A knowledge manager's musings

Notes, reflections and thread finding as I map knowledge management

[shiggison]

sharing our research threads at KMUK

For the past couple of weeks, we've been getting ready for KMUK, Ark Group's annual knowledge management event that Victoria is chairing. We're taking with us a snapshot of our research so far into the evolution of the knowledge manager to share with delegates and speakers. I'm curious to see how it resonates with everyone.

It's still strange to be this side of the Ark Group coin after spending a good few years working there in the early/mid-noughties. It's the experiences I collected while working on Inside Knowledge and then at Aon and Ernst & Young that have helped me pick out 11 (I couldn't settle on 10) threads that run through the conversations we've been having.

We've turned these themes into a series of statements to share among the tables of delegates. We don't necessarily agree with them all, but we hope they'll spark discussion and uncover new anecdotes that illustrate other KM challenges or successes.

I won't go into too much detail here, but will give a full account after the conference with Paul. In case you're curious, here are our top-11 thrands (an accidental portmanteau - threads and strands - invented while catching up with Khal on the research). We'd love to hear your reaction to them:

Knowledge managers must help make space for reflection and assimilation

Knowledge managers must focus on the practical and talk the language of the business rather than preach the philosophy of KM

Knowledge managers need to understand the commercial angle to their work and articulate how KM impacts business outcomes

Knowledge management initiatives must follow the organisation’s strategic direction and start at the grass roots

Social media is a powerful tool for knowledge sharing but the cultural context within an enterprise is different to the external cultural context

Mobility solutions, such as smart phones and iPads, have solved the information-access challenge

Knowledge managers have the tools to collaborate virtually across geographies but lack the capabilities to use them successfully

The link between cause and effect for knowledge initiatives is difficult to articulate

Knowledge managers should focus on just-in-time rather than just-in-case KM as we can’t predict and capture what people will need

Knowledge managers should recognise critical points in the employee lifecycle are new hires and leavers

The skills, behaviours and characteristics of a successful knowledge manager have changed dramatically over the past 10 years

And if you're going to be at KMUK, do say hello. It's a while since I was last at a KM conference so I'm hoping there'll be some friendly faces. And if you want to follow from afar, I'll be tweeting at @shiggison.

First published on the Sparknow blog.

[shiggison]

“The whole world is being reorganised in my head”

At dinner this week, my friend Megan pointed out that I have not reported back on my interview with Manuel Flury from SDC in Bern, which is very true and remiss on my part. The full profile is waiting to be written but as I'd been a little nervous of the approach we chose to take, here are my reflections on how we collected Manuel's KM story.

Manuel met me from Bern train station at midday. He is a tall, bearded gentleman with an open, friendly face and, like many continental Europeans, has an impressive grasp of English (among other languages). We spent the first hour or so talking over a pizza and salad, and then continued the interview walking around his beautiful city.

There was barely a cloud in the sky. The warm sunshine on the 15th-century architecture, tree-covered mountains and the startlingly green-blue river Aare has left me with an enduring technicolour image of Bern.

Beginning the interview at a restaurant felt more natural: table, dictaphone and face-to-face interaction all at hand. But I’m not a fan of interviewing over food. It’s rather unfair on the interviewee who can’t eat and talk, and ends up wolfing down mouthfuls in between questions. The interruptions are also harder to control with waiters, noisy neighbours, jarring music, and, in this instance, a local TV crew filming chefs tossing pizza dough beside our table.

We covered a lot and I quickly realised how little I know about the world of international development. Thankfully, the recording played back Manuel’s stories and examples pretty clearly and we continued talking while walking around Bern for the next couple of hours.

The lapel mic securely fastened, I put my faith back in the dictaphone, and this time upped my listening and retention skills as I no longer had a pad for scribbling questions or comments.

Natural flows and pauses

Replaying the recordings, I can hear a definite difference in the tone, speed and flow of our conversation. At the restaurant we struggled to hear each other and Manuel’s voice seems more forced and his answers almost come in chunks. While walking, his words seem freer and more fluid, he speech slows and his pitch is more natural. I had been worried about distractions. But just as we walked from one spot to the next, pausing to take in the vibrant views or for a snippet of local history, it was easy to pick up our thread again.  And as I learnt about the system of Swiss cantons and social hierarchies, his recollections of when he first encountered Sparknow at a conference in the Hague moved easily to SDC’s initial work with story, his thoughts on locked frames and measurement practices, and onto his hopes for the future. Listening back, the background noises don’t interrupt but rather help me remember my reactions to Manuel’s projects or his opinions on KM. The echo from an enclosed alley, my gasp as I see the river Aare for the first time, birds singing, children laughing at the bears, the blustery wind when walking by the water. In total, we talked for about four hours. There is no way we would have been able to do that sitting in one space, especially not a sterile meeting room. While walking we had natural pauses that allowed us to take a break from the interview without it affecting the flow. When working in an office or at home, I have to go outside and do something different to clear my head and come back to projects with fresh eyes. Interviewing outside felt like I was both working and creating space in my head at the same time. We ended the interview over coffee at an open-roofed café/bar right over the Aare. It gave Manuel the opportunity to show me photos of a nomad, his object that he says reflects his work with knowledge, and some slides he uses to explain knowledge. More of which in the proper write up. As I headed home on the train along the coast of Lake Geneva I jotted down what had stood out from Manuel’s experiences and lessons learnt, which I hope will give a nice taster of what’s to come:

Focus on practice over concepts and philosophies

Find the momentum in the organisation – that’s where you focus knowledge management

You can’t measure everything through direct relationships. What will be the impact on innovation and knowledge sharing from excessive reporting and planning?

Create legitimacy and credibility for your work – prove yourself and build on the trust

KM is closely tied to learning and quality

You can’t force change

Don’t talk about KM, use the language of the business

Work with the grassroots

Be known for something: KM at SDC is well known for its facilitation skills, which helps to get KM involved in many meetings

The Swiss system of direct democracy where everyone represents themselves also has an impact on knowledge sharing

Don’t underestimate how well you need to know or understand the organisation to be successful with KM

The quote I’ve used as the headline is how Manuel describes his ‘aha!’ moment when the power of storytelling clicked for him. Having been nervous about the logistics of this outdoor interview, I’ve adopted it too. I knew it would be different, but I don’t think I realised the impact that walking while talking would have on the content, its pace, how I listened and what I took away.

Also posted on the Sparknow blog.

[shiggison]

Why Kindles leave me cold

I keep seeing people with ebook readers on the tube and it looks so uninspiring. Here’s what I think you’re missing with a Kindle and why my shelves will always be full:

The weight, thickness and texture of a book is part of the story

You can’t glance at a shelf of ebooks and know which one’s most loved

Heavily broken spines are a far better review than a five-star rating

Forgotten, makeshift bookmarks from train tickets, receipts and letters, scrawled notes in margins, underlined words, numbers from phone-held-between-ear-and-shoulder conversations

Handwriting that isn’t your own

Tears, stains and creases, sand stuck in the glue, dog-eared, warped and crumpled pages

An author’s illegible signature

Books hold the reader’s story too.

[shiggison]

Preparing for a walk and talk

11:50am 19 April 2011

Manuel Flury heads the Knowledge and Learning Processes Division at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), part of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. A long-time friend of Sparknow, there was never any doubt that we would seek his insights for The Evolving Role of the Knowledge Worker; the question was how best to conduct this knowledge exchange to do his experiences justice. From a short introductory conversation in March it was clear that Manuel is an open and hugely engaging person with a wealth of experiences to share. He is also about to head back out to the development field in an exciting new role in Ethiopia, which will bring his 10 years in KM at SDC to a close. A 60-minute telephone interview simply would not do. Knowing that Manuel is a keen walker and that I once put myself through the three-peak challenge, Victoria and Paul suggested we meet in Berne and do the interview while on a walk – perfect.

In preparing for this trip, my challenge has been how to capture our conversations while out and about. It wasn’t until I started thinking about the logistics that I realised how much I rely on the safety of a quiet meeting room, a recording device carefully placed on the desk in front of my interviewee, and my notebook and pens to hand. Sitting on the SBB train from Zurich airport to Berne, I’m running through my prep:

I have invested in a lapel mic for my dictaphone. I just hope that the wind, rustling from walking, birds, planes, and any other manner of aural distractions don’t obscure the stories Manuel has to share

I have a crib sheet of questions in my back pocket should I stray off on tangents. I’m bad enough when in a meeting room with a prompt sheet in front of me, who knows what might happen without that visual pull back on track

I have sturdy walking boots

And my fingers crossed

I’m curious about what difference being outside will make. I’m sure that the views of Bern, glorious sunshine (I checked the forecast last night) and fresh air will evoke deeper insights. But what difference will it make that we’ll be walking rather than bound to chairs and a desk? Could it have a negative impact that we’ll not be facing each other and are likely to have less eye contact? Will I miss anything? Will the lack of writing materials hamper me or prevent Manuel from explaining something visually? Will the million and one distractions take us off course or interrupt a critical point mid-story? Well, my train arrives in 10 minutes so I’ll report back soon.

[shiggison]

Making connections

On occasion, a man wanders round Brighton with a tiny video camera clipped to his glasses. Not because he’s working under cover or has a worrying voyeuristic streak but because he’s capturing the every day. And every day he films, he says something interesting happens.  Sam and I met about three years ago. I bought one of his paintings on a visit to the seaside and it now lives on my dining-room wall. Since then I’ve taken friends to his London viewings – Susie now has a Hewitt too. I introduced him to George when I found out his company supports artists and to Elizabeth when she was looking for art for the TechHub walls. Recently, as a thank you for “being determined to help” him, he invited me to the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea where some of his work was on sale. This was unexpected. Not the gesture, but the sentiment, because I haven’t considered myself as being determined to help. I’ve just been making connections when I see them. It’s the nature of this connection making that’s been niggling at me for some time, especially since working on the knowledge manager’s journey. I’ve always marvelled at how I will start a new project and it seems that the whole world has developed a sudden interest in the topic or I’ll meet someone under completely distinct circumstances and it happens to be their specialist subject. I used to think it was happy coincidence, but now I realise it’s the lenses we look through. I’m sure somewhere there are academic papers that go into this with far more rigor and there’s every possibility I’m just stating the bleedin’ obvious. But just as Khal, Victoria and I talk about information overload and a lack of reflection time, an article appears in McKinsey Quarterly on that very topic. And just as Sam and his camera stumble upon happenings in Brighton, all these things would have happened anyway, we just wouldn’t have been switched on to them. I am the last person to see celebrities in the street. Despite living in London I don’t expect to see them and so I don’t. I once stood next to Al Pacino for 10 minutes in a hotel bar completely oblivious (although, to be fair, he really is rather short). But it’s more than just spotting these things, there’s also an element of nurture involved and being open to making connections. Maybe Sam and I started talking about this at the show because we were sitting among so many beautiful objects with hopeful artists waiting for somebody to connect with them. Maybe it was Sam talking about how he connects the images he sees and photos he takes with the paintings he wants to create. Maybe it was because of the somewhat serendipitous way we met. But Sam had also just read Tribes by Seth Godin, which has caused him to think about the way he fosters the connections he makes and the opportunities that present themselves. I often describe my work in knowledge management as creating environments that allow people to share and find the knowledge they need, whether they know they need it or know it exists. While we can provide the conduits to knowledge and help people build their networks, everyone needs to look for, nurture and make connections for themselves. Too many times have I heard people complain that they haven’t heard about a recent project or nobody told them about a new widget that would have been invaluable. If you’re not open to making connections, if you don’t expect there to be useful knowledge outside your immediate network or don’t search for it, don’t be surprised when things don’t just fall in your lap. And if you’re in Brighton and you see a man with a tiny video camera on his glasses, for goodness’ sake do something interesting. 

Picture credit: Main Square with Car, Sam Hewitt

[shiggison]

Back to front

Last week I gave a short presentation at Publishing Expo, one of four exhibitions at Earls Court, in a session called ‘Open Source – the way forward?’ The idea was to talk about our technology decisions for the relaunch of the sharedserviceslink.com website, which went live in November and has been a big project for me since last summer.

When I first spoke to Michael Upshall from Consult MU, the session’s chair, I wasn’t sure how much I could contribute. It wasn’t a question we’d spent much time deliberating when choosing a content management system (CMS) and certainly wasn’t something I could debate with a room full of publishing professionals.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether this was even a useful question? If you’re looking for a tool to manage your content, how high up the priority list should it be whether the one you choose is open source or not?

Coming at any issue solution first will likely result in you shoe-horning your needs to its features and limitations rather than finding a tool that truly meets your needs. I’ve seen many initiatives run awry when project teams or developers lose sight of the issue they’re there to address or get carried away with adding bells and whistles to the technology. Knowledge management teams can similarly alienate people when they first meet a group to talk about how they can help and simply walk them through a long list of potential solutions: information sources, research and analysis, collaboration tools, online and classroom-based training, methods for capturing and sharing knowledge, people-finding systems, all manner of repositories, intranet pages, facilitation support, etc, etc. Chances are your group doesn’t completely understand how some of these tools can help, so dissecting and understanding their plans and objectives is a crucial first step. The most relevant solutions should start to become apparent as you talk, and your knowledge plan is born. Coming back to the CMS choice for sharedserviceslink.com, we needed a tool that would ensure the website could meet the business’ objectives to:

Build our membership base

Be an easy-to-use source of knowledge for members

Improve our search-engine ranking

Generate revenue through the site

Integrate all our channels and information sources

Support our growing product portfolio

Important additional considerations included:

Limited budget, technical skills and resources

A strong focus on content not technology

A quick turn around

Integration with other systems

A solution provider that understood our industry/business and could provide advice as well as technical skills

We opted for a proprietary tool, WorksSitebuilder, because it best met our needs and the team we’d be working with had experience we valued, not because it was proprietary. Listening to Steve Parks my, co-panelist from Code Enigma, an agency that works with Drupal, an open-source tool, we could easily have opted for his company’s services providing it had the experience and approach we wanted. I’m not saying the open source/proprietary tool debate isn’t important, but if you’re looking to get your hands around your content and you’re not a techie, which the majority of the people in the Publishing Expo audience didn’t seem to be, then I think there are other questions that need answering first. No matter what project you’re working on, coming at it solution first won’t help.

[shiggison]

Advice to a new knowledge manager: don't do it

Here's a snippet from my recent interview with Gordon Vala-Webb, National Director, Knowledge Management at PwC Canada.

We had an animated discussion on how he has seen KM evolve, the skills and tools he relies on, and the explosive impact of social media. But all of a sudden our hour was up. Before I let him dial off I squeezed in one more question that he could answer when he had more time: what advice would you give someone starting out in KM? “Easy,” he said. “Don’t do it.” And then he was gone. Not quite what I was expecting. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long for a more detailed response to appear in my inbox. Gordon’s advice to a new knowledge manager: Don’t do it because: 1) There is no money or glory

For you personally - in fact KM is likely a career-limiting move (you need to help people change, this makes them uncomfortable, especially your colleague directors)

2) There is no roadmap

There is no clarity on how to do KM within an enterprise. Everything is being invented, or reinvented, at the same time, including:

Technology, vendors, products, pricing

Business models Understanding how humans know, think, consume information and make decisions

Organisational politics and power

There is no easy way!

3) In fact KM is the hardest thing in an organisation. It is the most sophisticated management approach there is. It requires you to work across multiple disciplines (within your team and with others)

Information architecture / taxonomy / metadata

Usability / screen design

Change management / marketing / adoption

IT security / infrastructure, risk / legal

Human resource management

4) And you have to do this while:

Most people don't understand what KM is or how it works

Having to invent (or adapt) most of what you do (see no roadmap above)

Having limited internal political power and resources

But - you should do it if you want to:

Make a difference to your organisation (by breaking through the complexity barrier)

Learn a lot about many different things

Meet some really interesting people.

I wanted to share Gordon’s words now rather than wait until we’ve finished the report because I find it a comforting list. It reminds me that I’m not the only one to struggle with these challenges and it helps me remember why I got into KM in the first place. I suspect the list could be longer. I’d add that you should do it if you want to get to the heart of an organisation and really understand what makes it tick. What would you add? Finally, this nugget also reminded me of two lessons that were played back at me by Karl James at The Story in February: stories aren’t where you expect them to be (I hadn’t originally intended to ask this question and it was a snap decision to squeeze one more in before we ran out of time) and don’t switch off your recording device too early!

Owl letterpress print by the wonderful Jacqui Sharples. See more of her work here.

[shiggison]

A generous listener

Yesterday I helped create a monster. Literally. While I didn’t actually pick any of its features (eyes tangy like pickled onions, hands spindly like spaghetti, a body like a condom filled with walnuts and beautiful feet), I helped vote for its name. The Pedicurous.

I was in a room full of story tellers. Artists, designers, bloggers, authors, sculptors, photographers, role players. I had worried that I’d feel like an interloper, but I think I felt more at home at The Story than I have done at most KM events.

During the day I asked a friend to sum up his very recent trip to the US in three words. So the same challenge to me for my day at The Story:

Unexpected – but I’d had an inkling it might be

Emotional – Victoria’s use of ‘visceral’ is probably more accurate

Real – sounds trite but I can’t imagine anybody was there solely because they’d been sent by their boss. The anticipation and urge to listen and learn filled the room. And there was zero use of words like: stakeholders, quick win, leverage, traction, cost effectiveness… hurrah!

  Twenty-minute speaking slots and 15 speakers – it was destined to spill over but it also meant I had the childlike joy of immersing myself in a new story I knew nothing about and waiting to see where it would take me over and over again.   Karl James caught me off guard. Had I had any, I’d have been reaching for tissues. He’s a dialogue specialist. He collects stories and is a listener. But more than that, he’s a generous listener, which is probably the phrase I took away with me from the day.   I’m not going to try to explain his presentation when artist Eva Lottchen's a genius (Karl’s session is along the side and onto her next notepad page) and Karl recorded his rehearsal. I love looking back at my notes – what a treasure trove of nuggets for story collectors. Don’t become your story. Ask good questions. The need for rich listening is so often overlooked. Be with your questions. Shut up. The story isn’t where we expect it to be. Not everybody is used to being listened to.   With so many speakers, the organisers decided against Q&A, which, unexpectedly, I liked. I had questions but I held them in my head and they have helped with these reflections. And as it takes immense deliberation and a giant force to get my hand up in a room full of people, I could just sit and enjoy.   There’s so much more to say, but this will do for now.

[shiggison]

Spooky... or is there something in all this?

The wonderful McKinsey Quarterly seems to be on the same wavelength as us... there must be something in the water (or something to do with connections suddenly appearing when you're looking for them) as there are two pieces that resonate.

First, an article on Recovering from Information Overload. As the standfirst says: "Always-on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy." Nice!

Second, words from Tom Davenport are due next week on how we need to take a strategic approach to rethinking knowledge work. The teaser claims he will offer guidance that will "bring sanity to 21st-century knowledge work". Yes please. I'm a long-term fan of Tom's thoughts on KM so am looking forward to this immensely.

Now all I need is some time to read it all and digest what I learn from it...

[shiggison]

Space and reflection

Last week, Victoria and I met Mohammed Khalid, executive partner at Gartner (I love how that rhymes), and tucked the first interview for the Knowledge Manager’s Journey under our belts. Which is lucky, because despite meeting at Carluccio’s and being surrounded by beautifully prepared pasta, our conversation took off at such a rate that we completely failed to order any food. Before joining Gartner, Khal was global head of knowledge management at the British Council and head of IT services at the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency. He is clear that despite being a technology aficionado he is driven by what it is, culturally, that makes us share and collaborate. Looking back, it wasn’t my most structured of interviews, but it was fabulously fluid and kept returning to one theme in particular: our diminishing space and ability to reflect or assimilate. “When you go to a conference, what do you want to get out of it,” he asks (the interviewer/interviewee tables had clearly turned by this point).  Having organised and attended many events over the years, I’ve known the answer to this for a while: I want to get out of the office and into an environment that lets me listen to and discuss what others are doing. I want to stumble upon what I think of as knowledge nuggets: those ‘aha!’ moments and flashes of clarity that elude me while I’m at my desk. And while I do take away notes and collect clever charts, it’s those nuggets that stay with me. But why does a windowless basement make things click? We’re all time poor and have to deliver more with less. Knowledge workers must prioritise: do they bring in sales and deliver client work, or try to recall how to use self-service knowledge tools? In a world of back-to-back deadlines, meetings and cost-reduction initiatives, it’s not hard to guess the order of things. Throw in making time to reflect on what you’ve just learnt on a project or heard at an event, I’m pretty certain you’ll find that towards the bottom of the list. Khal’s involved in the Gartner Symposium and helps clients build their agendas. “If their days are jam packed, I tell them to take something out so they can assimilate what they’ve heard.” I’m sure few people would argue with this but many struggle to justify it as a valuable use of time. We’re also learning to live with new volumes of information and attention-seeking technology. As Khal points out, our concentration spans are shortening. Sitting on a tube or plane is one of the few times we are completely cut off from communication. This can send some blackberry addicts into a mild panic, but I’m among the people who love the time without calls, emails, news alerts, status updates or instant messages elbowing their way into my line of sight. I left the restaurant wondering how we resolve this and started scribbling these thoughts on the Metropolitan line on my way to a friend’s book launch. At the British Library, Mark Stevenson was in conversation with Michael Brooks, author of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, about what he’d learnt during his round-the-world trip interviewing scientists, politicians, technologists, farmers and many others for his book, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future. Knowing Mark well and having helped read chapters of his book as they flew from his keyboard, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the parallels with my lunchtime conversation. Fumbling for a notepad about half way through I jotted down:

We need to re-build the skills required for critical thinking

Before we can bring about change we must be able to imagine the future

Narrative and story, not technology, will bring about change

We have greater access than ever to information and knowledge, the question is whether we know how to use and filter it

We need a renaissance in scientific thinking. And for this we need information-handling skills.

How do we give ourselves thinking space? How do we re-build these critical thinking skills? It seems obvious that they’re desperately needed, but I don’t see an obvious solution. I’m hoping this becomes a thread in future conversations and interviews for the Knowledge Manager’s Journey, it feels important.

Photo credit: Tim Higgison

[shiggison]

she looked at me blankly

It was October 2004 and I’d just left the world of publishing for corporate life at a global insurance broker. Enjoying a few drinks at a party in Clapham I was chatting to a uni friend I’d not seen for years.

“How’s the magazine going?” she asked.

With a big grin on my face, I told her that I’d recently handed it over to a new editor as I’d accepted a role at Aon in its knowledge management team. She looked at me blankly.

I’ve had the two questions that followed posed to me many times since then. The first is pretty straightforward to deal with.

“No,” I replied. “Not the energy company. It’s a broking and risk management firm.”

The second has never been simple to answer and I still find myself taking a deep breath as I throw myself into it.

“What’s knowledge management?”

It’s taken me some time to refine my response. I don’t want to cause fellow party goers to fall into a jargon-induced coma nor do I want to be labelled ‘the one not to sit next to at the dinner table’.

The only approach I know that works is to volley a question back: “What do you do?” Then it’s easy. Business development, architect, pharmaceutical research, IT project management, journalist, jet engineer, teacher, fireman. Once you have a context you can explain what we do.

People’s reactions are great. I’d say 90% of the time their eyes widen and they tell you exactly how much they need someone to do the same in their organisations. Occasionally, you get the eye rollers who give a soft snort and dismiss you as another corporate five-minute wonder.

But it hasn’t been a fad, not unless fads can last well over a decade. You could debate when knowledge management started for the next ten years, but in my mind it was the mid-1990s when companies began to take it seriously with a major groundswell at the turn of the millennium.

And that’s what I’m here to map. Fifteen years in the making, how has knowledge management evolved? What does a typical knowledge manager look like? Are there specific attributes we all share? From where do we draw inspiration? And how on earth do we make it work?

With Sparknow, I’ll be plotting this journey through the stories of the people who have shaped it. And while I do so, I’ll be learning how to use the many narrative research techniques that have given Sparknow the reputation it rightly deserves.

By the end of it, we’ll have a collection of stories, using all manner of media, that we hope will not only be useful as a resource but also show the value our approaches bring. And if you’re interested in my reflections and musings along the way, I’ll be sharing them here.

Find out more about our project.

Also published at http://blog.sparknow.net/post/2809929987