Defining ... Some Thoughts

This seems to be the season for fundamental re-thinks. It began with Dave Snowden's post about alternative to CKO, which delved into the relationship between business units and KM. I had published a poll about the same topic (which is open till 10th October), and blogged about Dave's thoughts. And something i have been thinking about for a few days (the reason i havent been able to blog about this earlier is simply laziness) ... how could one define KM. And came across this post by Dave Snowden, defining KM, which i think is a very good description of what KM should be doing in an organization.
I think the definition Dave gives describes KM quite well:

The purpose of Knowledge Management is to provide support for improved decision-making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring program.

Improved decision-making ... this is something which was promised by information systems more than a decade back. Though decisions did improve, there is still the possibility of decision-making being more improved. How, one may ask. Till now, the paradigm of decision-making hasnt considered that decision-making is not a perfectly rational process. In other words, decisions arent always made on perfectly rational assumptions, or on information available, and that, even if theoretically, all possible information were available (which it cant), there would still be that factor x which is not totally definable, and which cannot be externalized, which influences decision-making. Could we call this tacit knowledge? Probably. Could we call this experience? Maybe. No matter what we call this, this remains the major aspect of Knowledge Management.

Add to this the aspect that it is not usually possible for everyone to have access to all possible information required to make a decision. Not only is this because of systemic constraints, but also because there is usually no single definition about what information is relevant, or required, for making a decision. In some scenarios there is, but not in all. Given this, one aspect of KM is also to get people connected with sources of knowledge, whether repositories, or people, and to get them access to knowledge, whether directly or indirectly, which may be relevant for decision-making. This is the essential value-proposition for tools like social networking.

Another aspect which Dave mentioned is about the positioning of KM in the organization. The essence is that at a centralized level, KM needs to be synchronized with the strategic imperatives of the organization, while implementation should be done at localized level. Implementation of KM initiatives should be within the context of the localized business requirements. This has a number of benefits. One, this ensures that while overall KM is aligned with strategic requirements, at the point of implementation, KM is aligned with specifics of business requirements. Two, this also creates a level of ownership for  KM initiatives among business units. Three, it is easier to measure the impact of KM initiatives in highly localized context, where it is easy to define the way KM can impact the business, rather than at a generic level.

Knowledge Management Team ...

There is a wonderful post by Dave Snowden discussing alternatives to CKO. I would put this post as one of those which is a must-read for anyone who has some interest in the realm of Knowledge Management. This is because the post gives a very clear picture of the way a KM team should be structured, and what should be some aspects of the role of a CKO in the organization.

I agree with Dave that with the current model, of having a CKO as being distinct from the "business units" or LoBs in the organization, KM is seen as being something which needs to be done by someone else. This is one of the reasons why KM initiatives in a lot of organizations face a scenario of low engagement with business units. Unless we can come up with a scenario where KM is not seen as being something has to be done by someone else, this seems as though it would continue. KM, in other words, needs to be the responsibility of everyone. However, an important part of this is that KM must be relevant. KM today is seen as a set of practices, and platforms which can be used by everyone in the organization uniformly. This is where i believe there must be a change. That different people in the organization need KM to solve different problems, that different people would engage with KM in different ways and scenarios, and that different people need different things from KM is something which needs to be understood well. If KM is something additional which needs to be "done", probability is that it wont get "done". Which means that KM needs to be more and more a part of the day-to-day work of people. In other words, we need to look at a scenario where KM practices are integrated with the business processes in the organization, as i have written before (and still looking for inptus, folks).

Another important thing that Dave says is that central support is a must-have, though it should not be the driving factor, but rather, the supporting the factor in KM initiatives. The way i look at it, the KM initiatives should be driven by the business units, with some form of support which comes from a centralized KM function, which can leverage their expertise at KM initiatives to support the KM initiatives being run by business units. This will ensure that the KM initiatives are synchronized with the business needs of the business unit, while at the same time, ensuring that the business units own the KM initiatives. A small example ... When you are talking to a team to introduce the KM portal to them, are you able to introduce the portal as a KM portal, or as their portal, which, by the way, is hosted by KM, being the facilitator. What this means, i believe, is that the KM function in the organization should look at a form of a federated structure, with a central KM team, which are the facilitators, or rather, i would look at them as being consultants, who are also facilitators, supporting the KM initiatives decided and run by business units, with their own KM teams.

Dave also says that the role of the CKO should not be rotating role, with people from the different functions and business units taking up this role for a period of time. This would ensure that there is no drying up of new ideas to take KM to the next level, and also that the KM initiatives are synchronized with business needs. Another way, though, i feel, could be to create a clear distinction between the ownership for KM initiatives, and the facilitation for these KM initiatives. If the CKO should be someone from business units, then the career path for people who are part of the central KM team seems to lead to the bogs. On the other hand, if you have a dedicated, full-time CKO, and he happens to be a CKO 1.0 (please pardon the pun), then that, probably, is the surest way of taking your KM initiatives downhill. A large number of organizations, for example, have CKO's who dont really appreciate the power of web 2.0 in knowledge-sharing, and this is a sure way of getting the KM initiatives going the way i mentioned before.

In a nutshell, KM should be a two-tiered structure, with a central, support team, and a business unit-owned team, which actually formulates, and drives the KM strategy, and the resultant initiatives. While on this topic, please look to the right of the screen, and right below the beautiful picture of the Victoria Memorial, please do take a moment and post your opinion on the poll i have posted (isnt this the season for KM team structure?).

Big KM ...

There is a rather interesting post by Patti Anklam about three forms of KM ... i am looking forward to the post about little KM, but at the moment, thought i would blog about this post. For a few reasons. First, this post is a wonderful way of introducing the subject of KM to someone who maybe has not interacted with the formal structures of KM as a practitioner. In addition, it describes well the possibilities which are available to us with a KM toolkit. Which is why i would recommend this post.

In addition to that, one aspect that Patti brings out:

Set of services provided by or through a central KM organization to business units.

This describes the scenario quite well. At the same time, one thing to see from here is that in most organizations (the ones i have interacted with), KM is seen as an external entity. This is something which someone from corporate has decided must be "done", so they ask folks to fill out some templates and upload them on portals. Are they useful? How does that matter? Does anyone use them? Again, how does that matter? While a consultative approach may be helpful (something Patti mentions), i feel that the important challenge we as a community of Knowledge Managers face is to understand that KM is a wonderful thing, but that KM is a tool which is part of the managers toolkit for solving business problems, and for meeting some requirements. Once we look at this, its easy to derive that the positioning of KM must as a solution to meet specific requirements, not as an additional activity which needs to be done. Rather, you may find that not using the term KM, but rather, terming and positioning it in terms the business users understand, and can relate to, is an important aspect of selling the ideas of KM, leading to larger adoption.

Another aspect that needs to be looked at ... what is the impact of having KM as an external entity, vis a vis having KM as a part of the business units themselves. While i dont have much experience of the latter, one way to look at this could be to position KM as a part of the business unit, for operational perspective, while at the strategy/planning level, this could be something which could be centralized (with inputs from business units), because while a KM strategy must be synchronized with corporate requirements, the implementation of this strategy must be aligned to the business requirements of business units, because at the business units is where KM is actually going to find engagement, and create value. And since in different business scenarios KM could deliver value in different ways, the implementation of the strategy could be something which could be worked out by a KM team within the business units. If you would like to share a thought, or an experience you have come across, please do comment.

Are We On The Right Track?

There is a post written by Luis Suarez about whether the way we are describing Social Computing, and Enterprise 2.0 is the right way, and if it is, whether it is surprising that results are not as quick in coming as one would like them to be. So this post is a little late, and i had thought of writing this last week, but knowing me, you wouldnt be surprised. The question Luis is raising is whether change would be happening anytime soon:

Maybe we are just planting the seed for that change to take place in 20, 30 or 50 years from now!

Or maybe it just wont? Maybe the change that we are talking about would be in a form quite different from the change that we are working towards. More about that, though ...

The way i look at the idea of change being too slow, i dont think this is surprising. The way i look at this change, its quite similar, in terms of magnitude, to the change from the individual mode of production to the industrial mode of production, and this didnt happen in a day. Sure, it probably took much less time than we would expect similar change to take now (after all, we are living in a world where the speed of change is increasing with every passing day). The change that we are talking about is not so much about the technology, or about people for that matter, as it is about the form, or structure of mode of production, both in terms of the processes which are required to create value, as well as the nature of the work, and the interrelations between different participants in these processes, whether individuals, or organizations. In other words, this change is about the way people interact with each other, both as individuals, as well as participants in the value-creation process, though i believe, its much more the former than the latter, unless you believe that human beings are a logical species, which, being a logical person yourself, you wouldnt subscribe to. This change is about the changing roles of participants in the value-creation process, which brings along with it changes in the decision-making structures of the organization. If you look at it carefully, the earlier transformation, to the organizational mode of production, saw movement of decision-making from the many to the few, and the change we are talking about today, is about movement the other way round.

Coming back to the question of why the change we are looking for, may not exactly be the way we are thinking it would be. As i have written before, looking at a community-based model of the organization replacing the model of the organization we have today may not be a bright idea. This is simply because an organization needs to drive in a particular direction, and for the organization to do so, the parts of the organization must be synchronized with each other, rather than pulling in different directions. Which is why, to bring coherence in the direction that communities take (assuming that at some point in the future, communities are a normal occurence in organizations), hierarchies would play a role. This may mean that the change that we could see may be somewhere between the community and hierarchy way of looking at the organization. Any thoughts on this, please leave a comment.

Getting Web 2.0 To Work

Before you get any ideas, let me tell you that the title of this post has nothing to do with any kind of magic potion which can get you to get web 2.0 to work. Though, if there was such a potion, i am not sure how many folks would queue up to get-a-fix! this post is titled around a McKinsey article which looks at the reasons which executives say are the major hindrances to adoption of web 2.0, and six ways they think could get web 2.0 to work.

The six ways they have come up with to get web 2.0 to work, you can read for yourself (you will need to register), what i am writing about here is what the report has come up with, about the impediments to web 2.0 adoption. There are three reasons which executives think impede adoption:

• Organization structure
• Inability of managers to understand the levers of change
• Lack of understanding of how value is created

If the organization structure is an impediment to adoption of web 2.0, thats probably to be expected. This could be because web 2.0 tools are not compatible with the organization structures as we see them today. In other words, web 2.0 tools are a way to driving the move towards Enterpriser 2.0 (i still believe Enterprise 2.0 is about organization structure and the nature of interactions that generate value in organizations).

Looking at the other two points ... one is that managers dont understand the levers of change. The question this raises is, what are these levers? Maybe theres only one lever ... that is that of distributed decision-making. In other words, greater role for people across the organization in the decision-making process. What is important to understand here is that the important aspect about web 2.0 is that value cannot be defined for them. Its very difficult for anyone to attach a monetary figure to their adoption, and say that with a particular level of adoption, this is the level of value which is delivered. While its intuitive that web 2.0 tools bring value, this is not too easy to demonstrate.

The point about there being only one lever is something i have (almost) written about before, here and here. Till a few years back, there was an implicit relation people built between expertsie and grey hair. This no longer happens. This is something i talk about when i am making a presentation about Knowledge Management. Since i look at Expertise Location as an important part of Knowledge Management, i try to tell people that you can be an expert even if you dont have a single white hair (or have all the hair on your head intact). This is the lever which i feel is important for managers to understand. When looking at the lack of understanding of how value is created, as i mentioned, this is something which is quite difficult to demonstrate, but as i have written before, if we try to bring this into the context of a specific business process, rather than a context which is generic, this is something which can be understood.

More Enterprise 2.0 ...

There have been quite a few blogs written around what Enterprise 2.0 is over the last few days. One of the blogs which brings together thoughts from a number of blogs has been posted by Paula Thornton. There is quite a wide view of Enterprise 2.0 which you get from here. Though, more people think that theres something to look at with Enterprise 2.0, there are people who also believe that this is nothing much more than the flavour of the week/month/year ... or thoughts on similar lines.

What comes from here is that Enterprise 2.0 seems to be connected to the technology, to larger or lesser extents by different people. Which probably misses the point. One important thing about Enterprise 2.0, the way i see it, is that this is about the form of the organization in a scenario which has more participation and collaboration from across the organization than we see today. What is important to see is the implication this could have for the organization (at least in theory, because probably this would not be something which would come around, or not anytime soon, but more about that later). The implication is the inclusivity of decision-making within the organization. Again, there have been discussions about how this will impact hierarchies in organizations, and while some believe that hierarchies will disappear, i dont think so, as i have written before. This is the aspect of Enterprise 2.0 (or, the interaction between communities and hierarchy that would probably occur in organizations, and the resultant form the organizational structure would take) that doesnt come out of the discussion.

One of the interesting reactions which Paula mentions is from this post:

Enterprise 2.0’s true potential is to facilitate a paradigm shift that fundamentally changes operating models and leverages the existing reality of work.

Probably the change wont be as huge as had been anticipated earlier, what we can be reasonable certain of is that change is there, and this would be seen going forward, too, though the exact shape is something which we cant be sure of now, not just because this would depend on the interactions between communities and hierarchies, but also because the extent of change would also vary from organization to organziation.

Another interesting idea that comes out is that of emergence, which comes from this post. The idea being that as people discuss things as part of a community, through this conversation, things emerge. Whether these are new products, new markets, strategies, etc., these arise from the minds of people, and emerge through conversations. And this process is enabled by Web 2.0 tools (though these tools are not the organization, which is where the difference between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 comes).

From here, it can be seen that Enterprise 2.0 is about the form and functioning of organizations. To what measure this will come through is something we will need to see, as we have already discussed. Any thoughts, please do post comments.

Technology And People ...

I am reading an interesting book ... One named Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. OK, so i am a little later, but even so, i think some of the ideas put in the book are still relevant almost 25 years after the book was first published. This post that I am writing is about a statement in the book:

Technology can be imported at low cost an with a minimum of cultural risk. Institutions, by contrast, need cultural roots to grow and to prosper.

Now, while this is being written in the context of Japan, and how Japan, in the 19th century, consciously took the route of importing technology, while creating the social institutions locally, this concept can be looked at further, to see whether this is relevant to organizations, and if it is, how it can impact organizations.

To begin with, this idea seems to be as though it is relevant in the context of organizations, too. Technology is straight-forward. Technology works the same way, gives the same output independant of the scenario around it (well, some of us who work as consultants, or with customer support may not agree, but more or less ...). On the other hand, people dont necessarily. Which means that technology, being culture neutral, can be brought into the organization easily, while adapting the culture of the organziation to the cultural framework that is inherent to quite a few new technologies, is a different thing altogether. For example, ERP brought the paradigm of business processes cutting across departments (breaking down silos, that was the idea), while Web 2.0 tools are bringing in the next wave of bringing down silos (which only means that silos didnt really go away, they just metamorphosed to a point where they werent looking like silos).

The question this raises, then, is whether the technology tools which the organization adopts should be compatible with the predominant cultural scenario of the organization, or whether the point of introduction of new technology is leveraged to try and drive the cultural context of the organization to a different direction (remember package-enabled reengineering?).

I dont think there is an answer which would answer this question for all. But the point is, the compatibility must be there. And this is something we looking at this from the KM perspective must also bring to the equation, especially with Web 2.0 technologies, because the paradigm of these tools is quite different from the earlier paradigms of organization structure. True, ERPs also created a different paradigm, which has changed the way organziations work over the last decade or so, but this was around business processes, not about people. Web 2.0 tools, on the other hand, are bringing a change which is oriented towards people, and the interactions between people, which impacts dynamics of interactions between people at the organizational level, with the blending of communities and hierarchy, as i have written before, here and here, which means that the compatibility between technology and culture is more important with these tools.

Further Enterprise 2.0

If you thought the previous post ended abruptly, that was because i was going to continue to write on the topic. One thing that comes out, i think, is that communities have a role to play in organizations, but they wont bring down the hierarchical structure of the organization. Rather, communities would continue to blend with the hierarchies of organizations, while at the same time, deliver value within that context. One way of looking at it is that communities may align with the way the organization delivers value to the customer, contributing to the value creation process. Whether this be product development, marketing, sales, production, communities could be aligned to this. This is because, as i wrote in the previous post, business processes align the efforts of different parts of the organization to the objective, and hence, if communities are to deliver value, they would need to be aligned.

Dion Hinchcliffe writes in his post about social business:

Dozens of Fortune 500 companies are formally using Enterprise 2.0 tools today and are not reporting this. They are however reporting better productivity, improved communications, the ability to find information, and cost reductions. But not the collapse of corporate structure. What is true is that additional lines of communication are opened including channels to weak ties and other broader influences. The traditional org chart, never a very good measure of what people actually do at work other than identifying who does their performance reviews, is being augmented by the social graph, not replaced.

This is the point i am trying to make. That communities would blend with corporate hierarchies, in a way that the organization as a whole can leverage communities for achieving something. Probably the idea that communities are a tool which can be leveraged by organizations to solve business problems needs to be considered? Please do post your comments ...

My Two Bits

Over the last few days, there is a lot of discussion around Enterprise 2.0, started off by the post by Dennis Howlett, where he things Enterprise 2.0 is a crock. Andrew McAfee blogged about what he thinks about this. What are they saying?

Dennis believes:

Like it or not, large enterprises - the big name brands - have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can’t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense. Therein lies the Big Lie. Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all.

Andrew writes that:

I believe that over time companies that don’t use them will fall behind those that do, but how far behind, and over what time frame? Not that far, that fast.

He goes on to give examples of how some of these tools can be used to solve specific business problems.

However, the point that we probably need to think about is that the way for organizations could be somewhere between these two. True, people dont have the time for web 2.0 or any other term. But, are there better ways of achieving things than the way they are done now? There probably are. On the other hand, are hierarchies so bad? Not necessarily. Its what you do with them that probably builds or takes away value from these. There would be, in organizations, a mix of hierarchy and community which would co-exist because this is probably the model which would bring value, as also take care of some of the things which communities throw up which organizations cant manage. For example, lets not assume that communities are so self-driven that there is going to be no need for someone to define your objectives, and do a performance appraisal. True, appraisal systems could have a community component which defines how well you can create value by being part of a community, but this would, probably, be the way these two viewpoints would merge, if they do.

Lets look at this in a simple way. Maybe this is oversimplification, but it illustrates. If communities were to be the cornerstone of the business world, the organization would either yield to communities (dont think thats probable), or becomes a loose gathering of communities. Let us keep in mind that with the latter, the communities would need to be in synch with each other, and not pull in oposite directions. How would that happen, if there were not going to be any hierarchy? Today, this is achieved by business processes, which are brought together by some form of hierarchy. To look at it another way, even commuities have hierarchies. You find some people emerging to lead a community, and this may or may not be based on the hierarchy of the organization.