APQC's Knowledge Management Blog

Blogs to the left of me, blogs to the right of me…

2007-12-13T12:30:00.000-08:00

that’s how I described one of the findings from our just completed consortium benchmarking research on enterprise 2.0 tools. With about 120 of some our closest friends gathered together at APQC for 1-1/2 days to share their experiences, blogs were definitely on the minds and lips of everyone. Whether used as a communication or as a collaboration tool, blogs seemed to be considered THE way to connect people among many in the audience. So, with that wisdom in mind, I ask, “Who’s using blogs for business purposes, and what results have you seen?” Or, in other words, “Show me the money!” Comments welcome; encouraged; hoped for.

P.S. From the knowledge transfer session I described above, we created a new blog—just for participants only. They’re going to keep the discussion going in there. Those of you who missed out, well, you missed out. BUT—if you comment here, I’ll make sure they get a chance to hear from you.

Et tu, web 2.0?

2007-11-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

Well, another KMWorld has come and gone, and beyond catching up with old friends and meeting new folks, there was a lot to learn this time around. I’d have to say in fact, that this was the most productive of the many KMWorld conferences I’ve had the opportunity to attend. Stuff was cutting edge—and applied—not just theoretical “here’s what we’d like to do in KM if we could”.

If I had to pick out the two themes I was most fascinated by it would be the web 2.0 stuff of course, and the number of times I saw social network analysis (SNA) used. While I use as much of the web 2.0 stuff as I can—RSS, IM, blogs, wikis, mashups, VoIP, social networking sites, podcasts, etc.—some of that is due to the fact that I’m both a remote employee as well as someone who’s on the road nearly 100% of the time. Using the web 2.0 stuff is about the only way for me to even attempt to stay on top of current events. Still, hearing all these speakers made me stop and take inventory of just what it is I’m using and if they’re really making my life easier or not. So let’s see:

RSS feeds: I’m inundated with enough reading material already, so my feeds are mostly entertainment oriented. Things like the language podcasts, talk radio, and old movies and radio shows. On the trip out to San Jose, I listened to the 1939 radio broadcast of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” It might have only been November, but it was still comforting to hear the story that I’ve seen so many times in film in so many ways (the Mr. Magoo version is still by far and away my favorite). On the whole, RSS is true to its namesake, and since I only use it through iTunes, it’s a no-brainer. I give this one a thumbs up.

Podcasts: Literally half of my 80Gb iPod is loaded with this stuff. Again, they’re mostly diversionary things like travel advice columns. Rick Steves is my favorite since I watch his TV shows also, but his podcasts are somewhat long so I have to be in the mood to pay attention that long. That also goes for some of the others, like Frommers, and the BusinessWeek ones, so I’m less apt to actually listen to them. My main client has a daily news podcast that I try to catch up on at least weekly, but that’s just because I feel like I must. The learn a language stuff? Not a chance. Spanish? Chinese? Japanese? Nada. I’ve got all three, but can’t figure out how to learn and retain the stuff after listening to them. A far bit more fun are the video podcasts like old movies (I’ve watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on that tiny 3” screen), and other public domain stuff. I’m too cheap to actually pay for content. So while I could learn something using podcasts, I don’t, so this is a neutral.

IM: This is one of my favorites because it’s so easy to use and unobtrusive. Using Trillian to cobble together my AOL, Yahoo, and MSN IMs at least leaves me with only one interface to deal with. Unlike some folks, I’m not bothered by a spontaneous, out of nowhere IM popping up on my screen. For work colleagues, I like to use it just for signaling purposes—to ask if they have time for a call. For friends, just to say “hi” or have them let me know that I’ve (unintentionally) ignored them for too long. It’s quick, easy, and most importantly doesn’t clog up my email. For those who have their IMs forwarded to their cell phones even better. I hate texting on my phone, but being able to type out text messages to the phones of others is a good thing. Definitely a life enhancer and a big thumbs up.

Blogs: Well, truth be told, not so much—interest that is. Maybe folks have a story to tell, but first I’ve got to get out there to read them. Maybe I should use RSS to at least bring them into one place and read the headlines, but then I’m back to reading just to figure out if I should read more. I wonder what this really means for the knowledge marketplace. After all, the supply siders are definitely out there, just offering up their knowledge wares for the taking; but I’m not buying. In most cases, I haven’t even found the market. I had a running dialog with a reader of this blog once. I thought my rationale—and math skills—were spot on for supporting my non-reading of blogs. So it’s fait accompli—I generally don’t get around to them unless I have a specific topic I’m looking for. So what do I expect for this blog? Hello out there…out there…out there…A thumbs down here (so far).

Wikis: To be fair, I’ve only been a user and not a contributor to this most democratic of publishing mediums. Power to the people has never rung more true than for wikis. In spite of that—you can call me old school, or even just old—I don’t allow my MBA students to use wikis (read: wikipedia) as citations in their papers. Although I’ve discovered the value of wikis, mostly for arcane subjects that the Enclycopaedia Britannica would consider blasphemy even to breath the words, I’m still not ready to think of wikis as authoritative as those sources sporting an ISBN. A solid neutral here, since I have had fun with wikis.

Mashups: A cool idea. To be against them would be like challenging motherhood and apple pie (Sorry, that last inference was clearly intended for an American reader. Let’s just say they’re both really good things.). I’ve used a few, with the most memorable being someone’s mashup of Google Earth with music and locations of famous WW II battle locations like Iwo Jima or Pearl Harbor. Each element by themselves isn’t so unusual, but the cleverness of mashing them all together made for an interesting experience. A solid thumbs up for mashups.

VoIP (Voice over IP): Probably the best known of this group of apps is Skype, a free application that is also free to use between two users if communicating from computer to computer. There are variations on the theme, such as computer to landline or mobile phone, or personal phone numbers, or voicemail, but those cost money (of course). Still, when I’m able to chat with my daughter half a world away while she’s in Japan sans cost, I’m all for it. Over a DSL or better connection, the sound quality is pretty good, with little lag (although a lag sometimes is annoying, it can also be pretty funny to hear yourself at the other end again—kind of like speaking a ‘round’ by yourself). If there’s a drawback to this app, it’s only that I can’t find enough users to keep the cost to zero. Oh by the way, when I get stationary (this is being done at 35,000 feet), I’m supposed to call a colleague via Skype. She’s in Norway. I’ll be in San Diego. Interestingly, our biggest hurdle won’t be technology related. It’ll be finding a time that we’re both agreeable to. A big thumbs up just because of the frugalness in me.

Social networking sites: My site of choice is LinkedIn. Not because it’s so good, but because MySpace seems a bit scary, and FaceBook is off limits to me (according to my twenty-something daughter, who would never get over the embarrassment of her father having a page there!). While I still don’t think LinkedIn is fun to use, a key reason why I rarely go into it, I have used it both to help connect others as well as to ask others to connect me with someone. So for that purpose, the social networking aspect seems to work. A downside to not accessing it much I’ve found, is that changes to my resume or interests, or desire to connect with others doesn’t happen very often. Now fortunately, my resume hasn’t changed in the last 4 years, but I’ve noticed that some of my connections have out-of-date profiles, rendering this tool a bit less reliable. Still, I wouldn’t give it up—thumbs up.

Virtual worlds: Now technically, I don’t use VWs, even though technically I could. I do have a Second Life account, but don’t have enough connections with others there to make it worth my while to investigate more fully at this time. And, while the idea of flying around just by flapping my arms appeals to me, I still haven’t even figured out how to do anything but launch my F-18 Super Hornet straight into the ocean off the flightdeck of the CVN-76 USS Ronald Reagan in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. It’s safe to say that I won’t be picked for Top Gun school anytime soon. If I could figure out a use—with others—then VWs would get my nod. Right now it’s just an idea to me—thumbs sideways for life enhancement.

So if you’ve been keeping score (but why in the world would you?), that makes about half—5 of 9 to be exact—of the web 2.0 tools I’ve discussed a positive experience for me. I’m not exactly a technology luddite, so I wonder if this is just because I’m old? And, if you’ve come this far with me, then you know what comes next. What’s your experience with web 2.0 applications? Any Gen Y’ers out there willing to share?

And the winner is…

2007-10-19T14:34:00.001-07:00

IMHO it’s Organization A. And the reason I think so is due to the “knowing-doing gap.” That concept tells us that just because you know something—a strategy, a process, a course of action—doesn’t mean that you actually do it. Similarly, just because you do it without a full appreciation of the strategic implications doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. So in this case, in spite of the fact that Organization A seems to be at a clear disadvantage to Organization B based upon the comparison I created, I’d still go with A to have long term success over B.

While I won’t go so far as to use the analogy that “slow and steady wins the race,” it is a bit of that practically speaking. Organization A has very rudimentary processes in place for knowledge sharing, and their cultural disposition to sharing is about on par with that, but their adherence to good change management principles, process orientation, and even their very mechanical way of executing knowledge management at least keeps them moving forward.

Compare that to Organization B. They have some very complex processes identified. At a high level, they have a picture of the world. Unfortunately for them, at the user level, the identified processes don’t mean a thing. In fact, the big-picture view of the world that Organization B has created for its users is so involved, that to attempt to use it is actually detrimental to getting the nuts and bolts work done. So what does that mean? It means that all the energy put into the identification, development, publishing, and advocating of the processes falls on deaf ears when the users are under daily pressure to get things done. So why does this matter? Well, because everyone is so busy trying to get their own work done, any talk of knowledge sharing also lands on those same overburdened ears.

Consequently, even though Organization A plods along, trying dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s as they attempt to inculcate knowledge sharing into their members, at least the rudimentary requirements of knowledge sharing are acknowledged and practiced. They may not know, but they do. Organization B’s grand plan may never see the light of day (in a practical sense where members are using it effectively). I’ve seen the progress of knowledge sharing in A, and it’s slow and painful, but it’s there. I’ve seen the lack of progress of knowledge sharing in B, and at this snapshot in time, I don’t see how they’re going to get it at all. Any ideas about how both organizations can be helped?

A tale of two organizations

2007-09-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided that anyone who thinks that knowledge sharing (aka knowledge management) is easy, or worse, who “doesn’t get it” at all woefully underestimates the complexity of the situation. This came to me recently as I’ve been working completely heads down with two organizations (you’ve been wondering what happened to me, haven’t you?), both which desire to improve their operations. While I won’t name them (for obvious reasons), their characteristics read like a dichotomy of what organizations can be. Just off the top of my head, here are some:

	Organization A	Organization B
Have robust business processes defined	Only starting to identify and document them	Methodology is fully developed although its application is variable
Have supporting technology for content and collaboration	Content is provided one-way; technology enabled collaboration doesn’t exist	More collaboration sites than you can shake a stick at
Have well defined knowledge sharing processes in place	Highly developed structure with roles, responsibilities, communication plans, and business rules in use	Ad hoc sharing is encouraged, but no known processes developed to enforce rigorous sharing
Have business and knowledge sharing measures in place	Still developing	Use of scorecards, RYG dashboards, etc. in wide use
Have sufficient content to share among users	No real content management strategy developed yet	More content than you can shake a stick at
Have a documented vision for what knowledge sharing can do for the organization	Their mantra includes the value of knowledge sharing	A consistent idea of what knowledge sharing means hasn’t even been socialized throughout the organization yet.
Have a culture of knowledge sharing in place	Processes in place ensure that the culture is reinforced	Only ad hoc among colleagues
Have mechanisms for identifying, vetting, publicizing, and reusing best practices	Mechanisms in place, but number of best practices is low	By definition, best practices are rolled into methodologies

So—if we can all agree that the purpose (at least one important one that is) for institutional knowledge sharing is to improve processes—then which organization do you think is better at it? Using the traditional measures of time, cost, quality, which organization performs better? Or, maybe they both excel? Or neither?

Of course, I could tell you now, but then I’d have to think of something for my next post, wouldn’t I? I’ll leave this question unanswered for a comment period and get back to you.

Social networkers unite!

2007-06-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

Self organizing teams…a toolkit of social tools to help…an environment of collegiality never before seen in a “siloed” organization. Is this the brave, new world of work? Let’s hope so. Dale Arsenault has kindly provided a peek into the future, describing a scenario in which project managers can nimbly choose the appropriate tools to aid their projects’ chances of success. Collaboration happens, either in real time or asynchronously, but in any case it happens 24/7. Trying not to sound pessimistic however, how are we going to get there?

Now trying to be a “thought leader” means not constantly throwing roadblocks into what “could be,” but the question still nags me. Current and future needs as I hear them from others seem to indicate that web 2.0 tools aren’t the hurdle—the speedbumps are still basic change management. So maybe our current study on the intersection of KM and web 2.0 comes at a good time for me. It’ll allow me to get my head above the fray of “what is,” and spend more time on visualizing the future.

Actually, of all the web 2.0 apps, the one that holds the most interest to me personally (from a knowledge management perspective that is) is the personal page—the MySpace, Facebook type pages. I use neither of those popular apps, but I am on www.linkedin.com. [note: I’m not endorsing any app, I just happen to be on that one.] Even that is a bit of a chore for me however, as I don’t find myself anxiously awaiting the opportunity to update my profile, or to add some new, pithy comments into it.

So what makes the other sites so popular and what’s missing from the app I use? I think its fun. Yes, fun! Somehow the transition from “personal” to “professional” page takes the fun out of it. Go to any typical personal social page, and you’ll not only find regular updates by the page holder, but they’ll have “friends” that make quick comments—comments that indicate that others are actually reading what’s there. The implications of course, are huge if we can incorporate the personal page look and feel into our professional pages.

A person can list what books they’ve read and recommend, or their research interests, or talk about what others are talking about, or expose some of the tacit knowledge that they’ve accumulated over the years—all good stuff for an organization. No repository could ever even hope to be so rich in content as that provided willingly by the page holder. Let’s assume for a moment that what I’ve said above is true. Let’s also assume that an organization’s leadership understands the value and encourages such pages (they can be internal only—that’s not a show stopper). How do we introduce the fun factor into it so that people will be willing and excited about sharing their knowledge this way? Any success stories are greatly appreciated.

Not too wiki?

2007-05-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

Re-reading Tim O’Reilly’s definition of what web 2.0 is (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html), allows me to consider another aspect of its relationship to enterprise knowledge management. Lately, we’ve heard much buzz about the wisdom of crowds and wikis for example. I happen to agree that the collective perspective, insights, and solution provided by a group are generally better than that generated by a lone individual (or I wouldn’t be in this business). I also think that wikis have a clear advantage to their users, as the potential participative opportunity should allow users to feel invested in the results produced in a way far greater than simply submitting to a corporate repository.

So what’s the issue? The issue is, “How should organizations develop enablers like wikis to make knowledge management more effective?” By definition, wikis ought be somewhat authoritative. Wikis are not a place for wildly divergent ideas although acknowledgement of differences certainly should acknowledged, as they would be in any well researched document. In any case, where is this authoritative content supposed to come from? My guess is subject matter experts. Which subject matter experts? Probably the same ones in the organizations today. So what are we going to do differently to tease out expertise from this group that we haven’t done in the past? It's easy find experts in any organization. You ask around and you hear the same names come up. It's not always so easy to see their expertise in writing because they're busy making use of that expertise, not writing it down.

We’ve been down this path before. Communities of practice are modeled after communities of interest. Communities of interest get their fuel from the passion each member has for the narrow topic of interest they’re involved in. While I don’t have any research at hand, I suspect that it’s possible that some community of interest members are so passionate about their interest, that they may be involved to an extraordinary degree. We try to get CoPs to mimic the same behavior—sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What do we miss there? And, what might we miss if we simply tell subject matter experts that now they’ve got a much easier way to publish their knowledge for the benefit of everyone?

Perhaps this will have to be a convergence between the exploratory wiki-thinkers and the stodgy old, formal knowledge management types. Introducing wikis without considering change management, or denying how newer collaboration methods can increase interactivity will likely lead to less than satisfactory results. Neither approach alone will get us there. It’s not a matter of what, it’s a matter of how. So how?

Web 2.0 here I come!

2007-05-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

As promised, I’ll now acknowledge that blogs have value. In what ways I’m not sure yet, but it’s a losing proposition to continue down my former path. So—let’s expand the conversation. Let’s talk about what are commonly referred to as “web 2.0” technologies. They usually include such things as blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, social networking, etc. Taken as a whole, I can get behind web 2.0 much more than I can for any one application. That’s because they all share an underlying driver that transcends a specific use. They all rely on peer-to-peer access. The need for monolithic sources of knowledge is fast becoming irrelevant. I’ve argued this point for some time, so in this case web 2.0 helps my cause.

The only fly in the ointment however, seems to be that organizations just aren’t ready for it. At our KM conference earlier this month, the theme was innovation and the presenters certainly did their best to illustrate the buzz around web 2.0 and the like. But what I heard from folks there were issues around implementing “old” technology, such as collaborative spaces, and repository management. With only a few very notable exceptions (and you know who you are), attendees were concerned about some very practical and long-standing knowledge sharing problems such as getting people to create, share, and reuse regardless of what technologies are available to them.

That leads me to consider that there may be a divide looming—those organizations that are taking a traditional knowledge sharing approach v. those that are testing the web 2.0 technologies to see if more knowledge sharing occurs. And, because web 2.0 technologies rely on the previously mentioned peer-to-peer model, one could argue that expertise location is enhanced as well. After all, if you get something from someone’s blog, being aware that that person has useful content on similar topics naturally allows you to stay connected with a person v. a repository.

Nevertheless, my work in KM—while straddling the divide—has still been in the traditional; taxonomies, repositories, validated content, knowledge maintenance processes, and so on. It’s not a resistance to the new, it’s what’s being asked for. Regardless of the technology used, some basic change management and human nature considerations are still king. Recently, a client senior executive said to me, “There’s nothing to keep my people from sharing; all they have to do is get up out of their chairs and go down the hall.” True enough, as far as I could tell nobody was shackled to their desks. Yet no sharing was going on. And, this organization has enough technology to make most of us jealousy—satellite VTC, webcams on PCs, instant messaging, and on and on. Still no sharing.

In another case, a member of a “gang of four” (her description) told me that she and her colleagues do get together in person to share what they know—but they have to do it secretly out of doors. When I suggested that we could help them with a collaboration space to allow them to share 24/7 (and stay inside during the Winter), she flatly said “no,” that putting those same kinds of comments in electronic form would be too risky.

So those cases and others, IT management’s concerns about effective management of all technologies, and the fact that some organizations haven’t even learned to walk with KM means that web 2.0 technologies would be the equivalent of immediately going to running with KM scissors in hand. But, if you’re worried about me being left in the last century, never fear. APQC’s next consortium learning benchmarking study, KM and Enabling Technologies (principally web 2.0 stuff), launches in July, and I get to play in it. I suspect that they’re taking the approach that making the nay-sayer a part of the experience will open my eyes to a brave, new world. By the way, we may even innovate the way we do studies with this one. There’s been some talk of using a wiki to develop parts of it. Stay tuned.

I'm in! I'm in!

2007-05-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, for all you fans of this blog (all 1 or 2 of you), I'm back! Believe it or not, my absence has been due to: 1) being extremely busy with clients, and 2) not being able to get into this thing. When google decided to take over www.blogger.com, they required everyone to switch over to their google accounts. For some time, I was unable to remember my google account name/ID, then when I finally figured out how to get in, my IE 6 browser wouldn't get me past the sign-in page. Finally accepting the fact that I was out of my league, I consulted with my IT guy and he suggested Firefox. I've used Firefox in the past, but always hated the fact that some images don't come through. However, this was no time to be stubborn, so the rest they say, "is history."

More importantly, being able to get back in means that I can continue to blog on what is important. And that is (drum roll please)....blogging! I have now been turned from the dark side and will acknowledge the value of some new(er) technologies, blogs included. Somewhat like being out of breath due lack of exercise however, I am going to finish this post on that note in hopes that you'll all come back for more the next time....

Okay, okay, I take back my words…

2007-03-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

not about my position on blogs, but those about having said the last words about them. Let the discussion continue!

Some interesting phenomena have occurred that bear mentioning since I began this public revelation and now discourse. First, I’ve been alerted that I need to be careful what I say, as there may be a misconception about whose position is really advanced here. So, for the record,

ALL CONTENT POSTED ON THIS BLOG BY THE BLOGGER (ME) PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, ARE SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY AND VIEWS OF THE BLOGGER ONLY (ME AGAIN), AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF APQC, ITS CUSTOMERS, SUPPLIERS, OR OTHER AGENTS (BASICALLY, MANAGEMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR MY POSTS, THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG NOTWITHSTANDING). I PRESUME THAT THE RESPONSES POSTED TO IT ARE ONLY THOSE OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTHORS AS WELL.

With that out of the way, I also realize that my communication skills must need some improvement, as my position on the use of blogs is clearly not clear to those responding. I’ll need time to work on that—please be patient.

This discussion has also given me an opportunity to learn that more people read this blog than I could have imagined, with some of the lurkers now commenting publicly, indicating that I must have hit on a topic with real interest. In fact, there have been more responses to my posts re blogs than on any other topic—what delicious irony. For that I thank you.

On to some of the responses then, which I will comment on as responses. Maybe I will be moved after all, as I’m finding this a bit exciting now…

Blog no more..on the subject of blogging, that is

2007-03-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Last week and this brought me new data points that have convinced me conclusively that blogs won’t be anything I recommend to my clients any time soon for knowledge sharing. For the record, let me again repeat that I think blogs will show some business value in the future—they’re already ubiquitous—but they’re just not going to be on my menu of knowledge sharing devices today. So let’s go over the latest good advice I received:

Describe the business value of the blog—essentially understand the value proposition of using the blog. Fair enough, and the same advice we would give to our clients regarding any aspect of knowledge sharing we would guide them to undertake. Old news. Let’s presume for a moment that an internal company blog is intended to decrease the time to competency of its employees. I’d like to learn of an example from among the 60-million+ blogs out there where the company thinks it has earned back its investment.

Blogs as discussion forums and discussion forums as blogs? Well, discussion forums have so much over blogs that if you want to use the discussion forum device and call it a blog, I’d be very happy. Down with blogs, l ong live the discussion forum!

Next, keep the posts short. I like this one and will do all I can to adhere to it. Interestingly however, our president Carla O’Dell sent me a link to an article regarding blog and wiki security concerns. Within that article was a hotlink to a large technology company’s blog site, where any employee can have a blog—for internal or external consumption. Wanting to conduct research I went to the site, sought out the top read poster, and spent some time reading it. Lots of long personal rants, some links to other information, and in the end, completely useless for anything that I personally care about.

The final nail in the coffin for me was an article in the March 20, 2007 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Ever hear of Twitter or Dodgeball? They’re among the latest rage—wireless instant messaging and social networking all rolled into one. I can hardly wait to hear of a company that espouses the virtues of those sites!

Oh, one last item—to those who would hijack my blog by responding with something like, “I like your blog, please go see mine at uselessstuff.blog.com” are assured of only one thing—I wouldn’t go to your blog even if you paid me to do so. You obviously don’t understand a key fact of knowledge sharing; that you don’t get any play if you aren’t trusted, and frankly, I don’t trust you.

So that’s it—I kept this as short as I could. And in the words of that famed philosopher Forrest Gump, “That’s all I’m going to say about it.” On to something else!

re: the re: to my blog about blogs

2007-03-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

BRILLIANT! (I feel like those guys in the beer commercial)

The latest advice for making this blog useful includes more dialog, more publicity of our capabilities, and more frequency. Okay, got it. Taking them in order, if a blog becomes valuable when a discussion breaks out, what makes that different than a discussion forum? I don’t think it’s a matter of semantics, so I want to understand how blogs are different than discussion forums. And, if they’re not, what’s all the buzz about? Discussion forums have been around for a long time, and IMHO the killer app for communities of practice. So I do like the idea of the exchange! If I now start calling discussion forums blogs, will that change the dynamics of them?

On to the matter of publicizing our smarts… Good idea if I want to push our products and services, but I’m not a particularly good salesman, and this model feels very salesy. In fact, it feels like if all I do is to extol our virtues, pretty soon I’m going to want to apply to our sales and marketing department. I can do this bit of shameless promotion though—here’s our website URL: www.apqc.org. Note that we’re a “.org” and that we do lots of cool stuff, especially in the area of knowledge management, where our president Carla O’Dell is one of the true thought leaders in the world. Whew! That was a lot for me—more promotion next time.

More frequency? I’ve posted 4-5 times in this one week alone! I’m tired. This is hard work for me, especially when I’m trying to keep my attention focused on client needs. Now in fairness, I still only care about internal knowledge sharing, so this externally facing blog doesn’t answer the WIIFM, but I am still responsible for it. So—a tidbit of external knowledge sharing? How about this? Stan Garfield runs a really cool community where there are discussions about KM related issues; in the community’s discussion forum.

Okay, enough of running down my own blog. Here’s something that is important and that needs more attention: knowledge retention and transfer. I just finished a two-day workshop with an industry group whose main concern is the impending implosion of the industry from the rash of retirements expected in the next five years or so. This is an industry-wide problem, so not only is it an issue at one organization, it creates a poaching problem for all the organizations in the industry. And don't think you don't have to worry about "their" problem. This industry is necessary for every one of us in the U.S. every single day, 24/7/365. If anything, you should be glad that these folks are as far ahead of the curve as they are with this issue--your life may literally depend upon it.

More broadly, many organizations from many industries are also worried about the issue (as evidenced by our study that currently includes 31 sponsoring companies and another half dozen or so best practice partners). So what is your organization doing about this potential meltdown of institutional knowledge? By the way, at this workshop I just attended, a term was used that I had never heard previously—“Y2Gray.” Meaning that perhaps the sky isn’t falling and that the hype of loss of institutional knowledge is just that—similar to the Y2K non-problem of a few years ago. So which is it?

More blogging about blogs

2007-03-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

First, allow me to state up front and clearly that I truly appreciate the response to my last blog post on blogs. It’s that kind of discourse that I’d love to have on this and other subjects as a way of learning what others are thinking. The valuable time that folks read—and sometimes even respond to—my ramblings humbles me. Since I’m unconvinced of the business value of blogs and am still testing that hypothesis, I struggle with appropriate knowledge (read: useful) to be shared. So please do continue to read if you find value in this, and definitely respond if you don’t.

Before I continue, let me also restate my basic premise about blogs: They’re not ready for business prime time (but I will modify that statement later in this post). I’m no fortune teller, and I don’t even play one on television, but I have been known to be on the bleeding edge on more than several occasions—and been wrong—so there’s precedent here if I’m wrong again.

Sidebar: In thinking of how I’ve arrived at the conclusion I’m often on the bleeding edge, I offer these examples of what I’ve purchased in the past:

First fully automated shutter controlled 35mm SLR – Konica – no longer in the SLR business
First “portable IBM PC compatible computer” – Columbia Data Systems – company defunct
Early consumer videotape recorder (Betamax) – well, you know that story
First front wheel drive car since the re-introduction in 1966 – Olds Toronado – company defunct
First satellite phone company – Iridium – if you’re still holding their stock (like my son bought based upon my recommendation) use it for scratch paper
Early laptop computer – Texas Instruments Travelpro – got out of the business, sold it to Acer
Early compact PDA (PCMCIA card size) – Franklin REX – sold to Xircom and immediately discontinued

Bottom line: Before you buy anything technology related, make sure I haven’t already selected it—it’s sure to be a loser.

Having said that, I got a great response that I would like to re-post in its entirety as well as address each of the points the responder made about my blog misgivings. Others on the blogs-are-good side of the fence are also encouraged to respond, since enabling technologies for the next generation of knowledge workers is my academic research interest and I can always use more data points. So, below is the response to my blog about blogs, and my response to that is contained in [brackets]. Again, thanks for the response and insightful perspective.

RESPONSE:

It seems to me that you are missing some of the main rationales for blogs.

Your article seems to paint blogs as if they are just an extension of the traditional diary, but they are not . . . diaries are private, blogs are public.

[Beyond the obvious that diaries were intended to be private and blogs public, blogs still suffer from the same linear thinking, i.e., chronological order based upon the most recent thoughts. What is considered critical knowledge is purely from the perspective of the blogger, not in collaboration with the receiver, or the business.]

The purpose of a blog is to share thoughts, to build an audience, to communicate, to network, to connect with other people, etc. A blog can be a marketing tool, a social networking software tool, assist with dissemination of knowledge and, in some cases, stewardship of knowledge. Where appropriate in context, it could lead to lead generation and business opportunities.

[We’re in agreement with the above, that blogs can provide leads, connect people, market, and so on, but—because of the ad hoc nature of the blog posts, the value rendered is limited in my humble opinion. The fact remains, that even if blogs are used as knowledge stewarding devices, they still suffer from the same problem as more formal knowledge stewarding devices, valuable content needs to be put into them. I would go on to argue that for formal systems, say Lessons Learned databases for example, their structured nature not only ensures that certain valuable information is made explicit and stewarded, it also ensures that every “post” is considered of value. How many blog posts can be said to be of value? 100%? 50%? 10%?]

So, from the supply side there could be quite a bit 'in it for me'. Looking around, I can see some people have put considerable thought into their blogging strategy and carefully monitor their metrics and the value they add to their readership.

See http://nano-marketing.viabloga.com/news/forrester-sees-roi-in-the-blog-adventure for more discussion of how blogs can add business value (but bear in mind there has been some discussion around this article in the blogosphere you might want to chase up)

[While I read the nano-marketing article regarding blog ROI, I also attempted to go to the source, Forrester, for the full-text article. With no success there, I then went to an electronic library and found another article I found of interest. In this article, the writer states, “Most blogs are a complete waste of time. They’re often personal labours of love, heavy on personality and light on useful content” (source: Holloway, A. (25 Dec 2006 – 14 Jan 2007). To blog, or not to blog?, Canadian Business, 80(1), p. 15. Retrieved March 12, 2007 from ProQuest electronic database.) By the way, if you were expecting me to reference a quote that doesn’t support my own bias, get real!

Back to the nano-marketing article, GM was cited in it as having calculated a 99% ROI in 2005 from its consumer facing blogging efforts. How they determined that I won’t dispute. However, it does help me focus my argument a bit more. That blogs are not ready for business prime time—as an internal knowledge sharing tool. Use it for marketing and consumer feedback, fine. I happen to be in the business of helping organizations manage their internal knowledge needs, and here I am adamant that their value has yet to be realized. (more on that in my next post if I remember to write about it)

By the way, another side note here. The suggestion that I research other blogs about the value of blogs was well intended, but I simply didn’t feel I had the time available to do that. Still a problem (trust, time, incentive) for knowledge management systems in general, and still a problem for blogs I argue. And, as long as I’m on the subject of other blogs, if I remember correctly, I stated that there are some 60-million blogs out there. If even 1/10 of 1% are business related, that leaves me with 60,000 potential useful blogs to read. If even 1/10 of 1% of those are any good, then I have only 60 blogs to read. But, will I read even 12 per day? WOW! I just realized, if you’re reading my blog—THANKS!]

At the end of the day, a blog is a content management system that because it is simple to use is used, and doubles to serve many business functions e.g. networking, lead generation, information sharing, idea sourcing / sharing, etc.

[Simplicity is good, but not at the expense of usability. If you’re at all familiar with Lotus Notes (no endorsement should be inferred here), you’d note that it is both a formidable content management system that can also accommodate blogs without losing its usability—for the retriever of knowledge. In general, the use of discussion forums—which I humbly submit is the “killer app” of knowledge sharing—is at least the equal of blogs, and can be structured to look like blogs if that’s what people need to see in order to use them. In fact, even with such structure, discussion forums are woefully underused.

In the case of this blog in particular, have you ever even attempted to find something posted more than a year ago? Would you even know that I only took it over last Spring and that any posts prior to that weren’t even mine? Did you notice that I purposely reused a phrase (“don’t need no stinkin’…”) in my last headline to see if you recalled seeing it in an earlier post? All problems of blogs I say.]

On the demand, side, it's like anything else - if you can provide content people are interested in, they'll read it and come back for more, and if they aren't, they probably won't subscribe.

[I think this is the most useful and spot on argument of the response. I sure hope to post something of value before the noise out there is simply the clanging of my un-read blog inside my head. So far it hasn’t provided me a lick of business value (e.g., leads, new markets, contracts!)]

I think you need to rethink your stand! ;) A blog can be a very useful business tool.

[Believe it or not, I really am open to ruminating on this subject—I just need more time. And, remember, I’ve already restated my position to include only those blogs intended for internal consumption.]

However, as a system it is very primitive. No one would design it that way . . . e.g. it is difficult to syndicate comments (you can't get an rss feed to see who's commented in other people's posts you are interested in).

[Therein lies the blog’s key weakness—it’s too primitive for organizational knowledge sharing.]

But I think you'll see this area grow in business value and uptake.

[No doubt you’re right there. I just think that time isn’t today.]

Wikis? Again, they are content management systems, and they are useful for quick and dirty solutions and for some purposes (e.g. you noted Wikipedia). But I think for the corporate world they need extra features. But who cares? The corporate world already has sophisticated content management systems, which are wikis by another name - just not open source. So sure, arguably wikis might not take off in the corporate world, but if content management systems already have, isn't the point moot?

[I promised to tackle the subject of wikis later, and I will but not before we have a full discussion on blogs. So anyone who’s bothered to come this far with me, thank you. Give me your take and make this a real discussion. Oh yeah, I did enjoy the irony of using Wikipedia as a source—I would never allow it to be used as a reference from one of my own students!]

APQC is Hosting a KM Conference

2007-03-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that APQC is hosting a KM conference in May.

It should be pretty cool because Jimmy Wales, founder of wikipedia, will be presenting.

Blog? I don't need no stinkin' blog!

2007-03-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Actually, I’ve decided to jump—off the fence that is. I am now clearly on the side of the fence that thinks that blogs and wikis are not ready for business prime time. After many months of mental gymnastics about these two applications, I just don’t think they’re worth the effort put into them—or at least the hype that surrounds them. I’ve come to this conclusion based on both our current consortium study on knowledge retention and transfer, as well as some recent personal experience.

Now let me go on record to say that I do believe that both blogs and wikis have some value—just not business value—at least not yet. Since blogs by definition can be freeform, the rest of this post may be weaving all over the place, but I’ll try to focus it by commenting specifically on how blogs are (are not) useful to knowledge sharing and knowledge management programs. Wikis fall into this same trap, but I’ll tackle them in a later post.

From http://www.wikipedia.com/ (ironic, isn’t it?), a blog is defined as, “…a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.” Wikipedia further goes on to say that some 60-million blogs (give or take a few mil I suppose) are out there these days. So—what does all this mean? Where am I going with this? Simply this: blogs don’t answer the WIIFM for knowledge management!

Pre-internet, a “blog” would have been a journal, or your sibling’s diary. Add the web, video and audio (you could have added pictures already in the old days), stir until blended, and you’ve got a blog! To that I say, “SO WHAT?” Did anyone ever read someone else’s journal in the past and get immediate business value from it? Does your organization host a blog space and tell you that’s where the authoritative knowledge of the firm is, or that it’s at least where good stuff is?

I understand that Einstein kept detailed journals of his work (as I suppose most scientists and inventors do) but did he ever share any of that work with others—while he was in the middle of it? Certainly there must have been a few nuggets of knowledge old Einstein could have imparted to the rest of us. Maybe even I could have described the theory of relativity had I only gotten a boost from some of his notes (editor’s note: I’m not that old—I was born after his death, and therefore, after his work was already published).

Okay, so back to my point. WIIFM for the blogger? WIIFM for the reader? I don’t know. In a business context, I suppose a blogger is to write about some tacit knowledge he/she has that has value to the organization. It’s not just blogging about his/her favorite hobby or foods. So what knowledge has business value? Who determines that? And even if it is determined, how do we make a blogger blog? The first rule of public speaking is to be passionate about what you speak. My personal experience is that it holds true for writing (or blogging) as well. So if I’m not passionate about blogging about my tacit knowledge, how are you going to make me?

Maybe you make me blog (or incent me as we like to say), by offering me some rewards and/or recognition for blogging. Okay, how many organizations do you know that do that? I really do want to learn about specific examples, because I want to talk to those organizations! My organization? I get no reward or recognition for keeping this blog. That’s not a criticism—it’s just a reflection of the reality that I am measured on my client service—not blogging. So in fact, every minute I spend working on this blog reduces my performance as I’m being measured against! WIIFM? And, because I’m not required to share any specific tacit knowledge I have, presumably about knowledge management, I can really blog about anything I darned well please—as long as its knowledge management related. Where the heck is the value in that?

So on the supply side, we’ve got me—no guidelines, no rewards—only passion. What about the demand side? Who the heck wants to read this stuff? What is the universe of users on the demand side, and WIIFM for them? Let’s see, they could be:

· Unaware of my blog
· Aware of my blog but don’t care because it doesn’t interest them
· Aware of my blog but don’t care because they’ve read it before and it really doesn’t interest them
· Aware of my blog, read it (occasionally or otherwise), but just chuckle because it doesn’t give them any knowledge management value
· Aware of my blog, read it, and sometimes comment on it because they have their own agenda—like publicizing their own blogs
· Aware of my blog, read it, and sometimes comment on it because they have something to share in the arena of knowledge management
· Aware of my blog, read it, and get immediate business value from it

If you actually read my list, you’d see that I purposely ordered the items in descending order of likely occurrence. That is, getting any real business value from my blog is not practically nil—it is nil! Inductive reasoning tells me that I’m not meeting the WIIFM for my readers.

By the way, while I’ve addressed the WIIFM problem with blogs, there are also technical problems with them—e.g., chronological format, inability to browse, non-authoritative content, etc. But, those problems pale in comparison to the WIIFM hurdle. In a future post, I hope to discuss podcasts, storytelling, and other mechanisms for knowledge transfer (again, stuff we’re finding out from our current benchmarking study). For now though, I’ve just used 1-1/2 hours of my billable time to blog this, for no more reward than the intrinsic value of taking a stand.

My head is goig to explode!

2007-02-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Yes, it’s true. Not unlike the cycle of technology that has come “full circle,” I have now decided that my head will explode from “infoglut.” Remember that term? What do I mean by this? Think of the original use of computers in business. They were mainframes—big (physically), and they were centralized—one corporate brain that kept all the enterprise’s important data. Somewhere along came PCs—small and individual—creating fragmented brains all over the place. To manage that, the server/thin client model was born so that some of the information could be reined back in to the corporate brain. Today, the internet/intranet has exploded that model even more toward a future where a single brain can be envisioned. Think of your life—your spreadsheets, calendars, mail, photos, directions, etc., all hosted by Google.

Similarly, I am now mired in infoglut once again. How ironic for someone engaged in knowledge management, no? It goes something like this: years ago I had trouble reading everything I wanted to read—couldn’t afford all the magazines and journals, couldn’t carry them all around, and so on. Then along came the internet that at least allowed me to save my back and briefcase space (if not the expense). I could save my favorites and read stuff on demand even if I had only a few minutes to sneak the reading time in. I felt empowered to be able to control even my fragments of time—choice was good!

What I discovered though, is a corollary—too much choice is not good! Now I’m inundated by all the possibilities, which leads me back to the problem of reading everything I want to read. Listening to some of it would be helpful (think of podcasts), but even sourcing that content is a chore for me. RSS? For me that just means Really Swamped Sometimes. I was lucky enough to get an 80Gb iPod from my family for Christmas. In a month’s time, I’ve gone from 0 bytes of digital media to over 35Gb of stuff—songs, podcasts, videos, notes, etc.—and feel like I can’t keep up with all that now. Where did all that stuff come from? And why didn’t I need it before?

For a change, I made a conscious effort to read some printed material on a cross country flight this week from my home in Cleveland (where it was -1 degree when I left) to San Diego (where thankfully, it is considerably warmer). The local paper, Laptop magazine, Fast Company, and some car magazines (my favorites). What did I read? More about social networking. Blogging. Live mobile TV. Simulations. Second Life. That doesn’t even include some good advice from Jack Vinson and Dale Arseneault regarding checking out other similar topics and the “Info Islands.” By the way, in my last post, I promised to get out to Second Life—haven’t found the time yet.

Where am I going with all this? Back to the next generation. For me, applying technology has been something I’ve had to learn in my lifetime, and while I enjoy it, today’s and tomorrow’s knowledge workers are saying, “what’s the big deal?” After all, this is their life; what they’ve grown up with and have always known. So how will they work together? Connect? Stay connected? And how will they choose who and how to stay connected with? In previous posts others have responded saying that the incentive to collaborate is the same for any generation, and perhaps that is true. On the other hand, I still want to know if the technology enablement available today will change behaviors or motivations? And who knows what tomorrow will bring?

By the way, on a somewhat related note, I’ve decided that one of the reasons I don’t like to blog is the fact that I have to type this thing. As an industrial engineer in a previous life, the man-machine interface has always interested me. Typing has never been a skill of mine. When Tablet PCs first came out, I rushed to get one. Being able to communicate in my own (bad) handwriting has improved my productivity by orders of magnitude—but even that has its limitations. I’ve tried both the tablet PC’s built-in voice recognition app as well as the leading voice recognition software available, and have found them to be less than satisfactory, but maybe if I could dictate this blog, I might find it more to my liking.

One last thing: something I found especially enjoyable and satisfying recently was watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the bejillionth time—even if it was while sitting in a plane squinting at a tiny iPod screen.

Collaboration: The Next Generation

2007-02-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

Since I recently had a “milestone” birthday (so people tell me), it gave me a chance to reflect yet again on the fact that I’ve been in the work world longer than some of my colleagues and clients have been on this earth. While that could be a frightening thought, I figured that I could use that perspective to my advantage. So, I’ve decided that an area of research interest for me will be how the incoming generations of knowledge workers will interact and collaborate with each other. As a researcher—and academic wannabe—I decided to come up with a hypothesis to base my work on. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go into detail about it again, but it’s basically “how do young professionals (as defined by the “millennials” or some other tag) interact differently than those of earlier generations” (as defined by the “geezer” group or similar that I’m a part of)?

I think they do (and will) interact differently than the rest of us in the workplace. Two site visits this week and a keynote speaker that I’m listening to right now as I type this corroborate my view. First, an APQC site visit is what we do with best practice organizations as part of our collaborative benchmarking studies. We physically visit the organization—and in this case it was NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Aerospace Corporation—and have them host a meeting to discuss what they do that makes them considered “best practice” in the knowledge domain we’re studying. For this study its knowledge retention and transfer strategies. Both NASA and Aerospace indicated that they’re using some of the newest technology enablement tools to reach the “younger” professional. The keynote speaker is entertaining the audience with his insights about what makes the boomer different from the Gen X’ers from the Millenials, and so on.

While this is good to hear—and I’ll certainly use them as data points, I just hope this area doesn’t get researched to death before I use it as my dissertation research problem! In the meantime, I’m going to go and check out Second Life. I think I can use a makeover and that sounds like the easiest (and most painless) way.

Blog? This ain't no blog!

2006-12-29T07:09:00.000-08:00

Incredible--over two months since I last posted to this. Were it not for a few kind souls who added some comments, this blog would be as dead as morse code (it's true; I understand even the Boy Scouts have given up on offering a morse code merit badge these days). So what is this thing good for?

That's what I intend to research to find out. My personal research agenda from now on will be about the "next generation" of professionals. That is, what are the "young" professionals of today--those of you who know what Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake, and texting are all about--doing about knowledge sharing? How do they do it? Why do they do it? What makes them do it? My hypothesis is that their rationale for knowledge sharing (read: KM) is or will be, radically different than that of previous generations of professionals.

Why do I think that? Well, let's look at the easy part of this hypothesis: the technology enablement that didn't exist before recently. Let's start with the phone. Sure, the phone's been around for quite a while, but now it's personal. While I'm not quite old enough to remember when you had to ring up a live operator to connect a call (I did see how that works in the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life" though), I am old enough to remember that we had a "party line" (for you younger ones, it's not anything like what the name implies) and a phone number that went something like CHerry 1-1234.

So what's the big deal? We've always had an ability to connect to others through the phone--even in far away places. The big deal is accessibility. I liken this to stored knowledge in a public library. Now I grew up with public libraries, and I still love them but, they're not always convenient. Today's young professionals probably wouldn't step into a library unless they had to get out of the rain. Now that's not a criticism--it's just a feeling that today's professionals have grown up with knowledge accessibility through the internet--not through scouring dusty bookshelves.

Like libraries v. internet, so is the phone of the past and today's mobile phone service. As recently as a decade ago, cell phone service was a new thing. My first cell phone was permanently mounted to the floor of my car, with a little pigtail looking antenna glued to the back window (that's how you determined in the old days who was up with technology). I paid $30 a month for 20 minutes of service--and I thought that was a good deal! With cell technology however, came the beginnings of accessibility.

It also meant that a proliferation of accessibility was beginning to emerge. I took an inventory once. For me, my son, and my daughter, we once had 8 different phone numbers at which we could be reached if necessary: cell, home, work, fax, school, etc. Accessibility was possible then, but not convenient. Interestingly enough (to me at least), having more ways to reach people isn't nearly as good as reaching them in one consistent way--all the time. That's what I'm talking about regarding today's young professionals. They need only their mobile numbers. Many don't even have a "land line" at home (I wonder when that term will become nothing more than a trivia question).

So now, young professionals can reach anyone anywhere, anytime, 24/7. And because they've grown up with that paradigm, they might just do that (is there any etiquette about not calling after a certain hour of the evening anymore?). This, dare I say--convergence--of accessibility is what is different from the past. I haven't even mentioned texting, or presence indication yet--that's for a later post.

For me then, the bottom line of this accessibility is, how will organizations create, share, qualify, and retain their institutional knowledge in the future given the habits and preferences of the newer generations of professionals? They're here, and they're coming to replace us dinosaurs of previous generations. How will we work with them today given our own habits and preferences? And what will that mean to our organizations in total?

If I can get my head back into this blogging thing soon (right now it hurts from all this thinking), I'll ruminate on blogs, wikis, VoIP, presence indication, texting, IM, social networking sites, and other technologies that make it both easier to access knowledge as well as provide a dizzying number of sources of knowledge.

Happy New Year to you!

Looking ahead? We don't need no stinkin' looking ahead! (yes we do)

2006-10-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

Getting back to the old blogosphere hasn’t been easy, as I’ve been on the road for the past 3 weeks and trying to come up with pithy things to write about just hasn’t been on my list of priorities. Even this week when I thought I’d be home the entire week—I find myself going nearly cross country twice, from home to Calgary, and then Calgary to Virginia Beach, before going home again. So unfortunately, while this still isn’t pithy, it is timely as I just conducted a webinar with my colleague and knowledge management SME Darcy Lemons.

The topic was all about knowledge retention and how to get that knowledge to the right people even after the knowledge providers have “left the building.” Although there are many considerations, such as transfers, layoffs, voluntary quits, temporary leaves, and so forth, the loss of knowledge by an organization due to retirements is the one that I most closely associate with. I guess realizing that my professional career goes way back to the disco era of 1974 makes that a stark and startling reality for me. No organization I’ve ever worked for in the past had or has (to my knowledge) any type of robust, knowledge retention strategy.

About the only thing left of the outgoing person’s legacy is the now up-for-grabs cubicle and the hoarded napkins, paper clips, markers and pens, and spare change collected over many years left in the departed’s desk drawers. So Darcy and I talked about the bleak statistics compiled that predict how we won’t be able to replace the outgoing knowledge (people leaving) with sufficient numbers of incoming knowledge (people being hired) even on just a body count basis. That is, we can’t expect to be able to replace people one-for-one, and the idea of being able to directly replace their knowledge and experience (developed over the years) is laughable.

Keeping the knowledge you've got---from leaving....

2006-10-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

You know you’re getting old when....

Although I’ve only been here at APQC for a few years, my professional life has spanned over 30. While that’s pretty hard for me to imagine, unfortunately the truth is that it is the truth. Starting during the height of the disco era is almost as embarrassing as admitting that I liked disco. Three decades and six employers later, I’ve been lucky enough to pick up quite a few tips and experience from every place I’ve been.

So when I was asked to do a webinar on the difficulties organizations have keeping their intellectual capital due to attrition—layoffs, voluntary quits, and especially retirements—I had to admit that why I was asked was because I was part of that demographic. I think I’ve got a few more good years left in me, but even if that’s the case, how does APQC plan to take advantage of the collected knowledge I’ve gained, both now and particularly when I’m ready to head out the door for the last time?

How does any company anticipate those needs? Or do they even recognize the problem before it’s too late? Do all companies plan for a retiree’s replacement only after they’re gone? And even if they know the time is near and post for a new hire, what about the loss of knowledge that leaves with the outgoing employee? You can’t simply replace that knowledge with a new body—or even two, or three. The point is, replacing the people isn’t the same as replacing their tacit knowledge and technical experience.

The problem is worse yet when a company initiates a reduction in force. There, the planning horizon is probably a lot shorter, and the ability to capture and retain the knowledge of those being laid off is limited at best. Having been laid off twice in my own career, I know that those organizations simply wanted me out as soon as possible so as not to create a disruption among those who remained. What they also didn’t get was any benefit of my knowledge—learned at their expense. My next employers were the beneficiaries of that.

Come to think of it, I was also a voluntary quit twice as well. In those cases, the companies I left were lucky to get two weeks worth of knowledge—or at least what knowledge I was willing to leave behind. Here again, on balance, I left with much more than I came in with.

So how does any organization plan for the loss of its knowledge? Some knowledge will always be lost to be sure, but how do smart organizations keep as much of it as possible? What’s their strategy? APQC will be looking at this problem over the next few months in a collaborative learning study titled, "Knowledge Retention & Transfer." They wanted me to start thinking about it now I suppose because they wanted me to be a part of the solution—and not the problem.

Whither Knowledge Management?

2006-09-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in the design and implementation of knowledge management systems for nearly ten years now and it’s been great to see the maturation of thought, systems, and techniques devoted to KM. With that maturation though, comes an obligation to reflect upon what KM has actually provided its supporters. While I can’t say what others have encountered, I can say from my own experience both as an “insider” as well as a consultant that well designed knowledge sharing systems provide value above and beyond other management tools. That is, if you have a process improvement strategy already—say, six sigma, lean, or some other methodology—knowledge management can improve upon it.

While we didn’t know it at the time, years ago General Motors could have benefited greatly from good knowledge management. I spent 19 years there, most as an industrial engineer, so process improvement was definitely in my job responsibility. From machine design, to plant layout, to time studies, and so on, all the traditional improvement techniques were in my toolkit. What wasn’t however, was a systematic way to learn and to share my experience among all the other industrial engineers in the corporation. In fact, with nearly 200 manufacturing plants worldwide at the time, even networking with only one industrial engineer from each location would have been helpful.

So even though I may have gotten better at my craft, any improvements I helped to create were just point solutions—one improvement in one place, at one time—perhaps never to be repeated anywhere else again. Without knowledge management and the sharing of experience, we were all re-inventing good processes over and over again—just in different locations. Now this isn’t to say that we didn’t learn, because we certainly did. We just didn’t do it in a systematic way as knowledge management could provide. What we did do was to re-use old machine designs as a start and improve upon them; referenced similar processes that we tweaked; and, asked around if we thought we could count on the experience of other, more senior engineers.

There is an epilogue to this however, as today General Motors has a knowledge management program. It’s good to know that the company I started my professional career with has learned enough to build in systems that may help it get to the next century. I’d like to know what others have experienced though. What about this business of measuring KM? How do you know it’s got something to give that other methods don’t?

2006-08-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, Stan Garfield answered the call for a "Top 10" KM do's and don'ts. Number 2 on his list is: Balance people, process, and technology, with a project leader for each category. It seems to me that Stan's thoughts here line up with my experience---to a point. That is, a comprehensive KM strategy that includes a balance between the elements is essential. All too often organizations implement an IT solution that they think will lead the way to a culture of knowledge sharing only to be disappointed in the lack of results. Paying attention to the processes required---creatintg and publishing knowledge, assuring its quality and maintaining content relevancy, and continually innovating from the shared knowledge base---can't simply be left to chance. Similarly, the change management piece---the people element---is something that must be fully strategized and deliberately implemented.

What I think are missing from Stan's list though, are content and measurement. In order to share, people have to have something worth sharing. What will bring people back to a repository but content that is meaningful to them? Like a little maintained website, lack of content will surely mean a quick death to any knowledge sharing effort. KM can, and should be measured as well. Just as any other improvement initiative, KM should be held accountable to its results. Measuring KM however, doesn't mean just measuring its activity level. Measurements that mean something to the business that are impacted by KM activity are the things that matter.

Some salient comments by Christian Young...

2006-07-31T11:03:00.001-07:00

Traveling--especially without my laptop--makes this blogging business even more challenging than it already is for me. I must admit, extemporaneous writing doesn't come easy for me (although speaking does!), so my blog looks a little sparse compared to most. Nevertheless, I think the real value of any blog is the interaction it can provide, and Christian Young recently provided such input.

He listed 5 (six really) great points about some of the conditions and thinking necessary if KM is going to "stick" in an organization. Could these ideas form the beginning of that "top 10" that I'm looking for? For those of you steeped in KM, perhaps the Christian's thoughts seem like, "been there, done that." However, if they don't, then it must speak to the idea that not everyone is aware of the benefits of KM yet--much less understand and embrace them.

I suspect that it's more of the latter, as I still often come across organizations where KM is as foreign a concept as is string theory. Even for organizations that do understand KM as an improvement technique, application of it isn't a slam dunk. Just this morning for example, I had a call with someone who easily understands KM--yet his organization doesn't--and consequently, executive support for it is non-existent.

Thanks for your feedback Christian. Any other commenters out there?

The Top 10?

2006-07-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed about being in this field we call KM is the diversity of experiences of practitioners, researchers, and those just plain interested in the topic. From a previous post, a suggestion was made that maybe we could come up with a "Top 10," or even "Bottom 10" of KM ideas, techniques, tactics, or gotchas. That seems to me to be a pretty good idea. While I haven't thought through all the permutations of such lists, I guess I'd like to throw out one thought that I believe is universal, yet is also a thought that is universally gone unheeded.

The thought is, "If you build it, they won't necessarily come." That's in reference to the idea that if an organization builds a comprehensive intranet, with spiders, with external links, with yellow pages, and so on, that it won't necessarily result in knowledge sharing. I think that this thought has proven immutable, yet organizations still routinely go the route of building an intranet first and then wonder why nothing happens.

Whether this is a top 10 or bottom 10 idea doesn't matter to me, but I'd like to hear from others on this or similar words of wisdom that seem to have stood the test of (KM) time.

What's the next big thing in KM?

2006-06-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

Just ruminating a bit before the 4th of July holiday….

I’ve been lucky enough to do this “thing” called knowledge management for nearly a decade now and it still surprises me how many opportunities exist to help organizations just to get started improving their business through knowledge sharing methods. So there’s no real dearth of “starter” stuff or KM 101-type things that we can all think about or do, but what of the more advanced organizations? What can we offer them? What have they done or can do to take their KM programs to the next level? That is, what’s the next big thing in KM?

I’ll be taking some time away from the office next week, and maybe the break will give me a chance to refresh my thoughts on this. In the meantime though, I hope that when I do get back, I’ll find lots of ideas here from others to help me get a conversation going.

Does leadership style affect Community of Practice effectiveness?

2006-06-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

Does leadership style impact the effectiveness of communities of practice (CoP)? That is, communities of practice by definition are loosely based “organizations” defined by their members’ identification and affiliation to the community’s goals. The nature of their interaction are intended to be peer-to-peer, minimizing the effects (and sometimes the requirements) of hierarchical knowledge transfer as might be seen in more traditional organizational forms. So the newest member is assumed to have as much to contribute to the success of the community as the most senior; the staff member contributing and participating as effectively as the chief executive. This democratization of the community is what gives a CoP its knowledge sharing power.

But what of the leadership style applied to the CoP? Can the executive sponsor, or community leader, or other influential champion of a CoP be an autocrat when it comes to managing the community? Must a community leader be collaborative, participative, sensing, and so on, in order for the community to function effectively? As a specific example, let’s say that Organization A has traditionally been a “command and control” type of culture, and Organization B has been widely acknowledged as being collaborative, innovative, and less sensitive to hierarchy. Now let’s say that both organizations decide to formalize the communities of practice naturally inherent in all organizations. They each develop strategies, commit resources, assign roles and responsibilities, and require measurement of results. Will their previous leadership styles automatically lead to more effective (or less effective) CoPs, or will the communities by their nature negate the effects of leadership style? What have you seen?

Knowledge and Innovation

2006-04-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

In a recent study, APQC found that innovation is important to all organizations in all sectors, whether for-profit, government, or nonprofit. In an economy powered by knowledge workers, the better use of knowledge can lead to faster, less risky, and more vibrant innovation. In technical organizations such as many of those studied by APQC, knowledge is often the raw material as well as the product of their work.

Do you think these organizations -- known for their innovation -- create, manage, or leverage their knowledge more effectively or differently than other organizations? Is the way they manage knowledge part of the reason these organizations are so innovative? APQC's research has found the answer to be a resounding, "Yes", but I'd like to hear your opinion on the intersection of knowledge (knowledge management) and innovation.

Records Management is a Must These Days

2006-03-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

We have seen such a surge in requests for best-practices in records management in response to corporate law suits and Governmental regulation (SOX), we've commissioned a consortium benchmarking project on the topic (http://www.apqc.org/studies).

It seems there are many organizations out there trying to figure out how to get their hands around managing all of the information within their organization to ensure they can adequately respond to law suits and requests from the Government. How much is enough to have "responded"? How much is too much? How do you balance the request with the cost or impact to the organization? How do you minimize the cost of "eDiscovery"?

Let me know your thoughts. If you feel your organization may be best practice, we'd love to screen you for this project, as well.

The Differences in KM Around the Globe

2006-03-23T14:39:00.000-08:00

Organizations based in the US, most of whom operate globally, are focusing their KM efforts primarily in two arenas: collaboration and content management. Collaboration serves as the vehicle for sharing tacit knowledge and rapid problem solving. Collaboration is focused on enabling work teams scattered around the globe. What is new is the emerging prominence and formality of CoPs, responsible for finding and sharing best practices, create new knowledge, fostering innovation, and enhancing the organization’s image in the eyes of customers as a knowledge-based enterprise.

As for content management, organizations are trying to manage the knowledge and information they already have. Businesses are awash in valuable explicit information, and want to try to organize it, usually to support a work flow or product line, or to avoid litigation and risk, and make it easily available to employees. In some cases they are also making it available to customers and suppliers.

APQC is seeing equal emphasis on tacit knowledge exchange—communities—and on content management.

APQC does see a continuing shift in funding models. More and more, the business units, rather than a corporate group, are appointing KM managers and funding collaboration. They turn to the central IT organization as the key supplier for the tools to make it happen. For content management, the same picture is emerging.

The challenges have not changed: ensuring an ROI for KM efforts, giving people time to do it (or creating roles that are explicitly accountable), and dealing with other cultural barriers to having people spend time in knowledge sharing or content management activities.

What about organizations with their historical and cultural roots in EMEA and AP countries? Is the focus primarily on collaboration? Innovation? Content management? Are the challenges the same?

Knowledge Leaving the Organization

2006-03-15T07:45:00.000-08:00

It seems that many employees are on the move again. We still have the huge gap being created by retirement, but it seems with the market picking up, many employees are starting to change jobs as the "grass gets greener".

We conducted a study on this topic a couple years back. It was called "Retaining Valuable Knowledge...". We are looking at repeating the project as many more organizations are dealing with new challenges in this space. We would love to hear your feedback. Please post your comments around the challenges your organization is facing as employees retire, leave, transition it new roles, etc.

Human Capital, Talent Management, Organizational Capability

2006-02-24T14:34:00.000-08:00

How many different ways can we categorize programs and processes that impact the people component of our organizations? In the last few days alone, I've read articles on new Human Capital Metrics, the revised "War for Talent," aging workforce woes, succession management, and leadership development. Over the last 8 years as the economy has boomed, bottomed, and is now booming again, you see human resources and operations people scrambling to alternatively prove their worth and then deliver the people their hungry management needs to fill their positions. Are the different names designating a new magic "ingredient" or are we just re-labeling to provide new spin, white papers, and attention at conferences? Either way, there is some fundamental blocking and tackling that needs to take place.

Inside organizations, most management is continually striving to find the best people to deliver the highest value to customers (internal/external) via the most efficient processes. We all know that requires a lot of moving parts to mesh with synchronicity - when it does, things are beautiful. However, if management doesn't understand what customers want, don't have the people that can deliver it if they do, and can't keep their processes humming, all hell break loose in the form of unhappy customers, disgruntled employees, and waste-ridden processes. After working on several benchmarking studies looking at developing leadership at all levels, talent management, and succession planning, it's obvious that a significant component of business success stems from putting the right people in the right jobs, with the right development plans to eke every ounce of performance out of them. Likewise, after studying process improvement methodologies like 6Sigma and lean, it is apparent that understanding process capability, outcomes, and improvement areas is vital to success. Further, tapping into the knowledge base of the people who engage in those processes for best practices, templates, shortcuts, etc., helps to keep all of the parts moving together. Finally, providing training/learning opportunities via web, classroom, on the job coaching, and mentoring helps individuals maximize their potential and drive better people/process performance. Isn't it time we stopped thinking about disparate improvement programs and instead focused on a Performance Program that focuses on improving the performance of the processes and people that engage in the processes for our value chain?

Wow, what a rant...but these are thoughts I'm mulling over with colleagues. We're focused on investigating how to take this concept further and bring together the best thinking from leadership development, human capital management, training and learning, organizational development, process improvement, and KM into a performance program that drives real, tangible value in an integrated fashion. Your thoughts?

Planning Our KM Conference - What to Cover?

2006-02-21T15:42:00.000-08:00

We're planning our 11th annual KM Conference for May 4-5 in Vegas this year and met as a team yesterday to discuss. Our internal KM community of practice puts on the conference - picking speakers, setting format, etc. - similar to many other organizations. We're trying something new (for us) this year that I've seen at several other much larger conferences - networking groups. We're asking attendees to answer 4-5 questions so that we can "match" them with individuals that have similar interests. We'll then send that information out so they can make meaningful connections prior to, during, and after the conference. Have others tried this? My main concern is manually matching 300-400 people's profiles. We haven't found a cheap or easy tool that makes this possible and buying Social Network Analysis tools seems a bit overboard.

I would like to see this conference be as "customized" as possible as well - we have the standard program with breaks built in, etc., but we're also trying to do "Birds of a Feather" cocktail reception and lunch breaks to allow members to find their center. What other ways have conferences allowed people to create a "Starbucks" experience where they get the base ingredient and then add/enhance as they go?

I'm saddened by the fact that I won't be in attendance this year - my first miss since 1998. Fortunately, it's for a good reason, however - my wife is due with identical twin girls on May 4! While I'm sure many of the attendees in Vegas will be getting by with as little sleep as me, I won't be doing it over beers and poker chips - instead with midnight feedings and double diaper changes! Should be a fun adventure...

CoPs - building to formality

2006-02-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

I just had a great chat with a couple of blokes from an international mining company (they're Aussies, a place near and dear to my heart) who are building their community effort as we speak. For several years as the mining industry consolidated and rode economic slow downs with cost cutting measures, these gentleman have fostered an "informal infrastructure" for their communities (they call them forums). Now that the industry is experiencing a huge upturn (fueled by demand for iron and coal in China, among other things), the company is struggling to meet capacity because of talent shortages and repercussions from previous downsizings. So, they are primed to evolve their informal infrastructure into something more structured and focused. We talked for nearly 2 hours about how to position communities, where to have the community center of excellence "sit" in the organization, and how to focus their efforts for maximum gain. Sounded like they were primed for success as the company has invested in an operational excellence group that reports to the CEO - a wonderful place to establish core community processes and tools.

The struggle, of course, is how to reconcile new, more formal CoP processes with the current methods of working that many like and enjoy. We talked about doing an assessment of key stakeholders and specific communities to discover the best of the current program as well as gaps that need to be filled. Additionally, they have an opportunity to link communities to the talent management issues (finding expertise, linking it together, identifying and embedding best practices, and improving personal networks) and growth needs (bring best practices to bear anywhere, anytime with greater efficiency if people are connected and content is appropriately collected). I think they need to focus on creating a few formal communities where it makes sense according to these two drivers and continue to support those informal groups that wish to keep operating.

One interesting question they had that I would like to get an answer to as well - are there any studies/metrics on how participation in CoPs affects retention of individuals inside an organization? APQCs study on CoPs last year asked study participants to survey their CoP members on their perceptions of value of the community. We had about 800 respondents, mainly from the best practice organizations we studied, so the results are very positive. I wrote an article that will come out in the March KM W0rld issue on the results of this - some of the info is below. However, we didn't get a clean look at how participation affects retention - anyone have anything out there?

93% said their CoP has a clear, compelling business value proposition for participation,
84% said their CoP has a senior sponsor,
88% said business/line management supports the time spent on CoP activities,
88% said business/line management recognizes the value of CoP output, and
70% said their CoP has a communication strategy to promote outputs and results of CoP to outside stakeholders

Consumer Electronics and KM - Where Are They

2006-02-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

I have been working with my colleagues and IBM to launch an industry benchmarking council for the consumer electronics industry vertical. The intent is to focus on collecting metrics around 10-15 KPIs related to the service after sales process and then have the group continue to meet, share best practices, etc. around other pressing topics. As I was preparing, I read some amazing stats in "Irresistable! Markets, Models, and Meta-Value in Consumer Electronics" (by George Bailey and Hagen Wenzek) about the industry - it's expected to hit $130+B in revenue this year but their product margins are razor thin (in the 0.4% to 3% range). My favorite passage in the book said something like - global electronics companies have changed the landscape of the world by making communication ubiquitous and instantaneous, but now they have to change their business models to fit the landscape they created.

This got me to thinking - in 8 years of studying and working with organizations from Fortune 500, govt, and associations, I've never read about or worked with a consumer electronics organization on KM. Sure, HP, Microsoft, and Dell get written up, but I'm thinking about the Sony's, Pioneers, Ericssons, etc. My guess is that most are very engineering driven, innovation oriented companies, so where's the KM? I would imagine that the industry is facing many of the same pressures that Big Pharma is today with outsourcing, globalization, specialization, and compressed cycle times. Sounds like a perfect environment for communities of practice, best practice transfer, and expertise location to me. I'll be interested to find out more as we get organizations inside the walls here in the next few months.

The Leadership Crisis and KM - Huh?

2006-02-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

As we're preparing for another best practice study on Leadership Development Strategy, one of my colleagues, Darcy Lemons, shared a research brief just released the by Hay Group and Chief Executive magazine on "The Best Companies for Leaders." The following quote, as usual, caught my eye:

In fact, there is an impending leadership crisis facing large and small businesses across all sectors: According to a recent report on National Public Radio, 50 percent of the management workforce can retire in just five years. As 46 million members of Generation X step into 76 million baby boomers’ shoes, today’s leaders are justifiably concerned about how to identify and prepare their successors. Considering these demographics, the issue is quantitative as well as qualitative: The question for companies isn’t simply "Do we have good leaders?" It’s also "Do we have enough leaders?"

KM'ers have long been concerned about retaining valuable knowledge in the form of technical skill and expertise - sales skills, specific technical domains, knowledge of "the way things work," etc. We haven't spent as much time talking about how knowledge management approaches can impact/improve leadership. As one of the generation that has to attempt to fill the shoes of the Greatest Generation, I'm looking for any edge I can find. Experience suggests that communities of practice can provide a wonderful link to both leadership development and talent management programs inside organizations.

Community leadership provides a unique opportunity to learn leadership skills that seem more and more important every day - leading disparate types of people across time zones, virtually, and outside of your direct report sphere. Effective community leaders at Schlumberger, for instance, have repeatedly taken advantage of the talent management aspects of the position - they are recruited into the role, put their participation into their performance goals, are rated by peers and leaders on their ability to achieve results collaboratively. Ultimately they are rewarded/moved into new roles. As of 2003, all of the initial wave of community leaders (the InTouch variety), had rotated into a role of their choosing upon completion of their term (no mean feat at an intellectually elite organization like Schlumberger). Further, you can use community participation to drive better development programs for future leaders - communities (and their participants) typically sit at the juxtaposition of daily business and thought leadership. What better way to identify the kinds of knowledge and the kinds of people that leaders will need to understand in order to lead their part of the organization into the future?

An intriguing topic - one I hope we learn more about in our study and personally over the next few months.

Day 2 of the Virgin Blogger - Thoughts on the future direction of KM

2006-02-08T14:42:00.000-08:00

Over the last few weeks, I've had the chance to think a lot about where organizations are taking KM. I participated in a study APQC just completed called "Leveraging Knowledge Across the Value Chain" that caused me to examine some of the ways we've been thinking about KM. My number one takeaway - sophisticated organizations don't have stand-alone knowledge management anymore. Instead, they've begun to integrate...with their organizational learning initiatives (talent management, leadership development, training and development), their process improvement programs (6Sigma, lean, Baldrige), and their supply chain management areas. We coined the phrase "Performance Program" to describe this - focusing knowledge management, process improvement, and learning tools to improve process performance and the performance of the people who engage in those processes. I don't know if that's a good phrase or not, but it seemed to capture the mood.

I found it particularly intriguing that the KM practitioners of old who have survived and thrived are concentrating on helping the process performance of the entire value chain - internally of course, but also with suppliers, customers, regulatory agencies, academic partners, and other vendors. KM may not be the right answer for every situation (we all know this intuitively) - so these people have pulled together an "awesome set of tools" (one of my favorite quotes from Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High") to focus on driving business performance. We actually revised APQCs Stages of Implementation KM roadmap based on these findings - we'll discuss and hope for feedback on our KM community call on February 28 at 10am central. I'll be interested to hear other's thoughts.

On another note, as we bask in the beautiful spring-time weather in Houston (yes, we can have good weather here...in February, no less!), I've had a few days without intense project work to catch up on articles on organizational learning, marketing in associations, and developing leaders virtually. It reminded me of how important it is to occasionally stop, step back, and fill up your head with new thinking - it's certainly helped me regain some perspective that I lost in the last 6 months of working on tons of projects and traveling all the time. I've found that content feeds like BNETs leadership, human resources, and supply chain newsletters have helped me find relevant information without having to remember to search. Here is a link: http://nl.com.com/view_online_newsletter.jsp?list_id=e805

I'd love other people's suggestions for sources of relevant business information outside of the traditional Fortune, Business 2.0 etc.

Blog Transition and Musings on CoPs and Content

2006-02-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

Our previous blogger extraordinaire, Farida Hasanali, has bequethed me her blog...she's moved on to an exciting new role at Expediant Solutions. I'll do my best to continue to provide something of interest and look forward to your comments and input.

Today's thoughts - last week I worked with a large client that is rolling out a community of practice for its global Black Belts. They're attempting to create regional chapters of the community of practice (a "federated" model) because their geographical spread and lack of funding for face-to-face meetings precludes having everyone get together. Since they didn't have a history of sharing or knowledge capture, they are putting together monthly conference calls by region (and with the regional chapter heads as a group) to push interesting project findings, identify common source problems, and establish relationships. They'll be using a typical repository/discussion tool to facilitate ongoing dialogue between meetings. We spent a lot of time trying to craft the right messages to drive participation - communication is so difficult with time-zones and different native languages. They had a successful launch - but I wonder if anyone has created successful ongoing communication plans for such groups? In an article in in the 12/05 issue "Association Now" magazine I came across these 5 tips for framing messages from Rebecca Leet:

1. What action do you want to affect?
2. Whom must we motivate to achieve that action?
3. What desire of theirs is met by taking the action we want?
4. Where does our desire overlap with theirs?
5. What do we say so that they hear their desire will be met by
taking our action?

Each of the region CoP facilitators is working on putting together 2 tracks for driving participation - identifying 2-3 goals that the regional BBs can work on across sites to drive better performance and mining the group for "hot topics" that they can discuss anytime, anywhere to solve problems. I like their approach...in a disciplined project environment like 6Sigma, more structure seems to work better than the more organic communities we see in other places.

On another topic - we're seeing more and more interest in how organizations are using content and document management tools to impact the way they comply with regulatory issues (like SOX and HIPAA, etc.) as well as respond to lawsuit subpoenas. With the ever expanding capability to "hide" the damaging memo or piece of content on thumb drives, CD, hard drives, email, IM, etc, it looks like more and more organizations are struggling to manage their processes for discovery and compliance. KM processes and technology have an immense impact on this...so, APQC will launch a best practice study on the topic in June of this year to see what we can discover - should be an interesting topic.

More later...

Farida's New Adventure

2006-02-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

Hello all,
Hope you are doing well. I wanted to send you all a note about my latest escapade. It's probably one of the most dangerous ones I have undertaken lately. No, its not boating in Bali, nor bungee jumping in the Amazon, I am leaving APQC (home) to venture out into the big bad world to try my hand at strategic planning and IT related consulting.

As some of you know, APQC has been home for me for the past thirteen years and having this blog for the past two has been amazing. Since I started this blog with APQC's name on it I feel compelled to leave it here as I move on to newer and scarier things.

Of course I will be starting my new blog shortly and you will find me on the blogosphere soon. My new e-mail is fhasanali @ xpediantsolutions.com

Meanwhile don't give up on this blog. Its being taken over by Wesley Vestal, APQC's lead KM guru. Wes has been consulting in KM for the past 8 years and has some great experiences and insights to share with you all. He has implemented KM, scorecards, measures, leadership strategies, etc. etc. You name it he has done it. Although I am very sad to leave this blog for now I am also very excited that Wes is taking it over.

Again, when I get my new link, I will post it on this blog for you.

You all now have my new e-mail, please fix the spacing and send me a note.
to all of you
take care
farida

Relationship between knowledge management and information management

2005-12-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

All,
For those of you having a holiday season, I hope you are enjoying it. Although I am working this week this time is very precious for me. There are no customers calling and no one is asking me a million questions so I get time to catch up on reading, strategizing and getting energized for the new year.
Part of the reading catchup took me to this listing where Liz Orna posted this description about her thoughts on the relationship between KM and IM. This is an SLA listserv so these people work with information everyday and I figured she knew a thing or two about it. Here is her post. It made sense to me and gave me a way of looking at both the relationship between KM and IM and the longevity of KM when coupled in this way with IM.

" is right to say that 'knowledge is a process and a way of life, not
represented by a db. So, the combination of IM and KM works for me, but not
KM by itself'

KM got overblown because there wasn't enough thinking about what
constitutes the knowledge that needs to be managed, how it differs from
information, and where the two are interdependent.

The distinction and the interdependence lie in the fact that knowledge
lives inside individual human minds. Only human beings can know, and what
each of us knows is invisible and inaccessible to other human beings until
we've turned it into another form - which we call information - and put it
into the outside world. Once it's there, other people can get at it, assess
whether it's useful, and, if it is, transform it back into knowledge inside
their own minds.

So each of us has to be the knowledge manager of our own knowledge. If we
understand that, we can then define what KM in organisations has to do.
Its role is to:
support individuals in managing their own knowledge;
minimise the intellectual and financial costs to them and the organisation
of contributing their knowledge to the organisation's information resources;
promote knowledge exchanges under conditions of mutual trust;
help individuals and the organisation to define and keep their knowledge
obligations.

KM can't fulfill that role without IM, which has the essential complementary
job of:
acquiring, storing, co-ordinating and making accessible information to
maintain the knowledge the organisation needs;
providing new information resources to meet changes in the knowledge needs
of the organisation;
managing the information that emerges from knowledge exchanges
using the ICT infrastructure innovatively to support interactions among
people about knowledge, and the finding, diffusion and communication of
information

Those roles mean that KM and IM have a shared territory too; it includes:
organisational policy and strategy for using knowledge and information to
support business processes; the value added by using knowledge and information
monitoring changes in the internal and external environment for K and I
implications bringing the results into central strategic decision making.

Liz Orna
http://freepint.willco.com/forum/bar/read.php?i=32166

Unfortunately this post was not carried any further.

Role of Blogs in Knowledge Management and Communications

2005-11-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

All,
Bill Ives recently presented on the Role of Blogs in Knowledge Management and Communications within the Enterprise at one one of my KM community meetings. The presentation was excellent. I recorded it and am sharing it with you all. To get the presentation you must register on the KSN - there is of course no charge to register. If you are already a member please contact me to find out how you can attend these calls for free.

Here is a brief description of what the call covered:

"Blogs are hot, but what do they really bring to business communication and knowledge management? How are successful early adopters using them? These are questions the presenter asked 70 well-known bloggers at firms ranging from IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and SAP, to many small businesses in a variety of industries as part of research for his new book, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. The combination of accessibility, transparency, and archiving that blogs provide has the potential to enrich business communication. This session summarizes the insights gained from the interviews and addresses the use of blogs for knowledge management, as well as internal communication and collaboration."

Here is the link: to the registration which will get you to the recording and the powerpoint.

Also, I apologize to those whose questions I have not yet answered. I promise I will report on other measures I use for the KSN.

Measuring the effectiveness of portals

2005-09-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

The last quarter of 2005 is about to start and like last year I am starting to panic about measures again. Before I know it the ill fated e-mail will come from my boss saying "lets sit down and review your annual performance" which in my world equals word-to-word as "the performance of your site."
No sweat! This year I am not as unprepared as last year. And this is because of many factors some of which I will discuss as I explain to you what I have in place.
First - there are two major components of my measurement scorecard. 1) Impact on Revenue, 2) Increased site activity
This post will cover the 1st measure.
Strangely enough in my case the impact on revenue is the easier one to calculate. Be warned! it is a primitive method used very infrequently these days, its called "talking.":-)) In the past we had always focused only on the customer...lets get the information from the customer. Here is my lesson learned. The customer's response was always circumstantial, sometimes accurate but usually it was a narrow answer like " I thought I could benefit from the study topic." or "the KSN will be a good resource for the company."
Here is what we did this year to get a better sense of the customer's reason to buy.
We put together a small survey with one or two questions and NOTE - instead of asking the customer we ask the account managers. There is only one main question. What factors do you think influenced this customer's decision to buy an APQC membership? The options we gave them are our major product areas such as KSN, OSBC, Events, Consortiums, and Consulting. The account managers are given a 100 points. They divvy up the 100 points between these product groups. The logic behind this is that the account managers are the ones that have been courting the customer for a while, they have proposed all our products and services and we hope that our members find each and every one of them valuable but there is always one that triggers the decision. The account managers weight that point the most heavily.
We follow exactly the same process for renewing members. If an account manager has been doing his/her job it means they have been in touch with the member regularly. They know what the member(s) has been involved in and they know whether or not that member is going to renew next year. Having them fill out the same survey for their renewals tells me how valuable the KSN is in impacting a renewal and it tells my boss how much his account managers know about their customers. Pretty cool! huh!
We started this in January this year and I am pleased to say that the KSN has consistently stayed over the 50 point mark. Isn't that incredible. Of all the members that have signed on and of all the members that have renewed, on an average the KSN has impacted 50% of those decisions.
My goal this year is to finish collecting this data for the rest of the year and then make a business case that says if the KSN impacts membership revenue by 50% - don't you think my budget should reflect the same:-)) Of course I don't want 50% of the revenue as my budget I just want to have a solid basis for saying give me more money so I can improve one of our most important products.
I hope that some of you can adapt this to your organizations and use it to monitor impact on revenue. If you all have any questions, feel free to write. Any suggestions to add would be greatly appreciated.
Activity measures on my next post. Stay tuned....

Finally, a face to face meeting

2005-09-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Some of you may remember my ramblings about wanting to try out a face to face meeting for my KM virtual community. Well that has finally happened and I have put together my first Wine N Cheese get together for my Houston members. About 10 people are signed up and although it seems small I am actually happy that many more did not since I wanted to keep it small so I can really get to talk to most of these folks. Its being held on October 5th at our campus in Houston.
If your organization is a member of APQC and you would like to attend please let me know. If you don't know whether your company is a member or not, check to see if your company name is on this list.
There is no charge, its just an informal get together being held for local Houston folks.
I will definitely keep you posted on how it goes because I think face to face meetings are very important for communities to bond. I know that there are many very successful completely virtual communities out there but I strongly believe that if those virtual communities were given an opportunity to meet each other they would have an even stronger bond and maybe be more successful.
Please feel free to share your thoughts with me on this matter.
thanks
take care
farida

Rita scared the life out of us and then just whizzed right by

2005-09-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
Wanted to let you all know that all is well here at the APQC. Since Hurricane Rita kind of decided to leave us alone and only bestowed some heavy winds and rains on us we are generally ok.
I of course was one of the "evacuees" you saw on TV. It took me 16 hours to get to Dallas. The first 6 of which was spent trying to move 4 miles ahead. I can walk a 15-18 minute mile so that should give you some perspective as to how slow it was. But I was in it for the adventure so I hung in there, did not run out of gas, and got to Dallas at 1:00 am in the morning after which I think I slept for two full days. Or at least it felt like that.
Coming back yesterday was half the time. Still 2 1/2 times what it takes normally but when you spend 16 hours on the road going in, 8 hours coming back all of a sudden seemed not too bad. Its all a matter of perspective.
Hindsight, should I have stayed. Of course, but then hindsight is always 20/20:-)
It was one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. If I had not left and something major had happened to Houston everyone would be like "you were warned, why didn't you go?" and now because I left I got comments like "we knew nothing was going to happen, we were the smart ones, we stayed."
Funny part is when I spoke to my friends in Houston (from Dallas) they were dying of boredom. Everything was closed, they couldn't go anywhere, some ran out of food because they ate all day since they had nothing better to do, and of course no stores were open to replenish supplies. Those who stocked up on DVDs were probably smart.
I of course was having a good time in Dallas visiting friends and I even went out to the lake and got some sun. So something good usually comes from hardships and I am thankful for that.

I want to thank you all for reading the blog and thinking of me during these trying times and I will add a separate post on other activities going on within my community and my Web site later today.
take care
farida

Hurricane Rita and new uses of Blogs

2005-09-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
I think I have been jinxed by the rain bug. I went to India last month and got stranded in Dubai for two days because the Mumbai airport was flooded. Being there during heavy downpours was not much fun either but I made the most of it. If I ever figure out what is blocking my ability to post pictures I will post some pictures of my trip to the Taj Mahal and some glorious palaces in Jaipur.

So I come back and Katrina hits. More rain and as you know a major impact on Houston due to Louisiana's evacuees.

Well we are still reeling from Katrina and now Rita is about to hit Houston. I wanted you all to know that we are going to be closed here most likely starting tomorrow.

But here is the interesting part. My IT folks came and said, hey Farida! your blog is the only offsite Web site we have. If our servers are down can we use your blog to post messages to our employees. There is a unique use of a blog (offsite one), used in cases of emergency:-))

So, I am hoping all will be well and I will be back here Monday smiling but just in case its a while before I can write, its been great writing and I plan to pick it back up as soon as things smooth over.
You all take care and please bear with us if we end up using this site as our means of communication.
thanks
farida

Copyright and Ownership Issues for Blogs

2005-07-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
Recently someone had brought up the issue of "what the company you work for owns" in terms of "the work you do." My team member Anne forwarded me this very interesting post on her Bus-Lib listserv about blogs, intellectual property rights and copyrights. I think its valuable for us bloggers to know some of this.

The Editorial by Lesley Ellen Harris in Volume 2005,
Issue 1, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter,
deals with copyright ownership in blogs - it is
reproduced below. For further information on this
print newsletter, see www.copyrightlaws.com www.copyrightlaws.com/>.

Editorial - Copyright Ownership in Blogs

The Internet continually forces us to test the
application and flexibility of current copyright law
to new modes of communications and media. The Internet
has already spawned debate and lawsuits about
hyper-linking, P2P file sharing, and the removal of
copyright management information and technological
protections. A newer Internet activity, blogging
resulting in Weblogs, is now being discussed in the
copyright arena. A blog is basically a stream of
consciousness discussion available to the public at
large. Individuals keep these blogs on every topic
imaginable. Blogs are original material, and once they
are fixed in some form, saved digitally or in a print
out, they are protected by copyright in most countries
around the world. In fact, they would be protected for
50 to 70 years after an author's death - much beyond
the life of any blog itself.

Blogs are becoming more popular amongst professionals,
and certain employees are even encouraged to create
blogs based on their work. This raises interesting
issues concerning copyright ownership in the blogs. If
an organization requires blogging as part of the
duties of an individual, it is likely that the
employer owns the content in the blog, just like the
employer owns other copyright-protected works created
by that employee in the course of employment.

However, if the blog is initiated by an individual
though it may discuss work-related issues, outside the
scope of his employment, who owns the content in the
blog? This is comparable to the situation where a
professor writes a book related to, but outside the
duties, of his instruction. This is often a gray issue
in the academic world. University policies that
specifically deal with such issues can help clarify
the situation. Also, a professor approaching his
university prior to writing the book, may be able to
clarify the situation, prior to a confrontation.

Many companies have yet to develop Weblog Policies,
similar to their other integral policies. Thus,
employees who discuss work-related activities are
generally held to the rule of "good taste" in their
discussions, and of course, not spewing any
confidential information. As is the case with many
Internet-related activities, would a written Weblog
Policy contradict the free flowing nature of
information in a blog, and perhaps weaken the
effectiveness of these blogs?

With ownership comes the issue of who may authorize
reproduction of the content in a blog. Generally, only
the owner may authorize others to reproduce a work.
Would this be an organization or an individual? Or
should the whole notion of obtaining permission in
relation to blog content be mute, since the whole
point of the blog is for as many people as possible to
access and read it? The blogs by Sun Microsystems
employees at blogs.sun.com take what I call a
compromise position. These blogs are subject to a
Creative Commons License. Thus, the blogs are
protected by copyright, however the rights are
conveniently set out in a hyper-linked license and are
broader than those rights attached to most
copyright-protected works.

To date, there are no lawsuits relating to ownership,
reproduction or re-distribution of the content of
blogs. This in itself may be helpful for organizations
and individuals who are determining "policies" in this
area. And for those bloggers who want their content
read as widely as possible, they are free to put a
statement on their blogs to the effect that the
content may be freely used without permission.

Are blogs another way to publish content?

2005-07-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

Folks,
The people from the blogging survey asked this question of me via e-mail. Read my answer below. I would love to see you all add to this answer with your thoughts and ideas.
thanks
farida

Question: Please rate your blog's impact on the following factors in your company.

Another way to publish content and ideas was the top answer to question eight in survey.

Do you think this answer means that companies did not have the place to publish certain ideas and content, or that a blog is just another place to publish the same type of content you might publish on your corporate website?

Answer: If I had to pick I would say the latter for sure. But the reason why organizations could use another publishing medium is in part due to saturation of existing media and in part due to a change in how we work. An analogy that best describes this is television. Product companies have realized that the effectiveness of their television advertising has dropped considerably. Are people watching less TV? I wish! The availability of on demand television through Tivo and DVRs have led to a drop in "commercials" watching. People record their shows and fast forward through the commercials. So product companies have had to think of other ways of getting the message out and an example of that which everyone recognizes is the partnership with TV shows like The Apprentice. Pontiac sold more cars and Burger King sold more burgers because the show used those products in their competitions.

On a similar note, how we work has changed. We are more collaborative now than ever before. We have access to more information, we have access to higher data speeds, we need more information these days to deal with the global environment than we did before. These changes are leading to the search for more effective means of communicating and blogs is one of them. Its low barrier to entry and ease of use makes it an easy tool for people to collaborate and share. In my opinion Web sites and Intranets are still effective mediums for sharing information but I think they are not getting the credit they deserve because people may been jaded from past experiences of sites that were either not populated with content or stale sites where content never changed.

Farida

Results of Blogging Survey

2005-07-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

Hey all,
The final results of the blogging survey held by Backbone Media are published. There are some lessons learned for corporate blogs that are worth reviewing. You can access the survey here.

farida

Employee Intellectual Property Rights

2005-07-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hey all!
Comment posted yesterday..

Farida wrote: "..but at the end of the day you still "work" for the company and everthing you do and accomplish belongs to them."

I think this is an underlying assumption that is not necessarily "true." Is it possible that everything you do and accomplish does not belong to "them?"

To address this question that someone sent it yesterday I did some research so as to have my facts in order. I agree with your comment...I did make an underlying assumption but it was based on my knowledge of employee intellectual property rights since I am in an environment where our knowledge is the organization's intellectual capital.

This blog for instance is a good example. No one at APQC puts any effort in this blog other than me. I rarely even use APQC physical resources (explicit content written by me or others in the company) when writing this blog but my experience comes from working with APQC customers. So I consider this blog to be APQC intellectual property and if I leave APQC I would leave the blog behind and start a new one wherever else I go.

Anyone, if I am mistaken about this assumption please speak up.

So back to the research...I looked on the SHRM Website for some guidance and in an article called "Whose Knowledge is it anyway" from their October 2001 issue they state, and I quote:

"The U.S. Copyright Office defines work made for hire as “work prepared by an employee within the scope of employment; or a work specially ordered or commissioned in certain specified circumstances. When a work qualifies as a work made for hire, the employer … is considered to be the author.” Recent court cases in this area, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in The New York Times Co. v. Tasini (No. 00-201), have focused primarily on freelancers and could have been resolved with sound employment contracts."

I interpret this legal jargon as "if you create something when you are employed by a firm and that something is within the parameters of your daily job, then it belongs to the firm."

So having said that, I must mention that this article had a few other interesting points. One was that of the future struggle that employers are going to have with this issue of intellectual property because some employees are starting to get creative and their creativity is making money for the company but the solutions are outside the norms of intellectual propoerty.

For example, Fortune magazine recently reported that several Wall Street brokers had set up a web site outside their firm to attract and advise clients. The initial reaction would be that this was a clear violation of Securities and Exchange Commission rules, the site should be shut down and the employees fired. But are not such enterprising employees what you want? What if the top 20 percent of salespeople at a company had their own web sites? Who owns the customer relationship—the employee or the firm? Remember, all of these employees are working to enhance the bottom line of their employers. For all those “customer-centric” companies, is this not the exact behavior you want from your employees?

The article then goes on to mention that because of these new ways of working (Web sites, employee-owned businesses) HR is going to have to reformulate the old rules of work product ownership in order to encourage employee creativity and increase employee retention.

I think that's exciting stuff. As I mentioned this information came from the SHRM site at shrm.org. There are two articles I referred to, one titled "Whose Knowledge is it anyway" and the other one is called "Inside Job in the same edition.
If this topic interests you and you have a SHRM membership check these out.

Happy July 4th

2005-07-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

hello all,
Before leaving for the weekend I wanted to wish you all a very happy July 4th, that is those of you living in the States and have the day off of course.

I wanted to bring up a couple of things that you might want to think about or review if you have a moment this weekend.

1st, we are getting ready to kickoff a consortium study on "KM across the Value Chain," the delivery model is just like the one I did on CoPs, remember went on site visits and reported to you all. If you are interested in participating in this study please check out this proposal. The study has a cost associated with it but if its something you are battling with in your organization its well worth it.

Also if you have feedback on the scope don't hesitate to write and I will send it to the project team.

2nd, this whole discussion we have been having on funding models for communities. I have requested one of my writers to take all that discussion, get some material from our past studies and create a short white paper on it. If any one would like to contribute to the creation of this white paper please let me know.

That's it. I'm off now, I hope you all will have a wonderful weekend.
take care
farida

Funding for Communities of Practice

2005-06-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

Recent question to Dinesh,

Thanks for the insights about joint funding. What about the community of practice members donating money to fund their own endeavor?

Or, what about the members creating a parallel funding organization?

Farida's Comments

I am sure Dinesh will reply to this question, so thanks Dinesh. Just a couple of comments from me.

Members donating money to fund their own endeavor would surely in my opinion be a community with a cause so passionate that members would be willing to put money into it themselves. In that case I would think it shameful for an organization that does not recognize that passion and provide for the community.
On the bureaucratic front however I am not sure how that would work. Especially if the community is related to your job and you get paid to do your job and you in essence almost paid the company back to be part of a community? That would somehow not work out in a large organization especially with the finance side.
We have seen many instances where members put in their time and effort at no extra cost to the organization. They meet with their communities for dinner and pay themselves and spend the evening with co-workers. That could be considered funding a community in a way but when it comes to needing actual dollars to do something, a specific project I don't see how the "membership funding" would work.

A parallel funding organization would hold all the same opportunities and barriers as Dinesh has described. We come back again to the fundamental point of funding=ownership. Whoever that parallel organization is, would want some ownership in the outcome of the community. If that is mutually acceptable by the community, the funding organization, and the host organization then its possible to make such a model work. Again that follows the same scenarios as Dinesh has described.

Have any communities been funded from external sources?

2005-06-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

"In your studies of Communities of Practice, have you ever seen an informal community generate funding outside of the formal organization?

In other words, when a community of practice gets to a point in its growth when it needs resources to continue to develop, are there options outside of fighting for funding from the traditional sources in the organization? "

Farida's comments

In my research so far I have not seen any communities that have been funded using external sources. One of the main reasons for that in my opinion is that the information shared inside communities is sensitive to some degree. Members of a CoP where trust is securely established will share their dirty laundry in hopes of being helped by their peers. The very notion of going to an external source for funding would mean that the funding source would own some of the community or at least some rights to it and that may not be in the best interest of the organization.

For example, Fluor Corporation always gets inquiries from its customers wanting to know if they can be part of Fluor's communities or if they can get access to data and Fluor has decided against it since the information shared in their communities is what gives them the competitive edge.

What I have seen are "shared service" models for communities. Chargebacks are a means of funding and several organization go that route. The Core CoP group is self sustaining in that it stays in business if it can provide value to its customers through the implementation and support of communities.

To Dinesh, thank you for your valuable insight. I am sure my readers are thrilled.

Jamming communities under the radar

2005-06-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

"When APQC goes into organizations to study them, who do you talk with? Who do you spend the most time with? Is it the formal organization to include the CoP function people? Or, do you talk to the community of practice leaders who are passionate about the practice that they are part of and are taking action to improve?

Because your entry point into the organization is the formal organization and the CoP function people, you may be skewed from the get go towards the formal interpretation of reality.

I wonder what would happen if you conducted a clandestine study of the most JAMMING communities of practice--communities that the formal organization might not even know about. "

Farida's comments:

You all are making me so happy by responding to my posts. We may have hit upon something with this topic.

To address your questions - You are absolutely right! We do go in through the formal organization and we do talk to the people "in charge" of CoP implementation whom I will refer to as the CoP Core Group. But....
Very rarely have I come across an organization where the management team sat down and said "Hmmmnnn....let's develop a CoP strategy. You, you and you, go forth and make CoPs." The reality has typically been that informal communities that have formed over the years suddenly come upon some innovative idea (process or product) that ends up saving the company money. All of a sudden they get management attention and a manager's first thought is "how do I replicate this?"
That's when CoP strategy happens and the people who were successful in their first CoP typically get "promoted" (I use the word loosely) to become part of the CoP Core Team or to lead it.
Having said I also admit that there are companies that sit down and say lets put a CoP strategy together. These companies are the ones that move cautiously when new approaches surface. Their management is searching for improvement approaches, maybe they participle in one of our studies or attend a conference, hear about CoPs and they go back and look for them in their organization. Now here's the point of contention.
Do they find jamming communities "under the radar".... they might, depending on your definition of jamming. If the communities are jamming because they just enjoy each other's company then yes one can say that they stayed under the radar. But if jamming means that the CoPs' interaction positively benefits the organization then I don't see how they could have managed to stay under the radar for long. In this day and age management is looking through a magnifying glass for opportunities to cut costs and increase revenue.

In both our studies during site visits we talk to not only the CoP core group but also to community members and leaders. In the latest study we actually created a separate survey for community members and leaders only. No core group. We asked questions like does your CoP help you in your work? Do you get other tangible/intangible benefits from it, does your management recognize your contribution? Etc. The survey was anonymous and we had over 600+ responses from 8 partner organizations.
In a nut shell CoP members and leaders thought their communities were Shangrila. Everything was wonderful in their world. A few responses were along the lines of our management does not recognize our efforts, or our CoPs are not as well aligned to the organization as we would like them to be, but by far majority of the responses were POSITIVE.
Well you can interpret that however you want, either its true or not. Because of the subjective nature of the survey we had never intended to make the survey public or make any deep conclusions based on it. It was just shared among the study participants. But I just wanted to mention that we look at all angles.

So last but not least, if there are jamming communities under the radar I am sure they would not want to talk with us because they would certainly lose their "ghost" status and suddenly become visible to the world.

Do communities of practice HAVE to show tangible value in order to be funded?

2005-06-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
Thank you to the person who responded to my posting and provided their point of view. I truly value your interaction.

The issue you speak about,

"What if formal structures have actually begun to prevent the organization from achieving its purpose? Even great leaders atop the formal chart can't seem to overcome the inertia. By bringing the informal social systems like networks and communities of practice under formal organizational control, we actually limit the
power of the informal to make a positive difference for people and society."

is the one that forward thinkers are now concerned about. It seems that in our wonderful capitalistic economy every time something innovative is discovered, especially innovation that leads to returns, corporate capitalism is just waiting there to absorb it into the mainstream. And I agree with you, sometimes that kills the effort completely.

So at one end we could say finally KM and CoPs are becoming part of mainstream and being realized as value add activities, but on the other hand the very nature of CoPs is such that if it loses its edge when it gets absorbed into mainstream.

I am sure this is not a debate anyone can win per se, just an articulation of different points of view.

farida

Is structure harming communities?

2005-06-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hi all, this comment was posted on the blog and I think its a great discussion topic so I wanted to answer it on the blog itself as a primary entry.

"I'm wondering if you agree with the APQC KM Roadmap to Success idea that the culmination for org KM is institutionalizing KM. I am particularly interested in your thoughts on institutionalizing communities of practice.

Remember Etienne Wenger and William Snyder's HBS article in 2000 called CoP: The Organizational Frontier? In that article they describe the managerial dilemma of supporting CoPs without destroying them. I loved the story of the farmer who killed the golden goose to get at the gold.

I'm wondering if we are not heeding Wenger and Snyder's warnings. If the formal organization coopts informal social systems, aren't they killing the golden goose?"

My thoughts

In our earlier study on "Building & Sustaining Communities of Practice" this concern is exactly what we had articulated in the closing section of the report. That is, if organizations start managing communities heavily then they will lose their sense of being a community and start feeling like another business unit.

I have thoughts that go both ways on this argument. In our recent study on CoPs what was clear among organizations was that communities had to display tangible value in order to continue to be funded. This begged the argument that expectation of tangible value meant imposing a structure on the community and many organizations have in fact done that. So if I follow the "purist" thought process that a community is a group of individuals that come together because they want to and not because they have to then one can assume that in this new structured CoP there will exist both types of individuals. Most of them hopefully will participate because they want to, because they see the inherent value to their jobs and their lives but there will also be some that will join because they have to due to management visibility. Does this intermingling then of voluntary and involuntary membership change the fact that it is still a community? I am open to anyone who wants to comment on that. My thought is no...it doesn't. Maybe its a modified community structure but the base goal of the community is still the same. That is, to share knowledge that others want.

Where the analogy of killing the golden goose is concerned, we do find communities that die as a result of increased management attention but in most cases if the community is in fact the golden goose then management finds people who are willing to commit to outcomes to start up a community. In such cases the people who did not want the management attention shy away from the community and those who can handle it participate.

Another interesting change among our partner organizations was the recognition that CoPs could in fact take many forms. There are groups of people who just want to meet and talk and not worry about outcomes. For them the converstaion is enough. In such cases management says "its ok to continue to do that, just don't ask us for money, because if you do then you have to justify the expense." Then there are groups of people that don't mind the outcomes and want increased visibility in the organization. Just the fact that they have structured outcomes does not make them any less of a community. They are still like minded people, they still like talking to each other and sharing, the only difference is they are taking their knowledge sharing to knowledge creation and dissemination that impacts the organization's botom line.
So organizations are starting to understand both these types of communities and are supporting both of them.

I hope I have provided enough information to your comment. I thank you for taking the time to respond to my postings.
take care
farida

"Phishing"

2005-06-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

Hi all, I subscribe to John Patrick's blog (I have added his blog as a link on mine). He is President of Attitude LLC and former VP of Internet Technology for IBM. He travels a lot and writes very interesting excerpts on his travels and thoughts about technology. So after hoarding my knowledge about his blog for this long I am shamefully now sharing it with you.
My impetus to do so is based on the topic for today. Patrick has an interesting entry about "phishing" especially the ones that seem they are coming from eBay or Paypal. I know I receive at least one or two a day, threatening e-mails saying that unless I verify my account with eBay it will be suspended. And believe me its difficult to delete those without hesitating and thinking they may be valid. Rest assured they are not. Patrick has done a great job outlining the issue so I am including a link to his blog entry on the topic.

Phishing - Part 4

As always comments are most welcome

Memorial Day Content

2005-05-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

Its a three day weekend here in the States. Yeah! I am so excited. I can't wait to get out of here and be gone for three days. I know a lot of you feel that way too so I hope you relax and have a wonderful weekend.
Couple of things before I go. A lot of you have visited the KSN and some of you have even registered. For those that have I am looking into repackaging some of the content and selling it at a package price. Don't know all the details yet but we are starting to explore the idea of selling the content in small chunks to non members. What I would love to hear from you on would be ideas or links to other sites where you have purchased piecemeal content from and liked the experience. Please let me know, it will help me get a feel for how to go about putting the content packages together.

Second of course I cannot leave you without content to read for the weekend. Here are a couple of interesting pieces we recently published on the KSN. Enjoy!

How Blogs can help KM
The 10 most wanted motivation killers

Have a safe and enjoyable weekend.

May 2005 KM Conference Presentations

2005-05-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

Hey all, remember I said I was in St. Louis at my own KM Conference. We had some really exciting speakers and we finally have the presentations posted on the site. Of course its nothing like being there but for those of you who weren't there, I hope you decide to attend next year.

You don't have to be registered to view the presentations but if you do register on the KSN at Register Now send me an e-mail and let me know, I will send you a surprise gift in the mail. Promise!! its useful.
Farida

KM Conference Presentations, May 2005

I Blog for Knowledge

2005-05-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Hello all, back in balmy Houston where the highs have already reached 80+ degrees and humidity is around the same. But it's home what can I say.
I wanted to focus this entry on the topic of blogging itself. In my second to last post I wrote a bit about the issues with blogging and I want to continue that topic somewhat and also intersperse it with the increased interest in blogging as an approach for knowledge management and knowledge sharing. I beefed up the presentation that I linked to in my earlier post a bit and delivered pretty much the same message to my conference attendees in St. Louis last week that I had shared with the folks from the eGov conference.
So first of all just to give you some perspective, our conference had 285 attendees. The track that my session was held in had 4 other speakers. My meeting planner gave me a small room probably thinking, yeah she'll get 25 or so, you know some spill over from the other tracks. Was she in for a surprise? The room was packed, standing room only. That in itself is an indicator of the popularity of the topic. Very few, almost none of the attendees were small or single consultancies. Almost all of them were knowledge managers like you and me grappling with how to get people to share knowledge in the enterprise.
So blogs are starting to get some serious attention within corporations and they are looking at blogs as an approach to support knowledge sharing efforts. As you have seen in the presentation many companies are starting to use blogs effectively to share information. This trend is especially strong in organizations that have project based delivery and have project managers, teams, or people on the road delivering services.
There are a few key points I want to share with you in case you are trying to sell the concept of blogs to your company.
1) Blogs are updated frequently. Even I (delinquent as I am) try to update my blog at least once a week which means that if I were writing to share knowledge within my organization I would have contributed at least 52 content items.
2) Blogs point out the experts. Because blogs are individual opinion based, you know the material on the blog is from the blogger's brain. If what he/she says means something to you or works for you then the blogger is building credibility and expertise in the area they are writing about.
3)This I think is the key point. The blogs are not necessarily the KM tool. The RSS feed is. This was shared by Patrick Lambe from my listsrv. Think about it, he is absolutely right. If a large percentage of your employees start blogging, then blogs by themselves are no different than individual databases. The value is in having a tool that allows you to select all the blogs that you are interested in and getting a consolidated post of all the new items posted on the topics that interest you. That tool is none other than RSS.

My other topic that I covered during this session was on Wikis. Talk about open mouths. For those who had no concept what a wiki was were aghast at the idea that there are sites out there that allow anyone to edit anything on the site anonymously. "Control" is a major factor in our organizations. The whole idea of not having control over what someone posts or edits is something that will take a long time to take hold in traditional companies.
I saw a couple of optimal situations in which wikis could be used. One, they can be used in a closed project setting to discuss topics or ideas (almost like a collaboration space) but one that has a memory. Its used to house what people may learn on the project or something they need to develop. Second would be a broader application of the same concept that is using the wiki to gather knowledge from the organization. Especially in a community setting I can see the administrator putting out a topic in a wiki and everyone contributing thoughts, issues, concerns, experiences and expertise to it. Then a subject matter expert can use that raw content to build a “usable” content piece that can be added to the knowledge repository. When I use the word “usable” I am implying that the subject matter expert has vetted the information so that if someone decides to reuse or apply the ideas in the content item they know that its valid information.
So as usual my plea for interaction. If anyone has issues, concerns or thoughts they want to share please don’t hold back. Until next time, farida

2005 Communities of Practice Study

2005-05-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

Wow! That study ended yesterday. What a powerful session. I guess all the sleepless nights were worth it after all. I've kept you posted on all the partner organizations that we visited. What we do at the end of a study is to get everyone together in a room to discuss the findings. All the best practice partners are invited and all the companies who sponsored the study are invited. Talk about a great community, everyone comes to learn and share openly and freely their experiences good and bad, they don't hesitated to share why they fell flat on their faces when they tried certain things and how they recovered.
So here are some brief bullet points from the Executive Summary. Realize that this report is not out for another four months so what you are getting is a major early preview.

Communities are now allowing organizations to communicate and execute their strategy and refine their competencies;

Communities are being seen as providing the speed and enabling the innovation needed for marketplace leadership and positioning;

Communities are integrated into the fabric of the organization's core work and value chain;

Organizations are adopting the strategy of aligning their communities more closely with their formal governance structure;

Tools and methods of community building and management have matured and become a central competency with their own center of excellence;and

Managers, executives, and subject matter experts are personally engaged in sustaining communities.

The stories told by partner organizations were compelling and truly successful. Lots of money has been saved in these organizations by the implementation of communities of practice.
If you are considering implementing CoPs in your organization, call us. We would love to help you through this. Sorry to sound like a commercial but we have learned a lot and we can really help make a difference in your efforts at enabling communities of practice.
As always if you have comments on these very high level findings write me. Lets start a dialogue. Have you implemented communities in your organization? Are they working or not? Let me know. I love to learn.
Gotta go now or will be late for the key note who happens to be my president. You know when its the pres, you gotta be there.
Will share more later

Presentation at eGov

2005-05-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

Hey all, reporting from the road this beautiful Thursday morning. I'm in St. Louis for our annual KM conference and just got through with the final knowledge transfer session for my study on communities of practice. So I will break up what's being going on into multiple posts or else it won't make any sense.
First, I spoke about blogs at eGov in DC. It was pretty cool, a lot of people are interested in blogs but are not sure how to work with it. I had a room full of people, at least a 100 or more and they were bustling with questions on blogs, wikis and IM, you know general real-time type collaboration stuff.
The issues with blogs in the workplace today are the same issues we were facing with the Internet. That is, oh my! this is a completely "open" medium how in the world are we going to control it. Remember that. There were discussions and fear about how the Internet would impact our organizations and that employees would spend time surfing the Internet and no work would get done. And the answer is yes, we all had to go through a few painful experiences of misuse of the Internet or rather abuse of the Internet but it all smoothed out pretty nicely.
Thats the same fear with blogs, oh my! employees are going to say whatever they want on the blogs and how can we maintain control over the integrity of the information that goes out. Like all new "stuff" this too will work itself out after faltering a bit.
The key here is that organizations have to keep their end of the bargain and not stifle expression but guide it.
Did you all read the article on Technorati. I have to say I am very disappointed with their management. Getting their employee to take down the picture on his blog when they themselves are in business purely because of blogs is a true shame. Shame on you Technorati management. If you'll would like to comment I would be very interested. If you don't know what I'm talking about send me a mail and I will find the link to the article for you.

Anyway, need to quit rambling and give you the link to the presentation at eGov. You can find the presentation here.

eGov Conference in DC

2005-04-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the multiple postings today, if I don't do it right away I forget. Both Wesley Vestal and I are presenting at the eGov conference in DC on April 22nd. Wes is presenting on KM and Organizational Learning and I on blogs of course.

If anyone would like to attend the conference, eGOv is offering APQC a 25% discount. If you are interested please write me for the discount code. You can get more information about the eGov conference at their site.

APQC's Knowledge Management Conference

2005-04-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you have not already registered for APQC's conference please do so quickly as it is filling up fast. We got a record 80 registrations in 3 days last week.
Its being held in St. Louis this year and is on May 5th and 6th.
You can find details at APQC's Web site. Click on the banner at the top of the page.

Communities of Practice - progress on the study

2005-04-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

Site visits are complete and we are in the midst of writing the final report. Based on the past study, the big difference this time was the confidence factor. Communities of practice are here to stay. They are not a temporary experiment or pilot, they are recognized as organizational structures that lead to business results.

Another interesting observation was with regards to technology. There was no focus on fancy technology to support communities. Partner organizations have made investments in acquiring some missing functionality such as collaboration space (only if the community requires it) but mostly they are using their own existing systems building on capabilities to support their communities.

One dissapointing factor for me was that none of the partner organizations are actively using blogs within their organizations or within their communities to share knowledge.

Communities of Practice at the Federal Highway Administration

2005-03-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

Hey! You know those rumble strips that are on the side of the road that wake you up when you drive off... the implementation of those are credited to communities of practice at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The FHWA is an interesting agency, in case you are wondering what the W in their acronym stands for its for Way in highway. That one got me too.
FHWA does not build the roads, they oversee the safety aspect for land, air, water, and railroads. They ensure that the nation’s transport system is safe for public use, or they oversee the safety of civil aviation, and they monitor and operate the waterways for trading. It's like that BASF advertisment that used to come on, "We don't make the product, we make the product better."

So knowledge is their only asset. They have knowledge of how to build safe roads and waterways and their job is to impart that knowledge to agencies at the local level so they can comply with the safety requirements. FHWA therefore chose communities of practice as their approach of choice to enable this knowledge transfer.

Well, they have all the good habits of other successful best practice partner organizations, such as executive buy-in, strong community administrators, etc., but FHWA has two things the others don’t have. One is public communities and two is a balanced scorecard for measuring the effectiveness of their community program. Being a government agency they want to engage their constituents and hear what they have to say and they do that through their communities. For instance there is a community that caters to people who are going to be displaced as a result of land acquisition for highways. The community gives its constituents a forum to express concerns. So FHWA has spent some time figuring out how to interact with public forums and has had to deal with educating its workforce on what can and cannot be shared on public forums.

The Balanced Scorecard approach, (they call it that and they have tried to keep the quadrants as close to the "original" balanced scorecard as possible) has four quadrants. Customer results, Business results, Initiative growth and processes, and outreach and leadership activities. FHWA captures results under each of these quadrants and tries to quantify as much of it as they can very conservatively for reporting purposes. As a result of their structured approach to measuring outcomes, communicating with senior leaders about the continued effectiveness of communities of practice has become very easy. After all if saving lives is in your mission statement, you have to find every possible means of making that happen.

Hope you all have a great weekend and a Very Happy Easter to all.

Communities of Practice at Arup Engineering

2005-03-23T14:47:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of Arup Engineering? If not, look up the Sydney Opera House, Arup made that design happen. I don't know if it’s the nature of their business or if it’s their founder that makes Arup one of the most innovative organizations I have been to. To give you a sense of the legacy left behind by Sir Ove Arup, here is an excerpt from his "retirement" speech that is handed to every new employee walking in the door.
"There are two ways of looking at the work you do to earn a living:
One is the way propounded by the late Henry Ford: Work is a necessary evil, but modern technology will reduce it to a minimum. Your life is your leisure lived in your “free” time.
The other is:
To make your work interesting and rewarding, you enjoy both your work and your leisure.

We opt uncompromisingly for the second way.”

Sir Ove Arup’s firm belief was that his company would not make money at any cost. A legacy like that creates a natural culture of sharing and “small company” feel even though Arup is 7,000 employees strong. Its no wonder then that communities of practice thrive at Arup. But don’t get me wrong, its not all “huggy-kissy,” its still pure business. They are a highly matrixed organization just like many others today but their communities break down communication barriers and create an environment for sharing.

One of the keys to Arup’s success with communities is not just its culture but the recognition of several roles that have to exist within a community in order for it to thrive. In most organizations you will find a community leader/administrator, members, and subject matter experts. Other peripheral roles such as content manager or librarian will crop in and out as the community needs it. At Arup, roles such as political champion, activist, and technology leader also exist to ensure that the community has the support it needs to function.

An example of innovation is one of “Fire Engineering.” How many organizations can say they influenced the creation of a whole new field of engineering. Arup can. And that too with one person. One engineer who found it very important to study the “fire load” on structures pushed Arup to create a practice in that area. The idea is that buildings should be tested for fire load just as they are tested for structural load. Fire Engineering is a new discipline being taught in universities today.

Communities of Practice at Air Products and Chemicals Corporation

2005-03-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

My next stop after Ernst& Young was Air Products and Chemicals in Allentown, PA. Brrrrr... boy it was cold. I almost lost my fingers that night. That's because I am after all a summer baby, having lived in Mumbai India and then warm Houston, Texas all my life I had no gloves with me. So of course when I had to walk outside for 10 minutes trying to find and then drive the rental car around town I sat warming my poor blue hands for at least 20 minutes before I could do anything. So much for that.
Air Products and Chemicals (APCI) is an interesting organization. They have been APQC members and study participants for a long time. Air Products is one of the largest industrial gas producers, supplying a broad range of industrial gases, mainly oxygen, nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, and helium. These gases are used in most industries, including food and metal processing, semiconductor manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace and chemical production.
Communities of Practice are the primary approach for knowledge sharing at APCI. They have an interesting model of Communities of Interest, Communities of Practice and Centers of Excellence. Each level of community addresses a particular need within the organization. This is based on their realization that even in communities one size does not necessarily fit all so they created three buckets to fit the needs of their organizations. Their advice to us was the same. Understand your organization, its culture and the needs of your employees and then design the best KM solution to suit their needs. APCI presents at some of our conferences so keep an eye out, they are worth listening to.

Ernst & Young's Knowledge Management Efforts

2005-03-14T20:24:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday last week we visited Ernst & Young in Cleveland. APQC had originally studied Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in our previous study on Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice and we were very impressed by their efforts to institutionalize, to embed knowledge sharing in their culture. I wondered if Ernst & Young by itself would have continued the efforts.
I am glad to report that they have. The Center for Business Knowledge is still alive and well and in part revitalized because of recent regulations concerning audit and compliance.
Knowledge Sharing at E&Y is a mega process. This means that it gets "strategic" attention and therefore resources, and it is expected behavior of every employee. The CBK offerings are divided into "standard" and "custom." Standard offerings such as communities of practice deployment and support and technology are funded at the corporate level. If a practice area wants a custom application or solution then the CBK charges back the cost to that area.
As I mentioned earlier, communities of practice fall within CBK's standard delivery model and include chartering, planning, identifying stakeholders and deploying communities. After that the CBK takes on a monitoring role to help keep the communities focused and active.
If I had one salient point to pick out about their initiative, it would be focus. The CBK's is strongly focused on ensuring that knowledge sharing is embedded into the company culture and they do everything in their power to nudge people into that.

Communities of Practice at Fluor Corporation

2005-03-09T20:46:00.000-08:00

Hello all, reporting from the road. Visited Fluor Corporation last week in Aliso Viejo, California. What a phenomenal place, I mean both the location and the organization. The KM team at Fluor is running and gunning with their initiative. They have a well planned strategy but more important than that is the fact that they are deploying the strategy according to the plan. I have attended many site visits in my years at APQC and if I had to pick out a couple of salient points that make these organizations stellar I would say 1) the team has passion, and 2) they roll up their sleeves and get the work done. The team at Fluor works really hard to make sure that they are providing complete support to their communities of practice. They have clearly identified roles and responsibilities in their communities and all the support staff comes through to help push, prod, pull, whatever it takes to keep the community running. Sorry I cannot share details with you until the study is released to the public. Fluor has spoken at other public conferences and if anyone knows a link to a presentation let me know and I will link to it.

I have also visited Ernst & Young and will be visiting Air Products and Chemicals tomorrow. Signing off from freezing Allentown for now.
farida

Knowledge Management at Turner Construction

2005-02-28T11:19:00.000-08:00

Folks, want to bring your attention to a cool article we released last month. Its about how Turner Construction Co., a partner in APQC's Integrating Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning study and the largest commercial builder in the United States, ensures its employees have access to the training and tacit knowledge they need to perform their jobs? According to James Mitnick, a senior vice president at Turner, the organization focuses on performance-based learning. Read about the learning network Turner has built to bring learning, knowledge, and collaboration together to drive the company's performance.

If you want access to more articles like these all you have to do is register on the KSN, that is my site. Remember there is no cost to register, if you are not a member you will get non member access and you won't have access to some of the members only content.

Are you a member of APQC?

2005-02-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

If you read my blog but don't know if your organization is a member of APQC please contact me or go to my site and click on Membership and Current members. I am bringing this to your attention again because I have so many resources on the site for KM and communities and it would be a shame if your organization is a member and you just didn't know it. If your organization is already a member then there is no cost at all to access the research.
So, if you are a member, please click on Register Here on the main page and fill out the registration form and get access to the Knowledge Sharing Network. Once you are in you can click on Community space, look for the KM community and get access to all the community call presentations I have had over the past 2 years.
I just had a call today on Social Network Analysis. A very interesting approach to understanding networks within organizations. The question is are SNAs an effective means of identifying groups within an organization that are ripe for creating a community? I would love to hear your opinion on that . Also whether you agree or disagree please share with me your thoughts on Social Network Analysis. Anyone have a cool story to share of implementing or not implementing social network analysis in your organization? I would love to hear from you.

What has Farida been up to since November?

2005-02-23T13:06:00.000-08:00

My last post was in November sometime and I mentioned something about creating a blog strategy. So here goes... I did get my blog reviewed and got some guidance on little things I can do to have my blog picked up by search engines. If you are interested contact Bill Ives (his blog is linked on mine) and get Amanda's information. If you are already a savvy blogger you probably don't need a review.

A lot has happened since November, the most interesting of which is my role in the latest study on Communities of Practice as mechanisms of organizational effectiveness and innovation. Tall order for communities eh! But why not? If communities are going to play in the main tent, then they must show ROI just like the rest of the process improvement approaches in the marketplace. Now the study costs $16,000 to participate but I already have 23 sponsors, so you know that the topic is pretty hot these days. I am not sure if everyone knows how APQC runs its studies so I will give you a brief methodology overview.
The sponsors come together with APQC and we design a survey instrument to gather information that the sponsor group is interested in. APQC then finds 10-12 organizations that fit the bill of "best-practice" organizations that matches the scope of the study. In this case organizations that have used CoPs to enable organizational effectiveness and innovation. The sponsor group then chooses 5 of these organizations to site visit. A site visit is a face to face meeting with CoP practitioners for a day (6 hours or so. After all 5 site visits, APQC analyzes the data, writes a final report and finishes the study with a Knowledge Transfer Session in which all the sponsors and best-practice organizations get together in a 2 day networking session.
So, if you are interested in joining the study don't hesitate to call. I start traveling on site visits next week and my first visit is to Fluor Corporation in Orange County, CA. Poor me, I have to go to California:-))
The remaining organizations selected are Air Products & Chemicals, Arup Engineering, Ernst & Young and Federal Highway Administration. We will have finished site visits by March 16. Phew! My travel schedule is going to be a bear over the next two weeks.

Actually I am really really excited about this study and am looking forward to finding new and innovative lessons learned from these partners. I am the acting subject matter expert on the study and have to write the final report so I am really hoping that good things will come from the site visits. And they always do so no worries.

So, I am back on track and I will be posting regularly again so stay tuned. I will keep you posted on site visits, maybe see if I can encourage some discussions of findings, and although I cannot share the final report with all of you I can most certainly share some high level lessons learned.

Communities of Practice ROI

2004-11-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

Can one truly measure the return on investment on communities? I guess the answer is it depends. It depends on what the goals of the community are. This past month I had been tasked with return on investment proof for my community. The question specifically posed to me was not what is the impact of the APQC KM community but how or does the APQC KM Community impact the bottom line and how.

So I set out to find correlations between community members and their behaviors. My first attempt was at purchasing behavior. I took the names of my community members and totaled their purchases. I was able to prove that community members are active APQC product and services buyers. Then came the hammer. Would these people have made the same purchases were they not community members? Answer: Yes, possibly. This is the tough part. There is no way for me to tell how being in my community influences a purchase decision.

Next attempt was at membership tenure. Most of you know APQC is a membership based organization, so we live and die by our member retention rate. I looked at the list again and tried to determine how tenured these community members are. Same answer, community members are tenured APQC members. This time I put myself through the scrutiny; would these people have continued to be APQC members if your community did not exist. Same answer, I think so but I don't know for sure. I am not sure how being a member of my community impacts a decision for an individual to renew membership.

Back to the drawing board. I went back to my own advice. What was my community created for? It was created to add value to the membership. It wasn't created to increase revenue (although I wish I could say that it did). So I finally took this message to the management.

The KM community consists of tenured APQC members with purchasing power. I have several testimonials from community members that express this value sentiment. I cannot prove that my community makes them buy or makes them stay, but what I do want to try is to get them more involved and to expand the community offerings so that I can attract more members like these. Because my hypothesis is the more involved members I have the greater the probability of additional purchases and of membership renewal.

I did not ask for a lot of money. Just a little slush if I needed to travel to set up local chapters, a few technology dollars to incorporate this blog into the community site and an approval that I should continue to spend time on this community. (one of my proposals was to nix the community completely - my argument was if its all about the money then let's just not do it. But I know APQC, it's never just about the money, it's about member value, so I knew that was not going to happen:-))

I got all three. So I am going to spend the next couple months really setting strategies. Not just for my KM community but also for my Web site.

Now to the apology. I know I have been gone a while and some of you may have given up on me, but I was in way over my head trying to prove ROI (not just community, site and technology et al) and I had on request from Bill Ives gotten Amanda to conduct a blog review for me. It's pretty cool, she charges $100 and basically gives you some pointers on maximizing your blog.

That will definitely go in as part of my strategy for next year. Stay tuned for lots of changes and innovations from me. I'm crazy that way.

Local chapter

2004-09-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Another thing I forgot to mention in my earlier posting and actually its a completely separate thought so I started a new post. This has to do with trying to gently nudge the community ahead and see if the dynamics of the group change. Right now my community is happy. I do all the work, they attend the call. Bada bing Bada boom. They provide feedback and respond to me when I prod them.
Now I am contemplating the idea of local groups or future chapters. Here is the process. I am going to send out a message to all my Houston KM Community members and say hey, I am organizing an informal dutch dinner for the KM community, this say, this time, please RSVP if you can make it and I will make reservations. I want this to be low cost since I do not have a budget for my community so all I can afford at this time is to pay for my own dinner. At the first dinner I will have something in hand to talk about. I might even get feedback from those who respond with a yea to see what they want to talk about or maybe we all just want time to chill and get to know one another. If my Houston dinner is successful and they want to do it again, I will try say DC where I have another concentration of members. Again same process but this time I will get help from one of my KM buddies in DC to pick the location and make reservations.
The intent is of course to have these informal dinners develop into tiny local KM chapters for APQC maybe introducing new members to the fold, helping out on projects and at conferences, etc. The possibilities are endless. If any of you reading has done this before please share your lessons learned with me. I could use them.

Call for participation - Sustaining Communities of Practice

2004-09-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

Hello all, I thought of doing something different with my KM community call next month so I thought I would share it with you and see if I get any feedback. This time instead of having a single presenter I plan on having two or three people talk. Guess what the topic is? OK silly question. The topic is sustaining communities of practice and identifying what high performing communities means. Any of you reading this blog are welcome to send me a note if you would like to present on the call. The criteria is that you must know of a high performing community and be able to come with some characteristics of one.
Its looking like the call will be on October 14 at 10:30 pm central time but all speakers have not confirmed yet.
What I am trying to do is to get someone to speak to Social Networks and if they play a role in sustaining a community or not. Apparently there are several people who believe that social networks are the lifeblood of a community and therefore all organizations should indulge in social network analysis if their communities are to sustain themselves. I look forward to this call because I know I am going to learn a lot.

Communities of Practice and Measurement

2004-09-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

Measurement is all the buzz these days! I guess we are all trying to do more with less so organizations are evaluating every dollar it spends since the number of dollars are limited. Communities like any other approach comes under the same scrutiny. The whole "organic" piece works for only so long, before the boss asks "what am I getting out of this?" When we start communities in organizations the cost is relatively low (unless you start with some expensive technology). But as more people get involved you may start needing technology or people may spend more time in the community or you may need funding for events, and before you know it you are asking for a community budget.
The moment you do that, return on investment (ROI) comes into the picture. Like the boss said, "what am I getting out of this?"
Typically in the initial phases you are not necessarily measuring the impact of the community, you are assesing the health of your community. Communities go through some very distinct phases of starting, forming, growing, maturing and sometimes dying. Of course I am not quoting anyone's stages per se I am just saying that they go through these phases.
When you start, an early measure is membership. How many people are in your community? Then you move on to activity. How many times do you meet or get together? What do you do when you get together? and how much do members drive what happens in the community versus what the leader is driving?
As the community matures the group should attempt to put together some outcome measures. Take on a special project to fix something that will impact the bottom line, or gather ideas to create a new product, recommend changes in a process, something that makes a bottom line impact to the organization.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that all communities have to have bottom line results, some of you may be lucky in that your management recognizes the inherent value of a community and knows that sometimes intangible stuff cannot be measured but does pay off somewhere. But that's not the good fortune of most of us that have to account for every hour with a project code.
So here is a basic article on Measurement and KM that Kimberly wrote a while back that is a great overview on KM and Measurement and gives you a framework to think about measures.

Challenges with information technology in the context of communities

2004-09-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

This one is my favorite. Partly because I have a small community space on my own site and boy do I have my share of challenges.
In my opinion the biggest challenge is "unavailability" of information technology (IT) resources. I don't know about you but when I go to my IT folks and say please....pretty please can you add some functionality to my site, they look at me and smile and say "Sure, right after we take care of these other 50 million critical things that are right ahead of you." I mean, they are really nice so I can't say anything bad about them and they work really hard every day except that it is frustrating that we have limited resources so they cannot focus on my needs immediately.
Any of you readers identify with my experience?
Lets kind of back track. When do we need IT in a community? We need it when our community really starts to collaborate and share and all of a sudden people are sharing this really cool content with one another and feel the pinch of not having a place to put it. It may also start earlier if the community is more technically oriented and likes to communicate electronically as opposed to the phone. Then you would need to have some collaboration software on at the very least a distribution list that you can send messages to.
There is a ton of "collaboration" type software out there. It is typically the best fit for a community but can be really pricy. I think e-mail works great except it can get cumbersome if everyone is copying everyone on their e-mails and then of course you have to go looking for old e-mails for conversations of things you thought you had, etc.
Software companies such as Groove, Tacit, Askme, and Vignette (bought Inxight or Insight I can't remember now, they are all the same) all play in this space. They have different ways of getting to the collaboration piece. Groove gives you chat rooms, chat groups, e-mail, and a rudimentary data store. Tacit works on filtering e-mails for valuable content and puts it in a repository and tries to identify like users. AskMe is an expertise locator system that profiles individuals and their expertise. It also has collaboration spaces and e-mail, etc. And so does Vignette. This is by no means an official description of what any of these vendors offer its just meant to give you a flavor of what is out there. The reason I even brought these vendors up is because one of the primary challenges in community implementation related to technology is that of vendor selection. My rule of thumb is the amount of analysis I do on a vendor is directly proportional to the cost of the software. If something costs under $1000.00 I try it out almost immediately and don't fret if it doesn't work. What it does is teach me all the things that I want from my other vendors, what questions to ask, etc. Then I go looking for the big guys and am ready to make a more informed decision.
Again, spend as much time on it as it deserves based on the functionality you are looking for.
I know its ideal to have a system that integrates with the main/primary system of the company but in really big organizations that can be quite a challenge. If your needs are simple keep your technology simple.
Another challenge that some organizations face is that they get all the technology in place at first and then as the community forms they find no one uses it. My take on this is that it was too early to implement the community. Without really knowing the members and their needs it is always risky to implement a technology. Don't get me wrong, it could totally work out and if it does then its not a challenge. But if it doesn't it most likely means that your members are not used to communicating in the way that the technology dictates.
So if you all have more technology challenges, please write me.

Challenges with Roles

2004-09-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

I had written about roles earlier but had focused primarily on the leader and the members. Once a community is established there are several other roles that come into play such as content manager, librarians, subject matter experts, technical, customer service, etc. It so happens that most of the challenges associated with roles lies in finding these resources.
In an ideal situation members in your community would be able to fulfill these roles but some of them such as a librarian or an information technology architect require special skills and you may have to request help from other departments.
There in lies the challenge. The same issue that you have with getting your management to give up resources is the same battle you will have in trying to borrow resources.
Again, all this would be smooth if there was a plan up front, all roles identified, all managers bought in and senior management endorsed. But let's face it, I think that is very much a "best-case" scenario.
The challenge facing the critical role, that of community leader has to do with skills. A leader has to have a mixed bag of skills. Networking, leadership, facilitation, technical knowledge, knowledge of the organization, and access to external experts. Its tough to find someone with all these who also has a passion for the topic. If you have to chose, the most important one is knowledge of the organization and respected individual. This is because a leader has to be very influential to get participation and liked by many since he/she is trying to get participation.
Well, just lost power completely, there's a storm brewing....

Challenges in implementing communities of practice

2004-09-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry y'all! I know I have been gone a long time. Circumstances beyond my control and a great example of some of the challenges we face in implementing communities today. Sometimes we just don't have the time. Between traveling and school and managing a team of content writers, and managing a community.... You get the picture. Every night as I lay down I think darn!!!! I did not put anything on my blog today. And I know I am not unique in this. Most of you share exactly the same or worst predicament in trying to manage work, home and professional growth.
So back to challenges. Lets look at challenges broken down by: Building and managing communities, roles, support and funding, information technology, sustaining, and measuring the impact of communities.
Senior leadership involvement is probably the most common challenge of building and managing communities. Although communities are supposed to be organic and grow and die naturally, if an organization wants its communities to be responsive and innovative it is going to have to support it formally to some extent. That's where management comes in. Ideally senior management would be supportive of communities, however we have found that communities is one of the rare approaches that does not necessarily need upper management approval. In a "real" community, where people get to together because they want to not because they have to, the members don't view community membership as "work." They participate in the community because they get something out of it. Ok! so that was "fantasy-land," reality is that although most of us participate in things we get value from it would be nice if it were recognized as part of our job and we did not have to get burned out and give up on communities completely. That's where the boss comes in. Even if senior management is not involved, general, departmental,line, etc. managers have the authority to give their employees some time to participate in the community and allow their employees to grow professionally.

Time,is the other obstacle in managing communities. You may find the time to participate but where does one find the time to manage. The best solution for this is to break up responsibilities. See if you can get administrative help from your department for things like sending out invites, finding the conference room, arranging for the food ( if there is any), etc. That will leave the community leader to focus on the value add work of finding out what the community members want to talk about, researching the topic a bit, maybe finding a speaker, etc.

The other big issue in building communities is getting people motivated to participate. Again, just remember if you are fighting it, that is people don't want to participate maybe they are not getting anything out of it and its not a good community. Look for pockets of individuals that are already banding together in some form. They will appreciate the attention more than those that are fighting against you.

Another challenge in the build phase, especially if its a new community has to do with scope and focus. It's during this phase that the team has to decide if the community is going to be very specific or general, its its under the radar or a big-bang, and if its grass roots or top down created. So again the logical answer would be to identify stakeholders, to make sure this is a team effort, to make sure that the people who will be leading the community are involved in these decisions.

A lot of what I am writing is run of the mill, how we work. I am listing these in context of creating and maintaining communities with the hope that if you are in the process of creating communities in your organization you will think about and account for these challenges beforehand and be ready with answers when it's your turn to present a business case to your senior management.
As always... please send me some thoughts. I know a few of you are reading this blog now so there is no excuse for not participating. Please send in your challenges so we can have a discussion or at least get some answers or suggestions for you.

Continuing on community activities

2004-08-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

My community, that is the KM community that I administer has a mix of several different types of people. There are Kmers, Six sigma folks, quality folks and the like. As you can imagine getting the whole community involved is almost impossible. And because these are all people from different companies their goal for being part of my community is simply this. Keep us posted on up and coming things and challenge our minds by inviting people to speak who don't necessarily agree on everything or who are forward thinking.
So what I do is look for speakers in different areas. One time we had John Biedry from Servicemaster talking about their six sigma initiative. Another time we got a group of banking individuals together just so they could share problems and barriers they were having at banks with regards to KM. Last month, Tom Davenport spoke about managing knowledge-intensive processes. So, I don't look for all 468 members to constantly participate every month. But I usually get at least 50-60.
Are the calls effective? Although I have no formal gauge I know that these people come back every month for the call. If it did not bring any value to them I can assure you they would not come back. We are all too busy these days to attend conference calls with no value.

Community Activities

2004-08-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

OK, so we talked about the roles of leaders and members so today I will talk activities. Now, I know a few of you are reading this blog so I want to see some input from you all on activities within ya'll's community. Yes, its "y'all" I am officially Texan you know:-))

The primary goal of any community is typically to get people together. So it seems like a face to face meeting might be a good start. That's not always possible if you are bringing together a global community but you are still attempting to get people together even if its virtually. These days it seems even when we are in the same vicinity most people still prefer to communicate virtually. I never got that. I would much rather go and meet people and get to know them rather than e-mail them constantly. I know of people who work in cubes across each other and send e-mails to one another instead of lifting their heads and talking.

Oh well! back to point. The first meeting should preferably be a face to face one. All the research we have done supports that argument. Face to face meetings build trust. When we communicate face to face we get a ton of physical cues that tell us if we can trust someone or not. Once people have gotten together face to face, virtual communications become much easier and more productive.

So sticking to the topic of trust for a moment, if there is one single issue that bars communication its trust. Therefore in your community efforts should be made to build trust immediately. There are several ways of doing this. Face to face of course is one. If that's not possible try to create an informal environment where people can express themselves. Something like a profile. A profile should have both formal and informal components so that people can identify with one another. Trust is built just as effectively when someone knows you are an expert in airplane design as when someone finds out that you share with them a passion for skiing. After all if you share the same passion you must have more things in common. Besides having a "human" side makes one more accessible.
Another approach to building trust is to have the first meeting focused on writing "community norms." Some communities actually write their "constitution." Personally I think that's a bit much but who am I judge. In communities one size certainly does not fit all. The community norms or guidelines consist of items such as response times, respect, low tolerance for either dominance or non-participation, how often you all want to meet, where, how and when, etc.
The next natural activity would be roles and accomplishments. Usually there is a natural leader. That's most likely the person who put the community together in the first place. If that's not the case then elect a leader. Decide on other roles such as a rotating admin role, a subject matter expert role, an executive sponsor if necessary.
Where accomplishments are concerned you want to agree as a community to what you want your outcomes to be. The outcomes must benefit both the employee and the organization. Depending upon how much time you spend in your community really think through what you want your outcomes to be? We all learn continuously. Even if you are an expert on a topic, you may feel at first that you are "giving" all the time. Be patient! As the community catches up with you, you will have a set of peers that you will find invaluable to run ideas against, to vet your solutions, to give you opinions, etc.
Sometimes community participation may be entirely social. You just like to hang with these people. That's great. However, if its a "work" community you will need to eventually show some professional growth or your manager may frown upon your social activity.
We'll continue tomorrow on some other community activities. I hope I hear from some of ya'll on activities you conduct within your communities.
farida

Role of community members

2004-08-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

We talked about the role of community leader(s) so now lets talk a little bit about the role of community members. Community members have the responsibility of being participative. It's nice to have someone do all the work for you and for all the information to be pushed to you. But if you truly want to be part of a live community and you want your group to last forever then everyone has to bear the load. Kinda like marriage! The more you work together the longer you last. At least that's how I think marriage is supposed to work!
Members can take on assistant leadership roles, such as finding speakers, taking the pulse of the community on hot topics, getting someone to sponsor a night out for the community. Whatever you sphere of influence may be use it in some way to benefit the community if you can.
Another very important participative behavior is that of providing expertise, advice, mentoring, or information. A community comes together because people want to learn from one another. All members must give and take almost equally. In fact if you have a weakness of some sort, your community is a good place to overcome that weakness. And it does not have to do with the topic itself. If you have difficulty speaking in public then volunteer to speak in your community gatherings. Your community should be a safe haven for you to practice.
So lesson for the day, communities are about sharing and participating. Hope you are doing that in your community.
Adios for the weekend!
farida

Role of a community leader

2004-08-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

Lets talk today about one of the critical elements of a community. It's a leader. Typically when communities form they do so because there is one or a small group of individuals who are extremely passionate about something. It could be cars, drugs (the good kind), airplanes, engines, or nail polish. It doesn't matter. Having a passionate leader can make or break a community. I have truly come to believe that most of us are just plain lazy. We are interested in stuff but we tend to participate only if someone else does the heavy lifting and we reap the benefits of someone else's hard work. In comes the community leader. The leader will at first bear the whole burden. Arranging meetings, finding speakers, deciding on discussion topics, taking notes, disseminating notes, checking schedules, etc. Once the community has stabilized a bit, the community should take on most of the roles. There should be someone in charge of meetings, a sub group that determines topics of interest, someone else who works with venues, etc. At all points in time you want to constantly ask yourself. Are these activities worth it? Is what I am getting out of this community worth the time I am putting into it. If the answer is yes, you are in the right community. If the answer is no, you are looking at the community experience as something else you have to do and maybe you want to reconsider your membership. This latter point is unfortunately easier said than done. Sometimes you are required to be part of a community. If you are a graphic designer and you are not part of a graphic design community there is no telling what new technology and shortcuts you could be missing out on.
Ah, we digress. The community leader. The primary role that a community leader should play is that of social bee. He/she should be the person everyone knows and that knows everyone in return. When you talk to someone in your organization and you say John Doe is our community leader, the person you are speaking with should recognize the name and smile and say good things about them. A community is all about networking, about getting people together and making sure the experience is a positive one. Who wants to be part of a community that makes you feel bad when you leave. Life's too short for that.
A community leader also brings accountability to a community. Especially within an organization where all of us have goals, the leader should encourage the community in such a direction so as to help meet the member's professional goals. That's a win win for the organization and for community members. Another critical requirement for a community leader is tenure. I know I will have some criticism about that. New hires can be very knowledgeable in their fields, be extremely passionate and be good community leaders. True. That all can happen and I am sure it does.
However, in most organizations if you don't have tenure then you don't have the social bee ability. You don't know people and people don't know you. And if they don't know you and can't trust you then how can you form and sustain a community.
We have seen examples of two kinds of leadership. The single passionate leader as well as team leadership. Guess which one lasts longer! That's right! Team leadership. When you have a leader with a passion and everyone else is just a recipient then when the leader leaves, the community dies. It happens to whole organizations sometimes, so why not to small communities.
This little write-up gives you some specifics on community roles.
If you want to access more information like this please register on my site at http://www.apqc.org. Click on Register Here in upper right hand corner of screen, provide information and viola you are in. You never know, your organization may be a member and you may have access to all the research on the site. Got comments!!!!!

Assessing the health of communities

2004-08-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

So far we have covered some grounds on communities and I have provided some links that will help you get started (in my earlier posts).
Say for instance that you decided to go looking around in the organization for existing communities and you realize that several exist in different forms. One of the first things you can chose to do is to measure their effectiveness. The key elements in a CoP assessment are alignment to the business, leadership, and structure. Read more about assessing communities of practice on our site.
An effectiveness assessment of communities should also be conducted once your communities are in place and have had some time to form and gel together. Remember communities are living organisms. If they are not evolving and changing with the member's and the organization's needs then they are most likely dying. If they are, let them go.

Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice - Executive Summary

2004-08-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

I know its been a couple of days since my last posting. Its been a bit crazy around here I should say. We are still talking communities of practice so I thought I would shoot you a link to two pieces of content that I think are great resources if you are building your own communities.
One is a brief overview on CoPs and the other is the executive summary from our research report on Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice.

Quick note, yesterday the reason I did not post on the blog is because I was hosting a community call. For me that has been a successful activity. I find a speaker, a topic and I set up a call every month for my community members. Oh ya! Did I forget to mention that I am a community leader. So some of this stuff that's coming from me is from experience.

If you are a member of the APQC and want to participate in my community calls on KM send me a line at fhasanali@apqc.org.

Interesting discussion on communities of practice

2004-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

I am a member of a yahoo listserv on KM and we are having an interesting discussion on communities of practice.
My question to the listserv was regarding research topics for next year. I threw out the concept of "Next generation communities." Steve Denning helped initiate some thought provoking comments by questioning whether "next generation communities" actually existed or if we are just rehashing the same concepts over and thus getting caught in a stale KM initiative rather than focusing on "what's next?" What more should we be doing to make KM effective? Is the answer innovation, blogging, mobile technology....
What are your thoughts? If anyone has any comments please reply to this post.

Continuing on Communities of Practice

2004-08-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am going to stay on the topic of communities of practice for a bit. I will provide links to more content that I think will help those of you who are starting out. This presentation given by Richard McDermott at APQC's conference in San Antonio a couple years ago is a great concept paper. Richard always does a fine job of making communities easy to understand.

Types of Communities

2004-08-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

When we conducted our study on Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice we found a trend in the types of communities that organizations typically have. The three types are helping communities, best-practice communities, and innovation communities.
Helping communities exist in all our organizations. They consist of people helping one another when needed. You could call them your social network. The only difference between a helping community is that its intra-organization whereas a social network crosses organizational boundaries. Of course helping communities can cross organizational boundaries too but in its simplest form its employees (interested in the same topic area or having expertise in a topic areas) informally helping one another.
A best-practice community is a slightly advanced helping community. In a best-practice community, the members not only share tips with one another but make an effort to capture and reuse lessons learned and best-practices uncovered during regular work or special projects. These communities require a bit more formality. They typically have a leader, someone who helps with categorizing the information, maybe some meetings, and some of the member's time is formally allocated to community activities.
An innovation community typically stewards its body of knowledge. If the organization makes cars, then a "brakes" community would be in charge of knowing everything there is to know about brakes on a car. That means that when a new car is being designed, the designers would contact the "brakes' community to find out what types of brakes would work best on the new car. Participation in this type of community is typically not voluntary and working collaboratively is a large part of the community member's job.

These communities are not exclusive of one another. A helping community can morph into a best-practice community, or a best-practice community can morph into an innovation community. It is however not required that communities change. They can stay at the same stage they began in as long as the needs of the members are being met.
Most organizations have several different types of communities at the same time. If we stay with the same example of a car company, the HR department may have a helping community and really never move to best-practice, research and development will typically always have innovation communities, whereas assembly line workers may be part of a best-practice community where they share what they learn on a daily basis with others in the same field.

If you are attempting to introduce communities in your organization, look around. Find groups that meet regularly and see if you can create some structure around their community in order to enable them to spend more time in it. Careful though, communities don't typically like too much structure. If they get too formal they crumble easily because then it starts looking too much like your regular job.

Communities of Practice

2004-07-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

In this post I would like to touch upon the concept of communities of practice. To recap we have talked about getting started in knowledge management, creating a value proposition, a business case, assessing your knowledge management efforts,etc.
So say you decide knowledge management is the way to go. Now you need to decide what is going to be the most effective solution for your organization's challenges in the area of knowledge management.
One that I would recommend is Communities of Practice. I know there is a lot of debate on communities. What are communities of practice? How are they different from networks? Is this just another organizational fad? Yes, we have heard it all!
Simply put communities of practice refers to a group of individuals who share a common interest and who come together to discuss and share information about their interest area because they want to, not because they have to.
So how do you get communities started, do they already exist in your organization, if so how do you recognize them? These are all questions I will address in my upcoming posts.
Have a great weekend!

Managing Knowledge in an Unmanageable World

2004-07-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

What a cool tag line! Reality is that not only is the world unmanageable, knowledge is unmanageable too. When we really think about it, you can't really manage your knowledge but you can put some structure around it so that its easily available and transferable. Easier said than done of course.
I wanted to highlight this article today because it proves old is still gold. There are some solid concepts in this article written by our Chairman, Dr. Jack Grayson. He does a great job of surmising the factors that effect knowledge management, its relationship to TQM and the benefits of knowledge management.

A Roadmap to Knowledge Management

2004-07-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

An invaluable resource for those of you starting out in knowledge management. Our senior consultant Wesley Vestal put on his thinking hat and put down an awesome paper that will provide you with a comprehensive overview of knowledge management. Checkout our KM Road map Overview.

Embedding KM: Creating a Value Proposition

2004-07-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

We are still on the topic of developing a value proposition which in some organizations may also be referred to as business case. A business case is typically the outcome of a value proposition. Once you know how the KM effort is going to benefit your organization then you start calculating the cost of resources to make it happen. Include both people and technology costs to get a true picture.
This quick read article on Value Proposition provides some best-practices in creating a value proposition.

Creating a Value Proposition

2004-07-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

So moving right along, if you have been reading any of these posts you now have some idea about what knowledge management means in the business world. So if you are intrigued enough and want to get started the first thing you are going to have to do is to come up with a business case or a value proposition of sorts. Something that says why should we invest in this effort. Check out this presentation on Creating a Value Proposition to get some ideas from not only APQC but also from several of our member organizations who are kind enough to share.

Critical Success Factors in Knowledge Management

2004-07-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, so sometimes I forget all the stuff I have written about and then I stumble upon it randomly. Today while surfing my own site I found this neat article I had written on critical success factors in knowledge management. I want to share this with you since I think its well written. Of Course:-)

Assessing your Knowledge Management Program

2004-07-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

In keeping with one of the first steps in knowledge management, that is assessing knowledge managment within your organization, here is another resource.
This brief write-up on the six steps to assessing your knowledge program provides a list of behaviors you should see in your organization if you have a healthy knowledge management initiative. If you would like an assessment report of your own, fill out the survey I had mentioned in my earlier post.

Facing some interesting challenges

2004-07-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

So here I am, a knowledge manager with a Website full of knowledge to manage and I have a very interesting challenge. I know that having a Website chock full of great content for my members is a great thing but its only one of the benefits of being a member of APQC. How do I make a direct correlation between my content and the efforts to keep the site current and member renewal rates or increased revenues.
I know a lot of you struggle with this same issue. I have several measures in place of course and several reports that I run on activity such as number of hits, number of registered users, number of content items, customer sat surveys, number of content views by document, etc. But still I can't seem to build a convincing enough case that shows a direct relationship between the site and membership renewal. Got any ideas!!!!
This weekend I will find more links to interesting and free content on my site related to KM.
Ciao!

Failures in Knowledge Sharing

2004-07-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

Have you tried knowledge management at your organization and failed? We have seen many instances of stalled knowledge management initiatives. Check out this short summary of failures in knowledge management as reported by APQC.
Click Here for the article.

Welcome to APQC's KM Blog

2004-07-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you interested in knowledge management and its impact on your organization and your daily work lives, this blog is for you.
APQC is a non-profit association that has been researching knowledge management initiatives in organizations for the past ten years. As a result of our research we have acquired a tremendous amount of collective expertise in understanding why people in organizations don't share knowledge, how an organization can start implementing processes to enable organizations to share knowledge, setting up communities of practice, etc.
The aim of this blog is not to sell you APQC's products and services but to share our research with you. I will also post links to interesting articles that may help with ongoing knowledge management initiatives.
My first contribution is the availability of a free survey on our site that will help you assess where your organization stands with regards to knowledge management. Again I mention FREE, as in fill in the survey and get a comparison analysis of your organization against others in the database. It's a great place to start.
Lot more information coming your way. If there is anything specific you need information on don't be shy, I'll see what I can do. If nothing else I can share a few pearls of wisdom.