Where Are We Going?

Arguably, the world at large is increasingly building low-quality products and services and is not able to support the multitude of greedily acquired customers because of wanting to scale up and grow (greed, unreal targets and what not) whilst not investing in equivalent support structures. 

This means excessive multitasking, absence or lack of well-placed specialists, lack of focus on the core product or service, complexity etc. At the other end, sometimes the supporting structure even when present is so detached and clueless that it does more damage to the existing equation. Think call-centers. 

Systems and individuals are stretching so much to keep pace with the world that they go beyond natural limits of elasticity and lose their original strength gradually or break. More alarmingly, such a misled world influences systems and individuals to lose sight of or compromise their real needs and values. :-/ #banks #insurance #outsourcing #retail #manufacturing #construction #you-name-it 

Why Companies Exist

From frivolous efforts at charity and CSR, to more serious all-round investment in support of social issues/challenges. Not always successful but fragmented and continuous focus on going green, customer delight and employee engagement. 

Jargons like diversity, no discrimination and ombudsman, commercially motivated but inclusive ideas like intrapreneurship and crowd sourcing, to independent and near altruistic operations for enhancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

Some organizations seem to have come a full moral circle but we still have text books that claim companies exist in order to make a profit.

Zero to Ten

The writing is on the wall. The evidence is more than obvious. There are NO exceptions. Take every single field that you can think of. Media, Health, Education, Economics, Commerce, Arts.....

Recognition and returns that are tied to quantitative targets lead to death, destruction and despair in the long run if not the short. People will be people. They will run after what they want even if and after they notice they are dragging all the good things away from their rightful place. Rant over.

Thinkers 50

Vineet Nayar's "Employees First, Customers Second" philosophy has put him in the list of Top 50 Thinkers. Tom Peters, anyone? Sheena Iyengar (TED video on the dilemma of Choice) is the only Indian Woman in the list. 

Umair just about makes it at #49. Phew. Seth Godin, Gladwell, Marcus Buckingham, Rosabeth Kanter, Daniel Pink, Gary Hamel, Stephen Covey, Goleman and Nitin Nohria are all there. Ken Robinson is definitely there but I'd have expected him to be higher up the list.

Clayton M. Christensen is at #1 and, importantly enough, he is someone who talks about organizations' (single-minded?) pursuit of profits being not just the death of innovation but of the economy.


http://www.thinkers50.com/

Management Theory, Anyone?

Absolutely loved this article. Feast for thought...! (Link and extracts below)


The Management Myth - Magazine - The Atlantic

• One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results
• Another, even more fundamental feature of science—here I invoke the ghost of Karl Popper—is that it must produce falsifiable propositions
• Over the past century Taylor’s successors have developed a powerful battery of statistical methods and analytical approaches to business problems. And yet the world of management remains deeply Taylorist in its foundations.
• Much of management theory today is in fact the consecration of class interest—not of the capitalist class, nor of labor, but of a new social group: the management class.
• Each new fad calls attention to one virtue or another—first it’s efficiency, then quality, next it’s customer satisfaction, then supplier satisfaction, then self-satisfaction, and finally, at some point, it’s efficiency all over again
• But what happened to such stalwarts as McKinsey, which generated millions in fees from Enron and supplied it with its CEO?
• Our firm wasn’t about bureaucratic control and robotic efficiency in the pursuit of profit. It was about love
• “R-I-P. Rip, shred, tear, mutilate, destroy that hierarchy,” said über-guru Tom Peters, with characteristic understatement
• The lessons Mayo drew from the experiment are in fact indistinguishable from those championed by the gurus of the nineties: vertical hierarchies based on concepts of rationality and control are bad; flat organizations based on freedom, teamwork, and fluid job definitions are good.
• On further scrutiny, however, it turned out that two workers who were deemed early on to be “uncooperative” had been replaced with friendlier women
• It was a way of harnessing the workers’ sense of identity and well-being to the goals of the organization, an effort to get each worker to participate in an ever more refined form of her own enslavement.
• The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about! And the debate goes on
• In most managerial jobs, almost everything you need to know to succeed must be learned on the job
• No,” he said, shaking his head with feigned chagrin. “There are only three forces in this case. And two of them are in the Finance Ministry.”
• but the point is rather lost if students come away imagining that you can go home once you’ve put all of your eggs into a two-by-two growth-share matrix.
• Taylor’s pig iron case was not a description of some aspect of physical reality—how many tons can a worker lift? It was a prescription—how many tons should a worker lift? The real issue at stake in Mayo’s telephone factory was not factual—how can we best establish a sense of teamwork? It was moral—how much of a worker’s sense of identity and well-being does a business have a right to harness for its purposes?

Gary Hamel: Who are the Most Innovative Companies?

• Gary Hamel: Who are the Most Innovative Companies? - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ
  
  
  Notes:
  
  
  • Fourth are the cyborgs, companies like Google, Amazon and Apple that have been purpose-built to achieve super-human feats of innovation.  You won’t find much industrial age DNA in these organizations. These companies have been built around principles like freedom, meritocracy, transparency and experimentation. They are so endlessly inventive and strategically flexible they seem to have come from another solar system—one where accountants are treated as servants rather than gods.
  • If you work in a company that’s merely human—one that’s riddled with stale, conformance-inducing management practices—another chirpy anecdote about Google or Apple may make you puke.
  • Most of our management rituals were designed (a very long time ago) to promote discipline, control, alignment and predictability—all laudable goals. But to outrun change or head off a newcomer at the pass, these processes have to be re-engineered so they facilitate rather than frustrate bold thinking and radical doing.

Bull's Eye!

Dilbert by Scott Adams

A priceless cartoon to demonstrate the story of literally "price-less" projects. ;-) 

KMers' Survival Guide

It's been quite a while since I read such a well-analyzed post. Steve has totally rocked in this post. A must-read for every passionate KMer who dreams about making a difference to her organization. As I responded on Steve's blog,  

Totally rocking post. It leaves me, like many of the folks above mentioned, speechless. Your analysis is spot on, to my mind. I am particularly impressed with the end notes on what KM programs will have to be wary about. The only thing I perhaps do not agree with is your perception that HBR encourages traditional management techniques even today. To my mind, most of the current HBR articles and blog posts are brilliant and step out of the conventional management boundaries. In fact, I've personally read many HBR articles that emphasize on KM as a management tool.

Meanwhile, here are some extracts from the post that struck me as awesome. 

....So even when an oasis of excellence and innovation is established within an organization being run on traditional management lines, the experience doesn’t take root and replicate throughout the organization because the setting isn’t congenial. The fundamental assumptions, attitudes and values are at odds with those of traditional management.

.....The third assumption of traditional management is that the marketplace can be predicted and controlled and manipulated.  

*****  

....The fourth plank of traditional management is to view employees as “human resources” i.e. things that can be controlled and manipulated and exploited. So long as the firm was merely providing goods and services to the marketplace, it could give commands to employees as to what to do and control them to make sure that they did what they were told. Once the challenge became one of having interactions with customers and creating a steady flow of innovations and new value to customers so that they would be delighted, the firm depended on its employees to generate those innovations and interactions. Smart firms discovered that the energy and enthusiasm and insights of its employees—now often highly educated—couldn’t be bought or directed or commanded and controlled. Instead, employees had to be inspired to contribute—a radically different and more difficult challenge. Again it was a shift from a simple linear manipulation to a complex interaction. 

...The sixth plank is economies of scale. Becoming bigger enables the firm to achieve economies of scale. But in the process, traditional management encounters the experience curve and the phenomenon of declining returns. The more experience the firm has, the longer it takes for the next performance increment of improvement. This is discouraging and tends to result in managerial “flailing”, as managers desperately try to make further gains in a setting that doesn’t permit it.

***** 

What makes it difficult to change traditional management is the interlocking and self-reinforcing nature of these assumptions, attitudes and values. Once the goal of the firm is established as producing goods and services or making money for the shareholders in a predictable economic environment, scalable bureaucracy and the efficient management of existing knowledge stocks are seen as appropriate responses. The firm develops proprietary knowledge. It aggressively protects that knowledge to make sure no one else gets access to it, and it extracts the value from that knowledge as efficiently as possible and for as long as it can. The rationale of the firm is to minimize transaction costs in deploying these stocks of knowledge efficiently. That way of thinking and acting created huge and seemingly successful companies in the 20^th Century. 

*****  

The first step is to make sure that your ship is seaworthy. Check to make sure that your KM program is well managed, with clear goals, vibrant communities of practice, effective use of IT and social media (though without excessive reliance on IT), and valid metrics of the KM program’s contributions. Without those elements in place, your KM program will be a sitting target for a cost-cutting traditional manager.

The second step is to make sure that your KM program is focused on supporting innovation and learning, and drawing on flows of new knowledge, including knowledge from outside the firm, not merely re-circulating the internal dogmas of yesterday.  In this way, your KM program can be a genuine contributor to the firm’s real future.

The third step is to check: what are the overall goals of your organization? If your firm is already committed to radical management, you are in good shape. But if the firm is built around traditional management--producing goods and services, and making money for the shareholders, through “scalable efficiency”, then your KM program is at risk, no matter how well run it may be, and how matter how much you can demonstrate what it is contributing to the firm today. With the attitudes and practices of traditional management in place, it is only a matter of time before your KM program will become another victim.

Auto-Cartoon-Biography

I did not really have any plans to write my autobiography despite realizing how much of a best-seller it is likely to be, the only simple condition being that the book be made available for free no cost whatsoever. But you know how unpredictable life is. Even a small event can thoroughly shake us up and force us to reconsider the most critical of our decisions. I've just been through something on those lines and now want to desperately start writing my autobiography and change the world for the better. There still is hope. 

I was attending a session on Innovation wherein the speaker put up a slide that spoke to me in a loud, clear and excited voice. It almost felt like I was seeing my life take on the form of a PPT slide and stare me in my face and give me the biggest of jitters. At that profound moment, I made up my mind to write my autobiography irrespective of whether I find any intelligent publisher who'd be ready to flood the book shops with it or not. The reason was very simple. Ask any author who has been through a major struggle trying to find an appropriate cover design for her book. I was, however, lucky. Even before I'd decided on writing my autobiography, I had found the perfect cover design for it! Hallelujah! They say a picture speaks a thousand words. A cartoon is perhaps a step ahead as it not only has a picture but also some extra words. Here it is. 

How does that look? Profound is a mild word to describe it. I'll have to of course buy the thing from Randy and pay a royalty every time my book is 'sold' but that can be arranged for if I decide to sell all the books I've purchased over the last 10 years or so. No, wait. A brainwave. A blinding flash of the obvious. I'd be lying if I say this cartoon is a personification of only my life. It is definitely a perfect representation of every Knowledge Manager's life. So, maybe I should make this a generic book on Knowledge Managers (and the profession of KM) and arrange for some income from various Knowledge Management communities across the globe for the wonderful publicity and subtle wake-up call to Organizations that take such an approach to KM initiatives. Yeah? If you happen to be a KM professional and would like me to insert a special chapter on your life and experiences in the book, get in touch. Conditions apply.

PS: Potential Titles: 

- The Life of a Knowledge Manager

- Free Knowledge Organizations

- I Love Knowledge, But I Can't Pay For It

- Hire a Knowledge Manager & Get Knowledge for Free
- The Sixth Discipline
- The Knowledge Illusion
- Zero Budget Knowledge
- Shoe String Knowledge Management

What Organizations can Learn from Talent Reality Shows

Why do I always have to start off my posts with an introduction to what I do/did and why I do/did it and so forth. Why can't I just plunge into what I want to share rather than get gregarious about the context? I suspect that contexts are really boring for most people however essential or important they are from a knowledge perspective. Ignoring the contextual pre-post introspection on contexts, here's what has been on my mind of late. 

Being a music aficionado, I enjoy watching music-based talent reality shows. Apart from enjoying the overdose of music and being amused by some of the occasional drama therein, what I really am in awe of is that most of the participants demonstrate radical improvement and phenomenal growth over a period of few/many months.

I think it's a great thing to genuinely identify, nurture and showcase talent to the world. It is true that most of the participants are already worth a lot but even diamonds need to be polished! As these thoughts sank in, it suddenly occurred to me that there must be something - actually, a lot - that organizations can learn from these shows about training, learning, induction and ramping up. I am not too familiar with international talent reality shows but I'd like to believe most of these points are universally valid.

I think the top reasons why talent reality shows manage to help their participants achieve exceptional growth are:

1. Mentoring and Training: Most reality shows engage full-time mentors and judges who spend a significant amount of energy on mentoring and training the participants. When organizations hire new employees, how serious are they about assigning appropriate mentors and monitoring their efforts?

2. Regular Practice/Focus (weekly, daily): Most talent shows involve daily or at least weekly practice, rehearsals and live performances which results in obvious improvements in participants' skill levels. How much of relevant hands on 'practice' do new employees get once they join an organization? Are they put on projects immediately? Do they get to work on pilot or internal projects if they are not assigned customer-facing projects?

3. Constant Feedback and Public Recognition: This is very important. I find that most talent shows spend a lot of time in giving the participants immediate, precise and clear feedback, suggestions and recognition. Sometimes this is from the judges and mentors and sometimes from the audience. I think this is an area where organizations don't do so well. Even the annual appraisals are rarely handled the way they ought to be.

4. All Round Development: In most cases, talent shows are great platforms for the participants to be exposed to various new dimensions of their subject. Even if the participants are only good at one or two aspects of the subject under question, by the time they are through the show, they undoubtedly pick up a lot of new information and learn about other aspects of the subject. For example, in Music reality shows, participants are exposed to all genres of music which improves their confidence and contributes to all round development. How many organizations have a clear and structured plan to ensure that their employees go through projects and experiences that develop them in many spheres of work and life?

5. Inspiration via the Gurus and Achievers: Talent reality show organizers, as far as I've observed, make an effort to bring in popular Gurus and achievers occasionally and put the participants in front of them. This may be an effort to improve the TRP of the show, but ignoring their intentions for a moment, it is true that participants find inspiration from such an exercise. Meeting achievers can change lives at one extreme or can at least teach new employees something very critical at the other. How many organizations take this up seriously and facilitate touch-time for new employees with the 'Stars' and Leaders of the organization?

6. Support from Family (Boss, colleagues, mentors): Most of the participants who make it to the top are the ones with enormous support from their family. How much of support does an organization provide? What do the new employees' manager, colleagues and mentors do to make it easy for them? Also, how much of importance is given to the employees' families and their work-life balance as they struggle to make the transition? 

7. Positive Team Dynamics: This is a versatile combination of healthy competition, team camaraderie, mutual support during all phases (low or high) and the very presence of a community of similar Talents. What could organizations do to establish such a beautiful culture and environment?

8. Fun Quotient: Every talent show worth its salt will have a prominent fun quotient. It's hard to imagine such a show being sober all the time. There is, for example, likely to be a person or two with a sense of humor or someone who imitates others on the show and so on. In the organizational context, teams with such 'humor glue' characters may do much better than others.

9. Tangible Rewards or Opportunities: I am not sure if I am underrating this aspect by putting it toward the end of the list. :-) I think an underlying growth motivator for most participants (however passionate they are about the skill itself) is the huge reward or promised opportunity at the end of the show. Is it clear or guaranteed in organizations that an employee will get a pay hike or a promotion or a wonderful project opportunity if she puts in her best?

10. Rules: To be more specific, talent shows have clearly defined rules that are however flexible in unique or unforeseen circumstances. The teams largely stick to the rules but the organizers are, I've observed, ready to make room for unique situations and bend the rules when required. Do organizations allow for such flexibility?

And here's a clarification I simply need to make lest I lose my wonderful non-existent reputation. (After all, I was the one who tweeted this recently - Give me 10 reasons why we need 10 reasons for everything.) I just happened to find 10 reasons, OK? I had no special schemes up my sleeve to make it to the common and ubiquitous "10 reasons why blah the blah" list. Believe me. And, more importantly, don't forget to leave your thoughts on organizations that are at level zero with reference to the list above.

Innovators Need Patience...

Leading an innovative initiative:


Check out this simple but useful article from Innovation Tools. Be prepared for rejections, objections, ridicule, sarcasm and what not. Prototypes are important. Get the right people to work with you. Sell the idea. 

S-T-R-E-T-C-H

Both - working with limited & adequate human resources involves stretching yourself. Limited human resources means stretching your capacity for work & efficiency. Adequate human resources means stretching your capacity for leadership & planning.

The Goople Effect

Wonder what that is? It is something I've discovered & observed quite often and I wouldn't be surprised if it is so common and obvious that everyone is aware of this phenomena. Maybe I should just claim the ownership of the name of the effect. ;-)

 

The Goople Effect: The phenomena of people dropping the names of Google and Apple as examples whenever they talk about corporate entities in the context of innovation, business models, products, operational approaches, corporate attitudes, business presentations, processes, practices and just about everything. The more interesting aspect of this phenomena is that the audience normally accepts these examples and nods in agreement and rarely questions the appropriateness of the examples. 


A simpler twitterized explanation would be - Goople Effect: People dropping the names of Google & Apple as examples for everything under the sun & the audience accepting it with awe :-)


I rest my case. 

Welcoming the CKO...

I think any organization looking for a KM Head or a CKO (for the first time) needs to ask itself a few important questions before it spends time and energy on hunting for, interviewing and negotiating with potential candidates. Even if the answer to one of these questions is a 'No' or 'Not Sure', I'd simply suggest that they go back to the whiteboard and introspect/reconsider whether they really need a serious and passionate KMer to spend all her time in attempting to set up a KM ecosystem in an environment that may possibly turn completely hostile, ineffective, cynical, or uncooperative.

Being a person who claims KM to be her core competence, I'd hardly be expected to recommend such an option (that of not employing a full-time KMer). But, seriously speaking, this is reality - some organizations are simply not ready for KM and might as well postpone or redesign their KM plans based on their internal situation and capabilities. So, if they don't answer in the affirmative to some of these questions (hold on, they are coming) and conclude that they don't really need a full-time KMer immediately, what do they do? I'm not suggesting they ignore KM altogether but what I believe is that they could as well get one of their interested Management Representatives (from another function/domain) to take up the additional (and temporary) role of a KM Lead and spend perhaps 10 to 20 % of his time on KM related activities. Till they get some basic things right. The world becomes a happier place this way. I exaggerate. (There are considerable drawbacks to employing a part-time KM Lead whose core competence lies elsewhere - May lead to short-term thinking, biased planning and implementation, incomplete perspectives, to think of a few things)

Getting down to the heart of the post, what are the questions that organizations must answer to help them realize what they really want with re. to KM?
 
1. Are we sure of the structure for the KM team? More importantly, where does the upward arrow for the KM Head/CKO lead to? Do we know who this person should be reporting into and WHY? Both the individual that the KM Lead will report into and the function/areas the former is responsible for must be appropriate.

2. Are we sure of setting aside a reasonable and regular budget/investment for KM? For expenses related to expertise, technology, practices, incentives, internal conferences etc? (A no-brainer of sorts but show me organizations that actually do it religiously and I'll show you one that rocks!)

3. Do we know what we want from the KM initiative, to start with? Are we ready to build on our ideas and/or reconsider our expectations and ideas once we get the KM person on board and have detailed discussions with him?

4. Do we have a honest, somewhat reliable and collective understanding of the organizational culture, its unique qualities, its strengths and weaknesses and its potential responses to KM practices (sharing, reuse, innovation, learning, mentoring, collaboration etc) (The KM Lead would find it very useful to have a heads-up on this straight from the horse's mouth)

5. Given that the KM person is new to our organization, do we have a concrete plan to bring him on-board, ramp up and get to know the key people who will in turn help him understand the business, culture and past experiments with re. to KM? In short, do we have a good and exhaustive induction plan for the KM Lead?

6. (Optional) Do we have a list of employees who will be of significant support to the KM initiative in their capacity as knowledge champions, idea-givers, firm supporters, domain experts, technical writers etc? Having such a list right at the beginning would accelerate the implementation of the KM initiative but this is something that could also be left to the KM Lead herself. Another associated piece of information likely to be very useful is the identification of pilot teams/groups.

Types of KM Strategies

An idea jumps up all of a sudden from nowhere in particular on a quiet Saturday afternoon while yours truly is lazing around with what is normally described as a completely blank mind. I am not sure if this topic has already been considered by other KMers. I’d think someone must have written about this or at least thought about this before. However, as I am yet to come across such a write-up, I decided to go ahead and put it out, as it appears in my mind, to be examined by you, fellow KMers. 


Here goes then. It suddenly occurred to me that we have reached a state of affairs in the KM domain wherein we are well poised to turn around and look at the overall pattern(s) in our KM strategies. So, why not attempt to look at the different types of KM strategies that have been adopted by organizations with each type of strategy reflecting a dominant philosophy or concept? This may reveal why we adopted some of these strategies, what’s good or bad about them and where we might go from here. I am quite sure some of my assumptions are debatable, so please do not hesitate to leave your comments and inputs. 


The following are, I believe, the key types of KM strategies (in no particular order) that organizations seem to have adopted based on a number of factors like the business they are in, the organization's age, the beliefs, experience, knowledge and influence of the team or person at the helm of KM and the organizational culture and characteristics among other things.  


1. Integrate Everything: This is a strategy that pursues and focuses on the integration of content, irrespective of its source, flavor and purpose.  The integration may range from efforts to just put everything in one place in a meaningful structure to efforts to scratch beneath the surface and connect/integrate knowledge pieces at an elementary level. In some cases, where the KM initiative began early enough, it may be easy to attempt to plan exhaustively and restrict the creation of content to just one or perhaps a few appropriate platforms. This strategy may typically be followed by small organizations or large organizations that are particular about centralized operations and control. Such organizations are also likely to be very conscious of metrics like time saved in searching for content. Think portals, intranets and single source knowledge platforms (with widgets and mash-ups from other sources). Such strategies may not differentiate between documents, workflow, people profiles etc and may place an equal value on all these elements. Think small organizations or large ones with powerful KM teams. Dictator?


2. Connect Everyone:  Some organizations and KM teams would rather wash their hands off (as much as logically possible) the complexities & uncertainties of storing and updating content in repositories and exhaustive portals. Hard core business platforms that capture information/knowledge related to business processes cannot be avoided though. Basic portals and repositories are likely to continue to exist and be used. This strategy is not necessarily an attempt to only reduce the complexities of capturing and storing content but an inherent belief in the concept of knowledge being fluid and the value of it being highly dependent on the context. It also stems from the belief that all worthwhile knowledge lies in people’s heads and will make meaning (and can be elicited) only on a need basis. Consequently, such KM strategies would rather focus on people, their specific roles, situations, needs and connections. Efforts are made to do everything (culturally, procedurally and technically) to let people find relevant others and then find content from there on (or have conversations/collaborate) without too much intervention. Such strategies may emphasize on expertise location, formation of communities, encouragement and facilitation of informal networks, best practices sharing between specific teams, internal conferences and the like. Think relationship based organizations which focus less on processes. Broker?


3. Personalize Knowledge:  This strategy is perhaps the equivalent of a much milder version of the Ayn Rand philosophy in the KM domain. Organizations that adopt this type of a strategy may believe that nothing will be adopted as long as it is not presented in a personalized manner and format/structure (providing a self-centered view). The focus is unlikely to be on ushering in a general knowledge sharing and collaboration culture. Instead, it is highly likely to lure employees to be a natural part of their KM strategy and system by giving them something that they are unlikely to refuse, something packed and personal. The focus is on a personalized knowledge strategy that encourages employees to focus on only knowledge that is relevant to them. Subsequently, employees are encouraged to connect only with colleagues that matter to them etc. Everything points in the direction of benefits for the self and this may contribute to the initiative not being perceived as a ‘business’ initiative. However, implementing such a system may be difficult as it might call for in-house designs and techniques for smart knowledge filtering and personalization. Also, the technical effectiveness of such a system may be questionable if the underlying thinking is not strong enough. This strategy is slightly similar to the ‘Connect Everyone’ strategy since this is also people focused, but it has to go beyond connections and examine cutting-edge technology to understand the individual’s role and context and accordingly fetch and suggest content that is relevant to the individual and her context. Rather than company-wide intranets or portals, the focus here is on personal KM tools that allow employees to filter out the noise (with re. to their needs) and turn a blind eye to the rest of the knowledge floating around. This is likely to be a big hit amongst the employees as well as management but, as mentioned before, it may be tough to design and build an effective system.  Think innovative organizations. Psychologist?


4. Embrace Differences & Multiple Ingredients (‘Masala’* Indian term for a powder/paste comprising many ingredients and used to lend a complex taste to certain dishes): This is somewhat similar to the ‘Personalize Knowledge’ strategy from the conceptual perspective but lies at the other end of the spectrum from the technological perspective. Instead of focusing on individual employees, this strategy revolves around teams’ and business units’ (BU) idiosyncrasies. It is a decentralized approach and teams and BUs are allowed to adopt methods and tools that they are comfortable with without too many rules and controls. Thus, the organization may adopt varied mechanisms and tools for similar purposes. One team may manage their projects mainly through simple Wiki interfaces while another may have a niche workspace tool (in-house or purchased). Neither of them is forced to change or switch to the other tool/method.  Organizations are likely to be forced into such a strategy when there have been too many divergent and intractable views from the stakeholders or the KM teams were established very late or went through frequent changes in composition, or simply because the business believes in decentralized management down to the BU level. The organization may be quite comfortable with complexity and lack of a dominating central authority. There is no clear big picture as such and teams go about KM in their own convenient ways. The decision to change is taken at the team level. In such a scenario, KM teams may play consultants at the BU level rather than at the organizational level. There may, of course, be efforts to build bridges between selected tools and techniques between certain teams or even at the organizational level in case the organization is expected to benefit highly out of such integration. This strategy may be very hard for people who insist on simplicity, single sources and controlled systems. Such a strategy is debatable in many ways since the organization will still have distinct silos but most large organizations may be forcibly subjected to this strategy. Think of the large conglomerates. Peace-Maker?


5. Inject into Organizational DNA: This is, arguably, a KM strategy in its truest form and perfectly aligned and intertwined with the business and people strategies. It is characterized by the pursuit of plenty of soft knowledge practices rather than a passion for technological advances and experiments. Such a strategy can be designed and adopted only in an organization where the CEO and the key business leaders are genuine KM champions and mentors (encouraging a culture of openness, sharing, learning, reuse, innovation and collaboration). Such a KM strategy will primarily comprise of promotion of localized and organizational level knowledge sharing sessions/conferences/ideation, participation in organizational strategy formulation, practices like mentoring and shadowing, emphasis on employee-relationships, performance evaluation based on team performances rather than individual performances, business and operational processes that pay attention to the knowledge flow from one end to the other etc. The adoption of this strategy also indicates focus on practices like after action reviews, best practices, participation of ex-employees where needed, decision-making by communities etc. Such a strategy may not neglect technology’s role in KM, but it, nevertheless, is more passionate about simple day-to-day practices and mannerisms/habits leading to the efficient and effective sharing of knowledge and collaboration.  Think Buckman Labs. Doctor?


Finally, these are just the central tendencies that I’ve observed in various KM strategies in the organizations I have come across. Obviously, certain organizations may adopt a combination of two or more of the above strategies or may even transition from one to another based on the growth of the organization or change in the KM team composition or adoption of a new technology (the last one, un-ideally so because letting the technology dictate to the strategy is not advisable). That’s all for now. If you have ideas on typical examples for these strategies or what is missing from this list or how I can build upon this theme, please let me know. 

Tom & Jerry: An Ode to Today's Organizations

It is only once in a rare while that you come across articles that resonate with you and your values, put hope in your heart, a smile on your face and positive thoughts in your mind. On the particular topic of organizations and business, the last time I remember feeling this way was when I read an article by Peter Senge. I hung on to every word. This article by Gary Hamel gives me a sense of deja vu - of hanging on to every word and indulging in a musical chord-striking experience or whatever. Thanks to @rajwaghray for leading me to this article via his blog post. I am going to do what Raj has done, put out some extracts of the article here because I am so fascinated by it. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here’s an experiment for you. Pull together your company’s latest annual report, its mission statement, and your CEOs last few blog posts. Read through these documents and note the key phrases. Make a list of oft-repeated words. Now do a little content analysis. What are the goals and ideas that get a lot of airtime in your company? It’s probably notions like superiority, advantage, leadership, differentiation, value, focus, discipline, accountability, and efficiency. Nothing wrong with this, but do these goals quicken your pulse? Do they speak to your heart? Are they “good” in any cosmic sense?

Now think about Michelangelo, Galileo, Jefferson, Gandhi, William Wilberforce. Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa. What were the ideals that inspired these individuals to acts of greatness? Was it anything on your list of commercial values? Probably not. Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor.

.........A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. In so doing, it transforms great talent into exceptional accomplishment. That’s a fact—and it leaves me wondering: Why are words like “love,” “devotion” and “honor” so seldom heard within the halls of corporate-dom? Why are the ideals that matter most to human beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?

...........The next time you’re stuck in a corporate staff meeting, wait until everyone’s eyes have begun to glaze over from PowerPoint fatigue and then get up and announce that what your company really needs is a lot more luuuuuv. When addressing a large group of managers, I often challenge them to stand up for love (or beauty or justice or truth) in just this way. “When you get back to work, tell your boss your company has a love deficit.” This suggestions invariably provokes a wave of nervous laughter, which has always struck me as a bit strange. Why is it that managers are so willing to acknowledge the idea of a company dedicated to timeless human values and yet so unwilling to become practical advocates for those values within their own organizations? I have a hunch. I think corporate life is so manifestly inhuman—so mechanical, mundane and materialistic—that any attempt to inject a spiritual note into the overtly secular proceedings just feels wildly out of place—the workplace equivalent of reading a Bible in a brothel.

............Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist, held a similar view, which he expressed forcefully in “Man’s Search for Meaning:” “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended consequence of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself . . .."

So, dear reader, a couple of questions for you: Why do you believe the language of beauty, love, justice and service is so notably absent in the corporate realm? And what would you do to remedy that fact?

-----------------------------------------------------------

My immediate response to Gary's post went something like this:

I relished this article. Thanks so much for such a wonderful post. It also reminds me of some of Peter Senge's wonderful thoughts. I wish more people like you would instill such values in the corporate world. Well, I am no expert in collective human behaviour but I guess it all boils down to the fact that there will always be a set of people who listen to their minds and bodies rather than their souls and also the fact that many of us have been conditioned gradually since ages to focus on money/profits/efficiency etc. Like some of the comments indicate, most senior managers with a severe focus on profits would ask you to cut the article short or just go back to work and stop being so impractical and idealistic. *wry smile* It is up to the small set of people who listen to their souls to do whatever they can to make a difference and then leave the rest to nature! :-|

Another thing is that people are ruled by fear. Fear of not making enough money to indulge in their silly needs. If they don't toe the line and bring in the moolah, they are not going to get their monthly paycheck. They need to be appreciated and recognized as someone who toes the line and accomplishes the goal in order to survive and thrive. So why unnecessarily take the trouble to think of and advocate things that don't fit in? Just keep running in the said direction becomes the motto.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally, there's one another - to my mind - related story that I want to share. It's an interesting coincidence that this happened just a few hours after I read Gary's post. When I went back home and the door was opened to let me in (by a person who was perhaps muttering 'Why Me?') I froze on my tracks and did not even take the trouble to put down my heavy laptop bag, for in front of me was something delightful - A rollicking episode of Tom and Jerry on TV. Now, being a person who does not watch a lot of TV and for some crazy reason it having been ages since I had watched Tom and Jerry, this was like Manna from Heaven. I picked up a yummy-looking bun that was lying nearby (without caring about who it was actually meant for) and plunked into the sofa to munch on and roar with laughter at Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse (Just making sure you got the names right). Now, catch this and see it in juxtaposition with Gary's article. Shut the jaw. You'll see what I mean. 

Tom exhibits extreme laziness and does not care to bring Jerry's naughtiness to a halt, much to the chagrin of the house lady. So, the house lady decides to order for a cat-machine (that looks exactly like a cat) whose vendors claim that it can catch mice come what may. Stop me if you've already seen this episode. So...the cat-machine with no soul arrives. It knows just one thing - its only goal is to catch any mice that may be around. The cat-machine is extraordinarily innovative in its methods and seems to know a way out of every difficulty. 

But Jerry gets smart a little later and introduces plenty of mechanical mice (mice-machines) into the house in order to fight the cat-machine. The cat-machine now has many mice to catch and goes about maniacally and ends up destroying the house in order to trap all the mice! Jerry watches on in glee while Tom watches in bewilderment from outside (he gets sent off after the arrival of the cat-machine). And then the lady of the house realizes her folly and decides to call Tom back. Meanwhile, ironically, our cat-machine ends up almost destroying itself as well in its relentless, err, shall we say, rat race? ;-) The one last piece of machine that perhaps represents the mouse sensor in the cat-machine is all that remains and it accidentally slips into Tom's throat! Even as the house lady tells Tom to go about things in his own way and that she wants peace and quiet in the house, Tom starts behaving like the cat-machine because of the mouse-sensor in his tummy! The episode ends as Tom speeds toward Jerry in a cat-machine-like manner and the house lady screams in exasperation. 

Now, this, to my mind, is a very metaphorical example (no soul, rat race, human-machines, destruction and what not!) of the situation in today's organizations as explained by Gary. Let's just hope that we don't fully replicate the Tom and Jerry episode and realize, before it is too late, that there is in us - especially as a member in a ruthless commercial organization - an artificial and mechanical object that needs to be removed. I don't believe this is a case of adding an ingredient to ourselves. I dare say it is a pure case of removing from our minds, a foreign ingredient that is beginning to condition our souls!

Steve Jobs's Presentation Secrets

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

The Reality of Management

First: Employees will not and cannot stay buried in work every minute of their day (at least not every day of the year). They will take breaks and the type of break depends on individual preferences. Just because a person chats with someone for 10 minutes or one hour, one cannot conclude that he is not a good worker. The chat may, in fact, be relevant to official activities. Worst case, the chat may give the employee a break from routine and that may re-energize the person. There are paranoid workaholics but not all employees belong to this category. Trying to make a person who is moderately interested in work a complete workaholic through force or fear will not work and could, more importantly, be disastrous. The quality of work is best only when a person is inherently passionate and sincere about it. The speed of work is great only when passion and sincerity is combined with personal and technical skills and support from the rest of the organization. Employees without work ethics and a conscience are hard to change but changing them over a long period of time is possible only with patience and perseverance

Second: We live in a world where we cannot anyway control each and every activity of an employee and even attempting to do so will only backfire. If the concerned employee is consistently involved in an inappropriate activity that has a negative impact on his work or is unethical and does not heed to warnings, it may only then be natural to ask him to leave

Third: The best way to get work done is to come up with exciting and useful ideas, provide the implementer with the appropriate environment, tools & training, inspire him and trust him. Fixing reasonable schedules is another dimension. Additionally, if one wants to slide toward a more “controlled” approach, one can obviously follow up and monitor the daily or weekly progress (or at some other appropriate intervals) depending on the situation and type of work. If this process throws up any loop-holes or other suspicions, appropriate action has to be taken to bring the person/project on track. The action could be related to the idea, environment, tool, training, inspiration or even just trust

Fourth: There are times when the team may be admittedly slow and not run like Ostriches or be ready to squeeze out every drop of its blood, but we must accept it to be a reflection of reality (especially in the case of teams as opposed to individual star performers) and be happy (at least till the time you find a way to inspire the team to run faster) if the team is found to be traveling at a reasonably good pace

CEOs - Business - Motivation - Wodehouse - Bhagavad Gita

Lovely article.

* Resist the urge to label occurrences as bad (or good). Adopt a neutral view
* One needs to ferociously prevent one's thoughts from straying — stay in the "now"
* ....evaluate the mental models used by Psmith (one of PGW's ever-cheerful characters) and his cheery insouciance when faced with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
*....if you are looking for fulfillment, you won't find it in the job. It comes from inside you
* I encourage executives to invest completely in the process and not the goal. If they invest every fiber of their being into the process they are likely to enjoy the outcome. It is a paradox. When you become detached from the outcome, the probability of achieving the goal rises dramatically

The Netflix CULTure

Awesome set of slides on what Netflix wants its culture to be like. Hat-tip to @unorder (Shawn Callahan). They know exactly what they want in terms of employees and culture....and their preferences sound great to me (Sample this: We don't want Brilliant Jerks). This was uploaded only one month ago into slideshare, but has already been viewed 210000+ times, been set as a favorite almost a 1000 times and embedded elsewhere 500+ times. Not hard to see why. Not hard at all! As someone who once ran through every page of the PCMM manual, I can, well, see the difference between theory and practice.

I'm now motivated to understand their business and read about their management team. But it's quite sad, in a way, that such logical and ethical approaches toward business and culture are now seen as radical and revolutionary! We've, it might seem, come a long way down the wrong path! A clear reflection of the deterioration of the overall corporate culture!

PS: One thing that did make me pause and question is the value of "selflessness". Some of the points therein are understandable and to be appreciated but I think the value can be easily misconstrued. This value, for example, need not mean that you put the organization above everything else like the world/environment etc. And sometimes you may have to necessarily do what's more important to you rather than the organization - what if you're quite ill and not in a position to close an important business deal that cannot be further delayed? You may be forced to find someone else - though it may not be good for the organization - who can take your place and close the deal on your behalf, rather than risk your health.

And, thank you, Mr.Reed. For bringing back this quote that I drooled over a couple of years ago, when I first came across it.

'If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea' - -Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.