Tag Archives: web 2.0

I Cheated on KM. I Slept With SM. Many Times.

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Before your imagination runs wild, I have to tell you that KM and SM are neither women nor men (I’m straight by the way and no, the SM here is not our (Singapore) Senior Minister). Just in case you don’t know, I’m talking about Knowledge Management (KM) and Social Media (SM).

What’s with the blog post title? Many KM purists would consider me as a heretic, for associating KM with SM. So I thought I would make fun of those who don’t consider me as a true KMer. Unlike those KM purists, I see SM as not just a marketing tool. I see it as a KM tool. In fact, I believe SM offers the best of both worlds of marketing and learning.

Every KMer should embrace SM. There is no point keeping the so-called “KM purity”. Just grab whatever that works – and that could be SM.

Consider the following benefits of SM:

  • SM offers 24/7 platform for conversations. You can’t manage knowledge without managing conversations. You know that. And you also know that there is a limit on how many times you can hold conversation cafes – or any other face-to-face conversation sessions – for staff. It is unlikely that the management would allow their staff to attend conversation cafes – as and when the staff need it. Don’t despair! You have a choice. You can let the conversations continue in the SM. Staff could discuss, read, share, and reuse contents (knowledge) in SM as and when they need it. Plus, whatever that they’ve discussed and shared in SM can be captured instantly.
  • SM provides real-time statistics. There is another issue with face-to-face conversation cafes. Once you hold those conversation cafes, the management would be breathing on your neck and asks you, “What’s your ROI for the conversation cafes?” If you have experienced this, you would know that it feels like someone puts a gun on your head, and tells you to cough out money that you haven’t earned. Again, SM can give you the solution. SM captures some statistics like number of visits, how many times a document has been downloaded, who the active knowledge sharers are. You can easily translate these into ROIs.
  • SM helps to filter contents (knowledge). Let’s dream for awhile, and assume that your KM initiative is a wild success. Everyone in the organisation codifies and shares what they know in the knowledge repository (corporate intranet).  So far so good, right? But when you are awake, you will be horrified. You have a mountain of contents – which complicates search and retrieval (knowledge reuse). The big problem is, how can you distinguish relevant and quality contents from the rest? SM can help in this regard. Filtering contents in SM works based on “word of mouth”. So if someone finds a content useful, that person will indicate it, for e.g. by using “like” button (in Facebook), or “retweet” button (in Twitter). Others could “amplify” the relevancy and the quality of the content by hitting “like” / “retweet” button as well. Such action enables SM to rank contents based on feedbacks.
  • SM offers opportunity for reputation-building. Sharing and learning require incentives. What better incentive is there, than reputation? SM rewards those who share knowledge, initially by awarding them some “self-gratifying” reputation like “top tweet”, number of likes that the content receives. Of course you gain little reputation when your content receives high number of likes / retweets once in awhile. But you can grow your reputation if you can consistently contribute quality contents. Sooner or later, you will be recognised as an “expert” – and people would be more willing to listen to what you have to say.
  • SM is an “open space”. You can’t arm-twist people to share their knowledge. Knowledge sharing has to be voluntary – which is why SM is the perfect platform. It allows people to contribute as and when they want to, and to seek knowledge as and when they need to – without obligations.

Yeah, I know KM is about people. Technology doesn’t matter. blah blah…

Listen:

  1. I’m not saying that conversation cafes (face-to-face sessions) are not important. It’s centainly useful to hold face-to-face sessions regularly to build relationship. What I’m saying is, you can’t run face-to-face sessions as often as you’d like, because people are hired so that their bosses can see them working. You and I can have a debate on whether having conversation is considered work, but the fact is the bosses won’t consider it as work no matter what. That’s sad! but get over it and move on.
  2. Technology is KM enabler, but it doesn’t mean you can do KM without technology. I just don’t understand how some KMers can conclude that KM is possible without technology. They must be some dinosaurs. You see, in absence of technology: (i) you can only exchange / share knowledge with people near you; (ii) searching and retrieving knowledge / information are laborious; (iii) knowledge silos are everywhere; (iv) there are fewer opportunities to build reputation – which translates to fewer incentive to shares knowledge (and more incentives to hoard knowledge).

SM offers solution to many KM challenges. Open-up to possibilities that SM offers, or risk failing your KM initiative. The choice is yours.

What’s Your Crowdsourcing Strategy?

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Crowdsourcing is basically requesting others to collaborate with you to solve a problem. There are some controversy regarding the term. Jimmy Wales – the founder of Wikipedia – is not a fan of the term.

Nevertheless, the idea sticks. Before you can collaborate with others, you need to tell them the problem / challenge. So that they are clear on what’s the collaboration all about. It is also about attracting the right people to be the collaborators. Once people, i.e. the crowd, have a good understanding of the challenge lies ahead, those with ideas, time and the necessary skills will step forward, and those without – would pass the opportunity to get involved.

Here is a crowdsourcing process, for your reference:

Crowdsourcing is everywhere, especially in the social media. Youtube uses crowdsourcing to pick up good comments. Let me show you.

Crowdsourcing in Youtube

Crowdsourcing in Youtube

You see the Highest Rated Comments section? that is the result of crowdsourcing. So what is the problem that requires crowdsourcing? the problem is how to separate quality comments from the rest.

The crowdsourcing here is: Youtube asks the crowd to indicate which comment they like. Notice when you hover over a comment, you can see Vote Up and Vote Down button – depicted as thumb-up and thumb-down respectively. And there is some sort of behind-the-screen mechanism that keeps track of the number of thumb-up and thumb-down that each comment receives. This mechanism will then “surface” comment with highest number of thumb-up and lowest number of thumb-down. As you can see from the example above, the highest rated comment received 22 thumb-ups.

Crowdsourcing is not a “glorified” voting process. Please don’t degrade crowdsourcing as such. Voting is part of the crowdsourcing process. The other part is rewarding the crowd for participating in the crowdsourcing (refer to step 6 in the crowdsourcing process diagram above). This is what sets crowdsourcing apart from voting process.

Allow me to digress a little. People need incentive to collaborate (those who know me personally, would know that I’m a firm believer of this). I’m not talking about money here. This isn’t about monetizing collaboration. I’m talking about implicit reward such as reputation, or fame.

I think reputation is the currency for collaboration*. Let me ask you this: Why would people want to collaborate with you? (or why would people want to help you?) despite all altruistic reasons that you can think of, I think deep-down inside, those who help, want to be known (acknowledged) as knowledgeable, or nice fellow. Don’t believe me? See what happens if someone help you and you don’t say “thank you”. After a while, that person may stop helping you. So, that’s what I’m saying: reputation matters in collaboration. If you want collaboration, set-up a robust reputation system.

Okay, back to crowdsourcing. To use crowdsourcing, here is what you need to do:

1. Identify task to be crowdsourced. This sounds obvious and simple – but I can tell you it isn’t. You need to know the organisation culture. If your organisation is the place where staff don’t usually suggest solutions to other department’s problem – although it sometimes make sense to do so – then you shouldn’t try to crowdsource a department’s problem.  In other words, don’t fight the culture. It’s bad enough when you introduce a new term/process for staff, it becomes worse when you try to change the culture at the same time. Instead, why not you crowdsource a simple task – like that of Youtube, i.e. separating quality comments from the rest?

2. Design and Build the technology.  To do crowdsourcing, you need technology that can support it. This becomes a challenge, when you want to crowdsource your staff instead of the public. You may need to do customisation to your intranet. Make sure the vote/like button is intuitive and user-friendly. And users could get instant feedback on which comment has the most votes.

3. Setup a Robust Reputation System. As I mentioned earlier, people collaborate for a reason. That reason is reputation. You can’t divorce people’s self-interest from collaboration. You need to deal with it. The good news is, it is easy to setup reputation system using the social media. Let me give you an example. Linkedin uses a reputation system: “Manager’s Choice” and “Top Influencers This Week”.  See the following screenshot:

Reputation system in LinkedinThe idea here is to acknowledge individual’s contribution to the crowdsourcing effort. This is to motivate others to contribute as well. What you want to encourage is healthy competition among staff, so that there are sufficient quality responses to the crowdsourced problem.

4. Sell the crowdsourcing initiative. Last but not least, you need to promote the crowdsourcing platform. What you want here, is to create awareness in the organisation, about crowdsourcing. One good way is to publicise stories, anecdotes, testimonials about crowdsourcing.

The above four points are my crowdsourcing strategy. Any comments / thoughts? What’s your experience in crowdsourcing?

____________________________

*I’m writing a book on reputation as incentive for collaboration. I hope I can finish it by 2012.

Recommended Readings:

Howe, J. (2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Wired Magazine. URL: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

Castella, T.d. (2010). Should We Trust The Wisdom of Crowds. URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8788780.stm

Kessler, S. (2010). 5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing. URL: http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/creative-crowdsourcing/

Griner, D. (2009). 10 examples of how crowdsourcing is changing the world. URL: http://www.thesocialpath.com/2009/05/10-examples-of-crowdsourcing.html

Crowdsourcing news bank in Guardian.co.uk. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/crowdsourcing

http://www.openinnovators.net/list-open-innovation-crowdsourcing-examples/

How Uprisings Happen

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This is not a hit list, although it looks like one: Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, and Col. Muammar Gaddafi (a.k.a. the Mad Dog of the Middle East). The first two names are the ex-dictator of Tunisia and Egypt respectively. While the latter is the Libya’s dictator – who is fighting hard to save his regime.

Yes, I’m talking about the so-called Arab awakening (the Middle East uprisings). The interesting thing about it, is that, it happens now - which inevitably begs the questions: why does it happen now – not earlier? why do the people of the Middle East wait until 2011?

Before I answer those questions, let me share my thoughts on how the uprisings happen:

  1. It began with a deeply emotional story that touches many people’s life. The Middle East uprisings was inspired, at least partially, by a story of Mohamed Bouazizi. He was a college graduate who worked as a fruit seller. He was harrassed by corrupt officials who demanded bribes. He refused to comply and burned himself to death. It’s a tragic story, I know. But that’s not the point. Who cares about a fruit seller? I can bet with you that most Tunisians don’t – unless they share Bouazizi’s frustration. Unfortunately in Tunisia – where 14% of the population is unemployed, many people could empathise with Bouazizi story and decided to rise againsts the government.
  2. The story went viral thanks to social media. Bouazizi story is not going to spark a movement, unless many people know about it. The new media is a perfect platform for this, where someone could post a powerful story, and others pass it on to their friends, and their friends send it to their friends’ friends and so on. Social media beats the other media platform, because people are more likely to read stories forwarded by their friends. And there is no censorship. So, stories can travel very, very fast in the social media.
  3. Influencers could find out who share their thoughts, using social media. A powerful viral story is still insufficient to start an uprising. It’s a matter of fear. Fear of being beaten to death by the police. Fear of being thrown to jail for opposing the government (this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). But what happens if someone knows that there are others who want to start an uprising? the sense of fear goes down. And when more people know that there are many others who feel the same way, the fear-level goes down even further. And eventually, when there is enough “psychological safety”,  a collective action (an uprising) will happen.

Look closer to my point #3 above. I said the influencers, not the mass. Why? I think not everyone would be able to translate the meaning of a story to their personal lives. Those who are able to, are the influencers. I’m sure, in the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, there were influencers who interpreted the Bouazizi story, as a cause for a change. And the rest followed the influencers.

As a side note, mass collaboration / uprising / change is always started by a small group of passionate (dedicated) people. In Innovation lingo, these passionate people are called the early adopters. In KM lingo, they are called the influencers. In Design Thinking lingo, they are called – well – the designers or story interpreters.

So, to summarise, I think the uprisings happen now because:

  1. Many Arabs empathised with the Bouazizi story.
  2. A small group of influencers was able to share their interpretation of the story, over a censorship-less platform: the social media.
  3. The influencers attract followers. The best part is, social media makes it easy to know: (a) how many followers that you have; (b) who the other influencers are. This creates a “psychological safety” – where people feel safe to speak their mind and take a collective action.

Recommended Readings:

Yong, J.A. (2011). Uprisings Possible Without the Internet. Straits Times.

Anderson, C. (2010). Crowd Accelerated Innovation. Wired Magazine.

Branson, R. (2010). Make The Most of Social Media For Your Business. Today.

How Web 2.0 Can Boost Productivity

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I just finished reading a WSJ article titled: ‘The End of Management.’ It is a good article and brilliantly exposes the weaknesses of the current management model – which is the legacy of industrial revolution. The bureaucracy in the current management model is also known as Taylorism - which is the principle of scientific management introduced by Frederick Taylor in the 20th century. Taylorism’s main contribution to the management is ’standardizing work’ so that workers can perform at their optimum level – and thus increase their productivity.  This means, to practice Taylorism, the managers would have to examine work and create a set of procedures and policies for workers to follow. And to avoid ‘sub-standard’ work, workers are allowed minimum decision-making. Only managers can and should make decisions regarding work operations.

But before we condemn ‘bureaucracy’ in the management, we need to understand why it exists. When we look at how small organisations (<= 150 people) operate, we would notice that there is little need for bureaucracy because people are familiar with one another. This means: (1) they can address each other by name; (2) they are aware of each other’s working habits; (3) they know ‘how things get done’ in the organisations; and (4) they trust that their colleagues will ‘do their part of work’. Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book, The Tipping Point, argued that once organisations grow to more than 150 people, that ‘functional familiarity’ is lost. People are not aware of what others are doing. And the trust among co-workers is low. To coordinate and align the works by various departments / work units, you need to publicise rules and regulations (procedures and policies).  Hence bureaucracy is born.

So bureaucracy has good intention (initially). And it works well if the work can be broken down to logical parts and workers can be dispatched to work on each parts. But as we move into the 21st century, work is getting complex. Work components are getting interrelated, and thus it is difficult to work on individual component separately. The work components need to be done simultanuously, instead of consecutively. This calls for collaboration – which is, by the way, the buzz word of today’s management. Alas, it is difficult to collaborate well, when you don’t have that ‘functional familiarity’. You need to have a sense of how individual collaborator contributes their perspective and expertise to the (complex) task at hand.  This is where Taylorism fails. It assumes (non-social) systems and processes can make up for the loss of ‘functional familiarity’ and they can ensure no work overlap – since each worker knows what to do (though he or she may not know what others do). But, as evident in the recent incident of Toyota’s car safety woes, failure to see that one work component is connected to others, can be devastating because it creates work silos.

How can we work around Taylorism now since it is pervasive in the business world? Surely declaring that Taylorism should be removed is going to create a lot of resistance and not mention that it is an impossible feat.

Enter web 2.0 (social computing). The real value of web 2.0 is to connect people across cubicles (departments and divisions) – whom otherwise would have little opportunity to strike chance conversations among each other – in a virtual space. People can share and learn knowledge at their convenience since learning is asynchronous. Web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, discussion forums allow people to get to know others’ skills / expertise / experience by posting, commenting, and reading the online contents.  Furthermore, once you get to know people in the ‘digital habitat’, you can always cement the relationship by arranging face-to-face meetings / conferences.  Though building trust is always important, it needs not necessarily take a long time in the online environment. Indeed, the success of Wikipedia shows that you only need a short time to get collaborative work done in the web 2.0. And that is the good news about web 2.0. It reduces the collaboration cost (time).

The implication of web 2.0 for the business world is huge. For one, it enables workers to self-organise and collaborate to tackle complex problem. The ability to self-organise is crucial since any group larger than 150 people is not effective (productive). Coordinating a large group of people’s (> 150 people) work is time consuming and difficult (Just imagine arranging a face to face meeting among these people – and you will get the idea). But if these workers are empowered to self-organise, they would be motivated and engaged to solve problems that ‘close to their heart’, with like-minded colleagues. These workers will be naturally drawn toward tasks that suit their interest (passion), abilities, and experience.  This will reduce the need for rigid systems and processes to regulate how people do their work. And it will increase productivity since people are autonomous, motivated and engaged – partly because they are liberated from bureaucracy.

The best part is Innovation happens when people are given autonomy, complex task, and clear link between reward and effort. And whenever Innovation happens, productivity improved.

Roanyong.wordpress.com in 2010

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,500 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 31 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 118 posts. There were 38 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was November 25th with 56 views. The most popular post that day was What is Knowledge Management (KM)?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, churchwarnings.blogspot.com, and paper.li.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for lee hsien yang girlfriend, toyota downfall, stephen tong, cynefin framework, and 7 pillars of society.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

What is Knowledge Management (KM)? September 2010
2 comments

2

Toyota’s Downfall: Rapid Growth at the Expense of Knowledge Transfer March 2010
3 comments

3

10 Teamwork Lessons from Invictus September 2010

4

Notes from Design Thinking Summit 2010 October 2010
1 comment

5

Three Pillars of City Harvest Church (CHC) October 2008

What KMers Can Learn From Coca-Cola

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The above was an inspiring TED talk by Mellinda Gates. But what does Mellinda’s TED talk have to do with Knowledge Management (KM)? There are lots of similarity between non-profits work /Social Entrepreneurship and KM. For one, both areas of work are about influencing the majority to change the way they do things. That implies: coaxing, coaching, and educating the majority on a better way to live or work. Both areas of work requires behavioral / cultural changes – which means they centered around people.

The NGOs are trying to change the way people live their life, for example: using condoms for a safe sex, empowering women in patriarchal societies. While, KM professionals are influencing their colleagues / clients to capture, transfer and reuse knowledge.

Another important similarity between the two is, top-down management often leads to unintended consequences. The one-child policy in China certainly has good intention. The China government wanted to curb the population growth and to ensure families have means to support their child. However, this policy causes many families to abort or abandon baby girls, in order to have a baby boy (China is a patriarchal society where boys continue the family surname). As a result, currently there is a gender imbalance in China (119 boys born per 100 girls), which could cause social upheaval like forced prostitution.

In KM, coercing people to do After Action Reviews (AARs), when they don’t see the need to do so, could lead to unintended consequences as well. They could just capture trivial, instead of critical knowledge. They would not be motivated to dig deeper on why mistakes or successes happen (one good method to ‘dig deeper’ on a certain issue, is to ask five whys). As a result, the AARs produced are seldom reused, which defeat the purpose of doing it.

Clearly, we (the KM professionals) need a better way of rolling out KM initiatives. We can take cues from Mellinda Gates TED talk. She suggested that the NGOs can learn from the ubiquitous Coca-Cola. And like Mellinda Gates does, I also believe we can learn from Coca-cola. Here is how:

  1. We need real-time data. Just like the NGOs were, we used to be unable to figure out the effectiveness of our KM programme until it was too late. Thankfully, Web 2.0 is going to change that. We can now get our hands on real-time data, such as the number of times documents being downloaded, site visits, the documents being “liked” or “recommended” in Facebook.
  2. We need to engage local entrepreneurial talent. In KM lingo, our local entrepreneurial talent is the Knowledge Champions or KM evangelists. Whatever you called them, they are the folks who advocate knowledge sharing behaviors, promote KM tools and techniques, and capture knowledge in stories or AAR.
  3. We need to have good marketing. Marketing is one area where many KM professionals are found lacking. Many of us think that by sending emails / simple notification about KM events or courses, people would form a bee line and sign up. Sadly, our target groups are usually the people who have no background or interest in KM. To roll out successful KM events / courses, we need to interpret and communicate how this KM event is relevant for their work. In other words, we need to market KM events / courses based on what people want, instead of what we think they need. To do so, we need to listen. We need empathy so that we can understand the challenges that our target group faced in the course of their work.

Why Gen Y’ers Would Make Organisations Nimble

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Gen Y’ers (also known as the Millennials) refer to those being born between 1980s and 1990s. Since I was born around that period, I’m one of 76 million members of Gen Y. Gen Y’ers are valued by the employers because we grew up internet era. We are (usually) IT-savvy. We know how to apply social networking tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogs, to the business field. But we are also known to be  job hoppers. Many Gen Y’ers, like me, have high expectations for personal growth and will have no qualms of changing jobs if ‘we are not ‘growing’ in our current job. A Straits Times report in April noted that many Gen Y’ers change jobs frequently, staying in each job for an average of just 18 months.

It is important to understand that Gen Y’ers quit jobs that are not engaging, and not because we are lazy.  We do care about our work and want to thrive in our roles and responsibilities. What we don’t want is a job that doesn’t require much ‘critical thinking’ skills. We don’t want a supervisor who would tell us ‘just do the job’. We expect to be told the reason behind each complex task, that our boss wants us to do. We prefer not to work with people who do things because ‘the boss says so’. I’m not making these up. Take a look at the following excerpt from a Reuters article: How IT Will Change When Gen Y Runs The Show:

Gen Y workers “don’t see career paths in the traditional sense. They’re looking for companies that are much more flexible,” says Celia Berenguer, co-author of the June 2009 report “Catalyst for Change: The Impact of Millennials on Organization Culture and Policy,” from Monitor Co., a Cambridge, Mass.-based consultancy. “The traditional development and training processes are probably the least effective for millennials.”

Carol Phillips, president of market research firm Brand Amplitude and an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame, has studied millennials and what drives them. “They need frequent bite-size promotions, and things can’t be ambiguous. You have to tell them where the goal line is. They need it more than past generations,” she says.

Because these younger workers are so hands-on, giving them real-world experience is the best way to groom them for leadership roles, Phillips says. “You can’t lecture to this group. They get bored so easily. They learn best by doing. The way they learn is by figuring it out,” she says. “So give them tasks that stretch them a bit but that they’re still able to do.”

The past generations, the Gen X’ers and Baby boomers, may balked at giving what these Gen Y’ers demand: flexibility and autonomy. But here is the thing: They have no choice! As more Baby boomers are retiring, and Gen X’ers move into middle / top management position within the organisation, who would fill-up the bulk of rank and file positions? the Gen Y’ers. Despite the possible misunderstanding between the past generations and Gen Y’ers, more Gen Y’ers presence in the workforce should be seen as an opportunity because we (Gen Y’ers) can make organisations more nimble.

According to MSNBC.com, we are perhaps the best educated generation ever. But good education is not the reason why we would make organisations more nimble.  The product of this so-called good education, will make organisations more nimble because:

  1. We would actively tell our colleagues and supervisors about our ideas and suggestions. Some bosses (especially those who subscribe to Taylorism) would prefer to tell their subordinates ‘what to do’, instead of to receive suggestion from them. But we (Gen Y’ers) will not accept the outdated idea of ‘supervisors-think-and-subordinates-do‘. Whenever there is an issue crop up at work, we will not wait for our bosses to come up with a solution. We will analyse what went wrong , and propose a solution to our bosses.
  2. We are more willing to experiment with our ideas. There is no better way to develop our thinking skills than testing our ideas. We learn best by implementing our ideas, or adopting others’ idea into our situation. Exchanging ideas / thoughts with others and experimenting with ideas, can lead to innovation. More Gen Y’ers in the workplace means more people who would build on others’ idea and innovate. In other words, Gen Y’ers would contribute towards bottom-up innovation in the organisation.
  3. Our familiarity with web 2.0 tools means we can tap into collective intelligence and collaborate with others who share our ideas / thoughts. Leveraging on collective intelligence is not possible in the past, because there is no easy platform where like-minded people can meet and share their ideas. That easy platform is here now: social networking (web 2.0) tools. So, we (Gen Y’ers) are in better position to implement business initiatives such as Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Knowledge Management, or Marketing via new media (Social Media Marketing). The web 2.0 tools also allow us to call for collective action – a mass initiative by people who believed on a common cause. For example: Wikipedia.org, 350.org campaigns, Encyclopedia of Life.

Though the above pointers can cut through bureaucracy and speed things up in the workplace, it also blurs the role between supervisor and subordinate. And therefore not all bosses would welcome it. But then again, we (Gen Y’ers) consider personal growth as more important than career advancement. Thus, we wouldn’t lose sleep if our ‘self-starter‘ behaviors offend our bosses. We will simply change our job!

Just as people can’t be nimble without practice, organisations can’t be nimble without providing conducive environment for Gen Y’ers to share ideas, collaborate and innovate.

References

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS377020488420100823

http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100920-238000.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640395,00.html

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20100912_Gen_Y-ers__Smacked_with_reality.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38364681/ns/business-economy_at_a_crossroads/

KM and Innovation: The Missing Link

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Many people, including management experts and consultants, have an inkling of Knowledge Management (KM) is linked to Innovation in some way. Some even go further by saying that Innovation would justify investment in KM.  However, when you asked these people how KM would be linked to Innovation, you may receive divergent answers.

It is hard to expect a unified answer when the notion of Innovation is not immediately clear. It is not uncommon to define innovation as a process that produces new product. But, this is a pretty narrow definition of Innovation. We can innovate not only on product and service, but also on business process. In fact, to commercialize Innovation, organizations need to combine product/service innovation with business process innovation.

The above paragraph shed some light on the mystery of Innovation. However, we can’t completely understand Innovation without addressing the question of ‘who should innovate’. Some experts opine that only those people, who are qualified – such as researchers or senior management, should be involved in the Innovation process. Others think that everybody – including the customer and in the case of ‘open innovation’, the public – should be involved in the Innovation process.

‘Who should be involved in the Innovation processes’ is a question that can never be answered satisfactorily, because we do not know for sure who have brilliant ideas – the nutrients for Innovation – in their mind. The best thing we can do is connect people who have some common ground, but with enough diversity, to spur Innovation. To put it simple, we need what Dorothy Leonard called ‘Creative abrasion’ to spark Innovation. This is where Knowledge Management (KM) and Innovation coincide.

KM is about connecting the right people to knowledge sources, which can be either experts or written records. Of course this involves stimulating conversation that matters, i.e. conversation among people who are bound by mutual interest in a knowledge domain, or shared passion to solve their organisation’s problem. I would have to underline that although these people are attracted to the same thing, they may have different views or come from the different background.

Inviting people to join conversation that matters to them is now easier than ever, thanks to the advent of web 2.0 tools like discussion forums, social networking sites, wikis and blogs. These tools are revolutionizing the way people collaborate and catalyzing the process of finding ‘similarity in diversity’ – a common ground among the divergent views on a topic of interest – which is the necessary condition for creative abrasion to happen. The collaborative features in  web 2.0 (social computing) make this technology the new frontier of KM (APQC*, 2009).

The illustration below summarizes my point.

KM and Innovation: The Missing Link

KM and Innovation: The Missing Link

In addition, KM could offer ‘a shortcut’ to innovation by managing what the organisation knows – past project experience, lessons learnt – which could be used as cues to build new ideas. Thus, KM facilitates Innovation.

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*APQC stands for American Productivity and Quality Center

Why Every KM Professional Should Care About Climate Change Issue

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When I told my colleague that Combating Climate Change (CC) requires Knowledge Management (KM), she said she couldn’t see the relationship between the two subject matters. Her reaction is not surprising, many KM professional don’t consider Climate Change as a KM issue. However, as APQC 2008 study has shown, the essence of Knowledge Management is about fostering collaboration among knowledge workers¹.

Who are the knowledge workers in climate change issue? they are the scientists, politicians, and activists. It is undeniable that these various parties need to collaborate to tap from each other’s experiences and resources, so that the world could avert the danger of climate change. A fact that was recognised by Australia’s PM, Kevin Rudd, who stated that collaboration is the key to combat climate change².

Collaboration, however, is always easier said than done. Not so long ago we know that even within the scientist community itself there was a big disagreement of whether climate change could be considered as crisis³. Though via the Kyoto protocol and Copenhagen accord, the politicians mostly agreed that climate change was threatening all life on earth and it needed to be curbed, they have differences on “how” to combat climate change, i.e. who should bear the cost? how to monitor the commitments that the leaders had made?

It is clear that climate change is a global collaboration issue, which is also a KM issue. Thus, every KM professional needs to be involved in combating climate change. To do so, we can join communities of practice (CoPs) in the domain – climate change.

You may be wondering how to find CoPs in climate change. Though the CoPs do not refer themselves as such, they are usually bottom-up organisations and often founded by people who are very concerned about climate change. They have presence both virtually and physically. For example: 350.org, WWF.org. While, the CoP concept purists may not categorize these organisations as CoPs, we know that web 2.0 enables people to find others with the same interests / passion.

In short, the emergence of web 2.0 allows like-minded people to form CoPs more easily¹. This surfaces another reason for KM professionals to be involved in the climate change issue. We – the KM professionals – could help to cultivate and provide consultancy to the bottom-up organisations like the ones mentioned in the above paragraph. The return for us, other than saving the world, would be an opportunity to practice and promote KM, especially on CoP.

References:

  1. (2008). The Role of Evolving Technologies: Accelerating Collaboration And Knowledge Transfer. APQC Best Practice Report.
  2. Singh, G. (2009). Rudd Says Collaboration Key to Tackle Climate Change. Bloomberg.com.
  3. Lott, J. (2009). Why You Should Be Hot And Bothered About ‘Climate-Gate’. FOXNews.com. email gate in scientific world. climate change.

Notes:
Here are some of the important points from APQC Best Practice Report 2008:
1. Collaboration is the heart of Knowledge Management.
2. There is a shift of focus from collecting contents to connecting people to people.
3. As the digital capability to connect people to people expands, the definitions of collaboration and communities of practice are blurring.