For My Next Dissertation - BPO

I am currently working on my second masters dissertation as I near the end of my MSc in Operations & Technology Management at DCU.

The topic of BPO seems to be hot right now with recent M&A activity in this domain, including the acquisition of EDS by HP. Just last week, HP announced a re-branding of EDS which will now be known as "HP Enterprise Services".

My own specific focus on BPO relates to the challenges that a captive O&T unit faces in exposing BP services on the commercial market in their industry. This will build on the core competency theories of Prahalad and Hamel which would suggest that organisations can use their existing expertise to provide services to others.

Classic cases would include the spin-out of EDS from General Motors, 6-Sigma from Motorola and the likes of Canon becoming a key market player in the printing business.

I will share some of my research and thoughts here, but I am finding the subject very interesting and especially in a recession, where organisations are looking for new revenue channels when traditional income sources are suffering. Disruptive Innovation and Discovery-Driven Growth are two topics which are quickly growing my reading list currently!

KM Dissertation Advice

I met with a friend and former KM classmate of mine, Colman McMahon, today in preparation for a presentation we will be giving to the current students of the MSc in Knowledge Management at the Dublin Institute of Technology. We will be sharing our experience of tackling a dissertation in KM and also an open Q&A about our views on the current state of KM.

It was interesting to compare thoughts on where we see the future of KM, particularly on the technology and tooling side. We both had looked at wiki-use during our research and agreed that they are certainly useful in demonstrating the human elements of KM (capture, sharing, organising of knowledge etc). We also spoke about Sharepoint and Lotus Connections - we both agreed that there is huge potential in relation to the power of these environments to provide a solid infrastructure for KM and Enterprise 2.0 features going forward.

In terms of what advice we would pass on to the current class, we have yet to conclude on this. My own thoughts include:

• KM is more than just a technology discipline, in fact it encompasses many aspects of a working organisation. This is an important lesson to learn, as many people have fallen at this first hurdle of understanding what KM is and how it will provide value and enable internal growth for your organisation.
• The role of HR in KM is very important. "Learning & Development" has out-grown its welcome, and the days of simply attending courses and returning to the desk are over. The next generation of "Learning & Development" is continuous learning & development - KM! The knowledge workers of Gen X/Y want to search and discover knowledge instantly (instead of attending a 3-day course to do so).
• The tie between Web 2.0 and KM is a growing discipline. However, it is important to remember and focus-on the core KM principles. Don't deploy a wiki or blog because it's cool - deploy them for what they can add to your organisation, and be clear on what you are using them for.

Once we narrow down our thoughts on KM research and our experiences in the next few weeks, I will share them here.

Connectr #4 Presentation from ILUG 2008

As per my previous post, I presented at the Connectr #4 event as part of the ILUG 2008 at the IBM campus in Dublin last week (see slides below). This was a great event to be part of as we got to meet the IBM development team and hear their views on working towards Lotus Connections 2.0 which has just been announced.

Other presenters on the day included:

• Heidi Votaw (IBM Lotus Program Director, Social Software)


• Alan Crean (Process Master)


• Neil Burston (Oak Ridge Business Solutions)


• Ian McNairn (IBM Program Director, Web Technology & Innovation)

Some interesting features of Connections were also demoed (eg Blogs, Communites, Activities, Wiki Integration, Atlas). Given that Enterprise 2.0 is a hot topic this week due to the Enterprise 2.0 conference taking place in Boston, there has been lots of discussion around Connections 2.0 and the comparison to Sharepoint.

My thanks to Neil Burston and Stuart McIntyre for organising the event, and also to IBM for being excellent hosts on the day. I will post more on Heidi's presentation again. Here are my slides from the day:

View Upload your own

Presenting at Connectr #4 in Dublin

I will be presenting a "15 minutes of Fame" session at the ILUG Connectr #4 event at the IBM campus in Dublin on June 3rd. My slot is called "Implementing KM - Success Factors" which is closely linked to my previous post on the subject when finishing my dissertation.

Implementing KM - Success Factors

I gave a presentation tonight at the Dublin Institute of Technology based on my dissertation. In it I was demonstrating the high level findings of the research and some of the learning points and experiences of piloting an enterprise wiki as a knowledge management enabler.

First off was the idea that knowledge management is much more about people, their knowledge and embedding a knowledge sharing culture than any particular technology. IT will inevitably be part of any large KM initiative, but is only the enabler of the end goal. It is important to tie the goals of the KM program to the objectives of the organisation in which it is positioned. This will help senior management to sell and promote it.

I have tried to promote the benefits of KM as part of the initiative. I have found it is important to communicate these in a language which makes sense to all stakeholders, without too much jargon. The first 3 are recommended by Stan Garfield. They were:

• Avoiding redundant effort.
• Avoiding repeated mistakes.
• Taking advantage of existing expertise in the organisation.
• Making individuals more effective.
• Making teams more effective.

Given the people focus of my research, collaboration and knowledge flows became important. If we examine the knowledge networks which exist in an organisation, we can better understand how knowledge flows throughout it. Large Organisations are made up of many networks, with key players who act as information brokers, boundary spanners, central connectors, and peripheral specialists. These flows can often create knowledge bottlenecks of bureaucracy, which can prevent free knowledge sharing.

Next it was onto Web 2.0, and how the elements and behaviours of web 2.0 applications and communities are becoming increasingly popular in knowledge management. For example, a Forrester paper out last week reported that 85% of companies using Wikis were using them as a knowledge management tool. The match between tools such as wikis to the knowledge cycle (find, organise, share, use/reuse) and the enabling features (Search Link Author Tag Extend Signal) of web 2.0 is one which has not gone unoticed. My approach was simple:

• Engage Senior Management to back the initiative.
• Secure exclusive, high profile use-cases for the portal.
• Brand the portal to promote its use.
• Meet with prospective teams and user groups to gauge reaction.
• Drive wiki adoption by becoming a ‘Wiki Champion’.

The initiative was supported top-down by senior management, driven bottom-up from grassroots, and promoted laterally through communities of practices. This ensures sustained engagement across a wide range of groups within the organisation.

3 high level conclusions:

1. Knowledge management is more about people and the processes which enable knowledge management than specific technologies.


2. Simplicity is important, providing knowledge workers with the tools to quickly capture, organise, share and reuse knowledge which is important to their work.


3. Wiki’s provide users with the collaborative environment required for successful knowledge management.

My KM Dissertation Abstract

Having completed my KM masters dissertation, I thought it would be useful to share the abstract which sums up alot of the work I have been researching. The title of the dissertation was "Wiki based collaboration: An effective enabler of Knowledge Management?":

The World-Wide Web has evolved into a collaborative learning environment, where contribution and participation are replacing consumption and passive involvement. The shift which has taken place towards 'web 2.0' has been extraordinarily rapid, with the true potential of the web to connect people and their knowledge being seen. The use of web 2.0 tools as enabling technologies for knowledge management is becoming increasingly popular, with organisations replicating the success of these technologies on the consumer web behind their firewalls. The goal is to improve the knowledge sharing cultures internally and make better use of their organisational knowledge, so as to gain competitive advantage.

The full potential of the adoption of web 2.0 tools has yet to emerge, however early cases of successful implementation of social tools in support of organisational goals are positive. By closely aligning the aims of the knowledge management initiative with the goals and business objectives of the organisation, together with the early support of senior management, the potential success of the program is improved. An experiment to introduce web 2.0 technologies in a large financial services organisation has been undertaken to examine the challenges which arise and how the approach and language of the initiative helped to overcome potential misunderstanding and confusion about the terms web 2.0 and knowledge management. A pilot of an enterprise wiki platform was implemented, with full engagement of design and technical teams to position the technology as a potential collaboration standard. The focus was always about the capture and sharing of knowledge throughout, with many learning points for wiki champions and knowledge managers emerging.

Confusion around the true definition of knowledge management can be harmful to the potential success of initiatives if the wrong approach is taken. Focusing too much on technology can distract knowledge managers from the most important elements of implementing a successful knowledge management program; people, social networks and their knowledge. While technology will almost always be part of any knowledge management initiative, it is important to recognise that it is only an enabler of the cultural change with which knowledge management is associated. In order to facilitate effective collaboration between cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams, a new suite of enabling technologies is required, as the frequency with which these types of collaboration occur increases. Traditional tools such as email and file share have been overused and actually detract from effective collaboration amongst teams in projects which appear with increasing complexity.

This approach has shown that the terms knowledge management and web 2.0 are not crucial to the success of these programs. Aligning the goals of the project to the business objectives of the organisation allows senior management to better engage with the efforts involved in achieving those aims.

Please let me know if you have any comments or thoughts?

Wiki as a Knowledge Management Tool

My research has been focused on the collaboration and knowledge sharing elements of knowledge management in the enterprise. One of the key parts of this is to map what the enterprise wiki pilot is achieving against the basic knowledge cycle I started with when I began my first MSc (I have just started my second!).

So, looking at the 4 elements of the KM cycle above:

Find
Wiki use in the enterprise allows you to combine the knowledge of many teams into one larger, community knowledge base. This gives the users a "place" or "home" for their contributions where they know that they can be easily used by others.

Organise
Wiki spaces in products like Confluence & Socialtext are hierarchicaly structured in the parent-child page relationship which makes them easy to understand and to administer. Additional features such as tagging, breadcrumb navigation and powerful contextual search makes information retrieval much better than email + file shares. Some early responses with our wiki pilot have indicated that the benefits of having a web-based document sharing tool which can index-search attachments to provide a more powerful information retreival service is a very welcome addition to their job roles.

Share
Here is where the "Wiki Way" shines. There have been many groupware products in the past which have facilitated centralised, web-based document management, but wiki's provide this with the important collaboration layer that web 2.0 enables on top. They are a much more intuitive environment to interact with and will be around for a long time, as your n-generation graduate intake will already be trained in these environments from their own social interactions on the web!

Use & Reuse
As is mentioned on Stan Garfield's Weekly Knowledge Management Blog this week - 3 major benfitis of KM are avioding redundant effort, avioding repeated mistakes and taking advantage of existing knowledge and expertise within your organisation. A collaborative working environment supported by wiki use can help deliver on some of these benefits.

It is easy to forget the base principles which are enabled by web 2.0 tools when put to use in a business environment. We must be able to recognise the simple goals which culture and technology in the past have prohibited. A changing world with more and more distributed and virtual teams require organisations to provide its knowledge workers with tools which facilitate distributed and virtual collaboration.

Social Communication in the Enterprise

Creating a knowledge sharing culture in the enterprise is a difficult task. There are many benefits to be gained from an environment where employees can freely exchange knowledge and expertise, which otherwise may be lost when they leave the organisation or switch roles within it. This element is known as knowledge retention.

The following table shows the scenarios in relation to the tools or methods used for capturing and sharing knowledge in the enterprise. The green cell (social - tacit) is the one which is most coveted and is probably most difficult to establish as part of the organisational culture.

This social - tacit communication is what I am exploring in my dissertation. I want to investigate whether the use of an enterprise wiki platform will result in employees participating in a community environment where they can contribute and search for content which previously they would have to either request it or know where to find it in the unorganised shared folders.

I would classify each of the cells as follows:

Individual-Explicit: The creation of knowledge by individuals in documents or in eMails as part of their day-to-day tasks. This type of knowledge is often not shared or made available to others for re-use. In this context, it is often "lost" to the organisation. An example of this is a "How-To" document created by an expert on how they do their job and often stored on their own PC or printed in the form of a document.

Individual-Tacit: From the definition of tacit knowledge..."is knowledge that people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access. Often, people are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences". Freeing this knowledge can lead to improved collaboration and communication in the enterprise.

Social-Explicit: Meetings, Workshops, Internal Communications (Magazines etc.) and Intranet Content. This type of knowledge is created by many and requires some collaboration during it's creation or compilation. Organisations have been using Intranets for years now to allow many to access explicit information in relation to procedures, organisational structure, FAQ's etc.

Social-Tacit: A culture of knowledge sharing and open communication is required for social - tacit interactions to freely occur. The use of discussion forums and FAQ/best practice intranet pages have been tried for this type of communication in the past. The use of Wiki's in the enterprise is an emerging trend in this area, which tries to build on the success of wikipedia as a mass-collaboration and participative platform and bring this behind the firewall to solve real business problems. There are also many elements of social-computing which have been demonstrated by YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr and many others which can bring an element of personalisation to these portals.

The creation of communities of practice or adapting current communications methods to enable employees to participate in a wiki portal may help them to contribute to the greater organisational knowledge, however, it must be noted that the creation of documents and management of information strategies must be an important part of any collaboration strategy.

Selling Knowledge Management - Language is Key

I haven't had much time to post lately, my dissertation is at a very busy stage. One thing that I thought would be useful to share is my experience of turning an idea into reality. I am looking to pilot a wiki-based portal in my organisation to enable better collaboration for COP's (Communities of Practice), Special Interest Groups, Communications Groups etc.

I have found that the language used to describe my project has been very important. People don't readily know what is meant by 'Knowledge Management' and sometimes they can get a little scared when you try to sell an idea as KM. This is also true for web2.0, as is my experience with the word 'wiki'.

Now, almost everyone I have spoken to about the project has heard of wikipedia, but I am trying to demonstrate the benefits of wiki use in a controlled environment behind the firewall, So I have tried not to mention wikipedia where possible. I am enjoying people's reaction and their questions as they try to understand the concept.

I gave the idea a 'brand', so that when the people I meet talk to each other, they will spread the idea by using its' name. I called the portal 'OnePlace' - To signify that all of the work is now in one place, where the participants of a group can easily find their information (documents, meetings agendas, presentations), and that their COP now has a 'Place' (below) rather than simply comprising of a thread of emails and a monthly physical meeting.

So what about the language? I have tried to use words like re-use, reduce re-work, easily find what you are looking for, keep up to date .....to describe the use of a collaborative wiki space when working as part of a COP.

So where has this got me? A pilot is now being implemented, and we will see how the users react. It will be interesting to see how the baby boomers react to using wiki instead of depending on the office suite. I am confident though that even if they struggle initially with WYSIWYG editing, they will experience/observe enough benefits over the traditional email & attachment way of running a COP within an organisation (below).

Please let me know of your experiences with introducing wiki to your organisation?

Enterprise 2.0 and Generation Y - What's the right time to adopt?

I have been reading some papers recently about the differences between the Baby Boomer Generation and Generation Y. Specifically, I am interested in how individuals from both generations will react to the social computing tools when they are eventually adopted behind the firewall in large organisations.

Generation Y kids (those born between 1985 - 1995) are now coming into the workforce. I was born in 1984, so I actually feel a bit left out when I read about all of the excitement around this next bunch!

These individuals (which is a strange way to describe the most connected generation there has ever been) bring with them a whole new genre of communicating. They were the first to experience internet use in their schools, they have come through college with Google, Facebook, YouTube and all of the other social networking sites over the last 10 years.

If I focus a little on their most recent experience - College, here they have used the power of google and the web to teach themselves how to find information. They have used social networking sites to find, rate, share and view content such as music, videos, stories and slideshows with each other.

Now Imagine yourself as one of these guys (e.g. You are 21, and starting in a large MNC):

• You arrive in an environment where there are no efficient ways for finding the information you want, now when you don't know something about a specific task in your company - you can't just google it!
• You have no way of finding others who may know because the corporate directory lists only name, department, email and phone details - there are no full profiles (Knowledge Maps).
• To top it all off, you can't access YouTube, Facebook, SlideShare, Flickr etc because they are all banned in your organisation.

I could add more to this list but my basic point is that these young creative individuals will be like fish out of water when they arrive at their desks on day 1! What I am interested in is when is the right time to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into your organisation.

In the beginning the Baby Boomer senior management will not understand the user urge for wiki's, blogs, and collaborative tools such as tagging and bookmarking, however, at the same time the generation Y knowledge workers will get frustrated with the lack of structure and transparency in the enterprise information environment they will be working in.

IT Consumerisation - The user has the power!

I have been reading lots of papers recently about web2.0 adoption in large enterprises. It seems that the common occurrence is a small grassroots seed that grows with popularity into a larger more widely used solution.

I am referring to the IT consumerization which Gartner says will be "the most significant trend affecting IT in the next 10 years". While looking at my own organisation for my dissertation, I have come across multiple small-scale wiki implementations scattered among different departments.

On their own, each wiki was very powerful and an excellent improvement on the conventional tools for team collaboration in the 90's (email + MS Office), but in terms of consistency, cross-reference and compatibility they are actually creating the same siloed effect we started with. In speaking to one of the "Wiki-Champions", I also discovered that usage was not very high amongst the team members because the wiki was seen as a "gimic" i.e. There was no exclusive content on it which required them to use it, and also no management support of its usage.

I believe that IT managers have to recognise the user "urge" to use the social software tools as part of their working environment. The best way is to get in early, to put the tools in place so that at least when a team or project wants to create content in a workspace, they are all common, held on a single knowledge base (I don't like the word repository), and can be searched with all of the others.

One of the things that I have been concentrating on from the beginning is management support. If I engage the senior management approval for wiki usage by clearly displaying and explaining the KM benefits which could be realised, then I will get that exclusive content which will help ensure improved usage and sustained engagement with the system.

Collaborating in Workspaces

As part of my dissertation, I have been exploring the concept of employees working in "spaces" rather than on siloed PC's or shared folder drives. I have been expanding my enterprise workshop manager idea. There are 2 reasons for this:

1. By having informal discussions with colleagues, I realised that an enterprise would want much more than a workshop manager. They were all pointing me towards some method of capturing the knowledge created in a workshop, linking to the relevant output documents and giving the content some context.


2. When I started looking at enterprise wiki solutions, I realised how powerful they are. With the emphasis on simplicity, I was able to focus more on the content instead of worrying how the small pieces would fit together.

The main product I have been looking at is Confluence from Atlassian. I had heard alot about this product from other bloggers, so I decided to have a look for myself. I have found it very easy to use so far, and most importantly, Confluence does the simple things right.

So what does the use of an enterprise wiki offer? Well I am loving the concept of working in "spaces". A space is created for a project, many pages (overviews, documents, attachments, conversations etc) are created within this space providing a better visualisation of the project for its participants.

There are the more obvious advantages also - reduction in the use of shared folder drives, better document versioning, reduction of email spaghetti. Overall, I just love the look and feel of working in a project space, allowing me to access all relevant documentation in a searchable, taggable, personalisable space.

One interesting thing I will be looking at will be the comparison of a low-cost product such as Confluence with an enterprise giant such as Lotus Quickplace.

More to come on what I am actually doing, not getting much time to blog at the mo!

Enterprise Workshop Manager - Using multiple interlinked wikis to capture knowledge

A while back I wrote a post called Organising a workshop using a wiki (Please read this earlier post for reference). The idea was to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of running a workshop. Now for my dissertation I am thinking about the practical implementations of this type of knowledge capture in the enterprise.

Imagine your organisation is undertaking a large business requirements gathering exercise in relation to a major implementation. It is estimated that it will take a total of 70 workshops to cover all of the streams involved.

Using my proposed method, the facilitators could reduce the number of mails required to run these workshops as all details in relation to each event is located on its own dedicated set of pages.

Using links, the outputs of Workshop 1 can be referenced on the "Background" page of Workshop 3, as these 2 workshops are related. This means that the repetition of information is reduced, and less documents are required for the preparation for individual workshops. The re-use,retention and linking of valuable knowledge is increased.

Traditionally, an individual who cannot attend a workshop does not contribute (they may send someone else in their place). This can often detract from the effectiveness depending on that individuals role or importance to the topic being explored. Now, they can contribute any suggestions, questions, concerns, or ideas to the workshop wiki before the event. This helps improve the quality of what is discussed on the day, and improves the overall effectiveness of the event.

The notes for a workshop are usually jotted on to large flip-chart sheets during the workshop. These then have to be transcribed into a word document and mailed to everyone for review (at this point the flip-chart sheets we used to record what happened in the workshop discarded). Now, we can take the notes directly onto a wiki page during the workshop, and they are immediately available to all participants afterwards. They remain there for cross reference for future use.

All of the knowledge created during the 70 workshops is now held on a single, searchable repository. Each page or set of pages can be exported as PDF documents, which can be the starting point for the drafting of Functional and Technical specifications.

The method allows for many individuals to collaborate in a new way. By allowing easy, combined input to each workshop before the event, there is a reduction in time wasted on any "Surprises" on the day. It also allows for a definition of focus by providing a forum for Q&A.

Each user would open up the Workshop Manager. They will be presented with a "Dashboard" showing them all of the workshops they are involved in. They will be directed to the homepage of any one of these by clicking on its link.

I will expand this idea more in the more posts to come, but please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Web2.0 - What's different this time around?

While thinking about the role of Web2.0 in the enterprise, a contact has asked the following question - "What's different this time around?"

They were referring to the language being used by vendors to sell the idea of web2.0, noting that it is very similar to the "spin" used back in the 90's during the emergence of the Internet.

This is one of the reasons I chose to tackle this issue. As I outlined in my dissertation proposal - "the adoption of web2.0 tools and methods is being prohibited by misunderstanding of purpose and lack of defined ROI for business cases".

In this context, I would say that where the emergence of the Internet created channels for business to exploit a new market with their customers (e-commerce), web 2.0 is more an enhancement of "How" organisations operate internally.

Using Wiki's, Blogs, Intranet Portals, RSS etc will not present an immediately obvious ROI like Internet Banking or Online Sales did. However, they can help empower organisations to become "learning organisations" i.e Reducing repetition of mistakes, improving knowledge retention, creating collaborative environments, and encouraging a knowledge sharing culture.

A quote I like is by Kahlil Gibran:

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than
much knowledge that is idle.

There are also externally facing uses of web2.0 for organisations emerging (RSS feeds, Podcasting, Support Wiki's etc), and as their popularity grow, we will see more exploration in this domain.

What is Enterprise2.0?

In my last post, I shared the title of my KM dissertation - "Enterprise 2.0 – Using web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration & knowledge sharing in an organisation". So here is my first post in relation to understanding what Enterprise2.0 is all about.

I was thinking about how I would present the idea of Enterprise 2.0 to others who may not be familiar with web 2.0, social networking or indeed knowledge management. I came across this excellent presentation on slideshare called "Meet Charlie - what is Enterprise2.0?" which I think sums it up nicely:

I think my focus will be about examining the traditional methods on slide 31:

• Outlook
• Project
• Excel
• Word
• Internet Explorer

and comparing them with the benefits of the tools on slide 32:

• Wikipedia
• Google Docs/Mail
• Blogging
• RSS
• Instant Messaging
• Linkedin (Social Networking)

Overall, I think this is a great presentation and helps explain Enterprise2.0 in "Plain English", a style which is proving very popular as used by the folks over at CommonCraft in videos such as:

Wikis in Plain English

RSS in Plain English

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

My KM Dissertation Proposal

I have been working on the proposal for my KM dissertation which I will be working on from now until mid-December 2007.

I have decided to focus on collaboration and knowledge sharing within the enterprise. I looked at my blog posts since I began back in April of this year, and noted that of the 27 posts, 15 were tagged collaboration and 13 were tagged knowledge sharing.

Next, I began thinking about my own work preferences and experience of working within an organisation. Most of us have to engage with others every day, but do we progressively learn from and improve on past experiences from project to project?

I like the concept of web 2.0 and how these tools are popular amongst younger professionals for interaction (blogging), social networking(facebook, myspace), and information management(RSS readers).

So, I have settled on:

“Enterprise 2.0 – Using web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration & knowledge sharing within the enterprise.”

Over the coming months I will be blogging on topics in relation to the dissertation and on peripheral matters relating to the implementation of these topics in real life. I will examine case studies and research papers focusing on the successes, failures and emerging best practices in this field.

A brief outline description for what I want to do is:

Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing are concepts which we are hearing more and more about. Web 2.0 tools are bringing people together in new ways and providing platforms for sharing knowledge and improving collaboration within the enterprise. However, the adoption of these tools and methods are being prohibited by misunderstanding of purpose and lack of defined ROI for business cases.

In this dissertation I want to explore the processes for which web 2.0 can provide improved efficiency and new ways of capturing, storing and utilizing intellectual property. Furthermore, I want to show how these tools can become interactive knowledge repositories which can make this information available to more and more individuals within an enterprise.

For me, the most important aspect of this is the sharing of information. Communication, collaboration and accessibility of the information are key to successful KM. I believe that the “freeing” of information, be it explicit (in documents, folders, intranet pages etc) or tacit (expert opinion, past experiences etc), allows an organisation to make best use of its intellectual capital.

So, I will be looking for lots of feedback and hopefully some discussion on specific areas I am studying. Looking forward to collaborating and sharing knowledge with you soon!

Improving “Knowledge Flow” within an organisation

By “Knowledge Flow” – I am referring to the speed and efficiency by which communications are delivered to the employees in an organisation.

Often, information is fed along a human chain of Executives, Senior Management, Local Management and eventually to team members. This is often determined by the scheduling of respective monthly team meetings or circulation of bi-monthly/quarterly internal magazines.

An example:

• A new scheme for employees is going to be launched (educational/promotional) etc. It is discussed by and agreed upon by the executive team.
• Each executive circulates this news to their senior managers at their monthly update.
• Each senior manager then relays the news to their local team managers at their monthly update.
• Each team manager “announces” the new scheme to their team.

Notice the emphasis on new. Depending on the circumstances, be it availability of individuals or indeed the occurrence of any of these meetings – the news could take up to a month to reach the people who it really affects. Laurence Prusak describes it as follows:

Knowledge flows along existing pathways in organizations. If we want to understand how to improve the flow of knowledge, we need to understand those pathways.

I like the idea of internal blogging to deliver non-confidential information to employees. To make it even easier, the name for your blog can be “The [YOUR DEPARTMENT NAME HERE] Blog”.

Once people get over the “new-toy” aspect of reading a blog, they will see how easy it is to get the latest news, find relevant past posts (using categories and archiving) and how simple they are to use.

The problem I see with monthly or quarterly internal magazines is that they end up in the trash, and you would be hard pressed to find that much of what it contained was remembered. In contrast, if I remember that there was a post about Career Opportunities or Training Courses recently on the blog, I can easily search for it and find what I want!

For the executives, it can ensure quick responses to queries and items to be addressed. It also provides an opportunity to link to relevant intranet pages where the full article or policy relating to the topic can be found. It acts as an information repository for all of the communications within the organisation, division, or department. This is in contrast to an email pointing to a policy document which is “buried” deep behind the intranet homepage:

Home->Division->Department->Team->Documents->Polices->Comms Policy

If we want to improve knowledge flow, then we have to ease the information load on our executives and managers (the serial forwarders) to ensure that information is communicated to employees in real time. That way we will have an environment where employees are always receiving information which is relevant and up-to-date.

As part of my dissertation I am going to examine knowledge flows and how they can be improved.

Organising a workshop using a Wiki

Following from my recent post, 15 productive uses for a Wiki, I have been thinking about how wiki's can help improve collaborative working - No. 16, Organising a workshop using a wiki .

Workshops are used to gather small groups of people over a short period of time to concentrate on a defined area of concern. They are used to brainstorm, discuss ideas, help in decision making, and to plan a course of action.

Usually a workshop is organised by a facilitator, who will invite participants to attend via email. This email will include the title of the workshop, date & venue, a brief description of what is to be discussed (background, progress-to-date) and the list of invitees.

At this stage, the facilitator will probably field a number of questions in relation to the workshop from invitees requesting further information. So, when the facilitator responds to each individual question, we are in a situation where the workshop has already been siloed into a number of individual channels - before it has already begun!

This is where I see the opportunity for improvement. I think it would be useful for the facilitator to setup a wiki for the workshop. The wiki would include:

• Workshop Wiki Homepage - (Title, Brief description, Aims & Objectives) This page sets the scope of the workshop, and is the entry point to the wiki.
• Admin Details - (Date, Time, Venue, Contact details, List of Attendees etc.) This would help eliminate the standard phone calls and other queries in relation to the basic information for the workshop.
• Agenda Page - (List of items for discussion, Presenters, Workshop Structure) This page will allow invitees to remind themselves of what will be discussed. This can be updated/altered in accordance with comments/suggestions in the time leading to the workshop.
• Background Information - (Documents, Intranet Pages, Presentations, and other related material) This would help invitees to prepare themselves for the workshop by having quick access to all relevant material which will support the workshop on the day.
• Workshop Discussion Page - (Facilitators' answers to pre-workshop queries) This would allow all invitees to keep up to date with any queries, additions to the agenda, and comments/suggestions by all involved.

The main challenges to managing the communication via email, and keeping invitees up-to-speed in the time leading to the workshop are well presented by Jeff Oxenford in his post Death by e-mail. Jeff points out that:

While e-mail is a wonderful thing, it's not designed as a discussion tool for the following reasons:

• E-mail is one-way communication, not discussion.
• Written words and tone often get misinterpreted - 90% of communication is non-verbal.
• Messages often cross in cyberspace, so you're commenting on proposal 1 while others are commenting on proposal 3.
• It's much easier to be negative when talking to a computer screen
• People don't read every word of an e-mail message.
• Many important decision makers tune out when the flow of e-mails get too great.

Like Jeffs' guidelines for email, I would say that:

• Send out the Invitation by e-mail (in the form of an invitation to the new workshop wiki).
• Accept comments/queries, responding with an acknowledgement, and a link to the page on the workshop wiki where the comment has been noted/addressed/been posted for collaborative reaction.

So the advantages are:

1. Capture Knowledge - Gather all the relevant background documentation and information required for the workshop.
2. Organise Knowledge - Setup the workshop wiki, with areas for confirmation, collaboration, and communication. Avoid crippling delays and irrelevant discussion on the day by allowing attendees to contribute ideas and suggestions before the workshop takes place.
3. Target Knowledge - Allow all of the attendees to get up-to-speed before the workshop. The wiki also allows for those unable to attend to contribute in some way.
4. Transfer Knowledge - Document action plans and outcomes of the workshop for all attendees to see. This allows all involved to keep up-to-date with the "What next?".
5. Maintain Knowledge - Allow future reference to the work carried out in this process so as to help in other projects and prevent re-work.

Please let me know what you think. I may consider exploring collaboration-enabling topics such as this one for my KM dissertation.

Related:

Application of Wiki's (wikipedia)

Supporting Community Through ICT (Rountable Workshop)

An introduction to Knowledge Management

Here is a nice resource from CIO.com called An Introduction to Knowledge Management, which was wriiten by Meridith Levinson.

It briefly covers the following aspects of KM:

What is Knowledge Management (KM)?
What constitutes intellectual or knowledge-based assets?
How can tacit knowledge be transferred?
What are the benefits of KM?
How can I sell a KM project in my organisation?
How can I demonstrate the value of a KM initiative?
Best approach to KM?
Challenges of KM?
How to gain support for, and ensure sustained engagement with KM systems?
Who should lead the KM efforts?
What technologies support KM?

Corporate Blogging Resources

I came across two corporate blogging resources at the Blogtronix Wiki.

1. A list of sites and blogs related to Corporate Blogging.
2. A list of Corporate blogs.

I find the topic of corporate blogging interesting. Can your organisation really realise tangible benefits from blogging? Well, personally, I think that this media will become more important as the net generation replace the current consumer market.

By net generation, I mean the teenagers of 2007, who from 2010 onwards will open bank accounts online, harness wiki's and rss for information/news digestion, and will probably no longer want to receive communication with service providers via traditional mail and postal services.

It remains to be seen whether this generation will research potential service providers by analysing the material of their corporate blog?

There is also an interesting Social Text wiki site, Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, which has some interesting discussion on corporate blogging.