| 11/05/08 | | The difference between knowledge and information |
"Not that old chestnut" I hear you cry.
We have written a whitepaper on this subject and blogged on it a few times. It keeps the KM list serves across the planet pre-occupied for a few months each year.
I recently had coffee with a client to get an update on the implementation of the knowledge strategy we did for them a while back. The client described good progress in many areas but highlighted one of the things holding them back was the continuing confusion/uncertainty about the difference between information management and knowledge management. This was despite an extensive education campaign to get a consistent 'language' in place across the organisation on order to minimise the roadblocks to implementation.
This reinforced to me that we should just stop 'pushing the proverbial up a hill' on this one. My suggestion to the client was to stop talking about knowledge management. It is much easier to grasp concepts like 'better information management' on the one hand, and 'improved collaboration and learning' on the other. This conception makes it much clearer that there is a big 'people' and 'process/practice' component to the task.
Knowledge strategy = Information Management + [Collaboration and Learning]
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| 3/05/08 | | Conversations take time |
A few weeks ago, about the time of the 2020 Summit, I met with Dave Pollard at the Athenaeum Library on Collins Street. Dave was visiting from Canada. I've been a long-time reader of his blog and was excited by the prospect of finally meeting him face to face. As serendipity would have it Michael Sampson (Sharepoint collaboration guru) was also in town (from New Zealand) and joined us.
When you meet a person for the first time and you know there is plenty of things to talk about, the standard one hour meeting makes no sense yet I'm surprised how few people make time for longer conversations. Dave, Michael and I talked for 3-4 hours and it was only in the last couple of hours we got into the juicy topics. Yeh, yeh, I hear everyone saying, "We're soooo busy," but you know what, you need to make time for great conversations. The time excuse is our defence mechanism so we can say no to requests. How many times have you seen people greet each other with the words, "how're going? Real busy! Me too. Do you want to get a coffee? Sure?"
Well, I see something we talked about inspired a new post from Dave on his vision for how we might work in 2020. I'm glad to see it is filled with stories and concepts of collaboration.
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| 1/05/08 | | Cooperation and the tragedy of the commons |
One of our regular commenters, ken, has directed me to an interesting article in the Washington Post equating Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton's race for the Democratic nomination to the classic tragedy of the commons scenario. That's when the individual actors operate to maximise their self interest and in the process ruin things for the wider group.
Here's how the tragedy of the commons (TOTC) scenario played out for a group of people playing the role of timber companies.
He asked volunteers to play the role of timber companies in a forest. The volunteers were told they could harvest a certain number of acres each year, and were also told how quickly the forest could replenish itself. The question was whether volunteers -- thinking on their own and without discussions with other volunteers -- would restrict themselves to taking less than half the timber that they were allowed. If everyone did this, the forest would replenish itself in perpetuity, creating the greatest wealth in the long term.
But because the volunteers did not know whether their kindness would be reciprocated by others or exploited by competitors, people raced to cut as much timber as they could and quickly razed the forests to the ground. Groups with volunteers more willing to think about the collective good preserved their forests longer. But selfish people within these groups had a field day exploiting the altruists -- and the forests perished anyway.
Unfortunately TOTCs are played out in organisations everyday, especially by managers who haven't worked out that their role is to help their staff succeed. And this problem is being exacerbated by the trend of people moving from one job to another and only sticking around for the short term. This is a problem because TOTCs are only avoided if people are working for the longer term.
the only way to prevent tragedies of the commons is to set up structures in advance that reward long-term thinking and punish short-term selfishness. This happens mostly among competitors who share long-term interests and have social relationships of trust (emphasis added): If you and I are Maine lobstermen, we are likely to agree to set up limits on the overall catch each year because we see our future, and our children's future, inextricably linked. In the absence of trust and long-term relationships, the only way to prevent these tragedies is to have an outside regulatory agency step in to establish -- and enforce -- limits.
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| 28/04/08 | | Without Collaboration |
Hugh Macloed is a master with social objects. He draws at the back of business cards!
Here's two of his recent creations, so cleverly done for Microsoft.
It's a fun way to get people talking about collaboration.
And this one brings out the importance of a good conversation and good storytelling skills. We're all human after all and that's what brings us together.
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| 27/04/08 | | The difference between cooperation and coordination |
After writing our paper on collaboration there were several things we wanted to explore that just wouldn't fit into the original work. We are interested in when it's unhelpful to collaborate, examples of when collaboration has failed, and how collaboration differs from similar terms such as co-operation and co-ordination.
So on the question of cooperation vs. collaboration I decided to phone a friend, well Skype chat some friends, and get their gut response to the question:
What do you think is the difference between cooperation and collaboration?
Now please remember that each person had no time to consider their response. It's right off the top of their heads. Despite that caveat I think we got some excellent insights.
Here are the responses.
Cooperation = working together so both of our needs get served. Collaboration = working together to create something/a higher outcome together.
Initial gut reaction is that cooperation is more shallow / surface level than collaboration which is a bit deeper - more about a shared meaning and purpose with smarts, more strategic / tactical rather than (co)operational. Other gut reaction is that it involves using technology - synonymous between web 2.0 and collaborative technology. never hear of cooperative technology. Sort of like the difference between wiki/blog shared conversation (KM) and supply chain logistics and e-commerce (IM). Fuzzy boundary though.
I think the only thing that I would add on reflection that collaboration implies that there a a "product" of some type at the end (and not an abstract one)
However as I said (and as is implied in the paper on a skim read) I think there is far too much emphasis placed on the individual and individual behaviours when people talk about this, and not enough about relationships and interactions per se. Social Atomism v Communitarianism, its one of the basic divides
Amino acids cooperate to break down meat in my stomach.
I cooperate with a bunch of people in del.icio.us to create a massive pile of tagged information.
But I would collaborate with you on tagging specific documents for a book project.
Wilfulness and focus are key factors
Cooperation costs $125 an hour. Collaboration costs $350 an hour.
Some loudthinking. My daughter and I try to cooperate with each other about leaving the bathroom clean. I need her cooperation in certain respects and she needs mine. We are about to collaborate on arranging the financing for her university arrangements. Collaborator of course has undercurrents in other languages (French for example) of helping the existing regime in a morally corrupt or sleazy way. Cooperative has a good twang in the UK because of the cooperative movement which resulted in co-owned supermarkets, funeral parlours etc with some sense of community and collective investment and return. The cooperative society - http://www.co-operative.coop/ It went through the doldrums and then has resurfaced and took some good moral ground in banking terms a few years back. As I write it feels to me more emergent. Individual morals, ethics and practices collect to create cooperation but it always stays individual somehow. Collaboration must, perforce, be a collective construct throughout. Or in the case of the wartime collaboration, the authorities, or those in power, created conditions in which individuals collaborated. I'm going round in circles here but I'll write both words up and think about them. I suspect the only way is not to theorise but to think of actual circumstances in which one uses the word, both in public and in private life, and then see what the emergent definitions are. We could start a little trial space for the collection somewhere? I've a feeling I'd only use collaborate in a work context whereas I'd use cooperate much more in a private context. This is likely to mean cooperate has more meaning for me as a real word.
This is tough. I think we cooperate when we agree not to work at cross-purposes, and have an intention to help each other as need arises. Collaboration, to me, is always in view of a result -- something we both want to create.
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| 22/04/08 | | Building a collaboration workplace |
Our white paper on collaboration is now available. It was a pleasure working with Mark and Nancy White on this one. We're hoping this document creates a new conversation within organisations where people responsible for fostering collaboration (line managers, business units leaders, CIOs, HR directors) not only realise that they must look beyond the technology implementation but consider ways to introduce and support collaborative practices. The need to effectively collaborate is only going increase because the world is becoming even more complex and we will need more people banding together to create solutions by bringing their different perspectives to bare. We also look at a new type of collaboration, which we've called network collaboration, where the rules of how we work together are being re-written.
Nancy, Mark and I would dearly love to hear your thoughts on what we've written and in particular what additional advice would you give to supplement our ideas?
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| 15/04/08 | | Building a collaborative workplace - Canberra workshop |
Improved collaboration is a business imperative - to develop and implement strategy, to leverage existing capabilities and knowledge, to innovate, be more resilient in a rapidly changing environment and to reduce costs. Creating communities of practice is one of the key ways to build collaboration, but there are other important dimensions leaders and managers need to know to systematically build a collaboration capability.
If you're in the business of business, whether in the public or private sectors, you need to know about collaboration. Collaboration activities are ongoing in every organisation. Yet according to a recent Economic Intelligence Unit survey most collaborative activities are not completely successful because collaborators fail to establish a deep sense of trust among themselves. Then there's also lack of clarity on roles, support etc. There's a whole gamut of things one needs to pay attention to. Unfortunately, this is not an area they cover in business school.
We've learnt a lot about collaboration techniques in our journey and are keen to share some ideas about how organisations can make their workplace more collaborative. Given this, we are pleased to announce a new workshop called Building a Collaborative Workplace. The workshop is running in Canberra on 28 April and four other capitals later in the year. Go here to register.
We'll be discussing issues such as:
- the various types of collaboration
- roles required to foster and sustain collaborative behaviors and practices
- getting the most from your collaboration tools
- starting and sustaining communities of practice
- helping leaders foster a collaborative culture
And, of course, we will be providing many examples and stories to illustrate these issues.
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| 15/04/08 | | Conversations That Create—An International Thought Leadership Programme |
Here's an event you might like to attend. It's been organisation by Ralph Kerle from The Creative Leadership Forum.
Conversations That Create—An International Thought Leadership Programme
May 7 - 9, 2008
Venue: Centre for Leadership, Building 18, Chowder Bay Road, Mosman, Sydney NSW, Australia 2088
The Forum Challenge: "How can leaders in organisations lead generative conversations"
With International Thought Leaders
Shawn Callahan, Founder, Anecdote, Melbourne. Australia
Pavan Choudary, CEO, Vygon India, author and executive coach, Madras, India
Ralph Kerle, Chief Executive Officer, The Creative Leadership Forum, Sydney, Australia
Professor Kirpal Singh Ph.D, Singapore Management University, Dean of Economics, Arts, and Humanities, novelist, poet, Singapore.
and Session Leaders
Sandra Kay Lauffenburger (Laban), Dr Louise Mahler (Vocal and Choral)
A 2 1/2 day leadership programme designed to explore, develop and produce new thinking and learning around the way conversations occur to produce creative outcomes..
"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so." Doris Lessing
The Forum Preamble
The hard assets of all organizations tend to constitute the primary value of the organization but they are useless if not for the human asset and specifically the resourcefulness of that human asset to organize and utilize the hard assets. And one of the essential elements of this human resourcefulness is that of imagination and creativity. But these two elements remain dormant without the generative contexts to draw them out and generative contexts are established and maintained only by the right kinds of conversations. If the output of a musician is music, the output of a playwright a script, the output of a sculptor a piece of visual art, then the output of a leader is creative conversation because it is the leader's job to organize and focus the energy of human resourcefulness. It is the job of the leader to create and maintain the conversational 'spaces' that trigger the imagination and apply that imagination to creative work. The majority of conversations that people have at work do not readily lend themselves to creative action. What is the case in your organization?
Conversations that Create will explore and develop how to create and maintain the necessary generative spaces and have the kinds of conversations needed to move individuals and teams into creative output. Participants will learn and practice practical ways of having conversations for possibility and opportunity, for engagement, commitment and creative action and for creating the necessary relationships for sustaining a generative space.
Click on www.thecreativeleadershipforum.com
Event Fees and Conditions
The cost to participate is $880 incl GST. All meals are included in the cost. Accommodation is excluded. Click here for full details of the venue situated on Sydney Harbour. The Forum is limited to 30 people. All presenters will be participants as well. This is not an academic conference, rather a peer to peer practice led information exchange with participants drawn from business, government, academia, the arts. Particular regard will be paid to the balance and mix of participants.
If you are interested please email Ralph Kerle on rk@thecreativeleadershipforum.com or call direct on 0412 559 603 in the first instance.
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| 5/04/08 | | Building a collaboration capability - the quick quiz |
A while back we talked about three types of collaboration: team, community and network. So here's a quick quiz to help you understand just how collaborative your organisation really is. This little quiz is part of our upcoming article on Building a Collaborative Capability by Mark, Nancy White and me. If you want to get a preview copy just sign up for our newsletter if you not already a subscriber.
Answer true or false to the following statements.
Team
- You enter into collaborations as peers with each person playing a valued role. True/False?
- Teams are recognised and celebrated as a unit. True/False?
- People enter into collaborations with a feeling of promise. True/False?
- There is someone in your organisation you can turn to to learn more about effective collaboration approaches. True/False?
- You have access to relevant and useful collaboration technologies and are encouraged to use them. True/False?
Community
- There are other people in the organisation who have similar interests and passions who you connect with regularly to learn from each other. True/False?
- Your organisation actively supports communities of practice. True/False?
- The conversations your community is having are engaging and help you do a much better job. True/False?
- Your community is coordinated by a passionate individual who is supported by a small group who really care about the community. True/False?
- Managers see the value of participating in your community and activity support your attendance. True/False?
Network
- More than half the organisation are using social book-marking approaches and tagging web pages. True/False?
- People can recount stories of where they have found information from someone else's book-marks, blogs or wikis that made a significant contribution to their work. True/False?
- New communities have formed based on the realisation that people where interested in similar topics. True/False?
- The organisation actively supports the use of network collaboration technologies such as social book-marking, blogs, wikis, tagging and RSS. True/False?
- Senior leaders are using network collaboration technologies. True/False?
Give yourself 1 point for each time you answered True. Add up your points.
15 points: Collaboration nirvana. If you like working with high performance teams, communities or networks, never leave this organisation.
14-11 points: Damn good, keep it up. Lot's of opportunities to tackle complex problems and achieve tremendous results.
5-10: So so. Things are getting better and the signs of life are there.
1-4: Dismal effort. Most of the time the hero sweeps in on their white stead and saves the day receiving all the glory despite all the hard work everyone else actually did.
0: Collaboration hell. If collaboration is your thing why are you still there?
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| 1/04/08 | | Jumpstart storytelling - creating the conditions for collaboration |
When we start on a major change project we will often run a number of workshops with the leadership team to really get them to own and define the project. A big part of this activity is getting this group to collaborate and work as a team. In the past we have run sociometry exercises, anecdote circles and future backwards activities to get this group to gel. But I have a much better way now thanks to Seth Kahan's jumpstart storytelling technique.
How to run a jumpstart storytelling session
- Divide the participants into groups of 6
- Ask everyone to provide a concrete and specific example in response to a story eliciting question that is related to the objective of the workshop or project. Most recently I ask a workshop participants to recall when they have been proudest of the work they or their colleagues have done?
- Each person gets 90 seconds to tell their story.
- When everyone in the group has told one story ask the participants to remember the story that was most powerful for them; what resonated the most. And ask them to remember who told that story.
- Get everyone to switch groups to there is as many new faces as possible in their new group.
- Ask everyone to retell their story they have just told. Because this will feel a little weird I suggested they observe how their story changes and improves in the retelling. Again 90 seconds per story. At the end of everyone retelling their story reassess which story you think is most powerful and remember the storyteller.
- Depending on the size of the group you can switch groups again.
- Now the fun begins. Ask everyone to remember the person who told the most powerful, relevant, engaging story and go over to them and place your hand on their shoulder and keep it there. After a while a network of people forms and clusters appear revealing the high impact stories. Invite the people the group chose to retell their story to the whole group. Lead the applause at the end of each telling.
The energy goes through the roof with this technique and people get to hear stories they have never heard before. Most importantly the group gets to know each other at a deeper level. There is one more advantage as well if your project is narrative based: the leaders experience the power of narrative in the first 5 minutes of the project.
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| 21/03/08 | | Shawn has opened up his Twitter |
I've decided to open up my Twitter so anyone can follow my tiny tweets. Before I only let the Anecdote team follow alog but I started to realise that there was a much wider network that could help each other out. So feel free to check out my Twitter page and if you think I should follow you let me know why. I love following people who point me to eclectic bits of information and ideas.
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| 9/03/08 | | Collaboration consulting—fostering a collaboration culture |
Have you invested in the latest and greatest in collaboration technology but still feel people are still not collaborating? How many Microsoft Sharepoint servers and IBM Quickplaces remain relatively untouched or only used by the organisation's technorati? I think it's a big problem because this narrow view of collaboration starts to get the concept a bad name: "yeh, we did collaboration but no one used it." And then there the issue of the vast amount of money wasted and opportunities lost. We can't afford to loose faith in collaboration because the external environment is moving in a direction that mandates we collaborate. The problems we face now and into the future will only increase in complexity and it will require teams of people within and across organisations to solve them.
At the heart of the problem is collaboration culture. Does the organisation have a culture that supports collaboration? And if not, how do you change your culture to be more supportive?
Creating a more collaborative culture
In helping organisations develop collaboration cultures we've confirmed what Edgar Schein noted a decade ago: cultures are largely created and modified by the actions of the organisation's leaders. And here we view leadership in its broadest sense as someone who people take notice of and follow their lead. There are a relatively small set of things leaders do that affect culture:
- What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis
- How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises
- How leaders allocate resources
- Deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching
- How leaders allocate rewards and status
- How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate
The short-hand for this list is, “How do you get ahead around here?” And if you get ahead by working as a loner, shafting your team mates, taking the recognition when others were clearly a part of the success and having reward mechanisms that reward individual pursuits above all else, then your culture will be the antithesis of what's required for collaboration to flourish. So how do you turn it around?
Steps to foster a collaborative culture
Here are some of the steps we help organisation to implement to move from the state of the 'individual is king' to one where collaboration is activity encouraged. Of course this is not as simple as this list might suggest but it gives you an idea of they types of activities required. A full explanation is coming soon in a white paper Mark and I are writing with Nancy White, so here is the expurgated version that mainly links to other posts we have written.
A. Appoint a collaboration co-ordinator
If there is not a resource appointed the capability is unlikely to be implemented. Someone has to be responsible for moving the activities forward.
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/02/developing_a_co.html
B. Create a network of collaboration supporters
The collaboration co-ordinator can't do this on their own so they need a network of supporters across the business lines. How you create this network and who is included is vital to your success.
C. Help people understand the process of collaboration
People will need to know what the organisation means by collaboration and how to collaborate.
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/01/collaborations.html
D. Ensure the Collaboration Co-ordinator reports regularly to senior leaders
Find stories of success and take every opportunity to informally tell them to the leadership. Then have data and good reasoning to back up your stories.
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/04/the_role_of_sto.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2007/02/finding_success.html
E. Get the most from your collaboration tools
Make sure you are getting the most from your current investment in collaboration tools. Learn the techniques and practices that will make these tools truly valuable.
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/09/why_people_dont.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/01/seven_ways_to_g.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2007/10/technologies_fo.html
F. Start communities of practice
Perhaps I'm biased, but CoPs is a mode of organising that takes collaboration to the next level above team based approaches.
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2007/06/nancy_white_and_1.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/01/starting_a_comm.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/12/actionoriented.html
http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2006/02/will_the_commun.html
G. Promote good collaborators and hold back bad collaborators
No sense talking up collaboration then promoting the worse collaborator in the business. This one is simple and will have the biggest impact on the culture. Promote good collaborators and let everyone know they are being promoted partly because how they collaborate.
H. Practice collaborating for when a crises occurs
When the shit hits the fan we watch our leaders intently and we learn about their character and what it takes to get ahead around here. If you want collaboration to flourish have a plan to collaborate when a crises occurs. Demonstrate that the leadership team collaborates. A crisis is a vital moment in an organisation's cultural development.
Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2004.
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| 9/03/08 | | Community of Practice success story |
One of the best ways to illustrate the value of Community of Practice efforts is to find stories of success and to use them. We previously posted on the publication of 'Stories from the Coal Face', a booklet produced by Rio Tinto's coal division that communicates many of the ways that CoP have added value to the business. Rio Tinto has made a short video on one of the stories and this is publicly available on their website. Well worth checking out and using as an example of how collaboration can make a big difference in unexpected ways. I particularly like how the video engages the product group CEO and sends a message to the organisation about moving to a more collaborative culture using both the people and technology aspects.
Thanks to Mark Bennett for the link and for his perseverance in achieving the production of the video.
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| 12/02/08 | | Good intentions and the ability to apologise go hand-in-hand |
I caught up with Julie Perrin yesterday. Julie is a storyteller and performer and we got talking about the dangers of spin in teaching people storytelling. Julie made the important point that any storytelling effort must start with good intentions and be told with authenticity.
Then it dawned on me: in a complex world many outcomes are largely unpredictable and so while our intentions might have been sound at the outset, the result might unexpectedly cause pain to someone. Consequently the ability and willingness of people to apologise is a fundamental business skill. I wrote this post a year ago on ways to say sorry to rebuild trust.
This thought was prompted by radio discussion yesterday morning about the impending apology the Australia government will give to Aboriginal people for the past practice of removing Aboriginal children from their families and putting them into foster homes. Tomorrow will be a historic day.
One radio listener sent a message into John Faine (the radio announcer) and said something like: "Saying sorry is the first step when a mistake is made in order to maintain a relationship regardless of the intention" (she said it much better than that. Please let me know the actual wording if you heard it). The many relationships at work are important because they have such an impact on how we feel and our ability to do a good job.
The ability to say sorry sincerely is also important in the growing number of collaborations we are now seeing in business.
How to say sorry1
- recognise and acknowledge that a violation has occurred
- determine the nature of the violation—that is, what ‘caused’ it—and admit that one has caused the event
- admit that the act was destructive
- accept responsibility for the effect of one’s actions
- offer some form of forgiveness, atonement, or action designed to undo the violation and rebuild the trust
1. Lindskold, S. (1978). “Trust development, the GRIT proposal, and the affects of conciliatory acts on conflict and cooperation.” Psychological Bulletin 85: 772-793.
| 8/02/08 | | Marshall Goldsmith on balancing technology and other skills |
I heard Marshall Goldsmith say this on my ipod this morning:
"So many people have spent a lifetime for preparing themselves for technological skills yet have spent no time training themselves on how to influence people so the technical skills make a difference."
The same is true for collaboration. So many people have spent countless hours preparing themselves for collaboration technology skills yet have spent no time learning how to collaborate so the technical skills make a difference.
| 6/02/08 | | Developing a Collaboration Capability Requires more than Wishful Thinking |
“I haven't got the intellectual capacity or the time or energy to actually manufacture all these pieces of jigsaw, but I know where I can find them. I go and I see amazing science being done, I think, ‘Whoa, can we work together? Because that is one of the pieces of the jigsaw, I can see that it will fit and I can see I can help you with maybe a little bit of yours but you can help me with mine.’”
The trouble is, collaboration is a skill and set of practices we are rarely taught. It’s something we learn on the job in a fairly hit-and-miss fashion. Some people are naturals but many of us are clueless. It’s no wonder then that developing a collaboration capability is often the number one priority in the work we do to help organisations develop their knowledge strategies.
Establishing a collaboration capability requires someone to foster its development. People would think you are crazy if you suggested a company establish a sales capability without sales people or a human resources capability without a HR team. Yet, we have seen organisations wishing for a collaboration capability without identifying or resourcing people responsible for developing it. Wishful thinking is not enough.
The role of the collaboration co-ordinator (evangelist, manager, specialist; the title doesn’t really matter) would include:
- ferreting out good collaboration practices and tools and keeping up-to-date with the field
- finding situations in the organisation where better collaboration would make a difference to the quality of products and services, the speed of delivering these products and services to clients, and the ability to use a diversity of ideas and approaches to innovate
- helping people learn and adopt collaboration practices and tools
- collecting stories of how collaboration really works for the times you need to justify the role
- connecting people and ideas so new collaborations might flourish
Those organisations that move beyond wishful thinking and commit resources to establishing a collaboration coordination role can often face the frustrating dilemma of wanting the job done but are unable to free someone to do it. We’ve seen this situation a number of times now and have offered an Anecdoter (one of our consultants) to do the job while a suitable permanent staff member is found. Whether the role is filled in house or my a services organisation is immaterial. The important point is that the organisation is signalling to everyone that collaboration is important and that they are serious about enhancing their collaboration capability.
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| 31/01/08 | | Seven ways to get more from your teleconferences |
Your teleconference system is one of your most important KM technologies.
Here are 7 things a facilitator can do to improve teleconference experience.
- Encourage everyone to be on time . Unlike f2f meetings where people can sneek in and catch up, arriving late at a teleconference meeting seems to be doubly disruptive.
- Introduce everyone. When you walk into a room you can do a quick scan of who's there. That's not so easy on a teleconference so ask each person to announce themselves on arrival (some systems automatically provide announcements) and when everyone is ready to start do a quick whip around of names starting from the person closest to Greenwich then move west. OK, you don't need to do the Greenwich thing but it's quite fun in a global group getting people to work out their longitude.
- Remind everyone of who's speaking. When you have a dozen or more disembodied voices on the line it can be hard to work out who's talking. Get people into the habit of prefacing what they say with their name, for example, "Shawn here, to get our community of practice going ..."
- Reduce background noise. The more people you add to a teleconference the more likely someone will have a noisy background, noisy typing as they take notes or some other annoyance for the rest of the participants. Point out the mute functionality of the system or the handset they are using and asked people to turn off any other device that might interfere with the call (such as mobile phones).
- Rotate start times to be fair to all timezones. If you plan a regular get together on the phone and your participants are scattered around the world, don't leave one geography to do the graveyard shift.
- Use IM or a chat room to increase richness. This is probably the most important suggestion. Encourage everyone to join a chat room of group instant messaging (such as Skype) and as the call proceeds urge everyone to jot down what they are hearing, share urls, and create an artefact of the meeting. You can use it to jog your memory latter and during the call see what people are getting from the session. I was introduced to this approach by my colleagues at CPSquare and John Smith and I have written a practice note on how to do it.
- Record the call. For those who can't make the meeting simply record the call and share the audio file.
There are a range of other practices you might want to include such as employing additional technology to share screens (I was part of a fascinating teleconference today where one participant shared his screen and showed us how to design sheet metal components using engineering drafting software), share presentations, online voting, whiteboards. You might also want to practice ensuring everyone can be heard especially when there are a group of people in a room sharing a teleconference phone.
So I would love to hear the tips and tricks you've seen work. I'm sure we are going to see and be part of many more teleconferences.
| 22/01/08 | | World Trade Center and emergency services mis-coordination |
One tragic example [of mis-coordination] is recounted in Peter Denning’s article about HFN [hastily formed networks], in which he describes analysis of the disaster response efforts after the attack on the World Trade Center: New York Police Department (NYPD) helicopters that had been monitoring conditions by circling the towers had observed signs of structural collapse in the north tower and immediately issued an emergency evacuation order to all police; however, they failed to inform the firefighters, who, having had no warning, were not evacuated.
Huston, Tracey. "Enabling Adaptability & Innovation through Hastily Formed Networks." Reflections 7, no. 1 (2006): 9-29.
| 21/01/08 | | Masters of Collaboration |
BusinessWeek picks up on the move to collaboration in the creative and sometimes ego-driven world of product design.
"Just as forward-thinking engineering firms have worked to team up with design partners to offer a holistic output to clients, many design consultancies have responded to the seismic shifts in technology and culture by adopting a radical, collaborative approach—in stark contrast with the magician/know-it-all designer type of old."
I did pick up one of the common misconceptions about collaboration in this article. That is, collaboration means big teams. But at the same time collaboration is not universally good. This quote sums up both ideas.
The process-driven, collaborative approach does have its detractors. "The danger is that it becomes very flat and very unemotional," says Yves Béhar, founder of Fuseproject in San Francisco. "You need personalities and points of view, and points of view come from people, not processes," Sapper adds: "You do not need big teams to create innovation; as a matter of fact, big teams often act as brakes to innovation."
[via CPH127]
| 20/01/08 | | Collaboration's resurgence |
Everywhere I turn recently and I hear people talking about the need to collaborate as if the idea was new. Why has collaboration become the capability organisations must have? And why now? I think I have an inkling.
About 20 years ago a lot was being written about collaboration (this was just the growing snowball crunched together and bowled down a hill by Emery and Trist in 1965). People were getting interested in new organisational forms, talking about flattening organisations and linking firms. The issue of how firms might collaborate arose and we had a flurry of academics and practitioners proposing how it might be done. One of the most cited authors of that time on collaboration is Barbara Gray, who defines collaboration as a, "a process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible." [1] I like it.
Emery and Trist sparked the idea from an organisational perspective and made the vital observation that collaboration is essential in turbulent times. Gray elaborates and also states that collaboration is most useful when we face complex and seemingly intractable problems. Now think of what we face today in the 21st century. Information volumes are exploding (by one estimation it's doubling every 4 years [2]), decisions are faster, things are more connected. No wonder people are screaming for collaboration now. It 's a way to progress in today's complex environment. The problem is that most organisations don't know how to do it.
Unfortunately, about 10 years ago, we were led up the garden path a bit in our search for collaboration solutions. And I have to admit I was part of the problem because over the years I've worked for the large IT corporations like IBM, Oracle and Sybase who promised us new collaboration technologies assuring to deliver a new way of working. Actually, some of the technologies were great stuff and today there are many useful technologies we can use. But the technology alone doesn't give us collaboration. You would be forgiven for thinking it does. Today if you search on the term 'collaboration' the majority of results will point to technology solutions.
Thankfully, back in 1989, Barbara Gray offers us some ideas which take us beyond the technological and in particular she proposes a process describing how collaboration happens. This is important because it gets us thinking about the types of things we can do in an organisation to foster collaboration. Gray's process has 4 phases (updated more recently from the original three):
- problem setting phase: "getting people to the table"
- negotiation phase: "reaching agreement on what to do"
- implementation phase: "ensuring the agreement is carried out"
- Institutionalisation phase: "building a long-term relationship"
Getting people to the table
Sad as it might sound, when I was in IBM, a common first question I 'd ask a colleague whom I was seeking a collaboration with was, "so what do you need to achieve this year?" If our objectives were interdependent I knew we had a chance of successfully collaborating. Then we could sit down and really nut out the purpose of our collaboration and make the commitment to work together to deliver something useful. On larger collaborations one or more leaders emerged. The best collaborations were when the leader was the natural selection based on their capabilities rather than the ordained choice based on organisational hierarchy.
Reaching agreement on what to do
The gentle art of conversation is the starting point (personally I disagree with the adversarial approaches, such as debate, as a useful approach to collaboration). Bohm called it dialogue and it involves listening, suspending judgement, being open and honest and working together to build on ideas. These types of conversations then lead to questions of what will be the next actions of the group, how do we divide up the effort, what will good look like and when we deliver our bits? We also need to work out how to reach agreements and ways to solve problems. There are many techniques that are useful at this phase including world cafe, pre-mortems, open space, story-spines, most significant change, and the bevy of ideas in Getting Things Done. It's also important to agree the ground rules for your group and most importantly decide what will happen when the ground rules are transgressed.
Ensuring the agreement is carried out
The most powerful way to ensure agreements are kept is to get everyone to commit openly and clearly to the whole group but in the full knowledge that the world does change and adaptations will be required. Public commitments need to be revisited on a regular basis not left for months and months only to find that an important commitment has slipped away. Keeping seeking feedback from those you serve through your collaboration and continue to seek good ideas and good practices as a standard way of working.
Building a long-term relationship
The best collaborations result in long-term relationships and I'm certain the strongest relationships go through the hardest times. The difference between and strong relationship and a broken one is what happens when the times are tough. One of the best set of techniques I've seen to handle the tough times is in a book called Crucial Conversations. It guides you through what to do when things turn dark and shows how you can keep adding to the pool of meaning as a way to work things out. Essentially these means keep talking and making it safe to talk.
Collaboration is important more than ever because of the nature of the world we live in. The problem, however, is that we not taught collaboration in organisations. It happens through necessity and success is mostly by chance and experience. Organisations wishing to develop a collaboration capability more systematically will need to thinking clearly about the process of collaboration and how they can support that process.
[1] Gray, Barbara. Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989.
[2] Lyman, Peter, Hal R. Varian, K. Swearingen, P. Charles, N. Good, L.L. Jordan, and J. Pal. "How Much Information 2003?" http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/.
| 3/01/08 | | Conference call practices to generate knowledge and record learning |
John Smith and I worked together last year using Google Docs to create this practice note on ways to get the most from conference calls.
| 12/12/07 | | Communities of Practice |
There are a whole bunch of useful concepts used by organisations to focus their community of practice and knowledge management programs. Some of the more useful and memorable ones are listed below:
- Learn Before, Learn During, Learn After - the concept used by BP and described by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell in 'Learning to Fly', which remains an excellent practical reference on communities of practice and KM in genel
- Connections, Conversations, Content - the core concept of the US Army CompanyCommand Professional Forum as described in the book 'CompanyCommand' by Nancy Dixon et al. This concept is described as "a network of company commanders who connect in conversation about relevant content to advance the practice of company command" (page 3).
- Discover and Adopt, Discover and Adapt, Develop and Share - the CoP mantra developed and used by the communities of practice within ExxonMobil
- Ask, Learn, Share - used by Shell International to provide the focus for their community of practice program. The 'Shell Blue Book' remains a fantastic example of collecting and presenting CoP success stories and we previously blogged about it here.
We have been working during the year with Mark Bennett, who is the steward of Rio Tinto's extensive communities of practice program. Mark has been looking for an appropriate concept to use within Rio Tinto and while liking the concept of ask-learn-share, its linear nature didn't sit right. So Mark has designed this concept and is testing its utility in simply describing the focus of their CoP initiatives.
Rio Tinto's coal division here in Australia recently published a booklet called 'Stories from the Coal Face' and, inspired by the Shell Blue Book, it describes how CoP have contributed to the business. Mark Quinn (yes, another Mark) is the driving force behind this booklet and behind the CoP activities within the Rio Tinto coal business. It is an internal publication so you might have difficulty getting your hands on a copy, but well worth it if you can.
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| 19/11/07 | | Collaboration at Tipping Point |
There are many ways to encourage collaboration in an organization. Using Web 2.0 tools is a great way to start a collaborative discussion in under 5 minutes.
I came across an interesting collaborative concept recently www.thepoint.com
Launched in September 2007, The Point is a community where people can come together to solve the problems that are too big or time-consuming to solve alone. The Point is a groundbreaking way to use the Internet that helps groups of like-minded people get things done. How? No one is obligated to do anything unless a campaign reaches its "tipping point." At the tipping point, everyone springs into action, knowing they have the numbers to make a difference.
Great way to get people involved to test an idea or get a democratic vote before leaping into a decision (and avoid email overload)!
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| 5/11/07 | | Changing people's attitude toward change |
Collaboration brings with it change and complexity and uncertainty. How are we going to do this? What will happen next? Why should we work like that?... are some of the questions that mark the beginning of a collaborative project. It’s all a state of mind! A matter of perspective.
I’m Chandni and I’m new at Anecdote. My first blog is about my experience in managing collaboration and change and an interesting technique - a 10-second test!
To pursue my passion for knowledge, narratives, complexity, people, culture, and change, I’ve flown all the way from UK (where I did my MBA) via Mumbai (India, where I am originally from) to Canberra. My journey at Anecdote started on October 22 and I’m having a great time doing what I really love.
In my previous roles (as Chief Knowledge Developer and Head of the Knowledge Initiative at an ITeS company), I always thought that bringing about change in the culture was a simple thing. Our workforce was young and spirited and we were innovative and had an open working environment…what could be difficult about that?
Well, I was obviously very wrong and spent a few years figuring out why some people share what they know quite easily, some literally ‘find’ obstacles and put them in the way or some simply don’t want to be disturbed. So I divorced the explicit aspect and started exploring the social aspects of knowledge-sharing behavior, and in talking to people I discovered that narratives have a unique power that often remains untapped. Aligning the right technique to the right situation, that’s where the trick lies. I’m guilty of missing target too!
Let’s change that.
At Anecdote, we continuously seek and design techniques to deal with the complexity within organizations by understanding the ‘story behind the story’. What stories are people saying about an event or experience in their workplace?
Now, (this is my MBA talking) a lot has been said about how denial is the first stage in change management. And collaboration initiatives are a big change for people sometimes. BUT the more important aspect is that there are reasons and stories that form this denial in people’s minds.
Here’s an interesting technique I stumbled upon on Ken Thompson’s blog. He has some good collaboration techniques listed, but this one is a great insight. He calls it a 10 second test to assess people's reaction to change.
How can you quickly find out what each team member's number one concern is about working in this scenario?Dr Lewis recommends you get each of them to repeat the following 5 words out loud without thinking about it too much:
"We can’t do that here”
Listen carefully to which of the five words they stress – if its:
We – they are worried about their Identity
Can’t – they are worried about their beliefs and values
Do – they are worried about their skills
That – they are worried about their behavior
Here – they are worried about the environment
It might then be useful to probe the domains the participants seem most concerned about using anecdote circles to collect stories about the concerns that in fact may be the cause of their resistance or concern.
When you try it out, let us know how it went for you. We’d be happy to hear your story ☺
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| 1/11/07 | | Using Twitter to stay connected |
I was sceptical whether Twitter would be a useful business tool. I heard it was addictive so decided to keep away until I worked out how it might be useful. There are six of us in Anecdote and we all work from home. Three of us are in Melbourne and three in Canberra. One of the problems with working from home, or out at client sites, is the feeling of disconnection that builds without hearing the chatter that would surround you in an office. Twitter provides this chatter.
We started using Twitter a few weeks ago and already I can feel the difference. I have closed down access to my Twitter feed to the world so only Anecdoters can see my twits. That way I can share all the things I might say if we were in an office together. This is a valuable service for our business but I couldn't measure this value. It's the value of contentment, sanity, fun, and a smile when you hear Robyn has just baked some muffins, Daryl is wrestling with Zahmoo, Mark is updating his iPhone, Krista is writing an anecdote for her business card and Chandni is getting her mac working.
I noticed Tom Davenport is writing off the business value of social networking applications like Facebook and MySpace. He might be right but being social is essential to our work. So if Twitter is a social networking applications I can say it delivers us business value but don't ask me to put a figure on it.
PS. It is this type of hard the measure business value that Most Significant Change and Zahmoo is designed to assess.
| 27/10/07 | | Collaboration conditions |
I was having a conversation last week about how easy it is to rob people of the permission to collaborate. Examples were provided of how 'bosses' don't even need to say anything: a disapproving look is enough to communicate that a chat while making coffee isn't considered 'working'.
The conversation reminded me of an experience during one of our projects. The client representative couldn't find a meeting room and took us to this fabulous collaboration space in their new(ish) building. This new building was designed to enhance collaboration. An atrium runs along one entire wall and is filled with secluded nooks for private conversations, with areas where groups can get together and with cafe areas where people can have 'chance meetings'. I was surprised that our little group was the only one in there and asked why. Our host explained....
Early on, this place was used all the time. I loved it and brought my team here for regular meetings and, with the shortage of formal meeting rooms, I had lots of my smaller meetings here as well. The place always had a great 'buzz' about it. But the design had a big flaw, the executive offices were all positioned overlooking the atrium. One day I was called into the office of an executive who told me they considered I was spending too much of my time in the atrium (collaboration space). Apparently others had similar experiences. Nowadays hardly anyone comes here. We feel we are being watched.
In complex environments we know that little things can make a big difference and in this case the impact is obvious in the low usage of this great space. The conversation also remind me of the powerful impact of managers in their day-to-day interactions. Every interaction is an opportunity to build or to erode engagement....and collaboration. It could have been a very different outcome if the executives had said 'its great to see you using this area'.
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| 17/10/07 | | Technologies for knowledge management |
There's been a lot written on this topic; probably too much because if someone asked, “What technologies should I be thinking about to do knowledge management?” you would be hard press to find a simple answer. Of course the answer is, “It depends.” But that's unhelpful. If I were asked this question I would say, consider the following:
- Telephone and conference call capability
- Intranet
- Search & social search
- Email distribution lists
- Document management
- People directory
- Video - YouTube style
- Wikis
- Blogs
- Social bookmarking
- RSS
- Tagging
- Instant messaging
- Collaboration tool (group calendar, discussion threads, file sharing)
Have I missed any biggies?
Technorati Tags: technology, tools
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| 15/10/07 | | 50 Web2.0 ways to tell a story |
The guys at Cogdogroo have documented 50 web2.0 applications you can use to tell a story.
http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools
It's a wiki so you can help them improve their resource.
Technorati Tags: web 2.0
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| 14/10/07 | | Creating timelines |
Have you ever wanted to create a timeline? Well there is now an online application call xtimeline that can help you out. The interface is well thought out and lets you explore all the events.
Technorati Tags: timeline, tools, web 2.0
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| 12/10/07 | | Participation in communities of practice |
I'm really enjoying Sketchcast. One of the reasons why I think this is an important knowledge transfer technology is the feeling I'm getting that people are getting fed up with so much reading. A couple of weeks ago Daryl and I ran a narrative workshop for a construction company. We plastered the wall with anecdotes from their company and as people arrived we invited them to read the stories. There was a visible sigh from these guys. It wasn't their preferred method of taking in information. Mind you, once they got started they really enjoyed hearing their colleague's stories. I guess it made me think that we need to always be on the look out for other ways to present information and the rough sketch is an essential part of any repertoire.
Technorati Tags: sketchcast
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| 30/09/07 | | Client relationships - getting a helping hand |
We are lucky to have many terrific clients that we love working with. Here's an example.
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| 29/09/07 | | Read our blog using our RSS feed |
I'm hoping everyone who reads our blog is reading it by subscribing to our RSS feed. Now if that sentence made no sense to you, check out this Common Craft explaination of RSS and how to use it.
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| 27/09/07 | | Social bookmarking |
One of the new practices that will be essential at a time when information volumes are exploding is social bookmarking. That's because with social bookmarking you are getting help from your colleagues, community members and practically any one else who's doing it. Problem is, it's not the easiest thing to explain. So we are lucky to have Common Craft's 3 minute video that anyone can understand.
As readers of this blog you are probably already in the know about things like social bookmarking, weblogs and wikis. So your job is to let your colleagues know about this practice so we can all benefit from people using this tool. Just forward this post to them so they can see this cool video.
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| 27/09/07 | | Intranets 2.0 |
Last week I was lucky enough to go along to the Intranets '07 forum in Sydney and had the opportunity to see what a number of organisations in Australia are doing in this space.
One thing that really struck me is that most organisations seem to view wiki's and blogs (and all things 2.0), to be a natural extension to their Intranet projects. The pressures to adopt the latest trends are certainly there, and doing something inside the firewalls seems to be on people's agendas, so it makes perfect sense to use the teams and infrastructure that are already in place.
However, I'm not sure that they know what they're getting themselves into. Adopting these new collaborative and social tools will require a paradigm shift from the current thinking. Let me explain ...
In my notes, I wrote that there seemed to be a real dichotomy in the language being used. On the one hand speakers when describing their Intranets were talking about standards, compliance, custodians, approval, reviews, structured, efficiency, control, and 'single source of truth'. Yet on the other hand, they mused that intranets were about 'people, people, people' and that they were trying to improve collaboration, increase knowledge sharing and foster networks.
I put this down to what appears to be a lack of or poor understanding about the differences between information and knowledge. It seems that many organisations still have a mindset that knowledge management is about trying to codify explicit knowledge - finding it and sticking it in a database, which will in-turn improve sharing and collaboration. However, in doing so, they are ignoring tacit knowledge and the social aspects of learning. Organisations face big challenges to bridge this nexus, and to do so they will need to also consider the 'human' aspects of social software - that it is enabling, empowering, emergent, organic, action-oriented and open. I'll end with a quote, which I think sums it up pretty well ...
" ... viewing knowledge as a duality means that both perspectives are needed and both must be taken into account in any attempt to manage knowledge." 1
References
1. Hildreth, P.J. & Kimble, C. (2002). "The duality of knowledge"Information Research, 8(1), paper no. 142 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/8-1/paper142.html]
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| 12/09/07 | | Intelligence agencies adopting social software |
I'm giving a presentation to the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) conference in October so I'm keeping my eye out for relevant news items. Here's one passed on to me by Nerida Hart. Any other pointers would be appreciated. The topic is narrative approaches to knowledge retention.
“How do you transform analysis?” asked Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). “One word: attitude. For people to collaborate and bring new and vital skills to the intelligence community, we need to change our attitude.”
Technorati Tags: intelligence
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| 15/08/07 | | Building relationships |
I flew from Newcastle to Melbourne last night and had a fantastic two-hour chat with the lady in the next seat. By the end of the journey I felt like I had a new friend. She posed three questions to me that helped us build a relationship in a very short time. Give these questions a try and I suspect you will surprised at what happens. I was.
What is the best piece of advice you can give me?
What has been your most profound experience?
What is the greatest gift you have ever received?
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| 17/07/07 | | Converting your blog posts to wiki pages |
Today I worked out a neat hack to get our blog posts from Ecto into our wiki without having to reformat.
- Simply view the html of the blog post. In Ecto this mean clicking on the < > toggle at the bottom of the screen.
- Copy the html.
- Paste the html into HTML::WikiConverter and click “Convert HTML to wiki markup” and hey presto the wiki markup version appears.
- Copy the wiki markup version into your wiki.
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| 17/07/07 | |