Return to Blogging
Things have been somewhat quiet here as of late due to a pretty hectic schedule.? Although I’ve started to catch back up on email I haven’t (by a long shot) been able to keep to my one-post-per-week blogging goal.? The indefinite blogging hiatus is over however, so expect to see more regular activity on this site again.
Catching up on some of my RSS feeds, here are a few that have really caught my attention recently that I thought I would share here:
- RSS Bankruptcy is discussed over at LawyerKM .? This appeals VERY much to me at the moment!
- Steve Dale discusses Identifying Community of Practice Needs
- Andrew Gent on The Four Paradoxes of KM
Perkins Eastman: Practice Area Communities
Congratulations again to Perkins Eastman and all of my former
colleagues in the Knowledge Resource Team for winning gold in the
Intranet Innovation Awards .? Working with the various Practice Area
Communities (PACs) was one of the things I enjoyed most working there.?
I only wish that I could have shared some of the tidbits I learned
working with the PACs on the video as well, but alas, I ended up opting
out since I had a severe allergic reaction to nuts only a couple days
before (and I’d prefer not to be on video looking like the Stay Puft
Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters), but I digress…
James did a great job editing the video and I think a lot of great
points for working with Communities of Practice are captured.? Since I
was sidelined with an injury at the time (ha), I’ll share a few of my
own thoughts here about why I feel PACs work so well:
- Having gatekeepers who are passionate about sharing knowledge is
critical for that attitude spread to the rest of those working in the
practice area - Also, having those gatekeepers work closely with passionate KM
team members who can propose new concepts or ideas for constant
improvement of the PAC methodology is key - Using the intranet as a vehicle for not just codification, but
collaboration and communication as well gives the PACs more than just
one dimension - Having community members set goals for a PAC, in terms of new
deliverables or just more opportunities to share knowledge in
person/online, can be a huge motivating factor - The practice of pollinating new concepts and ideas by showing one
PAC what another is doing can also be a catalyst for action.? The idea
that, “Hey - we should do something like that too!” can produce great
results
Individualist vs. Communitarian Cultures in KM
The other night at KM Chicago Ann Lee presented a summary of the CKO Summit from last October. There were a few interesting things that came out of the presentation, one of which was a slide discussing how globalization is impacting KM. Specifically, as organizations become truly global, how do those in the KM field account for differences between cultures that are more individualistic versus those that are more communitarian.
A graph was presented which identified the UK and US as more individualistic societies while China and India were more communitarian. This is a big question – how do you design KM initiatives so that it works for all cultures encompassed within a truly global organization? This ties in with something that emerged from my dissertation (which I’ll hopefully be posting a summary of the results in the next couple of months – stay tuned).
When asking participants of various geographical backgrounds to rank/rate Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for KM, the majority of participants found the listed CSFs as successful.? However, there were some differences that emerged between participants.? Although not statistically significant, participants that indicated that their primary geographic location of work was Asia ranked the CSFs slightly lower than participants of any other geographic region.
One possible explanation for this is linked to the potential North American bias that exists in the current literature on CSFs for KM, as well as other disciplines which the CSFs in my study were drawn from.? Not surprising considering there are a few publications suggesting that the design of KM initiatives and especially the design of KM systems have a heavy North American bias.
This brings about a new question which I would love to know the answer to: What CSFs for KM exist in Asian companies that don’t exist (or at the least aren’t as prominent) for KM initiatives in companies based in other geographic regions?? If we know what different CSFs for KM exist and can account for the relative weight of importance in each culture, can we then design better KM initiatives and systems?? I’m also curious if there are any organizations out there now that are bridging the gap successfully and how they go about it…
KM in Accounting, KM Toolkit, and CoP Links
Over the past few days I’ve had a chance to catch up on quite a few of the items that have been piling up in my feed-reader and thought that I’d share a few that caught my eye.
Knowledge Management in the Accounting Industry:
CCH recently surveyed accounting professionals and have published the results.? The report, “New CCH Survey Guides Accounting Firms in Building More Intelligent Businesses” notes that Knowledge Management is a cornerstone for success in this industry.? An interesting snippet from the article:
“Firms with a formal knowledge management (KM) program consistently performed at a higher level as an intelligent business than firms without a program in place. Firms that are moving forward as intelligent businesses with formal KM programs identified significant benefits, including:
- 76 percent reporting increased efficiency;
- 69 percent improved client service;
- 63 percent increased productivity; and
- 62 percent increased revenue.”
Tools for Knowledge and Learning:
Odi.org.uk has published a good list of tools used in KM here: Tools for Knowledge and Learning.? There is a lot of good information in there and the tools are centered around five areas:
- Strategy Development
- Management Techniques
- Collaboration Mechanisms
- Knowledge Sharing and Learning
- Knowledge Capture and Storage
Communities of Practice Articles:
Stephen Dale discusses “Responsibilities and Guidelines for Communities of Practice“.
“I was looking for some inspiration in putting together some guidelines, rules and policies for online communities of practice. Nancy White over at Full Circle Associates is always a good starting place for this sort of thing.? Here is another example. Feel free to use or elaborate on…”
Anecdote has an interesting piece on “Finding the Domain for communities of Practice“.
“One of the key challenges in starting a community of practice is to find the right domain - the topic that people are passionate enough about and interested enough in to contribute some of their discretionary time and effort. One of the tests we use is…”
Gian Jagai shares an Update on Communities of Practice at Hitachi Data Systems with us.
Building a Community at Intel
Heath Buckmaster has shared a great post on building a community for IT over at the IT at Intel Blog. The post is great because it’s more than a “how-to” on building a community, rather, we’re provided some great context and?given the methodology to-date.? Heath takes the time to discuss the origin of the business problem, why communities were identified as the ideal solution, what tools?are used, and in general he shares the journey so far.? There are some great ideas in there that I encourage you to check out.? The post ends with what’s next for the community:
“Here’s the big challenge…and I don’t have an answer for you yet on this one… How do you make the move from awareness, to participation. In other words, if you’ve got thousands of people reading your content every day, how to get those thousand people to actually reply to, change, or add to your content? How do you get more people to create pages on a wiki, or add/answer questions in a forum? How do you turn visibility into action?”
Communities of Practice Resources
Found this via the NLH KM website .? It’s a bit dated, but a lot of the info in there is still good.? From the site:
“The materials on this site are some of those originally developed in the course of helping a client roll out a company-wide knowledge management (KM) initiative.? The materials here have been adapted for more general audiences.”
Check it out: Communities of Practice Resources
Intranet Innovation Awards
The results are in and I’m proud to say that Perkins Eastman were given a Gold award for our Practice Area Communities (PACs) as well as a commendable entry mention for pushing intranet news via Blackberry to staff (helps to keep those road warriors connected).
If you’d like to take a glimpse at our now award-winning PACs you can take a peek over here. To quote from the Step Two website:
“The PACs provide a wealth of knowledge, both explicit knowledge that has been codified as well as tacit knowledge exchange in real-time. Providing staff with multiple formats for knowledge sharing and continuous learning, they are provided additional means to innovate and consistently deliver award-winning projects.”
And if you’d like to order the entire report you can do that here.?
Congrats to my fellow KRT (Knowledge Resource Team) members – go team!
Knowledge Community Toolkit
I stumbled upon this at the AIA (American Institute of Architects) website the other day and, while focused on developing CoP in architecture, I think that there is enough in here of value that I thought I would share here. From the AIA website:
“The AIA has compiled an assortment of documents which will help with the establishment of knowledge communities at the state or local level. These vary from a how-to document on holding roundtables to an advertisement template for groups to use in marketing their events.”
A few of the documents may be helpful for those in the beginning stages of developing a CoP, but I think some of the unique marketing materials that are shared (flyer, flash presentation) are certainly things that can be re-imagined within the organizational context of most CoP facilitators. So, how inviting does that Outlook invite you just sent for your next CoP meeting look when compared next to some of these marketing materials? My guess is that something like this might help to drive some excitement and awareness back into those meetings.
I haven’t seen any studies around this, but it’d be interesting to see if CoP with a sustained branding/marketing campaign have higher visibility, participation and engagement within an organization than CoP without. My gut says yes, but I just wonder if there would be a statistically significant difference between the groups.