Managing Partner has provided me with a PDF version of my article that I can share on my blog.
This article was first published in Managing Partner on 25th September 2012 and is reproduced by kind permission (www.managingpartner.com)
Make or buy: How to choose a KM system for your firm
Received the two copies of Managing Partner magazine with my article printed in it yesterday, looks great! https://www.managingpartner.com/feature/technology/make-or-buy-how-choose-km-system-your-firm.
I will publish it here, in my blog in a few days.
What are the challenges of selling software for knowledge management?
I am writing this because I was recently asked by a KM technology vendor how they could be more successful with their platform and I thought the response would make a good, quick blog post.
My answer was that it is difficult to sell knowledge management technology because the platform, unlike other technology platforms, has to appeal to users so it has to be well organized and designed and consider functionality and usability issues; and it has to appeal to IT departments, so integration with other applications, cost, installation, support, and maintenance are prime considerations.
Why do I say that unlike other platforms it has to appeal to users and IT? Because unlike other platforms people will generally find a way around using KM technology if they can–they’ll use email, or shared drives, or just won’t share their knowledge and expertise. If it’s an accounting system, they have to use it, if it’s a time tracking system they have to use it, so bad user interface designs and functionality survive because users have to use those systems to get their jobs done. All too often KM is viewed as a “nice to have” not a “must have” and the challenges of picking the best technology to support it are ignored, in favour of “this one’s cheaper” or “this is from a vendor we already have a relationship with” or some other such cop-out.
So what do you do in this situation? Customize the pitch depending on who you’re talking to.
Creativity and Knowledge Management, part 3
Picking up from the idea of art as a metaphor for knowledge management…
Could we use the creation of art to demonstrate the importance of knowledge management? Yes, I think so, I think it might make workshops more enjoyable and lead to better outcomes.
Would doing some right-brain activities possibly help the left-brain do its job? Probably, it seemed well accepted at the conference that both right-brain and left-brain are necessary for innovation, i.e. the diverge/converge cycle.
What shape all of this takes in the Knowledge Management Consulting I do remains to be seen, but I am quite excited by the possibilities.
P.S. two last things from MindCamp:
- I met Dimis Michaelides of “The Art of Innovation” there and loved the workshop and simulation he did.
- I also met Whitney Ferre of Creatively Fit and loved the workshops that she did as well as the time I spent talking with her outside of the formal sessions
Whether either of them know it they provided pieces to the puzzle for me to discover the intersection of art and knowledge management, thank you both of you!
Creativity and Knowledge Management, part 2
Okay, so back for part 2 of Creativity and Knowledge Management, picking up where we left off.
We were talking about left-brain and right-brain and the different KM activities that fit in each area, and that’s fine, but what about right-brain activities that aren’t knowledge management activities that use knowledge management activities in their creation?
For example, one of the experiential exercises we did at the conference was recreating stylized watercolours of a frog and a spider. We each got a piece of the picture, which had been cut up into squares and we had to reproduce our square onto a bigger, rectangular piece of watercolour paper. Both the squares and the rectangles were numbered on the back, which made putting them together again easy. This was collaborative, it used meta-data (the numbers on the back) and we had the opportunity to go back and add additional detail to any of the pieces after we’d seen them all put together–all KM activities, but with art as the content matter.
Are there other KM activities that could be demonstrated through art? Lessons Learned? Peer Assists? Content and Document Management? Communities of Practice? Innovation?
So art becomes a metaphor for knowledge management.
Next post…Creativity and Knowledge Management, part 3
Creativity and Knowledge Management, part 1
I went to MindCamp last week (August 23-26, 2012). MindCamp is a creativity and innovation un-conference organized by a dedicated team of volunteers; this was its 10th incarnation and it was fabulous!
I went to investigate the intersection of knowledge management and creativity/innovation and I was not disappointed. Certainly, innovation comes up in KM, and is an outcome of sharing knowledge, whether that knowledge is shared in a documented form or in a community of practice (I have even done presentations on KM and innovation), but where does creativity and art fit in? Creativity isn’t necessarily the same as innovation.
As some of you know, I am an aspiring artist in my non-KM time so have been toying with how to incorporate my art into KM–The Art of Knowledge Management, and I came away from MindCamp with some ways I could do that.
The starting point for me was how to reconcile the left-brain (logical, sequential, rational, analytical) with the right-brain (random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing). It’s funny looking at these descriptions now, it doesn’t seem that hard to reconcile the two halves to make a whole.
The left-brain of KM focuses on the processes, workflows, and information architecture of KM. The right-brain of KM focuses on search activities, and the sharing that happens in communities of practice and mentoring, not-to-mention the creation of an over-all strategy for KM.
I think I will leave this post here for now, and do part 2 in a few days, after we’ve all had time to think this through a little more.
LawTech Camp, KM Technology discussion
A few weeks ago, I participated in LawTech Camp in Toronto. Connie Crosby and I were launching our beta-test for our Law Firm KM assessment tool, so we had an opportunity to do a demo presentation and talk about KM, I’ve posted the slides on SlideShare, click on the <demo presentation> or <about KM> links to see the slides.
There was a lot of discussion both during and after the presentation about one of the slides, so Connie wrote a blog post about it, which you can see here: https://www.slaw.ca/2012/06/11/
My Answers to Five Questions on KM
I did this interview with Vedalis, the representative of Knoco in France, and totally forgot to share it with everyone, https://blog.vedalis.com/billet-interview-Stephanie. They are doing a series and will be interviewing the other Knoco team members, so check back to their blog regularly.
KM helps you be lazy!*
Imagine this scenario: you’re working hard on a project or task, you’ve got a deadline you’ve got to meet, but you’re stuck, you don’t know how to finish.
What do you do?
Well, if you are experienced in the ways of knowledge management you:
- ask your colleagues,
- ask the Community of Practice you’re a member of,
- search in your expertise location system or yellow pages at peoples profiles,
- post something on your internal Q&A or social media application,
- you search your corporate document management system, ECM system, or other such repository/repositories to find the answer.
And you find the answer, doing considerably less work than creating the solution yourself and you meet your deadline. With all that time you saved you take a couple of minutes to post the solution, so that someone in your shoes days/weeks/months/years from now can find your solution and be lazy too!
*Thanks to Kathleen Wilson for the idea for this post.
Knowledge Management Mentoring
Would you rather learn how to implement knowledge management rather than have a consultant come in and do it for you?
I have just finished a project where I mentored/coached the main person on the client side through the creation of a Knowledge Management Strategy. She was knowledgeable and had, in fact started a strategy but got stuck. I have to say I enjoyed the experience, I wasn’t sure at first how it would go, and certainly it took longer than it would have if I had just done the work, but in the end she has a strategy that she can sell to management and she feels comfortable with how and why it was developed that way.
A win for all, I’d say.
I’m thinking I need to do more of these types of engagements, so watch for announcements.