In the previous blog post I have explained how we have started a networking opportunity without extensive planning or consultation. It was within our mandate, and on request from the organisational community we mobilise it. Of course, there were concerns – such as will people be interested to attend apart from the 3 ‘mavericks’ who served as the trigger for such an initiative? Will they make time to attend these? And will it deliver enough value and impact to warrant ongoing organisational support and legitimisation? Was the organisation ready for this?
Or to ask the question differently – was there a learning culture in the organisation underpinning the success of such an initiative? Nancy Dixon proposes an interesting view on this in her book Common Knowledge (2000). She states that it is a myth that the exchange of knowledge happens only in organisations that have a non-competitive or collaborative culture. It is, hence not a prerequisite to first fix the culture and then get people to share. Let people start to share about issues they see as really important, then the sharing itself will create a learning culture.
Again, do not wait for the prerequisites often cited in KM writings. I continually learn – if you can get the people together, then you can have the trust that the knowledge will flow – and it always does, if it is something they care about and that is important. And if it does not flow – then you should find a way to introduce a different issue into the conversation and network.
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Tags: Conversations, Knowledge Management, Knowledge sharing
We have recently launched an initiative that provides the opportunity to anyone in the organisation to join so-called Street-smart conversations. The initiative was mobilised on request from some organisational members, who felt the need to find out how others get it done – how they are able to navigate and deal with the challenges been living in the ’streets’ aka the organisation. As I have heard someone saying – “I am tired too answer all my questions myself – it is just to0 hard.”
We started without a big pre-amble of planning, approvals, motivations and so forth. This was within our mandate to create more contactivity between organisational members, and to contribute to the strengthening of the knowledge (sharing) culture of the organisation. So – the requestors provide a list of potential topics, we arranged the sessions, and so the street-smart conversations start to take place…
And this is now interesting, that this are indeed delivering on the expectations of a network, as setout by Rob Cross in a special study for the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management (cited in The Future of Knowledge by Verna Allee, 2003). They identified five ways in which networking facilitates creation and use of knowledge -
(1) People get answers to their questions, both know-what and know-how.
(2) The receive meta-knowledge: pointers to domains of knowledge, databases, and people.
(3) They find ways to reformulate their problems.
(4) They receive affirmation and vlidations of their plans or solutions.
(5) They gain symbolism (prestige) from contact with a repsected person.
We did not have to do any engineering or hire fancy facilitators or structure the conversation to attain the above – we just have to create the opportunity for networking and conversation. The challenge is how to attract people to join in the network and conversations, and how to sustain the momentum and value to participants. The desired response should be that people now longer ask ‘where will I find the time for just another event adding to my load’, but rather ” I cannot afford to miss these conversations”. Idealistic I know…
Another challenge is the follow-up and follow – through on issues coming forth from these conversations – such as aspects that management may need to be aware of and attend to. This should be from within the network, and the network should decide how to take these forward.
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Tags: Conversation, knowledge creation, Knowledge Leadership, Knowledge Management, knowledge networks
In an interesting get-together today with Sonja from The Narrative Lab we discussed the current concerns in South African organisations regarding a skills void, and the associated risk. One such manifestation is for instance in the credit risk decisions in the lending operations of a bank – due to lack of experience, the judgement and intuition of credit assessors is not what it should be, and they approve loans that should have been rejected. Due to the lack of a repertoire of experience, they are not able to detect underlying patterns and often weak signals of risks that would have been detected by seasoned credit assessors.
Three underlying causes contribute to this void in deep or intuitive skill. Firstly, the current organisational design does not allow people to start working in a branch, and then to follow a path to a credit department. They are not afforded with the opportunity to operate at the interface where the ramifications of decisions and patterns underlying credit risks can be directly observed. Secondly – people are fast tracked due to a shortage of workers (and various reasons can be quoted for this dilemma). The third underlying cause is high mobility of workers – not only within a line fo work (such as credit rating), but also between lines of specialisation. This is impacting depth of experience which influence intuition and judgement.
There are several ‘prescriptions’ to threat this risk – retention of the knowledge body (talent management, staff retention strategies etc), skill transfer initiatives (mentoring, coaching, grey beards (I do prefer the term grey heads:)), accute attention to codify the ‘wisdom’ of seasoned credit rators into training programs etc). These are, however, all based on the understanding of knowledge as a possession – someone possesses the requisite knowledge. The focus is hence on either keeping the possession within the firm by keeping the ‘possessor’ or by facilitation the process to posess this knowledge.
An alternative (or it could also be a complimentary) perspective would be that of knowledge formation – here the focus shift from the individual as possessor of knowledge, and external containers of knowledge, to the community as the all-important site of knowledge formation. In stead of focus on replicating insights, implying that first these insights must be made replicable (elicit, transfer), the focus shifts to the co-production of ‘new’ insights – insights that are new to the community, although it may have existed prior to them in the firm. The grey heads in this instance takes on a community roles or roles in the social network. It will also entail different tactics – such as simulation, or case studies from within the community.
This thinking is based on the Architectures of Knowledge: Firms, Capabilities, and Communities (2004) by Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet.
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Tags: knowledge retention, knowledge transfer, skills
In stead of focusing on “this is knowledge management”, we have opted for identifying a few labels to represent our aspirational identity when presenting to the stakeholder communities.
* A catalyst for knowledge – to create, stimulate, energise, amplify the reaction between two or more agencies or actors in such a way that new meaning is created and/or connections/ relations are build that will afford the relational context for ongoing knowledge reactions.
* An hub for knowledge – a focus point that people associate with knowledge dynamics – building new knowledge, sharing knowledge, connecting knowledge, exchanging knowledge. We are planning to extend the notion of a hub to be the focal point for advise and skills to facilitate these knowledge dynamics and associated knowledge environments and knowledge ecologies.
* A space for knowledge – a space that affords meaningful knowledge encounters, and a space that people will visit looking for such encounters.
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An interesting paradox – they want people to connect, but sometimes interruptions are not welcome
One of the premises of the Knowledge Commons at the CSIR, was to provide a space where people who are physically dispersed over a large campus in various buildings, will be able to make contact and connect in such a common area. For that purpose, a restaurant will be part of the Knowledge Commons and there is also a nice open area with a loungy-feel to it. The flow of the building design was also took into consideration this intent for serendipitious contactivity.
And that it is exactly what is starting to happen. For instance, when people are at the Knowledge Commons for a session, they will see others during breaks and have good conversations which otherwise would not have happened.
But, in some circumstance people need to pay attention to their guests, and then the occasional contact with a fellow collegue could be disruptive.
How should we respond to this concern? You cannot regulate the open spaces to make it exclusive for some sessions. That will be too contradictionary to the intent and design philosophy behind the Knowledge Commons.
Through discussions with collegues there seems to be two options - encourage the organisation to develop some signals to indicate that you are not open to this type of contact at the moment and secondly to consider to alter the architecture where possible to allow for more private open spaces.
When we design architectures, social architectures, anything – we need also to consider that anti-patterns to the patterns we are designing for. In this case there is a natural anti-pattern to the driving pattern of serendiptious contactivity – namely focused and uninterrupted conversations in an open space. Then you have to decide if this (potential) anti-pattern is desrible or not. If not – the design should not encourage it. It will not always be possible to design to avoid this undesirable anti-pattern, and that could also be too restrictive. If it is a desirable pattern – then you have to consider in the design if you want to enourage or amplify it, or just leave the design that will allow for it, but not encourage it.
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Tags: knowledge spaces
An interesting insight from our latest Cafe Conversation at the KM Practitioners Group in Pretoria last week, was the difference of response of males and females in conversations.
Men tend to tell stories to top the last story - Oh, that is nothing… wait until you hear this one….
Women have a tendency to associate with stories – Oh, I can relate to that, let me tell you what happened to me…
Not that I am a great supporter of such stereotyping, but it does explain some dynamics in such conversations.
One of the best parts of the experience was, however, when one of the subject matter experts during the reflection shared with the group how deep one of the questions hit him – it was the question that made him really think, and that he takes home as a new perspective on his endeavours of more than seven years. This is what true conversations are – everyone can learn, and sometimes you can learn more from an honest question than expert answers.
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Tags: Conversations, KMPG, Narrative
My 7 year old nephew recently played his first Sevens Rugby Game. Now you know how serious a rugby game is for a seven year old. After some time on the field, and when hearing the whistle again he looked at the referee and said “How can we score points, if you keep on blowing the whistle.” Needless to say, this created for amusement around the field. But this also made me think…
Do we sometimes blow the whistle too often and too early in our work situation. We often use the terms ‘control freak’ or ‘micro manage’ – i.e. blowing the whistle frequently. As soon as someone is not doing something the way I would have done it, do I blow the whistle. Or do I allow the person to pursue a different way to get to the desired result. Or do I need to blow the whistle often because they are all milling around without purpose, since they do not really know what the purpose is? This is most likely true for 7-year olds playing their first rugby game – the passion might be there, but they still need to discover the game plan. And this team felt that there was too much control – they want to score points and experience that sense of achievement – my team’s score on the score board. Do we sometimes want so much a team to play a proper game, that we frustrate them not been able to get points on the scoreboard?
That does not mean that we should never blow the whistle. We should just be mindful as to when and why we are doing it. Is it to provide them with the opportunity to break from a milling going nowhere, and to find new structure in the game bu themselves? Is it to protect them from others not playing fair? Or do we blow the whistle because they did not play the game plan we prescribed?
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Dear KM Practitioner
It is time for our next Café Conversation. It is our pleasure to invite you to a Fish Bowl conversation around
“Why is KM working (better) in some organisations,
and not (that easily) in others.”
The following experts will be joining us as anchors in the conversation –
- Gerrie Lok (ESKOM)
- Melanie Sutton (IQ Group)
- Sharon van Biljon (IBM)
- Roland Wagner (I-Kno Solutions)
Fishbowls involve a small group of people seated in circle and having a conversation (fish). They are surrounded by a larger group of observers, seated in an outer circle (bowl). The facilitator or subject matter expert gives a short input of 5-10 minutes which sets out the general outline of the discussion and after that the inner circle starts to discuss. The outer circle usually listens and observes. Whenever someone wants to participate and move to the inner circle, a participant from the fishbowl must free a chair and move to the outer circle. (http://itcilo.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/facilitate-a-fishbowl- discussion/).
As with our previous Café Conversation we will also reflect on this format during the last part of the session.
When: WEDNESDAY, 10 June 2009; 08:00 for 08:15 start until 10:30 (or later for those who want to network some more)
Where: CSIR, Building 22 (For directions, click http://tinyurl.com/cg28ks). Entrance @ Gate 3 North Gate.
RSVP: Before Friday, 5 June 2009 – Please go to http://www.prohmote.com/ecdb05e1 to register for the event (it is quick – no site registration required). Or alternatively, please send an email to ebester@csir.co.za to RSVP. Guests also welcome. What about inviting your manager to join?
Facilitor: Aiden Choles from The Narrative Lab
Sharing our stories…
It all started with the following message on the KMPG Forum
Benchmarking
23 September, 2008 – 15:09 — Jeanette A M Seko
Hello All
I have recently joined Momentum and working on a Knowledge Management project. The one o f the objective is that our project should be of world standard therefore we are looking for companies/organisations that have a KM system in place, to see if we are on the right track.
Thank you to Jeanette for sharing the rest of the story…
When you are new in an industry and still trying to find your feet life gets very difficult. However my experiences were really amazing. By using the social networks available we (Nicolette Botha and myself) managed to communicate with one of the best people in Knowledge Management. I was very surprised by the welcome and the openness I got from them. After requesting an meeting with Marina she openly welcomed us to Multi Choice and the knowledge that she shared with us was more than I have learned in a all my training. It was a great experience, even after she left we still had contact with Lameshnee who when we needed to show our team their website she was more than willing to accommodate us.
In later months we went to IBM and Sharon was more than willing to assist and share her experiences with us, this made it easy for us to be able to show our IT section the benefit and scope of Knowledge Management. When we moved from one manager to another we sourced the help of Judi whom we met with our current Manager and she explained Knowledge Management to us in a more practical sense. It is these benchmark, mentoring and discussion that made our Knowledge Management journey exciting and interesting, and with all this it became clear that KM is not a science you can practice alone you need experienced people by your side to help you when you fall.
Regards,
Elmi Bester
Regional Facilitator – Pretoria
Knowledge Management Practitioners Group www.KMPractitioners.com
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Tags: KMPG; South Africa
I have recently started in a new job as the Manager of the CSIR Knowledge Commons – a facility that was build to afford a space for the CSIR to nurture and develop research, collaboration – both multidisplinary but especially trans-disciplinary – and science dialogue. Albeit from been confronted with a new facility with not yet an established flow of operations, this is also a new direction in my career – part of the job content is to host events at the venue. So what is happening is that I have started to build a model of behaviour and support required around the first few events. This model was not that successful today – the experience for one of the events was not what it should have been or could have been. We did everything we did for the other events, so what was different…
The other events were self-sufficient in terms of their technological support – we just need to show them once how to operate the projectors and off they go. Actually – they do not want interference and prefer to drive the system themselves. The additional support required in terms of the setup of presentations for this event today was not that unexpected or a real problem. So – that still was not the real difference. After some reflection I realised what the difference was – the other meetings were closer related to boardroom type of meeting, and the others have dedicated event co-ordinators taking care of the detail arrangements and attention. This event from today was something in-between – it was not really a boardroom meeting, but there was also not a professional event co-ordinator. So their expectation was that the Knowledge Commons will fill in with the welcoming of people in the morning on arrival and also taking care of there needs during breaks etc. For instance, the organising committee all arrived just in time for the session to start. To date (due to various reasons) the events co-ordinator would take care of these – and to note that they will be early at the venue welcoming the people and guide them and help them to settle in. So this was unexpected and we were not prepared. We could respond to some extend, but since we did not anticipate this we were not really geared for this.
The knowledge lesson from this story – my repertoire of events in this specific facility is still limited and their is not a real prior model to fall back on since the approach is that it is not really a conference centre neither a facility focused on training or a boardroom. It is a space for knowledge that needs to find it owns identity. There are common event management experiences that would have helped – I just have not yet been exposed to these or been aware that I need to learn from others about this. I have regular interactions with people in the organisation that is doing related things – such as the Conference Centre and Events Practitioners, and am receiving invaluable input and advise from them. It is just that for today’s event i have not asked the right questions yet… I did not realise I need to ask these…
Next week I want to make a coffee date and ask them to share their stories and experiences of different type of groups and expectations so that I will be able to notice such a scenario earlier next time and can adapt faster and do the right things.
And I have a suspicion that may have shared as such with me already – I was just not receptive at that point in time.
As Benjamin Zander would say – “How fascinating”. I am looking forward to new learnings and new understandings… and to share stories with others to help to build up a relevant repertoire for events so that I can anticipate and adapt to make each event and each experience a great experienc! And of course - reducing my stress levels and frustrations.
Filed under: Knowledge, Knowledge Management | 1 Comment
Tags: Knowledge Practices, Knowledge Worker, Learning
KMPG Pretoria News – May 2009
Dear Km Practitioner
After various long weekends, it is now back to normal. Herewith your invitation for our monthly session in May – taking us back to basics.
Theme
Research Methodology: a powerful start and ongoing process to your KM initiatives
Knowledge Management (KM) is research intensive. From the initial phases of a KM initiative which may include the development of a KM strategy to post-acceptance and implementation phases, Research Methodology plays a crucial role.
This presentation will share with KMPG members the basic tenants of Research Methodology as well as a case study of RM in action in developing a KM strategy for a government department.
Roland Wagner will be the presenter. He gained consulting experience on various assignments in Europe and South Africa. Whilst involved with LEAN Six Sigma and TQM consulting, he realised then that there was an increasing interest in Knowledge Management (KM) at Fortune 500 clients. Roland became interested in KM in 2000, and completed for his Masters Degree in KM at the University of Stellenbosch.
Currently Roland heads the KM consulting unit at i-Kno knowledge solutions which is situated at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria. At i-Kno he has headed the KM teams developing KM strategies for the Department of Science and Technology and the Film and Publication Board.
When: WEDNESDAY, 13 May 2009; 08:00 for 08:15 start until 10:30 (or later for those who want to network some more)
Where: CSIR, Knowledge Commons, Building 53, (For directions, click http://tinyurl.com/cg28ks). Entrance @ Gate 3.
RSVP: Before Friday, 8 May 2009 – Please go to http://www.prohmote.com/a89e6b82 to register yourself and guests for the event (it is quick – no site registration required). Or alternatively, please send an email to elmi@kmpractitioners.com to RSVP
Next topic
Café Conversation – we are planning a Fish Bowl event. Aiden Choles from The Narrative Lab will facilitate this session – Wednesday, 10 June 2009.
The theme will be “Why does KM works (better) in some organisations, and not (that easily) in others.” We are in the process to finalise a panel of experts with real and longer term experience with KM in different industries.
It was also interesting that in the recent weeks, there were quite a few tweets on Twitter referring to blog reflextions on Knowledge Management …
· JBordeaux: Thank you for the comments – both public and private – for the Day DoD #KM Died. http://tinyurl.com/cgxvbl
· KM_guy: #KM Great insight from “Above and Beyond KM” – “Off-Route, Recalculate” http://tinyurl.com/crqmuq
· DavidGurteen: Nancy Dixon on the history of #KM http://tinyurl.com/d4esgc
· Stevebarth: What’s wrong with defining knowledge management? Why 62 bad #KM definitions are better than 1 good one http://bit.ly/MNRwe
What would your tweet be?
Follow KMPG_SA on Twitter
Regards,
Regional Facilitator – Pretoria
Knowledge Management Practitioners Group www.KMPractitioners.com
Follow KMPG_SA on Twitter
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