Communities. Coaching.

The gap between inspiration and insignificance
The gap between action and thought
The gap between perseverance and pessimism
The gap between understanding and ignorance
The gap between enjoyment and boredom
The gap between I did it and If only I had done it
May quite easily be filled by the combination of......
......a competent coach and a capable and concerned community

Happy Chemicals in KM :-)

How to get a good D.O.S.E of the Happy Chemicals through KM. 

D-O-S-E: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphin. Don't ask. It just occurred to me. (All right, I came across the first three in many articles. Did a little bit of research and discovered the last one) 

Dopamine: When you find the knowledge asset you were looking for in the content sharing platform. Also, when you get a reward for writing the most popular asset in the repository - The reward chemical 

Oxytocin: When you discover, interact and bond with colleagues who have similar/complementary ideas or share your areas of interest via the social networking platforms - The trust chemical 

Serotonin: When you are the most favorite expert or most voted for expert in the expertise locator. When people approach you for help knowing that you have what it takes - The importance chemical 

Endorphin: When pain is replaced with happiness; When you solve a problem with the help of a knowledge asset someone shared, an expert you discovered or colleagues you connected with in the content and people platforms - The pain to pleasure chemical 

But, to start with, you need the action chemical:  

Adrenalin: When you present your thoughts and learnings in a meeting or write a blog to share your knowledge - The action chemical 

KM Asia 2011

Here is a very high-level mind-map of the recently conducted KM Asia 2011 Conference. Please note that this is only a bird's eye-view of the proceedings. You can look up the #kmasia11 hash-tag in Twitter for more details, ideas and thoughts from the conference attendees. 

The KMix Program

I believe this post may liberate me from boredom for a while. There was a time when the highlight of a good week - for me - was likely to be the process of writing a creative/humorous/meaningful post. Now, one needs to be satisfied - more often - with a quick and witty observation or insight, shared in a jiffy, in the form of a tweet or a status update. Arguably, the process of blogging is a more mentally engaging and absorbing activity. What a to-be-recorded speech for a permanent audience demands of (and gives) you is different from what a quick remark in a largely informal setting does. However, the most dangerous addition to the former situation is, potentially, rambling. 


To get ahead with this post, it is not meant to be an accurate reflection of reality. You may or may not recognize these characters or may only be able to partly relate to them. This post is meant to provide more humorous relief than genuine insight. That said, by Toutatis, let me proceed. 


Look around in your organization or even your personal social circles. You may possibly find at least one of the characters described below, only their names are likely to be very different. You need to understand what roles they might play in your knowledge management program/strategy before the sky falls on your head. Let's call the program, you are in charge of, KMix as it rhymes with the characters' names and sounds harmonious etc. 


Asterix: A star hero(ine) who is both intelligent and action-oriented. A person who shares his knowledge on the go and inspires others to solve problems, accomplish things and stay active and alert in life and at work. But he also knows when he must keep his mouth shut. Your knowledge management program - KMix - must engage him at any cost. He is your program Salesman (Ref: Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point) in more ways than one. He needs a micro-blogging account if not anything else.



Obelix: A good-natured but ignorant bloke (or girl) who is happy following Asterix around and using his 'raw' skills when asked to. He can beat up the bugs and be the life and soul of a wild-boar party. He does not consume the magic potion of knowledge but is nevertheless an asset in certain situations. He may never understand the meaning of a knowledge management program (KMix, in this case) but he needs to be mentored by one of the Asterixes so his skills are leveraged upon. He needs to follow Asterix's tweets even if Getafix (coming later) does not allow him to consume any of his blog recipes. He may need a micro-blogging account to at least declare that he has spotted boars (opportunities) or Romans (competition) 

Getafix: The wise man (or woman) in the organization. A thought-leader who has plenty of important and magical recipes and is content sharing it with the action-men and women. He is a Maven (Ref: Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point). He likes to cook up reliable stuff that will help fix problems. He is the expert or adviser that your knowledge management program (KMix) must point to when there is a crisis or when your action-men and women need to get started. He is the person who is interested in discovering knowledge and putting multiple pieces of it together. Ignore him at your own peril. He needs to have his own blog of recipes and might also want to create demos, documents and presentations at times. 

Cacofonix: A lot of you would probably jump up and say you know this person really well and he sits right next to you. A man (or woman) who can't help sharing his, err, so-called wisdom. Someone you'd like to shut up every time he opens his mouth, which is quite often. He thinks he is great, but the problem is no one else does. The KMix program could do without him and his noisy ways. He, after all, adds to the information overload and forces you to focus on information filters as much as information fillers. His blog may have no use for feeds/email alerts and his tweets may be blocked by most colleagues. But remember to release him when you want to chase away annoying competitors.

Vitalstatix: The manager who may not necessarily fight battles himself (or herself) but is a powerful entity. He is the one who decides whether the battle should be fought or not, in the first place, and then puts people on the job. He, however, listens to Getafix and Asterix and considers their views before he decides what to do. He is a people connector (Ref: Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point) who knows everyone, can see the big picture and has a bird's eye-view of the situation. (He is carried around on a shield in the actual Asterix and Obelix stories.) He needs a social networking account and needs to be subscribed to important knowledge sources if not anything else. 

My version of KMix stops here even though I am tempted to include Dogmatix (as a character or subject matter expert who focuses on ethics, values and is the champion of the Organization's environmental initiatives etc) and UnHygienix (as perhaps a character who knows how to 'fish' for knowledge but does not know how to curate it and package it well so it can be consumed by others. What he needs is good training ;-) ) as additional examples but that would be taking it too far, uh? Woof. 


PS: All credit for this post goes to the authors of the Asterix and Obelix series (Goscinny and Uderzo). My version of these characters, for KMix, are nothing but simple extensions of the real characters. 

Seek. Sense. Share.

Beth Kanter - SM Model

I'm always looking for simple and catchy ways of communicating what knowledge management is all about. Most people, incorrectly, believe it to be something abstract and conceptual - something that cannot be practiced too easily because it only has theoretical clarity. Many KM practitioners plunge into complicated and/or dry explanations (and I'm sure even I've been guilty of this in the past ;-)) which makes the situation worse. Admittedly, this blog has, perhaps, plenty of such posts (self-written and borrowed from other writers) and corresponding ideas. Looking at the brighter side, ultimately, each one of us may be able to relate to and remember at least one of these slogans/models/definitions and apply it effectively.  ;-)

I came across Beth Kanter's (http://www.bethkanter.org/seek-sense-share/) SM model (pic above) via G+ this morning and thought it was simple and easy to remember for people who are still confused about what KM is. Any practice, process, idea, tool or behaviour that attempts to help us seek, sense or share is, in my opinion, a knowledge management entity. 

Quote

The real genius of organizations is the informal, impromptu, often inspired ways that real people solve real problems in ways that formal processes can’t anticipate. When you’re competing on knowledge, the name of the game is improvisation, not rote standardization — John Seeley Brown


 Hat Tip to @Oscarberg 

Why is it difficult to explain KM?

I spent some time answering an old but good KM question (on Linked In, after a long time)


(Why it is tough for a Knowledge Manager to make others understand what exactly he/she does?)


IMHO, it is difficult to explain because of the following reasons (in no particular order)

> There are multiple (sometimes radically different) interpretations of what Knowledge Management is, both at the organizational level as well as at the individual level. No wonder KM departments fit into different streams in different organizations (HR, IT, Quality, Sales etc)

> It is a constantly and fast evolving field (most fields are, but - for example - just when we thought people were clear about what the KM function typically does, E2.0 happened and the KM R&R changed radically to reflect something highly social rather than asset-based)

> Knowledge, by itself, is an abstract subject. Pursuit of knowledge is for a few. Pursuit of the more tangible profits is for many

> People are more interested in "What's in it for them" and would hardly be fascinated by topics like sharing, collaboration (if you were to approach KM purely from that angle) etc - simply because people don't scratch the surface to see what's beneath is actually something that is good for everyone

> A slightly different flavor arising out of the combination of the first and second point - It is a multidimensional field involving a) culture, processes, technology, content quality etc b) reuse, sharing, communities, collaboration, search, filtering, semantics, etc c) psychology, organizational behavior, group-thinking, brainstorming, mentoring etc                   

Personal Knowledge Portfolio

1. Does this chart make sense? Please note that it is to be seen in the context of an organization and not just an individual. 
2. Does this consider/address at least the top few platforms and top few benefits?
3. Is there something wrong in this picture? For example, any block that is not in the appropriate place, in your opinion?
4. Any other feedback for improvement?

Libraries and KM

Some quick and immediate thoughts:

1. There is no substitute for a good - real, physical - library. Despite the Kindles and PDFs

2. Library professionals ought to adopt the latest technologies to make it easy for people to browse through catalogs and reading lists from their desktops. Sites like LibraryThing and Safari are good examples for sharing one's virtual bookshelf. This could be a part of the KM system

3. e-Formats of books are essential in certain situations and cannot be avoided

4. Library activities should be extended to allow people to have conversations, collaborate and engage in group-reading or thinking

5. With the onslaught of e-readers, I am not able to predict the impact it will have on physical libraries a decade from now. Environmental preservation may lead to people being encouraged to read books online rather than depend on print. 

Learning and The Dangers of Expertise

This talk provides good food for thought. Do watch it if you're interested in KM, Collaboration or Learning. The speaker warns us about the dangers of blindly believing so-called experts and not questioning them enough and about societies having to feel more comfortable about managing dissent. 


Someone from the audience asks a very valid question - About the impact that this might have on how we teach children. Here's what methinks:


Maybe this points to a clear need for collective learning amongst children? Rather than a teacher standing up in front of the class and preaching? And of course, the need for education to accommodate questions from students, Montessori style.


And, finally, consider this post in juxtaposition with the previous C&H strip. See the joke? :-)

KM India Summit 2010-Observations

Last time around (during KM India Summit 2009) I ended up writing one of my longest ever posts and attempted to cover too many things in it. Some people did come back and appreciate it but I suspect, for many, it must have been daunting to read such a lot. This time, I plan to share my key observations and interpretations rather than cover the whole event as if I were a journalist.


KM India Summit 2010 lasted 2 days and there were three master classes (covered in one day) before the conference. I was fortunate enough to attend all of it as I got a free invite in return for speaking at the event (My topic was KM and Social Networking).


@MadanRao has done a great job of live-tweeting in case you're interested. He also has a blog post here. Atul Rai (Wipro Infotech) covered a lot of stuff through his FB updates. I think there were a few random tweets from many other participants as well. Search for #KMIndia (on Twitter) to check them out.


Meanwhile, for me personally, here are key thoughts and discoveries from the Master Classes:

• Mindtree undoubtedly has a super-exhaustive KM initiative to boast of and they've attempted to give equal attention to all forms of KM (culture, process, tech, ideas management, knowledge creation, collective intelligence mechanisms and tools, KM embedded in projects etc)
• The Millers' work on innovation and the role of spiritualistic thinking/human values is extraordinary. I was completely tuned into their session and it felt wonderful to listen to them though I think the time period we are looking at for the whole world to move to thoughts that combine spiritualism with business is, well, very huge
• The Millers conducted a very sincere workshop with a lot of exercises to help participants understand their level and styles of thinking. They had a wonderful exercise that brought out some interesting facts for me personally. It helped me understand I am an "intention" person more than a "connection" or "action" person. (Intention people look for a meaningful contribution and tend to look for a purpose before getting down to actually doing things. Connection people are those that value relationships above everything else and Action people don't like to waste time thinking any more than they can help it :-)). The exercises also helped participants analyze whether they are short-term or long-term oriented
• Verna Allee's workshop was very interesting and brought to light the advantages of Value Network maps as opposed to social network maps or process flow charts. Her website will give you most of the details that she covered during the workshop. I believe this is a concept that is worth the time and energy and you never know what it may lead to. I hope to be able to apply this somewhere

****************  The conference talks  **********************

• One aspect that disappointed folks who have been in touch with KM in the Indian IT industry was the presentation of familiar - same old - case studies (without any significant changes from the previous versions) 
• Infy's Suresh delivered a sophisticated presentation that urged us to bring together multiple disciplines, related to KM, for better results
• Ron Young explained the four dimensions of KM (Creativity, Collaboration, Innovation and Knowledge) and reiterated that we need to bring eastern and western thinking together to be able to make the best of knowledge
• William Miller (in his talk) brought out the relationships between and importance of combining spiritualistic thinking, innovation and KM - the first time I have ever heard such a talk at a KM conference. It goes some way to prove that KM could perhaps be the pathway to such a business (r)evolution!
• In general, presenters from non-KM fields made a greater impact on the audience because of the freshness in their perspectives. Vinita Bali from Britannia spoke about knowledge of the customers' needs as one of the superior dimensions of KM. She had some intriguing examples from the domain of medicine. She spoke about holistic thinking and treatment of symptoms in the context of knowledge and the importance of cross-learning between sub-fields. She had a simple definition of innovation that everyone appreciated after it followed a knowledge cafe that resulted in sophisticated perspectives ;-). Innovation, she said, in simple terms is "something that creates new value"
• Anil Menon, Pradeep Kar and Sadagopan spent some humorous, inspiring and thought-provoking minutes on innovation in the context of countries and dwelt upon the culture in India vs that in China. One of the interesting things that stuck on to my mind was Anil's emphasis that knowledge of theory was essential for business leaders :-)
• Dr.Sandhya from IIT Madras Research shared the results of an interesting study she had conducted that revealed that organizational learning support systems can turn around the innovation ecosystem. Her study revealed that innovation increases from 13 percent (with just availability of knowledge) to 66 percent if the organization has a good org. learning support system. She also mentioned that co-location of the concerned entities was found to be very important for innovation
• Mr. Trivedi representing the Govt. of India shared an impressive performance management model that has been implemented for assessing the performance of Indian ministries! 
• There was a debate on whether KM has fulfilled its potential or not and arguments were justified on both sides. It seems like the lack of concrete measurement techniques for KM will remain a pet peeve amongst those who like to say KM has not reached its potential. It would be interesting indeed to see if KM crosses this limitation in a convincing manner. Also, it later occurred to me that we are perhaps talking about the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly but things don't end there....the butterfly then needs to fly, collect food, "get" its colours and what not
• The knowledge cafe on KM and innovation brought out familiar thoughts on the two subjects as well as proved that people are still confused and unsure when it comes to categorically defining intangible concepts

After-thoughts:

1. We need to have more specific and detailed case studies on KM process improvements and cultural endeavors which probably means more workshops that are targeted at a specific audience, surveys before the conference is planned, and finally, more non-IT companies in the fray
2. We need to spend more time on creating and using frameworks rather than simply rattling off a laundry list of things that companies do. We need more sessions that help people understand principles so they can then act on their own
3. Also, another idea that I recently mentioned in a previous post is to include a session that presents ideas that are completely against the topic and the flow of the conference. That would be funny, provoke creative thinking and result in some unusual combinations of concepts etc

Knowledge and Human Stupidity

I came across this article - The basic laws of human stupidity - many weeks ago via Twitter (apologies, but I forgot who had tweeted about it. I think it might have been @beastoftraal). It took me a while to find some time to read the entire article as it is a pretty longish one. But believe me, once I started reading it, I just couldn't stop till I was done. It engaged me as much as a ball of thread might engage a curious cat - the whole experience was playful, interesting and thought-provoking. It delighted me, excited me, made me think, reintroduced me to the element of fun in Economics, and had me grinning ear to ear for quite a while. The article has flavours of social economics, psychology, human behaviour and humor. Obviously, I also attempted to relate these laws to the field of knowledge management. More on that later ;-) 


I immediately wanted to share it on this blog but then I kept procrastinating on the pretext of writing something around it rather than just sharing the raw link (for which we anyway have Twitter and FB). But I think I overestimated my creative potential. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that nothing I can ever say will add value to the brilliance, constructive sarcasm and the subtle joy that the article exudes. It is a perfect essay that leaves no point unexplored and, what's more, every bit of the exploration that the author -  Carlo M. Cipolla - engages in is a total delight to read and contemplate. Trying to interpret or comment on it would be like commenting on, say, the Himalayas. Not easy at all, uh? 


I've become as big a fan of Cipolla as of Wodehouse! :-) It's a pity Cipolla doesn't seem to have capitalized on his sense of humor and awesome thinking to write as many books or 'stories' as Plum did.

From the article link....

********************


I cannot, of course, avoid saying how I relate this to KM. No, you can't kill me! Shut your eyes if you don't want to read anything on KM. Here's the thing - I think knowledge management's objectives are (or should be) to get people to see the merit of remaining in or moving into the "intelligent" quadrant (you must read the article to understand what I mean) and looking for mutual benefits as both a taker and giver of knowledge.  I think it is a good example of the intention to exhibit human intelligence, as referred to in the article, because it is about yielding a gain to yourself while causing a gain to others as well and, as we know, KM revolves around the combination of sharing, learning and collaborating (working together to achieve something). 


At the risk of sounding somewhat obsessed, pursuing Knowledge Management in its truest sense, I believe, will put us all - in due course of time - in the I (Intelligent) block and help the organization and society as a whole (even though sometimes it may seem like we are in the Helpless block whenever we come across Bandits who only want to use our material but not share anything that they may have created or discovered). :-)

ICKM - October 2010

My key observations from the ICKM conference this year (October, 2010) - A mindmap summary. Hope some of it, at least, is self-explanatory!

Guest Posts on the Cognitive Edge Blog

I had the opportunity to guest post for a couple of weeks on the Cognitive Edge blog. Here are the links to my guest posts. Please note that many of these are repeat posts from this blog.


Some ideas from ICKM


Talent Reality Shows and Organizational Learning (repeat post)


Knowledge Management Gaps (ICKM)


Basic Laws of Human Stupidity


Hiring a CKO (repeat post)


KM Strategies (repeat post)


KM and Murder Mysteries  (repeat post)

Hole in the Wall

Emergence. Self-Organizing Learning Systems. Children. Education. Knowledge. Collaboration. Plenty of lessons in there!

Guest Post by Alexis Bonari on KM

Augmented KM Success: Just Add Collaboration

Knowledge management is an invaluable tool for any business, but it’s best when collaboration is an active contributor. Where KM meets collaboration, information shouldn’t just be managed; it should be exchanged, archived, and made available to the entire company. Because all employees have the potential to contribute to a company’s strategies, tactics, and capabilities, a communal unit of stored knowledge is an ideal concept. But how can that idea become reality?

The Benefits of Collaborative KM

Traditional management techniques assign constrained, prioritized duties to employees and leave the brainstorming to a select few. That’s starting to look like a dated and myopic strategy as collaborative KM arrives at a variety of businesses and companies. Baseline, which identifies itself as a guide dedicated to planning and implementing next-generation IT solutions in business, has conducted a recent study of collaboration’s role in KM. Out of 342 managers, 33% stated that KM strategies had helped them to achieve their original KM business goals. However, out of the managers who used collaborative KM strategies, 58% achieved their goals. The collaborative facet of KM is revolutionizing the way companies run, interact with customers and partners, and relate to employees. 

Encouraging Collaboration

The first step to pursuing a knowledge-sharing initiative is to increase knowledge productivity among employees. One strategy to achieve this goal is the implementation of collaboration tools and applications. There’s a lot of software (such as CenterStage or KnowledgeBase Manager) aimed at the idea of collaborative KM, so it’s relatively easy to choose a set of tools for a specific business. Introducing collaborative tools to employees is the hard part, but successful implementers have some strong advice for managers who want to try out the tools. Staying serious about the company-wide use of the new tools is effective, but it’s also important to manage expectations and introduce the tools with deliberate care. With a younger set of employees, it helps to choose collaborative tools that use social network-based interfaces. Not only do these tools enjoy considerable popularity, but they also encourage employees to spend less time on Facebook and more time on the constructive, work-related version during office hours. Although 58% of managers stipulated that collaborative tools and systems had to be customized to maximize their potential, they agreed that collaborative KM benefits are worth the extra cost. 

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Photo: Public Domain
URL: http://www.pmthink.com/KnowledgeManagementITSM01.jpg

Conversations

Apparently, some body of research conducted - surprise, surprise - research on conversations and came to the conclusion that 43% of the conversations we have are meaningless. Not sure if that means the conversations themselves are meaningless or they are ultimately meaningless because we don't do anything (take action, change behaviour etc) after we have had a meaningful conversation. ;-)

Incidentally, this morning, I wrote something on conversations for my official blog. Thought I'd reproduce it here for some, well, meaningful conversations on the topic of conversations. :-)

So, here are some random thoughts (on the remaining 57% of the conversations we have):

- Sometimes, you need to have a conversation to know what's on your own mind

- A real conversation is one which involves a genuine effort to understand the other person's perspectives and share your own insights and experiences

- A conversation is, arguably, not one where you start off with an inflexible and pre-determined objective to get the other person to toe your line or do something. This may prevent you from identifying the 'actual' objectives, challenges, concerns, solutions etc. Though you may have to state the objective of your conversation at times, you must be prepared to see it undergoing changes...

- Unless we are talking about extremely focused people, a conversation that gets the best out of both the parties having it is one wherein both are approachable, understanding, patient and aware of multiple perspectives

- Sometimes, a conversation involves compromising on something a la a tough negotiation

- A controlled conversation (largely led and guided in a particular direction by perhaps one of the parties) is necessary during certain situations but may not always lead to great consequences. A free-flowing conversation that is allowed to chart its own path may lead to more serendipitous discoveries and get the best out of the participants  

Caveat: However, there is a likelihood of one of the parties completely hijacking the conversation if the other person involved displays an open mind, seems vulnerable and fails to be assertive. Tch.

What?

The Social Intranet

There was a strong sense of deja vu as I read this blog post by @oscarberg , a KM/E2.0 expert from Sweden.  


In his post, Oscar effectively outlines what he thinks ought to be the ideal principles of the modern-day Intranet – The Social Intranet. It's an extremely well-written post and is a must-read for everyone wanting to make the transformation from traditional KM to E2.0 enabled KM.


http://www.thecontenteconomy.com/2010/07/serving-long-tail-of-information-needs.html

The sense of deja vu, by the way, is because I had the wonderful opportunity to conceptualize, design and roll out such a social Intranet in my own organization just a few months ago! Quite glad to note that the principles of the app we rolled out are in alignment with some of Oscar's thoughts. PS: I've written a full paper on the work that I was involved in and am actually hoping to present it at an appropriate conference. 

Key views (from Oscar's post) that coincide with the approach I adopted for our E2.0 app: (Highlights mine)

To help people find and discover information that is relevant to their tasks when they need it, we also need to create powerful pull mechanisms which allow relevant information to automatically surface and be placed at the fingertips of knowledge workers just when they need it. It is also critical that they have access to ALL information that is available, including collaborative content produced by teams, content produced by external resources, tacit knowledge captured in conversations, and so forth.

It equips everyone with the tools that allows them to participate, contribute, attract, discover, find and connect with each other to exchange information and knowledge and/or collaborate.

Although too many options can decrease your performance and create stress, information abundance does not equal an abundance of choice; the social intranet is a pull platform with mechanisms for automatically attracting relevant information and people to you. What’s important is that the options you are presented with are relevant and usable.

Deliberately hindering information to reach people is not the way to avoid the sensation commonly called information overload, because as Clay Shirky argues the problem is not the amount of information but rather that the filters we have fail to sort it properly for us. We need to get the filters in place instead of blaming and emonizing ("Tsunami of data", "firehose of information" etc) information supply and arguing that the only way to solve this "problem" is to limit supply.

The social intranet also has an important part to play when it comes to supporting serendipity; enabling people to find both information and people they didn’t know they were looking for.

Spending time and effort searching for relevant information and people where there is information abundance just won’t pay off. We must have ways that “automagically” attract useful information and connections to us.

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