Barbara Fillip's Knowledge Management Blog

Knowledge Transfer

2011-12-21T05:26:00.003-05:00

Most if not all of the books, articles, blog posts and papers I read about knowledge management are talking about relatively simple and traditional organizational environments. Silos, if they exist, are silos within a single organization. I am looking for resources that address more complex environments. How do you efficiently manage knowledge transfer in an environment where the matrixed organization is superimposed on layers of contractors. On specific projects, everyone on the "team" (contractor or not) may recognize the need to collaborate around the goals of the team/project, but when it comes to supporting the longer-term goals of the organization, isn't each individual expected to run back to his/her respective home base. If you are a contractor, how much of your personal knowledge are you comfortable transferring to someone working on another contract?

KM Research Questions

2011-09-17T06:28:00.001-04:00

I recently participated in a Twitter Chat focused on Knowledge Management Research (#KMers chat archive).

The conversation prompted me to think about key research questions I'd like to answer within the context of my own work.

What is different about knowledge management in the public sector (compared to the private sector)?
Related Hypothesis: KM in the public sector is strongly impacted by contractor/government relationships and other types of "partnerships," creating organizational boundaries that inhibit knowledge sharing?
Impact: Barriers need to be recognized and addressed upfront.

What is the role of project managers and project management in knowledge management within the context of project-based organizations?
Hypothesis: 1) Project-level knowledge management efforts need to be embedded in standard project management practices (not an add-on supported by the KM office); 2) In the absence of (and in addition to) formal KM requirements or embedding of KM practices in project management practices, the project manager plays a key role in ensuring the KM is taken seriously and not just a "check the box" activity.
Impact: We need to better understand how to embed KM practices and principles within established project management processes and we need to bring project managers on board.
What knowledge should knowledge management efforts focus on?
Hypothesis: KM efforts are often vague about the knowledge domain they will focus on or address, as if it was obvious or KM efforts were expected to cover all knowledge domains relevant to the organization.
Impact: Be clear about what your KM efforts are covering or not covering. Be strategic and focused. Don't try to do it all.

Looks like I've skipped some steps and tried to answer my questions as I was asking them.

Cognitive Impact of Reading in Multiple Languages

2011-09-11T08:41:00.000-04:00

Technically, my first language or mother-tongue is French. Given that I have lived and worked in an English-speaking world for the last 25 years or so, my primary language is English.

I recently came across a Ph.D. thesis on a topic of interest (knowledge management and mapping) in French. Given that I stopped using French after high-school, my exposure to professional level readings in French has been limited and I haven't read much about knowledge management in French. When I have come across French blogs and websites related to knowledge management, I've mostly been interested in the terminology and finding equivalent French words for the English language KM jargon I was familiar with.

Reading a Ph.D. thesis isn't the same as reading a blog. In addition to the terminology, which I wasn't familiar with, french sentence construction and the rules of argumentation (how you construct your argument and articulate your thoughts) are different in French. [I learned that quickly in my first year of college in the US when I had to switch to English and to another way of thinking and writing.]

I have a lot of informal theories about bilingualism and the relationship between language and thinking modes, most of which I won't get into here. Two things happen when I read in French: 1) I slow down because it relies on a part of my brain that's buried deep, a little rusty because it's not called upon regularly; 2) I awaken not just the language / translation part of the brain that reminds me that "gestion des connaissances" = "knowledge management", but also a different cognitive framework. Reading in French essentially demands much more effort, much more thinking about what I am reading.

When I am reading an English language book or academic article about KM, I tend to scan for anything interesting and new because I make a lot of assumptions about what the authors mean based on what I already know or have read. Reading the same book or academic article in French forces me to pay closer attention to the meaning.

Related Resources:

Catherine Kelly SELLIN, "Des organisations centrées processus aux organisations centrées connaissance : la cartographie de connaissances comme levier de transformation des organisations. Le cas de la démarche de « Transfert de Savoir-Faire » chez Total", mai 2011. LINK.[This is the Thesis I've been reading in French]

Knowledge Models / Concept Mapping - a yet-to-be organized Pearltree collection of web-based resources.

Government Contracting & Knowledge Management

2011-09-11T07:05:00.000-04:00

What is the impact of government contracting (both in terms of volume and types of contracts) on core competencies, intellectual capital, and knowledge management practices?

Insufficient attention is being paid to the government / contractor relationship in current KM strategies and practices.

HYPOTHESES:
1) Current KM strategies and practices ignore the organizational barriers, refusing to acknowledge that they exist;
2) Current KM strategies and practices focus on "government" knowledge and ignore the contractor perspective, while contractors may have their separate KM approaches focusing on their intellectual capital.

Is the ultimate goal to merge government and contractor KM approaches?
Is the ultimate goal to establish knowledge sharing practices building bridges between government and contractors without necessarily merging KM strategies? If so, at what level should this happen? Project-level or higher?

I haven't scoped the issue very thoroughly yet but I think it's worth exploring.

Signs of KM Maturation

2011-07-31T07:51:00.000-04:00

More than three years ago (May 2008), I joined the Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. As a contractor rather than a civil servant, I was (and still am) working with a Task Order and slowly getting to assimilate how on-site contractors are supposed to work. I had worked on Government contracts before, but in a very different context and not on-site. At first, I thought I was responsible for expanding the reach of the center's KM practices so that it wasn't an ad hoc affair but a set of KM practices embedded into the projects' life-cycle. Ideally, projects would complete a set of KM activities on a regular basis just like they go through key reviews and reach critical milestones. It would be part of what they do. In a perfect world, they would be doing it because they see value in it rather than because it's a requirement. A lot of groundwork had already been laid by the Chief Knowledge Officer, so it made sense and at the time, it didn't look overly ambitious. I was naive. The most important thing I have learned over the past three years is establishing a KM program takes time, even when you have a dedicated staff. KM staff need to be resilient, persistent, and willing to constantly engage in small experiments to refine and adapt their approach, take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, and avoid the traps of KM.

If everything works well, as of October, I will finally get to work more directly with the projects to embed some KM practices in their life-cycle. This is happening now not just as the result of a fortuitous coincidence of budget issues, but made possible by the fact that in the intervening years, our office has worked very hard to make KM practices work in a critical strategic area of the project organization. Having demonstrated a successful approach in one small, yet critical office, we are offered an entry into the big guys' world, the mission projects.

When KM is funded as an overhead function, KM is at risk of de-funding. When the project office is willing to pay not just for an annual KM event but a full time KM position, you know you're doing something right. I'm not sure this is an indicator that features prominently in KM maturation models. Is it possible that the source of funding is a better indication of success than the overall size of a KM office? I feel that I have just been given this opportunity and I don't want to miss the boat.
Of course, a lot could go wrong between now and October. It is still very much a contractor position, therefore subject to a lot of budget uncertainty in the medium to long term. If this opportunity moves forward as planned (I'm optimistic about it), there are no guarantees that we will succeed. There are no guarantees that what we did with that one small office can be a blueprint for other efforts, yet we have learned a lot with that effort and with three years under my belt in the organization, I am now much better equipped to assess the environment and admit that it is ambitious.

Working directly with the projects, rather than being perceived as a separate office, is an important step forward. It has a lot to do with ownership of the KM activities. When KM is something that the KM office does, it is typically an overhead, disposable activity. When KM is embedded in projects, it becomes part of what they do, a way of doing work.

The Curse of Knowledge: A Challenge for Experts and Fiction Writers

2011-07-23T07:40:00.000-04:00

The “curse of knowledge” refers to the difficulty experts have in teaching less experienced or knowledgeable individuals in their field. At the expert level, a lot of background knowledge and tacit knowledge is taken for granted and becomes so unobtrusive to the expert that he/she doesn’t think of it as something that needs to be explained or discussed. As a result, the expert tends to speak at too high a level and can’t communicate well with non-experts. This goes beyond the communication issues related to excessive use of professional jargon and it applies within fields, not just across fields. That is why mid-level professionals make better teachers and mentors than top level experts. Mid-level professionals haven’t lost touch with all that background knowledge necessary to climb the knowledge ladder. This is a relevant lesson for anyone trying to convey an important message to others. Are you paying attention to what the target audience for your message already knows? If not, you could be speaking over their heads.

Fiction writers face a similar “curse of knowledge.” They know a lot more about their characters than the reader will ever know, and the key task of the writer is to put just the right amount of information on paper to convey the essence of the character without sharing the full character development sheet (something that could include details such as their favorite food and the titles of the last three books they've read). Certain actions by key characters won’t make sense unless some relevant information has been provided beforehand (I've caught myself at times wanting to tell the readers to just "read it again" to catch what they missed on the first read). The sequence in which information is provided is therefore critical, yet the writer can’t dump all that background in the first few pages either.

The main difference is that experts can keep talking to fellow experts, be brilliant, and go on to win Nobel Prizes. As long as they're not asked to teach college freshmen, they'll be fine. A fiction writer who is brilliant in his/her head but can't transfer that magic on paper is not going to be very successful.

Related Resources

(Article) The Curse of Knowledge - Harvard Business Review Magazine - December 2006.
(Series of blog posts) Made to Stick for Writers - Writer Sense - August 2010.
(Book) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Chip Heath & Dan Heath

The History of Information: a course and a Pearltree

2011-07-17T08:07:00.000-04:00

I've spent the past month devoting ~an hour a day to "The History of Information," a Berkeley course with reading list and webcasts available online. This is my first experience completing a full set of online video lectures. I can't say I did all the readings, but I listened attentively to all the webcasts (most of the time).

I took some notes, but without a precise goal (like passing the final exam), I was mostly interested in getting a bird's eye view of the topic and in typical "collector" mode, I bookmarked a significant number of resources mentioned in the reading list or in the lectures, most of which I scanned but did not read. I collected and organized these resources in Pearltrees.

So, what did I learn?
Did I learn less, as much, or more than the average student in that class who attended the face-to-face lectures, interacted with the professors, and presumably, did all the assignments? I suspect I learned less, but that's just fine. My goals were different and my goals were met.

Besides the course materials, I learned a lot about what I like and don't like about Pearltrees.

Intelligence, communication, and decision-making

2011-05-21T18:14:00.000-04:00

I attended a talk by Dr. Lisa Porter on Friday. Dr. Porter is the director of IARPA, the intelligence community's equivalent to DARPA. She talked about "The Scientific Challenges of the Intelligence Community," and pointed out that for the intelligence community (and for agencies like NASA as well), data collection isn't the main problem. The analysis of increasingly voluminous mountains of data is the real challenge. How much of the solution might come from automation remains unclear.

She talked about a number of projects IARPA has been working on to try to address some of these challenges, but throughout the talk, I was bothered by something and I couldn't put my finger on it. The focus seemed to be on delivering the best possible analysis to the country's senior leadership. It sounded as if the question of how senior leadership is going to interpret the findings is beyond the scope of IARPA.

The day before, I had been reading a lot about the Challenger Accident as I was drafting a Teaching Note for a Challenger case study we are using in workshops. I was reading through a number of academic papers highlighting the communication aspects highlighted in the case study. As an intelligence analyst or an engineer, you would certain hope (perhaps even expect) that your findings will be interpreted as you intended them to be interpreted. As with any communication, however, the expectation that the intent of the message will be perfectly transmitted is misplaced.

Here is what was bothering me: The accuracy of the findings being presented does not necessarily correlate with good decision-making. On the other hand, incomplete or inaccurate findings can't do much to support good decision-making. I'm also not sure what "good decision-making" means.

Videos as Knowledge Products

2011-05-15T08:41:00.002-04:00

Update: See a similar post: Video Video on Danegeld.

I've been bookmarking videos on knowledge management. People in knowledge management often argue that any face-to-face meeting needs to be recorded so that those who didn't attend might be able to benefit from the meeting as well. I'm skeptical. Face-to-face meetings are meant to be interactive. If you're in the room, you have the ability to interact and the option to stay quiet. If you're watching the video 12 months later on YouTube or some other service, there is a temptation to multitask (I'm writing this blog post while listening to a video recording of a 45 minute talk on personal knowledge management that is meandering and not getting to the point). In a face-to-face setting, I am very tolerant of meandering presentations. If I am watching a video and it's not getting to the point fast enough, I will start multitasking and then almost immediately stop listening.

There is a place for video products, but when we videotape a live lecture and make it available online, what percentage of the benefits of the live lecture do we lose? I'm not even talking of the networking benefits involved in personally attending the event face-to-face and talking to speakers and participants.

Here is a collection of links to videos on Knowledge Management themes. (click on the pearl)

Technology Adoption: The Importance of the Second Trial

2011-05-10T05:02:00.002-04:00

I seem to follow a pattern with most web 2.0 tools. There's an initiation phase where I try out the tool and I use it for a short amount of time. In that initiation phase, I figure out how it works, but I'm only scratching the surface of what the tool can do and I'm already noticing some of the drawbacks.

Then my attention span drops off and I barely visit that tool for months at a time. My suspicion is that this is where most people give up on a tool and decide it's not for them. I've done that recently with Quora.

At some point, I come across something on the web that reminds me that I have an account on that tool and I revisit it. Very often, the tool has evolved and added new functionalities between my first and second trials. I'm usually happy with improvements and likely to pick it up again. The second trial tends to be more focused on getting something specific out of it... a more focused project. It doesn't imply that I'm going to use the tool on an ongoing basis, just that I've thought about what the tool can be useful for and when I might need it, not necessarily on a daily basis. This pattern was realized with Pearltrees. I played with it more than a year ago, found it somewhat interesting but limited in the way it structures links between pearls (much less flexible than a mindmap for example, yet much easier to create than a mindmap consisting only of URLs).

One of the drawbacks of Pearltrees is that a Pearl has to be a URL. As far as I can tell, you can't add a "concept" pearl without a link. It's not meant to build concept maps or mind maps. If I'm organizing links, after the first ten links, I'm automatically starting to think about how to group them around key concepts. Pearltrees doesn't allow you to do that easily. To address that challenge, I've used links to Wikipedia as a way of organizing around key concepts in the pearl map below.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING & Related Concepts in Barbara Fillip (bfillip)

KMers navigating between fast flow and slow space

2011-05-07T15:10:00.000-04:00

April 26 KMers Twitter Chat I participated in, facilitated by Ewen, @ "KM for me...and You?"

Knowledge Areas for KM Professionals

2011-05-07T11:55:00.001-04:00

This visual has nothing to do with a rigorous analysis of what a KM curriculum would need to address but it has a lot to do with areas/fields/topics I've encountered while DOING knowledge management. I've highlighted Personal Knowledge Management in bold because it ended up in the middle of my arrangement of bubbles somehow and it is often neglected and ignored by KM programs. I've used a loose coloring scheme to differentiate things that were strictly KM (ugly green) from IT-related items (light purple), from individual-focused items (red line) and organization-level focus.

Knowledge Management Education & the Job Market for KM Professionals

2011-05-07T07:42:00.002-04:00

Kent State University and George Washington University have been collaborating around an initiative to strengthen KM education (mostly at the Masters and Ph.D. level) with what I understood to be a long term goal of strengthening the KM profession as a whole by turning KM into a "discipline" with a standardized set of core qualifications, etc... essentially trying to balance or counter the emergence of competing commercial outfits delivering KM certifications and in the process making a few claims about the strength of their training.

I don't have sufficient first hand knowledge of the entrails of all this to pass judgement on any of it. From a personal perspective, as a knowledge management professional, I've had to ask myself whether I needed to get a KM certificate of some kind and after looking into it, I've decided that it did not make sense. For one thing, I've been disappointed with classroom learning (even in workshop format) settings and I seem to do better with ongoing social learning opportunities using a wide variety of sources and methods online. Another aspect of this is that I know enough about knowledge management to be skeptical about the ability of any training out there to really help me with ongoing KM challenges I face in the workplace and to give me something I can't find on my own with a little of diligence on the web. I could see myself taking one "class" a year on a specific topic, but the certificate approach isn't appealing to me.

The initiative driven by Kent State University (KM Education Forum Community Wiki) includes a series of webinars (completed) and a two-day onsite event at George Washington University (completed this past week, May 5-6). I listened in on some of the webinars and attended the onsite event in D.C. The back and forth between the academics and practitioners was interesting. Not surprisingly, there's a significant gap between the concerns of the academics ("we need to create a true discipline with a rigorous curriculum") and the concerns of the practitioners ("can you please send us people who know what they're talking about and can DO knowledge management"). Part of the problem is that there isn't a standard explanation of what "doing knowledge management" really is because 1) KM is highly contextual; and 2) KM draws from a wide range of other disciplines.

In parenthesis, I'm not convinced KM is a discipline or needs to be a discipline from an academic perspective. I see it as a cross-disciplinary field. I'm not sure the marketplace is asking for KM professionals coming out of schools with a KM degree. I think the marketplace would be satisfied with KM professionals who have had cross-disciplinary training, whether their degree comes from the school of computer science, human resources, business, library sciences, etc..

At times it seems as if there are a few individuals ("strong personalities" I should say) who are positioning themselves to be able to say "I created KM as a discipline." A small dose of humility might do some good to the field of KM as a whole (see a related short post by Nick Milton: "It's Wrong to be Right"). Within organizations, without a dose of humility and the ability to collaborate with other departments, KM can't go very far. The same probably applies to KM in academia. I find the attempt to establish KM as an independent discipline to go against the nature of KM. KM is not going to get more recognition in organizations when it becomes an academic discipline. KM will get the recognition it deserves where and when it is able to demonstrate value to the bottom line and/or organizational goals of the organization.

That being said, I do find a great deal of value in some of the work being done in the context of the initiative to define roles and responsibilities as well as competencies required for KM professionals. Again, as a KM professional (in a contractor position), I have to think in terms of career path. I consider myself a KM generalist. Where do I go from here? What competencies do I need to acquire to get to the higher levels of the KM career hierarchy? What KM specialist competencies would have the most value if I wanted to become a specialist? What would I really be good at and what would be too much of a stretch? What existing skills and competencies should I build upon? If I'm currently somewhere between KM specialist and KM team leader (leader without a team, but below CKO), what are my options both within my existing organizational setting and within other organizations.

Which brings me to the next set of issues: the marketplace. In trying to identify specific competencies and skills that I had/didn't have that were in demand in the marketplace, I've collected job advertisements for the past few months. I've focused on positions that had the words "knowledge management" in them, but also paid attention to jobs with titles and descriptions involving "organizational learning" and "chief learning officer." A few observations:

A significant proportion of the jobs labelled as "Knowledge Management" are 99% IT. Some of them are webmasters jobs under a KM label. I suppose that may happen when web content management falls under the responsibility of a KM office.
Some organizations with a significant number of KM jobs have well defined KM job descriptions and qualification requirements with a good degree of consistency across the board. You can tell from the job descriptions that they have a strong KM program (the World Bank comes to mind).
Federal Government KM jobs are often described in Federalese and alphabet soup. Even when they're open to the general public, you'd need a translator and insider to explain the terminology and have a chance in competing with people already on the inside. If you don't already know the systems the agency has in place, I don't know how you can expect to get through the first level of screening because you can't target your responses properly if you don't understand what their language.
A lot of KM jobs are very specific about the systems and tools you need to know to apply. They don't ask for specialists in communities of practice, they ask for Sharepoint or system XYZ specialists. As an applicant, that tells you something about where the organization is in terms of KM maturity. They've already made a lot of decisions in terms of approaches and systems. As a KM generalist, I know how to use a dozen different systems but would I call myself a Sharepoint specialist? Probably not. Give me a couple of months and I can probably become a Sharepoint specialist. I don't think being a specialist in a specific tool or system would be a smart career move.

This is a personal blog and these are personal opinions. Obviously, this isn't meant as a summary of the KM Education Forum webinars and onsite event. See links below for the official information.

Related Links (not advertizing or recommending any particular academic or commercial training)

Kent State University Knowledge Management Education Forum (with a link to the KM Education Forum wiki)
George Washington University - Institute for Knowledge and Innovation
Columbia University's new Master in Information and Knowledge Strategy
SRM International
Knowledge Management Institute
#Kmedf11 (limited tweeting...when I asked the organizers if they had set a twitter hashtag, I was told there wasn't one)

Daily KM Papers in my Inbox

2011-04-30T08:56:00.001-04:00

I realize that most peopledon't want more email and the idea of receiving multiple newspapers in their inbox on a daily basis wouldn't be appealing, but it's all a matter of managing the flow and deciding what's worth subscribing to temporarily vs. long-term. Unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, so there's nothing to worry about.

I continue to grow the list of people and organizations I follow on Twitter but given the way I use Twitter (mostly to gather nuggets of relevant information), I don't need to constantly check my Tweet feed yet I don't want to miss potentially interesting Tweets. By focusing on specific topics using Tweetdeck and filtering by columns, and subscribing to a few (four at the moment) Twitter-based newspapers, I am managing the flow while avoiding distractions.

#KM Daily
#KMers Daily
Knowledge Management, Le Journal, by P. Bernardon ... more likely to include French content

"We see the world as it isn't"

2011-04-22T06:52:00.000-04:00

Fallor ergo sum - I err therefore I am.

Read On Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz.

Informationist

2011-04-17T14:48:00.000-04:00

No, I am not talking about Taylor Steven's debut novel, The Informationist, but it is that very book that introduced me to the term and made me wonder if there was such a term or profession.

What is an informationist, then?

An informationist is someone with a strong library science background combined with specialized expertise in a particular topic area. Informationists are usually embedded with the professionals they support rather than working out of a library. It appears to be used primarily within the medical profession (see the Wikipedia definition of "informationist."). Another terms often used (or that I am more familiar with) is that of "embedded librarian). The reference librarians I know who work at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center library for example, are extremely knowledgeable about both the science and engineering aspects of what NASA does. They're not embedded at the project level, but they are capable of supporting specific projects on an as-needed basis.

Next question: Where does the informationist fit in with the knowledge manager? Are these complementary roles?

Collective Action

2011-04-12T06:07:00.000-04:00

I'm currently reading/listening to Clay Shirky's work (Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus). This flashmob video fits in like a glove.

Key Elements of a KM Strategy

2011-04-07T05:15:00.000-04:00

The key elements of a KM strategy can be summarized as follows:

Leadership: Are the leaders both on board with the KM strategy and communicating that it is important?
Incentives: Are the right incentives in place for people at all levels to do what is expected of them in terms of KM?
Resources: Have adequate resources been identified and allocated appropriately (in a sustainable manner)?
Value: Does it make sense? Does the KM strategy address critical business needs? Do people within the organization believe the KM strategy is adding value?

But none of this will make sense without a deep understanding of the organizational culture and business need.

Informal Learning via Social Media: An Example

2011-04-01T07:07:00.002-04:00

Explaining the power of informal learning via social media to non-believers can be challenging because in most cases, the non-believers are not social media users and therefore it's easy to revert to "you just have to try it, then you'll understand." That simply doesn't work with some people. You need to give them something more tangible to get them to try it.

I had two very specific examples of tangible benefits this week. One example involved the use of Twitter at a relatively small in-house conference and was 100% work-related. The other example belongs to the critical gray area of professional interest that s not directly work-related. I am documenting both, but I'll focus here on the second on.

I recently purchased The Working Smarter Fieldbook. I've been following the authors from a digital distance for a while, whether on blogs, Twitter or other channels and I purchased the book or rather, the PDF file. As I started reading through it on my Kindle, I noticed little black squares and my first thought was that some images were missing. Something must have gone wrong with the PDF, I thought. After all, this is an unbook, it's not meant as a perfect final product. I didn't think too much of it.

A couple of days later, I am attending an in-house conference (the same one where I had that other informal learning experience via Twitter) and one of the presenters has an image of the funny little black squares on his slide. He must have said only two words about it but that was the trigger. It wasn't a missing picture, it was content I was missing out on because I had no clue what it was. Now I knew it had a name, it was a QR (Quick Response) code. Armed with that information, I googled QR, ended up on the Wikipedia page. The next challenge was to get back to the book I had first encountered them in and figure out how to "read" them. Post a question about it on the Yammer Social Learning Community, simultaneously google QR "reader", find the free iPhone app, and that was it, I was all giddy about my discovery.. so excited about it I had to tell a colleague about it later in the day. Checked the Yammer Social Learning Community later on and there were a dozen or so messages with links to additional information, examples of how people use QRs, etc, etc.. One post specifically answered one of my remaining questions. If the QR in a book is just taking you to a website, why not just put a standard URL? The answer is that a URL doesn't change and you'd have to reprint your book or document if you change the URL. The QR doesn't change. You can set it to change where it takes you.

Connected the whole thing to a presentation I had seen months ago about Augmented Reality.
Started noticing QR codes at the mall, tried one -- the first hand experience remains key in understanding what it does.
Started writing this blog post, which took me to additional resources, including the video below.

Resources collected in the process:

Twitter Account: QR Code News @QcodesR
7 Things You Should Know about QR Codes
Mobile tagging (Facebook page)
The World Park (YouTube)

100 Tools for learning + 1 (Paper.li)

2011-03-26T07:19:00.001-04:00

Jane Hart's annual list of the top 100 learning tools is always an interesting way of keeping an eye on trends and discovering new tools. I went to check the list this morning with a different purpose. I went to see if my current favorite is on the list. I couldn't find it on the 2010 list but it has 3 votes on the 2011 list. It's not clear that it's going to make the top 100 in 2011.

What am I talking about? Paper.li. Paper.li allows you to subscribe to daily newspaper issues made up of Twitter and Facebook links.

The newspaper arrives in my email box. With TweetDeck and my filterened column for KM-relatead tweets, I can end up with 20 tweets essentially pointing to the same link. With Paper.li, I will see only one link to that item. It helps to filter out duplicates. If I keep TweetDeck open all day long to keep an eye on things, I lose focus on what I'm trying to achieve.

For me, Paper.li won't completely replace TweetDeck, but it has an important Twitter management function.

All of this leads me back to a point about the Top 100 Tools for Learning. Some of the tools listed are really sub-tools in the sense that Paper.li and TweetDeck exist only because of Twitter. They're tools develop to address some of the challenges brought about by Twitter. Also, it would be useful to have lists by category of tools. Presentation tools have little to do with microblogging tools for example.

I discovered Paper.li via Twitter, but you go directly to the Paper.li website, search for existing papers, on topics of interest, and subscribe, never requiring you to even get a Twitter account.

Subscribe to the top 3 "Knowledge Management" Paper.li Twitter newspapers and I'm confident you won't miss anything critical being shared on Twitter around Knowledge Management.

Of course, that all works out for me because I use Twitter as a way of connecting with resources more than as a way of connecting with people. To connect with people around KM, the weekly #KMers tweetchat is probably the most effective approach.

Conclusion: You don't have to keep checking your tweet feeds to get significant benefits from Twitter. It doesn't have to be a distracting tool. What you need is a willingness to try it out and figure out how to use it so it works best for you.

To Reflect

2011-03-20T08:53:00.002-04:00

Somewhere in downtown Pittsburgh.

I love collecting links to interesting items on the web and I regularly bookmark using Diigo. While I think that just the act of bookmarking something makes me focus on it a little more than I would if I were just scanning the item and moving on, I'm always feeling slightly guilty about the fact that I don't do much with these bookmarks. Now that I have a substantive collection, however, I find myself coming to search it more often. The photo to the right is one I took on a visit to Pittsburgh. I came upon it today while cleaning up some files and it triggered some cleaning up of my Diigo Library. Cleaning up, it turns out, is a good way to trigger reflection and in my case this morning, I ended up thinking about my use of tags, the increasingly important role of tagging and folksonomies, and how looking at your own tags and how they related can trigger new connections. The clean up also forced me to learn a few tricks about searching my own Diigo Library.

Links from my Diigo Library (Tags= reflections, reflective practice, journaling, professional journal, PKM, AAR)

Fifteen Minutes of...Reflection, Chris Collison - Blog post (2/28/2011)
The Social Practice of Learning: a craft for the 21st Century - Paper: Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2009) 10:205–214. Note: This paper is focused on educators but the broader principles apply to any profession.
Learning in the Thick of It, Harvard Business Review OnPoint Article, July/August 2005. Note: Focuses on After-Action-Reviews (AARs).
- More AAR links in my Diigo Library

Donald Schon: Learning, Reflection and Change (infed / Encyclopedia of Informal Education)
Wikis and Blogs as Reflective Practice (Short Paper)

More "Reflective practice" links in my Diigo Library.

Professional Development Practice: The One Sentence Journal - blog post (June 2008)

More "Professional Journal" or "journaling" links in my Diigo Library.

If I combine all the related tags mentioned above in a search of my Diigo Library, the query returns... 160 items. I suspect many of them are labeled PKM for personal knowledge management.

Understanding Information Overload: Email

2011-03-13T06:25:00.000-04:00

"When the amount of information available to be filtered is effectively unlimited, as is the case on the Net, then every improvement in the quality of filters will make information overload worse." Situational overload and Ambient Overload (Nicholas Carr, March 11, 2011)

In his post on "Situational Overload and Ambient Overload," Nicholas Carr differentiates between too types of issues: Situational overload refers to the ability of finding the needle in the haystack (or our ability to search for something specific), while ambient overload refers to our ability to filter the unending rivers of information that are available to us to find things that are of interest to us.

In short, Clay Sharky's often quoted statement that "It's not information overload, it's filter failure" (Clay Sharky, Web 2.0 Expo) doesn't address all the angles of the information overload problem.

I was struck by this statement by Nicholas Carr because it helped me deepen my understanding of the confusion most people seem to experience around the words "information overload." When people complain of information overload, they'll often use email as an example and mention that they receive hundreds of email every day, immediately followed by a statement to the effect that if they read all their emails, they'd have no time for real work.

I don't receive hundreds of email at work -- and I should be thankful for that -- but as an experiment, I started collecting in a folder all the messages that I receive that I consider to be a waste of my time and I should never have received. I should mention here that we have an excellent spam filter and all the unnecessary email I am collecting are internal to the organization. Most of these email messages come from individuals making use of distribution lists. Half of the messages don't apply to me at all, meaning that I am not the intended audience for that message. There are particularly annoying examples of this: 1) the message reminding me to submit my timesheet, which would be nice, except that I'm a contractor and I work on a different timesheet schedule; 2) the message advertizing all the wonderful training opportunities -- for which I don't qualify.

To address the problem, I have a number of options:
1) unsubscribe from these lists
That is not necessarily an option since I didn't subscribe in the first place. I was automatically added based on my various organizational identities.
2) create an email rule to automatically divert all these messages to a folder and review/delete when I have time
3) create a rule that is specific enough to automatically delete the specific messages without targeting all messages to the offending distribution lists;
4) have a friendly conversation with the sender(s).

Then there's the occasional "donuts in the kitchen" announcement, which might be useful to some, but I don't work in the building where that kitchen is located, so again, that distribution list doesn't work for me.

Then there's the "I wanted to make sure you all receive this" message, when the message referenced has clearly been sent to every single individual in the organization. Either the sender hasn't seen that the message was sent to everyone or the sender doesn't trust the recipients to read emails addressed to everyone, but they trust the reader to read emails from him/her.

In the work situation, I don't have complete control over what I receive and I have to pick my battles. This one is probably not significant enough to turn it into a skirmish, but multiplied by thousands of employees receiving a dozen or more unnecessary emails a day, there may be a case of action.

My personal email inbox is another story. Even without spam, I do get many more emails there and I make extensive use of filters to screen things efficiently and not miss important messages. In my work inbox, I can't afford not to screen every message, even if only to delete. In my home inbox, most of what I receive are things I asked for (notifications, subscriptions, etc...) but don't need to read until the weekend or don't have to read at all if I'm pressed for time. That's the ambient overload aspect of the information problem, the same problem I encounter with RSS feeds I subscribe to and most of my use of Twitter. That is something I can control. I can decide how much time to spend screening Twitter feeds and RSS feeds. I can skip a whole week and not have to worry about it. It's not essential to my existence. Nothing will happen if I miss a week's worth of Twitter or a week's worth of RSS feeds.

The Challenge of Learning in Projects

2011-03-05T07:39:00.000-05:00

It is easier to establish AAR processes (or a similar process) in projects or activities that have a short life cycle and are repeatable.

Here is a very simple example: You've developed a training curriculum that you deliver four times a year. At the end of each session, you conduct an AAR, the lessons of which you can quickly integrate into the next session and so on, in an ongoing fashion.

There are project circumstances, however, where establishing an AAR process is much more difficult because of the following perceptions firmly held by project team members.

1) the projects are long-term AND there is little learned in phase A that really applies to phase B

2) projects are so unique that there isn't much specific you could learn on one project that will apply to another project

3) project teams are pressured to delivery THEIR project on time and on budget (at times competing with other projects for resources), so why should they waste time on activities meant to help out future projects for which they have no responsibility.

1) and 2) above are hard to believe but I've heard it. KM professionals should never assume that everyone perceives of the value of knowledge in the same way they do. 3) is where the biggest problem resides.

So, if the project team doesn't have the necessary motivation to engage in KM activities, where is the appropriate entry point? Somewhere either above the project (management level) or below the project (professional groups, etc...)?

Project X experienced challenges with its risk management approach, an issue which would have come up in a project AAR (if implemented at major milestones rather than at the end of the project). The project didn't schedule AARs because of 1), 2) and 3) listed above. What if there was a Risk Management community of practice with the appropriate incentives to support members with the knowledge of the entire community rather than just the knowledge of the individual risk manager assigned to that project?

That does not mean there aren't good opportunities for using AARs in that organization. Not all activities around the organization are long-term unique projects.

In short: Don't push AARs where they don't belong. Find the right approach for the specific setting.

Related

Keep Learning: AAR version

Don't publish content without a usage strategy in place

2011-02-19T06:30:00.000-05:00

I spent yesterday transferring a case study from a complex PowerPoint format (with embedded videos and exercises) to a more accessible wiki. It turned out to be a rather labor intensive, mind-numbing activity.

The earlier alternative had been a zipped file which contained all the individual pieces, including videos, attachments, etc... Needless to say, very few people were going to download the zipped file to their desktop in order to get a sense of what the whole thing was about.

So, now the case study is technically more "accessible." Does that mean it is going to be used? No. Can I get the wiki stats to lie for me? Yes. I can probably collect statistics that will tell me that X number of people accessed the case study every week. However, if I were to ask these X people whether they went through the entire case and found it useful, I'm guessing the answers would not be very positive. I'd learn that they stumbled upon the case study while looking for something else and promptly exited.

Ideally, the entity creating content of that nature, content that was designed for a face-to-face training environment, needs to think about how the materials would need to be adjusted or re-purposed for other uses. When the content is yours, you have a strong incentive to ensure that it doesn't sit on a shelf or deep in a folder on someone's desktop. You also have a better sense of how it could or should be used. You have a good sense of why you developed it in the first place. When you're inheriting someone else's content, it's tempting to just make it accessible but not really get invested in whether people will get any value out of it.

So, yesterday, while I was concentrating deeply on manipulating files to reconstruct the case study in its new, more accessible environment, a few questions came up:
* When I create (or re-purpose) content, shouldn't I pay a little more attention to what I name the files, so that someone else, coming later, would have a sense of what they are even if they're not familiar with the content.
* When I create (or re-purpose) content, shouldn't I have a usage strategy in mind? I know who the target audience is for that case study. I know who would need to take a lead role in promoting the use of that case study. The next step would be to make that explicit, to proactively engage those people most likely to have a use for it.

Perhaps "usage strategy" isn't the right phrase. Perhaps it's an "engagement strategy." I want people to engage with the material.
* Why would people engage with this material?
* How are people going to engage with this material?
* How do I tweak the original material to make it more user friendly in its new "setting"?
* How do I let the right people know it's there?

Similar issues arise with all of the case studies we work with. They're designed for face-to-face training. We post them to make them more accessible, but our real target group consists of instructors who might consider using the cases in their training. Hence, it's not enough to make them more accessible.

Bookmarked in First Half of February 2011

2011-02-12T06:53:00.000-05:00

Social Business Software and KM - Percolating

2011-02-12T06:19:00.001-05:00

I do my best to leave work at the office and switch the brain to non-work related things when I close the office door. Sometimes, though, work sticks to my brain. It's often a question or a set of questions that need to percolate for a while. The office isn't a very good place for reflection, so I tolerate reflection and percolation during off-hours.

Here are some of the questions currently percolating:

1. How to ensure a KM impact for social business software
If a social business software is introduced within the organization with the specific purpose of improving internal communications, how can I make sure that the implementation also supports knowledge management?

a. I set up a KM community within the new platform and champion KM through that space, potentially replicating perceptions of KM as something the KM office does rather than something everybody should be doing (Big Foot approach).

b. I seed KM-related comments, suggestions, resources, etc.. throughout the various communities, turning myself into the annoying KM guru-wannabe who obviously has too much time on her hands.

c. I make sure not to refer to anything I do as KM and I actively participate in relevant communities, modeling the behavior I'd want to see from all employees with regards to KM (super-stealth approach).

2. Competition between Tools / Too Much of a Good Thing?
If a social business software is introduced within the organization when another tool (a wiki) is on the rise, will there be competition between the two sets of tools and how do you prevent confusion regarding the purpose of each tool?

a. Yes, there will be confusion unless the differences are clearly explained and the two tools are presented as complementary rather than competing.

b. People are going to be reluctant to learn two new tools. They'll insist on using one or the other because they already know how to use it, rather than pick the most appropriate tool for the task.

c. There's enough space for everyone to play in both playgrounds. I'm worrying too much and it's a non-issue.

d. It will take so much time to deploy this social business software that everyone will have already developed their space in the wiki and there will be little demand for the new tool.

3. We need PKM too, don't we?
I strongly believe that most people in organizations could use a little Personal Knowledge Management before jumping into Organizational Knowledge Management, yet talking about PKM is even less likely to be well received than KM. How do I push forward with what I strongly believe in?

a. Go to the KM boss (my boss) and suggest a PKM workshop or online course (yeah, right... I must have lost my mind for a second).

b. Build a PKM module on my personal page in the existing wiki and point people to it (add a link in my email signature as a starting point). Don't tell the boss, just do it.

c. Mention PKM in every single conversation until there's a buzz around the term and the top leadership decides we need one of those (just kidding!).

Related Resources

Some lessons about capacity building in social media for development organizations in the South, January 24, Lasagna and Chips (blog)
There is a simple diagram in the post mentioned just above that struck me as on the spot and also reflects my perspective on KM. With KM and with social media tools, you can't build anything at the organizational level until you have a critical mass of individuals interested (practicing personal knowledge management and using social media for their own individual benefit).

KM Twitter Chats - Slow Motion Brainstorming on Storytelling

2011-02-05T04:52:00.007-05:00

In the past couple of months, I've participated in a few Twitter chats run through the KMers group. I haven't developed a strong pro or against attitude. I like the idea of communicating with like-minded individuals who have similar professional interests but with whom I would otherwise have no contact through regular work-related tasks. I still find them a little awkward.

Imagine a dozen people sitting around a table for a brainstorming session around a pre-determined topic. A facilitator welcomes everyone and starts up the conversation with a question. Imagine that instead of having to take turns to speak up, people are able to talk over each other, but everything is slowed down so that the participants are able to hear and comprehend what everybody else is saying. There's a little more time to think about what to contribute to the conversation and you can respond to something that was said a minute ago rather than the last thing that was said without getting everyone totally confused.

I'll use the most recent KMers' chat on Corporate Storytelling and Knowledge Management as an example.

The 140-character limit forces has both advantages and disadvantages:

(+) You're not able to ramble on about an idea without making a point. If your 140 character message isn't clear on its own, people will just ignore it and move on quickly.
(-) Don't expect it to be more than a brainstorming session. People will express ideas and share resources they're aware of, they may express agreement or ask for details, but there isn't time or space to go deep into anything.

(+/-) You're more inclined to turn your message into the equivalent of a movie tagline or a book logline. If your message is intriguing enough, you get a request for details.
(+/-) There is a "built-in" written record (transcript) of the conversation (keep that in mind when you're furiously typing a tweet).
(+) The conversation doesn't always end with the chat session. Some participants in the chat may follow up with some additional thoughts or a summary of the chat in their blog (See Jeff Hester's blog post on Successful KM Storytelling).

(+) The chat's hashtag (#KMers) can be used at any time (beyond the specific hour of scheduled chat) to reach out to this particular KM community even if all the members of the community aren't among your followers.

Storytelling Resources:

My Diigo "Storytelling" list of resources.

Anecdote: Five Conditions That Encourage Stories (blog post)
The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, by Stephen Denning, 2005. (book)
"Tacit Knowledge: How Stories Capture Tacit Knowledge", Steve Denning.
ILO, "Knowledge Capture and Organizational Learning."
Knowledge Capture Systems: Systems that Preserve and Formalize Knowledge, 2007 (Presentation)
"Storytelling in Knowledge Management: An Effective Tool for Uncovering Tacit Knowledge," by Shauna LeBlanc and James Hogg.

"Unleash Tacit Knowledge Using Storytelling"(IFAD presentation)
"Imparting Knowledge Through Storytelling," by Tom Reamy, 2002 (Article).
"Story Guide:Building Bridges Using Narrative Techniques," Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation (SDC), 2006.
"The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles: A Practical Guide to Facilitate.", Shawn Callahan, Andrew Rixon & Mark Schenk, 2006.
"Storytelling and Knowledge Management" (Presentation by Eric Brown), March 2009
"Storytelling in Organizations," Changing Minds website.

See also Anecdote Circles

About Knowledge Management Plans and Strategic KM

2011-01-26T05:13:00.000-05:00

In the past 18 months, I have done a lot of thinking (and a lot of drafting of plans and requirements documents) about KM plans in the context of an attempt to "institutionalize" or "scale up" KM within the organization. To me, the critical question isn't so much whether a KM plan would be a good idea or not, but rather, how do you make it happen when there is no requirement or mandate for projects to have such a plan.

So, here's the real question for me: Do you try to create a KM requirement and then go about enforcing it, or do you work with project teams to create and implement a plan because they've come to believe in the value of KM activities embedded in the plan?

To get to the point where they believe in the value of KM activities, you need to convince them to actually implement some KM activities. Perhaps they'll agree to do an activity or two, but they won't experience the full value unless they do it systematically, throughout the project's life cycle. If you implement ad hoc KM activities with the project, they'll start seeing KM as just that, "ad hoc" and not something that's truly embedded into the project. It becomes something that the KM team does with them once in a while rather than their KM activity.

Why KM Plans (January 24, 2011), Nick Milton in Knoco Stories - From the Knowledge Management Front Line

"One of the push-backs we often get when we introduce KM plans is “why do we need a plan? Any good engineer will naturally do all the learning they need; surely a KM plan or learning plan is just added work for no added value?”

I posted a comment in response to this blog post, suggesting that when there isn't a requirement for a KM plan, it may be more effective to integrate KM elements into existing plans. I've seen it integrated into the Risk Management Plan.

Knowledge management Plans, Knoco.com

"The concept of a project-level Knowledge Management plan is one of the most exciting new ideas to come out of Knowledge Management in the past 5 years. It is a device that allows Knowledge Management to be fully embedded into project controls, at the same level of rigour as risk management, or document management."

I strong believe in the potential of KM plans. They're particularly valuable in the context of large, complex projects that are driven by plans and requirements and document management to begin with.The project may be complex, but the KM plan needs to be simple and leverage other things that are already planned within the project.

See also Knoco Newsletter on Knowledge Management Plans (Spring 2007).

Planning for Strategically Relevant KM

Are You Wasting Money on Useless Knowledge Management?, January 20th, Harvard Business Review, by Ian MacMillan, Max Boisot, and Martin Ihri.

"The problem is that most current knowledge management efforts merely inventory the company's knowledge, without parsing out the knowledge that is strategically relevant. Strategic management of knowledge focuses only on those knowledge assets that are critical to your firm's competitive performance — from the tacit expertise of key individuals right through to explicit company-wide general principles."

I agree with the statement above. That's also why all the current attention given to social media as a KM solution, is potentially misguided if it is seen merely as a way to better connect people. Also, strategically relevant KM at the organizational level may imply KM activities at the organizational level rather than just KM at the project level. There are different layers of strategic KM activities at each level of the organization.

Tool of the Week - Quora

2011-01-15T07:45:00.000-05:00

I became aware of Quora through Twitter. I was noticing Quora this and Quora that without understanding what it was and eventually I must have clicked on a link and ended up on the Quora site.

Quora is a Q&A tool with a social networking dimension. It's integrated with Twitter. These days, everything needs to be integrated with Twitter it seems. You set up an account and off you go, posting questions and answering other people's questions.

It reminded me of Aardvark, a similar Q&A service that I tried out (never really got into) a few months ago and Wolfram Alpha. Aardvark is more about seeking advice about where to take your next vacation and Wolfram Alpha is more like querying an encyclopedia. I'm simplifying.

Aardvark seemed to be a Q&A in a vacuum, with random people answering your questions whereas Quora collects and displays answers in a semi-organized fashion and allows you to identify topics of interest and people to follow. Wolfram Alpha is a powerful search engine that retrieves verified information. At least that's my impression.

As a public tool, these are interesting experiments but I'm more interested in their potential application within organizations. There is a significant amount of literature on knowledge management systems within organizations specifically focused on Q&A types of "solutions." These are based on a number of assumptions: 1) there is a demand and supply side in the knowledge equation, a market; 2) the correct incentives are in place and all you need is a tool to act as a bridge between knowledge seekers and knowledge owners.

When you set up tools such as Yammer within an organization, you are essentially opening up broader avenues for people to connect, potentially ask questions and get answers. You should not expect everyone to use these new channels for Q&A purposes and you should not expect this to be THE solution. A Q&A system such as Quora, when implemented within an organization, has the advantage of gathering answers into one spot. Answers don't get lost in the traffic, they accumulate, in a not-so-orderly fashion, around questions.

I haven't explored the tool long enough to understand its true potential, but long enough to have a few questions: How much structure should be imposed for the system to remain useful and usable? How much policing and training is necessary to avoid complete chaos? How do you deal with the skeptics who will inevitably say that none of the content is "validated" knowledge, that it could actually be dangerous if people follow the advice posted and it's wrong.

It's not exactly a new idea. I remembered reading a paper by Ackerman & Malone titled "Answer Garden: a tool for growing organizational memory," from 1990 (might as well be a century ago).

Links of the Week (01/08/2011)

2011-01-08T08:09:00.000-05:00

Read Knowledge Management Below the Radar
January 4, 2011, by Adam Richardson
My Comments:If my own experience is of any value, it's best to allow KM to thrive "under the radar" wherever it wants to sprout across the organization rather than try to control it centrally from a KM Office. The challenge is that letting KM-related activities emerge and grow organically may result in a multitude of pockets of knowledge and associated technologies that are not necessarily well integrated or connected. You can end up with knowledge silos. So, the KM Office, if there is one, has a role to play in connecting the dots and providing broad guidance as well as... and this is very important, filling the gaps... doing what is critical from a KM perspective that isn't already being done.

A good example of that are the case studies our office develops based on the experience of projects. Project teams may focus on their own lessons learned, which they should, ideally, handle internally, with the KM Office's support as needed However, the project teams are not likely to spend time writing a case study meant to disseminate what they've learned to other projects. It's something the KM Office can take on as a service to the organization as a whole, facilitating the transfer of lessons from one project to the rest of the organization.

Related Links

Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA (that's where I work)

NASA Case Studies

Read How to Make Use of Your Organization’s Collective Knowledge – Accessing the Knowledge of the Whole Organization - Part I, by Nancy Dixon

My Comments: Nancy Dixon's posts aren't your typical blog posts, they're well thought out essays. They usually come in a series on a particular topic. She talks about "sensemaking" as the first step in making use of an organization's collective knowledge. In a practical setting, we call it "Pause and Learn," and it's a two-hour team reflection activity that enables members of a team to have a conversation about the salient aspects of a particular project experience. For project teams, one of the challenges is accepting the fact that this relatively simple conversation is valuable (i.e, worth spending precious time on).

Related Link

Knowledge Management at Goddard: Pause & Learn

How do Rocket Scientists Learn?

In Her Mind's Eye [New Blog]

2010-12-30T18:25:00.002-05:00

I will keep posting irregularly on this blog, mostly about work-related / knowledge management related things. I started a new blog titled "In Her Mind's Eye" that will be focused on the themes of the novel I am finishing up. My Twitter account will continue to reflect the mix of everything and anything of interest to me.

So You Want to Write a Novel

2010-12-01T17:52:00.000-05:00

Just hilarious!

Trends in Pop Psychology books

2010-11-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

Bounce (Mathew Syed)
Switch (Chip Heath & Dan Heath)
Think! (Michael LeGault)
Choke (Sian Beilock)
Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)

Is it just me or is there a trend in popular psychology books? Even the book covers follow a specific style. So, just as you'd recognize a YA vampire novel by it's cover, you can now pick a popular psychology book by it's one-word title and cover art.

I've reached my tipping point. I've bounced from one book to the other and obviously I'm no Mozart, Federer, Picasso or Beckman. I've tried to switch but change is hard. In the end, I started thinking without thinking and now, I can't stop blinking. Next think you know I'll be choking. I can't get it right. All this science of success is too much for my brain.

PLENK10 - On selfishness

2010-10-12T05:38:00.000-04:00

Cover via AmazonI was on a train for six hours this past weekend, with a book (the physical thing) on hand. It happened to be The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. I can't say that I was doing deep reading because I'm not a regular train traveler and I was slightly distracted by the noise and motion of the train, but sitting in the quiet car, I did manage to read uninterrupted for significant chunks of time.

While I was testing my ability to read (as opposed to the constant skimming and scanning that I and apparently everyone does on the web), my teenage daughter sitting nearby was doing her usual multitasking: math homework while watching a TV show on Netflix. My own brain cannot do that and does not want to try to do that. It feels fragmented enough, thank you very much. I can understand listening to background music while studying but I cannot understand watching TV while studying. But then, why should I worry about how she does her homework if her report card is consistently excellent?

Since I was taking my daughter to visit my Alma Mater, I was also being reminded of the old days when 90% of my time was spent studying -- which in my days meant reading on my own, digesting content on my own, and taking exams on my own. I might have made every effort possible to avoid classes known to require group work. Did that make me incapable of working with other people today? I don't think so. Did that make me selfish? I don't think so.

I don't necessarily buy into everything Nicholas Carr says in The Shallows, but I understand what he is saying about our brains' plasticity and how the tools we use reshape the neural pathways in our brain. I experienced it first hand with language. When I was 17, my family moved to the US (from France) and I soon enrolled in college in the US. My English was far from perfect at the time and I struggle for a while, but within a couple of years of immersion and constant reading in English (while essentially stopping to read or speak in French), my brain was rewired. I lost my fluency in French and my primary mode of thought and expression became English.

When you stop using a skill, you lose it. It worries me that I may be losing my ability to engage in deep reading. I've already essentially switched to audiobooks for fiction. That was for convenience, since the only time I have for fiction is my car commute. Yet I realize that reading a novel while holding the book in my hands is not the same as listening to a well trained audiobook narrator while driving. Hopefully, I am not listening so deeply that my attention is diverted from my driving. With a book in hand, I can read as deeply as I want to.

All this rambling to explain why -- for this week at least -- I will not try to engage in the PLENK discussions, I will focus on the readings and the readings only (well, after this post anyway), returning to my selfish individual learning habits, as a sort of experiment. I will reward myself with some deep reading and hopefully deep thinking.

Where Theory Meets Practice - PLENK10

2010-10-08T09:29:00.002-04:00

Click on the caption to open the image in a new tab/window.

Preliminary Map - Linking Adult Learning Principles, Organizational Learning, and the Deployment of Collaborative Software & Social Media in Enterprise Context

Visualizations and Scale

2010-09-30T05:08:00.000-04:00

Mapping my PLE/PLN for PLENK2010

2010-09-21T05:45:00.000-04:00

I started out mapping out all the tools and doing a real diagram but that's like trying to understand how my brain works and I don't care that much about the details. The point of the diagram above is that most of the annoyances I encounter with my PLE/PLN have to do with the bipolar nature of the beast. There's "WORK", which is quite interesting, but constrained by "this is a government computer" types of issues, and there are PERSONAL/PROFESSIONAL" interests beyond work. There are work-tools and personal tools. There are rules and confusing policies. This is my PLE as I see it, though some of the tools listed on the WORK side of the brain made there way in the diagram only because they SHOULD be part of my PLE (if they were used effectively).

I posted a second diagram with more details of the tools involved in the PLENK Flickr group.

When We Think We Know

2010-09-18T07:50:00.002-04:00

Here's the context: A work-related group I participate in (committee type) is planning to organize a World Cafe. I'm a participant with a limited role, no decisional power, advisory power at best. I'm sensing from the conversation that few people in the room have direct, first hand experience with a World Cafe. I have very limited first hand experience myself, perhaps just enough to know we (as a group) don't know enough. I've attended one such event and didn't really get much value out of it. Yet it appears that I've read so much about World Cafes (out of personal interest) that I feel as if I know more than other folks around the table.

It's not clear that I really do but let's focus for a second on HOW I know what I know about World Cafes.

I haven't learned much from my limited direct experience with a World Cafe (other than the fact that a first experience with a World Cafe isn't necessarily a very positive one)
Until last week I didn't own any book or manual about how to handle World Cafes
I've probably collected some resources about World Cafes when I was focusing my attention on learning through conversations
I've probably followed a few blogs from people who talk about World Cafes
I've been particularly interested in the use of graphic facilitation in the context of World Cafes
I had a few conversations about World Cafes with individuals who didn't necessarily have much more experience with World Cafes than I did.

The result is that through my PLE (yes, I had to find a way to connect this to PLENK2010), I may have developed a sense of "knowing" what a World Cafe is all about, when in fact, it's quite superficial knowledge and until I'm more deeply engaged in participating in and organizing World Cafes, I should be careful not to claim that I know much about them.

Somehow connected to... Where Your Brain Figures out What it Doesn't Know (NPR)... which also reminded me of Teaching Smart People How to Learn (HBR).

Random Thoughts about PLENK2010 ... so far

2010-09-16T20:17:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts... about PLENK 2010 as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)

Liked the #Plenk2010 Daily, a summary of posts on Twitter. I'm not a heavy Twitter user but this course has already prompted me to learn a few Twitter tricks I didn't previously know (I learned to use the delayed posting function). I tweeted from my iPhone (typos included).
Watched the recordings of the Elluminate sessions. I don't really feel any need to be there live and participate in the sidebar chatter. It's too confusing to me, requires a split brain to follow the presenters and the side conversation.
Tried to add my blog feed to that of others but I'm not sure I provided the correct information.
A lot of the traffic is noise, but that's the reality of much of what we face in the workplace. We all need to learn to deal with noise and to better filter information.
Reconnected with someone I'd not been in touch with for a long time.
Talked about PLENK with a colleague at work who doesn't have any special interest in PLEs but understood what I was talking about in terms of using different media to connect and reach out to people across the globe.
Posted more on Twitter this week than any previous week since I opened my account more than a year ago (I'm guessing).
Learned (from a fellow PLENK participant) that there is a multi-user version of Tiddlywiki called TiddlySpace. I'm a certified Tiddlywiki fan.
Learned at least one new word: rhizomatic.
Set up a Google Alert for PLENK2010.
And... many of the participants appear to be in the education field -- which makes sense. I'm coming at the PLE/PLN/PKM discussion from the perspective of lifelong learning and personal professional practice more than as a tool for students.

None of this seems to mean a lot right now. Patience required.

PLE, PLN, PKM --- I get it, it's about the P, it's personal.

2010-09-15T06:00:00.000-04:00

I don't really think in terms of personal learning environments and personal learning networks but more in terms of personal knowledge management plan, which I see as more action oriented and focused. To implement my personal knowledge management plan, I use a number of tools and techniques (my Personal Learning Environment) and I draw upon the people within my network (Personal Learning Network).

I'm still trying to figure this out but I don't want to spend too much time on terminology. It's personal in the sense that it is uniquely my creation and my responsibility. It's what works for me and what works for me is continually changing so I'd rather go with the flow rather than spent too much time defining what it is right now or what it has been in the past. The problem is with this approach is that it's difficult to have a conversation with other people - especially a conversation with 1000+ people- if we're all using similar terms to mean completely different things.

I'm repeating myself. I've blogged about this in the past (in February 2009). I probably said something different at the time.

PLENK2010 vs/and writing

2010-09-14T06:25:00.003-04:00

Yes, I have found yet another way to distract myself with an interesting activity that will take time away from my ongoing novel project. Someday I'll get my priorities right. If I had a deadline on the writing/editing tasks, this would not be happening.

I've signed up for PLENK2010, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). I don't think it should be called a course. It's a semi-organized learning environment where ~1000 folks with a similar interest in Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are going to read about and mostly talk about PLEs. It's a gigantic dispersed, networked conversation around PLEs and related topics.

Now that I think about it, my writing/editing tasks can be seen as part of my big picture PLE. To the extent that I still consider myself an amateur writer and the writing/editing I am currently doing is more of a learning experience than an income and deadline-driven activity, then taking part in PLENK2010 is not in conflict with my writing/editing goals.

I may have a tendency to compartmentalize and construct barriers and boundaries when there really shouldn't be any. Making connections where there were none before is going to be one of my goals. Isn't that how we learn, by building on what we already know (or think we know)?

The New Social Learning

2010-09-06T06:14:00.000-04:00

I've just finished reading The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social media, by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner. It's an easy read, full of examples of how organizations have done it.

I can see how social media tools can greatly support ambient awareness and individual learning in the sense that it can help anyone stay current professionally. It's great for personal knowledge management (if you incorporate reflection time).
The new social learning helps you connect to a great variety of people you would not have connected with otherwise, but does it really help you in the daily work routine. For some positions and organizational functions (if your work involves attending a lot of conferences, if you work in the public affairs office of an organization, the knowledge management office, etc), social media is transforming the nature of work. I'm not sure this is the case for the majority of jobs. It has also transformed personal knowledge management and informal professional development for everyone.
How do social media tools affect group / team learning? I will probably have to take a closer look at the book but I didn't see a lot in there about how social media support small teams and group learning. I can see how it supports learning in a very broad and general sense, but I am more interested whether social media can be applied effectively in small group settings and how. The book doesn't seem to pay a lot of attention to the difference between social media tools that support global connections vs. enterprise 2.0 tools that are really more internally oriented (with some connections to external partners). I have a feeling that many organizations are still struggling with just that and are having to define or redefine how enterprise 2.0 is not just getting employees more connected to the outside world but also more connected internally . Some social media tools are much more appropriate than others for group and team learning. I'm thinking of the potential of wikis in particular.

The amount of space dedicated to countering possible detractors is telling, but the critics are not specifically targeting the learning aspect of social media, they're targeting social media in general. The authors don't claim that learning through social media replaces all learning, but they also don't touch on how this new social learning fits in with other types of learning (such as "learning from experience").

In my current place of employment, I have recently attended two sessions on social media, both of which were entirely focused on the use of public social media and offered a very PR-oriented approach (how do we get the word out about our wonderful work). There is nothing wrong with that but I fear that if our collective understanding of social media doesn't go beyond that, we'll be missing out on the greatest opportunities.
You do have to read all the examples offered in the book with a grain of salt. There was one particular example that made me raise an eyebrow because I knew something about it first hand and... well, the best way to put it would be to say that I have a different interpretation of how successful it was.

Related resources:

A Framework for Social Learning in the Enterprise (Harold Jarche, February 2010).
A book I've had on my shelf for a while: Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance, by Jay Cross (2006).

Best and Worst Advice

2010-07-22T05:29:00.000-04:00

I joined a writer's group a few months ago. The group meets for a couple of hours every week. Yesterday's session focused on "advice" as a theme and more specifically, a discussion around the best and worst writing advice ever given or received.

Somehow, the conversation triggered some connection to my work.

1. Focus, time management and goals

Given limited time and resources, don't spread yourself thin, don't procrastinate, be selective about what you do in the "here and now". If you're writing a novel, handle it like a real world project, set a timeline for completion of major milestones. Don't use the advice to "read broadly" as an excuse for delaying your writing. Don't use the advice to "research thoroughly" as an excuse for not writing. At work, don't take on more tasks than you can handle, if your tasks don't have specific deadlines, make up some.

This advice seems to apply equally well whether I think of writing as a hobby or a profession because the "free time" is a valuable commodity that deserves to be managed carefully.

2. Take yourself seriously

I still feel ambivalent about what it means to take myself seriously as a writer. Am I a writer if I write as a hobby and never submit anything for publication, or never even try to get other people to read what I writer? For me, taking myself seriously as a writer has meant a) saving what I write (as opposed to throwing it away soon after writing it); b) getting to completion (meaning going from writing pieces of dialogue and scenes to writing a full manuscript); and c) paying attention to the craft of writing and trying to write something that would be good enough for someone else to read.
At work, taking myself seriously is another ballgame. It's one thing to take the task at hand seriously and completing the task to the best of your abilities. It's another thing to take yourself seriously as a professional and pay attention to long term professional goals, how your colleagues and supervisors perceive you.

3. Rules vs. Advice

Follow the rule and consider the advice. Even rules shouldn't be followed blindly. Rules are designed based on particular contexts. Until you understand why a rule is what it is (why it exists in the first place), you should probably not apply it blindly. Advice is meant to make you think.

There are "rules" and protocols worth following, just to get things done. If every editor on the planet wants manuscripts submitted double spaced, it's not worth trying to argue that a single spaced manuscript will save trees. Hopefully you're submitting your manuscript electronically anyway. Most workplaces are full of such "rules" and requirements for getting things done. That's why the first few months on any job are mostly about learning how to get things done, figuring out what the rules are and getting advice on how to get things done, regardless of what the manual says to do.

Don't spend too much time writing on a blog when you're supposed to be focusing on a novel. Ooops!

Mapping to Support Organizational Learning

2010-07-13T18:53:00.001-04:00

In June, I attended the Third International Conference on Knowledge Management for Space Missions in Darmstadt, Germany. I was there to deliver a presentation titled "Mapping To Support Organizational Learning," and to learn from other KM initiatives, particularly within the European Space Agency (ESA). My own presentation had a narrow focus, providing some insights into a process we've developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for capturing and reusing lessons or insights within the context of a "local learning loop." It's not a process that necessarily scales up well to institutional-wide lessons learned but it appears to be quite useful to ensure that teams learn from their experiences and that those experiences are shared with teams that follow.

Darmstadt is an interesting city where about everyone appears to own a bicycle. It was a lot of fun to hear the French, Italians, Germans, British, etc... all presenting in English with their respective accents. I felt totally at home.

Embedding KM

2010-07-09T06:14:00.000-04:00

Finally something on KM that rings true and is of immediate relevance to my work. Nick Milton's blog post on "The failure to Embed KM" is, in my opinion, spot on.

At a recent conference, I pointed out that embedding KM in work processes was critical to the success of KM initiatives. People in the audience picked it up as an important insight, yet the conversation didn't go very deep. I certainly didn't have much more than a general statement to offer. It's an issue we continue to struggle with.

It's one thing to start a KM program and implement a set of "successful" KM activities. It's another to get to the point where KM is just something people do as part of their work rather than something the KM office does.

I suspect that the way KM initiatives are introduced and managed has a significant impact on the level of difficulty encountered in embedding KM activities in routine work processes. In essence, the stronger the KM program, the more difficult it is to shift from KM led by a KM office to KM as everyone's responsibility. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it?

Antikythera Mechanisms and Modern Imaging Technologies

2010-05-29T11:21:00.004-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

One of the benefits of working on a NASA Center is the easy access to seminars and colloquiums on topics I would never seek out if I were working somewhere else. I blogged a while back about "why humans can't tickle themselves". That was the outcome of a seminar at work. Here is another one. I attended a scientific seminar yesterday on the Antikythera Mechanism. I didn't have a clue about what it was but the seminar description mentioned a ship wreck, ancient Greek artifacts, advanced astronomical computations as well as state-of-the-art imaging techniques. Sounded like a great mystery to me and given that it was Friday afternoon before a long weekend, I wasn't going to be missing that many calls or emails.

By the time I reached the auditorium where the seminar was being given, there were very few seats left. That was my first clue that the audience knew much more than me about what the Antikythera Mechanism than me. The Friday seminars are usually well attended, but nothing like a full auditorium. It turned into standing room only, with people sitting on steps and standing in the back.

This turned into a fascinating talk. Of course, I'm neither an astronomer, an archeologist, a mechanical engineer or anything remotely capable of understanding the technical details of what the presentation was about, yet the impression I came out with was that 1) some ancient Greeks were real geeks who appeared to have been way ahead of their time; 2) their user's manual is turning out to be quite useful 2000 years later; 3) people can develop advanced technologies when it addresses issues critical to their culture; 4) this has all the elements of a great plot for a novel or a movie. Think about it, 2000 years from now, someone somewhere finds something that's 2000 years old and they can't figure out what it could have been used for because "humans in 2010 were quite primitive." Sort of a "Planet of the Apes" adaptation.

A range of people have been trying to solve the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism since it was discovered in 1902. However, it is only in recent years that new imaging technologies have made it possible to fully examine the mechanism's interior and to decipher many parts of the "user's manual."

See The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego.

This blog has moved

2010-03-31T18:45:00.001-04:00

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The Introverted Leader -- book review

2009-11-15T06:38:00.007-05:00

Cover via Amazon

Jennifer B. Kahnweiler is a "champion for introverted professionals," her website says. I've just finished reading her book, The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength. I really appreciated the book's approach. Most people giving advice to introverts start from the assumption that introversion is some kind of disease. Don't worry, there's a cure... or you'll have to grow out of it. I don't want to be cured, thank you very much and I don't want to grow out of who I am. What I want is a way to deal more effectively with situations where introversion is preventing me from achieving some of my goals.

Kahnweiler appears to have a much greater understanding of the introverts' strengths and as the title indicates, provides an approach that builds on the introverts' strengths.

Some of the advice appears to be a little contradictory. To have "presence," you have to be yourself, but you may also have to learn to "act" in order to push yourself to pretend that you're not paralyzed in social settings. I can reconcile that by trying to act like the confident and assertive version of me that I can imagine but doesn't show up very often.

Most of the advice is very sensible and not too difficult to act upon if you don't try to do it all at once. I really liked the chapter about "managing up." Whether your boss is an introvert or an extrovert, being proactive in managing the relationship is very likely to pay off.

The basic framework for the book is the 4 Ps of Preparation, Presence, Push and Practice, but the chapters are arranged around specific situations, such as public speaking, project management and meetings, all situations where success may require introverts to push themselves beyond their comfort zone. The 4 P's are repeated throughout the book and you can't help but remember them and what they refer to. I liked that I'll remember 80% of the advice just by remembering the 4 P's as a trigger for much more. The sections of the book are peppered with short anecdotes, descriptions of real settings and people who have either struggled with various aspects of introversion or found ways to succeed not so much in spite of introversion but using some of their introvert advantages.

Nowadays, you can't write a nonfiction book and hope to sell lots of copies without an accompanying consulting practice, and a blog (The Introverted Leader). It's more likely that the consulting practice existed before the book and the book is a way to reach out to potential customers (as well as a source of income).

I also picked up a few references mentioned in the book:

Annette Simons, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.
Jay Conger, "The Art of Persuasion," Harvard Business Review.
Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed.
Scott Mastley, The Confidence Zone.
Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points. (a book and a blog)

The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

2009-11-06T06:46:00.004-05:00

I am trying to improve the Google Search results for a specific web site and testing some approaches. One of them involves creating outside links to the site. I realize they have to be quality links and this probably won't qualify as a quality link but there's no harm in trying.

The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is the office responsible for Knowledge Management at Goddard. That's where I work. Our office is best known internally for the Road to Mission Success Workshop (also known as RTMS) and best known externally for the NASA Case Studies developed by the office. We also implement Pause and Learn (PaL) sessions which are the NASA equivalent of After-Action-Reviews (AARs).

The office is led by Dr. Edward Rogers, Chief Knowledge Officer.

And, for the latest news about what Goddard is doing, check out the website of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Bookshelf

2009-10-10T09:21:00.002-04:00

What can we learn from someone's bookshelf? After all, we do make judgments based on people's appearance, speech, education levels, etc... How about trying to understand someone based on the types of books they read? I once came across a successful professional whose desk was covered by piles of books that appeared to have been strategically stacked. The intent was clearly to impress visitors.

Nowadays of course, we would need access to a person's digital bookshelf to get a sense of his or her full collection.

I was looking at the collection I keep on LibraryThing, a collection which is not complete, yet sufficiently representative of my interests. I looked at it from two perspectives: 1) the tag cloud (I'll admit to cleaning up the tags a little before creating the cloud); 2) the book covers for the "Knowledge Management" collection, since "knowledge Management" turns out to be the biggest category.

This tag cloud could tell you a lot of different things about me but some of the tags would require some explaining. For example,"human trafficking" stands out but in my mind, it was a relatively short term interest linked to a specific research and writing project. It does not reflect current interests.

I prefer the book cover visual to the tag cloud. From my perspective as the reader of these books, each book cover is a memory trigger for the book's contents and a great way to connect ideas and perspectives taken by various authors.

If you wanted to know more, you might be able to visit my LibraryThing account and dig out some information about how I rated these books and read any reviews (if I provided any).

KM & PKM - Missing Link

2009-10-07T05:03:00.008-04:00

I'm a fan of PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) and I'm puzzled by the lack of interest within the community of Knowledge Management practitioners in integrating PKM in broader KM strategies. There's a feeling that PKM is too much about the individual and not enough about the team or the organization. That's plain wrong. PKM is about continuously improving one's performance by systematically and purposefully applying KM practices at the individual level in order to be a more effective team member and a more effective member of the broader organization.

It's about being a lifelong learner -- How do I keep learning new things, both by doing and by purposefully seeking out new knowledge? How do I know what I should be focusing on? How can I know what knowledge I'll need five years from today? Do I have a long-term learning plan or should I just pick up new knowledge here and there? This may get closer to existing career management activities. What's my individual learning Plan? Teams can have learning plans too. Organizations certainly have strategies and plans around core competencies and training.

It's about managing information flows -- How do I access and filter information that reaches me? Some of this may be about personal productivity but it's not just about personal productivity. It's also about ensuring that I have access to all the information I need. I seek out the information I need. I'm not just waiting for it to come to me. What's your communication plan? Are you a passive recipient of information or an active producer / author? How do you see your role as an individual within your team or project in terms of information flows? Do you ever find yoursef wondering what information to push forward to others in the team, not wanting to flood emails with less than germane information?

It's also about communication skills -- How do I communicate what I know? how do I share what I know? With whom do I share what I know? I have often felt that I knew much more than what I was able to convey to others. Is there something I could do to bridge that gap?

I'd venture that without PKM, there isn't any KM. If we agree that organization do some KM, have always done some kind of KM -- even if not systematically or effectively why can't we also agree that people have always done PKM, just not systematically or effectively. Without PKM, enlisting employees to be actively engaged in KM activities is like pulling teeths.

KM needs to happen at the individual level (PKM), at the team level, and at higher levels. The types of knowledge that are most relevant at each knowledge is going to be different and the types of processes needed at each level are going to be different. Most KM strategies focus on higher level needs of the organization, most of which are not immediately relevant to the individual or the team.

Start with PKM and you'll be much better able to handle the "what's-in-it-for-me?" questions when you try to talk about team / project KM and broader organizational KM. Connecting PKM to KM initiatives is the missing link in terms of motivation.

I'm wondering if the key to a successful PKM approach isn't to be embedded in existing Human Resources programs. I'd also work it through any ongoing social media intervention.

PKM Resources on Diigo.

KM Strategy Development: Smorgasbord vs. Acupuncture

2009-10-03T06:39:00.003-04:00

Here are a few slightly random thoughts about a KM smorgasbord, centers of gravity, complex systems, acupuncture and "friendlies." It all started with a little personal brainstorming around KM strategic planning.

You can develop a KM strategy that is very broad based and tries to cover everything KM. Be very inclusive in your processes, listen to everyone, try to please everyone. What you'll probably end up with is a big smorgasbord of KM activities that make it look like you can't possibly have missed anything and everyone should be happy. Why are buffets not as satisfying as they might appear to be? First, you can't possibly try everything on the buffet. Second, if you ask people what was on the buffet afterward, you'll get as many different answers as there were diners. You will not have a coherent understanding of what KM is within the organization. You will not have a common view of benefits either? Perhaps it doesn't matter if everyone finds what they want on the buffet. You may find people to be satisfied with their meal but it's not clear they'll come back for more. In addition, when budget cuts come, you don't have a clue what to cut down on. Do you cut across the board and provide half the previous quantities or do you pick and choose which dishes to remove? Perhaps I am too pessimistic in thinking about budget cuts rather than a budget increase. The same question would emerge with a budget increase. Do you just provide more of the same, more of specific activities or new dishes on the table? You have no clue because you're just trying to do everything at once to please everyone.

You can develop a KM strategy that is focused on making the leadership happy and responds to the needs of the leadership or whatever the leadership thinks the needs of the organization are. You'll get leadership buy-in, perhaps even a good amount of resources to go ahead and implement. What you won't get is any kind of systematic, broad-based impact. You'll get resistance from front-line workers because it's likely you've managed to increase the burden on them without providing any kind of benefits to them.

So, the key is to develop a KM strategy that addresses the needs of front-line workers, leverages whatever opportunities already exist within the organizational environment, and present a convincing strategy to the leadership -- something that brings benefits to front-line workers AND in the process, addresses the needs of the organization and satisfies the leadership's perceived needs. Easier said than done, right!

This is where Centers of Gravity come in. You need to look beyond the concept of "leadership". Centers of Gravity are sources of power. For a KM initiative to be truly successful, you need to leverage Centers of Gravity, get them on board. Who has power within the organization? It's not just a question of individual personalities and positions within the organizational hierarchy. Where are the core nodes of the organization's? If you had a Smorgasbord of KM activities available and you could closely monitor the buffet table to see 1) what's getting the most traction; 2) what impact the activities have on organizational goals, which of the dishes on the menu would become the staples? Of course, we don't have the luxury of trying out the Smorgasbord approach first just to identify what's most useful. In addition, documenting impacts of KM activities on organizational goals is much easier said than done. Still... we need to make educated guesses about what would be most effective.

Think of the human body as a complex system. What are the core elements that make things work? The heart, the brain, the nervous system, muscles? Now think of an organization as a complex system. What are the elements of the systems that make things happen? What are the key functions? Forget about the organizational chart.

In a complex system (the human body or any organization), it may be difficult to pinpoint one or two centers of gravity. As soon as one element breaks down, others are affected. You can't seem to treat one without affecting the other. Now think of acupuncture as a way of reaching out to specific systems of the body and very precisely targeting them. Where are the pressure points within the organization?

When I think of being "strategic", I think of being in a situation where resources are limited and some decisions have to be made about how to proceed. There are alternatives to ponder and "trades" to be made. Do you spread all your resources across a smorgasbord of KM activities? Do you go all out with a broad-based outreach campaign to make sure everyone in the organization knows the types of KM services that are available? Or... do you deal primarily with "friendlies," those who are already sold on the KM idea and who are already on board, hoping there will be some trickle effect and organic spread of KM ideas? Or... do you deal with the "friendlies" AND go after Centers of Gravity.

This falls into the "half-baked" category of blog posts. They're fun to read six months later, once my thinking has evolved into something a little more polished.

KM Strategy - Diigo List

A Tweet, a Parker 75 and a Flat Tassie

2009-09-13T17:15:00.006-04:00

Today I learned that I own a Parker 75. Among people who know anything about fountain pens, it's a well known model. I don't know much about fountain pens. I've always owned one or two that I use regularly. The Parker 75 belonged to my grandfather before it was handed down to me. I've had it for many, many years and I just called it "my grandfather's fountain pen." Now I know it's a Parker 75 with the crosshatch grid design.

It all started with a tweet that I caught early this morning. The tweet was pointing to the website of a fountain pen repair expert. A few clicks later I was entering the world of fountain pen collectors and discovering an entirely new vocabulary. I looked for photos of my grandfather's pen and it didn't take long to find it. It's a Parker 75 but there are many variations of this model. I have the crosshatch grid design that was common with the original production in the mid 1960s. Mine also has a flat tassie. Do you know what a tassie is? I had to look it up in the pen glossary.

There's a wonderful website where I learned all there is to know about the Parker 75.

I'm sending my Parker 75 (and its little brother, the matching mechanical pencil) to be repaired and cleaned up... all because of a tweet.

What's Your Signature?

2009-09-06T11:41:00.008-04:00

A while ago I wrote a post titled "What's Your Element?." In it, I talked about my reading of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Richardson. In this post, I am talking about a signature as something related to a person's element, yet distinct from it. A signature represents the unmistakably unique mark of someone's element. When someone is truly working with their element, the results have a unique signature. The results have their DNA or fingerprints all over.

I've worked on a number of projects in the past few years that have played a key role in my professional life. In the cases I'll mention below, I was the primary "architect" and the projects took on what I've come to recognize as my "signature."

Writers want to develop a unique voice, artists work to refine their unique style. Why wouldn't the average professional want to develop their own professional "signature"?

When something is uniquely yours, it's both your genius and your blind spots that are embedded in that unique signature. Ideally, collaborative work can help identify and address the blind spots and in the process, improve the final product or outcome. Yet collaborative work means compromise. Most artistic masterpieces are not collaborative works but rather the works of individual artists.

Here are four projects -- far from masterpieces -- that have my signature.

Two of the projects listed above were developed based on client / employer requests. The other two were developed purely on my own time. It's as if when I am assigned a significant project of this type at work, I make one up at home.

All four required substantive investments in research and synthesizing of knowledge. They are all signature products for me. Three out of the four required some innovative use of technology either in the development or dissemination of the product.

The first project, the ICT4D course, available on my website for several years since I stopped teaching it, continues to draw a significant number of hits every month. All of them have a didactic element. They are knowledge products. All of them involved doing something that had not been done before, an element of experimentation and pushing of some boundaries. Making the Connection is probably the best of the four because it got the benefit of significant help from a co-author and I had nothing to do with the final production process. It's definitely a finished professional product. The others have an amateurish look and feel to them.

A personal signature isn't the same as branding. Branding is about claiming some kind of ownership and you can brand products with your name even though they don't reflect anything like a signature. A signature isn't something you tag on to a product after the fact to claim it as yours. A signature is something about the product that claims you as the originator or creator.

Now if I could only look at these products objectively and identify my blind spots....

PS: This post falls in the category of half-baked insights that may or may not make sense. I have a feeling it's mixing apples and oranges. But then, isn't that were creative juices come from? Mixing apples and oranges? :)

Playing with Pearltrees: social bookmarking meets web navigation

2009-08-22T13:50:00.007-04:00

Joined a group on Diigo 24 hours ago, opened an email telling me about what other people are tagging in that group, followed a link, discovered Pearltrees. Next step: play for a couple of hours. Let the creative juices flow. How can I use this tool? How does it work?

That's how things happen. Copy some script and voila... click on the pearl below to visit my first Pearltree map.

Try it out for yourself! Discover Pearltrees' website! Watch a YouTube introduction to Pearltrees.

Disclaimer: I have no personal or professional connection to Pearltrees.

What's YOUR Social Media Policy?

2009-08-22T09:02:00.006-04:00

As social media enter the workplace, intentionally or not, organizations in the public and private sector are rushing to develop social media policies and/or adding social media sections to their employee handbook. Some of it is preemptive, some is reactive.

Preemptive
An organization launches an enterprise social networking tool and various groups consulted raise concerns. Human resources has concerns. The legal team has concerns. There are so many unknowns. Let's dig up all existing policies and make sure we add to it to cover all eventualities -- most of which we can't predict. Those we can predict are typically already covered by existing policies.

Reactive
An organization just had a negative experience with some internal abuse of social networking tools and decides to clamp down on anything and everything that might happen in the future. You can spot a policy that emerges from such a situation if some of the language refers to situations that would only apply to a small number of employees.

Whether the policy work is preemptive or reactive, I wonder whether the authors of such policies ever consider how their words might be interpreted by employees.

Employee Reactions
* "That's just the official policy, nobody cares about what the policy says. Just be careful and don't get caught. They can't monitor everyone all the time anyway."
* "Wow! They can use that to fire me if they want to. As a matter of fact, they can probably find something in there to fire anyone if they really want to get rid of someone."
* "They're just targeting employees who get caught watching porn at the office or who spend their days surfing the web and don't do the work. It doesn't really apply to me."
* "Fine. I get what this is all about. Security, productivity, I get it. I think it's time I develop my own policies." :)

Here are some ideas -- not restricted to social media:

* I shall not share links to my personal social bookmarking site with my employer even if 99% of my bookmarked resources are work-related. By extension, I shall not share any relevant web-based information with my employer or co-workers if the information was found during off-hours.
* I shall never use my personal computer to do any employer-related work. It doesn't matter if my computer has the necessary software and the work site computer doesn't. Downloading free software to the work site computer is an obvious no-no.
* By extension, I shall never use my own pens, paper or other supplies to do any employer-related work.
* I shall never try to bypass red tape / bureaucratic processes in order to get the work done. Forget about common sense. It's a myth. Policy rules!
* I shall make sure I understand policy thoroughly and send as many clarifying emails as I feel necessary to my supervisor. Better swamp their email box than get fired over some misunderstanding.
* I shall limit the number of times I check my work email during off-hours. I shall never respond to a work email during off-hours. I shall never check my work email on weekends.
* I shall not think about work too much during off-hours. 15 minutes a day is the limit.
* I shall not mention my employer (especially not in any favorable way) on my blog or other social media tool. By extension, my employer's name shall appear only on my CV.
* I shall not arrive at work early or leave late. Any encroachment on personal time is totally unacceptable.
* I shall make sure to separate employer-related knowledge from what I really know. Only employer-related knowledge is relevant at work.
* I shall investigate surgery or mind-control techniques that might allow me to better separate the part of the brain that deals with employer-related work and the rest of my brain. We wouldn't want too much collaboration between the two. There is no such thing as a gray area of professional interests that isn't directly job-related. That gray area is a danger zone. The brain has two sides: job-related brain vs. personal brain. Everything that is not strictly job-related is personal and therefore should not be used at work.
* Self-censorship is the best policy. Anything that might be misinterpreted should be deleted, never spoken and forgotten.
* I shall make sure that no one reads my blog. If one person reads it, it's one too many. Who knows what they might read into this post?

Get it? Obviously, I'm taking it a little too far and I can laugh at it, but I wish employers would lighten up a bit too. What do we really need? Training? Yes. Policy-driven fear of termination? I don't think so.

Oh, by the way, this has obviously nothing to do with my own employer. I wouldn't want this post to be interpreted as criticism -- that would be against official policy. :)

Oops! I am in clear violation of my own policy. Just spent more than 15 minutes thinking about work-related issues during off-hours... on a Saturday, no less!

Diigo Lists

2009-08-21T05:36:00.007-04:00

A while ago, I had to transfer my bookmark collections from FURL to Diigo. While the process was automatic, my tags turned into a mess. I had developed a clever way of organizing my tags in FURL. At the time, I thought it was quite clever. It worked very well for me and I even wrote a little paper about it (Learning from Doing: Social Bookmarking).

I should write a Part II to explain why it turned out to be very dumb. I certainly didn't anticipate having to transfer the bookmarks to another service and what that would mean in terms of "portability." Here's a quick example. I used tags like these:
"ICT -- Access"
"ICT -- Education"
"ICT -- eGov"

In the transfer, these tags ended up split into three parts: "ICT", "--" and "Access". I had 800+ meaningless "--" tags. It will take a while to clean up the mess. There's probably a bigger lesson to be learned here but I haven't figured it out yet.

By the time I'm done with the clean up and I've learned to use all of Diigo's capabilities, it will be time to transfer to the next best thing!

Why bother cleaning up? I would like to be able to link the relevant collections (KM tags in particular), to my Learning Log business novel.

I now have a "didactic fiction" bookmark list on Diigo.

The Boss, by Andrew O'Keeffe

2009-08-20T06:52:00.003-04:00

Here is another business novel I came across last week, downloaded to my Kindle and just finished reading: The Boss, by Andrew O'Keeffe. I've read a good number of business novels and business parables in the last couple of years. This is the best to date, and probably the first I wouldn't mind reading again, and again. In fact, I might put a reminder on my agenda to read it every year a week or so before my employee appraisal meeting. And if I find myself in a job interview, I'd want to read it again as part of my prep work.

The story is written from the point of view of an employee facing a great cast of horrendous executives and according to the author, based on true stories. I find it hard to believe a company run by these executives would survive long but for the purpose of storytelling, it works.

Here are some quick lessons about what works in the business novel genre:
* get to the point (the learning point), move on.
* a quick description of the setting, to the extent that it relates to the core of the story, is good, but there's no need to overdo it with beautiful prose. Simple prose, relatively short sentences, common vocabulary. It's meant to be read by busy business people, not for a day at the beach.
* keep it simple: No need for subplots or an extended cast of characters. Stick to what's needed to tell the story and not more.

This particular novel makes good use of Aesop's fables (an early form of didactic fiction), connecting individual fables to situations the main character is encountering at work.

Image by Carla216 via Flickr

I grew up with the Fables of La Fontaine rather than Aesop's fables but it's the same idea.

The story starts with a good amount of whining about how bad bosses can be, but slowly, the main character learns to handle her reactions to the three "Bs" (bad boss behavior) and how to not be a victim. The cases of bad boss behavior she confronts are a little exaggerated. They may all be based on true story but I would hope no one would be so unlucky to be exposed to all of them at once in one job.

I wrote in an earlier post about the role of the advisor in the business novel. This business novel doesn't have an advisor. There are a couple of people around the main character who provide useful insights and encouragement, but no single individual has all the answers. That worked very well in the story and it's much more realistic than the "all-knowing" advisor.

There are many parallels between this business novel and what I am trying to write in Learning Log. At the end of the book, there are discussions questions for facilitation, and sections meant for specific audiences (employees, leaders, etc...), something I've also tried to incorporate in Learning Log. In many ways, it's telling me that I'm on the right track and I have more work to do to make my novel as good as The Boss.

PS: I've also found 3-4 other business novels and discovered that Japanese business novels are quite popular. I wonder if the French have written any.

Organizing Your Desktop

2009-08-15T13:31:00.008-04:00

I used to accumulate folders all over my desktop and over time, it became difficult to find what I needed. I've found a way to make a little easier to find my stuff quickly. It revolves around three elements:
1. A core visual on my desktop that helps to organize folders according to key work-related tasks. I use Cmap to do the diagram.
2. Shortcuts to folders I need to access most often
3. Regular review and reorganizing based on how work is evolving.

The diagram below is based on my real world job.

Vanity Awards

2009-08-13T06:06:00.003-04:00

Here's how the email starts:

"I am pleased to announce that Knowledge For Development LLC has been selected for the 2009 Best of Arlington Award in the Computer Operator Training category by the US Commerce Association."

And then there's a nice image of the award plaque. Wow! Awards are nice, aren't they? Except this one might be embarrassing to display.

Step one: Read with both eyes open to spot the red flags all over it
* The message was sent using an email address only posted on my website.
* The sender doesn't seem to know my name.
* My company, Knowledge for Development, LLC, although technically still registered, hasn't been operating for several years.
* Since when would any of my activities qualify as "Computer Operator Training"?

Step two: What's the US Commerce Association anyway?
They do have a simple website. I won't even point you to it. Anyone can have a website.

Step three: What are other people saying about it?
The following article was found just one item below the US Commerce Association website in a simple Google search:

All That Glitters? US Commerce Association Awards to Biz May Not Be What They Seem
I didn't go beyond that. I don't want to know how much they wanted to charge me to send me the award plaque. That's essentially what they are in the business of, selling you vanity awards. They're just not very upfront about it.
A few months back, we received in the mail a very fancy package addressed to "The Parents of ______." They had my daughter's name and even the name of one of her teachers who had supposedly recommended her for a prestigious and highly selective -- not to mention expensive -- leadership program. That took me a little longer to spot because my daughter happens to be a straight "A" student and a teacher did indeed recommend her for the program. The program's website was very similar to what I found at the US Commerce Association site. Other sites talking about the program were providing conflicting information about whether it was a fraud or not. Some parents seem to think it had been a great learning opportunity for their kids. Sometimes it's not a straightforward fraud but you are getting manipulated into buying something you would not have bought if you had not been told how great you (or your kids) were.
In any case, you were paying a high price for the program and you were inclined not to look at the price because your kid had been selected and not sending them would be to deprive them of a great opportunity they had earned. I explained the whole thing to my daughter and we agreed the money would be better spent on some other great opportunity she could pick herself. I also suggested to my daughter that she should keep the fancy mailing package as a reminder that all that glitters isn't gold. Great lesson for her!

Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009

2009-08-11T18:28:00.001-04:00

I don't usually get that excited about new bills presented to Congress but I figured I had to read this one. The Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 is out.

I printed all 60+ pages of it (sorry!) and went at it with a pink highlighter. In some sections, I found myself highlighting everything, so I stopped the highlighting procedure.

I was particularly interested in the section below:

(p. 9)
"Sec.624B Office for Learning, Evaluation and Analysis in Development.
(1) Achieving United States foreign policy objectives requires the consistent and systematic evaluation of the impact of United States foreign assistance programs and analysis on what programs work and why, when, and where they work;
(2) the design of assistance programs and projects should include the collection of relevant data required to measure outcomes and impacts;
(3) the design of assistance programs and projects should reflect the knowledge gained from evaluation and analysis;
(4) a culture and practice of high quality evaluation should be revitalized at agencies managing foreign assistance programs, which requires that the concepts of evaluation and analysis are used to inform policy and programmatic decisions, including the training of aid professionals in evaluation design and implementation;
(5) the effective and efficient use of funds cannot be achieved without an understanding of how lessons learned are applied in various environments, and under similar or different conditions; and
(6) project evaluations should be used as source of data when running broader analyses of development outcomes and impacts.

None of this is very new, particularly aggressive or revolutionary. It's common sense. The problem I sense is that it fails to acknowledge that M&E as it has been practiced in international development, isn't necessarily going to provide the answers we're all looking for. Evaluation is done when the project is over. That's too late to change anything about how that particular project was run. Something has to be done while the project is being implemented. Something has to be done to ensure that the team implementing the project is fully engaged in learning. Technically, that's what the "M" for monitoring is meant to do.

Instead of putting so much emphasis on the "evaluation" part of the M&E equation, and trying to do "rigorous impact assessments", I would want to focus much more on developing more meaningful monitoring. Meaningful monitoring could use some insights from knowledge management. You don't do knowledge management around projects by waiting till the end of a project to hold an After-Action-Review and collect lessons learned. If you try to do that, you're missing the point. However, if you hold regular reviews and you ask the right kinds of questions, you're more likely to encourage project learning. If you have a project that is engaged in active learning, you are not only more likely to have a successful project but you will increase your chances of being able to gather relevant lessons. Asking the right kinds of questions is critical here. You can limit yourself to questions like "did we meet the target this month?" or you can ask the more interesting "why" and "how" questions.

Traditional monitoring involves setting up a complex set of variables to monitor, overly complex procedures for collecting data.. all of which tends not to be developed in time, and is soon forgotten and dismissed as useless because it is too rigid to adapt to the changing environment within which the project operates. [I may be heavily biased by personal experiences. But then, don't we learn best from personal experience? ]

I know the comparison is a stretch but at NASA, the safety officer assigned to a project is part of an independent unit and doesn't have to feel any pressure from the project management team because he or she doesn't report to project management. If something doesn't look right, she has the authority to stop the work.

If monitoring and evaluation is to be taken seriously within USAID, I suspect that it will require a clearer separation of M&E functions from the project management functions. If the monitoring function is closely linked to project reporting and project reporting is meant to satisfy HQ that everything is rosy, then the monitoring function fails to perform. Worse is when monitoring is turned into a number crunching exercise that doesn't involve any analysis of what is really going on behind the numbers. Third party evaluators need to be truly independent. The only way that is likely to happen is if they are USAID employees reporting to an independent M&E office.

I would also want more emphasis on culture change. As long as the prevailing culture is constantly in search of "success stories," and contractor incentives are what they are, there will be resistance to taking an honest and rigorous look at outcomes and impacts. Without an honest and rigorous look at outcomes and impacts, the agency will continue to find it difficult to learn. If you can't change the prevailing culture fast enough, you need to establish and independent authority to handle the M&E functions or train a new breed of evaluation specialists who don't have to worry about job security.

My first hand experience with USAID-funded impact assessments has led me to question whether those who ask for impact assessments are willing to acknowledge that they may not get the "success story" they are hoping for.

Hmm.... I guess I still have strong opinions about M&E. I tried to get away from it.

I've always thought that M&E was closely related to Knowledge Management, but I also thought it was the result of my own career path and overall framework. (See my core experience concept map on my new website)

Watch out for these M&E and Knowledge Management connections:

(p 12)
(6) establish annual evaluation and research agendas and objectives that are responsive to policy and programmatic priorities;

If you're going to do research, why not make it "action research". Keep it close to the ground, make it immediately useful to those involved in implementing projects on the ground . Then you can aggregate the ground-based research findings and figure out what to do at the policy and programmatic levels. Otherwise you'll end up with research that's based on HQ priorities and not sufficiently relevant to the front lines. If you're going to try to capture knowledge that is highly relevant to the organization, make sure you're doing it from the ground up and not the other way around. Knowledge needs to be relevant to the front lines workers, not just to the policy makers.

(p. 12)
(11) develop a clearinghouse capacity for the dissemination of knowledge and lessons learned to USAID professionals, implementing partners, the international aid community, and aid recipient governments, and as a repository of knowledge on lessons learned;

I'm glad at least the paragraph doesn't include the word "database". I'm hoping there's room for interpretation. I'd love to be involved in this. Knowledge management has a lot to offer here, but we need to remember that knowledge management (an organizational approach) isn't exactly the same as Knowledge for Development. Knowledge management can be an internal strategy. As indicated in para. (11) above, the dissemination of knowledge and lessons learned needs to go well beyond the walls of the organization itself. That's both a challenge and an opportunity.

(p. 12)
(12) distribute evaluation and research reports internally and make this material available online to the public; and

Do project staff really have the time to read evaluation and research reports? Do the people who design projects take the time to read evaluation and research reports? I don't mean to suggest they're at fault. What probably needs to happen, however, is that report findings and key lessons are made more user-friendly, otherwise, they remain "lessons filed" rather than "lessons learned."

In my current job with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, I've been very fortunate to witness the use of case studies as a very powerful approach to transmitting lessons learned. Case studies often originate from a massive Accident Investigation Report that very few people will ever read from end to end. Case studies extract key lessons from a lengthy report and present them in a more engaging manner. It's also not enough to expect people to access the relevant reports on their own. There has to be some push, some training. The same case studies can be used in training sessions.

These don't feel like well thought out ideas but then, at least they're out of my head and I can get back to them later when something more refined comes to mind. If I waited for a perfect paragraph to emerge, I wouldn't write much at all.

Learning from Success and Failure (a follow up)

2009-08-07T06:18:00.006-04:00

I am tired of reading statements like "We learn best from failure" and "We learn best from success." No. We learn best when we pay attention to what happened, how it happened and why? Whether it was a success or a failure doesn't make a difference in terms of our capacity to learn from an event.

A caveat or two:

The organizational culture and existing processes within an organization may make it easier or harder to systematically learn from either success or failure.
There may be a natural propensity to learn from failure (simply because it hurts and we don't want to do it again). Even if that can be demonstrated, it certainly doesn't mean that we can't learn from success. If we choose to learn from success and we put the right processes in place, there's no reason we can't do it.

Organizational Learning and Fading Memories

2009-08-02T06:31:00.001-04:00

Warning: Learning doesn't last.

Lessons learned can be slowly forgotten over time. Memories fade. When something is "learned", is it permanently imprinted in our memories? No. We become complacent again. We forget. We may not forget everything but we forget the details, the how and the why. Lessons may be institutionalized through new rules and processes as a result of an accident -- to ensure it doesn't happen again -- but with the passage of time, it's just another rule, soon disassociated from the original incident or accident. As soon as people no longer understand the "why" associated with a rule or process, it can be dismissed as bureaucratic red tape and soon ignored or frequently bypassed.

Remember Chernobyl? Remember Bhopal? Remember the Tenerife double aircraft disaster?
What do you remember about them?

Everyone remembers the Titanic, but what exactly do we remember about it? Do we need to be reminded of the details of why and how it happened on a regular basis?

We pay most attention to the why and how just after an accident happens because everyone is focused on "how could it possibly happen?" and "who is responsible?" What we really need is a process for reminding people of the why and how when they think they least need it, when everything is going well and they start thinking it could never happen to them.

I'm also wondering about other factors:
1) Proximity: What's the relationship between an individual's "proximity" or level of involvement with an accident or related lessons on the one hand, and the declining memory curve? Does first hand "learning" last longer?

2) Intensity: What's the relationship between the intensity of the failure (i.e. human lives lost vs. a failed project that didn't achieve its objectives), the extent to which the causes of failure are investigated, and the speed with which memories of the failure fade and lessons are unlearned.

3) Dynamic nature of Lessons: Lessons need to be "updated" regularly based on most recent history and discoveries. Even if you've learned something based on first hand experience, you still need to "update" that knowledge.

Rules and mandated processes need to remain linked to their original rationale. When someone is told that they need to follow rule x, y, z, they should be able to ask "why" and to get a straight answer other than 1) that's how we've always done it, or 2) that's the rule. If you understand the why and the rationale makes sense, you're much more likely to follow the rule.

Defining Success and Failure, Managing Risks

2009-07-29T04:03:00.000-04:00

When I started working as a NASA contractor more than a year ago, I quickly noticed the differences between NASA and international development. No kidding! I didn't expect much in common but I wasn't sure at all what to expect with NASA.

NASA's daily routines, all the hard work that gets missions into space, revolves around minimizing the risk of failure. Risk management is a big deal. You build a spacecraft that costs a lot of money, you can't afford to have it blow up or become floating space debris. A lot of attention is paid to ensuring success by analyzing every possible failure mode and coming up with mitigation strategies when there is a residual risk. There are methodologies and full time risk manager positions handling all this.

Failures tend to be obvious, even when they are not catastrophic. Either something is working as planned or it is not. You can have a partial failure but you know exactly what is and what isn't working. It's not something you can hide.

As in the transportation industry, catastrophic failures are studied extensively to understand the causes of the failure and to make sure that this particular type of accident isn't repeated. NASA tries very hard to learn from its failures. Accidents in the human spaceflight program may get the most public coverage, but all accidents and failures in space and on the group are dissected to understand root causes. Ensuring the lessons learned from such detailed studies are embedded in project routines to avoid repeat failures is a more difficult task. Many of the contributing factors to a failure are soft issues like team communications that don't have an easy technical solution ready to apply uniformly across missions.

On the success side, the typical discourse sounds very much like PR and has little to do with trying to understand what when right when a mission is successful. There is little attention being paid to all the factors that made it possible for a particular mission to succeed. Success is defined as the absence of failure and doesn't seem to require extensive "study." Success is normal, failure is the anomaly to focus on.

I should add that success is defined very clearly and early on in a mission's development. How that success is defined early on has important implications on how the mission is designed and the types of risks and mitigation strategies that are developed, including what gets chopped down when the budgets are cut.

Turning to the field of international development, it's as if all of that is reversed. Failure is something projects / donors hardly ever admit to because they can get away with it. Failure is often far away, relatively invisible, easily forgotten. Success and failure are not clear cut because, among other things, projects (and their multiple stakeholders) often fail to come to a common understanding of what will constitute success. Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) meant to document progress and, eventually, "success" is underfunded or not funded at all, as well as very difficult to execute in a meaningful and unbiased way. There are no incentives to openly talk about failures and why they happen.

There is no "risk management" beyond perhaps spelling out some assumptions in the early design of a project. In a NASA project, risk management is an ongoing process, not something handled during the project design phase.

Writing the statement above about the absence of risk management in international development prompted me to go check. I discovered that AusAID, the Australian development agency, does talk about "risk management." See AusGuidelines: Managing Risk. And this turns out to be very timely since the Australian Council for International Development is doing a workshop on the topic July 29th in Melbourne and July 30th in Sidney.

My previous experience in international development circles has been that few project managers have been trained as project managers and are aware of or applying project management methodologies such as those promoted by the Project Management Institute (PMI). That's just not how international development projects are designed and implemented. I did see a trend, especially in IT-related projects, where more sophisticated project management approaches were becoming a requirement.

So, if NASA needs to learn how to analyze its successes as much as it analyzes it failures, I would suggest that the international development community needs to pay more attention to defining what success and failure mean for any given project or program, and start applying risk management principles more systematically. Risk management methodologies would need to be adapted to existing international development practices and requirements and to the specifics of different types of projects.

See also:
Charles Tucker, "Fusing Risk Management and Knowledge Management," ASK Magazine, Issue 30.

Personal Learning Plan - July/August 2009

2009-07-24T05:32:00.001-04:00

I don't update my learning plan on a very strict schedule and I don't worry too much if I haven't exactly done everything I planned to do. Just thinking through where I want to focus in the next couple of months is useful. Every other month or so a need to refocus emerges but most of the map is stable. Click on the image for a larger version.
The new areas of focus are all related to the didactic novel, Learning Log. I don't want it to languish in never-ending revisions. I want to keep the momentum going.

Aquatic Gardens, Washington D.C.

2009-07-20T06:43:00.001-04:00

Credits: A. & N. Fillip

The END is just a new BEGINNING

2009-07-04T14:47:00.004-04:00

What do you do when you've posted something on your blog and when you read it again just a few days later your thinking has evolved significantly and it no longer reflects what you really want to say? Do you edit your original post or do you write another post contradicting the first one?

I'm opting for contradicting my earlier post titled "THE END." This is happening partly as a result of watching Jay Cross and Dave Bray talking about unbooks, and partly because in the process of making "final" revisions to version 1.0 of my manuscript, I am already considering future revisions and getting a better understanding of the current status of my manuscript.

My earlier post titled "THE END" was all about the exhilaration of writing the two words at the end of a manuscript, declaring that the story was all there and readable. At the time, I called it FINISHED. That is where my thinking has evolved and where I can clarify. Version 0.9 is finished but will not be published. Version 1.0 is the version that will be published. It will be a finished version 1.0, not necessarily the final version of the manuscript.

In other words, even if you see your manuscript as an unfinished product, there are finished versions that become published versions. And then at some point there will be a final version even if it is still an unfinished product.

Embedded Links in Ebook

2009-07-02T05:32:00.004-04:00

* Publisher Offers Tips for Embedding Web Links in Ebooks
* Harlequin Embeds Hyperlinks in New Book

I was assuming Ebooks didn't have hyperlinks. I was wrong.

This is exactly what I need, the ability to put embedded links in the manuscript so that readers can follow links but also have an experience closer to turning pages than to reading sections of text on a webpage.

THE END.

2009-06-27T09:14:00.005-04:00

There's something very rewarding about writing "THE END." It's all about that moment when you know the piece you're writing is ESSENTIALLY DONE. The story has been put down on paper from beginning to end and it's readable. It may need some polishing and an additional round of revisions but it's essentially done. It's also the point when you have to make decisions about how much more needs to be done so that the work on it is FINISHED. Perhaps a piece of writing is never truly finished but continuous editing and revision is not something I could easily get used to. I need to be able to say something is FINISHED and move on to something else. It doesn't have to be perfect to be FINISHED.

I wrote "THE END" earlier this week when I completed the first round of revisions to the didactic novel I've been writing for the past 6 months. It felt really nice to get to that point. I am now entering unfamiliar territory since this is the first time I manage to complete a first round of revisions and still be interested in the manuscript. I'm looking at all my notes trying to figure out how to prioritize revisions.

What I really need now is to create the right incentives to complete the entire process. I know I'll complete the second round of revisions. I might get a little lazy and find excuses for calling it FINISHED sooner rather than later but I'll get to the point where I can call it FINISHED.

The real question is whether I'll actually ask anyone to read it and what to do with it once it is FINISHED. I don't think the process will really be completed if I just shelve it as a FINISHED project and never get it out for others to read.

This is how this blog is going to help me create the incentives to complete the process: The more I write about it here -- not just the writing process but the novel itself -- the more I build the necessary confidence to do something with it (... have someone read it).

So... here is a piece of information: The manuscript is titled "Learning Log -- A Didactic Novel about Knowledge Management, version 1.0". The "version 1.0" might suggest that I would consider making revisions to turn it into version 1.5 or 2.0. It's a possibility but mostly the "version 1.0" is there to indicate that while it is finished (it's not a beta), I still see the project as an experiment to learn from and not necessarily something that needs to be perfect. {a not so subtle attempt at lowering expectations}

Playing with Code

2009-06-21T19:39:00.004-04:00

I am NOT a programmer and I don't know a lot of HTML. Yet I am playing around with pieces of code to try to customize the TiddlyWiki I am using for my novel. Today, I've achieved one tweak. I've added a plugin that allows the reader to adjust the font size. I didn't create it, of course. I'm a codes scavenger.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to automatically indent the first line of every paragraph. I still can't figure it out.

Didactic ... in a good way

2009-06-14T08:09:00.004-04:00

I've come to realize that the term "didactic fiction" has negative connotations. The more I look for it, the more I encounter it in the context of someone defending a piece of fiction by saying... "it wasn't didactic at all." In that sense, "didactic" is taken to imply something "preachy" and annoying, something that ultimately distracts from the main function of fiction, which is to entertain. Imagine a novel written with a strong Global Warming theme or some other controversial theme and the main character is a scientist who fights to get politicians to listen to him. The story could easily turn very preachy and "didactic". If the main objective of that novel is to entertain, but use a theme likely to get some traction, then it makes sense to stir away from something too "didactic."

I could try to avoid using the term, just to steer away from the negative connotation but to be perfectly honest, there is a strong didactic element to what I am writing and I am not comfortable pretending otherwise. My task is to explain how a piece of fiction can be didactic in a good way and sufficiently entertaining to keep the reader's attention.

Kissing the Problem

2009-05-17T07:40:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Annette Simmons' A Safe Place for Dangerous Truths: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear and Distrust at Work.

I'm finding a lot of quotable passages and some nice expressions. Here is one: "Kissing the problem". When groups in an organization constantly complain about a problem and do absolutely nothing about it, they may have acquired a sort of complaint habit that they've become comfortable with. They're "kissing the problem." I've noticed a lot of this behavior going on. It's usually enveloped in a larger conversation about bureaucracy to make sure that nothing is actually done about it. A new employee might notice this but a long-time employee will not even notice because the behavior is part of the culture.

How about trying to "slap the problem" and wake up everyone?
And... what am I doing about it?

Top Tools for Learning

2009-05-09T09:26:00.014-04:00

I was trying to come up with my "Top 10" to contribute to Jane Hart "Top 10 Tools for Learning 2009" but I can't get to ten if I sticking to the tools I truly use regularly. So here are my Top 8 tools for learning, the tools that are part of my personal knowledge management system.

* TiddlyWiki (portable wiki) - excellent to develop a searchable notebook and many other things, including writing a novel.
* iGoogle - excellent to organize your desktop, quick access to Gmail & quick links. I've created three tabs in iGoogle (home, office and KM). That way, if I'm at the office and my screen shows my iGoogle desktop, anything on that screen is work related. The KM tab is for everything that is related to knowledge management and/or professional development that isn't directly work-related.
* Google Reader (organize rss feeds) - the key is to regularly review what's useful and what's not and not be afraid of unsubscribing. Once in a while I also go hunt for new interesting feeds.
* CMapTools (concept mapping): I use Inspiration at work because that's what our office uses but I have a strong preference for CMapTools for concept mapping. I've been slightly obsessed with concept mapping and it's become a hammer looking for nails.
* Captura (screen capture) - I don't know that it's really a "learning tool" but I use it regularly.
* Diigo (social bookmarking) - I love it since I discovered its highlighting and comments capabilities. I was using FURL for a few years, they were bought by Diigo and the transfer of my bookmarks went relatively smoothly.
* Blogger - I've added Zemanta to it recently, an easy way to enhance my posts with related links and to automate the process of creating hyperlinks.
* iTunes (for podcasts and audiobooks) + iTunes University

If I had to pick the top 2, it would be TiddlyWiki and CMapTools.

That being said, I don't use any of these things when it comes to supporting my youngest daughter's learning. For that task, I rely on a white board, index cards, and the local public library.

Learning at the Speed of Change

2009-04-25T06:40:00.000-04:00

Sometimes there's a word or a phrase that catches my attention. Perhaps it's just a few words that appear to perfectly encapsulate a thought or a feeling. "Learning at the speed of change" is one of those. We rejoice about our increased ability to communicate. We can communicate more often, with more people, with more tools. Most of that seems to be about quantity (How many twitter followers do you have?). Are we communicating better or just "more"?

At the same time, we complain about information overload. In fact, just as the quantity of information we have access to doesn't guarantee anything about the decisions we make, the fact that we can and we do communicate more doesn't guarantee that we're communicating better. The overload (of information and communication) might become a distraction if we're not able to increase our ability to focus.

"Learning at the speed of change" is a reference to the fact that change is the only constant and the speed of change is increasing. Information overload is only going to get worse and it would be nice if were collectively able to focus our attention on two things:

1) the quality of our communications; and
2) our ability to extract value from massive amounts of information.

We need to learn faster. We probably need to become better lifelong learners as well. If the pace of change is increasing, our ability to learn continuously and faster is going to be critical. Yes, the vast amounts of information now at our fingertips and the many, many tools we now have at our disposal to communicate and learn from each other are wonderful. They will really provide value if and when we learn to collectively harness their potential.

Some possible implications for Knowledge Management:

Pay more attention to meta-learning (learning about learning)
Very little attention is paid to the connection between personal learning styles, group learning and organizational learning. The connection between personal learning styles, personal learning strategies (& personal knowledge management) on the one hand, and organizational learning and traditional knowledge management initiatives on the other, is missing.
Treat knowledge as a very dynamic thing
If you are going to try to capture and store knowledge, it will need to be in formats that are easy to edit so that it doesn't quickly become outdated. The types of knowledge that you should be focused on will also change rapidly.
Accompany the introduction of new tools
Don't just demo new tools to show people how to start using them. Accompany the new users in figuring out how to handle those tools strategically from an information overload perspective. Accompany the users in climbing the learning curve and learn with them.
Keep an eye on the trade-offs between speed and depth of learning
You can use Cliff Notes or Spark Notes to make sure you've really understood a difficult piece of literature and to facilitate your learning and preparation for a test or you can use them as a cheat sheet to pretend you've read the book and try to pass a test with minimal time investment on your part.

All of this is assuming that we all need to catch up or keep up with change. Does this also imply that if you want to make change happen, you need to be learning even faster, you need to be the one ahead of the crowd, making all the mistakes that followers will learn from and avoid? Does it mean that in order to lead change rather than react to it, we need to learn FASTER than the speed of change?

The State of the Economy and Twitter - A Hypothesis

2009-04-21T05:27:00.005-04:00

Our individual outreach efforts increase in scope and intensity when we start feeling insecure about our jobs. In the current economic context, feeling some level of stress about job security is natural. My hypothesis is that the fact that Twitter suddenly took off and reached a tipping point is related to the fact that people are reaching out, trying to connect or reconnect, gather job intel, learn about a new field, etc... either because they've already lost their job or because they feel they might be next.

I am not suggesting that Twitter's success would not have happened without the economic crisis. I'm only suggesting that the economic crisis gave it a push over the tipping point. What do you think?

You could also argue that Twitter is the cause of the economic crisis.... (Economist Blames Twitter for Downturn), but I won't do that!

Learning in Workshops

2009-04-11T20:30:00.001-04:00

I spent two days in a workshop this past week. I wasn't a participant and I wasn't the main facilitator / organizer. I was there as support staff but mostly acting as an observer. I collected and typed up all the feedback forms so the participant feedback is fresh in my head. Overall, the workshop went very well. As I was reflecting upon the feedback, I occurred to me that there was a great deal of consistency across the feedback forms in terms of the type of feedback provided. They didn't necessarily agree on the best and least effective elements of the workshop but there was consistency in terms of what mattered to them.

Some lessons learned about things that matter to participants:

Things they expect and don't see matter
Participants' expectations are important. Simple things such as name tags and handouts are expected. If you don't have them, for some reason, you should at least explain why they're not made available.
The physical environment matters
Just make them comfortable enough so they're not distracted by the environment. There is always someone who will be too cold and someone who will be too hot.
The status and level of enthusiasm of the speakers matter
You can get away with not being a top level leader if you demonstrate that 1) you know what you're talking about and 2) you're passionate about your work.

You can get away with not being the most dynamic speaker if 1) you're the boss and the participants respect the fact that you took the time to show up; and 2) you're able to answer impromptu questions rather than speak from slides.

Speakers who are honest and candid are appreciated as long as the picture being painted isn't too bleak. Always end on a positive note.
The manner in which a particular topic is presented matters
You could almost talk to them about anything as long as you're able to make it interesting. The best way to make it interesting is to give specific examples or tell a story. I used to think that the content of the presentations (in terms of topic focus and scope) was the most important thing. I still think it's obviously important for speakers to address something that's within the scope of the workshop but it's really the whole package that makes the difference. The perfect content delivered poorly by someone who has limited legitimacy won't be as well received as an open conversation with top leaders that drifts from one topic to another based on questions coming from participants.

It could very well be that what I'm interpreting as "what mattered" to the participants simply reflected the way we phrased the feedback questions. The questions were essentially meant to get a sense of the participants' satisfaction levels rather than to assess the extent to which any learning is happening.

Knowledge Management in Federal Agencies

2009-04-05T08:19:00.006-04:00

The Federal Knowledge Management Working Group launched a Federal Knowledge Management Initiative a while ago. Members of the group are feverishly working within Action Groups to create sections of a Roadmap document. I'm a little skeptical about the overall value and quality of what is going to emerge as the final document but if the primary objective of the initiative is to put knowledge management on the agenda of the Obama Administration and the leadership of federal agencies, then it might achieve that.

I have been participating in two of the Action Groups and in the process, I've learned a few things about "writing by committee", the challenges of writing a coherent piece when the authors come from different perspectives and don't share a common language, using a wiki to work on collaborative writing, how to get group members to volunteer for specific writing or review and editing tasks, and more generally, how to voice disagreement effectively.

The centerpiece of the initiative is the creation of a Federal KM Center. Sometimes, when you are trying to make a point (as in.. there is a need for a Federal KM Center to increase the visibility of KM in Federal Agencies), you end up emphasizing the negative (there are few Chief Knowledge Officers, Federal Agencies employ ad hoc KM practices, etc...) and failing to highlight the real successes. For example, a couple of agencies (esp. Army and NASA) are perceived as good examples to follow and repeatedly mentioned as such while many agencies that have developed relevant and successful "knowledge management" practices are much less visible and never mentioned.

What if the reality is that many more Federal Agencies are implementing Knowledge Management related activities, don't necessarily feel the need for a formal KM program, and achieve great results without one? There is an assumption that if you don't have a formal KM program you're probably not doing enough, not doing much. What if not needing a formal KM program is a sign that you are already ahead of the curve and your KM approach is well integrated in your operations?

What if an agency that is allowing its various offices to develop their own best practices or lessons learned activities is more effective than a centralized KM office? Which should come first? A centralized KM program? The ad hoc emergence of best practices/lessons learned activities within organizational units? If the objective is to generate quick wins, I would suggest that ad hoc activities at the local level, within organizational units is more effective. Once those local level mechanisms are in place, coordination and knowledge sharing across organizational units can help build greater organizational learning at the agency level.

[Testing Zemanta with this post]

Stories, Movies, and Books

2009-04-02T05:52:00.001-04:00

I've had several discussions with family members recently about books and movies. We've reached a consensus that if a movie is based on a book and you've read the book, you will be disappointed by the movie. We've tested that with classics and new releases alike. I've always been a fan of movies, but I like movies that are more than "entertainment". I like movies that have a story, more than just a sequence of scenes.

I watched "I've Loved You So Long" a week or so ago. There are so many subtleties in the movie that would make sense only to the French or people steeped in French culture. For example, I'm not sure everyone would catch the meaning of the title. The french title, "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime", is part of a children's song that plays a role in the movie. It's the little song Juliette teaches Lys to play on the piano, the same song Juliette played with her sister when they were kids. The song itself is very meaningful and relevant to the primary theme of the story, the relationship between the two sisters. The song's title is "A La Claire Fontaine". And Juliette's last name is Fontaine. Little details...

The full song lyrics in French and English: A la claire fontaine.

The movie was directed by Philippe Claudel. Claudel happens to be a professor of literature and novelist, both of which become relevant in the movie. A key character in the movie teaches literature at the university and characters discuss books and literature in general. More importantly, the way the movie is constructed, the way information is provided to the viewer in subtle ways, in small installments, is more typical of how a good book is written than of movie plots. This was a movie that was written and directed from a writer's point of view. The result was excellent.

There's also a key difference between how French (or European) movies tell stories vs. typical American movies. In an American movie, nine times out of ten, you can predict how the story ends, you almost know what the next scene is going to be. A French movie is much less predictable. To the uninitiated (my spouse included), a French movie can be maddeningly slow and confusing.

Anatomy of a "Aha!" moment

2009-03-08T07:41:00.004-04:00

Step 1: Routine
I'm doing something routine, checking my office email from home through the webmail application. I'm starting to draft a response to a message, I'm thinking, editing, thinking, and by the time I'm ready to send, the connection has timed out and I lost my message. It's not even saved as a draft.

Step 2: Recurring, yet not constant error
This is a recurring "error". It's entirely my mistake. It doesn't happen every time I deal with my office email from home but regularly enough to be an annoyance. It has happened before and I don't seem to learn anything from it. All I would need to do is remember to either save the message regularly (automated saving would be better!) or draft it outside the browser and cut-and-paste it when I'm ready to hit "send". The solution appears simple. Why am I not able to implement it?

Step 3: What is going on?
Do we really learn something from our mistakes only when the annoyance or consequences reach a certain threshold? If I've recognized that I need to do something about it and I know what the solution is, why am I not able to implement the solution?

Part of the answer is that when I start answering an email, I don't recognize the fact that it might take me a while to be ready to send. I underestimate the time it will take to answer. In truth, when I start responding to an email, my mind is entirely focused on the answer, not the mechanics and limitations of my webmail application. [Thankfully, this blog tool automatically saves my drafts and has a big "SAVE NOW" button just below what I am typing, just in case.]

The webmail application is particularly annoying because it doesn't tell you that you've lost the connection. It lets you think you're still connected. It lets you write a nice long message and you don't realize you've lost it until you try to send it. Can you see smoke coming out of my ears?

Step 4: What is really going on?
I'm staring at the login screen again and by then I know I've lost my message. Interestingly, the login screen that appears after you've been logged out as a result of a connection timeout isn't the same as the login screen I routinely start from, the one that I have bookmarked for easy access. So, what's the harm in reading the fine print? I might actually figure something out, right!

Step 5: Fine Print
Some background first: There are four options on the login screen (private vs. public computer; and full vs. light version of the webmail application). I'm working on my private computer at home and I have a good connection so I don't need to select the "light" version. The login screen explains that the light version is "sometimes" faster if you have a slow connection.

Here's the fine print: You need Internet Explorer 6 or higher to use the full version of the webmail application. Aha! I use Firefox. What does that mean??????? It means that even though I'm selecting the "full" version, I'm automatically transferred to the "light" version... and since I've never experienced the "full" version, I never noticed. The "light" version seems to time out after 15 minutes (even when I'm on a private computer setting which, according to the instructions, should give me 24 hours without being automatically logged out).

Step 6: What else is wrong?
It took me too long to get to this Aha! moment. How could the error have been avoided in the first place or what might have made it easier for me to catch it sooner?

In hindsight, I could have mentioned the problem to a colleague to get some insights into what might be wrong. However, since I was assuming the problem was my inability to remember to save, there was no obvious need to mention it to a colleague.

I could have contacted IT support, but again, I was assuming the problem was with me, not with the system or how I was using it.

ALL login screens should have the same fine print. It's possible that I would have noticed the "IE" fine print sooner if it had been on my routine login screen and not just on the login screen I was rerouted to after I timed out.

I might send this to the IT support folks.... they might find it useful as a case study in user stupidity. I'm not wondering if this is indeed the full explanation or if I'm still missing half of it.

Personal Knowledge Management Plan

2009-02-22T06:04:00.007-05:00

How are "Personal Knowledge Management" and "Personal Learning Environment" related?
A while ago I created a diagram representing what I consider to be my Personal Learning Environment (PLE). It essentially consisted of a visual representation (a map) of all the tools I use to keep track of information resources (notes, books, electronic resources, social networks, work documents, etc...) that are essential to my work/learning. The diagram also attempted to show how all these tools were connected and allowed the identification of some key inefficiencies related to the lack of synchronization and duplication of tools/methods at the office (fixed infrastructure) and at home (a more mobile set of tools). The initial impetus for creating this PLE map had been the frustration I was encountering with my mix of paper/electronic tools.
Initial Personal Knowledge Management Plan
Today I created a Personal Knowledge Management Plan. To make it relatively simple as a first attempt, I am limiting myself to short term needs and developing a plan for March 2009. I am also using the framework defined by Kirby Wright in his "Personal Knowledge Management Planning Guide." The guide offers two possible formats for a personal knowledge management plan, a graphical format and a table format. My initial attempt, below, is an adaptation of the graphical format. I must admit that I am having some difficulty differentiating the Learning Dimension and the Analytical Dimension of Kirby Wright's framework. Click on the image to view the details.

Ideally, I would review the plan on a monthly basis and adjust it as needed. I probably need to be more specific about the KM/learning goals embedded in this map but as a first monthly map, it will serve its purpose.
Getting back to the initial question of how the PKM plan and the PLE are related, the PKM plan answers a "what" question (what do I want to focus my learning on?) and the PLE is more focused on the "how", and "where" questions and on information/content management issues. I suspect my thinking about this will evolve over time. It doesn't feel very mature at this point. Let's call it emergent thinking.

Collisions

2009-02-21T11:58:00.001-05:00

Sometime in early February , two nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic. It was a fender bender and nothing serious happened. In the same month, two satellites collided in space, at very high speeds, and the result was the complete loss of both satellites as well as lots of space debris.

We tend to think of space and the oceans as relatively empty and of collisions as unlikely. Well, no matter how unlikely things are, they can happen. Are these Black Swans?

See The Black Swan Theory (Wikipedia).

Disambiguation, polysemous and polysemantic

2009-02-21T10:40:00.000-05:00

Big words....

I was involved in a little conversation about tagging and the challenges associated with disambiguation in folksonomies. For example, someone is using the tag "NPR" to refer to the National Public Radio and someone else is using the same tag to refer to a NASA Procedural Requirement. This example is just an acronym with multiple possible meanings. What about "open source." To an IT person, "open source" has to do the availability of software code, as opposed to proprietary software. To someone in the intelligence community, "open source" really means open source intelligence, intelligence that is publicly available in print or electronic form.

So, is it so bad that people from different background and different interests might end up using the same tags and mean totally different things? I'm going to take a slightly different perspective and suggest that the ambiguity and chaos of folksonomies is 1) an opportunity for making connections between things that would otherwise not be connected and 2) an opportunity to acknowledge that we don't all share the same frame of reference.

Autodidacts and Lifelong Learning

2009-02-16T05:57:00.004-05:00

I've always been fascinated by autodidacts. I come from a family of autodidacts and I'm the odd one, the one who pursued the formal education. Nevertheless, I'd like to borrow from the autodidacts' attitude towards learning.

Autodidactic Press ... Your one-stop shop for lifelong learning.

I also love to come across course syllabi, especially if they have a good reading list. I don't necessarily read all the resources listed but it gives me an idea of what's out there.

Team Journaling & Action Learning

2009-01-26T05:12:00.000-05:00

(This is a follow up to a previous post titled "On the Use of a Learning Journal")

Team journaling extend the journaling concept from the individual to the team. This brings me to action learning. How can we make sure to create appropriate linkages between individual reflection tools and team reflection activities?

Of course, my didactic novel project isn't a team activity so this question applies more to my real job than this project. However, as is often the case, the two are closely intertwined. Here's an example of how things happen:
1) a co-worker is taking a course on project management, reads something about "extreme project management" and somehow associates it with me and my areas of interest;
2) this co-worker and I end up a couple of minutes early in a meeting and he mentions what he was reading to me;
3) I don't know anything about "extreme project management" but based on his explanation it sounds similar to another concept I'm more familiar with, "rapid prototyping". Perhaps they're not that similar but what they have in common is that they reverse a certain number of assumptions about traditional project management or product development approaches;
4) as I later recall this serendipitous bit of conversation with this co-worker, I decide to go check out exactly what "extreme project management" is about -- Wikipedia gives me a start. It has something to do with human interaction management or managing project stakeholders in complex projects. Sounds like this has some potential for what I'm working on. Just enough to spark some new ideas, new connections between ideas.

If I were working in a team, especially a team engaged in an action learning project, I might be sharing some of my thoughts about extreme project management with some team members. I might ask if anyone on the team has heard of it, seen it in action, or sees any relevancy or application to our work.

How much learning is going on in a team may depend on the extent to which individual members have this "x might be interested in this" type of reflex, followed up by "let's send him/her a note about it" or "I'll mention it to him/her when we cross path at the meeting today." Two things need to happen: 1) co-workers need to have a good sense of each others' areas of interest and areas of work; and 2) co-workers need to see the benefits of follow through, the second step.

On the use of a Learning Journal

2009-01-10T09:50:00.013-05:00

This blog is essentially a learning journal. Typically, a learning journal is a private journal. This blog is therefore the public/sharable version of a learning journal and my recent focus on a particular didactic novel writing project makes it currently focused on that.

As I've probably mentioned in a previous blog post, I am highly challenged with regards to organizing my notes. I use a dozen different methods of keeping track of thoughts, references, reflections, books to read, articles of interest, etc... The result is complete chaos.

Instead of viewing this "chaos" as a problem, I've decided to temporarily assume that there's nothing wrong with what I am doing. Let's call it a decentralized approach to note taking.

As a side note, I was introduced to the concept of "indirect proof" this week -- yes, your child's geometry homework is a potential source of learning and inspiration. An "indirect proof is a type of proof in which a statement to be proved is assumed false and if the assumption leads to an impossibility, then the statement assumed false has been proved to be true." (Mathematics Dictionary)

So, if I start with the assumption that what I refer to as chaos is a good thing, where can I logically go with that. How good is it? Do I need more chaos? Do I need to refrain completely from trying to keep notes in any organized fashion? Do I need to stop worrying about it? None of these appear to be silly questions to me, so what if I pursued this line of reasoning a little further.

Why would I want my notes to be organized? Do I ever re-read them? Not really. I benefit from them primarily because of the thought processes that went into actually writing down something. If I ever end up re-reading them, I won't be looking for something specific, I will more likely be looking for a source of inspiration. It won't matter if my thoughts are captured on 10 different tools and in 20 different files as long as I know what these things are and where to find them. Right?

I will now commit to not obsessing so much about the chaotic nature of my personal reflections and notetaking habits. :) I will not try to stick to a single "learning journal". I will, however, revisit the personal learning environment map I had created a while ago to keep track of the many notebooks and tools I use.

Some resources on professional journaling:

* Journaling for Learning
* Writing a reflective learning journal
* Keeping a professional journal
* Journaling Portal

Fiction of Development

2009-01-03T07:37:00.009-05:00

If I were to trace my interest in didactic fiction to a specific thing it might be a paper I read a few years back " The fiction of development : knowledge, authority and representation". It influenced a lot of the fiction I read, it introduced me to the idea of using fiction as a teaching tool, and it turned me on to seeing my interest in fiction writing as something I might be able to use in my professional life rather than simply as a personal hobby. I consider it a professional hobby -- if there is such a thing.

The books listed below are not what I would classify as didactic fiction, yet they definitely teach you something.

Brick Lane, by Monica Ali
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kirin Desai

Didactic Fiction

2009-01-02T07:24:00.010-05:00

What's didactic fiction?
Didactic fiction is fiction with a message. It is fiction that tries to do more than entertain the reader. It is meant to share a message. The primary objective is to teach something and storytelling is the method chosen to convey that message.

Didactic fiction I have read (so far)

Jack's Notebook: A Business Novel about Creative Problem Solving, by Gregg Fraley

Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield

The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox

The Deadline: A Novel about Project Management, by Tom DeMarco

Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, by Spencer Johnson

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni

This turned out to be an interesting mix of didactic topics and writing approaches. I now need to read Steve Denning's Squirrel Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling.

Will we ever be able to tickle a robot?

2008-10-11T06:51:00.003-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in an auditorium at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland to listen to Professor Robert Provine, a neuroscientist from the University of Maryland give a talk that has been advertised with the following title: "Tickle and Beyond".

The auditorium wasn't full but it was a very good crowd considering that it was a Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend. I'm there because it's 3:30pm and I'm essentially done with what I had to do this week and I'm curious about what "tickle" has to do with NASA. In addition, the talk is part of a Scientific Colloquium and while I've been able to attend some of the Engineering Colloquia and the Systems Engineering Colloquia, I wanted to see what a Scientific Colloquium was like. I am of course neither a scientist nor an engineer, therefore I walk into these talks anticipating that I won't really understand more than 20-30% of what is being said. Still, I'm usually getting something out of it.

What did I learn this time?
1. Chimps can be tickled and they can laugh but they don't laugh like humans. The reason they can't laugh like humans is related to the reason they can't talk: They can't control their breathing like we do.
2. Tickle is a neurological phenomenon but it's also a social phenomenon. Strangers aren't likely to tickle you. It's not something you can control. It's spontaneous.
3. You can't tickle yourself. That has to do with the fact that we have a sense of selfhood. We know the difference between self and other. Robots are limited in that they don't have a sense of self. They don't know the difference between touching something and being touched.

More around this.....

Dr. Robert Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

Levels of Understanding

2008-09-11T05:26:00.002-04:00

I was sitting in a series of meetings yesterday and getting frustrated with the extent to which I was failing to understand what was being discussed -- the mix of 5,000 acronyms and highly technical engineering "stuff" got to me [and pausing the discussions to ask a question was not an option]. So I switched gear and instead of trying to understand the meaning of what was being said, I tried to focus on the bigger picture. Who are the people in the room? Why are they there? What is the broader purpose of the meeting? What is really going on?

I don't think I did more than scratch the surface in terms of understanding what was going on but at least my level of frustration was lowered to a manageable level. Getting out of the meeting was obviously another option but I had been asked/told to sit through it and so I was under pressure to actually try my best to make the most of it.

So, here are some reflections which have nothing to do with what was actually said during the meeting:
1. If I don't understand something, how many other people in the room are not understanding it?
2. If I am there because I have been told to be there and I don't have any incentive to ask for clarifications or actually say anything in the meeting, how many people in the room are in the same boat?
3. The only time I've ever experienced writer's block is when I am sitting in a meeting attempting to take note, my brain is unable to process what is being said and I have nothing to write except "I don't get this".
4. As soon as I realized I was not going to get much out of the meeting, I started to think about how many other things -- more productive things -- I could be doing if I wasn't stuck in this meeting. That made it even more difficult to concentrate on what was being said.
5. At one point, a project I knew something about was being discussed. Suddenly, some of what was being said made sense. Simply put, I had some context for that discussion. I had no point of reference for the other issues being discussed and therefore no way of making connections to any prior knowledge. The people in the room (those who understood what was being discussed) had a long history of communicating around the issues being discussed.
6. Let's imagine a new staff in the room who happens to have technical expertise in the area being discussed. How much more than me is he/she understanding? Quite a lot, but without the prior conversations and context knowledge, he/she isn't grasping everything either.

Lesson: When trying to communicate something to a person you don't know very well, be aware of the fact that the person doesn't necessarily share your frame of reference and might have very little incentives to tell you that they're not grasping what you're talking about....

Case Studies

2008-09-04T04:54:00.002-04:00

The Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer (OCKO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center - where I work - makes extensive use of case studies to facilitate knowledge sharing across missions. These are case studies developed by the OCKO team based on real missions, including some that have not yet launched. The case studies tend to focus on project management rather than technical issues. The technologies and engineering challenges may be complex, and the science questions being asked may be difficult to understand for the average person, but the project management challenges are not that simple either.

The case studies have also been initially written with a specific audience in mind (project managers and their deputies) and with a specific purpose in mind (for use in the context of facilitated workshops). A "case" can be presented in different versions depending on the time allocated in the workshop and the purpose of the use of that case. For example, a short version of a case (one page) can be used as a teaser to introduce a group to case studies before they are presented with a longer case.

In the past few days, I've also come to realize that the younger generation of engineers and future NASA project managers would also greatly benefit from these case studies. Whereas the discussion question for groups of project managers tends to be "What would you do as the PM for this project?", the discussion question for future PMs needs to be adjusted to their current roles. I'm not sure whether the entire case study would need to be rewritten. I've also come to realize that there are dangers in rewriting case studies. The more they are rewritten to suit a particular purpose, the greater the danger of straying away from the real story. The best approach might be to keep the case unchanged but to adjust the facilitation and trigger question that starts the discussions around the case.

Uncluttering Your Mind

2008-07-09T05:26:00.005-04:00

There's something to NIKE's "just do it!" slogan that has always appealed to me. Today, I signed up for a fiction writing class. I had been thinking about doing this for so long -- yet not doing anything about it except checking out the same options over and over again -- that I eventually became annoyed by the repetitive nature of my own thinking processes. There is a danger in over-analyzing everything and feeling the need to rationalize decisions.

I learned something really useful a while ago in a time management class and through the Getting Things Done book by David Allen. When you create a "to do" list, you are essentially uncluttering your mind, freeing space for more productive thoughts. If you keep a personal or professional journal, writing down some thoughts on a regular basis can be a very useful way of processing your experiences and moving on with an uncluttered mind.

Signing up for a fiction writing class may sound like a very simple and mundane action but it has a huge uncluttering effect. To all the procrastinators out there.... go unclutter your mind!

Accelerated Learning

2008-06-30T04:25:00.004-04:00

I wrote about rapid onboarding a couple of months ago. Rather than seeing it as the organization's responsibility, I was looking at it from the perspective of the employee. As an employee, what can you do to shorten the length of time it takes you to be fully integrated within your team and to add value to the organization.

Based on my experience of the past few months, I'm tempted to express some caution with this approach and to articulate some hypotheses.

Unless the organization is equally in a hurry to get you on board and fully committed to helping you out, don't rush. Whether a rapid onboarding approach is appropriate (and successful) or not may depend on factors totally out of your control as a new employee. Such factors may include 1) the extent to which you have regular access to your supervisor/management for feedback and guidance; 2) the extent of disagreement / conflict around your position.

Becoming part of a team or organizational unit has a lot to do with establishing relationships. This can't be rushed too much and if there is disagreement or conflict around your position, it may take even more time. If the environment is less than ideal, it should still be possible to focus on learning the culture, the jargon, the processes, and staying away from actually "doing" anything (especially anything that might be perceived as stepping in other people's territories), at least until things settle and you've had a chance to see more clearly what is going on and you're better able to interpret subtle cues and signals.

I'm assuming this isn't such an issue when someone is hired with a clear mandate to lead a team. Then you probably can't afford to wait and see. If you're in charge, learn quickly and act like a leader. If there is confusion about who is in charge and roles and responsibilities, then being in a rush to do things and to add value is probably not where the emphasis should be.

Propinquity... among other influence factors

2008-06-21T17:12:00.005-04:00

Propinquity -- my new word of the day -- has to do with proximity. The "propinquity effect" refers to the impact of proximity -- or physical distance -- on human relationships. This has a clear impact on team building and efforts at fostering collaboration within organizations. How do geographically dispersed, mobile and sometimes entirely virtual teams and organizations succeed when the propinquity effect would suggest that they are bound to fail?

I came across the word "propinquity" in Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. Interestingly, I picked it up thinking that it would be a typical business / management book with lots of anecdotes and stories from the U.S. Corporate sector and the reality was quite different. It is full of examples from the social sector. All of the international examples (Grameen Bank, Soul City, Guinea worm) were familiar to me. The book doesn't mention the term social marketing but many of the examples are clearly related to social marketing concepts. It does refer to social capital.

After reading both Made to Stick and Influencer, I realized that most books published these days -- or perhaps it's only those that are successful -- have a very similar structure. They're structured around six key concepts or success strategies. Case Studies (examples) are used throughout and each core case is referred to multiple times, across chapters.

The Curse of Knowledge

2008-06-11T04:55:00.008-04:00

Timing is everything. Had I been reading "Made to Stick" six months ago, I would probably not be reacting to it the way I am now. "Made to Stick" is about what distinguishes a sticky idea from an unsticky one. The concept of stickiness had already been discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point," and I found the two books to be highly related and equally insightful.

There are lots of interesting insights in "Made to Stick" but I am going to focus here on what they refer to as the "curse of knowledge." The idea is that once you know something, it is quite impossible to imagine not knowing it. Good teachers know how to do it but most of us have some difficulty in explaining what we know to others simply because we tend to assume that the other person knows/ understands certain things when they in fact do not.

[This is clearly going to be an ongoing issue, very related to my last post.]

I took a position a month ago with NASA. It's a knowledge management position and I'm not expected to turn into a scientist or engineer any time soon. I expect, however, that to be effective in my position, I do need to have some understanding of the core concepts, methodologies and processes that define how NASA does business.

Yet I am confronted almost daily with highly skilled technical professionals who speak an alien language. When they used words like risk management, reliability, systems engineering, safety, --- not to mention the millions of acronyms thrown around -- there is a strong assumption that everyone in the room has a common understanding of what these terms refer to.

Let's take the word "sustainability" as an example. Coming from a "development background" -- a term which incidentally would mean nothing to someone working at NASA or would be misunderstood as having something to do with engineering design or software development -- the term "sustainability" means a whole bunch of things and can't easily be separated from the developing country / development project context I have always associated it with. Of course, for an environmentalist, the term "sustainability" conjures a whole different set of images. So, when a NASA engineer talks about sustainability, how can I unlearn what it has always meant to me?

I'm told that risk management and knowledge management are closely related. Obviously I'm going to have to figure out what risk management is all about because that's not a prevalent concept in international development work. I had come across the concept when exploring project management methodology, especially project management around IT projects but the international development community doesn't talk about risks.

I was a monitoring and evaluation specialist in my previous position. That doesn't mean anything to a NASA scientist or engineer, so I have to try to figure out what the closest equivalent is in their world. It turns out that it might be the risk manager. The risk manager identifies and analyzes risks, transforms risk information into planning decisions, tracks risks, controls risks and communicates and documents risks. The monitoring and evaluation specialist translates project objectives and activities into indicators, identifies approaches for collecting data for these indicators and plans activities to monitor progress towards the achievement of project goals, and at the end of the project, helps determine the extent to which project objectives were achieved. Both the risk manager and the monitoring and evaluation specialist are focusing on following the project life cycle to ensure that the project stays on track, avoids possible obstacles, and achieves its objectives. One focuses on identifying and avoiding obstacles, the other focuses on documenting the extent to which the project is making progress. One is proactive, the other is reactive. Is the glass half full or half empty? When you are dealing with very high risk and high cost projects, then perhaps it makes sense to focus on minimizing risks.

The Importance of Context, First and Second Readings

2008-05-14T05:49:00.006-04:00

In his blog, Knowledge Jolt with Jack, Jack Vinson wrote "I was reading something today that just clicked for me. Context provides a frame of reference to what you are reading or hearing. The better I understand the particular frame of reference (context), the better I can understand what this information or knowledge means." (Knowledge Jolt with Jack, May 12, 2008)

I had a similar thought this week, only slightly reversed. I didn't read something and realized how much it suddenly made sense. I read something and realized that I wasn't getting as much out of it as I would have hoped to.

Being in a new job, with a new organization and now working with individuals in technical fields that are totally new to me, I am coming across written materials that are difficult for me to absorb. I don't think I need to acquire a degree in these technical fields in order to understand the materials but I suspect that I need extended intensive exposure to these materials and the people who write them in order to start truly understanding. Right now I understand them on a very superficial level. I'm missing at least 50% of the meaning they are intended to convey.

Related thoughts
1. Whatever I am reading now and not fully understanding, I should read again in six month or a year to "get" more of it because by then I will have a greater understanding of the context.

2. When writing a technical document, keep in mind that audiences with different levels of contextual knowledge will be reading it. For example, someone who hasn't been breathing and living development literature would probably not get a full understanding of a discussion around "sustainability" because so much contextual knowledge would be assumed rather than clearly articulated.

3. At times, even within our own field of expertise, it is useful to reread a text after a few years. Experience acquired in between the two readings of the same text will influence how we understand the text and how we are able to make connections based on these recent experiences.

4. My daughter's teacher thinks that making the kids reread a short text 15 to 20 times (once a day for a couple of weeks) increases their comprehension -- and fluency. That may be but it sure irritates me and it gets really boring for my daughter!!

Rapid Onboarding

2008-05-11T06:41:00.005-04:00

What I've been referring to as my rapid transitioning plan is apparently referred to as "rapid onboarding" by some employers and human resources departments. Wikipedia offers the beginning of a definition of onboarding:

"Onboarding is the process of integrating a new or a newly-promoted leader or associate into an organization or role. Onboarding begins when the leader accepts the position; it includes orientation, and extends through about month six, and sometimes up to one year, depending on the organization. Best practices for a world-class onboarding process include building knowledge, key relationships and providing feedback for the new or promoted leaders."

Three tips that apply equally well to the new employee and the employer:
- Avoid information dump (be strategic about what to focus on)
- Focus on introductions and networking
- Carefully select initial projects

A couple of related resources:

Don't Wait: Start Your New Job Now
Abstract: "Given the frequency of role changes today, managers must have their own fast-start strategy at the ready before transitioning into a new job. The most successful of these strategies combines reconnaissance on both business and cultural issues through face-to-face meetings with colleagues and customers and through plenty of independent research. Learn how sizing up your new role ahead of time can help you do more than hit the ground running."

Getting New Hires up to Speed Quickly
Abstract: "How do managers and companies quickly transform new hires into productive employees, a process called "rapid on-boarding"? The authors contend that companies that are more successful at rapid on-boarding tend to use a relational approach, helping newcomers to rapidly establish a broad network of relationships with coworkers that they can tap to obtain the information they need to become productive. Most organizations realize the importance of integrating new employees, but many fail in this regard, often because of five pervasive myths about the process: (1) the best newcomers can fend for themselves, (2) a massive information dump allows newcomers to obtain what they need, (3) cursory introductions are all that's needed, (4) first assignments should be small, compact and quickly achievable, and (5) mentors are best for getting newcomers integrated. Because of those misconceptions, managers will frequently rely on certain taken-for-granted practices that can actually hinder new employees from becoming productive."

There is probably a way to put a bigger knowledge management spin on this onboarding approach. In essence, what the new employee needs to do is a rapid knowledge audit and knowledge gap analysis to be able to focus on key knowledge areas essential to start contributing to the company/organization's mission. The employer is in a great position to help connect the new employee with the organization's knowledge bases (people, physical knowledge databases, etc...), but the employee is in the best position to identify his/her own weaknesses and knowledge gaps in terms of knowledge needed to do the work.

While most of the literature I came across was looking at the issue from the perspective of the employer and what the employer should do to accelerate onboarding, there should be more about how individual employees might want to take charge of their own onboarding -- especially if the company doesn't have a strong employee orientation or onboarding program. What I did find on this topic tends to focus on the highest levels of management and "how to take charge" rather than the average employee who might be more interested in "how do I become a productive member of the team."

Transition Acceleration Plan - Initial Adjustments

2008-05-10T07:17:00.004-04:00

I'm now a full week into my new job. I'm still in the process of defining my role and describing what I will be doing but here's a first attempt: I work with the Chief Knowledge Officer and other OCKO (Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer) team members at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to "maintain and expand knowledge management practices within Goddard." There is a set of six knowledge management practices that the OCKO focuses on so that the mandate of the office is relatively well defined.

My initial transition acceleration plan is a 100-day plan which involved a combination of learning and doing.

Learning
- Who is who? Who does what?
- How do I go about doing X, Y, and Z?
- What does Goddard do? (history, current, future)
- What does the OCKO do? (history, current, future)

Doing
I don't have a detailed workplan yet. I didn't expect to have one drawn out by the end of the first week. However, I already have a much better sense of what needs to be done and what the existing team has been doing.

My first inter-related steps include the following:
1) Practicing my "story": What am I doing here? How do I contribute? How do I fit in?; and
2) Getting invited to accompany team members to any meetings I can in order to be introduced to as many people as possible and immediately start building my own network based on the team's existing relationships.

I have a specific idea for a more substantive 100-day project. It hasn't been flushed out yet but from my perspective it would be very useful to undertake a rapid knowledge management audit. I don't want to be doing an extensive audit of knowledge but rather develop an inventory of ongoing knowledge management related activities. For example, there is a main library and then project-specific libraries. There are multiple training and related capacity building events developed across the Center. How can the activities of the Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer complement and leverage ongoing knowledge management related activities sponsored by various parts of the organization?

Week 1 lesson learned: It's fine for me to get a clearer understanding of what my role is going to be but it's as important for other members of the team to share the same understanding.

From Exit Interview to Transition Acceleration Plan

2008-04-28T10:03:00.007-04:00

In my last couple of weeks at AED I was trying to think about what I could do to make the job of my successor as easy as possible and in the process, wondering about organizational memory and what happens more generally when people leave an organization. The reverse, what happens when people enter a new organization and need to be brought up to speed is also of interest to me at the moment since I will be transitioning into a position in a new organization.

I see huge potential both for knowledge loss and new learning opportunities. The losses seem to be concentrated with the organization left behind and the new opportunities primarily with the departing employee. Clearly, it takes a while for a new employee to be fully on-board and able to contribute, so there is an investment on the part of the hiring organization. At the same time, the new employee is potentially a source of very valuable knowledge. The new employee's questions, reflections, and analysis of the new situation they are thrown into can provide clues related to the organization's operations that are invisible to those working within it and can provide clues related to how the organization is perceived by outsiders. In other words, could a fresh pair of eyes be useful to the new employer? If so, how can this be leveraged efficiently?

Exit Interview
A traditional exit interview is conducted by the human resources department and is focused on issues related to employee satisfaction and supervisors. Sometimes, it also provides an opportunity for the employee to reflect on the job and offer helpful advice. The objective of such interviews is clearly to help identify potential problems and reduce employeed turnover. However, it has very little to do with trying to retain the employee's knowledge. For these types of exit interviews, it doesn't really matter if they are conducted on the last day of employment.

For long-time employees going into retirement, there are other approaches which can ensure that as much as possible of the retiring employee's knowledge is retained within the organization. That doesn't address the knowledge loss resulting from the changing nature of the workforce and the fact that younger generations don't expect to be working for the same employer for more than a few years and therefore may have more self-centered learning and knowledge strategies of their own.

My questions during my last couple of weeks of employment centered around relatively short-term issues:
- How will my successor and former colleagues find my files?
- What files do I leave and what do I take with me?
- For those projects that need to go on without me, how can I make it easy for those taking over to do so without wasting time and energy reinventing the wheel?
- How do I transfer important communication trails (emails) so that they do not disappear with my email account? Who do I transfer them to?
In the end, I didn't have much guidance on any of these issues and I made up my own answers.

Transition Acceleration Plan
Now that this exiting process is completed, I can start focusing on what happens when entering a new organization. It's probably impossible not to start thinking about that earlier -- at least once you've officially accepted a job. Based on past experience, I can say that getting to understand how things work, how things are done within an organization, can be a lengthy process. My goal in the coming months is going to figure out how to accelerate the process. Ideally, I would want to minimize the transition period -- the period of time during which I am absorbing knowledge -- being a sponge -- and contributing very little value. Perhaps I'll call it my transition acceleration plan. And perhaps a pair of fresh eyes can contribute value early on precisely because I don't know how things are done and I should be asking questions.

Some of these reflections were inspired by my recent reading of"Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory," by Peter Stoyko and Yulin Fang for the Canada Public School Service (2007).

Moving on....

2008-04-26T04:41:00.008-04:00

Yesterday was my last day working at AED. I worked with AED for a little less than four years.

* rewarding -- most of the time :)-- as in "Wow... I can see how that has an impact on development."

* a great learning experience -- as in "That worked well, let's make sure to do it again this way," or "That flopped... let's not do it again," and "How did I not see that before...".

* challenging -- as in "that really pushed me to learn or do something I didn't know I could do" and "What on earth are we doing? This doesn't make any sense to me....".

In the process of reflecting on these past few years and looking ahead, I want to be able to remember as much as possible of the work I did, the relationships, the people. Below is a little collage representing the last few years at AED. Some of it would have meaning only to me but that's the idea.... The next time I have to go to an interview and I have to explain what I did at AED, I'd rather look at this collage to bring up memories than look at a few lines on my CV.

Barbara Fillip's Knowledge Management Blog

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About Knowledge Management Plans and Strategic KM

So, here's the real question for me: Do you try to create a KM requirement and then go about enforcing it, or do you work with project teams to create and implement a plan because they've come to believe in the value of KM activities embedded in the plan?

Why KM Plans (January 24, 2011), Nick Milton in Knoco Stories - From the Knowledge Management Front Line

"One of the push-backs we often get when we introduce KM plans is “why do we need a plan? Any good engineer will naturally do all the learning they need; surely a KM plan or learning plan is just added work for no added value?”

Knowledge management Plans, Knoco.com

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Are You Wasting Money on Useless Knowledge Management?, January 20th, Harvard Business Review, by Ian MacMillan, Max Boisot, and Martin Ihri.

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