Archive for knowledge management
by Bill Ives
April 19, 2011 at 3:14 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, KM, knowledge management
The subtitle of The New Edge in Knowledge is How Knowledge Management is Changing the Way We do Business. Knowledge management is becoming one of the longest running shows in business and Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert of APQC have been there from the beginning.
The book begins with a foreword by another of the KM All-stars, Larry Prusak. He notes a 1995 conference at UC Berkeley and offers some of the main principles of knowledge management that were articulated at the time:
“Knowledge is a fixed pool, a collection of resources that can be measured and used by standard management practices.”
“Technology is the key tool to unlock the value of this resource,. The more technology the better.”
Now before you jump all over these old school ideas that gave KM a bad name, Larry does it for you. He notes that these principles were not suitable for working with an intangible such as knowledge. He adds that despite this KM did not die and is experiencing a resurgence. I would agree on both counts.
He modifies the principle as follows:
“Knowledge is better understood as a flow. It is highly dynamic, nonlinear, and difficult to measure or even manage.”
“Although technology surely has its place, working with knowledge is primarily a human activity…”
Carla and Cindy pick up on this and note several new trends that have increased the potential for knowledge management such as enterprise 2.0 tools and the increased reach of the digital world in the work place, including mobile access.
Now there are those that use knowledge management as a whipping boy in describing the benefits of enterprise 2.0. There are also those that prefer to show how enterprise 2.0 helps achieve some of the promise of knowledge management. Clara and Cindy are in the latter group and I belong there as well. I think it is the more constructive approach. This promise is what first attracted me to the Web 2.0 tools seven years ago.
The book provides a comprehensive version of how best to implement knowledge management in 2011. It begins with an updated framework to guide program design initiatives and goes on to cover developing a value proposition. It then offers a variety of approaches to chose from and examples of successful ones. There is a chapter devoted to the new enterprise 2.0 tools and how they impact approaches. These tools are explored further as they go into detail on social networking. Following chapters cover governance, culture, and metrics. Four in-depth case studies conclude the book.
If you want a guide to implementing knowledge management in 2011, this is a good book for you.
by Bill Ives
January 12, 2011 at 3:17 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, intranet, knowledge management
Nielsen Norman Group has announced winners in their 11th annual contest for best intranets for 2010. In the announcement Usability expert Jakob Nielsen was quoted, “If there’s anything that has been overused, abused and hyped almost beyond the level of cliché, it’s ‘knowledge management.’ It might therefore be better to say that the winners in this year’s intranet design contest were very strong in ‘managing knowledge’ on their intranets. Employees are the ultimate knowledge resource, and the winning intranets provided features to transform their behavior into manageable knowledge. In particular, organizations used social networking—a natural inside the enterprise—to give employees practical and simple ways to communicate with one another and even change the way work is done at the organization.”
So if read this correctly knowledge management was mostly useless until social networking came along. While the introduction of social networking and other social applications has grealty increased the potential of knowledge management in my opinion, I would hardly say that KM was simply a cliché before their advent. You can set up siloed document repositories as a strawman for bad KM but when it is aligned with business processes I have seen a lot of value over the past 15 years. Having said this I do like the strong support for enterprise 2.0 concepts in this current report.
It is ironic that such weight is placed on social networking since social media was seen somewhat skeptically by the same group when the 2006 winners for best intranets were announced. The 2006 summary said that the winners “took a pragmatic approach to many hyped “Web 2.0″ techniques.” It also said. “Several winners have weblogs this year, but the blogs are restrained, emphasizing useful information instead of “what I did on my last date.” This is an anachronistic straw man as business blogs had been around for several years, getting high marks from Fortune, Business Week, and Harvard Business Review as early as 2005. Blog on.
The 2010 winners are described in detail in Nielsen Norman Group’s 433-page report entitled “Intranet Design Annual 2011: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets,” co-authored by Amy Schade, Jakob Nielsen and Nielsen Norman Group researcher Patty Caya. The report is available for download from the Nielsen Norman Group website. In alphabetical order, the 2011 world’s 10 best intranets are:
AMP Limited (Australia), a wealth management company
Bennett Jones LLP (Canada), one of Canada’s largest law firms
Bouygues Telecom (France), a telecom, mobile, fixed, TV, and Internet communications services company
Credit Suisse AG (Switzerland), a global financial services company
Duke Energy (US), an electrical power holding company
Habitat for Humanity International (US), a non-profit, non-denominational Christian housing ministry
Heineken International (The Netherlands), a leading brewer and owner and manager of a portfolio of beer brands
KT (Republic of Korea), an information, communications, and technology company
Mota-Engil Engenharia e Construção, S.A. (Portugal), a leading construction enterprise
Verizon Communications (US), a provider of wired and wireless broadband and communications services to US consumers, as well as of global business networking, data, and managed solutions to enterprises worldwide
There were no repeats from 2006 when Verizon competitor, Comcast, was named along with Volvo, DaimlerChrysler (nsme at the time), Microsoft, and others.
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by Bill Ives
January 7, 2011 at 3:45 am · Filed under
KM, knowledge management
Here is a useful list of knowledge management blogs to start the year. It includes three categories: general knowledge management, Web 2.0 and content management, and collaboration. The list from Biz-gasm offers a brief description of each listing so they took some time to get to know the sources. There are several FastForward bloggers on the list. All the ones I know on the list are excellent and I learned a few new ones to check out. Of course, there are other great ones that are missing but this is a nice start.
by Bill Ives
November 24, 2010 at 8:01 am · Filed under
knowledge management
Here my session notes from the KM World 2010 and Enterprise Search Summit 2010 keynote: The Wealth of Knowledge by Thomas A Stewart, Tom is the Chief Marketing & Knowledge Officer – Booz & Company. He is the Former Editor & Managing Director, Harvard Business Review and I have read his work for some time. Here is the session description:
“Our experienced author and practitioner shares winning strategies for developing and evolving knowledge-driven enterprises that are productive, innovative, and successful. Using real-world examples he illustrates how those strategies have worked in many different types of organizations. Stewart also looks into the future and suggests directions that knowledge-driven enterprises will engage in over the next few years.”
Tom started by pointing out the knowledge effort has been around for a while, running hot and cold like the Gartner hype curve. Investing in knowledge can still return great value. He began by looking at value in the knowledge economy.
He asked if the primary role of management is to address change or continuity. Change won, as did intellectual assets over physical assets.
Tom said that the knowledge economy stands on four pillars, First, knowledge is what we buy and sell. More of the money we spend now is on knowledge versus food, shelter, etc. Our smart phones have more knowledge than what was required to put a man on the moon. He now has a smart stove. This has created new strategic options for companies. For example, how are we going to package knowledge? One option is to put it into things. You can also distil your knowledge and sell it as a product. The third option is black box services such as what consulting companies and law firms do.
The TV show Mad Men shows old style marketing. They gave away marketing strategy to get the physical ads. Now these are separate and the ad agency game has changed. Firms such as law firms need new business models.
Knowledge now defines our work and activities. People need to ask what knowledge they need to do thier job. This is an opportunity for KM. This basic business case has limits. The first is that traditional organizations do not manage knowledge well and knowledge gets distorted in the communication process. Networks can be a solution. There are three kinds: the network of our team, networks from the center of an organization to those on the edge (including customers and partners), and networks to connect those on the edge with each other. Knowledge managers need to get these three networks under control.
Knowledge management needs to be able to handle fuzzy problems. When things are clear you provide best practices. When cause and effect is knowable you provide access to experts. When cause and effect are not known, you need to be able to take intelligent action within the chaos. This is where the most value from knowledge can be derived.
The third pressure on companies is the increasing globalization. First there was the globalization of markets, then production, now it is intellect. Now R&D budgets are being increasingly spent off shore. Distributed decision making only works when everyone understands the strategy and the knowledge to support it. Knowledge assets are what separate winners and losers. You need to be able identify your value to the market. Is it innovation, consistency, service, etc.? Does the sales force agree with management? This alignment is essential to compete.
The last pillar of knowledge economy is that return on knowledge should exceed that for other assets. This is how you create value. KM can accelerate this value creation.
Next, he addressed the rise of extreme competition. Everything is going faster. The customer expects 24/7 service. Customer power is growing. Pricing power is elusive. Traditional media has to compete against free products. Finding these products is much easier. Adaptability is key and KM can address this issue.
Then he covered pursuing a capabilities-driven strategy. The first order is defining what an organization really is. What is the identity? How do we create value for our customers? What do need to do this? To who are we selling what? The problem comes when these answers do not align. Problems when companies get side tracked to go after other goals because they seem easy. Coherence pays off. How can KM support this alignment? The answer will drive value in the 21st century.
Key questions include: Have we earned the right to win? Can we articulate the capabilities that give us this right? Have we created coherence in our KM system? How can we create the needed synergy by creating coherence through the same knowledge base? Tom suggests that knowledge management’s role has increased and become more strategic in today’s marketplace. I would agree.
by Bill Ives
November 23, 2010 at 3:46 am · Filed under
Innovation, knowledge management
Here are my session notes from Dave Snowden’s excellent keynote session at KM World and the Enterprise Search Summit, The Resilient Organization. Dave is the founder of Cognitive Edge. I have heard him speak on a number of occasions and thought this was one of his best. Here is the session description.
“In trying to create robust and successful enterprises, organizations have traditionally attempted to eliminate uncertainty through techniques such as scenario planning, risk assessment, process control, and using such programs as Six Sigma. However, the level of uncertainty and the consequences of failure have continued to create major problems for governments and industry alike. This presentation takes a radical new approach to uncertainty and supplies strategies to absorb uncertainty rather than eliminate it, thus creating a resilient organization. Resilience involves the recognition that failure of some type is inevitable and that what matters is early detection of failure and rapid recovery.
Such approaches involve using modern technology to augment human sensor networks and distributed cognition (commonly but mistakenly referenced as crowd sourcing, or wisdom of crowds). Snowden looks at the basic principles and drivers of the shift from robustness to resilience and outlines new methods and tools to move strategy from a linear process developed and implemented over months to dynamic real type approaches with rapid adjustment of objectives, funding, and resources. He examines the way in which modern organizations are focusing on effectiveness, rather than efficiency, creating flexibility in organizational structures, and installing information systems that can support dynamic interaction. Using real-world examples and providing practical tips, Snowden emphasizes an ecological approach to creating resilient 21st-century enterprises.”
Just prior to the session Dave tweeted “finalising slides with an hour to go to keynote, debating how many shibboleths to savage.” So I was interested to learn his decision. He was fast and furious. Dave began by noting that the main reason for KM is to support decision making and this has not changed over the past 15 years. Practical experience is necessary for wisdom. You need both theory and practice. But unfortunately now too many people are looking for simplistic answers. I would agree here.
Dave noted that most people can produce a decent meal through recipes and the right ingredients. A master chef can produce a great meal with whatever is your kitchen. We need theory and not just recipes to blindly follow.
Often low probability events can have high impact, such as when the levees broke in New Orleans. You need early detection of these possibilities and fast recovery. Counter terrorism is a good example. I would add the BP oil spill to the list. You need to architect for resilience. He gave a great example of homes turning back to the 18th century designs to survive floods in the UK.
The human brain scans a small percentage of the available data and makes quick decisions. The only people who look at all the data are autistic and they are overwhelmed but management theory adopts this autistic approach. To react to the charging lion you cannot examine all the data before you react.
Despite what Chomsky said, there are no deep structures in language and so taxonomies are useful but limited. The nature of the system determines how to organize it. You need flexible boundaries. He gave a great example of how to manage a children’s party through complexity theory. You create achievable goals and adapt to what happens. The only way to manage a complex system is to engage in it.
He went on to evolutionary theory. Within humans traits that develop accidently often prove useful. Culture can change DNA within a few generations. You want to set up serendipity. Many successful companies were happy accidents. They were outliers at the right time and seized the new opportunity. You need to be open to seeing these innovations. Context is king. In my own experience I have seen the desire of consulting companies to create recipes that new hires can deliver at high profit margins result in an ignorance of context and failure.
The worse movements are the ones with a single founder. KM did not have a single founder so that helped it. If you destroy variety in the system you destroy innovation. Six Sigma is an example of worst practice as it destroys morale and innovation.
Platitudes deserve derision. They only give comfort to the incompetent. Avoid recycled selective cases chosen in hindsight. You need to promote safe fail experiments. Technology needs to be seen as cognitive augmentation. Larry Prusack said intuition is just compressed experience. The human brain blends fragments in the face of challenge. He noted how Patton did this in World War Two. I saw the general’s portrait the next afternoon at the National Portrait galley and though a bit about Dave’s words.
Moore said that new ideas get traction until they threaten the dominant ideas. Dave noted his own experience. Companies that dominate a particular cycle have trouble moving to the next one. The same holds for countries or predators. The next paradigm will always come. We went from scientific management to systems dynamics (an engineering approach). We are now reaching the end of the systems dynamics era. It was too rigid and focused on outcomes but can be blind to new stuff. Now we are moving into the cognitive complexity era and a focus on impact rather than outcome. There are more evolutionary opportunities here.
He dumped on Myers Briggs brilliantly. I totally agree here and have always disliked it. It puts people into boxes based on discarded science but supplies a simplistic answer for those who need them. We need to shift away from the categorization of individuals to understanding collective capability. We need to move from scenario planning and linear process toward engaging everyone in continuous assessment.
Too much transparency is the enemy of innovation as it destroys risk taking. We need to move away from annual budget planning to continuous asset allocation. I have struggled through not much time wasted on large scale project planning so this strikes home to me.
The ability to create a network is key and not trying to hold power by having hierarchical authority. Hiedegger said that man acts as if he is the master of language when in fact language is the master of man.
We need to move from aggregation for people to allowing people to synthesize fragments. We need to allow for contextual blending of fragments. We need to put decision makers in direct contact with the raw data.
Failure leads to learning faster than success. At the same time, self-organizing requires some constraints or you just get anarchy. Social computing is what KM needed ten years ago. More to agree with here.
We need to distribute cognition but avoid the foolishness of crowds. Above all else we need to encourage messy coherence. Going form mess to order and mess to order in iterative fashion allows for adaption. Much to consider here.
