Knowledge-at-work

Informal learning - the root of KM?

Been reading through Jay Cross's new book - "informal learning - rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance" during the holiday break.

Way more learning happens in the coffee room than the classroom, but firms continue to spend way more on formal training than informal learning - there is a huge disconnect right there. The theme is similar in KM - formal structured tools, top-down mandates, ROI and the smells of project management dominance, do little to enhance agility, awareness, creativity, shared understanding and meaning - which add the real value.

Jay talks about unblended learning, emergence, grokking, envisioning, unconferencing, connecting, conversation, community, web2.0 and JDI (just do it). He makes the point that classes are dead, that every learner needs to cultivate an ecology, share via voicing, communicate using stories and build common text by collaborative editing (wikis).

Formal learning is like riding a bus, it goes, starts and stops when & where someone else decides (bus driver and urban transport committee) - informal learning is then like riding a bicycle, you choose the time, route and destination.

Jay has written this timely book in the form of short stories and vignettes, recounting his experiences and perspectives. I did not find much new stuff, although there are many interesting examples and truths, but Jay managed to hit the high spots so often, I was nodding in agreement as I read along. Clearly we have to assume responsibility for our own awareness, learning and critical inquiry, Jay neatly illustrates the tools, hints at the practices (which need more refinement) and paints the landscape.

http://informl.com/

On a different note:

I really like this distinction by JSB around the difference between learning to 'be' and learning 'about', which I feel gets at the core of the quest for informal learning - It is a new individual orientation that we need to master the changing nature of knowledge.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html 

and his reflections on stolen knowledge

http://www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/papers/stolenknow.html

So when last did you reflect on your informal learning practice(s)?

Commutation or factoring? in S2

The decision to commute or factor is simple or complex depending on how deep you dig and where you stand!!

Through my partner Patrick Hinderd, I've been involved in the S2 (structured settlement) industry for the past 6 years. This is a complex legal area, ripe for the application of KM practices.

The recent, 12/25/06 release of a paper by  Rob Wood calls into question the legality and economics of Insurance Companies that seek to 'factor' their issued structured settlement agreements through  commutation, as this may violate IRC Section 130(c) that prohibits acceleration.

There is a fine line between 'acceleration' and the legal safe harbor afforded by IRS 5892 that merits a deeper look at assignments, 'automatic' commutation and potential conflicts between State and Federal laws. This is an area that clearly cries for clarification via concept mapping.

What say you?

 

Reworking k representation

Knowledge representation is complex, confusing, difficult, emerging and evolving - So how do we deal with it?

What is k representation?

Ad hoc sketches, informal, qualitative and physical models, scenario construction, concept maps, rule sets, structured text, voice and video recordings all serve as representation, reflecting the expectations and experience of their creators, they connect collaboration to future use. They serve a dual role: (a) to facilitate design and critique and (b) to serve as the holder for the product to be, they are affordances in design, which they can enhance or inhibit.

Representations, clarify, extend, complete and move unique experiences and abstract ideas toward the essential and typical. Representations are physical, tangible and material, they allow ideas and experience to have an independent existence in an externalized form, they help to capture emergent thought. Like a lump of clay, a representation is tangible and tactile, it can be pointed to, passed around, played with, reshaped and stored. It takes thought experimentation one step further, eliciting new ideas.

On the formal side representations can be used for inference, in reasoning and as symbols, think rule sets, cases, predicate logic, spatial reasoning.

Representation as container

Boundary objects (concept maps, ontologies, source documents) serve as a vehicle, container and carrier, for ideas and meaning (reification). When a representation crosses (community) boundaries, there is often a loss of meaning and context, which is counter-balanced by an opportunity for new negotiations, different views and altered meaning. This points to the importance of establishing rationale & context in use or practice, an essential non-represented aspect associated with any formalism. All representations are situated in use. An important aspect of a memory object is its trajectory, i.e. the consequences of later use.

Capturing knowledge?

We use stories, cases, tags, metaphor, rules, heuristics, diagrams, patterns, templates, FAQs, lessons learned, learning histories...... what we then capture may be information rather than knowledge - if our key knowledge is tacit, embedded, emergent, present as a flow rather than a store, requires continual interaction and negotiation, is situated and distributed. No representation can stand on its own, we need an appreciation of the setting as situatedness, is ubiquitous, subtle and mostly represents a context that is just 'below our radar'.

Annotation (in the widest sense) is emerging as the forgotten stepchild of e-Learning and knowledge creation. This goes way beyond appending PosIt notes, writing in the margin or sequential replies to the editor; to collaborative writing & editing, refractoring, annealing text, awareness, pull notification and joint work at the artifactual level. Annotation is as much about continual 'access to edit your words', i.e., changing from serial static publication to continual revisiting and revising the script, as it is about telling your cohorts to come and 'see', comment, change and interact. These two aspects,: (a) empowerment to change another's text, and (b) unintrusive notation must join the representation dance together.

• Hargadon & Sutton, HBR May/June 2000, 157-166, talk about keeping ideas alive by encapsulating them in prototypes, metaphor, collecting and playing with junk. Stories are recognized as important representation for conveying values and meaning.

Collaborative concept mapping is a useful way to capture, refine and extend ideas and to explicate relationships. There are some interesting tools emerging as part of web2.0 that cover this.

There is no single formalism that is optimal under all circumstances, so be aware of these attributes when you select a way to represent knowledge - rather think in terms of a mix - a representation ecology :

• Do I need to capture values, context and allow for a flexible 'translation'? - stories, analogy, metaphor
• Will I make use of formal (automated) reasoning? - rules, predicate logic, cases
• Is it important to capture emergent thoughts? - wiki, open-space, sketch walls, PosIT notes & white-board, digital audio / visual recorder
• Do we need flexibility to gather and arrange emergent stuff? - index cards, white-boards, tags
• Is context and sequence important? - patterns, flow diagrams
• Are relationships and flows a key aspect? - maps, networks, concept mapping
• What type of knowledge will be involved? - declarative, procedural, inherited, inferential, temporal...

How then do you capture knowledge?

 

Reflecting on corporate memory

Sharing via explicit, evolving documentation is receiving more attention as wikis and blogs move into the enterprise. Let's take a deeper look:

Why and how does explicit knowledge sharing make a difference?

1. Reflection: in the fast and furious pace of f2f there is no time for deep reflection. An explicit documented exchange gives you the opportunity to review without the pressures imposed of 'thinking on your feet'. Many of our insights come from making connections and changing our internal models. There is something about 'seeing the text' that helps here. Perhaps it is the very process of moving thoughts from the brain to your finger tips as you type that does it?

2. The Record: so often we forget the bits and pieces that do not matter on their own, but when presented in context, when connected or experienced together, can deliver magic. Having a record you can return to, that reminds you of commitments, resurfaces tacit ideas and helps with synthesis is a major help. Often my clients find it is not the actual text that is important, it is the associated ideas and the insights that crop up and pop up that make this worthwhile.

3. Getting in deep: most groups, teams or communities of practice do not take the time to dig down to the differences that really matter. They gloss over assumptions, meld or skip different mental models, do not make the effort to clarify terms or wrestle with distinctions. Using language to 'bring forth another world' is an advanced skill that is enhanced by asynchronous virtual exchange. This approach can surface vision and build alignment that is often not easy face to face.

4. Helping novices: the biggest hurdle new folk face is understanding why: things are done this way, why we believe xyz, why we say abc. A written record (summarized at strategic intervals) goes a long way to bridging the gap between old timers and newbies. Conversations are a lot like stories, after reading through an on-line discussion, you have a different feel and appreciation for people, their beliefs, their interests, drivers, fears and their values.

5. Communication: how often have you not wished we had recorded the reason or taken notes of the other things we talked about? Having a sustained practice of recording the context behind key decisions, helps to spread the word, surface new connections & ideas, test assumptions, gives the group a decided leverage and advantage.

Issues

• Capturing ideas, thoughts, context and rationale on the fly
  
• Adding and enabling notification & interactivity (connecting and annotation)
• Moving seamlessly between structured formalizations and informal conversation / critique
• Using the repository to elicit and capture evolving insights (idea generations)
• Validation, weeding, summarization, encouraging engagement, creative abrasion & critique
• Navigation and intuitive access
• Integration of news with archival functionality
• Making forward links, i.e. from existing documents to new stuff.

The key to building a corporate memory, is not the content, not the review and 'editing' process, not the structure, ontology or indexing, not the meta-data and the search facility - it is the informal affordance(s) that permit or allow access and empower annotation.

Any repository that does not enable dialog, promote awareness, encourage back-channel connections, make it easy to connect to the source person, push notifications or foster diversity of opinion and offer affordances for annotation, is unlikely to survive.

What we need is explicit conversations.

Knowledge sharing - a re-think

Knowledge sharing is the primary, most basic knowledge practice - without a sharing ethos, much of KM promise fails. So what exactly is knowledge sharing all about?

It starts with a perception of self-worth, a feeling that you have something to offer, something of value to add or a new idea to present. This confidence is closely tied to your identity and the reason why trust, relationship and reciprocity are the key to enabling knowledge flows.

How can we share?

There are formal avenues such as lessons learned, after action reviews, learning histories, project reviews, meeting notes and more. Of equal, (perhaps greater) value, are the less formal exchanges such as mentoring, coaching, copying, observing, ethnography, dialog and the proverbial water cooler conversations where heuristics are swapped, stories get told, exceptions are handled and solutions are  given or explored.

Have you considered these practices?

Sharing expertise as patterns

Patterns focus on solutions to repetitive issues or combination of forces and store valuable experiences in a very compact representation. Writing patterns encourages negotiation of value and meaning, pattern names give fast access to useful knowledge and help to clarify communication in teams. The problem with re-invention is often not a lack of communication but the lack of an appropriate medium for transferring key knowledge. Patterns are artifacts, not theory laden constructs, and are not tied to any particular discipline or methodology. Their value comes from social consensus and trial by reuse.

The blackboard: a shared information space

Consider the wall map in a busy 'war room' with its colored pins showing spatial patterns, remember the blackboard (now it's more likely to be white) with a to-do list, the current concerns and issues or useful contacts.

• The blackboard is an affordance promoting self-organization, short term coordination and memory

People, documents, meetings and other activities often serve as blackboards,  interfaces and boundary objects.

Crafting joint concept maps

Concept mapping provides a highly visual way to show relationships between core ideas. Combined with the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process)the maps may be used to build qualitative models, elicit gaps, test assumptions and check for consensus. The knowledge sharing advantage is to invent best practices for interpreting and annealing concept graphs. The promise of electronic whiteboards is to offer us a new way to anneal pictures rather than text. A graphic introduces spatial reasoning, allowing qualitative visual clustering, distance metrics and intuitive affinity measures.

Although it is nothing more than a feeling right now, I believe there is much value in 'seeing' how we interpret graphics, looking for ways to elicit group consensus and including diversity. Developing a practice and a language for 'looking' at graphics is an important component of knowledge building in groups.

• MGTaylor KS practice: http://www.knowherestore.com/methods/knowledgesharing.html

Sharing metaphors & stories

Sharing knowledge is comparable to sharing your lighted candle: you have the opportunity to share your flame with others who have unlit candles, increasing the visibility for everyone and losing nothing yourself or you may keep your candle to yourself and get by with a feeble flickering single candle which is eventually going to burn out anyway. By sharing the fire with others, we enable others to keep the fire going and grow it, benefiting everyone.

Stories are a natural way we garner attention, pass along wisdom and share experiences.

Inquiry and reflection as sharing

Sharing is more than access, it is helping others make meaning and obtain understanding. Deeper sharing is possible if the domain is partitioned, the core concepts are negotiated, the environment is scanned and the feedback is shared in community. There needs to be reflection around joint meaning and reciprocity to have quality sharing.

• Denham's article: http://www.smithweaversmith.com/Ksharing.htm

Developing ontologies

Possessing a reduced, very focussed terminology, where everyone understands the meaning and applies the right term, has profound advantages for companies when they come to apply search engines, construct navigation aids, use visualization tools, implement agent technologies or index their electronic documents. Benefits: faster and more relevant retrieval, more effective communication, meaning templates promote alignment, ease mentoring, reduce training costs. Ontologies are  reuse strategies applied to language.

Sharing as commentary and annotation

Blogging where you add commentary to shared links, point to insightful remarks and ideas of other bloggers and highlight views that interest you is an emergent form of sharing. When this is combined with RSS feeds, categorization, specialist search engines and blog rings it becomes a powerful genre for sharing.

• facile annotation

So then how exactly do you share your knowledge?

Social search - KM thinking

Social search is touted as the next big thing for improving information retrieval, relevance and awareness. Let's take a look.

What exactly is Social Search?
There is no clear answer as the field is emerging and changing at a rapid pace. Here is one early definition: "..a collection of Internet wayfinding tools informed by human judgment. That judgment takes place in the form of tags, click-through activity, search history, and other actions". Source These technologies are being applied to bookmarks, images, tags, blogs, bibliographies.

Social search comes in many favors. New engines are riding the web2.0 wave making it difficult to evaluate progress in this heaving landscape.

Subscribing to a Flickr, del.icio.us, diigo or technorati tag via RSS - allows you to connect to a community, annotate, scan for recency, popularity or some rating measure as applied to posted images, bookmarks, URL links or blog posts. This brings new finds directly into your aggregator helping keep you up-to-date and raising your awareness.

Scanning or searching Digg or Wink - helps you quickly zero in on news, posts and items others have rated as interesting, worthwhile or can be used for finding experts.

Social search engines such as Eurekster, Prefound, Searchles,  Gravee, Collarity, Zimbio,  .... claim to use collaborative filtering, relevance rankings, community activity & behavior, 'collections', unique ranking scores to improve search returns, provide a 'personal touch', guide inquiry and add 'meaning' to those coded search algorithms the big boys use.

Affordances
What do we need to make social search really work?

• Dedicated community - people who share your interests, are sincere, active, honest and helpful - not always easy to find and maintain.
• Visual help and tools to refine a search - Quintura looks interesting with their interactive keyword clouds.
• Permanent URL - so individual searches can be stored, shared and updated.
• Ranking or scoring mechanism - simple but intelligent enough to prevent obvious spamming and gaming.
• RSS feeds - so you are alerted when rankings change, a repeated search yields new findings or friends provide annotations.
• An intuitive back-channel and community directory - to converse around results, rankings and relevance.
• Critical mass - there is a tipping point when social search offers greater value, improved relevance and increased awareness - no single engine is there yet.

So is your search social- yet?

Perennial KM issues

What are some of the perennial KM issues business firms are dealing with?

• How to speed learning, increase awareness and share experiences.  With an ever deceasing half-life of knowledge , just keeping up has become a major corporate imperative. Sure we have improved search engines, more stuff on the web and many ways to make connections, but the difficulty is making sense and finding people really 'in-the-know'. We need practical ways to build personal informal networks.
• Helping groups learn from mistakes and errors, practices to carry over learnings from project to project and improve corporate memory. We have made little progress in preventing those repeating errors, as firms grow in size and complexity, building relationships that enable knowledge flows, keeping in the loop and finding stuff becomes a huge issue. Could we improve the situation by adopting some emergent mindsets & web2.0 practices?
• Discovering opportunities and gaps in knowledge flows, improving personal networking and finding experts (in larger firms). This requires ethnographic digging, an understanding of the organization, a deep appreciation of knowledge practices and emergent affordances. Not many firms recognize or care about sub-optimal performance in this area - the results you see, are diffuse, obtuse and difficult to fit into classic ROI models.
• Providing environments, tools and processes that encourage informal learning, knowledge sharing of effective practices and stimulate innovation. Communities of practice, incentives & recognition for personal mentoring, story collection and telling, cross-domain and silo sharing can be useful, but there needs to sustained executive drive and support for this to have an impact.
• Improving competitive advantage, agility and adaption by making staff more aware, sharing the small insights, building on incremental improvements. Open space methods, creating forums and 'Ba' for trusted exchanges,  blogging and informal wikis may help. Once again top level support, legitimization and walking the talk - leading via example is the key.
• Finding tacit knowledge sources and helping to put these to work. Tacit knowledge discovery is tedious, slow and difficult - most firms shy away from allocating resources to projects dealing with intangibles, where outcomes are unknown and ROI is hard to prove. As knowledge retention becomes an issue due to workforce transitions, this problem is not going away soon.

Solutions are available - but it seems we are quite happy ignoring the issues or too busy shooting our self in the proverbial feet, content to repeat mistakes, letting others do the innovation and hoping things will 'just take care of themselves'.

When learning and knowledge collide

Recently I've been reading (and listening) to Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Jay Cross and Richard MacManus exploring learning networks and connective knowledge. I'm seeing a convergence and emergence of themes:

• Learning is an ecology - remember knowledge ecology?
  
• Connections are key - we talk relationships and patterns in knowledge work
• Informal learning is dominant - think communities of practice
• Learning is a conversation - dialog and creative abrasion facilitate knowledge creation and verification
• Capacity to connect is more important than current knowing - build your network rather than increasing your collection
• Diversity is essential to check cascades - confers adaptability, stability, flexibility

The movement towards collaborative learning is strong, some would argue irreversible, helped by   web2.0 and social software. The personal learning environment has moved from a walled LMS container to an evolving mix of flickr, youtube, secondlife, myspace, 43things.

Stephen says it best:

"Knowledge is a network phenomenon. To 'know' something is to be organized in a certain way, to exhibit patterns of connectivity. To 'learn' is to acquire certain patterns".

Knowledge & knowing

New book just released

George Siemens has kindly released his new book as series of .pdf files  which you are free to download, or you can read and contribute to the wiki conversation, or you can thumb through the excellent graphics on Flickr

In this book George looks at ways the context around knowledge is changing and the influence this is having on knowledge itself:

1. The rise of the individual - ability to voice and show, blogs and YouTube
2. Increased connectedness -  affordances for conversation
3. Immediacy and 'now' - knowledge half-life is shrinking fast
4. Breakdown and repackaging - new tools allow rip, mix and burn
5. Prominence of the conduit - new publishing  media have opened things
6. Global socialization - networking everywhere from MySpace to SecondLife
7. Blurring worlds of physical and virtual - 'on the go' becomes the norm

Library2.0 and KM

The library 2.0 (L2) movement shares many interesting activities with KM as I understand it.

Library 2.0 covers a wide field, from tagging OPAC, IM at the reference desk, to forming virtual communities and encouraging participation in content development, policy formation and asset selection & management.

Library2.0 meme    Library 2.0 in wikipedia   Library2.0 tag in Del.icio.us

The L2 has been branded a 'movement' and passing 'fad' by some of the more traditionalists, but I believe the pioneers like Michael Casey,  Ed Vielmetti and Michael Stephens are bringing a form of knowledge ecology to the library world and doing real world KM stuff.

Here are some of the L2 heresies:

• Users can modify library services, content and policy
• Participation is more than a book on loan
• Libraries should be open source
• L2 changes, authority, strategies, orientation and mission - it is disruptive
• L2 encourages library - library collaboration, co-operation and activities - moving beyond inter-library loans

Libraries need to pay attention to ephemeral content, provide blogs and virtual community, annotation affordances, move into myspace, encourage community and conversation, move into gaming, IM and more.... oh such horror!

What comes next? Recommender systems, Amazon feeds, iPod downloads.....????

If L2 is all about participation, collaboration, community, creative content, changing the context and bringing more people into the conversation - that is core KM stuff. I see the SLA has recently started a new KM division (about time!) and hope they will be embracing much of this L2 excitement.

Do you any L2 thoughts to share?