Kaye Vivian: Profiles in Knowledge, Part 2
This article contains Kaye Vivian's Dove Lane blog posts from April 25, 2006 to November 14, 2006. Later posts are in Part 1 and earlier posts are in Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.
November 14th, 2006
Here I go again. Back to definitions. The fact that so many capable people cannot seem to define, and agree on the definition of, knowledge management bothers me. How can we debate or understand problems if we can’t even define what’s in scope or out of scope? Why do we continue to spin our wheels with this? Here are some examples of KM definitions to show you what I mean. KM is…
“…information combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection.” …Thomas Davenport
“…information in action that people can make use of, along with the rules and context of its use.” …Carla O’Dell
“Knowledge is the ability to turn information and data into effective action…managing knowledge means delivering the information and data people need to be effective in their jobs.”…Wayne Applehans, Alden Globe, and Greg Laugero
“…a business process that creates organizational capacity.” …unattributed
“…the dynamic process of turning an unreflective practice into a reflective one by elucidating the rules guiding the activities of the practice, by helping give a particular shape to collective understandings, and by facilitating the emergence of heuristic knowledge.” H. Tsoukas and E. Vladimirou
“…processes, technology and behaviors that deliver the right content to the right people at the right time and in the right context so that they can make the best decisions quickly to solve problems, exploit business opportunities, accelerate competency and innovation.”…unattributed
“…the art of creating value from an organisation’s Intangible Assets.”…Karl-Erik Sveiby
“…an effort to retain, analyze and organize employee expertise to make it available to the organization.” …Stuart
“…achieving organizational goals through strategy-driven motivation and facilitation of (knowledge-) workers to develop, enhance their capability to interpret data and information, experience, skills, culture, character, personality, feelings etc.) through the process of giving meaning to these data and information.”… Roelof P. ult Beijerse
“…the creation, evolution, exchange and application of new ideas into marketable goods and services for the success of an enterprise, for the vitality of a nation’s economy, for the advancement of a society.”…Debra Amidon
“…a collaborative and integrated approach to the creation, capture, organization, access and use of an enterprise’s intellectual assets.” …Grey
“…is about connecting people to people and people to information to create competitive advantage.”…Hoyt Consulting
“KM refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning across the organization.”…Wikipedia
This is just a sampling. Go into any presentation session at any of the big KM conferences or pick up any KM book off the shelf, and the first thing the speaker does is define KM…in his/her own unique way. Sometimes I get ridiculed for saying repeatedly “defining KM today is like the fable of the blind men and the elephant.” You know the story…six blind men walk up and touch an elephant and they each touch a different part, so they each think “an elephant” is exactly like the part they discovered since they can’t see the entire elephant. That’s how definitions of KM seem to me (and proprietary KM approaches as well, but that’s another rant!). Kimiz Dalkir performed an informal survey that identified over 100 published definitions of KM, 3/4 of which could be considered good!
It all depends upon which viewpoint you bring to the field. Someone in business may see KM as a strategy related to intellectual assets. Someone with a technology/process background may see it as a systematic approach to help information flow readily to people who need it. Someone with a cognitive science background may see it more as individual expertise that enables someone to function intelligently in an environment.
A number of nay-sayers believe the reason KM can’t be defined is because there is no such thing as KM…we are trying to invent something that is already covered by other fields. Personally I believe it’s because we haven’t defined the field yet, so we can’t nail down all the component parts and their interrelationships. KM is a highly multidisciplinary field as we understand it today, and is in a state of “pre-science”, as Hazlett, McAdam and Gallagher put it. (subscription required) Personally, I hold out hope for a “unified theory of KM” that will bring all these components into focus and, ultimately, let us get to agreed-to definitions so we can get on with doing whatever aspect of the KM work it is that we each enjoy doing.
November 13th, 2006
A few months ago a writer named Esteban posted a message to the KM-Best-Practices forum on the subject of KM–Vision or Illusion. While I disagree with some of his commentary, this phrase started me thinking:
“I see that the physical arrangement (world 1) and the conceptual one (world 3) are united by a being that is part physical, part conceptual (thus we have a being (spirit) in a body (physical arrangement ) with a mind (conceptual) )…”
For a while now, I have observed the ways in which KM practitioners and consultants conceptualize KM, its components and their relationships. The most popular ways to represent KM are “four-blockers” and Venn diagrams with three interlocking circles. The labeling varies widely, depending upon the particular bent or interest of the author, but the concepts of three and four elements predominate. I have been wondering why. Ideation happens only in a context that includes existing knowledge, environmental factors and personal bravery (another “three”!). It is probably human nature to distill complex concepts into lists and pictures so they can be communicated more effectively, but I’m unfamiliar with the research in this area, so I can’t say that with confidence. Nevertheless, something seems inherently “right” in the consistency of KM leaders to think in terms of threes and fours.
Yesterday I was listening to a broadcast from American Public Radio, where V.V. Raman, noted physicist and Hindu scholar, was discussing mystical connotations of numbers. The program brought some things into focus for me. He pointed to the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses as representations of selected aspects of the source of creation (God, the One, Sat, the Infinite…however one chooses to name the ultimate power behind the universe) that people feel a personal affinity for. From his childhood, he felt a kinship with the spirit of Saraswathi, the goddess representing (or responsible for) music, letters and numbers. He discussed the universal language of numbers and the symbolic importance of them throughout history. For Christians, for example, the number three has powerful significance (three wise men, Father-son-holy spirit). For Muslims, it’s five (Five pillars of Islam, five daily prayers). For Pythagorean mathematicians it is six. For many religions it is 12. Kabbalists assign a numerical value to each Hebrew letter to reveal secret meanings in texts. Naturalists observe four elements — earth, air, fire and water. He provides many such examples.
What is it about “three” that makes it so powerful in describing knowledge management? Is it that the human brain is predisposed to order itself in triads? Some of the “threes” we can easily recognize from popular media and recent KM literature are:
· Mind, body, spirit
· Physical, conceptual, emotional
· Feelings, thoughts, actions
· People, process, technology
· Define, build, launch
· Information need, information seeking, information use
· Sense making, knowledge creation, decision making
· Data, information, knowledge
· Content acquisition, Content retention, Content enhancement
· People, places, things
· Strategy, capabilities, performance
· Knowledge gap, decision gap, knowing-doing gap
· Human capital, organizational capital, customer capital
· Inputs, processes, outcomes
· Tacit knowledge, Explicit knowledge, Implicit knowledge
· Knowledge acquisition, Knowledge capture, Knowledge sharing
· Identification, conceptualization, codification
· Culture, infrastructure, knowledge architecture
· Individual, community, organization
· Learn before, Learn during, Learn after
· Core knowledge, Advanced knowledge, Innovative knowledge
· Public knowledge, Shared knowledge, Personal knowledge
· Communities, repositories, content
· Strategic knowledge, Tactical knowledge, Operational knowledge
Historically, however, we know that a three-legged stool is not as stable as a four-legged one. Perhaps there is an unconscious attempt to “ground” KM by using 2×2 matrices of four quadrants. Maybe “three” lends itself to describing a process or flow and “four” is more suited to being a container for constructs. Some widely-used matrices and four-step processes include these:
Collaboration:
Synchronous, Asynchronous, Virtual, Face-to-Face
Knowledge work:
Routine transaction, Expert interpretation, Individual actions, Collaboration
Delivery networks:
Low formality, High formality, Intangible value, Measurable value
Drivers of KM Success:
Strategic alignment, Culture, Economic incentives/rewards, Technology
Customer KM:
High interactivity, Low interactivity, Low customer-specific, High customer-specific
Knowledge-Oriented Business Processes:
Low process complexity, High process complexity, Low knowledge intensity, High knowledge intensity
Decision Making:
Choices, Actions, Individual, Organization
Organizational Decision Making:
Low information use, High information use, Low information seeking, High information seeking
Knowledge Creating Activities:
Experimenting, Importing, Shared problem solving, Introducing new tools
Types of Information Needs:
Sense making, Cognitive, Affective responses, Situational
Organizational Culture:
Perspective, Integration, Differentiation, Fragmentation
Knowledge Creation Model:
Internalization, Externalization, Socialization, Combination
The Knowing Organization:
Information interpretation, Information conversion, Information processing, organizational action
Components of the KM Cycle:
KM team, KM strategy, KM metrics, KM technologies
Best Practice Knowledge Sharing:
Good idea, Good practice, Local best practice, Industry best practice
Known-Unknown Matrix:
User unaware, User aware, Information known, Information unknown
Modes of Knowledge Conversion:
Tacit to tacit, Tacit to explicit, Explicit to explicit, Explicit to tacit
KM Cycle Activities:
Build knowledge, Hold knowledge, Pool knowledge, Apply knowledge
If you are familiar with the KM field, then you recognize these approaches to be from Wiig, McElroy, Choo, Tirana, Davenport, Stewart, Saint-Onge, Wenger, Dixon, Nonaka and Takeuchi, Sveiby, Dalkir, Collison and Purcell, Zack, Denning, McDermott and others — a pretty stellar group. Assuming that these authors invest a lot of time, thought, planning and energy into trying to define the entity that is “KM”, I find it fascinating that they invariably resort to a structure of three or structure of four. Perhaps our human experience drills a preference for three or four into us, but perhaps there is a numerical truth behind it and the models we create will eventually let us understand KM because we will understand its numerology. If there is a universal language of numbers, maybe KM will be explained through our numbered models, once we get the math right.
October 30th, 2006
Everyone in the KM field has different favorite texts that they use or cite as sources. Perhaps not surprisingly, people involved in various KM-related activities in organizations have one set of favorites, and academics have a slightly different set. Here are the ones I value for various reasons and have recommended to others. You can also check out Shawn Callahan’s, Nick Bontis’s, and Tim Allison’s favorite KM books in their personal lists on Amazon.com.
My Favorites
There are a lot of good books listed here, and there are even more that are popular or more tactical. It can be overwhelming to think about starting to read this many, let alone everything available. Maybe this will help someone just starting out — if I had to limit myself to only six of them to guide me in building an enterprise wide KM program, these are the six I would have on my shelf (today!).
Here is a longer list of others that are all very good, and I’m sure I’ve missed some! I’d recommend any of these according to the specific circumstances of a person who asked. I have not distinguished between books with a social/organizational behavior slant and those that are more technology-based.
Business Practical KM Books
Knowledge Management Handbook by Jay Liebowitz (Editor)
Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations by Chris Collison
Intellectual Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True Value by Finding Its Hidden Brainpower by Leif Edvinsson
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Knowledge Management by Melissie Clemmons Rumizen
Working Knowledge by Thomas H. Davenport
Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances and Results from Knowledge Workers by Thomas H. Davenport
The Knowledge Management Fieldbook by Wendi Bukowitz and Ruth L. Williams
Knowledge Management by American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC)
Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know by Nancy M. Dixon
The New Knowledge Management: Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation by Mark W. McElroy
Creating the Knowledge-Based Business: Key Lessons from an International Study of Best Practice by David Skyrme and Business Intelligence
Intellectual Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True Value by Finding Its Hidden Brainpower by Leif Edvinsson
Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works by Daryl Morey (Editor), Mark Maybury (Editor), Bhavani Thuraisingham (Editor)
Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce by David W. DeLong
Scholarly KM Texts and Text Books
Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice by Kimiz Dalkir
The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Peter M. Senge
An Introduction to Knowledge Management: KM in Business by Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones (Note: request the online Instructor’s Guide with power point slides, case studies, exercises and review questions)
Knowledge Management in Organizations: A Critical Introduction by Donald Hislop
Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know by Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak
The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation by Ikujiro Nonaka
Knowledge Management by Elias M Awad and H.M. Ghaziri
Knowledge Management: An Integral Approach by Ashok Jashapara
Applying Knowledge Management: Techniques for Building Corporate Memories (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence) by Ian Watson
The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions by Chun Wei Choo
The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge by Chun Wei Choo
The New Organizational Wealth: Managing & Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets by Karl Erik Sveiby
Intellectual Capital: Realizing Your Company’s True Value by Finding Its Hidden Brainpower by Leif Edvinsson
Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management by Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Creating the Discipline of Knowledge Management: The Latest in University Research by Michael Stankosky
Knowledge Management: The Central Focus for Intelligent-Acting Organizations by Karl M. Wiig
Understanding the Knowledgeable Organization: Nurturing Knowledge Competence by Jane McKenzie and Christine van Winkelen
Knowledge Management: Clarifying the Key Issues by Scott I. Tannenbaum
Measuring the Value of Knowledge: Metrics for the Knowledge-Based Business by David Skyrme and Business Intelligence
Outstanding Books on Specific Components of KM
The Future of Knowledge: Increasing Prosperity through Value Networks by Verna Allee
In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work by Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak
Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage by Hubert Saint-Onge and Debra Wallace
Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger
Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder
Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities by Amy Jo Kim
The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization by Thomas A. Stewart
The Innovation SuperHighway: Harnessing Intellectual Capital for Collaborative Advantage by Debra M Amidon
The Organizational Learning Cycle: How We Can Learn Collectively by Nancy M. Dixon
The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Orchestrating IT, Strategy, and Knowledge Platforms by Amrit Tiwana
Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know by Nancy M. Dixon
Infrastructure for Knowledge Management by Randy J. Frid
Enabling Knowledge Creation: How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation by Georg von Krogh
The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations by Stephen Denning
Not Specifically KM, but Helpful to KM Thinking
The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold
Finally, the KM Standard that was finalized in 2005 by Standards Australia is a good reference document or starting point. It’s a guide for practicing knowledge management within organizations produced by a committee of KM practitioners for KM practitioners.
October 26th, 2006
Here’s a scenario I have been working with recently. Your suggestions would be welcome!
I have had some conversations with a friend who is trying to find a good name for a KM initiative in his company. It’s a mid-sized company (under 6,000 employees) in financial services. The environment is conservative, although pockets of people are interested in trying to do things in a new way. Most of the employees have been with the company for more than 10 years, and about 60% of them are 45 years old and up. Many have college degrees.
We are currently creating a KM strategy, and need to name the overall initiative and the go-to place on the company’s Intranet portal. Here are the biases we have so far:
Something like Knowledge Cafe or Knowledge Garden won’t work in this environment, and something like Knowledge Source or KnowItAll sound pompous. It’s a tricky problem! What are some good names you have seen or heard?
Here are a few I’ve researched or brainstormed with others. I’ll update the list as I get more suggestions.
October 17th, 2006
I have lived in a corporate world driven by ROIs, and agree that in that world, proving the value of KM to the organization is essential for funding and support. At the same time, given the current parameters for proving “value” in organizations, it’s impossible to do.
Douglas Weidner, Chairman of the International KM Institute recently said succinctly, “if KM can’t prove its worth, it’s worthless.” I disagree. It is intuitively worthwhile or so many capable, intelligent people wouldn’t be grappling with what KM is and how to apply it for good. It may simply be worthless in a given environment, with a given set of actors, at a given point in time. Just because one can’t prove the worth of something doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It can also mean one is trying to prove the wrong thing or attempting to solve the wrong problem.
There is a fallacy in all discussions of ROI for KM. As long as accounting systems (and financial managers) reject the so-called “soft” or intangible values of KM and treat KM like they treat software or a new piece of equipment, the true ROI of KM will never be shown or appreciated. How can you value or assess the worth of KM without talking about improved morale, reduced employee turnover, employee satisfaction, better information flow throughout the organization, personal pride, more knowledgeable employees (who give better customer service), stronger affinity networks, brand enhancement, cultural change, improved communication, team building? Until there’s a way to get those kinds of things counted toward financial value, ROI is a meaningless discussion in relation to KM.
KM is not a manufacturing process with people substituted for widget inventories in a financial spreadsheet. It is certainly possible to attach traditional metrics to each intangible identified, and they can even be shown to increase revenues or reduce costs — though some of the metrics would be a stretch, rather like Cinderella’s ugly step sisters squeezing into the glass slipper. It’s simply wrong. Organizations are not good at recognizing or valuing intangible benefits. Even if it were possible to break down all the components of KM and attach traditional (i.e. “accepted”) measures to them, the result would still not reflect the true value of KM, because KM is more than the sum of benefits from existing processes.
As John Maloney, a seasoned KM practitioner, points out, “ROI is a trailing accounting indicator. Return on Investment (ROI) is the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment to the amount of money invested…(a better way to measure) is value network analysis.” I agree. And even though it’s an uphill battle, we shouldn’t stop trying to prove its value.
September 8th, 2006
I don’t normally discuss individual software products, but a few days ago in a private post (and here) Jack Vinson mentioned Intellext’s personal search bot called Watson, which I had not seen. It does look very interesting, especially since I do a lot of research in a lot of different sources, as he does. As Jack described it, “It watches what you are writing (in Microsoft Office applications and some web browsers) and constantly searches sources for related materials. The sources can be your traditional Google searches, Amazon products, or they can be internal company repositories.” After reading the site’s marketing materials, it does look like a very beneficial tool for anyone who is interested in a wide range of subjects simultaneously, or is working on research papers. I can’t wait to try it out! Unfortunately, I can’t do it right now. The tool is (currently) free to download, however, it requires Windows XP running Office 2003 and Internet Explorer 6+, and I’m using Office 2000, so it clanks on the installation. The free version is not configurable, but it seems to cover a wide array of freely-available search sources. Maybe this will be the impetus I need to upgrade my software! Have you tried it?
Update September 24: I have now installed Office 2003 and tested Watson. It’s a very interesting tool with a lot of promise, I’m glad to say. The concept is right…let the user set as many custom locations as they want for a context relevant search, and then serve up any matches in clusters. The main complaints I have are UI issues. The display of matches is clustered in a tab-like format that is awkward to use, and the excerpts that show for each “found” reference are frequently unintelligible since they are so truncated. However, the concept is right on! The UI will get better. What may not get better is my other complaint. It’s subscription software. You can download and install the free (limited) version, however, to get the full featured, customizable Watson, you have to pay $9.95 per month. I don’t like endless subscriptions to anything (sounds like the discount buyer’s clubs that telemarketers are always trying to sell), and most certainly not for a research tool I could come to count on. Once they change the pricing model, it’s definitely a tool for KM professionals (and researchers) to consider!
August 31st, 2006
I was reminded this week of an annoying thing that happened to me about two years ago in an online community I had been a member of for a couple of years (call it Group A). It was what I’d call a moderator-centric community, meaning the moderator approved/rejected every post and tended to take an active role in all the discussions. While it was annoying at times, the group was good and the conversations were often substantive, so I tended to overlook the moderator’s style.
Group A
I left Group A about two years ago because of a content ownership issue. The group members had created a nice discussion archive over the years, with many solid contributions. Over the course of the years I was in that group, the moderator became blatant about making a name for him/herself by using the group as a sounding board for issues, and then using the group’s discussion to write an article under his/her own name and publish it–without reference to the group or the contributors who had provided the points the author was making in the article. It was free research or consulting that went unacknowledged and unpaid. I got annoyed with this the first time I saw my own words from within the community reprinted in an article under the author’s by-line. I was not in that community to enhance one person’s reputation, and I felt taken advantage of. I became more annoyed each time I saw this person featured at KM conferences presenting information discussed and debated by the community as his/her own.
In private discussions with the author, I challenged his/her right to repackage other people’s contributions as his/her own, without getting permission to reprint first. Over years of participating in and leading communities, I have come to believe that the authors of the postings, not the “community”, own the postings, although I believe the community has the right to retain for its private archives all the discussions that transpire in the community space. This moderator’s blatant attempts to profit from the knowledge, goodwill and conversations of others was ethically wrong to me. Furthermore, when I submitted postings that questioned this practice, asking what others thought, my messages were blocked. When it became clear that the author was not going to admit to or change his/her practices, and would continue to profit from the free ideas, suggestions, and consulting of the group, I resigned from the community.
Group C
I’m in another group now (call it Group B) and there has been some lively discussion this week about content ownership in another light. One of the members cites a situation in a different community (call it Group C) where she has observed the moderators deliberately removing discussion threads and archived posts because they want to erase the contributions of people who have disagreed with the moderators and become opponents rather than collaborators. As a result, the community’s archives are now incomplete. There are holes in discussion topics that many people contributed to over time, and valued. In addition, the moderators are refusing to publish posts that debate their policies or by people who are speaking against them for deleting the postings.
Facing such organizational issues, group C will no doubt collapse, but that is not my point here. The point is that the moderators of Groups A and C consider that they own the content, and they have a right to delete whatever they choose. Do they have such a right (both legally and as members of a community)? Who does own the individual messages posted to a community discussion board? Are ownership rules different if it is a discussion forum established by an individual on Yahoo Groups or if it is a forum established on a corporation’s public web site or if it is a non-profit organization or a government entity? Are there standard practices that apply to anyone for reprinting of information first posted in a private community?
Here’s a related situation as exemplified in Group C — when a member is drummed out of the community, or the moderators ban a person for what they or the community deem to be “cause.” When someone is banned from a forum or just resigns voluntarily, what is the correct action for moderators to take if they are requested to delete the former member’s past posts in the forum? Who owns those postings, the community or the former member? Does the “delete” request apply to excerpts from those postings that are reprinted in other members’ replies?
What Others Have Said
In Group B this week, a variety of people contributed some good insights to this complex problem, and I’m quoting some of them here without referencing the authors. (If any authors recognize their words here and don’t object to being cited, I will happily edit accordingly!)
· “…Generally, authors own their works of authorship, and have sole authority to decide how they are used. If your forum had some kind of affirmative contributor agreement whereby posters agreed that the forum owner had a non-terminable right to distribute the posts, you would have grounds to retain the posts — but otherwise, I think the author wins…Note that once you start thinking in legal terms, you’ve pretty much lost all trust on both sides…”
Recommended by LinkedIn
· “…cutting a post off changes the whole perspective on the archives.. a newbie that would want to browse wouldn’t just find gaps, but couldn’t possibly assist to the *creation* and transmission of implicit knowledge. Losing posts is like losing one’s story: you lose your memory, you lose yourself.”
· “It’s all too common that people join in online conversation without regard to policies about ‘word ownership.’ It’s hard to conceive that some of these situations…could ever happen. Or that there could be a question about one’s rights to delete one’s words from established online conversations. If there’s going to be such a strong interest on the part of the founder/sponsor of the forum that moderators will be so empowered to control the conversations, then people should be warned loudly at registration about the conditions under which they will be participating.”
· “*Unless* there is an affirmative contributor agreement, authors haven’t given up any rights. “
· “The concept of ‘intellectual property’ and ownership thereof is sort of an artifact of old-time publishing models, and needs to change to be more flexible and community-oriented.”
· “To my mind, a forum is a public space (even if bounded by the community), and when you speak into a public space, you give up the private ownership of your words, unless you explicitly license your words prior to publication (as in a book). The fact that the words exist in text form on a community archive makes them technically removable from that location, but even if deleted from there, of course the messages you send reside in multiple copies on everyone’s computers who ever opened and read those messages. So ‘deletability’ is virtually impossible to enforce. “
· “Interesting ideas, but (as far as I know) this is a legal issue, and so the decision has likely been made — those involved just need to discover it. My understanding is that in the USA and likely most countries the words would be owned by the writer, not by the forum, unless there were some other explicit agreement in place.”
· “The question which occupies my mind, is what are the contributory factors which guided the the moderators to start acting in a way that broke the community?…The bulletin board software, like so much social software these days, comes preconfigured for a hierarchical group of all powerful moderators. The role of the administrator as appointer of moderators with the power to censor comes built in, and is therefore often taken to be the normal way to behave. When under stress, the temptation to actually use these powerful tools which are positioned right under the nose, may be difficult to resist.”
· “Electronically mediated discourse is simply this, in the end, DIS-course…all words therein are co-owned and co-produced, no matter WHAT the Disneys or Microsofts think or do w/their $$$US.”
· “…has anyone brought up the ramifications of deleting posts that quoted other posters or deleting other posts that quoted the deleted posts? I suspect that the flow of IP becomes too interconnected to just delete posts that are from a single individual and expect that all their IP contributions are removed.”
· “I have to say that although the reading has been interesting I do NOT at all
understand the concern. Who “owns postings”?? OK who owns a face to face
conversation? or a phone conversation?? So you and I are talking about supervisory skills and you make a very good point.. next time I am teaching that topic I mention your thought (Maybe I make reference it was from you maybe not.. depend on my memory which is not always as good as desired). One of my students goes back to his office and gives a brief summary of my outstanding (of course grin) course. That student quotes my quote of you. Who “owns it?” Same in on line postings, blogs, emails etc. They are conversations and as far as I can tell not copyrightable (is that a word?? it is now).”
Read the Terms of Use Statements!
Community members should take care to read the terms of use statements before they start posting! In related discussions, the following organizations present varying claims of ownership.
A bulletin board software company said their copyright covers only the software (coding, templates, vbbcodes, etc.) that are delivered to the buyer. They do not “own ‘the threads’, ‘postings’, ‘avatars’, ‘attachments’ , ‘images’ or anything that YOU add to it. Whatever YOU add to it or modify is basically yours.” Then, adding a new dimension to this discussion, they comment, “Actually, YOU should be more worried about the copyright policies of your WEBHOST and ISP since they virtually OWN your space and files that you upload and CAN do whatever they please with it [sic].”
The Canon Digital Photography forum states in their Forum Rules of Use, “By posting messages to the Canon Digital Photography Forums you give forum owner and maintainers permission to permanently store all message content, present it for public viewing, backup it to any location and media, present it in other form, modify *, delete, or make any use whatsoever in the Forums…All images posted are copyrighted to their respective owners.”
The Artist Corner forums Terms of Service state, “Artist Corner does not own the forum posts (Content) you submit, unless we specifically tell you otherwise before you submit it. You license the Content to Artist Corner as set forth below for the purpose of displaying and distributing such Content on our network of properties and for the promotion and marketing of our services. By submitting Content to any Artist Corner property, you automatically grant, or warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted, Artist Corner the royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed. You acknowledge that Artist Corner does not pre-screen Content, but that Artist Corner shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse, edit, move or remove any Content that is publicly available via the Service. ”
Finally, the Sarcoma Alliance forums has an especially detailed legal statement regarding content ownership in its forums:
“All Content (defined below) used and displayed on the Website or available through Sarcoma Alliance’s services are the property of Sarcoma Alliance or its licensors and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, and other laws. “Content” means any information, mode of expression, or other materials or services found on the Website including, without limitation, discussion forums, software, writings, graphics, and any and all other features found on the Website. In addition to the Sarcoma Alliance’s and its licensor’s or supplier’s rights in individual elements of the content within the Website, Sarcoma Alliance owns a copyright in the selection, coordination, arrangement and enhancement of such content.
“Subject to the privacy policy described below, by posting Your Information on or through the Website you automatically grant Sarcoma Alliance a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, transmit, translate, distribute, perform and display Your Information alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights to others. You acknowledge that no compensation will be paid with respect to the use of your posting.
“Unless Sarcoma Alliance has entered into a separate written agreement with you that explicitly states to the contrary, you agree that any information, feedback, questions, comments or the like that you provide to Sarcoma Alliance in connection with this Website or Sarcoma Alliance’s services (”Submissions”) will be deemed to be provided to Sarcoma Alliance on a non-confidential and non-proprietary basis and will become and remain the property of Sarcoma Alliance. Sarcoma Alliance shall have no obligations of any kind with respect to any Submissions and shall be free to reproduce, use, disclose and/or distribute any Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, without limitation. You also agree that Sarcoma Alliance shall be free to use any ideas, concepts or techniques embodied in the Submissions for any purpose whatsoever, including, without limitation, developing, manufacturing, and marketing products or services incorporating such ideas, concepts, or techniques.”
What do you think? I’d welcome links to authoritative sources who may have resolved these questions, and will update this article with them.
July 7th, 2006
Recently I was talking with a friend about knowledge transfer, and he made the comment that in his organization, the management team seems to be trying to create “plug and play” people. It struck me as the way an organization that thinks knowledge can be stored electronically in databases would think about people, i.e., they are functional components to be stored and retrieved on demand. Of course, this is terribly dehumanizing.
We had a long talk about the usual KM topics — the role of individual expertise in knowledge management, what is knowledge vs. what is information, how technology supports or impedes knowledge flows, how to motivate people to share what they know, etc. In his organization, it appears that in certain areas, such as IT and customer service, management assumes that defining/documenting the steps in a process and then training people how to execute those steps is all they need to do to have an efficient and well-run business. Their goal is to be able to move people from one job to another seamlessly, assuming that somehow employees will be able to adapt to any new roles because there is documentation. It sounded like a sort of faceless corporate chess game — any pawn is a pawn is a pawn and any knight is a knight.
While I can understand management’s goal to bring efficiency to the organization and create a more agile work model, this approach is counter-productive and demoralizing. Maybe one Cobol or Linux developer can step in for another, but are business analysts or communications professionals really interchangeable? The plug-and-play concept certainly doesn’t take into account that people in IT or customer service or clerical roles (or other similar positions) have dreams and personal goals and interests that transcend their current job. Maybe a secretary is a secretary today, but maybe he really wants to be a musician or a writer. Maybe a developer aspires to be a platform architect or game producer. Maybe a customer service representative is quietly going to school to be a lawyer. Not to mention that any individual has built up a network of contacts inside and outside the organization based on personal interactions and shared associations. It’s impossible to replicate the networks a person has built over years, and to understand the value of knowing the right person to call at the right moment in a hurry to get the answer one needs.
There is a kind of corporate smugness in assuming that people are their roles. Human Resources professionals for many years have been orchestrating career paths for all levels of employees because they understand that people need to feel valued for the work they do and that they must believe they have an opportunity to advance in their careers in exchange for company loyalty. This concept of “plug and play” employees, that can be moved at will or inserted into a new role and expected to perform well without missing a beat, is sadly lacking in an understanding of people and their motivations, however “efficient” it looks on paper. A developer is not a developer. A clerk is not a clerk.
Another troubling note in the conversation was a complementary notion that when experienced workers retire or leave, having spent their years acquiring deep knowledge about their area of specialty, the company should be able to expect a new replacement to read the documentation and start with the same knowledge, a kind of knowledge parity. Of course, they don’t! The exiting employee has gained personal knowledge from their experiences over years, and built their social networks for various types of information. David Weinberger said in The Cluetrain Manifesto, “Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation - literally. And ‘knowledge workers’ are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations.” We all know that most of what people know about their work is never written down, so new employees simply do not have access to the full knowledge of experienced employees, because they haven’t been part of the conversations.
Even if exiting employees attempt to write everything they know about their jobs and processes, research and conventional wisdom say that they will probably capture only 3/4 of it. Intuitively we all know that it’s impossible to capture everything that a person knows on any subject. Even when employees are motivated to contribute, much of what they know has come from years of experience in their roles and has become so intuitive or instinctive that even they aren’t aware of it as critical knowledge for their role. That tacit knowledge is difficult to capture, and it is exactly the information that someone with a lower proficiency level needs in order to perform up to the same level as the exiting person. Organizations ought to consider this a potential flaw in their succession planning, and KM practitioners ought to consider this a challenge!
According to Malcolm Ryder, “The motivation to reach ‘knowledge parity’ is more than sufficient to drive adoption of a KM goal and capability, but it often confuses the issue of what to know and how to know. Worse, the issue of ‘how to know’ is even further confused with how to get what is ‘known’…” . He further says, “Because of that difference between the knowledge and the instructions, it is more obvious that ‘knowledge management’ per se has to do with the way knowledge users leverage their knowledge reserves and resources — not about how familiar they become with the definition and implementation of practices, rules and skills.” And that is what I think is relevant to this discussion. A newcomer in any role can’t leverage “knowledge reserves and resources” they don’t yet have. To quote a wise man, he who has ears, let him hear.
July 4th, 2006
After two very heady weeks of discussions about information, knowledge, data, reality, applied knowledge, personal knowledge management, tacit/explicit knowledge, and a wide range of other related topics, I came away with new insights about KM and what it is. It’s really a privilege to exchange ideas with wise and thoughtful people. I think everyone involved in the discussion broadened and deepened our knowledge as a result of our exchanges. Community is a magical thing when it is properly engaged.
Definitions is where the discussion started, but it then branched off into discussions of examples and possibilities, then it encompassed some very philosophical and theoretical thinking before coming back around again to definitions. It’s definitions I want to talk about here, because I have been on a soapbox about the need for them, and my understanding about the relationship of data to information has changed. Thanks especially to Joe Firestone for his philosophical insights.
Until recently, I believed strongly that data exists independently from information and knowledge. I perceived that we are swimming in a sea of data, some of which we know and some of which we are incapable of knowing by virtue of the structure of our sensing organs. I believed data to be the building blocks of information and knowledge, and that for data to have value or make sense, it must be perceived by a “knower” (for lack of a better term). This was partly due to definitions of data (”facts and statistics used for reference or analysis”) and information (”facts or knowledge provided or learned, or, what is conveyed or represented by a particular sequence of symbols, impulses, etc.”). To me this meant that data is a precursor to information. I was wrong. Data is actually one type of information. Here’s what I now understand (with some simple examples below).
Previously, I thought (as many do) that this is the way knowledge evolves from information:
Data –> Information –> Knowledge –> Wisdom
We’ve seen that string in many publications. I now understand it to be something like this (with the bracketed items being components of the word that precedes them):
Actually, I’m not convinced that “wisdom” is the ultimate end state as the traditional model implies. Perhaps “understanding” is. Since that’s a separate conversation, however, I’ve just left it in as a matter of convention.
I like thinking of information as “what is conveyed.” Information is the generic container of three types of components: data, derivations and speculations. Data are measurable outputs from a reality that can be observed — whether it is actually measured or not — so they are statistical in nature. Examples of data might be “12 centimeters” or “73 degrees” or “number of chimpanzees in the forest.” Derivations are inferences that result from data. For example, “The pencil is 12 centimeters long. It is shorter than a pencil that is 15 centimeters long.” Derivations involve a processing activity–observation, comparison, evaluation, etc. Speculations are information that does not rely on reality, observation, or deduction. Fantasy and theories fall into this category. For example, George Lucas’ Star Wars or pure algebra. All of the constructs in Star Wars are fictional–the people, the planets, the transportation, the creatures, the dialogues, the government, the economy. Yet most of us have enough awareness of the Star Wars constructs to be able to discuss them as if they were real. All of the theorems in pure or Lie algebra are based upon imaginary axioms, yet they exist as information and can be used to prove other theorems. So “information” is of three types: data, derivations and speculations.
Information must be communicated to a “knower” in order for knowledge creation to occur. Communication occurs through various shorthand mechanisms we have evolved over millennia, including alphabets, number symbols, languages, gestures and special vocabularies. Some examples of communication efficiency are “North” and “September”. They exist in every language, and are a shorthand for the objects, times, and relationships of objects in our reality. The terms mean something by convention, but contain no informational content. Information is, therefore, what is conveyed.
A knower must be present for “knowledge” to occur. We are continuously receiving and processing information. Through learning and/or experience, the knower uses information selectively to generate knowledge. Knowledge is the product of learning and experience within a brain. It can be tacit or explicit, as described by Polanyi, Nonaka and Takeuchi. Creation of knowledge is both conscious and unconscious. We don’t consciously know how to breathe, but we know how to make ourselves hold our breath if thrown into the water, or breathe deeper, or breathe with control to produce music from a flute. Knowledge is created by the knower.
For me this clarifies everything, and it puts “knowledge management” into perspective. It means that the only valid use of the term “knowledge management” is for personal knowledge management, because we can manage only our own knowledge (or to put it another way, no one can manage anyone else’s knowledge). KM practitioners can provide tools, methods, and education to help others to manage their own knowledge, but we can’t manage their knowledge for them. What we can and do manage is information, and the processes by which individuals share what they know.
I’ll be writing more on this. Check back. :)
June 2nd, 2006
A few weeks ago I challenged Polanyi’s concept of “explicit” knowledge (and Nonaka and Takeuchi’s subsequent use of the term). He/they were definitely on to a correct concept (that there is an output from knowledge that can be manipulated/managed and it’s a different thing from implicit knowledge, which is learned), but the use of the term explicit *knowledge* was incorrect. In those early days, they were articulating something new. They didn’t have the benefit of the many debates and discussions about terms that we have had in subsequent years, so they used the convenient term “knowledge” to define the two aspects of their concept. If they were building those concepts today, perhaps they might adopt different terms, like tacit knowledge and explicit information, instead. (Does anyone know Dr. Nonaka well enough to ask his thoughts on this question?) At the time they put a stake in the ground, there was no one to take issue with the terms in the informed way we can today. I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong, but I haven’t yet been persuaded that “explicit knowledge” is not explicit information. The term “knowledge” can only apply to what is in someone’s head. I’m sorry if I’m belaboring the point, and I welcome correction.
Let’s see how they are defined. The word “tacit” means:
1. Not spoken (American Heritage Dictionary), or
2. Understood or implied without being stated (Oxford English Dictionary)
The word “explicit” means:
1. Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied (AHD), or
2. Clear and detailed, with no room for confusion or doubt. (OED)
Information is defined as “facts or knowledge provided or learned.” (OED) . AHD defines it as:
1. Knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction.
2. Knowledge of specific events or situations that has been gathered or received by communication; intelligence or news.
3. A collection of facts or data
4. The act of informing or the condition of being informed; communication of knowledge
5. Computer Science. Processed, stored, or transmitted data.
Knowledge is defined by OED as:
1. information and skills acquired through experience or education
2. the sum of what is known
3. awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation
and AHD defines knowledge as
1. The state or fact of knowing.
2. Familiarity, awareness, or understanding gained through experience or study.
3. The sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned.
4. Learning; erudition
5. Specific information about something
If I understand all these terms, to me it comes down to “all knowledge is information, but all information is not knowledge.” Maybe it used to be knowledge, or maybe it continues to be knowledge in the heads of the people who know the information, but explicit knowledge itself is just a type of information. Knowledge transferred to another person can be called education. Knowledge that is transferred to a database can be called data. Maybe we need to create a new term for expressed or explicit knowledge if it’s not one of these two things.
What are some examples of “explicit knowledge”? I’m curious how others think they would be different from “information”.
May 27th, 2006
There have been a number of interesting conversations occurring in actKM discussion group lately, and one of them started with a challenge to define KM in one sentence. Having been through a similar exercise nearly four years ago with my KM colleagues Jeffrey Romayko and Jeff McCartney, I am interested to see what the forum comes up with. Here’s what we came up with three years ago (in a business context):
Knowledge management is a business process that connects people to people and people to information for competitive advantage and better decision making.
While it’s clear and short, it has the same problem that most KM professionals and definitions have — it mixes what KM is with what it does and with the outcomes of doing it. They are different things. Trying to mix them together in a single definition fails. An outcome is not a definition. That’s where almost all attempts at defining KM fail, actually.
KM thought leader Joe Firestone responded to the challenge with this thoughtful message that highlights why creating a definition is so difficult (reprinted with permission):
“One can, of course, say what Knowledge Management is about in one sentence, but I’m afraid that one can’t be successful in explicating its meaning by doing this. ‘Knowledge Management’ is not a term that refers to an ‘essence.’ Instead it’s a term that can be used legitimately in many different ways depending on the context in which one uses it.
“In this respect, ‘Knowledge Management’ is not very different from many other terms we use every day. For example, ’science’ is another such term. Does it refer to a series of processes, a method, a body of knowledge, a set of institutions, a type of culture? Take the word ‘culture’ itself. In 1952, the famous Anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, identified 150 different definitions of ‘culture’ used in the literature. No essence there either; nevertheless there is a field of Anthropology whose central organizing slogan (?) is ‘culture.’ I could go on. Sociologists don’t agree on the definition of ’sociology.’ Political Scientists differ on how to define ‘political science.’ And even with an ISO 9000 standard available, there’s still no universal agreement on the term ‘Quality Management.’
“So given all this, how does one approach the matter of definition? I think the first thing to do is to realize that the meaning of any term or phrase is not given by a definition, but is a dynamic thing that language users create and recreate as they use it. At any point in time, its meaning is given by its relationships in use with other terms and phrases, and since we have no access to the entire web of its relationships in use, we can only conjecture theories about its meaning, and recognize that since meanings are changing, even these theories about its meaning can’t be true for more than a brief time.
“Second, with this as context, I think one should recognize that to get at the meaning of an abstraction like KM, one needs to do quite a bit of conceptual specification, and that there’s no possibility of this sort of specification boiling down to a single sentence or even a paragraph that will successfully explicate the meaning of KM?
“So third, does this mean we should avoid offering definitions of KM? I don’t think so; but I do think we should give up the idea of finding the essence of KM, and realize that the purpose of defining KM in a sentence or brief paragraph is to give ‘an elevator speech’ about what we will mean by ‘KM’ in the context of some speaking or writing we’re doing that uses the term. We can’t expect the ‘elevator speech’ to completely convey what we mean by ‘KM’ to others, but we can start by giving the elevator speech, follow with a much more detailed specification, and then if there’s still need, interest, or purpose, write the book specifying all the things we can think of that constitute the mosaic of KM.
“Having waxed philosophical for most of this post, I’d like to end this by giving my elevator speech about what KM is:
KM is, first, a branch of management, which makes it a social science discipline. Moreover, it is a branch of management that seeks to improve performance in business by enhancing an organization’s capacity to learn, innovate, and solve problems. The purpose of KM, then, is to enhance organizational knowledge processing, and Knowledge Management as an inter-related set of activities may be defined as those activities whose purpose is to enhance knowledge processing.
“Now that’s two sentences providing two different senses of ‘KM’: one, the idea of KM as a scientific discipline with a purpose, and two, KM as an interrelated set of activities performed by people with a purpose. But this paragraph still doesn’t touch on KM:
– as a practice,
– as a body of knowledge,
– as a set of methods,
– as a set of institutions,
– as a community,
– as a culture,
– as a process or set of processes,
– as a value network,
– as an emergent social system,
– etc.
“Closing this now, I guess I don’t think my elevator speech about what KM is very illuminating. I know if I were starting out in KM, I’d sure want to know what I meant by ‘learning’, ‘problem solving’, ‘innovating’ and ‘knowledge processing,’ and wouldn’t even begin to understand the elevator speech until I’d gotten into that.”
I would add to his list a few other terms one would need to know, including knowledge, information, information management, data, and process. Joe and Mark McElroy’s award winning paper Doing Knowledge Management is a good starting point for other KM related definitions.
Dave Snowden replied pointedly to the challenge. He said, “Anyone who can answer that question in one sentence is not qualified to answer it.” I guess I’d say that’s true unless the person actually does happen to get it right. Someone will, some day. More of my own thoughts about the need for KM definitions can be found here, here, and here.
May 17th, 2006
This is Part 2 of a speculative view of knowledge management and learning 10 years from now, and how they may be enhanced using 3D gaming/simulation technologies. Read Part 1 here to get a sense of the overall work environment. This article focuses on the simulation environment itself.
An Immersive Portal Environment
Inside the portal space, my computer and view of my work are completely customized, with a unique appearance and functionalities that reflect my job type, work resources and information needs. In addition, I have a unique personal collection of 3D agents and other interactive objects that perform tasks for me, even when I’m offline. I plug in my headset to prepare for the training session, and since no one is sitting close by, I decide to direct the system by voice rather than by typing.
I wake up Ricardo, another of my animated agents, whose job it is to document information I want to remember, create libraries of reference materials I use in my daily work, and fetch information when I need it. Ricardo is my personal knowledge manager, and I have trained him to recognize and respond to my voice commands. When I need him to find or save information for me, I can order it without leaving my other work, or typing instructions. Since he uses built-in artificial intelligence, Ricardo is able to learn over time what my specific requests mean, and he has become expert enough to volunteer additional information or resources that I didn’t know about, from both internal and external sources. He is constantly monitoring and researching information I need in the background, and will sometimes pop up in the middle of something I’m working on to suggest a new resource he’s just discovered. He’s a great resource. Right now I want him to sit silently and observe what I’m doing and be ready to save anything I may want to save from my training session for later reference.
Now the fun begins! I click on the traditional looking corporate education icon on my desktop, and suddenly I find myself transported into a three-dimensional world on my screen. I’m looking at a world designed to look like a modern, but somewhat mysterious looking city, with a mixture of building architectures and landscaping features, and other visual elements I can interact with. I’ve seen other learning worlds at other companies that look like interplanetary space worlds or medieval landscapes, and we’ve been told that in a few years we will be able to choose from among several environments. For now, though, we have only the land of “Metropolis” and its capital city of “Arthursburg”, named playfully for our CEO. The designers had fun creating Arthursburg. It’s full of little inside jokes, plays on words and visual cues that long-time employees recognize instantly, like a statue on the main street of a man leaning on a golf club, with a rabbit pushing a golf ball with his rear leg, and a pub named “The Out Sourceror”. The designers keep it fresh, too. Within hours of a big customer win, media story, annual meeting or fiasco, references have been worked into the Metropolis landscape. The fun factor keeps people coming back to see what’s new, and we occasionally find their our own names gracing a computer generated character!
When I first joined the company two years ago and set up my account in Metropolis, I was taken to a character creation screen, similar to those in many popular video games. I had to choose an avatar, an animated icon, to represent me as I interact with the Metropolis environment. It’s possible to customize the avatar down to details such as skin tone, body type, overall size, hair style and color, facial hair, eyeglasses, earrings, scars, tattoos, clothing items and colors, etc. Some of the color options, such as pure white or pure black, are not available. In Metropolis, players have an opportunity to “purchase” the rare colors as a privilege once they have achieved certain status and objectives.
The system includes three different races — a very short race called Moris, an average size race called Humanos, and a large race called Talbos. Each race has special inherent abilities that give it certain advantages in interacting with the “world” and solving the puzzles and challenges there. I chose a female Humanos character of medium build, and had fun spending an hour trying on different looks and views until I found the one I wanted to keep. I then got to select three from among twelve other character variables that would enhance certain of my character’s abilities as they performed tasks in the world. I chose night vision (to find information in dimly lit areas), charisma (to enhance leadership and obtain more help from computer generated characters in the world), and strength (to absorb harmful effects without becoming fatigued as fast as others). I named my avatar Kaye. We are required to use our real names for our characters, since this is a business environment and we will be interacting with co-workers. Research has shown that it makes people act just a little more responsibly toward others.
The New Face of Corporate U
My character was then transported into the world, where I was met by a greeter avatar operated by the computer system. Ginny Greeter is standing in a large plaza surrounded by familiar looking buildings that have been designed to mimic our corporate headquarters complex and several of our regional locations down to the carpet designs and artwork. There are also official government-looking buildings, like a Courthouse and City Hall. Just around the corner is an inviting green park area, with a few small shops visible, and in front of the park is a library. Some of the shops are connected with real administrative services. There is a post office, for example, and a printing shop where we can order signs, brochures, name tags, and flyers for business events. Other shops are related to items available for purchase and use within the simulation environment.
Although Ginny is a “bot”, a computer-generated character (CGC) that operates using artificial intelligence and scripts, you would swear there is a human speaking! She can initiate dialogues with new arrivals, as well as respond to conversation, answer questions, and provide helpful hints and tips about the next thing to do when a person or group gets stuck on some activity. Group activities are what make this learning system special. Where most game-like simulations are designed for a single person to interact with the environment, solve puzzles, or discover information in a structured way, a multi-user simulation allows a group of people, each connected remotely to the system from their own computers, to experience the system simultaneously, and team up in real time on activities in the simulation world. This teaming opportunity creates dynamics that more closely approximate a real world scenario, and create an immersive learning experience with substantially higher information retention rates than traditional training. Either randomly or as part of a scheduled activity, real world workers log in to Metropolis and use their avatars as extensions of themselves, singly or in groups, to accomplish a variety of learning tasks called “quests”.
Our system currently has about 250 different learning quests to-date, each of which has multiple steps and a reward for completing it. Users can follow a prepared sequence as advised by their HR counselor or wander around in the simulated world and look for computer generated avatars that will give them a quest to do. The system recognizes you when you log in, and knows which quests you are eligible to do. For example, on my first visit, Ginny gave me my first quest to walk over to the library and read a book on avatar actions. It was tricky learning to use the arrow keys to navigate my avatar down the street to the library, enter the door, talk to the virtual librarian, and locate the book I needed. Once I had read the book (which actually appeared as printed pages in a window my screen), I returned to Ginny and she gave me a key to the university complex on the other side of Metropolis. After giving me a few instructions about transportation, she told me to board a realistic moving tram for the university, and I was on my way!
It’s interesting that it doesn’t take long for a person to become absorbed in their avatar’s experiences. I found myself quickly referring to “I”, when I meant my avatar, and that is what most of my co-workers experience, too. The environment of Metropolis is designed in such an immersive way that when, for example “I” boarded the tram, I experienced the speed and lurch of the tram, the slowing for intersections, the sounds of the wheels and creaks and bells and whistles, and the visual sensation of sitting by a window and watching the landscape speed by. When I exited the tram at my stop, I saw not only the University complex, but also the avatars of other employee participants. I knew I wanted to go back and explore the city and the library a little more later, but the first step was to enter the University, find the administration building and sign up for the courses I wanted in the registrar’s office.
You may think I’m giving too much detail here, but it’s necessary. When I tell you I am logging in to Metropolis to take a training class, maybe now you can get a feeling for what I am experiencing. The “I” I’m logging in is my avatar, the classroom is virtual, and the other participants in my class are located all over the country…perhaps in their offices, but perhaps at home in their pajamas with a baby on their knee! All we see is what each avatar does, and all we 'hear' is what the avatar says in type, although it's possible to hear the actual voice of the person behind the avatar if the group is using voice over IP telephony to speak with each other as they navigate through the tasks in Metropolis. Today we are all just typing. All the people whose avatars are gathered together in Metropolis see the same things on their screens, but from their own avatar’s location and point of view. The instructor avatar “James” standing by the gate may be a live, human instructor operating an avatar, or it might be a CGC preprogrammed with the information needed to teach the group how to accomplish the components of the learning module/quest. We interact with him the same way either way.
As we stand there waiting for the last two group members to arrive, several people start to experiment with the different actions their avatars can perform. One doubles over in convulsive laughter, another begins to jump in place, another kneels on one knee and pleads, another salutes, another curtseys, another nods vigorously, another cheers, another walks like Charlie Chaplin. The animations make it possible for people to be as expressive as they like, and soon all ten of us are practicing our cheering or jumping or clapping or bowing until James informs us that it's time to begin by saying, “Okay everyone, that’s enough fooling around, shall we get started?”
The Learning Experience
Today’s training session is on diversity, a company-wide annual requirement, so James briefs the group on what they have to do next. The overall task is to build a new multicultural housing complex to accommodate the needs and traditions of a wide variety of families, and walk a team of inspectors through it to evaluate the results when we are finished. The anticipated time to complete the course is three hours. There are a number of milestone tasks along the way before construction can begin. Accepting the “quest” creates a log entry for each participant. The group uses the chat capabilities built into Metropolis to strategize about how to accomplish the first task and retrieve the item they each must return to James to complete it. Several of the group members volunteer to split off to strategize about the architecture of the proposed structure, which the entire group will actually construct together from building objects existing in Metropolis. Instant messaging is built into the system, and I see a private message to me pop up from Kim, who will be in my 12:00 meeting, asking if I think we will finish the training in time.
The interaction of players expressed through their avatars reveals personal traits, abilities and preferences more clearly than live face-to-face interactions. There is a safety people feel as they type anonymously behind their keyboards, and qualities emerge that are sometimes unexpected. Some people prefer to challenge the problem boldly, some to do more reading and research first; some prefer to work collaboratively and discuss a problem to reach a consensus about next steps before moving ahead, while others prefer a more singular approach, and will charge out on their own without much notice or discussion; some want to take their time and be thorough, while others want to race ahead and get it over with quickly and move on. Some people use their avatars in amusing ways to entertain other participants as they work through the problems.
Group leaders emerge naturally as they use their expertise, problem-solving skills, and leadership abilities to ensure that the group succeeds in the quest objective. Sometimes younger members will step naturally into the lead. Over time, it’s possible to recognize good group leaders and support their approaches. Some participants show themselves to be noisy or disruptive group members, some are quiet and never contribute, and some are regularly away from their keyboard doing other activities on the side while the rest of the group works to solve the quest problems. This is one of the dynamics that makes multi-user interactive simulations so fascinating and compelling for participants. Human beings are interesting, and you simply can’t predict their interactions in groups.
As the group works together, the environment provides a wide range of learning objects to support the purpose of the training. There might be:
· Advertisements, such as billboards posted in strategic spots that present charts and graphs or new company products
· Kiosks where notes can be pinned up and tips exchanged
· Pictures on the wall in a building that, when clicked, run informational videos (participants can be instructed to view the videos as a step in their quest)
· A museum exhibit displaying real historical photos or paintings
· A product showroom where models of real world products can be tested virtually and include pop-up help
· Interactive simulated computers that show screen shots of software applications
· Objects that, when clicked, will fire up a web browser connected to a real world web site with information pertinent to the course content
· Teleports that enable a participant to move instantly between two points anywhere in the environment
· Objects that the participants’ avatars can pick up and use — for example, a hammer or a pencil or a TV remote control or a pitchfork.
As participants become familiar with the others in their group, they naturally step into roles, just as they might in a traditional classroom. Some will be subject matter experts, some will research the unknown factors, someone will write the notes, someone will facilitate the discussion, and someone will present the results. In Metropolis, some will plan the building, some will research or select the building materials/elements, some will decorate the space, some will work on writing a presentation or marketing brochure on the features of the new multicultural center, and some could even make the presentation to other groups of co-workers at a scheduled time. The system enables a work team to initiate an invitation and email it to prospective audience members, in the same way normal office meetings are scheduled. All company software applications are fully integrated.
The final step of each quest in Metropolis is a test to ensure that all participants learned what they were there to learn. The test is presented as a dialogue with James, the CGC quest giver. He can read the participant’s log and determine if the avatar completed all the required steps, or conduct a Q&A session. If a participant answers incorrectly, context sensitive help pops up a mini-review that enables the person to see what they should have learned, so they can complete the dialogue chain successfully.
In completing my test this morning, I missed an answer that used some terms I didn’t remember. I woke up my reference bot Ricardo and told him to fetch some definitions for the terms I needed, and to display them right away, as well as file them in my “just learned” folder. I also had him enter a reminder into my calendar to review the terms in a week to refresh my learning.
Once the quest/learning objective is completed successfully, each participant receives both verbal and virtual pats on the back from instructor James. He gives the participant a reward, and issues a report to their human resources file, indicating that they completed the mandatory diversity training module. The “reward” is something the participant can use in Metropolis — for example, virtual coins they can accumulate from completing quests and use to purchase items from a virtual Metropolis merchant (who may sell real world items, like electronics, exercise or outdoor equipment, holiday items or vacations from a catalogue). Rewards are sometimes visual badges of accomplishment in Metropolis, like a clothing upgrade or new clothing item, access to a hard-to-obtain hair or item color, perhaps a “title” by their name (for example, instead of just Kaye, it might say “Magistrate Kaye” or “Sergeant Kaye” or “Guru Kaye”), or maybe a color coding of their name to indicate level of experience and knowledge gained over time. Our system awards titles based on experience, actions in the simulation, and time spent assisting others. Research shows that introducing prestige rewards reflecting a participant’s expertise, knowledge and seniority are highly motivating to workers.
A few minutes ago I completed my own diversity training course, and was given 25 virtual coins as a reward. My avatar now has 75 coins and as soon as she collects 100, she will head over to the tailoring shop in Metropolis and have her blue jumpsuit dyed jet black! My next goal for my avatar will be to earn a title. I think Imperator sounds about right for me (evil grin). It will take another two years, since it requires a user to complete so many learning quests, but there are only two Imperators in the company so far — and I plan to put in some personal hours to earn the right to become #3! Besides, it’s not really like work; it’s like playing a game. The company regularly verifies that the value received from the simulation system is substantial, but I still can’t believe I’m paid to do this!
Documenting Team Meetings
Reluctantly, I leave Metropolis and return to the real world, where it's time for my weekly project team meeting. Today is President's Day, and though our company doesn't celebrate, an administrative support person who is revered for her pie-making prowess has baked six cherry pies. She and two of the young male staffers, dressed as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, are pushing a hovercart from desk to desk, and serving everyone in the office today. Pie in hand, I click another icon to start my team meeting. Each of our computers has a built-in minicam, and soon the live pictures of all six team members line up across my screen and we begin talking using voice over IP through our wireless headsets. One of the team has slides she has been drafting, and she presents them on the screen for our comments, updating them as we speak. Another member has found an interesting web site and wants to show us a couple of the features that he thinks we can incorporate into our project. He team surfs us to the site using his browser, and demonstrates the features as we watch and comment orally.
A discussion-logging feature in the meeting software has been turned on, so the entire conversation was captured. After the meeting, I run the audiotape through transcribing software, give the results a quick check for accuracy, and then pass it through a parser, which pulls out the relevant commentary based upon my keyword criteria and discards the personal comments and asides. I review the summary, make a few corrections, and have the minutes from the meeting posted in our online team room web site within an hour. The parser automatically generates a copy of the final approved document, tags it by type, title, keyword frequency, date and participant names, and posts it into the company’s content management system. After an approval step, it will be placed into the knowledge repository, where it will eventually receive evaluation ratings by readers. Within six hours, the meeting notes are available for search retrieval by anyone in the organization (with permission to access these types of documents, of course).
Building the Knowledge Base
The “knowledge base” in which all company information is stored is huge, and requires powerful content management, search, and expertise location tools. Profiles drive everything. Each new employee is required to submit a personal profile to the knowledge system describing their expertise, interests and areas of specialization. As workers complete projects, they are prompted to update their profiles to indicate any new knowledge or experience gained. Profiles are used to determine who subject matter experts are and define the types of information each individual should have access to.
Because so many workers come from other countries and English is not their first language, the system can also perform translations in 56 languages, and link to other internal and external content sources worldwide. This helps everyone to evaluate proprietary content against a high standard. With language barriers minimized, it’s easier to ensure distribution of information to the people who need it most.
One fantastic development is that the world is now the resource for knowledge. No single laboratory or company has all the knowledge it needs for business development or sustained innovation. Open source software and access to information have improved information access across barriers dramatically. This has also led to better ’surveillance systems’ that monitor technical and market developments, as well as where the talent is. Evaluating new content is everyone’s obligation, and user rankings help to bubble up the most important documents and items in the archives so they are easy to find and use.
In general, the convergence of voice, data and television signals in IPTV has finally delivered the quality and speed improvement in communications that were touted at the turn of the century. The smart devices we use in daily interactions with our homes and offices, like my PDA and notebook computer, as well as my own TV remote control at home, provide dramatic speed and quality improvements, as well as direct interactions with various knowledge bases. The fact that any device can be a telephone, a television, and a digital video recorder has changed how people communicate. Broadcast programs and training modules can be downloaded and recorded at the same time that a virtual Internet meeting using voice and video exchanges is occurring on the same device.
Meetings and conversations are routinely transcribed electronically, and emailed to participants for review and revision before entering them in the knowledge exchange system. People are not tied to their desks or a geographic location in order to have instant access to the best minds in the field, the best education, the best conferences, or the best resources of the organization. Stored text files now may contain embedded video clips or animated graphics or humor that will make the stored information a more complete and dynamic transcription of a person’s knowledge and experience. This has opened entirely new career paths for graphic designers, technical writers, and videographers, since society has become increasingly visual in its information needs and preferences.
Now I’m shifting back to 2006. Think this scenario is too far out to be believed? Maybe you should ask some colleagues to read it and ask the same question. The reality is that every one of these technologies is being developed or is in use today. As usual, what will lag behind is the cultural flexibility that allows people to adapt and change their processes quickly. Organizations that get the dynamics right first, however, will create competitive advantages that other organizations will be rushing to copy. How do you think KM will be different 10 years from now? Will there even be a thing called knowledge management 10 years from now?
May 17th, 2006
Looking ahead is always fun, wrong, amazing and ridiculous, but I’m going to give it a try anyway. Here’s my own vision of a wild and wondrous place to work 10 years from now…assuming there are still such things as corporations (which some futurists doubt) and we don’t all work from home! If you’ve been wondering what an immersive learning/knowledge management system might look like, read this and Part 2, which describes the knowledge system in detail.
Getting to the Office
My commute to the office was uneventful as usual. The magnetic sensor lane of the highway moved my driverless bus quickly to my stop and I had a chance to catch the morning news headlines on the small overhead TV monitors. All the big cities are now completely wired with fiber optics, and wireless Internet access is pervasive, making the broadband convergence we heard about in the 1990s a reality at last and universally available. Light-guide Optical Element technology even enables personal, screenless displays by projecting images and data from computers, DVD players, or VCRs into the viewer’s eye, displaying them in the visual field of the viewer. They beam signals right into the eyeball without any need for a screen!
I can’t wait to add an LOE micro projector to my next eyeglass purchase. Right now they are only available for training and dangerous or delicate occupations, like the military or demolition or microsurgery. I noticed a guy across from me using one of the new DNA based nano processors to play a multiplayer online game while riding to work. He was using his phone keypad and voice to enter commands. I’m not sure I’d like using those small keys to play a fast-paced game, but he seemed to have mastered it pretty well. He was also using a two-way audio system for communication and voice activation control of the application. Optical imaging technology has enabled a wide range of ultra-compact personal displays for mobile applications that are connected to the Internet 24/7.
With security screening already commonplace for a decade or more, I move quickly through my building’s lobby to the security station that scans my palm print when I swipe my card key on the security scanner, and matches it with my card key RFID identifier chip. ID cards are increasingly sophisticated, and the government and big organizations work hard to ensure they cannot be duplicated fraudulently. An unobtrusive metal detector is mounted in a decorative framework that most high-rises now display in their lobbies. It knows the difference between coins, keys, medical prostheses like knee and hip replacements, nail files, and more sinister items, so we are rarely stopped mistakenly. Three tiny camera lenses hidden in the architecture scan each person.
As I step into the elevator and the doors close, I hear the soft, almost silent whoosh of air as I rise silently to the 32nd floor. The elevator runs on a combination of batteries charged by ethanol generators and magnetic polarity, which makes the doors open and close with a sssssssnick, like the old-fashioned Star Trek bridge doors. As I walk out onto my floor, I’m in a wide, open space without walls. The central admin services are located toward the center of the floor near the elevators, and all around the outer edge the windows provide a tremendous view of the city and river below. The windows are strengthened with microscopic fibers during manufacture, and can resist breaking when an object is hurled at them at 60 miles per hour. This is important, since gale force winds are common here in the late summer months. In addition, they are light sensitive, so they darken when the sun’s light and heat are most intense, and they brighten again toward evening or on cloudy days. A coating of molecular particles that continuously repels dirt was applied to the outside of the windows, so there is no need for window cleaning or the dangerous acrobatics window washers of the 20th century routinely faced.
The Office Environment
What we used to call Generation Y is now in full bloom in the workforce. They work differently, and use technology as naturally as sleeping. In a bid to keep these young stars happy, the central core area also includes a lounge called the “bull pen”. It includes bean bag furniture, a refrigerator, book shelves with motivating and creative books and journals, a DVD player and disk collection anyone can use or borrow, a projection wall for TV or presentations, toy boxes containing touchy toys, throw toys, and all kinds of fidgety things to manipulate, like linked steel puzzles and Rubik’s cubes. In one corner there is a virtual dance machine with color-coded pads on the floor. The computer flashes a sequence of colors and tones, and the player must activate the same sequence using their feet. It’s a good mind clearing activity that gets the blood circulating! There are usually two or three small groups lounging about talking animatedly about some papers they have brought over, or debating theories and hypotheses. We are lucky our management realized early on that the best thinking and innovation can come from impromptu conversations and spontaneous work sessions among people of all ages and work responsibilities. Everyone uses the bullpen.
My first stop is the central filing and locker area, where I pick up my personal work files and notebook computer, which I usually leave in the office. My PDA holds all the software and files I use on my notebook, so when I put it in the cradle at home, it syncs the work partition of my personal computer with my work computer, so I can start right where I left off if I decide to work from home. I prefer this to updating the central server and downloading at home, even though the update speed is about the same, because it lets me use my PDA to work or catch up on email when I'm on the road. Ubiquitous fiber optics have made Internet access and file transfer speeds so fast that working from any location is the norm. The universality of computing was accelerated by the chicken flu pandemic. Millions of people worldwide caused a virtual economic stop and financial panic because they simply refused to venture out into public places or go to work, fearing contamination. If another epidemic hits, it won’t be necessary to leave home!
Now I face the first decision of the day…where shall I sit? The floor is wide open with standard desk configurations everywhere, allowing work teams or friends to group near each other ad hoc and change desks fluidly. White noise piped in over the audio system keeps the noise levels muffled. I choose a spot I like near the window, where I can see workers digging the pit for a new skyscraper across the street. The heavy earth moving equipment below looks like HotWheels toys, but I can still make out the big Trump T on the sides of them. We have been told the new building will be 100% green, and include huge indoor hanging gardens to convert the CO2 exhaled by residents to oxygen.
The fact that any device can be a telephone, a television, and a digital video recorder has changed how people communicate. Broadcast programs and training modules can be downloaded and recorded at the same time that a virtual Internet meeting using voice and video exchanges is occurring on the same device. Conversations can be transcribed electronically and emailed to participants for review and revision before entering them in the knowledge exchange system. People are not tied to their desks or a geographic location, and they still have instant access to the best minds in the field, the best education, the best conferences, or the best resources of the organization. Accessing a stored text file now means the file can contain embedded video clips or animated graphics or humor that will make stored information a more complete transcription of a person’s knowledge and experience. This has opened entirely new career paths for graphic designers and videographers, since society has become increasingly visual in its information needs and preferences.
Back on my floor, about every 30 feet or so, up high on the walls, are large flat panel TV screens. The sound is turned off, but workers can put on their wireless headsets and receive the latest news, sports or weather broadcasts at any time. There are many audio channels available, private channels reserved for confidential conversations and even customizable personal music channels. One entire wall by the water fountain simultaneously projects similar areas in two of our other large offices. We are experimenting with a hallway networking concept, where subject matter experts sign up for half hour time blocks several times each month when they will be available to have a hallway chat with anyone with a question or an idea. Anyone can walk up to the wall, and start a conversation with the other people present in the other offices, just as if they were present in the same room.
Did I mention that half of the desks in the main room are empty? Employers understand for the most part that anyone who doesn’t need to be present to meet customers or project team members can work from home with the proper equipment. Results from the past 10 years have proven that workers who can work flexibly from home on their own schedules are more productive, produce better work products, have lower stress levels, enjoy better quality of life, experience fewer health risks, and feel great loyalty to their employer. Most organizations now routinely offer such options to workers from their first day on the job. The concept of Web 2.0 took hold as organizations began to place trust in their workers, to rely on them to generate and manage the knowledge relevant to the organization’s success, and to enhance the user experience of technology to make it simpler and richer. Even managers feel less of a need to be in the office and manage. They are finally accustomed to working electronically and managing workers remotely.
Claiming My Space
As soon as I lay my combination cell phone and PDA in the charging cradle on the desk phone base, it alerts the switchboard where I am located. Now any incoming calls will be routed to my desk automatically, building security knows my location in case of any emergency, my PDA is automatically synchronized with my computer, and all my equipment is charging. I trade chairs with an empty desk. This chair can be programmed to my seating preferences. There is a scanner under the armrest, and when I swipe my badge over the sensor, the chair adjusts itself to my preprogrammed preferences. I like to sit high and have the chair arms low so my elbows are unsupported when I type, and I watch the chair conform to my specifications. I’m now ready to begin work at “my” desk.
As I snap my laptop into the bay, my 21″ flat screen monitor pops on, and asks me to sign in to our secure corporate network. I run my first finger over the built in sensor in the keyboard, which recognizes my fingerprint, and I’m prompted for my user ID and password. Once I’m logged in, I have access to any information in the company that my individual profile entitles me to access. No more remembering half a dozen user names and passwords, no more multiple log ins — the system knows where I can go and knows how to get me there. Two windows pop up onto my screen…my calendar and my email listing. The calendar immediately triggers an audio alarm to remind me I have a training session beginning in 15 minutes, followed by a conference call at 11. Just enough time to get some coffee.
I look around the screen for the familiar 3D animated image of my “personal butler”, who knows my preferences and resides in both my PDA and computer. I select an icon of a cheerful, turbaned djinn I named Omar, who interacts with me in a friendly voice I find appealing. He appears in a puff of virtual smoke and politely unrolls a scroll with a menu of service options — oil change for my car by the company mechanics, annual auto inspection (mine is about to expire), food items, drink items, single dose over the counter medications, travel reservations, electronic greeting cards, and discounts on tickets to shows, concerts, and theme parks. I click on the button for drinks, and it gives me a customized list of my favorite beverages, including Columbian dark roast coffee espresso with a splash of cream. Bingo! I press the button, Omar fires off the order, and I head to the central services area to pick it up.
The system recognizes that it is making a beverage for me, and prints my name around the base of the cup before brewing the coffee. As I pick it up, my eyes are drawn to a sesame bagel with cream cheese on the nearby bakery table. Another temptation succumbed to, I pull out my ID badge, wave it over the sensor by the bagels, and take one to go. My ID card is linked with my bank account, so the charge for the bagel is sent immediately to the bank, where it is paid from my checking account and credited to the bagel vendor within seconds. There’s not much need to carry around pocket change in the big cities any more. Just about everything can be purchased electronically using a bankcard with a smart chip or a corporate ID badge. My badge also contains a DNA ID marker, which enables me to access secure areas and confidential information to which I need access.
Back at my desk, I open the desktop portal application to load up my virtual training session. All the software I routinely use is there in the portal, and it’s all linked together. Files used or created by any application are accessible by any other application. A single click lets me reopen my desktop at exactly the point in all the applications I had open when I signed off yesterday, because the system lets me save a particular desktop view when I log out. Everything is instantly ready to go the next time I log on. I love this feature, because I no longer have to hunt for the documents I was working on.
Now that I’m actually ready to begin working, I will enter the knowledge portal, from where I access all my reference materials, project work, and learning. More about that in Part 2 of of this article!
May 1st, 2006
For the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling (as I’m sure most everyone else in the field does) to come up with another, better model to describe KM and its components and their relationships. If it were simple, Larry Prusak or David Snowden or Tom Davenport or John Maloney would have come up with “the” model 15 years ago. The fact that we are still struggling with it is a testimony to the complexity of something that seems on the surface to be so simple.
In order to simplify it, since most of us can’t agree on a definition, we use metaphors when describing it to co-workers or customers or funding managers. Personally, I’ve used the blind men and the elephant to describe it with some success several times. People seem to get it when I say, “KM is more than a shared drive with a search engine. KM is like the elephant…some see the tail or the leg and think they understand what an elephant is from what they are touching. Everyone is only partly right.”
With these thoughts floating around in my mind, I came across a series of short articles on Matt Moore’s blog discussing four metaphors for KM. The Library has a reference desk librarian and a collection of content. The Bank refers to intellectual capital and reusing it for added value. The Warehouse is fun, because it builds on the manufacturing analogy that makes KM more accessible for non-practitioners. In the Warehouse model, knowledge workers make and ship knowledge. They need knowledge “parts” to do that, and the inventory depreciates over time. Finally, KM databases as dustbins. (How fresh is your content?)
There are probably more. I’d love to hear some.
April 28th, 2006
It looks like the knowledge management “profession” is not the only group to have definition problems creating confusion among the rank and file. Danc is a thoughtful and introspective (former) game developer, and he comments about the challenges of cataloguing game development innovations on his blog on April 9:
“Here’s why I think this is important. Language is one of the biggest barriers to discussing game designs in an intelligent fashion amongst educated game designers. Currently, each designer is an island, isolated by and limited to their own design experiences. When they attempt to discuss even basic concepts with other designers, the terminology just doesn’t exist. Conversations devolve into exercises in semantic nitpicking as both parties desperately attempt to invent a common terminology on the spot.”
I’ve found myself reading online community discussions recently where semantic nitpicking made up quite a few of the postings, yet we failed to invent the common KM terminology we need as a basis for meaningful discussion. I know it’s tiresome hearing me say this, but until we have universally accepted definitions for KM and its elements used consistently by practitioners, the wheel spinning and jockeying to promote proprietary (and often narrow) viewpoints will continue to confuse the issues, generate uncertainty, and glorify incomplete views.
April 25th, 2006
I have experienced doubt concerning corporate blogs. As a former communicator, I believe some structure and filtering of communication is called for, even if you ignore the desire to control corporate messages. Otherwise, it is just more noise and will be more of a minus than a plus for the organization. Paolina at Green Chameleon raised the same question…is corporate blogging really the next big thing? Put me in the “No” camp.
Nearly three years ago, I initiated a test of a blogging tool in a Fortune 500 company, but limited the application to competitive intelligence. We invited only the people in the organization who received or used competitive intelligence to participate and to use the commenting features. They supported it vigorously in concept–but it had only limited success. Truthfully, I considered it a failure, and it wasn’t even real blogging. They were merely using a blogging tool to interact with information, and they did not have their own personal blogs.
Releasing personal blogs on the entire organization would have just created a mess. Most of the people were not used to interacting and commenting online, and most felt like they already have too much to read to go exploring a company blogosphere. Some would certainly have found it an excuse to spend time away from what they should actually have been working on. I know a lot of KM practitioners are excited about blogs and wikis and such, but, practically speaking, I just don’t see it working. There are too many organizational issues around them (privacy, control, guidelines and standards, ownership of content, etc.). Most organizations rightly will see them as a lot of extra work for very little, if any, additional value and a lot of potential risk…no matter how inexpensive the software is.