Kaye Vivian: Profiles in Knowledge, Part 4
This article contains Kaye Vivian's Dove Lane blog posts from November 16, 2005 to January 18, 2006. Later posts are in?Part 1, Part 2, and?Part 3 and earlier posts are in Part 5.
January 18th, 2006
A while back Christie Mason, from a discussion group I participate in, drew an interesting analogy between knowledge management and party planning. Her point was that KM is not a “new” social science, and, perhaps also, that social science is not “science” at all (something the scientists I know declare regularly!).
“I have difficulty conceptualizing “social” and “science” together. So far I haven’t seen any social science in KM that hasn’t already been discovered and applied by successful party planners.
“KM is social the same as giving a party is social. The right mix of environment and participants is crucial to the success of KM, or a good party.
“You can have wonderful people show up at your party, but if the environment is like a dark swamp with mosquitoes and moldy food the social gathering will not be a success. KM environments must also be attractive and nourishing.
“Successful party environments happen in a space built with tools. KM happens in a space built with tools.
“You can have a wonderful party environment but it’s not a successful party without participants who are there because they choose to be there. People choose to attend a party based on their perceptions of the other people planning to attend, the reputation of the hosts, or the environment. People to choose to stay at a party when it meets their expectations and needs. KM participants triage their participation using very similar criteria.
“Successful parties require constant vigilance by the hosts to make sure everyone who attends is included and involved. KM mentors must maintain the same vigilance.”
There’s a lot of truth to these observations! I would add, KM is like a covered dish supper, where everyone who comes brings their favorite dish, and those who want to try it serve themselves exactly as much as they want. This is tongue in cheek, but can we take it to the next level and say that “learning” is like a wedding (i.e., two people unite in their understanding of a shared piece of information)? And if wedding planning is different from party planning, maybe there’s a way to find a simple analogy to discuss the relationship between knowledge and learning that no one can quite get their hands around…
January 18th, 2006
I was reading Joe Firestone’s blog this morning. I really like his insights on things KM. He has a series of articles featuring debates he had with Dave Pollard about whether KM “has been done” (meaning not that it’s over, but questioning whether anyone has really actually managed to “do” it yet). Joe says it hasn’t been done — if we don’t know what ‘knowledge work’ is, then how can we know if we are successful at it? Dave, who takes a somewhat more pragmatic view says “if the knowledge worker’s boss says they are doing a great job, it doesn’t matter whether it qualifies as ‘knowledge work’ at all.” That, in a nutshell, is the status of KM in the business world. One camp who think the KM field/process/practice is still new and not yet fully/adequately defined, and one camp who think KM is/can be defined by the practical results (or lack of) gained from it.
Here is an excerpt from Joe’s article:
“…Has KM Been Done? This is a trick question. Of course, KM has been done. KM is a natural function in human organizations, and it is being done all of the time in an informal distributed way by everyone undertaking activity in order to enhance knowledge production and integration activity. But whether formal interventions claiming the label “KM” are instances of KM practice is another question entirely. To answer that question, we need to have clear, non-contradictory ideas about the nature of knowledge, knowledge processing, and Knowledge Management. And to have those, we need to get beyond the notion that we can do KM by just doing anything that may have a positive impact on worker effectiveness while calling that thing “KM”.
“Instead we need to recognize that the immediate purpose of KM is not to improve either worker effectiveness (though it may well do that) or an organization’s bottom line. Its purpose is to enhance knowledge processing that solves problems and to enhance the diffusion of these solutions, in the expectation that such enhancements will produce better quality solutions, which, in turn, may, ceteris paribus, improve worker effectiveness and the bottom line. (emph. added) And when we undertake KM projects, we must evaluate the contributions of our interventions to the quality of knowledge processing and knowledge outcomes. That means tough, precise thinking about knowledge processing, knowledge, and the impact on these that our interventions are likely to have.
“The question I am asking here is whether KM practitioners are, in fact, providing this tough, precise thinking as a basis for KM practice, or whether, instead, they are “practicing KM” by helping fields or techniques such as Information Technology, Content Management, CRM, Social Network Analysis, Story-telling, Communities of Practice, and “Knowledge” Cafés to “colonize” it? …”
Interesting stuff…to me, at least! What he’s saying is improving worker effectiveness and the bottom line are not the purpose of KM, they are potential outcomes of KM. That’s a very important distinction! I’ll be looking for what others have had to say on this subject.
January 17th, 2006
Here are some citations for how much KM can save an organization. I like to keep track of claims like these, because they are valuable when talking to financial people in an organization.
——————————
According to estimates based on research from IDC and Delphi Group, enterprises are losing around $5,000 per employee per year because of lack of information, training, or requisite skills - adding up to losses of about $20 per employee per day. Therefore, the overall money wasted by the average KM-deficient enterprise is about $25 million per year.
Sources:
Knowledge Management Factbook, IDC Bulletin #20065, September 1999
“Taxonomy and Content Classification: Market Milestone Report,” Delphi Group, April 12, 2002
——————————
“The intellectual assets of most companies are probably worth at least three or four times the company’s tangible book value, yet no CEO I know could honestly claim to be actually utilizing more than 20 per cent of his or her firm’s intellectual capital base. Can you imagine the fate of any CEO who could only manage a 20 per cent utilization rate in his or her production capacity, inventory efficiency, or any other traditional index of performance? It doesn’t even bear thinking about. Yet in this, the most important wealth creating area of all, a 20 per cent efficiency rate is considered normal, inevitable, and acceptable. Well, it isn’t.” — Matthew J. Kiernan, The 11 Commandments of 21st Century Knowledge
—————————————
“At one consumer credit firm, managers estimate the cost of failure to share knowledge at over $56 million from five instances alone, including failure to apply a customer retention innovation across different segments and failure to share U.S. learning on loss avoidance with Canada. Senior executives in a recent KPMG survey estimate that, on average, 6% of revenue is being missed from failing to exploit knowledge effectively.” — Stimulating Knowledge Sharing: Strengthening Your Organization’s Internal Knowledge Market. McKinsey, 2003.
—————————————-
“Since 1993, Bain and Company have been tracking the use of various management tools and according to their latest survey covering the year 2000, only about 35% of their world-wide sample of 451 companies was using ‘knowledge management’, reporting a satisfaction rating of about 3.5 on a five-point scale. The usage figure puts ‘knowledge management’ in 19th position, out of 25 management tools. This compares with about 70% using benchmarking, and almost 80% using strategic planning. It suggests that the flood may be more of a trickle.” — Bain and Company case study, August 2003
———————————–
“Knowledge management is still expensive. Intelligent search apps like Verity Inc.’s K2 cost more than $100,000, expertise software like Kamoon Inc.’s runs $175 a user or more, and instant-messaging and collaboration tools from IBM Lotus Software add as much as $38 per user. Add in consulting fees and labor costs, and it’s not uncommon for large companies to invest millions setting up knowledge-management environments, says Delphi Group analyst Hadley Reynolds. But companies are buying: Research firm IDC forecasts that knowledge-management software sales will reach nearly $6.4 billion by 2006, up from $2.2 billion in 2001.” — Information Week, August 18, 2003
————————————
Recent survey by the Brookings Institute–intangible assets like knowledge made up 69 per cent of a company’s market value in 1999 compared with 17 per cent in 1978.
————————————-
“By 2003, the average cost of redundant effort in Fortune 500 companies will reach $64 Million per year.” — KPMG
——————————–
“Companies are generating more than 20 million web pages of content per day, and because around 85% of the data on the web is unstructured it estimates that, among the Fortune 1000 alone, difficulties accessing information will waste $7.5 billion this year (2002).” — IDC Research study
—————————————
“Workers typically spend 2.5 hours a day looking for information, but find what they are looking for only 40% of the time.” — IDC Research study
—————————————-
Benefits gained by a financial services company from knowledge continuity management:
* 1000+ users were able to find the information they needed quickly and efficiently
* New hires could now learn about the company, the divisions and the system they were working on, without expensive, specialized training
* Existing employees could cross-train in new areas
* Once employees retired or were laid off, the critical knowledge they used to perform their jobs was now available for the people who replaced them
* Subject Matter Experts would not be barraged with questions about what they knew - this information was now stored in a centralized location and always updated
* The time spent by employees looking for information was reduced from 4 hours per week to 1 hour per week[1000 people x 3 hours per week = 3000 hours saved each week]
—————————————-
“Traditional financial statements would not show the loss of IC, and the subsequent impact to the company, if 1,000 employees would suddenly leave the company (Roos & Roos, 1998). However, KPMG’s research indicates that, after losing key employees, 43 percent of organizations experienced damage to a main customer relationship, 50 percent had lost knowledge of best practice information and 10 percent had lost significant income (Warren, 1999). “
——————————————
“Research by Buckman Labs estimates that companies spend 3.5 percent of its revenues on KM (Davenport, 1996). McKinsey & Company has an objective of spending 10 percent of revenues on developing and managing knowledge (Davenport, 1996).”
——————————————
“Companies who currently use KM techniques are quick to note that, although difficult to quantify, they are experiencing some cost reductions. Ken Derr, Chevron’s CEO, states "We learned that we could use knowledge to drive improvement in our company by emphasizing the shopping for knowledge outside organizations rather than trying to invent everything ourselves." (Ash, 1997) Derr believes KM techniques are saving the company over $250 million annually. Beyond the cost savings due to reduced cycle times and higher product quality, more attention should focus on the intangible savings indirectly related to managing knowledge.
Community focused organizations experience increased employee interaction and communication, as seen at Xerox (Hill & Storck, 2000). The more knowledge intensive and cohesive an organization becomes, the higher the threshold becomes for employees to leave the company because fewer outside organizations can offer similar levels of knowledge. This reduction in turnover implies large cost savings for companies. Ellis and Tissen (1999) estimate that companies spend 2.5 percent of their salary expense on training newly hired employees. Subsequently, with reduced turnover, the organization is able to increase entrance criterion for new positions, enabling an organization to recruit people with higher, specialized knowledge.
It could also be argued that employees with high organizational knowledge have a better grasp of their jobs and require less management supervision. Quicker, higher quality decisions could be made from lower levels of the organization. For employees who interact with customers, these intangible benefits could translate into better customer service with faster reaction times to customer questions. This better customer interaction provides an organization with an intangible competitive advantage. Any combination of these examples would provide a company with significant, albeit difficult to quantify, cost reduction opportunities. “
January 11th, 2006
Instructional design plays an important part in developing effective online adult education. Not surprisingly, critical elements in the success of an online learning experience are the roles of the instructor and the instructional designer. Incorporate the learning materials into an easy to use online environment. Busy adults have a high degree of motivation and interest in the subjects they sign up for, so the need to target and organize an intuitive online learning environment is even more critical.
Here are some instructional design tips for developing an engaging and instructionally sound online course.
To Begin
Start with the same type of information generally included in a course syllabus:
·?An overview and/or an orientation of the entire course
·?A clear explanation about how the course materials are organized
·?A list of priorities, deadlines, and responsibilities
Providing this extra organizational information for online courses can prevent participants from feeling lost or overwhelmed by the materials. Learners prefer clearly defined learning outcomes, or tasks, and recommended sequencing, so design courses with simple descriptions and cues about goals.
Just like traditional classroom courses, online course content should contain:
1. Clearly defined prerequisites & objectives.
2. Presentation of specific and relevant content.
3. Active learner participation using exercises, personal assessments and/or game simulations.
4. Highlight, clarify or reinforce critical points.
5. Follow-up and feedback capabilities.
Encourage Active Participation and Learning by Doing
Presented with an engaging, quality learning experience, students make their own bridges between concepts and obtain greater comprehension. Include tools like exercises, calculators with personal worksheets, or online simulations to encourage participation in the learning activities. Present real-world and case-based scenarios that require participants to think and apply the example content to their personal interests. Encourage practice and application of concepts by having assignments with interactive self-assessments or quizzes. Multiplayer games and simulations are also highly effective for this purpose. For adults, participation is critical.
·?Organize the learning sequence and materials from the perspective of the learner.
·?Provide cues and transitions between learning components.
·?Look for opportunities to practice or learn by doing.
·?Encourage active participation with ample opportunities for feedback.
·?Provide methods for personal self-assessment.
·?Each presentation or exercise needs to clarify, highlight or reinforce a critical point or it may distract the learner.
·?Use proven instructional design techniques for self-paced or instructor-led learning environments.
·?Limit the group size for synchronous learning courses. 30:1 seems to be an effective ratio, even though theoretically it would be possible to have an unlimited number of participants.
Create a Sense of Community
Online courses are not solo experiences, even though students may participate asynchronously. Participant communication is almost as important to the role of an instructor in online learning. Different people read and participate in the world differently. When participants share information by performing group activities and posting assignments, learning is facilitated in two ways. First, the participant is independently rehearsing and restructuring their knowledge while they develop opinions and create post messages. Secondly, the student gains exposure to other participants’ thinking and experience, thus broadening their own. Develop a sense of community online through collaboration, discussion and negotiation by offering places or times where participants can “meet” online. It can be something as simple as a free posted message forum software, or as elaborate as a fully integrated learning management system behind your organization’s firewall. The important thing is to make it both easy and necessary for students to interact with each other as part of the online learning experience.
Provide Ample Opportunities for Self-Assessment and/or Feedback
For adults, self-assessments are also important. Learners need to check their conceptual understanding and evaluate their progress by completing assessment opportunities based on their interests. They help the student to identify ways to make the learning applicable in the real world. Assessments reveal whether the pace sequence, assignments and content material are satisfactory or need revision. Here again, game simulations can provide particularly engaging ways for students to assess their own progress that instructors can observe and record.
Expert or instructor feedback is important to insure participants feel their contributions are an important priority and contribute to the overall learning experience. If necessary, provide guidance and suggestions to the group or to individual participants to keep them on track. Instructors should coach, observe participants, offer hints and reminders, provide feedback, scaffolding and fading, and model.
When providing online self-assessments or calculator tools, remember to:
·?Provide clear directions on how to complete the assessment and/or how to submit the assessment for additional review.
·?Set clear expectations for what information the self-assessment or calculator provides.
·?Provide specific recommendations when a personal assessment is to be evaluated asynchronously by a subject matter expert.
·?Provide participants with access to “help” information if they need to consult with a subject matter expert or technical support person during or after the assessment.
·?Make sure activities are structured simply and appropriately to help participants understand the outcome.
·?Provide participants with a timeframe about receiving any feedback or mentoring.
Check the Results Before Launching
After content is developed, review the materials and exercises in a controlled pilot environment online before you invite participants to use it. These guidelines might be a useful review checklist for your piloted courses:
1. Does the course establish enough and appropriate motivation to insure participant attention to the material and assignments?
2. Is the necessary content provided for all course components?
3. Is the presentation sequence of the content accurate and clearly indicated so as to guide participants through the material? Is it easy for them to back up and review a unit?
4. Is all the required information easily available to the participant in some format?
5. Are there enough practice exercises for participants to achieve adequate rehearsal, processing, and understanding of the content?
6. Are there adequate opportunities for instructor and/or classmate feedback included in the materials?
7. Are appropriate activities and evaluation tools provided?
8. Are sufficient follow-through activities provided to maintain learning and motivation over time?
9. Is the participant presented with clear paths, navigational guidance, and transition cues to direct them through the course material and components?
10. Are supplemental materials, such as outlines, glossary or checklists available to the participant to facilitate transfer of learning provided?
11. Have you arranged for the course material to remain online and accessible for a period of time following the course? Are the guidelines for that understood by the IT department and students?
Of course, there are a lot of other variables when building an online course, for example, size of each learning unit, assumptions about how long students will be online at each sitting, speed of network connections (which governs how graphically complex the materials can be), availability of all required software on student machines, complexity of the subject matter, experience level of students with the Internet, security around information access, and protection of personal information, to name a few. Some other good resources for reference are Florida Gulf Coast University’s Principles of Online Design, WebCT’s pointers on designing for disabilities, and CSU-Chico’s Rubric for Online Instruction.
January 5th, 2006
For some people, knowledge management means capturing and storing information. For some people it means finding an expert who knows the answers to your questions when you need them answered. For some it is cultural change and for some it is technology. All these are partially right. The lack of an accepted boundary around what KM is makes it difficult for many business leaders to understand — and to understand the value it can bring.
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, KM is happening in your organization. One department is operating a portal, one group is testing message boards, one is piloting a collaboration tool, one is building a new repository, one is working on a taxonomy for a shared drive, one is trying to get just-in-time information to call center representatives. According to research by Michelle Delio, only 8% of knowledge initiatives are driven from the top. A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation at the KMWorld conference in San Jose called Grassroots KM: Learnings from the Front Line. For the 92% of people who are participating in or leading a grassroots or bottom-up KM initiative, here are some pointers I covered in that presentation:
Where do you start?
·?First! Develop a strategic vision. Write it down. It drives everything.
·?Have a champion.
·?Start where you can win.
·?Define the business needs explicitly before deciding upon the technology.
·?Don’t let the IT group or technology drive the train.
·?Make a detailed communication plan.
·?Don’t start with customers, learn on your own employees.
·?Use before and after metrics .
·?Realize that KM has no “completion” date.
Some personal learnings:
·?Scale down your grand ambitions and get specific. Don’t try to boil the ocean.
·?Tie your proposals to business issues; help to ease pain points in critical processes.
·?Find the like-minded people in your organization and create an ad-hoc KM team. Create a Knowledge Panel or support group of believers and make them your advocates.
·?Identify possible champions; court them openly. Active executive leadership involvement is critical!
·?Determine your biggest barriers and create plans to get around them.
·?Formalize the KM team/project as an organizational initiative (even if you don’t have a formal budget).
·?Cultural change is the biggest nut to crack. Everyone is too busy to change what they do right now unless they are forced to.
·?People want to share when they think it's valued.
·?KM is not a technology, but technology can cause it to fail.
·?It’s happening, even if it's not called KM. Gather all the tests, prototypes, pilots and one-off projects under your umbrella. (Hint: you’ll be able to show big organizational savings just from eliminating redundancies!)
The truth about hording
You may hear or read in publications that people horde knowledge. If you find that to be true in your organization, dig a little deeper. People actually like to share their knowledge, to feel like they are having a positive impact, to help others, to contribute to an effort that is bigger than themselves. If they are overworked, get no recognition for their contributions, and/or other people take credit for their work, they are not likely to share. People will almost always share one-on-one. If you ask them a question, they will give you as complete an answer as they know to give. The secret is they need to feel that their knowledge and the time it takes to share that knowledge is valued. Figure out how to recognize and value contributions, and you will not have a hording problem.
The need for communities
The real knowledge work of an organization happens in the networks of people who share a common interest. Community is about people and how they work, not technology. Communities have to be a major element of your knowledge strategy, and can be especially valuable to a grassroots KM initiative. If your organization sees KM as another database (knowledge base) or wants to work on documents and content, it’s important to change the discussion and get people and how they interact into the mix. Knowledge is embedded in people, information is stored. It’s perfectly legitimate for an organization to want to have an information or data storage strategy, but that’s not KM. Communities feel ownership of the information that is important to them, and they will keep it up to date, create a network of experts related to their information, and create valuable organizational intellectual assets. Identify some existing networks that would benefit from better information sharing, and bring them on board first. Even a simple technology can be a good starting point and show good results.
Have a communication plan
Once you have a pilot or project underway, remind people of how it was before KM. Contrast for employees the difference between now and the way they used to work. Don't take for granted that everyone understands what you are trying to build or accomplish OR what you have accomplished so far. A good internal communication plan is critical! Just like the advertising approach says, tell’ em what you are going to tell’ em, tell’ em, and tell’ em what you told’ em. Be sure that all your key audiences are kept up-to-date for all phases of your initiative, and that you give them a way to value the success you achieve. Give participants information about goals and reports on their success.
It’s obviously easier to bring KM into an organization if you can be part of a top-down program, but if your only way is to do it from the ground up, it’s still possible to succeed. The critical factor is to choose your battles, and be armed to fight them!
January 4th, 2006
While it’s hard to imagine an organization that would not be better off with communities of interest, an amazing number still don’t have them. One reason is because of legal concerns, especially in the financial services and consulting businesses. They worry that a member or visitor will get bad advice from the community and act on it — then hold the organization responsible for any losses that result. Another reason is that business managers may not have much personal experience in a community, and are uncertain how to be effective at managing one, so they ignore them. Another reason is that communities are self-governing and discuss topics freely. Most organizations still believe in top-down, carefully crafted messages from executives. Executives fear loss of control over information (which, as we all are taught, is power).
In the 25 or so years that I have participated in and managed online communities, I’ve learned a few things that I believe to be true. Here are my Principles of Community:
·?Communities are voluntary associations of individuals who share interest in a common topic. A business community can be formed around a professional discipline, a skill or a topic. Other communities can be formed around any topic or interest.
·?A community can be a small, active core with a narrow focus or a larger group with diverse voices, opinions, learnings and experiences.
·?Communities have value when they are focused around data, not organizational structures.
·?Workers participate in two dimensions –vertical business hierarchies and horizontal roles that cross the business. Role-based communities provide an important context for work improvements, value creation, learning and efficiencies across the enterprise.
·?Communities require moderation. Moderators should be members from within the community, and moderators must be coached and supported.
·?Unless managers give workers time and encouragement to participate, communities will fail.
·?Key thought leaders must be involved in the community for it to succeed.
·?Communities play an important role in content creation and management.
·?Communities are the asset generators of a knowledge management system. Knowledge is shared between people, and capturing that exchange has value.
·?Members of communities develop trust and a strong comradery that results in candid questions/answers and effective problem solving. Community dynamics are important motivators for subject matter experts and can help in SME retention.
Management guru Tom Peters said, “It’s a cross functional world — removing/trashing/obliterating any and all barriers to cross-functional communication is nothing short of our single highest priority. However sophisticated the technology, however grand the vision of integrated solutions and great customer experiences, the business is doomed without real human communication." Communities fill that need, and all organizations have informal communities or networks, even if they are not supported by technology. Communities develop intellectual capital that can add to the market value of organizations. Giving communities the tools to function more effectively and create information archives is a priority for any knowledge management strategy and any smart business.
January 4th, 2006
For the last few months I’ve had an opportunity to step back and reflect on KM after having been heavily involved in trying to get a grassroots initiative off the ground in my former company for more than three years. Here are a few of the things I believe to be true.
·?KM is a business discipline powered by exchanges of information between people. It is a business process that creates value and enables learning transfers.
·?KM is a business process enabled by technology. It is not a technology.
·?Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is the personal experience, associations and information that exist in each person’s head. Knowledge is a fluid mix of personal experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provide a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.
·?Knowledge is the product of human activity. When it is documented, it becomes information. Information becomes knowledge again when other people learn it themselves. KM is the process of capturing and making available information for reuse and learning.
·?KM is a duality. The “social side” includes collaboration, conversation, community, meetings, discussions, lectures, classes, and live help. The “static side” includes repositories of documents, images, video, sound files, directories, web pages, records and help files. Both aspects are necessary and important.
·?People are wealth and capability generators who can profoundly affect market appeal, reputation and performance. Value and reward subject matter experts.
·?These environmental factors are needed for KM to succeed: Strong and committed leadership (without it, don’t start), Well-defined strategy integrated with business objectives, Measurable goals, Rewards and recognition for participants, Mindset/culture of knowledge sharing, and Right technologies.
·?Capturing knowledge and making the information available to replacement workers can greatly reduce the negative impact caused by loss of key employees, enable new workers to become effective more quickly, and help to build the intellectual capital assets of the business.
·?A knowledge strategy has two aspects: Cost control/avoidance and revenue/value generation. Different areas of a business will benefit from one aspect or the other, and both are equally important.
·?Knowledge management requires a long-term commitment from the organization to change processes and culture, as well as the tools to facilitate data capture.
December 28th, 2005
Some of the best and most interesting work in KM is being done outside of America, something which I find fascinating, given that we Americans are predisposed to think that we are the first and best at what we do. Maybe it’s because some of the early and leading practitioners of KM like Karl Erik Sveiby and David Snowden are Europeans, or because, as in Canada, the government made the Internet widely available early on and researchers like Verna Allee, Hubert St. Onge and Nick Bontis were able to get involved with the topic more readily. Or because outside America businesses and academic institutions are more willing to pursue new ideas that offer possible competitive advantages. There’s obviously no pat answer for why. But it’s clear that Europeans and Canadians and Australians and Asians are doing some of the most interesting work being done today in KM. (I don’t mean to bash the excellent work done by Ikujiro Nonaka, Tom Davenport, Joe Firestone, Richard McDermott, Carla O’Dell, Debra Amidon, David Weinberger, Larry Prusak, and many others.)
I was reminded of non-American contributions to KM today when I read a very nice paper called Theory Building in Knowledge Management by Irish authors Shirley-Ann Hazlett, Rodney McAdam, and Seamus Gallagher. (Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 14 No. 1, March 2005). The paper spells out clearly the current state of the KM debate (is it a tool or is it a process or is it a theory). The authors suggest that KM involves a number of implicit and explicit assumptions that guide theory and practice, and they analyze the major schools of thought within KM. They categorize KM as being in a “pre-science” state, where proponents in the field have different beliefs and values and even disagree about fundamentals. I was recently involved in a discussion in the actKM community where we were debating about whether KM is a profession or a process, and whether we have even agreed on the core components that constitute KM yet. It is clear that the field of knowledge management is still in its infancy and evolving, and that some of the best minds in the field are grappling with the parameters of it. This paper supports that attempts to develop an optimal KM methodology are misplaced unless the underlying assumptions and paradigms are identified and understood. Nicely said.
December 15th, 2005
This is going to sound like a rant, and maybe it is. I just cannot understand why “people” (who are close relatives of “they”) don’t realize that communication is an art. It probably has its basis in the fact that we all grow up learning a language and communicating more or less effectively with the people around us. Communication is common, its natural, and it doesn’t require a lot of thought to open the mouth, or pick up the pen or keyboard, and “speak”. Everybody does it, so everyone thinks they can communicate. Would it were true!
/rant on
Professional communicators have developed expertise, insights and wisdom about their craft that are just as significant to the practice of their craft as the expertise of any other skilled craftsman is. Anyone who pursues one type of work for 5, 10 or 20 years accumulates expertise that others not working in that field simply don’t have. They understand nuances, plan for the unexpected, know the shortcuts, innovate and solve problems that others not experienced in their craft can’t even anticipate. So why is it that in hard times communication budgets are among the first to be cut, and communication professionals are among the first to be dismissed? There is something troubling about how quickly communication budgets are cut in hard times, and how easy it is to dismiss communicators from the strategic planning table. They simply aren’t perceived to be mission-critical in most organizations or to be strategic in what they do. This bothers me. I don’t understand the logic of it.
If you ever watch the West Wing television show, you see how deeply integrated Toby is with all aspects of White House affairs, and how painstakingly he works to craft the messages precisely to reflect the nuances needed to advance the administration’s agenda. You see how CJ advises the President and others on how to focus on the message they need to convey, and delivers bad news to the media with the finesse of a prima ballerina. While this is not real life, I have known plenty of professional communicators in my life who do their work in much the same way as the TV show represents. So why aren’t communicators valued more?
Here are some points to consider:
·?Communications professionals typically work with the CEO, Managing Director, Executive VPs, leading local news reporters, investment analysts and brokers, the organization’s board of directors, and key individuals throughout the organization. They know the key people, hear the off-the-record comments, and know the most damaging secrets.
·?They sit in on the most strategic and hush-hush meetings on Executive Row. They often contribute equally, but are rarely acknowledged as full members of the strategic team. They are usually considered adjunct to, not part of, the inner circle.
·?They spend long, often unpaid, hours in the trenches with top business leaders learning the nuances of key business issues in order to be able to craft a news release or sales pitch or speech for someone else to deliver.
·?Communication involves more than public relations hype, writing promotional flyers, and planning splashy events.
·?The only CEO of a major corporation who came out of the communications field was Lee Iacocca (former Chairman of Chrysler Motors).
·?Communicators are usually well-networked throughout the organization, because that is how they get the information they need to meet tight deadlines and maintain awareness of the organization’s mood and issues.
Communicators are tremendous reservoirs of organizational knowledge! Why aren’t they in the executive suite as members instead of as visitors? Communicators typically have at least one college degree and according to the International Association of Business Communicators, more than half of them have graduate or post-graduate degrees. These are smart, capable and trusted people, who contribute solutions to the thorniest problems, help to avoid business crippling crises, and deliver positive, forceful messages. They are as knowledgeable and qualified in their field of expertise as underwriters, sales executives, strategic planners, financial executives, infrastructure architects, legal counsel, marketing and business development professionals, and others who affect the bottom line success of an organization are in theirs.
So why aren’t they in the executive suite as members instead of as visitors?
How they come to their career path is partly to blame. Many are liberal arts majors or English majors or social psychologists or other fields executives traditionally see as “soft”. Also, many of them start out in a junior level position — secretary, freelance writer, events planner, marketing researcher — and even after several promotions are never seen by senior executives as anything but the junior person they once were. There’s truth to “you can’t be a prophet in your own country.” In fact, many successful communicators have had to leave their company for another job, and then return to the original job a year or two later in order to advance and/or be perceived differently.
Personal working styles are partly to blame. Everyone has seen the Jungian-based four-quadrant approaches to assessing people’s working (and other) styles, like the famous Myers-Briggs test. Certainly, you can find people in the communications profession from all quadrants. The particular job requirements determine whether a person needs to be more tactical and detail oriented or more strategic and expressive. As a generality, however, most communicators tend to fall into the relationship/social/collaborative/expressive quadrants. They enjoy observing and contributing to some or all aspects of the dynamics of human interaction and behavior. Their collegiality and sociability can be a barrier, because they are thought to be “touchy-feely” or interested in initiatives or programs that produce only intangible benefits. And as we know, intangibles are not valued when it comes time for the financial team to put dollars on a spreadsheet or calculate ROI.
Ultimately, individual communicators and the communications profession are to blame for their lack of success. While there are clear exceptions, communicators are not good at promoting themselves! At the risk of sounding sexist, I think I should say women especially are not good at promoting themselves, and the profession is still mostly women. Women tend to like to work more collaboratively, to be contributing members to a team, to pitch in, to share the risks and the rewards. This working style has colored how the communications role is viewed by others. I know many communicators of both sexes who are reluctant to stand up and voice an opinion that’s different from their management’s opinion, take risks, or to demand extra resources for the work they do. Their collaborative working style makes it difficult for them to single themselves out or promote their own agendas above that of the group.
I don’t have a solution. This is a debate I’ve participated in periodically over the last 25 years, and I’m not sure it has a solution per se. It’s just unfortunate that so many communicators feel forced to leave the profession in order to advance professionally. They are bright, capable people. I wonder if there is a way to change the perception of the profession, or whether the way it is today is simply inherent in the work.
/rant off
December 6th, 2005
The closing keynote presentation by Dave Snowden of the Cynefin Centre was thought provoking. Whether you agree with his point of view or methodologies or not, he is always an interesting presenter who challenges the status quo. A humanist and realist, he has made his mark in KM in the areas of narrative and sense making. Here are my notes and thoughts on his presentation.
KM has a huge future, but not by that name. It’s about sensemaking, and moving from knowledge to sensemaking to actions. We should just forget the term KM — it belongs to the IT world now — and move on. The emphasis of the session was on the importance of moving the practice of KM away from knowledge/research and toward action. As he said, more of the same “knowledge management” (databases, analysis, intellectual capital) doesn’t cut it any more. We need to manage knowledge to improve decision making in organizations. He presented a 2 x 2 matrix called the Landscape of Management, with the axes being Complexity of Output and Complexity of Input. This creates four quadrants he calls Computational Complexity, Process Engineering, Systems Dynamics, and Sensemaking. Sensemaking is required when there is both complex input and complex output, and is the area where an organization can gain a cognitive processing and capability edge.
In nature, stability and resilience are opposed. You have to build in a tolerance for error and exception, i.e. inefficiency, so the system can become efficient. Our normal response to complexity is to simplify the input or the output, when we really need to be able to make sense from it. There are three types of sensemaking — three ways humans make sense of the world — and these schools are not absolute:
·?Ontology - the way things are
·?Phenomenology - the way we perceive
·?Epistemology - the way we know
Complex systems cannot be managed by planning outcomes.
领英推荐
He offered three key insights:
·?Identities form around attractors — within barriers
·?Humans evolved as pattern processing organisms, not data repositories
·?We always know more than we can say, we always say more than we can write down
It’s challenging to understand the processes by which subject matter experts make their decisions, because they have patterns stored in their long term memory, and process new information by comparing current observations against known patterns until one fits. Pattern matching is impossible to replicate. It’s unique to each person’s experience and knowledge.
Such processing is always based on past experience. Failure creates patterns faster than success. Storytelling also teaches patterns, which is important to understand in KM. We need organizational stories in order to have valid filters so pattern matching can occur.
Why does it take time to learn how to make decisions well? We need time to learn the patterns. Scientifically, it takes about two years for the neurons of the brain to “get it”. Humans learn from fragments/anecdotes that they synthesize in new ways.
For this reason it’s important to map the ecology of the organization *before* purchasing a system to facilitate knowledge management.
December 6th, 2005
Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) is a whole field devoted to the complex, adaptive nature of human systems that was derived from complexity theory. It's also called the science of networks and nonlinear dynamics in human interactions. The field applies complexity science and chaos theory from math and physics to the interpersonal challenges that plague individuals, institutions, and communities today in an attempt to make them more coherent and facilitate organizational change. By understanding the broader dynamics that drive emergent patterns of behavior, we can make sense of patterns, enabling organizations to increase the power and effectiveness of their interventions to change patterns of interaction and mimic effective networks.
Like KM, human dynamics is a relatively new field. As practitioners worked to understand and define the field, a myriad of approaches and tools were developed, and now the number and diversity of those tools can be confusing. Glenda Eoyang of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute suggests a matrixed taxonomy to categorize different HSD called The Practice Landscape. I can easily imagine something similar being developed in the near future for KM.
(Ed. Note: Thanks to Rosanna Tarsiero for this pointer!)
December 2nd, 2005
I have a few closing thoughts on this year’s KMWorld conference and my takeaways from the sessions I attended.
Looking for a Name
To me it seems that this year’s theme among the keynote speakers at KMWorld was, “KM is dead, long live KM.” Nearly everyone said something like, KM has a huge future, but not by that name. As a person who has struggled to bring KM into a large business, I have to say, this is not news — except perhaps to academics and people who haven’t had much personal experience talking with business leaders.
The term “knowledge management” rubbed me wrong the first time I heard it, and it always gets a negative or incredulous reaction from business leaders the first time they hear it. There’s something inherently self-important in the term. Most people find it laughable that anyone could possibly try to “manage” another person’s “knowledge,” and it’s too abstract. We are a profession crying out for a name change!
We also have a credibility issue. Most of us have come to KM from some other career — education, communications, librarianship, marketing, computer science, administration. And many of the people who are carrying the KM torch and looking to develop KM for their business have had mid-level roles in their organizations. There is truth in the adage “you can’t be a prophet in your own country.” Most of us simply will not be considered experts in KM, no matter how expert we become. It’s incredulous for most managers to think that the person who used to be drafting press releases can now advise about “knowledge management.”
What we call KM is finally congealing into a discipline or practice or profession or process, and we have some rudimentary agreement around what it is and what it isn’t. There’s no way any aggrandizing, esoteric or arcane name will do. And anything contrived or ridiculous would embarrass the serious among us so much we would never call it by that name. Maybe someone needs to conduct a naming contest.
Maybe an advertising agency will volunteer to create a made-up name (like Exxon or Altria or Experian) that we can all feel good about. Until we have a name we can all be proud of, one that won't make organizational leaders roll their eyes when they hear it, we will all continue to struggle to define what it is and what it should be called.
Methodologies and Masters
As the field matures, certain voices have emerged as the thought leaders on various aspects of KM. We had most of them presenting at this conference, which is a kudo to Jane Dysart and KMWorld. Something that jumped out at me was that a significant number of the presenters now use what we called in GE "four blockers" to describe their knowledge or segment some component of KM. It became humorous to me, because it illustrates the evolution of our group understanding. A few years ago presenters were drawing variations of three overlapping circles to explain KM (people, process, technology). Then we had mountain graphs, where various aspects of KM were represented along an ascending or descending line (a la Gartner Group’s hype cycle). Then we had the phase of correcting our understanding of KM with definitions (data–> information –> knowledge –> wisdom). The newest approach (which isn’t new) is the traditional consulting tool, the 2 x 2 matrix.
Personally, I like seeing everyone trying to define KM and its components in an understandable way. All of these visual techniques have had value and helped us to understand the complexity a little better. The problem I’m having now is that none of the axes or quadrants or views are related! No one seems to be taking the global view. KM leaders offer their comments pretty much in a vacuum. They don’t consult with each other as they develop their presentations, they don’t attend much of the conference except for the few hours around their own presentations, they don’t look at the same criteria or research, and as a result, they each present their point of view proudly as the truth (and point us to their book) without putting their ideas into the context of other leaders’ ideas. Other speakers have alternate solutions, of course, and the audience is left fumbling to find the thread of truth or consistency to take away and put into practice, if they can! We are like the blind men and the elephant. Is there no one who sees the elephant yet?
I’d like to see the KM visionaries and thought leaders assume the role of teachers, and help us all to unify behind one understanding of what KM is and how it works, and what we need to show business leaders to make them understand its value. But then, I’m a dreamer.
Two Roads Diverged…
Dave Snowden opened with the comment, "I want to start off with some bad news. I see this conference has many of the same faces, many of the same issues and many of the same organizations looking for answers." (I’m not sure this is a direct quote.) His opening implied that the people who “get it” are protecting what they know because they have gained a competitive advantage, and no longer participate and share at these types of conferences. Those who attend either don’t get it yet or cannot influence their management to act and are looking for help.
Professionally we are at a point of critical mass, at the maturity divide where the field splits into the “thinkers” and the “doers,” and each has different content and practical needs. Each has value and purpose, but their visions of the KM problem are different. For the conference to continue to be important to KM professionals, the thinkers need to be reaching even further ahead, and the doers need to be more specific and relevant about what they have learned. They all need to provide more context and assume a general level of understanding in the audience. We don’t really need sessions with definitions any more.
Where are the New Voices?
All of the leaders in the field today are consultants. That seems to be the progression. Come out of a think tank or off the KM front lines in business once you achieve a certain level of expertise, and hang out your shingle as a consultant (and write a book). While they are all strategic thinkers and have laid the groundwork for where we are today, there is the real world pull of having to make a living. As a result, the experts can become perilously narrow in their work, because they have to sell the ideas that got them where they are. The problem for the rest of us is we’ve heard them all before! Instead of quantum leaps in thinking, for the most part, they are making incremental steps in deepening what we already know.
The profession is maturing, as are the leading experts. We all dutifully go to hear Hubert Saint-Onge talk about creating organizational capabilities, or Dave Snowden talk about making sense out of organizational complexity, or Verna Allee talk about social/value networks, or Tom Davenport talk about knowledge workers, or Richard McDermott talk about communities. Clearly they are all strategic thinkers and have valuable things to say. Unfortunately, they are vested in their own proprietary theories/approaches to the detriment of a broader understanding.
There must be some other outstanding and capable people on the KM front lines today and waiting in the wings to challenge our thinking and take their places, but I haven’t seen many. Where is our next generation of KM leaders? Who are they?
I’m talking about the new young minds who want to Podcast sales meetings to external distribution partners, or create a knowledge based organization from the ground up using biological principles, or create an online 3-D insurance agency with avatar agents to sell policies, or restructure entire organizations into flattened peer-to-peer structures, or develop a KM system that is so pervasive in their organization that it is the primary platform everyone uses to get to any work done, or use nanotechnology to distribute information in some innovative way. These are the stories and concepts I want to hear about! As KM professionals, we need to be stretched, to see possibilities, to be shown a light a little further down the road than where we currently are. I just don’t see much that’s truly new happening in the field. Or maybe those new voices are just not being reported.
We heard a lot from the doers and vendors at this conference, and we see a lot of tactical information in print. That’s the stuff that is easier to put into a conference report back home and justify the corporate expenditure. But I’m hungry for new minds to question why we think and do what we do in our field, and point us toward obvious and not-so-obvious insights and advances. Maybe the really new ideas can only be found in future-thinking academics who research the field independently, without a product to sell or a methodology to defend. Wherever they are, we need to find them and draw them into the discussion.
It’s probably wrong to expect eagle’s eye views from experts who are putting food on the table with their personal methodologies. They do have an important role to play in the field and have done good work. But surely there are some new thinkers out there, some risk takers, some people who are trying new things, and cobbling new thoughts together for the next evolution of KM. Who are they? Where are they? I'd love to know who has an innovative or interesting spin on things KM. I’d love to hear from someone who is doing it and can talk about it, not just theorize about it in four-blockers. Maybe next year.
November 30th, 2005
Verna Allee’s keynote presentation “Pieces of the KM Puzzle” was excellent. The session covered how the many pieces that make up the “knowledge management” discipline fit together, and how they can be used selectively at every level of the organization in an understandable and interesting way to achieve results. Managers want to benefit from the value of KM, but don’t know what to pay attention to in order to be successful. It’s the KM professional’s job to help answer that question. Here are my notes and thoughts on the session.
Allee’s comments come from her work with value networks and living systems theory. She says, “Today’s business relationships encompass much more than the tangible flows of products, services, and revenue that we have focused on in the past. As we come to depend more and more on exchanges of knowledge and other intangibles with our customers and business partners, success depends on building a rich web of value creating relationships. New approaches and methods are needed to understand the reality of value creation.”
First point: Integrate knowledge into the business language. (Ed. note: I was happy to hear Tom Davenport say that knowledge has at last achieved a permanent place in the organization.) All networks are not alike. Informal/social networks have no shared purpose. Purposeful networks, such as knowledge networks and value-creating networks, are assessed by organizational analysis. To get value from knowledge networks we need to integrate knowledge into the business language. There is no widely trusted theory of the “knowledge economy.” We are in a free space right now. No one has figured out how to understand an economy where the resources multiply instead of get used up! Wow. What a great insight!
Where will the new theory come from? We don’t know. We only know that we need to incorporate the web of our life and social networks into our work.
One of the challenges we face is transparency in organizations. Transparency is not optional. All interested parties in organizations — shareholders, managers, employees, business partners, distributors, customers, regulators — want information regarding matters that affect their interests to be accessible. In today’s world, your only real asset is your reputation (which is not the same as “brand”). We are moving to 360 degree transparency and accountability, which requires cross-boundary collaboration, collaborative interactions and knowledge sharing technologies. It’s distributed capitalism.
Making information widely available creates all kinds of new possibilities. The network is becoming the business model. The organization is becoming the network or more network like. Workers have access to a flood of information. As KM professionals the question we have to answer is the only question that matters for managers today: With all the information available today, what do we need to pay attention to in order to be successful? How can we realize the value from these networks of information?
Another point: There is a high cost attached to not finding information. Citing Susan Feldman’s research at IDC, 50% of all web searches are abandoned. This means people are finding what they need less than 50% of the time. That translates into 50% fewer online sales, 50% more frustrated customers trying to solve a problem or get information, and 50% more phone calls that must be handled by a person rather than by automatic systems. At an average cost of $5 per phone call as opposed to less than $1 per automated call or mere pennies for finding an answer online, that is expensive. A tremendous amount of time is spent reworking or recreating information that was not located.
Another point: Communities of practice are good ways to centralize information. The first step is to do nothing–just realize that you already have them! Work with the communities that already exist in the organization and listen to them. These are the people already doing the work and interested in the subject matter. If you want to make them better or more successful, then you need to ask an important question: Are people in the organization rewarded for tasks or for knowledge sharing?
Another point: We are not teaching people the behaviors and skills needed for this new type of interaction. There are three levels of innovation: Business analytics, Social interaction, and Technology/infrastructure. Business analytics are challenged to move toward dynamic, complex whole-system analysis. Social interactions are challenged to move beyond project teams to knowledge networks. Technology is challenged to organize and integrate the networks on an enterprise level.
Most knowledge management programs miss the mark today. Why?
·?Asking the wrong business questions
·?Trying to make everything explicit (e.g., get everything written down and put into a database)
·?Not investing in social innovation and related technologies (knowledge sharing and learning are both social activities)
·?Disconnect between language and action
Conversations are *the* most basic knowledge process. As conversations happen, people begin to organize purposefully.
Thought –> Conversation –> Concept –> Plans –> Drawings and specifications
Introduce different ways of initiating conversations within your organization. Let the internal organizations occur, and then use technology to facilitate the conversations and knowledge sharing.
KM is complex. We start with the basic element, data, which becomes information. Then knowledge, which is functional. Then meaning, which is used for decisions. Then philosophy, which creates systems. Then wisdom, which brings renewal. And finally, futurizing. As you move up in complexity, the more you have to support the lower level networks in order to sustain viability.
Communities are the way innovations emerge in an organization and can be tested. Roles are shifting. When people have multiple roles, where is their “identity”? It’s no longer the “department”. Make their core identity their community.
There is an emerging Value model — three overlapping circles of Business Relationships, Human Competence, and Internal Structure in a background of Social Citizenship. Value is in the networks and exchanges of tangible and intangible assets. Intangibles are real assets that accumulate. They are real negotiables and deliverables as well as intangible exchanges (like knowledge or benefits/favors).
Some value network principles are:
·?You can’t administrate a network, you can only serve it (you can’t set up rules)
·?Be crystal clear about the role you play (in both formal and intangible exchanges)
·?Quality of the intangible exchanges
·?Value exchanges, flows and value conversion mechanisms
·?Intangibles build relationships and networks
·?Trust is the condition that supports the success of the network
November 29th, 2005
Tom Davenport delivered a fine opening keynote presentation at KM World on his current pet topic “Thinking for a Living: Keys to Knowledge Worker Productivity.” (His new book with a similar title will hit bookstores any day now.) Tom has done a lot to improve business executives’ view of KM as a useful tool for management by linking KM to business issues and strategies. Here are my notes and thoughts on his presentation.
Knowledge has achieved a permanent status in the organization. (Ed. note: It was a personal relief to me to hear him make this statement!) Now we have to think about our customers. They don’t care about the distinctions we make internally in our departments or organizations — they want to work, without reference to where the stuff they need to work with comes from. Knowledge workers have a high degree of education or expertise, and their *principle* objective is the creation, application or distribution of knowledge. Think professions — doctor or lawyer or librarian or engineer — but obviously any field has specialists who are knowledge workers.
Knowledge workers are at the core of our economic competitiveness. They are at the core of value creation and top-line growth. They drive the future. Human resources talent managers have typically treated knowledge workers with HSPALTA (”hire smart people and leave them alone”). Knowledge workers typically work unstructured, autonomously, and collaboratively. This becomes a challenge when an organization wants to teach others to be more like their successful knowledge workers.
Technology can make them more productive, but it’s important to make them more productive with tools and measures that help the organization to assign value to what they do. This can be challenging for the knowledge workers, because metrics and forms and other ways to codify what they do is at odds with their natural way of working…unstructured and autonomously. For this reason, Davenport says different types of knowledge workers should be identified and treated differently (i.e., a segmentation scheme is needed).
He demonstrated one possible segmentation scheme — a four-quadrant chart based upon Level of Independence (individual to collaborative) on one axis and Complexity of Work (routine to interpretative/judgmental) on the other. The resulting four models were “integrated”, “transactional,” “expert,” and “collaborative,” with collaborative being the hardest to achieve. Another possible segmentation scheme might use the axes of “Mobility” and “Use of Technology”.
He then listed a number of ways to improve knowledge work:
·?Adopt a process orientation. Unfortunately, this assumes you are telling people what to do, and knowledge workers don’t like this. Processes can, however, be implemented with respect for current work practices. Involve knowledge workers in process design for improved cooperation.
·?Change the external environment — physical space, team structures, culture, technology, or all of these. Interesting side observation was “Capers Jones’ Odd Finding” that predictors for a software developer’s success are use of a method (RUP, etc.) and size of office.
·?Embed knowledge into work (this is where the field of knowledge management is going). Inject it through people, project management or technology.
·?Automate decisions when possible. Use systems to narrow decisions (like LendingTree, Deep Green Bank, or Allmerica Insurance) for workers. In the world of finance, this is made possible by online credit, FICO, the Internet and proprietary algorithms.
·?Focused KM. Portals and repositories for unstructured/iterative work where you can’t embed knowledge. (traditional KM)
·?Personal KM. Address personal capabilities, and make it easier for people to manage their own work and flow of information. Research shows knowledge workers spend 3 hours 14 minutes per day processing work-related information, 1 hour 58 minutes per day to e-mail, and 47 minutes per day on phone/voice mail. We need to make people more informationally adept. Some ways to do this include:
* Use one tool well (Outlook, for example).
* Get instruction in how to search better. Most of us are not good at searching.
* Use only a few devices — stick with 1-2 gadgets.
* Don’t be a missionary about using every new gadget that comes out.
* Invest time weekly in personal KM.
* Use paper. Make lists. It works.
·?Reuse existing intellectual assets. Keys to success are leadership, asset visibility, and asset control.
·?Put someone in charge of multifactor improvement. Determine which knowledge work domains are mission critical. Design experiments and learn from them.
·?Emulate the social networks of high performers. Knowledge work *is* social work.
·?Experiment and measure, and use experimental rigor (control group, measures, systematic recording, etc.) and change only one factor at a time.
November 28th, 2005
It’s always interesting to hear what Richard McDermott has to say about communities. This time he spoke instead on the the latest buzzword in KM — knowledge work — with a presentation called “Improving Knowledge Work: Knowledge as a competitive asset.” In fairness, he is not a latecomer to the subject of knowledge work. He delivered a presentation on the subject in 1992! But I was interested to hear how his thinking is evolving, especially since he emphasized third world competitors in this session. Here are my notes and observations.
Interestingly, Richard opened the session with a discussion about hope. He said, “Hope is the most potent economic driving force in the world.” It’s a powerful force for developing economies, and knowledge represents a fundamental shift in the global marketplace. This is an exciting time for many underdeveloped nations. Technology makes it possible for them to leap past the expense of industrial production and become information and service based economies. The potential is enormous, and as a result, these countries are full of hope for their futures, many for the first time in generations. This creates a competitive advantage that we may be underestimating. Where the average American works a 40 hour work week, and the average European works a 35 hour work week, people in third world countries are working 80 hour work weeks. Hope is a potent motivator. The presentation centered on two slides. One covered product development. There are four phases it goes through over time — innovation, development of standards, transition and market presence.
The second slide covered knowledge domain maturity and the complexity of ignorance. He asked the question, “How much of your situation is really just the complexity of ignorance?” Knowledge is commoditized over time, and passes through four phases: discovery, understanding, development and commoditization. Initially there is low variety complexity, and then, as patterns emerge, there is high variety complexity. When a lot of confusion or conflicting information is present in a situation, it’s often because the situation is at the stage of identifying patterns to make sense of the situation. Once patterns emerge, then best practices start to be captured, followed by whole system improvement, modularization and finally, commoditization.
Finally, he discussed knowledge as a competitive asset. Standardizing and organizing knowledge is only half of the work. Spreading and deepening the knowledge is the other half. War stories are interesting narrations, but they don’t show the learnings or thinking behind the actions. So how do you communicate expertise? That is a more important concern.
Knowledge management professionals are challenged to help experts identify the *key* moments in their processes, and then get others to see those key or rich moments through the eyes of the expert, and leverage this. Experts solve problems through seeing patterns. This is an important point. They almost instinctively match the current situation to stored situations in their own brains, and can then see options for actions in the current environment. This is why knowledge transfer is so difficult — no other person has the same set of experiences against which to evaluate the current situation and determine appropriate actions. It’s very much an art. It’s more than just teaching a new person some information and steps. As he said, the brain evolved as a tool to enable humans to take action, not to store data. Knowledge management is about providing a framework of information that will inform others so they have the ability to evaluate and take action.
Other comments/observations:
·?To see how to transfer and deploy expertise, he suggested learning something complex you haven’t done before. In his case, he took up horse jumping. Knowledge transfer involves finding a way to mimic the experience of an expert. He had to learn how to sit in the saddle to anticipate where the horse would be three paces ahead. How to hold the reins, when to lean right or left or forward, when to pull back, how to fall safely, how to trust the animal. A riding coach provided both the instruction and the example to mimic, enabling a knowledge transfer to occur.
·?The “fad” of KM is dying, but the need for KM is growing.
·?Innovation is still possible anywhere in the knowledge commoditization cycle.
·?To create learning, communities are the best tool. Have communities very focused on the issues of the members. Spend time narrowing the community focus.
November 28th, 2005
This is a topic for a longer paper, I think. Today I was thinking about the guilds I have participated in over my years of multiplayer gaming, and drawing parallels to communities of practice in business and social settings.
Richard McDermott has been a leading voice on “real world” communities for more than a decade, and here is how he describes the characteristics of healthy, mature communities:
·?“Communities of practice are peer relationships. Community leaders and senior members don’t have authority over other members.
·?“They focus on sharing and/or developing knowledge, ideas, tips and practices around a topic. Even when they collectively research a topic or develop guidelines or procedures, it’s in the service of developing a body of knowledge.
·?“They run on influence, both internally and in their relationship with the organization. Of course, there are distinctions between the members of a community. Some are leading experts in a field, others are specialists in a particular topic, some are newcomers to the field, and many are generalists with different degrees of experience. While some members have greater influence, it is their expertise, creativity and knowledgeability that legitimates their influence.”
Most gaming guilds start off with a generic objective like “to have fun and share adventures together” or something along those lines. But in the end, they share knowledge of their experiences and develop strategies or approaches to be successful in achieving collective milestones or tasks. Today they often have web sites where they write up and discuss the knowledge they have gained for the benefit of other members (and would-be members) of the guild.
As an aside, some of the web sites I have seen are impressive by any standard of measurement. In addition to their message forums, they may have movies captured from actual play experiences, elegant graphics, quizzes, polls, fictional stories about members, profiles and backstories, technology help sections, new member help sections, downloads of add-ons that help make the gaming interface easier or more meaningful, VoIP connectivity, instant messaging, pictures and dramatic narratives of victories over major “bosses” in the game, strategies for key events, membership lists, crafting and skills spreadsheets, and even advertising! There is no question they are building a body of shared knowledge.
Since most of the players most of the time don’t know one another in real life, leadership and influence evolve purely on the basis of exerting one’s voice at moments of need and having people willing to listen. Unless you are a known guru on the community’s subject material, you will need to have gained member respect largely on the basis of what you type, in game hunts as well as in the forums. This is scary to people who are not natural (written) communicators!
But luckily for people who struggle to type, personal charisma plays a significant role in addition to raw knowledge — something I think is often overlooked by scholars who debate community roles and functions. A member who knows the subject matter the community is interested in (for example, how to defeat the snow yeti), and also has a playful or humorous way of presenting information or defusing tensions between members (there are always disagreements), is sure to be one of the respected leaders of the community. Charisma is especially important in guilds in MMOGs, because how a person chooses to express him/herself is all the other members will see or be able to judge them on. Most guild leaders are either so expert that no one knows more, or they are charismatic and affable people everyone enjoys sharing a gaming experience with, win or lose. Either way you look at it, it’s about influence.
November 26th, 2005
Steve Barth, a writer and consultant for KMWorld magazine and Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity, delivered an interesting and engaging presentation on “Games People Play”. It was based on work by Steve and his colleague Celia Pearce, artist and game designer from the UC-Irvine Game Culture & Technology Lab, who was unable to attend.
The question they set out to answer was, “Why do multiplayer game systems get so much energy from participants, where knowledge worker systems don’t?”
Here are my notes and thoughts on the session. You might also want to take a look at Dave Pollard’s observations on it.
In MMOGs players collaborate according to the rules of the game. To play a role-playing game (RPG) is to assume an identity and enter a virtual thematic world. In the game you encounter circumstances and characters that are programmed into the software, *but* there are also thousands of avatars (game characters) that other live players run. Not only do they interact in ways the designers intended, but also in ways the designers never intended! The players can actually change the rules of the game, because the game is not linear; it is a complex social environment. There are “goal-based” games, where you “earn and learn”. The player is rewarded for the accumulation of experience, for which you need both energy and social skills. There are also “social interaction-based” games, where the players must ally themselves with and rely upon others in the game to accomplish goals. An example is the internal commerce of MMOGs. To get rewards (items, reputation, clues, etc.), the player puts in time. Some players have a lot of time, some have little. Players with a lot of time collect valued items in the game and sell/trade them to other players, creating a robust economy. The game economy starts to leak into the non-virtual world. A look at eBay reveals that many players sell virtual items, game currency, pre-developed game characters, and even game real estate for real world money. As in real life, commerce yields greed yields crime. All these dynamics are present in MMOGs. The economic aspect of MMORPGs is fascinating, and social scientist Ted Castronova did some groundbreaking research on Norrath, the land in Everquest. Using exchange rates based on price parity, he found that the GNP of Norrath would make it the 77th largest economy in the real world, when compared to actual countries.
The socialization that occurs in MMOGs demonstrates collaborative learning that results in innovation and action. Players can express alternative selves and build up reputation. There are no rules of leadership or customs designed into the games–they are emergent. People have expectations of the game–a social contract, just like between citizens and a government– and will demand changes if they believe that contract has been broken. An example is a sit-in demonstration that the warriors class in World of Warcraft conducted to demand changes from the game developers for their characters. This is similar to employees and collaborative or knowledge management systems.
Unquestionably, people who play MMORPGs become tremendously involved in the games. They invest both time and emotion in these unreal worlds. Millions of people are playing them, and most express strong passion about them. There is a huge voluntary commitment of time (research shows that many gamers put in more than 20 hours per week in virtual worlds). That means there is something of value there, and we can apply this to knowledge management. But how? It’s still to be determined.
Some thoughts/comments based on other topics discussed in the session:
·?Games are flexible. As game designers become aware of a dynamic, they build it (and the rules) into the game. Work is static and rigid.
·?Can games mirror life? Companies still reward using industrial era objectives, not information era information or dynamics. Games have moved on and reward for individual contribution.
·?When you give people control (which is hard for managers in a traditional mindset), they will take ownership, give energy to their work and be more productive. BUT…they will not necessarily do what you want them to do. A shift happens away from “authority” and toward “trust”.
·?Work takes away self-belief. People are told/shown how their contribution doesn’t measure up to some standard or objective. They are told what they can’t do and should believe. In games, y ou can do/be ANYTHING. Barriers exist in any environment that affect our self-belief. Work structures us, but games let us be free to be and do anything. This is enhanced by the anonymity of the keyboard–no one can see us, know one knows us, we are what we type.
·?Games are played at home, and it’s dedicated time. We sit down to play when we can be totally absorbed in the game, without distractions. At work there are constant interruptions, so we work and think differently. Learning games could be designed to incorporate the effect of real world interruptions.
·?Game time is compressed. Ideas and interactions develop more quickly than in the real world. Game time could accelerate and improve product launches. Whether in a corporate product development environment or in a live simulation game environment, product launches can be tested, adapted and improved in a realistic way that can forecast actual product launch results.
·?Games can be used to interact with customers and develop new customers. In the game Second Life Wells Fargo created an actual bank where players can convert game currency into real world currency. Since about 1997, Active Worlds has had 3-D trade shows and virtual 3-D shopping malls, where game players walk their avatars through the environment, and visit shops where they can review product catalogs and transact real life sales. One artist created a gallery using photos of her paintings which she sold for a large price. Levis has experimented with branding in The Sims, creating a special virtual blue jeans clothing line that can be purchased for avatars to wear. The trend is definitely there for businesses to take their products where the consumers are spending their time. Incorporating logos and branding messages into game content is becoming more popular because players tend to play a game more than once, thereby offering the advertiser multiple opportunities to reach the player. There’s an opportunity to drive different stages of a campaign. With the game Toyota Adrenaline, gamers got an advanced 3D racing game with great graphics, and Toyota got great exposure.
·?Games have an addiction factor. (Wouldn’t we love to have this in our business applications!) Games are more visually stimulating, especially important to maturing Gen X’ers in the work force, and you are in control, unlike much of our normal lives and jobs. The potential for gaming is great in business training.
November 26th, 2005
KM is a relatively new business process, yet it’s changing before our eyes. The early attempts to understand the role and value of knowledge in organizational longevity and productivity are already being supplanted by creative new approaches. KM has to change. Look how organizations are changing!
·?Approximately 19% of the entire American workforce holding executive, administrative, and managerial positions will retire by 2008.
·?Beginning in 2005, every 7 seconds, another baby boomer will turn 60 and reach retirement age–a process that will continue for the next 18 years.
·?You can get success in six months with collecting exiting employees’ knowledge in a small company, but in a big company it will take 3-5 years.
·?Almost half of the American workers change what they do for their employers every year…That’s over 60 million moves! And a new person usually has to learn the old job.
·?The average worker starting today will have 11 jobs in his/her career. (There is tremendous cost related to ramp up and lost knowledge with all those turnovers. It’s not just the retiring employees…it’s also the mobile employees!)
·?Companies are changing, too. Peter Drucker said the average knowledge worker today will outlive his employing organization. (!)
·?For each incoming person into a job, there is a loss of 85% of the value of the person’s base salary for that year (on average). (Source: Bliss & Associates statistical model) This is based on cost of mistakes new employees make, lost knowledge, lost skills, contact list, etc. If you can reduce the cycles even 25%, it’s a huge, direct impact.
How can KM succeed in this fluid environment? In simple terms:
·?Define the critical operational knowledge, and who has it.
·?Save what you need, not what you don’t. (The 80/20 rule comes to mind) You don’t want to save everything. In older organizations, how many people are working hard but doing things that aren’t really related to the organizational mission any more?
·?Create an environment where it’s okay to take risks (i.e., no penalty for trying and failing) and it’s okay to share. Robert Redford says, “If you develop a mindset that if a person shares, their idea will not be “stolen”, then sharing happens rapidly. People like to share what they know when they feel like they are leaving a legacy or having an impact.”
Yes, this oversimplifies complex issues. With about 10 years of KM experience under our collective belts, we are all finally starting to understand just how complex. It’s painful and exciting to give birth to a new way of working. Looks like we have about five more years to get it figured out and put the processes in place.
November 26th, 2005
About a year ago, I read about a very interesting approach to knowledge management called “Operation Brain-trap” by a consulting firm in Barcelona, Spain .
Based on its fast-growth strategy and niche market, Cluster Competitiveness adopted a radical approach to managing its intellectual capital back in 1993. It required all its consultants to funnel any knowledge of the company’s clients, methodology, or business operations into a single digital repository available to all staff. Not too uncommon for professional service firms, right? The kicker here is that in this company any papers left on employees’ desks are routinely pushed into a trash can and recycled! The company’s rule is “keep nothing valuable on paper.” Talk about the paperless office!
There’s a temporary exception. Over the course of a typical 4-5 month engagement, each client case team has the “right” to fill one of the cardboard boxes that sit against a wall at the headquarters library and one file drawer. When a project is over, it’s all thrown out.
Using this approach the company attempts to make all of its consultants equally capable of serving a client at the highest level, and they can accelerate the ability of young MBAs to take on high level management roles (with some coaching from the sidelines). The success rate has been climbing, and is now at about 70%. They believe forcing everyone to use the repository for all information gives them a critical advantage in a competitive market.
Cluster Competitiveness can’t compete with the larger consulting firms in recruiting senior talent, so it wants to provide instant access to all of the organization’s intellectual capital. They do this through hardware, software, and personal operating style, all stored as a tutorial file on the corporate intranet. They measure the ROI of this strategy, and the metrics show a sharp increase in new consultants’ billing capacity and a drop in training costs since the KM strategy was implemented. Measured training capacity has risen 100 percent since the initiative started, and billings by consultant have increased more than 100 percent in the same time period. This strategy enables the organization to hire up to 50 percent more staff since everyone can rely on a common store of intellectual capital. If the company taught apprentices, it could add only two or three a year.
November 20th, 2005
I attended all the keynote presentations and quite a few of the breakouts. Overall, the conference was good – the keynotes alone were worth the cost and time! But the breakouts were a little uneven. Some were very good, but some were poor. There were an exceptionally large number of speaker substitutions this year, and the speakers appeared poorly prepared. Not the level of quality of previous years.
This made me wonder if there is a shift occurring in the field/profession/practice of KM. We seem to have a schism already between the visionaries and thought leaders who are clearly on the leading edge, and the less experienced people who have just discovered KM or have been put in charge of a KM component in their companies and are there to learn more about it. That’s a difficult gap for a conference to bridge, and I’m wondering if we may see in coming years a differentiation…conferences where thought leaders get together and discuss the theoretical issues, and conferences where others go to share experiences and describe more tactical how-tos.
One of the great advantages of the conference has always been the book of presentations that KM World publishes for attendees. At least theoretically, the slides from all the presentations are published in a huge book that you could schlep from session to session and use to make notes, without having to draw the slide, listen AND make notes. This year fewer than half of the speakers bothered to submit their materials, which was a big disappointment and made notetaking a lot harder. I commented on that in my conference evaluation.
I don’t plan to publish all my session notes here, but I will publish the ones from the most interesting sessions I attended over the next few days. If you attended and want to add your own notes, let me know and I’ll publish them for you or link to them!
November 19th, 2005
I flew home from the KMWorld conference last night, where I delivered a presentation on Grassroots KM and the learnings I’ve had over the past four years. The long doze-and-reflect time the two long flights afforded made me realize I have a lot to say about the applications of gaming to KM and learning. After all, I've been involved in multiplayer online gaming for about 20 years and online communities for about the same amount of time. KM and e-learning have been my work bread and butter for almost the past 10 years. I've thought for a long time that the human social dynamic present in games parallels that of business interactions, but the time wasn’t right for companies to make the leap of understanding required to get it.
In 1997 I made a presentation to executives at GE, showing them chat bots and suggesting that scripted bots would be a great interactive tool for delivering web site FAQs, and that online chatting would be great for customer support. Beyond the oohs and aaahs and smiles from the demos I provided, nothing happened. The ideas were good, but it was just too early for the group I had to see the possibilities. For a long time I've felt like that where mentioning my gaming passions at work are concerned. What I discovered from the interest shown at the KM World conference was that business executives are interested now. More than interested…excited and even hopeful that a more game-like approach will increase the effectiveness of and participation in KM and learning systems.
What excites me about the confluence of gaming, learning and knowledge management is its potential to reignite the enthusiasm of workers and open their eyes to a new way of interacting as they work toward shared goals. MMOGs provide new cultural and social worlds, where everyone starts on an equal footing, and traditional barriers are largely removed. Worlds where technology, social interaction, and thinking help people to do things they care about. Experimentation and personal choice are emphasized, and result in creative approaches to problem solving and learning–skills that can be brought back into the workplace.
Many business people don't play MMOGs, so in coming days I will spend some time describing the environments and interactions, so executives can see the parallels between gaming and stickiness and business applications. Here are some of the topics I plan to explore, and I’m sure there will be more! Got any other suggestions?
·?The parallel between the management/leadership of knowledge communities and the evolution of leadership/government in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)
·?The gaming experience, and how it parallels both life and work
·?A vision of a KM system that would be game-like and foster very interesting dynamics that could engage participants in a way that has never been done
·?What KM has to learn from e-learning's experiences with simulations
·?Gaming as a subversive business activity
·?Implications for the workplace and learning
I’d welcome you to discuss and debate these topics with me as I develop them further!
November 18th, 2005
As is true in communities of practice, multiplayer online game members do not start off with social rules or agendas programmed into the software. An environment for interaction is created, there are rules for interacting correctly with the system, and there is a stated purpose for being there. There are no rules of leadership, so leaders emerge on the basis of their actions and knowledge.
Both KM systems and game environments are complex social systems where unexpected events can happen and previously unknown people can rise up to be leaders. Each new contributor faces a learning curve, participates in training or a tutorial, and needs to achieve a certain level of activity or contribution in order to progress. It’s a good mirror for how most organizations are designing KM systems today. Which begs the question, couldn’t you create a KM system that was game-like, that people really wanted to use and enjoyed using? Where (gasp!) people might actually have some fun as they participate?
Why couldn’t achieving document input for a database be an in-game quest, with an in-game reward? Why couldn’t time spent in the system, reading and learning, be rewarded with “experience points” that translate to acquiring an in-game status item, like special armor or clothing or a banner? Why couldn’t reusing stored information or searching the system for an expert put some game currency in the user’s pockets? And as someone suggested recently, wouldn’t it be more fun to search the system if you were greeted by a search engine in the form of a dwarf in a horned helmet than an empty typing box? Especially if you could use your microphone headset to communicate with the dwarf by talking instead of typing, and instruct him what to filter out?
Simulations are already widely used in learning. I believe there is an opportunity for gaming to influence KM systems once the complex social interactions of online multiplayer gaming become more widely understood. Gen X is growing up after all, and they have a whole new set of expectations for how work can be done… :)
November 17th, 2005
Torill Elvira Mortensen wrote that multiplayer games are “secluded, exclusive arenas of play, which represent themselves as places rather than non-places. They demand the same manner of identification as crossing the borders of countries - they ask for a name and a password - identification unique to the player. In (most) games there is a penalty for assuming the identity of another upon entering. The reaction is very similar to the punishment for entering a country under false pretensions: the player will be rejected and banned.”
Playing with identity, for example, a male playing a female game character, is accepted in gaming, but playing without identification is not. Authentication of a player by the game system is the only way for others to know who they are relating to–meaning which live player they are interacting with. To steal another person’s persona is a type of power play that calls to mind Mr. Bungle in Dibbell’s A Rape in Cyberspace (1998), where he made the avatars of others speak his words.
What personal passwords do is permit others to be certain that while they might not be talking, chatting, playing or in other manners interacting with a faithful representation of the person behind a personae, they are interacting with the same character controller in every session. This need for identification is also necessary to be able to maintain the secrecy of the play arena. It’s an important factor for maintaining the nature of play. Even in early childhood, play is enhanced by making a secret out of it. To keep a secret, restricted access to the play is necessary.
In some games, even further verification is required. New players are flagged distinctively or given special restrictions for a time. They acquire skills and knowledge (and acceptance) according to the place they live and the actions they do. Achievement of a certain experience point level, or acceptance into a guild or clan, or completion of a series of learning quests, will elevate the ‘newbie’ to regular member status. In some games, administrators, sometimes called ghods or immortals, may contact players inside the game to be sure that the person is actually there playing, and not logged in as a “robot”, auto-following a complicit character whose experience gains could benefit the tag-along “robot”. All this security around identity gives members of the gaming community confidence that the people they think they are interacting with are, indeed, the people they think. It makes characters/players accountable for their actions, and ensures they receive the rewards or blame incurred by their styles of participation.
Isn’t the parallel with knowledge management systems obvious? In a knowledge system, participants want to know that they are interacting with people who are there legitimately. They want new members to understand the norms and processes of the established group. They want to be confident that credit for contributions is given accurately. They want to know they can trust in the reputation that is attributed to other members of the community, and they themselves want to be trusted. They also want to be able to locate specific expertise they need at the time they need it.
November 17th, 2005
Today’s session on Collaborative Learning & Games hosted by Steve Barth was one of the best sessions of the conference so far. Yes, it does dovetail with my own personal interests, but it was obvious from the participation of the audience- and that we all stayed over for more than 10 minutes–that the topic struck a chord beyond just me. Lunch followed the session, and I was fascinated as I walked around and overheard tidbits of conversations at many tables related to what we had been discussing. One lady from a law firm was sitting nearby talking to a colleague with animation about how to get a pilot started with her attorneys. Another lady was interested to explore how multiplayer game environments or principles could be used to achieve group learning objectives. We had a great conversation about how to create tasks in a game to get the player where they need to go, ways you could apply gaming to onboarding new employees, and how to design a KM system that would be as fun and engaging as a multiplayer game. It was so much fun!
In the late 1990s when I first proposed to some people at a GE subsidiary that an online game scenario would be a useful way to educate consumers on their web site, people stared at me and shifted uncomfortably in their seats. They must have thought I had a screw loose. Though I consider myself to be a “serious person”, it was clear that enabling people to learn in a fun environment was not serious enough! Today it was confirmed for me that the potential for multiplayer gaming as a tool of KM and collaboration may at long last be feasible!
Steve made some points from the current research literature, and showed some screen shots from 3-D games (which ignited the audience, who were largely non-players). See my notes here.
November 17th, 2005
According to the Gartner Group (2004), the percentage of individuals whose work depends on collaboration is rising and will rise significantly from 2000 (28%) to 2010 (70%). Collaboration is a way of working with others, and it is supported by the same functionalities that enable KM.
November 16th, 2005
The quality of the presentations at KMWorld this year seems less than in prior years. While many of the sessions have interesting sounding titles, there have been a number of last minute speaker substitutions, and the overall quality of at least half of the presentations has been less than expected. Many of the presenters know a lot about KM or some specific aspects of KM, however, they appear to have prepared poorly or simply be inexperienced presenters.
Also, in past years there was a large book containing the presentation slides for most of the sessions (a *great* help for note taking!), this year’s book is about half the size of prior years, and many of the more strategic and interesting presentations are missing. For the Knowledge Transfer track today, *none* of the presentations were in the book. Given that the presentation slides were due for publication in mid-September, one would assume that the speakers would have gotten their remarks together (and been better rehearsed or scripted for their presentations). It’s disappointing.
Many of the speakers, even in the “strategy” track, spent a lot of time defining KM basics that one would assume most attendees already know (it was repetitious). This dilutes the focus from the novel and timely content that we came to hear. For whatever reasons, this year it seems like the speakers simply aren’t well prepared, which is disappointing. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day!
November 15th, 2005
There is currently a lot of corporate activity in the KM arena. What do the experts forecast for Knowledge Management? The following projections are compiled from a variety of research and consulting organizations, as well as respected individual practitioners in the field.
KM as a Practice. KM as a practice will largely disappear by 2010. KM principles will be enabled by business, rather than by technology. Businesses will start to use knowledge management based principles, practices and technologies to focus on innovation and optimizing key processes. The KM process will merge with traditional business processes, adding intelligence to processes previously dumbed down through Business Process Reengineering. Getting the people issues right will be essential and the successful adoption of KM by organizations will be a key differentiator between winning and losing.
Portals. Businesses will reinvent their portals to benefit from knowledge management. Creating the right people environment will be critical. KM principles (collaboration, innovation, community) will permeate strategies, for example, in initiatives to enable knowledge workers. Portals will deliver personalized, in-context information (from both internal and external sources), tasks, and resource availability (human or automated). KM implementations will focus on business relevant areas such as competitive intelligence/marketing, sales/service automation, research and development, and customer/partner interactions.
Vendors. Vendors will combine their point solutions into packaged solutions or suites that better meet the needs of organizations. Toolsets will continue to consolidate, as companies buy the desired functionalities to create capability-rich KM solutions. Best of breed vendors will add deeper functionalities, for example, sophisticated techniques incorporating semantic knowledge/processing, categorization, and notification. KM technologies invented today (2005) will be incorporated into mainstream packages or suites in 5-7 years. Organizations should seek to adopt proven new KM technologies as soon as possible and achieve the benefits, especially niche users.