Jurgens Pieterse writes the Enterprise Design Strategy blog at ITToolbox and has a pair of articles on developing a KM competency: Four steps to develop a knowledge management competency Part 1 and Part 2.  He focuses on the training, communications and knowledge worker rating systems one might need to create:

Knowledge management is a target that seems alluring and yet most companies fail to deploy a knowledge management capability. Knowledge management starts by the people of a company to deal with knowledge in a modern era. A business must foster the means to enable their employees to use information resources efficiently and effectively. A programme is needed on an enterprise scale that will entice people to develop voluntary a knowledge culture through online training.

Part 1 of this pair talks about the training needs in four areas:

• Theoretical training - that transmits the basic theoretical concepts and ideas of knowledge management
• Organizational training - that foster personal application of knowledge management concepts
• Behavioral training - that encourages changes in group behaviour that integrate knowledge management concepts in a social context.
• Technical training - that enables knowledge management through the help of information technology tools and applications

Part 2 focuses on the communication plan and a "grading and reward system."  I have some concern with the idea of reward systems within knowledge management, but his proposal is more like scientist or technician rating systems that relate to the knowledge worker's overall contribution and skill level, rather than their specific knowledge base contributions.

[I found this pair of entries through my KM feed search. Too bad ITToolbox doesn't offer fulltext feeds.]

Permalink | written on 18 Oct 2006 at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) | Subjects: knowledge+management, JurgensPieterse, training

For those KM'ers who aren't already reading Archestra by Malcolm Ryder, he has another article in his ongoing thoughts about knowledge management: Where's the "System" in Managed Knowledge? (last paragraph)

If knowledge is systematically managed, there will be clarity about what kind of value is being generated at the different points in the process of making, saving and delivering it, and users will not hop around randomly in this production environment but instead be guided through it appropriately in real-time as they work.

I appreciate Malcolm's emphasis on context and how typical information technology systems do not usually account for a user's in-the-moment circumstances.

Permalink | written on 17 Oct 2006 at 11:48 PM | Comments (2) | Subjects: knowledge+management, context, MalcolmRyder

Sunday's FoxTrot comic strip by Bill Amend tied together at least three things I like: Sudoku (the number puzzle), mathematics, and FoxTrot itself.

The nerdy Jason Fox creates his very own Sudoku with mathematical formulae instead of raw numbers.  How much fun to have powers, derivatives, integrals, log, trigonometry, binary and hexadecimal numbers.  The next version will require that your answer include no repeated formulae in any 3x3 square or in the rows and columns.

[They clearly don't want people copying the art, so I won't do so.  If you are addicted, have a look.]

Update: I placed the puzzle with math solved below.

Continue reading "Sudorku" »

Permalink | written on 16 Oct 2006 at 12:02 AM | Comments (3) | Subjects: random+fun, FoxTrot, mathematics, puzzles, sudoku

Mary Lee Kennedy is at the helm for this month's AOK Star Series discussion.  She is the former director of Microsoft's Knowledge Network group and is now at TKG Consulting and the Harvard Business School. 

The focus of the discussion will be around sense-making, as described in her opening remarks (intro below).  To join the conversation, you need to be a member.  Should be interesting, as usual. 

Sense-making or sensemaking (as some write it) appears to be one of those topics that "everyone" is talking about while there has obviously been a lot going on in some circles for decades. As a practitioner I have sought to understand the impact of sense-making in the context of reducing ambiguity, i.e., increasing the ability to take actions informed by it, that result in a greater degree of success than is possible without it. This last part is important - in practice there is an expectation that one has the ability to visibly demonstrate that with an explicitly defined and applied sense-making exercise the organization is in a more advantageous position or when not in a competitive situation, leads to new knowledge that is considered of value. Like so much in human behavior - a sense-making initiative can be perceived as a "no-brainer" or commonly expected behavior and I have also seen the opposite - where it is overwhelming or so foreign that the organization does not know what to do with it.

Permalink | written on 15 Oct 2006 at 7:50 PM | Comments (0) | Subjects: event+report, knowledge+management, AOK, MaryLeeKennedy, sensemaking

John Walston of BuzzWhack has a new book out, The Buzzword Dictionary.  Since he is from the Chicago area (and it's funny), the Chicago Tribune's At Random column had a piece about the book (registration) with some sample terms that relate to my interests.

I loved this one.  Not only does multitasking guarantee that all your projects will be late, it also leads to more mistakes.  Now there is a term for it:

Faulty-tasking: Making mistakes because of multitasking. A handy word for what to call it when you accidentally send a personal e-mail to your boss and a business memo to your wife because you were writing both at once while also instant messaging, checking your fantasy football team and talking on the phone.

This particular definition is unfortunate, but it must be happening.  I prefer the more generous version that connects to teaching and

Knowledge transfer: This means teaching someone how to do your job before you leave. But you're a person, not a computer hard drive.

I bet the book will make a fun short-attention-span read.  The website posts daily updates.  They offer an email subscription, but no syndication feed of the same.

Permalink | written on 13 Oct 2006 at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | Subjects: book+review, random+fun, buzzwords, JohnWalston, knowledge+transfer, multitasking

The Center for Knowledge Management at Dominican University is holding a KM Open House on October 27th from 8:30 to noon, and I will be speaking with several others on knowledge management and careers in the field.

I have been planning to focus on something not so directly connected to "how to get a job in KM," but rather on my interest in blogs, communities and knowledge management.  If there is any career discussion in my talk it may be anecdotal discussions of how one should follow their interests to see where they lead.

Besides myself, the other speakers come out of the library world, which makes sense given that the Center is split between Dominican's Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Brennan Business School.  The other speakers are:

• Christina Stoll, KM advocate at the Metropolitan Library System
• Jan Chindlund, McDonald's
• Karen Miller, KM specialist at the American Library Association

For more information on the event, see the KM Open House page.

Permalink | written on 13 Oct 2006 at 9:34 AM | Comments (0) | Subjects: events, knowledge+management, self, Dominican, education

Yowza.  Blog entries as pdf's?  What were they thinking?  How can anyone get a blog this wrong?

Thanks to Geeklawyer for pointing out the truly dreadful 'blog' by Watson Farley & Williams, an international legal firm. As he says, it wouldn't have taken them long to find someone to help them understand what this blog malarky is all about, but instead they've gone the FIUY ([foul] it up yourself) route and have ended up with something truly atrocious.

I'm sure I am not perfect, but I have noticed others who have created "blogs" in this vein.  Usually they are hand-coded beasts that have none of the features of a blog (a human voice, web feed, ...).

Permalink | written on 13 Oct 2006 at 7:03 AM | Comments (3) | Subjects: blogs, how+to

Okay, an extreme title.  In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the people who are not posting articles and commentary in the online world.

There have been a number of articles referencing Jakob Nielson's recent Alertbox on Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities.  (TalkDigger digs up 50-odd references.)  He sites a familiar ratio of readers to contributors to participants:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

The ratio has a nice stickiness with evidence from the early days of the Usenet and mailing lists to Amazon reviews and the Wikipedia.  He goes on to offer some thoughts around mitigating the "inequality" and acknowledges that it will never go away completely.

Nielson comments on the negative effects of participation inequality, primarily that the voices and opinions of the non-participants do not get heard and therefore skew the dialog to those who raise their voices.

My take on this is that the balance is where it is.  It is not necessarily bad or good.  And I suspect this balance of participation even shows up in Real Life.  I know many couples consisting of "the talkative one" and "the quiet one."  Go to a party or watch the crowd at a conference and notice the balance of people who are doing most of the talking, responding and listening.  It might not be 1-9-90, but there are people who are naturally more participative than others.  Why should the online world be any different than the offline one?

Nielson offers some suggestions around "equalizing participation."  I agree that these suggestions will be helpful, but they don't help without some key characteristics of the person in question:

• Passion.  The primary aspect is passion - passion, excitement, engagement, anger over the topic and direction of the community.  With a particularly passionate person, issues of writing comfort and time are quickly overcome.
• Writing comfort.  Not writing skills, but comfort with communicating in the written word.  Do they have the confidence to put their hand up, potentially to get it slapped?  How supportive is the community?  Another reason blogs are so great: the owner gets to control the conversation.  I suspect the availability of audio and video technology enables many others to jump into the community, where the written word may not.
• Time.  Do they have the time to devote to participating?  I know this heavily impacts my ability to participate in the various email lists I have joined.  And I see it from the other members as well.

In fact, I suspect there is an undercurrent of importance to the people who aren't doing all the talking (writing).  First off, they are the audience.  However much we want to think that everyone now has the ability to contribute content to the common good, this just isn't the case.  Most of us are consumers of the content.  But without the audience, what is the point of all this writing?  If Amazon reviewers didn't think it was going to be helpful to write the reviews, why bother?  If bloggers thought no one was listening, for whom are they writing?

Even more fun: who is to say that lurkers in one community aren't more active in other communities?  Mightn't some people observe and listen and fuse the ideas across many communities to come up with their own great ideas that they discuss elsewhere, be that online or at the next conference?

This idea was discussed in a series of blogs a couple years ago in response to an EEKim article, Are Lurkers Bad?.  I jumped in too with Lurking builds community.

Permalink | written on 11 Oct 2006 at 10:06 PM | Comments (6) | Subjects: community, Alertbox, JakobNielson, lurkers, participation

I've judged projects for the Innovation Challenge the last two years, and it's been interesting.  The projects are presented as proposed products or services, and judges rate them based on a number of defined criteria.  The primary time commitment is in reading and reviewing the entries.

They are looking for some more judges.  The email announcement goes like this:

Help Determine the 2006 Innovation Challenge®  Finalists

Once accepted, you'll be evaluating fresh new ideas submitted by teams of top MBA students from around the world online for this year’s global sponsors (Hilton Hotels, DaimlerChrysler, Whirlpool, OPEN from American Express, GE Money and M&M Chocolate Candies). As you know, our esteemed judging panel is tasked with selecting the Top 10 Most Innovative MBA Teams in the World who will compete at the final round at the Darden School of Business.

BE A PART OF SOMETHING BIG

You'll join our community of over 180 world-class innovation practitioners and researchers from business and academia, and your background and work will be accessible to all site visitors and event participants. This year, 440 teams from 88 universities in over 15 countries enrolled in the competition.

We'd like you to contribute your valuable perspective to the next generation of business leaders, but we are also confident you'll learn something from them.

**To register 

 

TIME REQUIREMENTS

Also, keep in mind that this is a minimal time commitment on your part:
you'll judge up to 15 concept plans of two pages each during Phase II judging from October 15th- 24th. At a maximum of 30 minutes per plan, you will spend 5-7 hours scoring plans over these nine days. 

**For more information on the judging process

**See who's competing

**View video highlights

Permalink | written on 11 Oct 2006 at 8:56 PM | Comments (0) | Subjects: events, innovation, Innovation+Challenge

My wife has written a Requiem for a Record Store in Three Movements, recounting her interactions with Tower Records as a music fan, employee and music librarian.  Too bad they have been auctioned off.  I've spent a few dollars there.  And a few of those record store dates she mentioned was with me.

Tower Records didn't survive bankruptcy. On Friday, their assets were auctioned off. The stores are having liquidation sales.

Permalink | written on 11 Oct 2006 at 6:58 PM | Comments (0) | Subjects: self, music, RockHack, TowerRecords