45 KM resources

Lucas puts together a list of 45 essential knowledge management sites and blogs. Good to see that this blog's also in the list....Got no excuses now. Ought to improve my post content and do more of the thinking! :)

Motivation in the Army

I recently went to a training program on leadership and we happened to discuss how organizations can learn from other industries other than their own and use what they learn to get creative with their own problem-solving endeavours. One of the examples that came up was how organizations could learn from the Army about motivating people. Though I appreciated the idea, I was under the impression that the Army would anyhow largely comprise motivated people. I wasn’t able to imagine people who were not passionate about protecting the country joining the Army – and I am talking about India (not countries where it is mandatory to at least temporarily serve the country as a member of the Army). So, I posed the question and was told by at least three people in the class that I was mistaken and that there are people who join the army because they can’t join elsewhere. That was mildly surprising. Moreover, since performance as a member of the army is literally a question of life or death unlike many other fields, aren’t people bound to be “good”? So, doesn’t that automatically make motivating people a job that – I am oversimplifying it a bit here - simply means telling them to perform or perish and let that fundamental rule sink in????

I need some views on this topic. I mean, do let me know what you think.

Creativity - A Perspective

Another confession coming your way! I enjoy creating power point slides (as long as no one’s dictating and forcing me to follow the ‘rules’) though I don’t like being subjected to boring presentations that have overflowing text and/or statistics. ;) I love presentations that go easy on the text but sport a lot of cute pictures and punch lines etc. I like to see every power point slide as a plain white sheet of paper that I can use to express myself. Given a topic, I enjoy using slides to think of the flow of information, use of metaphors, interesting visual content, and quotes that go with the contents of each slide etc. Ahem. I heard you….and will move on to talk about something worthwhile. This post isn’t about my love for particular types of presentations……so, instead of waxing eloquent about my likes and dislikes, I will go straight down into the reason for this post. I am participating in the World’s Best Presentation contest. It’s been a long time since I first planned to write something on creativity – a full-blown paper or article or presentation that could be used to pass on my perspective of creativity to anyone interested. I finally got down to it, loved working on it and finally decided to share it on slideshare.net. Here it is. Let me know what you think. And errrr, as I am submitting it to the contest, if you happen to like the presentation, you could give it a “Thumbs up” vote. What? :)

PS: The presentation is embedded at the bottom of this page

Pas(spor)t to the Future

Came across this quote today. Simple and effective to communicate the significance of learning from the past.

"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do" - Disraeli Benjamin

Wonderful words of wisdom

From this article in HBR

“No one can truly define success and failure for us- only we can define that for ourselves. No one can take away our dignity unless we surrender it. No one can take away our hope and pride unless we relinquish them. No one can steal our creativity, imagination and skills unless we stop thinking. No one can stop us from rebounding unless we give up”

I can say it again. Wonderful words of wisdom….

Happiness and the Art of Innovation

Happiness and the Art of Innovation

I've been trying to catch up with my mail backlog and started off with long-pending BW articles. And I am happy. :-) Have been looking at some fantastic articles as you can see.....

Karma Capitalism

Karma Capitalism

Talks about Indian Management Gurus and how they are accelerating the adoption of ancient Indian wisdom in Business and Management.

Key words/phrases - Concentration, Consistency, Co-operation, Detached Involvement, Purpose before Self, Defocus on gains, Inner Peace over Materialistic Achievements, India - Fusion Society

Rising Above Being Cut Off at the Knees

Rising Above Being Cut Off at the Knees

I like this article. Nothing philosophical about these things in case you think so. There are times when I've done exactly this and liked myself for it and times when I've failed miserably and hated myself for it....

Got any experiences to share?

Motivation @ the Workplace

Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation - HBS Working Knowledge

Lovely article. Spot on. It says that employees are looking for three key things from their organization and as long as organizations deal with these, most employees will perform well. It also very rightly points out that most employees are enthusiastic when they start. It's the organization and its ways which demotivates the employees more often than not. The 3 key things pointed out are Equity, Achievement and Camaraderie....and I would like to add....perhaps in the same order?

Of Apple and Cults

Ilker has a well-researched post on cults in the context of the iPOD craze.....
The world's always loved to love some and loved to hate some.....

Creativity...

I am putting together a presentation on Creativity that I plan to submit to the World's Best Presentation contest. I'm actually done...but holding on to it a little bit longer just in case I get some more ideas. The last date to participate is 15 or so days away.

One of the things I discovered as I looked inward in my pursuit to understand creativity better is....Creativity is the manifestation of a lack of desire to be logical at all times...

Help

"Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways." - Samuel McChord Crothers

Help! I am almost splitting at the seams laughing....! :)

"Never speak out of anger, Never act out of fear, Never choose from impatience, But wait... and peace will appear." - Guy Finley

Very hard to apply....all the time! Sigh.

This is a quote borrowed from one of my favourite blogs. This blogger is undoubtedly a great cook. Apart from that, her style of blogging is cool. She shares the recipe of a dish that she apparently prepares on a given day, almost everyday of the year. The way she patiently shares her wonderful recipes along with some excellent photographs of the dishes that she prepares, appeals to me. She also shares some nice quotes every now and then...! :) Epitome of discipline.

Storytelling...

I believe in storytelling. No two ways about it. I’ve tried it before and continue to derive inspiration from the concept. I’ve written stories (long and short ones) to influence and provoke people, told stories albeit not so well, coaxed people to tell stories, listened to stories – and almost chewed up a few adventurous and exploratory insects because of a sagging jaw in certain situations. So forth. You get the idea. It works wonders (not from the perspective of certain insects, of course). But I want to understand something better. Help me. There’s one possible downside to storytelling. Certain people may get carried away and exaggerate a bit. So, you are looking at a situation where distorted stories are floating around. Over time, the story can get so distorted that it becomes an almost untrue story that evokes unwanted skepticism from the listeners. What can be done to prevent this from happening? Written stories, of course, may prevent continuous distortion that may accompany verbal stories. What else? Any thoughts?

What is Collaboration?

"The Role of 'Invitation' in Collaboration" - Dale has an excellent post on the basics of collaboration.

PM and KM Culture

Bill talks about a Project Management Case Study that he read on How Culture Affects Knowledge Transfer and quotes some important reasons why there is little knowledge sharing:

-Masculine values - compete and dominate rather than reflect and build relationships
-Perception of time as scarce
-No concern about the past and limited concern about the future
-Relationships based on respect and no unrequested interference
-Private ownership of projects
-Project managers don't need help

You can read Bill's full post here.

Interesting Idea...!

Organizational Charting Our Course

Immediate thoughts....
Advantages: Companies and their key people are going to be found easily - by prospective partners etc
Disadvantages: Another source of information for Head Hunting

How are you being, as a leader?

How are you being, as a leader?
....good post on leadership.

More on Ideation-The Birth and Death of Ideas

This is my final post on the book, Ideation – The Birth and Death of Ideas. It somehow has taken me too long a time to read the second part of the book as it is more about the formalities of registering, protecting and developing ideas. Here are some more tidbits from the book. I loved the first few chapters as it provided some well researched details about inventors and their psychology.

- Creative thinkers are divergent thinkers and have the following characteristics based on a study by P.J Guilford :

o Fluency – volume of solutions

o Flexibility – plethora of approaches

o Originality – things that have not been thought of

o Elaboration – thinking through details and execution

- Many inventers border on eccentricity. Examples quoted in the book are that of Archimedes’ famous reaction to his discovery while in his bath, Mozart’s giggling and promiscuous behaviour in court which resulted in many people not recognizing his genius (except the court musician who noticed and got jealous), Einstein’s confusing lectures, Newton’s lack of friends and preference for complete solitude, and suicidal tendencies in visually creative people and authors. The book puts forth an interesting reason for some of these behaviours – “Frustration of seeing the truth clearly but being unable to convince anyone else of this vision”. Another reason is apparently the possibility of one part of the brain not being able to cope with the intensity of the vision that the other part of the brain - that operates in an enhanced mode - conjures up.

- The authors also note that most creative/inventive people are alienated, live in poverty (mostly because they don’t care about money and enjoy the very experience of being creative/inventive and also because their talents are not understood or recognized), are persistent, and highly focused on the relationship between their inventions and ethics. Inventors are also labeled as traditionally paranoid because of reasons like theft of ideas by wily people often leading to unfair kudos and financial rewards for the latter. The authors of the book step out of the confines of typical “professional” thoughts for a moment and go to the extent of cursing idea stealers.

- Ideas are classified as Problem Solution, Evolutionary, Symbiotic, Revolutionary, Serendipitous, Targeted, Artistic, Philosophical and Computer-Assisted Discovery.

- In the chapter on The Corporate Innovation Perspective, the authors point out that the Finance and Accounting body in USA has been the first to admit that CFOs are ill equipped to value the intangibles in an organization.

- Another lovable quote by David Sarnoff that the book provides is “Let us not paralyze our capacity for good by brooding over man’s capacity for evil”

Previous posts related to this book:

So what’s more important?

Ignorance and knowledge are strange siblings

Change!

"Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die." - Tao Te Ching