The realisation of potential
Someone just asked me what the benefits of my consulting are, I liked my answer so much I had to put it someplace where other people would see it (okay, I’m patting myself on the back).
The benefits of the consulting that I do is the improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge workers through the alignment of supporting technology to their business processes.
The second part of the workshop was brainstorming the questions that need to/should be asked in working with each aspect of the model. What follows is the output of that session.
Attention
Collaboration
Participation
Critical Consumption
Network Awareness
This is a little different blog post for me, I usually talk about some aspect of Knowledge Management, and while this is related to the work that I do, it may not be immediately obvious that it is KM-related. I had a request to post a blog about a workshop I attended on the weekend, so here are my thoughts and notes, let me know what you think.
“A Howard Rheingold Workshop, Harnessing Social Media and Smart Mob Thinking for the Enterprise” (September 25, 2010)
I attended the workshop named above, and enjoyed and learned from it, but the title doesn’t do it justice, what we learned was so much more valuable than the title might lead one to expect.
The session was in fact about digital literacy or literacy in the 21st century. Howard spoke to us about a model he has created, a model that describes what we need to survive in this digital, connected age we live in.
In previous centuries we needed to know how to read and write, but in current times we also need to know how to pay attention, participate, collaborate, consume critically, and be aware of our network. During the workshop we spoke about all of these components and what they mean.
Attention is about being mindful of where one applies his/her attention, e.g. am I choosing to purposefully spend time on Facebook or did I get “sucked-in” because of factors that are external to me? It’s about being aware of how we are thinking and what we are thinking.
Participation is about the difference between passive consumption and active participation, things happening to me versus me actively making a choice. We spoke about examples such as ohmynews.com and other citizen journalism websites, although that’s certainly not the only type of participation.
Collaboration is what you would expect, working together, communicating, sharing information; this touches on things I normally talk about in Knowledge Management.
Network Awareness is the combination of knowledge and know-how and recognizing the various types of networks. Here we spoke about our on-line identities, and motivations, and the different components that make up a network. We also spoke about how networks have changed and evolved, so that instead of being based on a subject/interest/cause/disease, they are now centred around people, i.e. I am the centre of my network, not the city I live in or the ethnic community I am part of or any other dimension. In discussing network awareness, Howard reinforced the importance of building a network, certainly something I can appreciate after being an independent consultant for almost 7 years.
The most important component of Howard’s 21st century literacy model, in my opinion, is Critical Consumption. There is so much information available, how does one determine its validity? We have to be detectives, there are sites out there on the web that are very professional looking but that are totally bogus: they appear to be one thing but are really something else. In some cases it’s fairly easy to figure out, we can use sites like Whois to determine the ownership of a site or we can Google someone’s name. We need to get over the “authority of text,” the idea that because something appears in text means that it’s true, that is a notation from a by-gone era when there was a much bigger barrier to getting something into print, now anyone can have a webpage and self-publishing books is much more affordable than it once was. We have to look for clues as to information’s trustworthiness; otherwise we will be victims of every scam going.
A couple of points from Howard’s summing-up were particularly valuable:
• Regulate the way people consume on-line rather than what goes on on-line
• Keep up with the literacies, not the technologies
That was the first part of the workshop, in the second part we discussed questions that need to/should be answered for each of the components of the model, but that’s going to have to be another blog post.
The only thing that is certain is death and taxes…and change. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars on knowledge management technology solutions, focusing on the technology, because the technology is easy to focus on, it’s visible: buying the servers, installing the software, testing it, releasing it, those are activities that are very visible. Involving stakeholders in the software selection process, understanding what helps versus what hinders them in their performance, providing training, communicating, these are invisible, “soft” activities. Soft-skills/activities are often ignored, or down-played in organizations, sometimes it’s because of cost, sometimes it’s a lack of understanding of their importance, sometimes because there’s “no time.”
Projects fail because of this lack of attention to soft-skills, especially Knowledge Management projects. With Knowledge Management projects knowledge workers have already found a way to get their jobs done, it may not be the most efficient and effective way to get it done, but they get it done, that’s who they are. They may miss opportunities to share and leverage other people’s experience or create something new because they didn’t know there was a possibility to share/leverage/create, but they get their job done. In implementing a Knowledge Management project knowledge workers are being asked to do things differently, whether that’s share information in a repository or micro-blogging site, or participate in a Community of Practice; chances are it’s different than what they are doing now, and they will keep doing their “old way of doing things” unless they are given a reason to change.
Why/how do people change their behaviours? Because they have a reason to change, they understand the “what’s in it for me.” A good program manager will have included key stakeholders in the whole process from the strategy and requirements gathering stages to roll-out to the organization. Stakeholders, who include front-line employees who will be using the system, have contributed their needs and requirements to the selection of the technology, so the technology is actually supporting them, not causing more work. Connecting with stakeholders is critical, this helps them understand the change that is coming and to have influenced it so that they can feel proud of what’s being build and act as change agents with their peers, when the time comes to start using the technology.
Once the connection is made, communication has to maintain and inform the relationship. Tell the stakeholders the truth, own up to any changes in the plan or scope or functionality, the situation will only get worse if the organization tries to hide or sugar-coat changes that were not agreed to by the team.
Communication and training will drive the adoption and acceptance of the technology and process changes. The IT team can get the technology 100% right, and if they ignore the people and process side of the equation, they will fail. These people and process side often gets cut or short circuited when budgets tighten, this is short sighted. Better to reduce the scale of the project or extend a timeline than to skimp on training, communication, and involvement of stakeholders. If the organization has time to do it wrong and fail and fix it, then they have time to get it right the first time at a much lower cost than doing it wrong and then fixing it.
Involving stakeholders in all stages of the process, ensuring that the technology enables them and that they have the communication and training that they need to be successful, will ensure that the organization’s Knowledge Management investment will have an ROI to be proud of.
I was going to write about Knowledge Management models, at least that’s what I thought earlier in the week when I started to write this, but I have discarded that notion, at least for now.
As some of you will know, I have been out on my own doing Knowledge Management consulting for almost 6 years, after spending 4 years implementing it in a business unit at a large technology company, who will remain nameless. During this time as a consultant I have often pondered who to target with my sales pitch and marketing strategy, business or IT?
Certainly the projects that I have done seem to turn out better when the business brings me in, and we work with IT as a stakeholder, since technology is inevitably part of the KM strategy implementation. But people are often trying to connect me to IT people as they perceive that my services are IT, not business-related.
It all became clear to me the other night at the Knowledge Worker Toronto event https://www.meetup.com/Knowledge-Workers-Toronto/calendar/11140670/, thanks goes to Graham Westwood for pointing out what probably should have been obvious to me, except that it wasn’t. What did Graham point out? That it is usually, HR, Finance, or the CEO who have the most control/say over the budget, IT usually is perceived as a cost centre so doesn’t get the same say in budget decision making.
Why was this not obvious to me? I was coming at the problem from a different direction. I focus on solving business problems by using Knowledge Management activities to improved efficiency and effectiveness. So I was asking the question, “who has business problems that they want solved?” The answer anyone and everyone, which doesn’t help me target who to talk to. Asking the question differently, “who controls the budget purse-strings?” gets a much different response.
Anyone have any different/additional thoughts?
Information overload seems to be coming up in a lot of my conversations lately, I’m not sure if it’s one of those things that once you start looking you see it everywhere, or if it’s that we’ve all gotten so overloaded with stuff because of changes at our jobs (doing more with less), or if there’s more stuff out there to sift through, e.g. Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, LinkedIn updates and group questions, etc.
Anyone have any thoughts?
The Knowledge Worker Toronto group (there’s a link on the left-hand side) that I organize with Martin Cleaver and Connie Crosby is actually having an event in August to discuss Information Overload. It was a topic suggested by member Ben Hong back in June. We’ve asked our members to share tips and tricks and what they have found helps either on a personal or a professional basis, it should be a great event.
There is so much stuff to sift through and figure out what is important, and what’s important to me may not be important to you, how do you decide?
I was at two more presentations/discussions this week, one talked about creating space in organizations for knowledge, the other was on followership, and really had nothing directly to do with knowledge at all, however both have made me think that I need to continue my writing on managing knowledge, not to mention the wonderful replies that I got to my original post. At the “Followership” event the other night we were given a copy of Barbara Kellerman’s book, “Followership” and were treated to her speaking about it, so I may have another post once I have actually finished the book. In the meantime, some more thoughts on managing knowledge. Continue reading “Can you manage knowledge? (part 2)”
I was part of a group listening to a case study presentation on the evolution of a Knowledge Management technology this week. I listened not so much for the lessons learned, but to hear about the particular experience of this individual at a company I was once familiar with. Continue reading “Can you Manage Knowledge?”
Today’s post is a little different than my last few, today I am wondering why all the lessons learned that I see for knowledge management initiatives are the same.