I’ve been asked by a client to propose a way to help embed knowledge behaviours. My approach will consist of creating situations where the organisation’s staff work things out for themselves and develop their own interventions (as is my way), but it did get me wondering what knowledge behaviours might be. Here are some I’d thought of. My list was prompted by some ideas in David De Long’s working paper of 1997. I would love to hear what you think knowledge behaviours are.

• sharing what you know
• helping someone to learn something
• having open and rigorous dialogue
• discussing and exploring assumptions
• speaking one’s mind respectfully
• seeing whether it has been done before and using what’s been done rather than creating something anew
• linking up with people outside my clique to see if they are doing something we can use
• taking time out to reflect on what’s happened and discussing this with my colleagues
• seeking out the best person to help me (this might not be the most expert but perhaps the most approachable and quite expert)
• trying to combine ideas from different fields
• recognising others for their intellectual effort
• forming teams to collaborate on a project
• willingness to share the kudos
• being trustworthy
• fostering trust (this is a biggy and would have many related behaviours)
• checking my trusted information sources

This clip sums up how crazy things are getting,

Designing interventions for complex environments requires the designers to see new patterns. Before I elaborate on this idea here is a story Steve Denning told today on the workingstories email list.

The ability to see new patterns can be facilitated in a number of ways:

• New eyes—introduce people with different background and way of seeing the world and new patterns become evident
• New frameworks—a powerful new framework will help you see the world differently. I remember the first time I saw they Cynefin framework and from that day on I could see ‘complex’ phenomena.
• New experiences—people can talk about how something works but until you experience it the effects are typically limited.
• New combinations—Darwin famously envisaged a model of evolution via selection by combining Malthusian economics and countless observation made on the Beagle.

Our job in helping people design interventions is to create environments where new patterns can be seen. The above story is an excellent example of creating new experiences.

Trish Milne and I had one of our papers recently published in the Journal of Knowledge Management entitled, ActKM: the story of a community. Here are some of the finding from our research:

• 78% of respondents had never or only infrequently posted to the online discussion
• 21% of respondents indicated that ActKM has sparked initiatives in their organisations
• Over a 1/3 of respondents indicated that they have made off-list contact with list members and 80% of these contacts were with people with whom they had not previously communicated
• The ability to network with new and interesting people was listed as the most valuable aspect of ActKM

20% of the 840 members of ActKM responded to our survey. The paper also reports on interviews we did with frequent contributors and the core team.

Milne, P. & Callahan, S. D. 2006. ActKM: the story of a community. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(1): 108-118.

I always like to hear what Dave is reading; he seems to pick up the most interesting books. The Cognitive Edge website (still under development) now has a list of recommended reads. You should check it out.

What are you reading now Dave?

I enjoy reading Bob Sutton’s work. He seems like a no nonsense sort of guy who is not trying to baffle you with BS. Bob was the guy who suggested the no asshole rule which I would love to see more organisations implement.

Today Bob has released a new essay on Change This suggesting some guidelines for detecting misguided management advice. Here are his 5 guidelines. Check out the essay for the detail.

• treat old ideas as if they are old ideas
• be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies
• what are the incentives for the people who are selling you the idea?
• are they telling you that “all the best companies” or “most of the fortune 500” do it?
• does it seem to obvious (this is a good thing)

One niggle. I’m sure Bob is aware of Chris Argyris’ book, Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They’re Getting Good Advice and When They’re Not yet there is no mention of it. “Treat old ideas as if they are old ideas”, hmmm.

In March this year I introduced you to A Whole New Mind. Daniel Pink’s argument goes something like this: jobs which can be done anywhere at the end of an ethernet cable (software development, call centres, accounting etc) are moving to wherever it can be done cheapest; if it can be automated it will; and we have so much of everything each individual item is worth less. Knowledge workers in first world countries like Australia, the US and Britain need to develop their capabilities in areas like design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning.

Apologies for the long intro to this observation—bear with me. On the weekend I was mentioning to a friend that skills that were difficult to off-shore like plumbing, bricklaying and running restaurants were good occupations to pursue but perhaps I was deluded. I was watching Today Tonight (an embarrassing admission) and there was a story about business owners importing employees from the Phillipines and while they were being paid the award wage the business owners took advantage of the immigrants lower expectations for accommodation and general living standards. So it seems all jobs are at risk and a sensible strategy for a knowledge worker is develop Pink’s 6 capabilities as quickly as possible.

I was flattered to read that David Maister recently quoted me in a recent article on strategy based on a comment I’d made on his blog. I was making a point about how the stories staff hear about senior management will only change if senior management acts in new ways worth retelling. These new stories then change the perceived needs and desires of senior management (see Art Kleiner’s idea on core group dynamics) which in turn affects the decisions made at the coal face. A modified culture emerges. Unfortunately its impossible to predict what exactly will unfold. Consequently its vital that leaders know which stories are being retold (use anecdote circles) and why people think they are significant (most significant change). It’s only by detecting the weak signals and adapting continuously can a productive work environment be maintained in the face of change.

Some of you might know about the Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Forum—better known as KMLF. It’s a voluntary group that organises free face to face events for knowledge management practitioners. I’m on the coordinating committee and this week we’ve launched the KMLF blog for all you Melbournites and travellers to Melbourne to keep an eye on upcoming KM events and other KM happenings.

Don Cohen reminds us of the power of telling stories in organisations by retelling the story about NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs regular storytelling sessions. More organisations should do this rather than traditional information sharing get-togethers you typically find ladened with powerpoint and rooms filled with of rows of seats in seminar style. By asking the presenter to tell the story of their work the nature of the conversation changes—people don’t fight the content, they relax. Present people with facts and they feel compelled to examine and dispute. Present a tale and people engage and explore.

The different interpersonal dynamic created between presenting facts and telling stories was made clear to me one day when I was running one of our sensemaking workshops. The client said there was no time to collect stories to use in the workshop (our standard approach) and asked whether using snippets from reports would suffice. I said I was happy to give it a try while making it clear that I had never done it that way before. We ran the workshop and the participants argued vociferously over most of the snippets which, of course, lacked context and seemed to the participants as bold statements of fact without justification. It was a disaster. On the other hand people rarely argue against a story.

Don then makes two excellent observations we should all keep in mind:

• “I believe building trust and relationships is a more important effect of organizational storytelling than knowledge transfer.”
• “… the benefits of telling (emphasis added) a story can be profound.”

I agree with Don on both points and would add that any activity that fosters conversation and the development of new social networks is essential for creating adaptable organisations. Not only that but it makes work fun.

If you want to see a bunch of knowledge management blog content in one space, here is a blog aggregator site called Blogdigger.

Bad news travels fast and some argue that we learn best from our mistakes, but psychological research shows we will work harder, or a least wait longer, to receive good news.

Susan Heathfield suggests a facilitated process to conduct a simple training needs assessment. The basic steps to Susan’s approach look like this (she explains them fully in her post):

• get a group of people together who have similar jobs
• each person writes down 10 training needs
• each person calls out their training needs and facilitator writes them on a flip chart—no duplicates
• the group votes on the needs they think are most important (using, for example, a dotmocracy)
• the group then develops how they will implement the priorities
• the facilitator should take note of each person’s first two training needs to see whether they are represented in the group decision 

Obviously, as the same suggests, this is a simple training needs assessment but I would like to suggest a modification which illustrates a general point. People have difficulty listing what they know ‘off the top of their heads’. Sure, if you ask for 10 things you will most likely get 10, but it can be hard and only reflect what’s happening to you in that point of time. There is very little context to help you remember what you really know. The following maxim should be headed: we only know what we know when we need to know it.

So I would suggest people conduct a short anecdote circle (15–30 min) before they write their list of 10 training needs. The facilitator might ask a question like: when have you felt that you didn’t have the right level of skill to your best work or when have you felt the need for a new skill that would provide a marked improvement in productivity? This type of question is designed to elicit stories and as each person hears the stories of others they will remember things that will help them reflect on what training needs are really required. 

Last year we conducted a much larger training needs assessment for the Department of Defence on the topic of occupational health and safety. Mark talks about some of the things we learned here. What stood out for me was the marked difference in the what we learned from people’s stories compared to what was gleaned using surveys.

I’m always on the lookout for intervention design examples and I found one last week I think you’ll like. But before I describe it, remember what we mean by an intervention: a discrete action designed to improve the system but you can’t predict exactly how things are going to turn out. It’s not a project in the sense that there is a clear objective, and a set of milestones over sometimes lengthy periods. This example is from Pfeffer and Sutton’s Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management [pp. 116–117]

Pfeffer and Sutton are careful to point out that rewards and recognition approaches don’t work in all cases. It’s one of the dangerous half truths they explore. In this case recognition is used to convey a message to staff about what is important to the company. I think it provides a useful pattern (one of many possibilities) for intervention design: identify a desired improvement that can be measured (of course many cannot—have a read of this) and heap praise on those people who are adopting the desired behaviours. For example, if you are a scientific organisation and are unhappy with the number and quality of the papers being published, management would communicate the importance of, for example, publication in tier 1 journals then heap praise on people who succeed in publishing their papers in these journals. This is a better option than just saying “we should provide better feedback and praise to our staff.”

Bill Godfrey has made all his book reviews available online for free and is hoping to attract other book review writers to develop a truly open source book review resource! Bill says:

Pam Slim writes a refreshing and forthright post slamming common management practice. I particularly like her take on culture:

While I haven’t seen an intervention described in these forthright terms before it certainly meets our criteria of a small thing that can make a difference. Put another way; using simple rules. And frankly, life’s too short to deal with arseholes (Australian spelling).

Here are the 10 points Pam makes. For each point she provides a paragraph.

1. Don't spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture.
2. Stop running your company like the mafia
3. Spend a moment walking around the halls of your company and look at your employees
4. Teach people how to get rich like you
5. Don't ask for your employees' input if you are not going to listen to it
6. Don't train people until you know what problem you are solving
7. Ditch the PowerPoint when you have town hall meetings
8. Focus on the work people do, not how or when they do it
9. Watch the burnout
10. Forbid people to work while they are on vacation

One of the narrative techniques we use involves identifying the characters, topics and behaviours from a collection of transcribed anecdotes. This process usually involves groups writing these characters, topics and behaviours onto post-it notes ready for group clustering and sense-making. Now we don’t just use any kind of post-it note, we use Hexies Post-it Notes.

The types of clusters look like this:

As you can imagine, using normal rectangular post-its for this kind of clustering would take up a whole lot more wall space, not to mention being clumsy with no visual appeal. (Ok, thats the libran in me speaking through, we’re sposed to be aesthetic creatures).

Where can you buy these wonderful hexies? Look no further than here in our shop. Don’t get caught without.

Thinking over how pervasive (and problematic?) the notion of control appears to be in organisations I was inspired to write a little piece around it. Here’s how it begins:

Read the full article here

Viv McWaters and Brian Bainbridge are running their marvelous Open Space training next week 16th – 18th here in Melbourne.

As Viv says:

For more info, email either Viv or Brian at viv@theReef.com.au, briansb@mira.net.

Social Network Analysis has spent alot of its evolution and development down in the weeds where the expert has been king. Crunching and analysing. Not surprising really. There are traps for young players in SNA and there is a clear role for someone like an expert to keep us clear of traps.

Eventually however, when the crunching and analysis has been worked through, which these days happens mostly through software, a delicate opportunity emerges to provide the visualisations and network maps to a group. A group of people such as senior leaders or managers, or even people from ‘the coal face’. Whomever, they are people who will then face the challenge of ‘making sense’ of the ‘data’.

Until now SNA as a field hasn’t had much to say about how groups can ‘make sense’ of social network maps. The sensemaking perspective has been missing. Maybe this is because, as I mentioned, there is a delicate opportunity to presenting network maps to groups. Delicate because social network maps contain very delicate information. People’s names. The opportunity is around moving beyond ‘the expert recommends’ and more towards ‘the group thinks’.

Whichever, as I discuss in our seminar, SNA sensemaking can provide a powerful way forward. A way to action.

When it comes to Social Network Analysis (SNA) a common practice is to use centrality measures such as Betweenness (Bridgeness), Closeness and Degree. For instance, we often represent “Hubness” (in-degree) by colour scale, and “Bridgeness” (betweenness) by size. Resulting in:

Hubness as it suggests gives an indication of who are the hubs in the network. Betweenness (or bridgeness) gives an indication to the people who are acting as ‘bridges’ across various networks. Centrality measures such as these give us a way of making sense of the ‘data’.

As Bruce Hoppe has mentioned there are subtleties to these centrality measures. One subtlety which I have dug around for an answer on is: how sensitive are measures like bridgeness and hubness to missing data?

Why bother you ask? If you are using a survey tool then you might be familiar with the phrase ‘survey response rate’. And maybe how poor response rates can often be.

As this figure illustrates, even with a survey response rate of 75% there is only 56% complete relationship data available for use with the centrality measure of your choice. So, comparing between Hubness and Bridgeness, which is most robust to missing data? Turns out it’s Hubness. Interestingly, maybe even ironically, Bridgeness is sensitive to missing data. [See Costenbader and Valente 2003 for the details]

“Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping”. As a patient husband who has trekked around my share of shops on ‘shopping missions’ I’m not sure about this quote… But...

Now you can come shopping in our new Anecdote shop. Take a look!

In the upcoming months we will continue to stock our shelves so keep checking in. In the meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for products you’d like to see in our shop we’d love to hear them.

Looks like we had one of our articles published in The Daily Anecdote. This newspaper clipping generator is a bit of fun.

Who is Anecdote anyway?

The actKM list has a discussion underway to collect stories of how people have (either successfully or otherwise) tried to get management support for their KM activities. The story below is the one I submitted.

So, while I would love to say that the MD immediately approved the business case for travel for the domain teams, this wasn’t the outcome.  But there was a major change in the MD’s attitude towards the domains.  It went from ‘tolerating their existence’ to seeing clearly how they could and were adding value to the business.  I then continued to look for and test other stories…

Merlin Mann at 43 Folders points us to an interesting book called Mindfulness and makes reference to Jorge Borges’ (one of my favourite writers) famous list of 14 animal types (includes embalmed ones, stray dogs and those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush). Merlin points out that our ability to categorise and re-categorise is a fundamental skill.

Merlin’s post triggers a couple of thoughts. Richard Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought illustrates that westerners view the world differently from Asians: westerners are taught as children to see the world as nouns (look Johnny, a truck); Asians are taught to view the world as verbs (look Emiko, clapping). Yes, we all categorise but we should be mindful that different cultures do it differently.

Mindfulness is a word used extensively by Karl Weick. The sensemaking process begins when something is noticed and mindfulness enables us to notice what’s happening.

Last week I suggested we needed more techniques that fostered deeper conversations in business. Well here is a new resource which will help you get up to speed on a range of group processes designed to encourage dialogue. The 86–page report was produced by the Pioneers of Change Associates and commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The report describes the following techniques and many more:

• appreciative inquiry
• change lab
• circle
• deep democracy
• future search
• open space technology
• scenario planning
• sustained dialogue
• the world cafe

David Maister has just written an example speech for a new Marketing Director starting out in a law firm. It occurred to me that a very similar approach would work for a newly appointed Chief Knowledge Officer, Knowledge Manager, Director of Knowledge.. Below is David’s version with some modifications in square brackets.

A few months ago I facilitated an open space session for a group of knowledge coordinators working in a government agency. We spent the day together and at the end of the session there was a clear set of activities and a high level of energy to get things done. Yesterday I heard that many of the tasks haven’t been done. Yes, I was a little disappointed so I ask the question: “How can we increase the chances of sustaining the momentum after an open space session?”

On the same day on hearing this news I was working with Mary Alice Arthur, a appreciative inquiry (AI) practitioner from New Zealand. Mary Alice has done some wonderful projects recently: a merger at New Zealand Telecom, branding for ANZ bank (NZ) and working with NZ primary schools—all done with AI. Mary Alice said there was a similar concern in the Telecom merger project: would the interventions designed by staff be implemented? To counter the potential apathy each action team (responsible for designing and implementing the intervention) conducted a feasibility study and developed a plan for their intervention then presented their plan to the senior management team. The management team’s role was not to veto the plans, but just to listen and hear the team commit to delivering their project. There was tremendous follow through.

Robert Cialdini describes why this act is powerful in ensuring the ‘ball keeps rolling’ after your open space finishes: “People have a desire to look consistent within their words, beliefs, attitudes and deeds.” Of course when you commit to a leader there is considerable pressure to deliver. This type of  commitment is most effective “when they are active, public, effortful, and viewed as internally motivated (uncoerced).” Hmmm. What I’ve suggested sounds a little coerced. How about this modification: actions teams can volunteer to present their plan to the senior management team.

Now I’m not an expert in open space (Andrew and Mark have a much greater experience) so I’m keen to hear from people who have done many open spaces. What’s been your experience?

Denham Grey says:

At the same time we never seem to have time for good discussions. Many of our conversations appear largely transactional, designed to achieve the task at hand.

There are a number of techniques which foster dialogue. They can’t be used without a specific business purpose in mind, but when included in an initiative they create an opportunity for people to engage in in-depth conversations. And people love it!

• Most significant change helps people evaluate the impact of those projects which are difficult to measure. Stories of significant change are collected and then people are brought together to select which they think is the most significant. This selection process requires discussion, argument, listening and in the process people learn about base assumptions and what people value.
• Open space technology is a facilitation technique designed for small to very large groups to identify the issues that are most important to them and then once identified people nominate the topics they wish to discuss.
• Appreciative inquiry involves people interviewing one another about the things ‘that work around here’. People hear one another’s stories and the group discusses what the stories reveal  in order to design improvements.
• Anecdote circles involve people coming together to share their work experiences in the form of stories. They are typically used to size up a situation.

These techniques can form a key part of any change process because they perform the dual role of informing us of what’s really happening  and  by engaging people in conversation new social connections form, meaning emerges, assumptions are surfaced, energy is created and a range of possibilities materialise. It’s for these reasons we should include more conversation-fostering techniques wherever we can.