Never too early for KM

It's never too early to develop good knowledge Management habits. 

Read more on the KANAVA International website.

Conversations among KM Practitioners

The soon to be renamed Knowledge Management Association - DC Chapter held its monthly face-to-face meeting yesterday.  John Hovell facilitated a knowledge cafe starting us of with a short informal presentation on what he sees as a a set of trends leading to convergence of Knowledge Management, Organization Development, Diversity and Inclusion, and Systems Thinking (not sure I'm remembering this last one correctly but Systems Thinking was discussed in the mix).

In my mind, it's not so much that any convergence is really happening across disciplines, it's just that Knowledge Management has always been interdisciplinary and therefore crosses many other disciplines. Someone interested in Artificial Intelligence is probably observing a convergence between KM and AI.  We all approach KM from our personal framework, disciplinary background and professional experience. 

At the center of this convergence framework, John put the concept of conversational leadership.

As a tangent, I was also scanning through Kimiz Dalkir's Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice (3rd Edition) and I was struck by the number of KM models and frameworks presented. Clearly, there is no consensus on how to look at KM simply because it is so interdisciplinary. I also like the way Chun Wei Choo looks at it in  The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge and Make Decisions. Choo approaches KM from an information science perspective without making it about IT.

I hope we can continue the conversation within the Knowledge Management Community and I would recommend that we focus on the concept of conversational leadership to explore it further. It's not new. It deserves re-visiting.

Conversations don't solve everything but they embody both the simplicity and complexity of human interactions. What is it about conversations that is so powerful? From a practical standpoint, how can we, as KM professionals, introduce "effective" conversations in the workplace? When we say "effective conversation" what does that mean? How do conversations relate to another KM tool, storytelling? Is that part of a bigger theme of narratives? I could keep going with questions and how things relate to each other.

How do conversations facilitate the transformation of individual knowledge into team and organizational knowledge? How can I integrate conversational leadership skills as a learning objective in classes I teach (both face-to-face and online)? If your job focuses on employee engagement then you'd be asking how do conversations support employee engagement.

Metrics Anecdote

Here is a short, very simple fictional (adapted from reality) anecdote about metrics in the realm of knowledge management.

"Barbara, how many workshops have we done in the past 8 years?"
"Let me check.... 25."
"We've done 25 workshops in the past 8 years?"
"Yes."

And the number 25, whatever it means, is now a data point for someone in management who needed to know how many workshops we have implemented.  Someone needed numbers.  To say "we conduct knowledge sharing workshops" isn't the same as "we have conducted 25 knowledge sharing workshops in the past 8 years."  And yet, that number is meaningless.  Here's why.

"Barbara, how many workshops have we done in the past 8 years?"
"Probably more than 20. Why do you ask?"
"I need to document our activities with some quantitative metrics."
"Oh, then the total number of workshops isn't that relevant or useful because we used to do full day workshops and now we do half-day workshops and sometimes they're just 90-minute workshops, so workshops aren't all the same."
"Is there a better way to show that we have done a lot of good work with these workshops?"
"How about counting the individual sessions rather than the full workshops?  In those 20+ workshops, we've addressed 115 distinct topics in sessions lasting anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours."
"Thanks.  That's useful."
"You're welcome.  We also have attendance data and ....."
"Thanks.  I think the number of topics is good enough for now."
"Well... it would be nice to know in advance what metrics are of interest to management.  I keep metrics that are relevant to me for the purpose of improving the workshops."

Lesson/Insight

• When asked for metrics, understand the rationale for the request.  Ask questions (without sounding defensive or overprotective of data).
• Avoid surprise requests for data by pro-actively engaging management in the determination of valuable metrics to be collected.
• Don't just answer a question with data that you know is going to be misleading without further explanation, but do make an effort to be responsive and answer the question honestly. 

Research Project: KM in Small Organizations

During my Year of Learning, I plan on conducting some research as an ongoing project.  It will directly feed two of my goals (learning and network building) and it will be a longer term, indirect investment in a third goal (making a living).

At this point, I know I want to look at small organizations and knowledge management.  I started an initial literature review which will hopefully allow me to get closer to a meaningful set of questions.

As of January 2017, here are some thoughts:

• Most of the literature on how to implement successful knowledge management strategies applies to larger organizations;
• Small organizations may not perceive as much of a need for knowledge management if they see it as something that only benefits larger, more complex organizations with more significant barriers to internal information and knowledge flows or if they see it as something they can't afford to even consider.  That could happen if they understand knowledge management primarily from an IT perspective or as something necessarily complex and too daunting to tackle.
• My hypothesis is that small organizations could benefit significantly from embracing knowledge management practices to directly and quickly strengthen themselves and position themselves for greater impact and potential growth (if growth is what they are seeking).

Questions

1. What constitutes a "small" organization?  Are there any relevant thresholds in terms of size and impact of Knowledge Management?
2. What would be the most appropriate research approach?  Would it be useful to compare very small (5-50) to small (51-200) organizations?  What kind of sample size can I realistically consider for a 12-months project?  (10-20 organizations).  How about just a couple of more in-depth case studies?
3. What types of small organizations do I want to focus on?  There is some limited literature on KM in SMEs, but I want to focus on a rather unique class of organizations, small non-profit organizations working in the field of international development.  I'm not even sure I want to limit myself to non-profits.  The characteristic I want to focus on is "resource constrained," whether they are technically non-profits or not.  A small start-up for-profit organization trying to bring innovation to the field of international development (if that exists) is probably resource constrained in similar ways as a non-profit.  For the initial research, (probably self-funded), I would focus on organizations in the US.  Of course, it would be even more interesting to extend this to study/work with the partner organizations, those working in various countries under even more resource constrained environments.  
4. If this is all based on pro bono collaboration, where do I draw the line in terms of research vs. providing advice (i.e., consulting services)?
5. How do I find the right balance between what I want to study and what they need most? I have an interest in conducting research, but I'm primarily a practitioner, not an academic. I'm most interested in research that will have immediate applicability in terms of providing valuable support to the organizations I work with.   Everything I have done so far in planning has been very "me-oriented" because I have focused on articulating my own goals and interests.  This will change so that it is the real needs of small organizations that are ultimately served.   

Questions 1 through 3 will sort themselves out based on the findings of the initial literature review, some initial contacts, and pragmatism.

Questions 4 and 5 will only be answered by having open conversations with potential partner organizations for this research, making my intent and objectives very clear upfront and putting an agreement in writing regarding the scope of each party's involvement and responsibilities.

________________

PS:  I am reading an old copy of George Orwell's 1984.  We have two copies in the house.  My copy is a French version I read in the year 1984 while a newly minted immigrant to the US, attending the French High School in New York City (which explains why I was still reading it in French).  It has my old (212) telephone number printed on the inside cover.  The second copy is an English edition that one of my daughters read in middle school.  

KM and Design Thinking

Some thoughts generated by a meeting of the Knowledge Management Association (KMA) - DC Chapter on October 30th with a presentation/discussion with Arno Boersma and Barbara Bitondo:

• The session was titled "Why Design Thinking Will Save KM".  I was reading “design thinking” and my brain was registering “systems thinking” until the day of the event. Essentially, we’re talking about a different way of thinking about KM.  KM could benefit from both design thinking and systems thinking if they were integrated in some way.  That will require more percolations. For now I see design thinking as an interesting way of applying a new way of thinking to get us possibly unstuck from the general “KM is dead” malaise. KM has been supposedly dead or dying for as long as I've been in this field (close to 20 years) so I'm not too concerned. Sometimes as a cadre of professionals, we may need to unlearn, get rid of our assumptions and what we believe we’ve learned.

• What’s special about design thinking? The focus on the people, the end-users.  The term end-user suggests that there is a KM “system” to be used.  User experience also suggests a system or tool to be “used.”  If we want to focus on people, I think we need to focus on how people think, how they use their brains, not how they use any specific tool or system.
• If design thinking can help KM folks understand how people behave around information and how they create and share information to generate knowledge, that’s great.  I’m a little skeptical about simply observing what people do because there is a lot going on in someone’s head that doesn’t necessarily show up in observable actions.  There would be added benefit, however, in asking people to think about how they handle information and how they share their knowledge.  Can we apply cognitive task analysis (CTA) without making it all about how they navigate a website? In the end, the task may not involve “using” anything other than their brain and their voice in a valuable conversation over coffee (See Chris Collison’s article “Is this Knowledge Management’s most effective tool?”).
• In the spirit of learning from other disciplines and cross-pollination, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look again at theories of adult learning/andragogy.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel there either by starting from scratch with design thinking.
• Agile this, agile that, and finally, agile KM.  Is that not the same as applying the rapid results methodology to KM?
                                                          

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Here is the corresponding map for this post.  Unfortunately, I can only publish the maps as images at this time and therefore the links embedded in the map will not work.

Click to open in a separate window and enlarge.

Videos as Knowledge Products

Update: See a similar post: Video Video on Danegeld.

I've been bookmarking videos on knowledge management.  People in knowledge management often argue that any face-to-face meeting needs to be recorded so that those who didn't attend might be able to benefit from the meeting as well.  I'm skeptical.  Face-to-face meetings are meant to be interactive.  If you're in the room, you have the ability to interact and the option to stay quiet.  If you're watching the video 12 months later on YouTube or some other service, there is a temptation to multitask (I'm writing this blog post while listening to a video recording of a 45 minute talk on personal knowledge management that is meandering and not getting to the point).  In a face-to-face setting, I am very tolerant of meandering presentations.  If I am watching a video and it's not getting to the point fast enough, I will start multitasking and then almost immediately stop listening.

There is a place for video products, but when we videotape a live lecture and make it available online, what percentage of the benefits of the live lecture do we lose?  I'm not even talking of the networking benefits involved in personally attending the event face-to-face and talking to speakers and participants.

Here is a collection of links to videos on Knowledge Management themes. (click on the pearl)

  

Knowledge Areas for KM Professionals

This visual has nothing to do with a rigorous analysis of what a KM curriculum would need to address but it has a lot to do with areas/fields/topics I've encountered while DOING knowledge management. I've highlighted Personal Knowledge Management in bold because it ended up in the middle of my arrangement of bubbles somehow and it is often neglected and ignored by KM programs. I've used a loose coloring scheme to differentiate things that were strictly KM (ugly green) from IT-related items (light purple), from individual-focused items (red line) and organization-level focus.

Embedding KM

Finally something on KM that rings true and is of immediate relevance to my work.  Nick Milton's blog post on "The failure to Embed KM" is, in my opinion, spot on. 

At a recent conference, I pointed out that embedding KM in work processes was critical to the success of KM initiatives.   People in the audience picked it up as an important insight, yet the conversation didn't go very deep.  I certainly didn't have much more than a general statement to offer. It's an issue we continue to struggle with.

It's one thing to start a KM program and implement a set of "successful" KM activities.  It's another to get to the point where KM is just something people do as part of their work rather than something the KM office does.

I suspect that the way KM initiatives are introduced and managed has a significant impact on the level of difficulty encountered in embedding KM activities in routine work processes.  In essence, the stronger the KM program, the more difficult it is to shift from KM led by a KM office to KM as everyone's responsibility. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it?