A Compound of Alchymie

Knowledge Worker Handbook

I'm attending the fringe event at this year's Knowledge, Content and Collaboration (KCC) conference in Amsterdam (formerly KM Europe) and have through Knowledge Board submitted a couple of ideas for sessions. One is to run a knowledge business simulation with some of my colleagues at EKG, the other is to assist Piers Young (Templeton College, Oxford) with a session on developing the outline for a knowledge worker's handook. This ties in nicely with my current (but very slow moving) book project - effectively a guide for smartworkers - which in my view are simply knowledge workers who are trying to be more effective - 'working smarter not harder'. I'm looking forward to the fringe event already - promises t0 be a little different from the usual conference machine. See you there? I know some great places to eat in Amsterdam!

Knowledge Work and Process Work

I'm a knowledge worker: there is a high probability you are too. But what is knowledge work? How does it differ from other work? What do we call work that isn't knowledge work? I've been thinking about this a lot recently since it's a key aspect of my interest in what I call smartworking - effectively techniques and approaches that help knowledge workers be more effective. The old blue-collar and white-collar division of work is clearly outdated but are knowledge workers a sub-set of white collar workers? Are there any blue-collar knowledge workers? I've been using the term process workers to identify white-collar work that is process driven - basically if your work is driven by some machine like process, and you have little control over that process your autonomy is limited - and so therefore is your capacity to use your knowledge. The modern day call centre is probably a good place to see process work. Process work can be measured and managed by tracking activity but knowledge work can't - that's why measuring activity for knowledge workers (e.g. how much time they spend working on a report for example) is flawed. For knowledge work you need to measure outcomes. Throw away the timesheet - get your head around the output instead. The trouble is this can often be hard to do - especially as knowledge work is so qualitative.

Some types of work are difficult to categorise - what about nurses - clearly they are highly qualified and very knowledgeable but are they knowledge workers or process workers - or do they fall into some other category?

For me, one of the key aspects of knowledge work is self-management. OK, you may have a boss or a manager but they simply allocate tasks - it's up to you to manage when and how a task gets done, and to juggle conflicting demands upon your time (knowledge workers are always trying new approaches to time management). Of course we struggle to do this effectively - even after reading Covey's Seven Habits, which is why I enjoyed the following cartoon (from www.phdcomics.com) - click on it to see it full size (and readable):

Human Capital Wars

Microsoft hates Google apparently. Why? Probably because the upstart technology company is rocking the boat. Google is investing a lot of cash in developing the technology of the future and Microsoft is clearly rattled. Google are even developing an operating system - albeit a very different one. The following comes from Jason Kottke:

"They have this huge map of the Web and are aware of how people move around in the virtual space it represents. They have the perfect place to store this map (one of the world's largest computers that's all but incapable of crashing). And they are clever at reading this map. Google knows what people write about, what they search for, what they shop for, they know who wants to advertise and how effective those advertisements are, and they're about to know how we communicate with friends and loved ones. What can they do with all that? Just about anything that a collection of Ph.Ds can dream up."

Clearly Microsoft won't just sit idly around while Google are working towards world domination but one of their immediate short term concerns is the fact that Google are attracting some of the best people in the technology buisness. Worse still, some of those people are Microsoft employees. Microsoft is pursuing variety of law suits as a spoiling tactic - relying primarily on employee contractual agreements not to work for competitors within a specified time period (often 12 months).

According to Paul Saffo a Silicon Valley technology commentator:

''Google and Microsoft are locked in a brain race to see who can hire the biggest brains on the planet."

This war for  human capital is a feature of our knowledge economy. No matter how many knowledge bases or KM tools we put in place the really valuable knowledge will continue to reside in people's heads. When I talk to clients about KM and intellectual capital I sometimes ask them the following question:

What damage would be done to your business if the five most knowledgeable people left today?

Some businesses struggle to actually identify these five people - though in practice it isn't as difficult as they think. A friend of mine is a 'recruitment research consultant' and he is an expert at identifying who knows what - then tempting them to jump ship and work for the competition. Identifying the knowledge 'hotspots' in your business isn't that difficult - and if you don't do it then the chances are your competion might do it for you - and as they say;  'You never know how valuable someone is until they've gone'.

Knowledge, Information and Data

While doing some research with my son today - we were checking out the syallabus for ICT and Computing at 'A' Level - I discovered that if you follow the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) ICT Syllabus the very first thing you will learn is the difference between knowledge, information and data. That's interesting - the very thing that usually causes such debate amongst KM people doesn't seem to be an issue for 17 year olds. Sadly I haven't been able to track down exactly what AQA think the differences are  - maybe I should set myself this as a homework task?

I've introduced a new feature in this entry - the timeline. This links the entry with events in the wider world and effectively acts as a memory cue which is more powerful than a simple date - 21st July 1969 or Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon? I won't link every entry to the timeline - just enough to create a useful historical trail. A timeline view might even be an interesting way to index a weblog (along the lines of Outlook's little used timeline view).

Timeline: The US is still struggling to deal effectively with the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. Oil prices are sky high.  England prepare to battle for the Ashes with Australia in the final test.

Macro and Micro KM

My brother is a development economist - an LSE graduate that has spent his entire working life working on aid projects in Africa,  Asia and South America. In the aid and development business KM  has become a key issue but it's something that isn't well understood.  Did I have a good beginner's guide to KM my brother asked. Good question I thought, so I put together some stuff for him and also recommended 'The Idiots' Guide to Knowledge Management' by Melissie Clemmons Rumizen. In my quick 'beginner's guide' I used the terms 'Macro KM' and 'Micro KM' and thought that this was a useful way to separate big picture and small picture KM.

If you follow my thinking KM has two strands – the macro strand that sees knowledge as a strategic organisational issue, and the micro strand which sees knowledge more as a resource (among many) that simply has to be used more effectively.

Macro KM  sees the big picture and is more concerned with leveraging the value of knowledge than managing it. This approach now largely comes under the banner of intellectual capital and is based on the work of Sveiby, Edvinsson et al. For many organisations however this approach is too vague (and probably too strategic) to take seriously but in my view it’s critical in helping to explore the real (and sustainable) value of knowledge.

Micro KM is the KM that most people know about and have probably experienced. It rests on the simple premise that things could be much better around here if we only shared our knowledge more effectively. Easier said than done, but 90% of KM programmes attempt to tackle this issue and are effectively tactically rather than strategically driven.

Does your KM programme fall into the macro or micro camp? I've described them as 'strands' purposely to suggest that any KM approach should be doing both. Even when I work with clients on micro KM projects I also try to create a macro strand becuse ultimately if you don't get the big picture all micro KM projects will ultimately wither and die.

Knowledge Really is Power

I stumbled across a great book in one of those discount bookshops recently. It's called 'Information Feudalism - Who owns the knowledge economy?' by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite.  It looks at how corporations supported by rich economies are influencing intellectual property rules in the pursuit of even greater profits. Clearly corporations need to see a return on their investments in intellectual capital and locking up knowledge in intellectual property such as patents appears to be acceptable behaviour. However the book's authors make a compelling argument that this often goes too far and that knowledge is effectively being locked-up at the expense of much of the developing world. It's an interesting read, and charts the history of intellectual property strategies right up to today's World Trade Organisation's involvement. A short excerpt below:

"The basic strategy of the players in the knowledge game came to this. Their laboratories would produce knowledge that would be developed into products, for which their legal divisions would secure an impregnable patent position. Use was also made of trade marks, trade secret law and copyright. The quest for knowledge was really the quest for monopoly. Competition could be kept out or made to pay high royalties, depending upon the way the numbers panned out. Alternatively, intellectual property rightsand licenses could be used to structure a global knowledge cartel. "

Knowledge really is power - but then we always knew that.

KM and Learning

Is KM linked with  your learning strategy?

The purpose of training and development in organisations is to enhance performance - initially of individuals but ultimately of the organisation itself. There is currently much debate within the HR community on the ROI of training and substantial efforts are being made to link spending on training with improvements in performance (if I send my staff on a project management course will they be able to complete projects more quickly and therefore improve the overall performance of the organisation). But is training the best way to improve people’s performance? Probably not, at least not by attending formal training courses. People’s performance improves due to a rich mix of learning interactions – not least of which is the ability of people to learn from each other – or putting it another way to share knowledge about how to improve the way things are done. In this context there is a direct link between knowledge sharing and learning. A recent study by CapitalWorks (a US  human capital consultancy) surveyed hundreds of knowledge workers and asked them to attribute knowledge sources relative to knowledge actually required to do their jobs. 75% of the sources were informal, while only 25% were formal. Despite this 75% of the investments made in learning were on formal training programmes and only 25% on informal learning activities. The conclusion was that most organisations could dramatically improve the ROI on learning by shifting investments from formal to informal learning. What does informal learning look like – well it will probably look different in different organisations but explicitly linking knowledge and learning strategies is one sure way to begin to improve the performance of your people and your organisation. Knowledge management, learning management, performance management – they all point towards the same ultimate goal.

Knowledge Business e-Simulation

I assisted at a TangoNet session for the London Knowledge Network at the University of GreenwichBusiness School last week. The session was led by Graham Fernee (the UK TangoNet guru) and suppoted by Martyn Laycock and myself as a TangoNet coach. Once again TangoNet proved it's worth both as an effective learning tool and as a unique introduction to the issues that make knowledge businesses tick. Though it's PC based we run it as a fully facilitated session in a classroom environment with three people per team (nominally playing the roles of HR, S&M and CEO). Unlike the table top version of Tango TangoNet can be run happily over a single day and because each participant gets a version of the software to keep it can be used after the event for further exploration (I've been playing this week with a volume strategy since our team failed to implement one successfully). TangoNet really is engaging and if you work in a knowledge business (basically a business that relies for its success on knowledgeable people) you will find that the game mechanics simulate reality wonderfully. It's perfect for a consulting or business services organisations  - especially in the B2B sector. It can also be used successfully in the non-profit or public sector, or any organisation that has a business model that relies on matching quality teams with demanding clients. Indeed it gets its name from the phrase 'It takes two to Tango' - quality people in step with quality customers.   

Knowledge and Innovation

Back in February I spoke at a London Knowledge Network event which ran in parallel with the British Women Inventors and Innovators Conference at the University of Greenwich. My presentation focussed on the links between effective information, knowledge and learning processes, and innovation. Innovation is currently high on many organisation's 'to do' lists but of course it's actually very difficult to be innovative. Innovation needs a special set of conditions to thrive and those conditions rarely exist in many of our industrial age organisations. A knowledge focussed approach can however be enormously useful in supporting innovation and I believe that some of the KM techniques can be particularly useful when used specifically to foster innovation. And they are certainly more useful than sending people on creativity workshops.

In addition to the conference there was also an exhibition of  new innovations by British women. One that particularly stood out was a new ergonomic approach to cookware - Celia Gates' sensual curvy handles have been attracting lots of coverage recently. She spoke before me at the LKN event and it was great to hear how she overcame much resistance to bring her idea to fruition. A theme that surfaced more than one during the day was that men make great inventors while women are better innovators.  I guess it depends on how you define invention and innovation?

ExLink: Handl Cookware

KM with less emphasis on the M

A few years ago whenever I mentioned knowledge management to a client I usually got a blank look in return. Things have changed considerably – people recognise the label but have widely differing views on what it means. This is understandable – ever since an early conference session with Karl-Erik Sveiby where he defined knowledge management (KM) as an oxymoron it has been clear that one thing KM was not going to be, was straightforward.

Most practitioners would agree that as awareness has grown so has confusion. This is understandable in that those new to the approach are clearly trying to fit it with their current world view while those who were there in the beginning have moved on considerably. To get a feel for these developments you only have to look at the KM view from someone like Dave Snowden – complexity theory, autopoetic systems, and social network analysis are some of the current hot KM topics.

The most common view of knowledge management though is little more than information management in a shiny new coat. There is much talk of knowledge bases, about sharing best practice and connecting with experts but these technology driven capabilities have been with us for years – they’ve just never been positioned as KM solutions before. It’s true that to some extent KM has re-vitalised the information and communications technology agenda but to see this as the purpose of KM is missing the point.

Going back to our oxymoron – the word ‘management’ is probably the key culprit. This implies a command and control model that sits uneasily with the whole concept of knowledge but  take a little time to think about how important knowledge is to the way we currently work and you will begin to understand why knowledge has crept into  almost all aspects of our 21^st century lives. The knowledge society, knowledge economy, knowledge companies, knowledge workers are all terms in common usage. Whether people actually understand what these terms mean is another matter but the fact that they exist indicates a growing awareness of the importance of knowledge as a key driver for organisational development.

So what does KM look like without the M? Depending upon your requirements it can look pretty similar - knowledge bases, CoPs, expert locators can all feature in your organisation’s approach to knowledge but dropping the M can open up entirely new views of the role of knowledge within your organisation.

Significantly, one of the most useful of these views is that pioneered by Karl Erik-Sveiby himself. His ‘intellectual capital’ model develops the idea of the knowledge organisation:

“..one must be able to see an organization as a knowledge organization, that is to see the business from the standpoint of knowledge, see it as consisting of nothing but knowledge in the broadest sense, and see that it is the manager’s job to manage and develop this knowledge.” 

From ‘The New Organizational Wealth – Managing and Measuring Knowledge Based Assets’, Karl-Erik Sveiby. You can read the Foreward to the latest edition (in Korean)  on Karl-Erik's web site.

I intend to develop this ‘view’ of KM and intellectual capital in future entries.