Knowledge-at-work

IM -- KM

IM <-----> KM values just where do you sit?

As we get to know each other, you will come to appreciate I'm quite a radical 'knowledge' person. Most folks in the KM business do not worry too much about what they are dealing with, i.e., information or knowledge. I think the IM -- KM difference is indeed a critical distinction. Folks that have a good understanding of the difference are better positioned to see emergent knowledge related opportunities in the workplace and market.

It is difficult to make this contrast without talking one side down and the other side up (at least for me). Far too often I see the market highly confused about what they are dealing with. The same thing happens with 'tacit' knowledge, it really helps to have a very clear idea what tacit knowledge is all about, then you are in a better position to see where the concept is being used incorrectly.

Many folk see these distinctions as just being 'picky' and as 'playing' with language. My experience is if you make fine distinctions you can always recognize mixtures of meaning & confusion later, but it does not work the other way around.

Quite a few folk in the IC world really believe they are working with knowledge, some even think it is only when you have an 'asset', something you can exchange and assign a value to and that has legal protection / recognition (e.g. patent) that you are dealing with 'knowledge'.

Hope this helps

The KM spectrum

Everyone positions themselves somewhere along the spectrum from knowledge creation (awareness, learning, community) to intellectual capital (knowledge assets, branding, knowledge exchanges). Through long exposure, I have come to recognize my passions and interests are clearly at the knowledge creation end.

What I see happening at the other end (IC) is more about economics, PR, market caps and packaging than about the things that really matter to me, i.e. generating and understanding new insights, capturing experience and expertise, sharing and exploring. I do not wish to label or denigrate here, just my empathy is at the roots rather than in the leaves.

Intellectual capital is a HOT topic, it is the right emphasis to attract investment and to excite corporate sponsors, the right place to make money. I'm always left with this nagging question?

Where does the knowledge really come from that we will package and sell as Intellectual Capital? Can you just go and buy IC or must it be nurtured, grown and supported?

I'm a wellsprings person. My emphasis is on social capital, even the attempts to quantify "human capital" I find a little false, the key IMO is crafting supporting environments, building the right culture & attitudes, those are real difficult to see as 'capital' in any form.

For me, the real challenges lie in getting groups to leverage their learning, to combine and synthesize their insights, experience and expertise. Once you have explicit knowledge or information it is a very different skill set that takes that product and positions it in the marketplace, negotiates value or legal protection.

My perception is that working with raw knowledge is the hard stuff, getting innovation cranked up, getting folks excited about learning and thinking and creating new stuff, is where the real gaps are. Once you have an intellectual product, you can apply proven methods to package, position, price and pitch.

What do you think?

KM & e-Learning

The relationship between KM and e-L is closest when new knowledge is being created, assumptions are surfaced, questions are asked, groups reflect and insights are distributed.

Distance learning (DL) tools that support interactivity, feedback, annotation and communication between people (many to many) come closest to KM in my opinion. Both KM and DL need an ecology rather than a single way to allow information flows, where they cater for real time and asynchronous communications, annotations, simulations, using multimedia there are increased benefits.

Knowledge and learning increases when they occur in community, when there is the opportunity (and trust) to question, receive critique, view and interact in diverse ways with a diverse group. I do not think it is so much the bandwidth and the glitz that is important (does live streaming video really add so much more than quality text, audio and still graphics?), as it is the identities of the participants, their willingness to take risks, question others values and beliefs and reflect on ways things are done.

Tools that allow for fast building of prototypes, that make it easy to jot down comments, pass notes and draw on a simulated whiteboard together will help. I think KM is mainly about making new knowledge and about the verification of opinions, experiences and insights. So for me, DL and KM are close. I see a push to make all KM tools distance enabled, as this is the way to obtain scaling to larger numbers and leverage across time.

DL tools that fit here are: web conferencing, groupware with workflow, simulation, games, document annotation, i.e., any functions that facilitate communication, feedback and interactivity around a presentation medium. The key is participant to participant engagement rather than teacher to pupil push, or pupil pull alone. I do not think DL tools that simply allow a teacher to 'publish' an electronic copy and the students to read, can do the job.

KM - the ecological analogy

Ecological analogies I find are a useful way to view knowledge. They remind me that knowledge belongs in a complex system, that there are stores, flows and sinks, organizational immune systems that awake if provoked beyond a threshold to restore the old order, that knowledge is emergent, complex, dynamic, distributed, situated and still rather poorly understood.

Knowledge ecology:
puts the focus on relationships, people, social learning, and communities of practice. It ties to balance people, practice and technology by encouraging a holistic view of knowledge patterns using analogies to natural systems. KE is sensitive to the fragility of knowledge and adopts a sustaining, cultivating, crafting midset, seeking to leverage generative, collaborative and social learning.

KE is harder and takes longer to implement, the relationships with easily measured, fast returns are indirect and diffuse, the emphasis is on longer term positioning, growing & improving competence, innovation and awareness.

Knowledge management:
looks to maximize intellectual capital, promote competitive advantage and secure returns through investment in advanced information technologies, implementation of content driven systems and re-engineering of processes to capture lessons learned, best practices and customer contacts. Focus is on measuring intangible capital, working with explicit knowledge (information) and leverage via technology.

Knowledge ecology helps to make me aware that there is always some new twist in and around knowledge, that static content does not tell the real story, that emotions, beliefs, rituals, pleasure and pain are all part of the system.

Ecology tells me to look for knowledge analogies of niche players and generalists, to appreciate the power and wonder of cross-pollinators and the dynamics of gene flow, through knowledge ecology I have been exposed to the people side of knowledge which seems to be most difficult and the most promising perspective.

One of the core issues in both KE and KM as I see things is: How to support and cultivate the emergence of creative and generative learning / knowledge? There do not seem to be any easy answers here. I've been searching for winning practices for quite some time and have experimented with these:

Mind and concept mapping: to help articulate, compare and structure individual mental models in a visual manner. Shared cognitive models help to build alignment, promote clearer communication and allow others to build and contribute.

Pattern language: having a (semi-formal)ritual for the publication and social validation of knowledge claims.

Crafting distinctions: encouraging participants to 'bring forth new worlds using language'. We use analogy, metaphor, schemas to generate 'new' perspectives and situate the groups learning’s, this follows from a view that language creates reality.

Telling stories: to capture context, ethics, values and rich messages in a form that is easy to remember, a kind of local oral history.

Conversations: to assist participants opening up possibilities, sharing relationships, engaging in dialog, reflection and inquiry, allowing them to give 'voice' to their unspoken values, insights and beliefs.

Asking quality questions: in a trusting environment, this along with deep reflection, are the two practices that seem to help most with the emergence of 'new' local knowledge, learning, insights and understanding.

Record insights in an ever evolving 'corporate memory': where all have access and edit rights. We encourage direct annealing of the text to meld a common meaning and produce documents that all can support.

There are other important practices around the selection of a linear asynchronous tool, summarization, critique, having explicit idea generations, roles for the collection of questions, insights and commitments, bootstrapping, systems analysis techniques, LH column, learning histories, pair-wise comparisons and more.

We circle round categorization & classification, building identity and crossing community boundaries, making an effort to distill a local ontology, discover meaning and share understandings.

Here is a comparison of KE & KM practices

What has been your experience?

More KM questions

- What do you believe Knowledge Management (KM) really is?
An approach, an attitude, a mindset that appreciates the nature of knowledge, values the role of knowledge, and looks to build upon the opportunities provided by knowledge in business and society.

- How can IT help KM?
Support the people, do not make technology the focus, look at ways to help communication, dialog, critique, networking. Perhaps the single most effective step, is putting people in contact with people and enabling facile notification, communication / annotation / feedback / commentary.

- How do you think KM tries to help the organization?
* Increased awareness and agility
* Improved innovation and creativity
* Speeding time to market, increasing customer relationships, satisfaction & loyalty
* Helping to make the firm more competitive, learn faster and reap greater rewards from its intellectual and social capital (intangibles)

- How do you think KM is achieved?
with a focus on people, community building, experimentation, discourse, hiring and retaining folks that risk & share, leading by example, helping staff understand the role, nature and importance of knowledge, opening communications and building a supportive and creative environment.

- Is technology used in KM?
sure, but it is secondary to conceptual and cultural changes. Perhaps the best technology use is for collaboration and discourse support.

Is technology necessary?
-> If YES, what technology do you think KM uses, and how?
-> if NO, why is technology not necessary?
YES:
Platforms that allow seamless collaboration, instant communications and advanced inference. In a fast-paced global economy, technology is necessary to play the game, it does not yield sustainable competitive advantage, that comes from practice and through cultural change.

- How do you think you can benefit from KM?
Improved & continuous learning, being able to do things together I would never be able to achieve alone, opportunities for improved networking, faster news, greater awareness and deeper reflection leading to enhanced activities, self-organization and more effective co-ordination.

- Finally, what is YOUR definition of KM?
An approach that recognizes and actualizes knowledge. KM is about people: learning faster, deeper, continuously, collaborating and being creative.

So how do you answers differ?

KM questions

* What exacly does sharing knowledge really mean?

* What are the top 5 current issues in KM?

* Which 3 KM technologies are hot and which are not?

* What KM strategies yield the quickest returns with the lowest risk?

* How do you leverage innovation with current technologies?

* What is the best way to discover & qualify social capital?

* Why is it important to understand knowledge vs. information qualities when implementing KM projects?

* Do books really contain knowledge and can your knowledge be stolen?

* What is the 'best' way to validate knowledge claims?

* If knowledge is emmergent, how can it be transferred, recorded and captured in assets?

* How does KM really link and connect with SFM, SCM, CRM, e-Learning and customer service centers?

Would love to hear your key KM questions

Preserving knowledge

The key to knowledge preservation is to build a community and retain a relationship. Here tacit transfer takes place as people get to know each other and share emergent insights, implicit knowledge is discovered through dialog and the meaning behind explicit information can be shared.

Knowledge comes in 3 flavors: tacit (what you know, but cannot tell), implicit (what you know but need help to remember) and explicit (exchanged via writing, stories or conversations).

People taking their knowledge with them and leaving 'holes' sure is a major problem, many companies now build in knowledge transfer as part of their outsourcing and contract agreements to see that knowledge from external parties is retained.

The 'hole' left when people depart the organization (or move to another group within the company) can be partially filled by ensuring relationships are maintained and there is an open communication channel e.g. a virtual community. A few companies have retirement clubs where former employees can meet and mentor new incumbents. Some organizations have 'work shadows' or paired work to foster tacit transfer and they have structured practices such as peer assists, AARs (after action reviews), retrospects and learning histories to ensure knowledge is captured before, during and after projects.

Retaining a relationship is the real key to knowledge preservation - no repository can subsitute for the trust and social capital or provide the context, empathy and learning that can be gained from an on-going relationship combined with the incentive to share.

Corporate memory - revisited

An organizational memory is 'what the firm knows' and it has many components. Let's explore

a) Tacit knowledge (informal, unstructured and mostly unconscious expertise), contained in the heads of staff and outsiders who have a relationship with the organization. Some ways to get a handle on this is to do social network mapping or to have an interactive 'tacit register' on your intranet.

b) Expertise location tools. Either 'tacit miners' that scan and cross index electronic messages & documents connecting people and ideas, or open ended homepages with a quality search engine and templates (adds XML markup).

c) Document repository. Full text indexing, version control, security, paper trails and workflow. Access to formal documents, e.g. contracts, regulatory requirements, RFPs, engineering designs, customer reports, policy and memos.

d) Datawarehouse and datamart. Data repository for transaction and measurements (highly structured data). May have QBE (query by example), regular reports or an ad-hoc query interface, visual and statistical analysis facilities.

h) Groupware. Provides access to many to many persistent conversations and safe collaborative spaces.

i) Hard copy library. Traditional literature sources and catalogs that point to research reports, items in the firm's archives, books, conference proceedings and journal holdings.

j) Shared files. Multimedia items stored on servers and accessible via the LAN by multiple people and departments.

An important aspect of corporate memory is the relationships (organizational & personal) of its staff. Some of this information may be captured in specialized applications e.g. CRM and SCM.

The challenge is to provide secure access to these various sources, when needed, and only if authorized. So we see attempts to improve indexing & search using meta-language (XML), improved navigation via site maps and the hardest of all, getting quality contributions from staff that summarize their experience, give their perceptions / opinions and allow as much open access as possible. Large efforts are now being devoted to enterprise taxonomies and mappings to allow interaction with strategic partners and industry level exchanges (B2B).

The issues:
Poor level of engagement (lack of trust), low quality of contributions and lack of reflection (no shared vision and quality criteria), updating and keeping content (and the context!) fresh as external conditions change, (re)indexing and retrieval without a common shared ontology, in particular, having no 'forward' links from old content to new additions, capturing sufficient context to make sense to a wide audience, rating the value and use, both now and over time.

Some key problems are: finding a suitable representation to allow both flexible inference and introspection (for learning), crafting the social practices / policies, value set and discipline, to keep it 'alive, functional and useful'.

Corporate memories remain a pipe-dream mainly because of cultural and people issues. We struggle to bootstrap our own intelligence because we have not invented this practice yet.

This is a very exciting area with portals, personalization, collaborative filters, legacy system & ERP integration, personal blogs and RSS feeds taking much of the limelight. There sure is a delicate balance between finding people that know (+ having social capital) and providing instant access (wireless?) to the many information stores. In the end, I feel having informal communities that filter, massage, refresh and validate all the information, and a solid network of brokers to link across those communities, is the way to go.

Reflection & retrospects

Group reflection is a powerful way to surface insights, assumptions and issues. Knowledge practices that support & encourage reflection, evaluation, validation and critique can be very powerful.

As a knowledge facilitator, setting a finite date and switching the group conversation from divergence to convergence is one of the few areas where knowledge dynamics can be 'managed'. Doug Engelbart suggested this technique is key for intelligence augmentation and talked about idea cycles, bringing closure and building shared meaning / understanding before embarking on the next phase of information seeking, brainstorming and divergence.

'Forcing' a periodic review, building on the previous generation of ideas, where you have persistent conversations, is indeed a great practice to leverage learning and help newbies. This practice is also highly valuable to occasional visitors, as they can quickly catch-up and then drill-down to aspects of the conversation that catch their fancy.

Explicit idea generations is a key on-line and corporate memory ritual that runs like this:

* (birth) suggest a topic and create an attractor ==>

* (growth & development) brainstorm / divergence & dialog ==>

* (maturity) summary, reflection, & critique of suggested directions ==>

* (validation and learning) testing, creative abrasion & new alignment ==>

* next cycle i.e. continue the dialog using past synthesis as the departure platform.

Convergence / divergence is well known from the creative problem solving and decision making literature, and is widely practiced in design shops and creative thinking workshops. The cycles may be long e.g. start and end of a significant project (BPs retrospects), US Army AARs or faster paced e.g. a day or two (OODA loops). The power lies in the summary, evaluation and the critique, then the new start.

The key then seems to be finding ways to turn over ideas faster, cycling through generations of divergence / convergence, while putting sufficient energy into reflection, synthesis, critique and learning before embarking on new exploration, orientation and meme mixing.

Would be interested to hear what participants have experienced, how they scheduled or directed changes in thinking and conversational dynamics and if they see this as an important knowledge related activity.

Nurturing & sustaining knowledge

If you ask what is needed to create knowledge, gather and evaluate insights, collect and synthesize new perspectives you are likely to be met with blank stares or stony silence in most KM spaces

So what works for you?

* Crafting distinctions and bringing forth new worlds?

* Holding pattern writers workshops, creating a lingua franca and building a pattern language?

* Developing a joint ontology to gain alignment and leverage communication?

* Holding group inquiry, building a persistent conversation and reflection to surface hidden assumptions & truths?

* Building and sharing social networks along which knowledge can flow?

* Practicing creative abrasion and deep dialog to strengthen your identity and articulate your tacit knowledge

* Participating in a knowledge community, searching for gaps and arranging continuous learning through mentoring and selective events hosted by thought leaders?

* Engaging in e-Learning, to gain more knowledge from cohorts and availing yourself of excellent cyber coaching?

* Annealing a communal 'journal' or group blog to capture group memory and articulate & store information in reified artifacts?

* Have been collecting my thoughts on knowledge and learning in Wiki stop by and share your POV.

Distance learning principles

Thoughts on knowledge