tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-189858772024-02-24T02:02:05.864-08:00Dr. Bonnie CheukInterested in Knowledge Management, Information Seeking and Use Behaviour, Information Literacy (especially in the workplace), Communication theory and practice, Facilitation techniques - Sharing my personal views and I do not represent my company's view.Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-10123295874131982522020-03-22T10:15:00.000-07:002020-03-22T10:15:06.746-07:00Time to Press Reset as WHO declared COVID-19 Pandemic<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #333333; font-family: "Libre Franklin", "Helvetica Neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; padding: 0px;">
The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared COVID-19 a pandemic. I am trying to make sense of what is going on. I thought it is an opportunity to reset the world and pause-and-reset my own thinking (not to empty my thoughts, certainly a need to challenge my own ideas/thoughts that may not longer fit the new context).</div>
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I set up my first public blog in 2005. I started blogging inside my company, and then open my thoughts to everyone from 2009. I have been posting on and off on <a href="https://bonniecheuk.blogspot.com/" style="background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">https://bonniecheuk.blogspot.com/</a></div>
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Other times, I read and learn from my network on LinkedIn and twitter, and posting my thoughts, comments and questions on <a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bonniecheuk" style="background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222222; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bonniecheuk</a>. And I continue to blog inside my company.</div>
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I am indebted to Dr Brenda Dervin for her mentoring, guidance and challenge to my thinking and my practice in the past 20 years. Dervin and Mr. Squiggly always remind me to stay human (no matter how much great technologies I have at my disposal, and how excited to have led multiple digital transformation programmes ). I also learn that when I lower my ego to listen, and to treat others as living breathing human beings, doors are open.</div>
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I am worried I will forget the drastic change the world is changing in such a short time, and I wonder how I will change, how my colleagues, my family, my community, my country will change. Let’s see….</div>
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[Blog written on 22 Mar 2020, 5pm, Cambridge, United Kingdom]</div>
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You can continue to follow my blog on <a href="http://sense-making.org/index.php/my-musings-journal/" style="background-color: transparent;">http://sense-making.org/index.php/my-musings-journal/</a></div>
<br />Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-89004035412129287132018-05-16T12:26:00.001-07:002018-05-16T12:26:50.242-07:00A note for my future self on “where is Knowledge Management going”<div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); color: #454545; font-family: -apple-system, HelveticaNeue; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">In the past 20 years, I have been helping large multinational companies to create (human + digital) ecosystems which promote the flow of ideas/information/knowledge across boundaries. It is both an art and science to make it happen. It is never straight forward. This requires me/my team to exercise a combination of skills relating to agile strategic planning, user-centric design thinking, change management, communication & facilitation, networking, learning design, information management, analytics, and increasingly digital skill sets and mindset to make it happen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">Some organisations name what I do “knowledge management”, others call it “collaboration”, “business transformation” or “digital transformation”. To me, it does not matter as long as it is creating value to the company, the employees, the customers and stakeholders. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">Today, I reflected on my journey and asked myself, what are the top 5 questions/muddles/puzzles I have about the field I love, and I wonder where KM is going next. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">I noted down 5 questions and I like to share with my future self (and with my blog readers):</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 17pt;">1. </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">Has KM changed? Dead and then rejuvenated? Is it the same old same old as we were doing 20 years ago? Have we innovated enough to stay relevant?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">2. The ISO KM standard is coming soon, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">what does that mean? Should we be happy or should we be worried? Is that an opportunity or a threat? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">3. There has been a lot of buzz about design thinking, agile methodology, putting users at the centre, creating personae and journey maps, participatory approach to engage with target audience and listening to users’ needs to design solutions. KM professionals have been putting users in the centre to design our services at least in the past 20 years, can we be more visible and share our expertise in this space? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">4. Technology changes so fast, companies are facing constant disruption. Blockchain, AI, machine learning, advanced analytics are coming into the picture. Have we given enough thoughts on which part of KM services can be automated versus which part require human curation, emphathy, insights and judgement to create value to our users? Have we used analytics to inform the next best steps to add value to our users?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;">5. With the craziness of the speed of change, what skills and competencies are required for KM professionals? Should we focus on upgrading (technical and soft) skills or upgrading our capability</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-size: 17pt;"> to adapt, change and learn? And even more, should we be upgrading our capability to help our organisation to upgrade its capability to adapt, change and learn? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: .SFUIText;"><span style="font-size: 22.66666603088379px;">I wonder what my answers would be when I look back in a couple of years time. </span></span></div>
Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-52209409133223284142018-03-17T08:14:00.001-07:002018-03-18T01:34:49.184-07:00Knowledge Management in disguise: What do I do?<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">My best friend came to London for a study tour and she stayed with me in my London home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">On the first night of the reunion, she asked me “Bonnie, what do you do at work? Are you still working in Knowledge Management? I am not sure what I tell my study tour mates when they ask me what you are doing?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Such a great question. A lot of things come to my mind, as I reflect on my career. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">What do I do? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">1. I find ways to promote knowledge flow across boundaries for multinational companies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Typically this means creating information and comms systems, defining processes, nurturing communities/networks, putting in roles to allow employees (or customers) to easily access experts/knowledge to get their work done. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">As knowledge resides in people’s heads, in the relationship between people/team, and in documents usually sitting in some systems, I am seen as “a learning facilitator, communication facilitator, story-teller and story-collector” to “a digital person who knows about social media, build intranets, knowledge base, enterprise social collaboration platforms”.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Some colleagues think my work relates to IT. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Other colleagues think my work relates to communication. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Some colleagues think my work relates to new style informal and social learning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">2. I find ways to take people on a journey to embrace a culture of knowledge sharing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Every time I kick off a Knowledge Management programme (or whatever name the company use), one of the key mandate is “our company need to build a knowledge sharing culture, and break down the silos”. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Do I have magic to mandate people to change? Of course no! I do have experience designing user-centric participatory workshop to engage with people of all levels, listen to their stories, play back their stories for them to self-reflect and see the point for themselves to take small steps to change. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Some colleagues think my work relates to culture change. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Other colleagues think my work relates to employee engagement. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">3. I study people’s needs, pains and dreams in order to design systems that are relevant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Influenced by Dr Brenda Dervin who has been my mentor since my doctorate research days (1996-2000), I have been applying Sense-Making Methodology to research people’s info/knowledge needs in real-life context. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">After gathering the user stories, I create personas, user journey map, analyse the gaps and strengths, and use the insights to co-create the “to be” KM systems with the users. I work out loud, I seek frequent input on unpolished design/ideas, I invite criticism, I make quick changes, and I rapidly fine-tune the solution. And I am impatient, I would like to turn ideas into a working product quickly, and failed fast if needed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Some colleagues think my work relates to agile and design thinking. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">I am wary they are buzz words. To me, these concepts are not new. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">4. I practise strategic knowledge management. I work with senior executives to create knowledge-driven business strategy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Simply speaking, the senior executives and the Board have to recognise that improve knowledge flow can increase performance and is a key enabler to deliver the business strategy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">This is not always the case or possible. Reflecting on my career, it is usually a visionary CEO/CXO who believes in it, and open the door to make it happen at the right time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Practising strategic KM means staying business-focus and speaking the business language. It starts with asking: “Knowledge is everywhere, with limited time/resources, for this company to achieve its business vision, what are the truly “critical knowledge” that has to flow, to be managed and protected? What should we do now?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">The answer is guaranteed to be different for different companies and sectors operating in different contexts. That is why strategic KM can never be boring. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">Because of this aspect of my work, some colleagues think my work is in strategic consulting and business transformation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">So... what do I do? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;">My work is multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary and involve working with multiple business stakeholders. I don’t think KM sit in a box. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "uictfonttextstylebody"; font-size: 17px;"></span>Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-31085694072516213322018-03-11T00:51:00.000-08:002018-03-11T00:55:37.574-08:00What assumptions do you make when designing human-centric practices or systems? <div style="border: 0px; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 27px; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In this article published in KOSMOS Journal for Global Transformation (Winter 2017) titled “Luminal Leadership”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/liminal-leadership/">https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/liminal-leadership/</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The author Nora Bateson wrote “the illusions of our system crumble, each grouping of ideologies is ossifying in their own particular frequency and becoming less able to hear the others. The sense-making apparatus of our culture is losing its grip. (...) </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But short of a fundamental reorganizing of embedded assumptions of life and being alive, humanity may not make it. So, are we ready?”</span></div>
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I believe it is going to be hard work and requires a lot of discipline. It is not impossible, and it will be a journey. </div>
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As a start, I/we make a lot of assumptions when designing human-centric practices/systems (in organisation or in society). We have to be clear what assumptions do we draw on about human beings, about the gappiness of realities, about existing power structure, and how human beings make sense and mov-ING in between the cracks. There are many theories out there. One that has been developed in the past 40+ years by Dr Brenda Dervin called Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) is one that I found most useful. SMM makes explicit these assumptions, and Dervin’s research systematically apply a set of theoretically-informed methods to “listen to one another” whilst recognising that human beings tend to be habitually locked into their own world of nouns (eg ideology, role, function, gender, culture,...). </div>
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For those who are interested, it is impossible to elaborate her 40+ years of work in a few paragraphs. Here is an older article which I co-write with Dervin:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.718.3572&rep=rep1&type=pdf" target="_blank">Cheuk, B. & Dervin, B. (2011). Leadership 2.0 in Action: a Journey from Knowledge Management to Knowledging. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL), Vol 3, No 2 (2011).</a></span></div>
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With Dervin’s permission, I am happy to share some more articles to see if that helps to develop your thinking further. Feel free to get in touch. </div>
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<br style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;" />Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-50402378969956951152017-12-31T06:05:00.000-08:002017-12-31T06:05:02.016-08:00Company-wide culture change (evolution): is it an art form, corporate bluff, or is there a coherent methodology to guide practices? I was reading this Guardian article on New Year's Eve<br />
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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/23/from-inboxing-to-thought-showers-how-business-bullshit-took-over<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The article looks back at the management history which gives me some inspiration on how to improve organisation life in 2018, and how best to evolve an organisation culture. (Note: I intentionally not use the word "change" the organisation culture, because this implies a non-communicative top-down push approach to change people, more on this point later in the blog). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Quoting the article, "If we hope to improve organisational, then a good place to start is by reducing the amount of bullshit our organisations produce. Business bullshit allows us to blather on without saying anything (...) As we find our words become increasingly meaningless, we begin to feel a sense of powerlessness."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I agree with the author, this does not need to be the case. Company wide culture change cannot and should not be fluff that is filled with meaningless words. The issue I like to think through </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Is "how" to design culture program in a coherent, practical and repeatable way (that is not based on a cookie cutter recipe)? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I try to experiment and practice in my corporate life the following:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">- Instead of using "big words", I find ways to have genuine dialogue with my colleagues, to understand one another the purpose of our jobs, why we think/behaviour in certain ways at work, where we struggle, where we could help one another, and sharing our dreams. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">- And, I know I must be pragmatic, knowing that to achieve this "utopian" level of exchange, I must overcome some thorny challenges. The deep sharing won't happen by chance, certainly not through spontaneous conversation, it has to be done by design. I am mindful that there are experts (people-in-power, thought leaders, bureaucrats, nice people) who will intentionally or unintentionally silence the voice of those who are not like them, and so not all the colleagues are willing to speak up, and many voices and passion will remain hidden. They become labelled as the " uninitiated group" who are not willing to embrace change. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">- Spontaneous communication seems easy, nice to do. Let's have a meeting or run a townhall to talk about culture change! Let's have an interactive training and knowledge exchange session! Talking and sharing always make people feel involved. This is not what I am talking about here. Meetings and talking shops do not mean building deeper understanding, nor would the quality of exchange lead to better informed decisions to change things for the better. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">- I believe there is a need to have genuine conversation to share ideas and knowledge - based on equal status that everyone has something to offer, there is give-and-take, based on a fundamental belief that coming out from the conversation, everyone involved experience some changes - and I believe one has to put in extra effort to attend to power issues if we want to communicate in a communicative way. It is really hard, it requires deliberate practice and deliberate interventions, communication procedures. And ithey form the core foundation methodolody to design any company-wide culture evolution program. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">- I constantly remind myself: if I want to play a part to evolve the company culture, I should start by changing myself, not changing others. The first step is to change the way I facilitate communication, listening to myself and one another, bring out people's needs, pains and dreams </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in a communicative way. </span></div>
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Some experienced communicators, facilitators or coaches call this an art form. They bring out best ideas and make people listen to one another. The limitation is that only these experienced people can make it happen. </div>
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I am interested in experimenting ways to scale company-wide culture evolution, by introducing interventions/practices that are informed by a set of coherent theorectically informed methodology. I am inspired and indebted to Dr Brenda Dervin's Sense Making Methodlogy and her 40+ years of research evidence to guide my thinking and my practices. </div>
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If you are interested, this is a good reference article to go deep into the theory. (Mind you, I don't use the theoretical language in my workplace, I do not ask my executives team not my colleagues to read academic papers at work, I don't want to make it too abstract. These theories inform what I do, I stay very pragmatic and result oriented at work, designing practices to achieve business outcomes). Yet, I know my blog readers have diverse interest, so I share an article here. </div>
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Dervin, B. (2015). Dervin's Sense-Making as theory, meta-theory, methodology, and method, pp.59-80. In Nasser, A. & Saif A. Understanding information science: Twenty key theories. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. </div>
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I welcome your thoughts and anyone who are willing to share any alternative approaches to design culture program. Get in touch! </div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-47045786217155495362017-09-09T15:24:00.001-07:002017-09-09T15:24:46.884-07:00Information Literacy in the Workplace: Who cares? <div class="s3" style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.2;">
<span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">The ability to identify the need for information, to access, to effectively use and present information - from an individual or a group perspective - is critical for any knowledge worker to be effective in the workplace. Business executives strongly support the idea that knowledge workers need to continue to develop themselves, to further understand external customers' (or internal customers') needs, to draw on information and personal/collective experience to make decisions and present ideas. Information literacy enables employees to effectively undertake these activities and fulfil business goals.</span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">However, if information literacy (IL) is so important, why do we commonly hear only of the need to upgrade employees' leadership, communication, time management, project management, team management, lean/six sigma or digital skills, but rarely hear of employees being encouraged to attend "information literacy" professional development course? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">Does that mean information literacy is unimportant? Or do business leaders assume that all employees are equipped with information literacy skills from the education system? Do business leaders expect their employees to acquire information literacy skills on the job? </span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">Outside the library and information science community, does IL mean anything?</span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">Having worked in numerous global companies and working with senior executives </span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">establishing information/knowledge management strategy to become knowledge-driven companies</span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">, I concluded that the phrase Information Literacy does not mean anything to knowledge workers / business executives; IL are disguised within different functional labels, and business processes which are specific to the business context.</span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">In fact, the </span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">embeddedness</span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;"> of information in the business context makes it impossible to talk about "information" or "information literacy" out of context. This make the promotion of information literacy in the workplace extremely difficult (but not impossible)! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">Why has information literacy not gained much traction in the workplace context. If information professionals are aware of the challenges, we are in a better position to make a difference.</span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;"> Consider these 3 angles:</span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">1. Think about knowledge workers working in these functions: R&D, innovation, sales, marketing, client services, IT support, product management, business analysis, they have to interact with information to carry out their work. Informat</span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">ion literacy is obviously needed</span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">. IL is "hidden" in their respective function labels. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;">2. Knowledge workers face different demands at work at different times - ranging from the need to "drive efficiency/reduce costs" vs "increase effectiveness" vs "innovate" vs "handle crisis situation" - and in different context, information is defined and handled in different ways. There is no one-size-fit-all information literacy process/tools that work under all business scenarios.</span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">3. The level of information literacy exhibited in a workplace is highly influenced by the company culture. Whilst organisations with open, networked culture value information literacy, those with </span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">hierarchical</span><span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">, command-and-control culture would not value information literacy as much.</span></div>
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<span class="s4" style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px;">I am going to be a keynote speaker for the <a href="http://ecil2017.ilconf.org/" target="_blank">European Conference on Information Literacy ECIL 2017 </a> and I look forward to explore these topics in more depth with the conference delegates. My</span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;"> presentation is based on a book chapter titled "The hidden value of information literacy in the workplace context: how to unlock and create business value" in the "<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Literacy-Workplace-Marc-Forster-x/dp/1783301333" target="_blank">Information Literacy in the Workplace, edited by Marc Forster, published by Facet Publishing in Apr 2017.</a></span><span style="font-family: Helv; font-size: 10px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Literacy-Workplace-Marc-Forster-x/dp/1783301333" target="_blank"> </a></span></div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-70614332186581412272016-10-07T13:33:00.000-07:002016-10-07T13:36:24.804-07:00Digital Transformation inside Enterprise: Redefining the Future of Work<div id="AppleMailSignature" style="font-family: UICTFontTextStyleTallBody; font-size: 17px;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I recently presented in a <a href="https://www.conference-board.org/conferences/conferencedetail.cfm?conferenceid=2811&cid=go&wa=2&de=Y&des=861" target="_blank">Conference Board unConference</a> event in Brussels. The theme of the event is the Futue of Digital Transformation and Innovation. I presented on the topic "</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How will the work change as we digitalise the workplace: new leadership, new work practices, new relationship?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In this event, I am privileged to </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">meet up with many thought leaders who understand how digital transformation is impacting on society, business, industry and innovation, and we all recognise it is a long and difficult journey to get it right, yet we all believe and are passionate to co-create a way forward. It was a thought provoking meeting, and I am grateful to be invited. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">See this <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/Conferenceboard/status/784056423802101760/photo/1" target="_blank">infographic</a> created by Conference Board which sums up the keynote sessions:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To me, digital transformation is not about automation, i.e. applying the same process to get work done faster using new technologies. Digital transformation is about how we achieve business objectives with a different / better model, made possible by the new technologies available. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When looking at digital transformation inside enterprise, it is going to redefine employees experience at work. No longer limited by time and space, digital changes the foundation and engrained assumptions in terms of how work gets done:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Talents can work anytime and anywhere in a personalised way. Space is no longer a constraint. Clock-in-clock-out is no longer the only way to demonstrate productivity. What if physical and digital space can extend, compliment and blend together?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Talents can choose to get work done on personal or work devices and set preferences tailored made to individual needs. One-size-fit-all device and business application based on conformity to the lowest common denominator is no longer the only option. What if each talent can define his/her user experience at work?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Talents can build relationship, connect, communicate and share ideas and knowledge across boundaries quickly and easily. The hierarchical management, top-down communication, silos team working is no longer the only management model. What if work can be organised around a peer-to-peer networked model?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Despite the opportunities on offer, change is hard. Redefine the rule of the game means people who manage the status quo, and the associated policies, processes, tools, incentive schemes to support the status quo are feeling the ground is shifting, resulting in unease and resistance to change. The journey is not easy, and when</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> getting it right, the outcome is impactful and transformational. </span></div>
Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-26135627973044098752016-02-27T04:19:00.000-08:002016-02-27T04:19:48.724-08:00Digital transformation with business purpose: Leadership 2.0 required at all levels<br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Talking about digital transformation. Does digital come first or the business need to transform come first? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Very often, digital evangelists (including intrapreneurs) embrace everything digital and excitedly introduce them to their colleagues, only to find out that their colleagues "really didn't get it". Typical responses are:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- We have always done it this way and it works, why should we do it differently?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- Does this replace what we are doing today? Does this make me/my team more efficient, so we can do more with less time/resource? How do we measure success? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- These new digital tools are too overwhelming, does that mean I have even more to don more updates, communications to read? I am already overloaded.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- They are for my kids, they are for digital savvy people, they find it very easy, but I think otherwise. I am not good with digital, I feel inadequately equipped to go digital yet. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The challenge does not stop here. The next challenge is what is this "digital thing" suppose to transform? Could it be: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- adding digital to what we currently do ("Let's digitalise the training materials so they become elearning modules". "Let's digitalise the marketing message, so it is now published as a blog on the website").</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- using digital to achieve efficiency savings ("Let's go digital and do what we do faster. Instead of sending email to target audience, let's blast them with more messages via multiple social media channels.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Who ultimately make the decision on digital transformation? I would say the business with a digital </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">mindset (and if in the transition period when a company is building up the digital capabilities, business with input from the </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">digital transformation team).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is nothing wrong for the business setting efficiency and cost saving goals. In the past decades, machines and computers have enabled automation which allow us to do repetitive calculations or reduce labour. Most leaders can visualise what to expect. This is good, but perhaps not good enough.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What if business leaders start to ask "what if" digital can enble my business to doing something differently, rather than doing the same thing faster or a little bit better? What if business leaders start asking what are the possibilities and opportunities to use digital to fundamentally choange how we work and how we conduct business. What if business leaders start to ask what would the future or work / future of business / future of government look like? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Digital transformation requires a deep understanding of the business, why the company exist, and the value it aims to create for the customers. It also requires a mindset shift, ie to face up to the digital challenge (when one will never be able to catch up with new digital products being rolled out every day) and learn to swim in it and try things out even though we do not grow up with them. It requires the leaders to learn to feel comfortable when one do not know it all and that one can trial and fail fast, and keep moving on. In a highly networked world and when digital content are exchanged at the speed of light, digital transformation requires business leaders to create the capability for employees and partners to collaborate and work with one another when new issues or opportunities emerge.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This new ways of thinking and working, with clear business purpose and delivering value for customers in mind, require senior managers, experts, designers to let go of our ego and start to listen, learn from our younger persons, people with less experience and with different perspectives, and all employees at all levels need to learn to better listen and learn from one another as we explore new uncharted territories. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I call this leadership 2.0, and digital transformation (whether it is enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 or customer service 2.0 etc) needs leadership 2.0 at all levels. Every employees, at all levels, need to change and embrace change, as change become the new constant. We all need to learn to have an open mind, able to learn and unlearn, have genuine dialogue across hierarchy to get there. </span></div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-38662633918936197602015-08-19T16:40:00.001-07:002015-08-19T16:40:30.942-07:008 weeks after launching a social intranet and collaboration platform: What are the surprises?<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since April 2014, I have been partnering with many colleagues from across the business to introduce a new way of working/interacting/sharing knowledge in my company (Industry: financial service). This new way of working is enabled by a new social intranet, networking and collaboration platform which has been rolled out in mid June 2015. This is part of a wider cultural change initiative to future proof our business, build capability for change and to empower all our talents.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since launch, all employees (3500+) join in within 4 weeks. I am not excited by the figures, and more by what my colleagues are doing on this new enterprise-wide digital ecosystem (which comes with seamless integrates with MS Office suite, online chat and telephony, email). They are embracing new behaviour and using this ecosystem to get their real work done. The use cases come from all </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">business area (e.g. HR, communications, marketing, operations, IT, risk management, legal, leadership development, sales, senior executive). </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">They help to illustrate that we are not rolling out a new shiny social chatting, time wasting social platform. Instead, this is about real business and real work, and together we are redefining the future of work.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So 8 weeks later, after I came back from the summer holiday, I wonder how the adoption is going, how colleagues are adjusting to this new way of working, has the novelty effect worn off, and what are the surprises. My reflection is as follow, when compare to the time when the ecosystem is first launched, </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1. My team got many calls for 1:1 coaching (not just training on how and where to click), especially from the senior management and middle managers level, colleagues want to know how to make the platform truly useful, purposeful and impactful at work, they want to understand the principles and what/why they need to behave differently. They want to understand the consequences. This thought process is encouraging. It is signaling to me the project is enabling cultural and mindset change. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">2. Many colleagues are beginning to worry they receive too many email notifications, and that not everything is relevant to them. At launch, some colleagues feel they are "forced" (or a better word "encouraged") by their managers to follow specific people (boss, peers) and groups that are meant to be relevant to them. However, they are not necessary getting relevant messages because the communication model is exactly the same as the old email push model based on organisation hierarchy and structure. Coachng them that it is alright to unfollow and search, find and follow what they truly find value-adding is needed after 8 weeks. Would I do it differently? No. Because our adoption strategy is to start within colleagues comfort zone, and then show them the real empowerment comes from their ability to opt in and out, and access ideas/people which previously they would not have access or do not even know exist.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">3. Some colleagues start to worry about duplicate content posting, fragmentation of topics, and creation of duplicate communities/groups. It is a valid point, and they are introduced to the "emergence" principles, ie instead of assuming every posts or interaction have to be orderly, let's accept the messiness in getting work done. We need to coach our colleagues to learn to let go, let the interaction/content surface, facilitate the dialogue amongst fragmented group or content owners. Ask them "should these groups be more joined up? Do they serve similar purpose?" Building the understanding and having the dialogue on its own is more beneficial than trying to fit content into boxes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">4. There is less than expected resistance to move out of an existing old-style document centric static intranet to this new social intranet as colleagues want to provide the modern experience, and benefit from the real time metrics (to track how many people view a post), the improve searchability of content they own and want to share globally, and the ability for the target audience to follow and stay connected. They found it so much easier to manage content, design the user experience UX. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Reflecting on what happened 8 weeks after the launch, I noted the coaching/training/support that my colleagues' need have changed. I believe it will be changed again in another few months. It is important that we continue to adopt an agile and flexible approach to help our colleagues to move out of their comfort zone and to embrace a new normal way of working. What works at launch need to be adjusted based on emerging patterns (questions, complains, needs) of our employees. I continue to remind myself that it is important to go with the flow and make adjustment quickly, don't foget it is people and culture I am dealing with, and so I must respect our colleagues as dynamic, living, breathing human beings and co-evolve the company culture together.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And the change journey continues.</span></div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-70123981506582306942015-02-14T05:21:00.000-08:002015-02-14T05:21:37.865-08:00Social business and business transformation: where are we heading?I am preparing my talk at the <a href="http://www.henley.ac.uk/events/henley-forum-15th-annual-conference" target="_blank">Henley Conference Forum 25 and 26 Feb </a>this month. Reflecting on my publication on <a href="http://www.wlrstore.com/ark/social-strategies-in-action-driving-business-transformation.aspx" target="_blank">Social Strategies in Action: Driving business transformation (2013)</a>, my experience in the past 12 months driving business transformation within a highly regulated financial <a href="https://www.euroclear.com/en.html" target="_blank">institution</a> , and on McKinsey's latest research on <a href="http://shar.es/1oPnrT" target="_blank">Transforming business through social tools</a>, I understand the huge challenge leaders are facing and I am also excited about the future.<div>
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Whether you call in Social Business, Enterprise 2.0 or use of social media in the extended enterprise, it is now seeded in most enterprises and is considered becoming mainstream. We are finally scratching beyond the surface, and get ready for deeper transformation.</div>
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What do I mean? Here is how I experience it and where I am playing my humble part to shape:</div>
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1. Enterprise 2.0 is no longer about introducing new digital social tools to employees</div>
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2. Enterprise 2.0 is about embracing a new way of working to create value in a much more networked world, and it means rethinking what "management" means and what management processes and practices are relevant in this new world. It also means employees need to relearn how to behave when they are not being "managed" (or perhaps for some being "control") in a traditional way. </div>
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3. Enterprise 2.0 is about empowering employees to change old habits and build new reflexes on an individual level in the context of doing their day-to-day work. The change is on a micro-moment level and so it is hard because it is so personal, so real and so intense. </div>
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4. Enterprise 2.0 requires <a href="http://bonniecheuk.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/to-make-web20-work-we-need-leadership.html" target="_blank">Leadership 2.0</a> (which I advocated in 2009) and it means making a conscious effort to be mindful and cultivate good practices around communication, conversation, listening and dialogue, and feeling comfortable navigating in an uncertain environment. In an open and network enterprise, this is required at all levels, not just a requirement for leaders.</div>
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5. As all of the above happen, it means that we (leaders, managers, employees) will build new reflexes, redefining the norm, working together, communicating, collaborating in a different way, And the business workflow and day-to-day process as a result will be transformed. </div>
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Now that the real hard work begins, as we pay attention to people, and how they communicate and how they work together. How can we create an ecology that create value, unleash employees' potential, help our employees and even our clients to grow and learn? I expect a lot more experiment and innovation in this space.</div>
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I look forward to exploring my ideas further at the upcoming Henley Conference in Feb, and with my blog readers here.</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-26330045327487280792014-09-21T01:18:00.001-07:002014-09-21T01:18:33.070-07:00On a social collaboration platform, knowledge does not sit still... <div>
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On a social collaboration platform, Knowledge never sits still....</div>
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What do I mean?</div>
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If your company has a vibrant social collaboration platform which is embedded in the day-to-day business process, I expect your employees would be adoption the following new behaviour:</div>
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In this environment, KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT SIT STILL. It constantly gets updated, viewed by employees who want to know, get challenged and changed by the conversation, comments, insights exchanged between the author and the employees. It gets created more rapidly. It becomes obsolete quickly too (if it no longer serves the purpose). Policies, pitch decks, product brochures are updated faster with continuous user feedback.</div>
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So what is the role of knowledge manager in this networked workplace? </div>
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If knowledge does not sit still, knowledge capturing and organizing can be costly and time consuming but its value can be very short lived. We have to be selective to pick the strategic content that we must invest time/effort to manage, and let go of the rest.</div>
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I would argue we need to seriously focus on managing the "flow" of knowledge rather than managing information/knowledge as content objects. We need to pay attention in designing the time-space moment when "knowledging" happens, ie help employees discover what they need just-in-time, create an environment where they can make sense of the knowledge they encounter (including listening, reflecting and commenting with context), and enabling them to create new knowledge and disrupt outdated ones at a unprecedented speed. (Note: if you like to dig deeper into "knowledging" see this <a href="http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/article/viewFile/107/87" target="_blank">paper</a> I co-author with my mentor Dr Brenda Dervin)</div>
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We need to continue to acquire new skills and embrace new mindset to operate and add value in the networked enterprise. </div>
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Fellow knowledge managers, what are your latest innovation to facilitate knowledge flow? Please share....</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-35585459525923790902014-09-04T14:49:00.000-07:002014-09-04T14:49:13.449-07:00Knowledge management: a journey from 15 years ago....<div>
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I started introducing knowledge management to Arthur Andersen Business Consulting 15 years ago under the coaching of the then Global KM Director based in Atlanta, US, I remember we focussed on the following:</div>
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- we built best practice knowledge base to enable the consultants to re-use good practices</div>
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- we created top down communities of practice</div>
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- approved resources were posted up by knowledge managers</div>
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- members of the communities were brought together because of their industry focus</div>
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- members of an industry segment community were added to a email DL, they received newsletter with latest updates, wins, best practices every week</div>
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- KMers role were to cold call partners/consultants around the world to encourage them to share proposals, presentations, and then sanitised them (ie take out confidential info, client names, financial figures) for globale re-use</div>
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- KMers were there to understand consultants' information needs, and give them what they want </div>
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Just over 10 years ago, in 2001, I became the Knowledge Management Director of the British Council. I recalled the KM focus has evolved:<br />
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- knowledge management started to move away from building best practices knowledge base and centrally controlled intranet</div>
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- the role of knowledge managers change from being the approved webmaster, best practice publisher sitting in the centre, starting to help to create collaboration groups, focus on building communities of practice which allow the members to talk and learn from one another</div>
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That was the age of collaboration, more specifically, I call it the age of collaboration in silos because:</div>
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About 8 years ago, Enterprise 2.0 or enterprise-wide social collaboration platform enter the picture. Since 2006, I happened to have the opportunity to work with a visionary CEO of the world's largest environmental consulting firm, and then a visionary CEO of a large global bank. I recalled these visionary leaders spotted a gap, they noted the external world has changed so much, but the internal environment has not caught up. There are opportunities to change how we connect, collaboration and communicate to improve how work gets done.</div>
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After spending four years connecting all the employees in the environmental consulting company, and transforming how work gets done across boundaries. I took it as a personal challenge to move to a global bank to continue to innovate and fine tune my approach and thinking, this time round, driving business transformation from within a business focussing on business-specific use cases.<br />
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The technology is so disruptive that initially, managers and employees have no idea how they use the shiny new tools. I remember:</div>
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- intranet managers wanted to replicate traditional intranet on the new platform, wanting the same level of control, taxonomy structure</div>
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- communications managers asked for creating default setting when they can force email notification to all employees worldwide</div>
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- users and community managers had lengthy discussions as to where a document should sit, is it more appropriate to be in Community A versus Community B (not aware that a document is associated with an individual employee in this new world).<br />
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Soon we realised that this is a totally different world. The control, the habits, the processes, the tools (especially email) we have grown used to at work have to evolve/disrupt if we want to put our employees at the center of this new ecosystem.<br />
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Knowledge managers started to realise the power of social collaboration platform, ie:</div>
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- individual employees are in the driving seat (the knowledge manager as an intermediary function to manage content fades away). We cannot manage all the content, organize and tag them all. Employees can share, can tag and decide what to follow and subscribe to. They can search themselves at the time they need information.</div>
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- Content, communciation, community, collaboration converge in context, they cannot be handled separately if we want to give a holistic experience to the end users. </div>
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Fellow KMers, should we be worried: do employees still need KMers to anticipate their needs and bring the updates to them? should we be celebrating: do we finally have an opportunity to take the flow of knowledge to another level? If so, how?</div>
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It is time to rethink our role, why companies need us, and how can we create value? Are we designer of a knowledge ecology? Or are we gatekeeper of approved content? Where should we focus? Fellow knowledge mangers, what do you think?</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-44892810391612374082014-08-31T06:36:00.000-07:002014-08-31T06:41:00.381-07:00What is Knowledge Management becoming? <div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, Times; font-size: medium;">The world has changed, consumers are connecting, collaborating and sharing information in a new way. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, Times; font-size: medium;">What about at work? Where is our knowledge?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond,Times; font-size: medium;">Many (most) companies have not caught up yet. </span></div>
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<li>Information is locked in shared drive, emails, team sites </li>
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<li>Employees are geographically dispersed. They need to connect (whether it is by email, phone and F2F meeting, online chat, conversation or latest digital tools)</li>
<li>Employees and expertise are locked in functional silos, organisation hierarchies. Cross boundary collaboration is not easy and can be political.</li>
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My research and professional interest throughout my career has been trying to find ways to allow knowledge to flow within and across boundaries within geographically dispersed global enterprises and institutions. Most people think my role is "to break down silos".<br />
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I am enlightened by a CTO who reminded me that silos are created for a purpose. The functional and hierarchical reporting lines (which reinforce silos) are needed to run the business. So no matter how we restructure a company, we need to find ways to connect employees across boundaries based on emerging needs, not just based on organisation structure.</div>
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The question is HOW? How do we get knowledge flow across boundaries, and let the knowledge reach the right person at the right time? </div>
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In the past 10 years, I have been knowledge director for 3 different global companies, the senior management all want to improve knowledge and collaboration to increase value for the company. Somehow I begin to roll out social collaboration platform within large enterprises, and as I get close to the business, I touch on all aspects of the business (from sales, to product innovation, HR, learning, etc.) I realise my KM scope has changed. </div>
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Last year, August, I published this book titled <a href="http://bonniecheuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/my-new-book-social-strategies-in-action.html" target="_blank">social strategies in action: driving business transformation.</a> In this book, I outlined 13 different use cases how the use of social collaboration platform has transformed how work is done, how people share ideas, communication, share knowledge. As I speak at KM conferences and speak with knowledge managers. I got this response "Bonnie, you talk and your book is very interesting, but you are not talking about knowledge management." I am bemused.</div>
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I have been a knowledge manager (and eventually promoted to knowledge director) since 1995, I come out of library and information school, started as a cataloguer cataloguing medical books in a hospital library in Hong Kong, and eventually completed my PhD research on information seeking and use behaviour, joined Arthur Andersen Business Consulting to lead the KM program in Singapore/Asia, then move around various industry leading KM initiatives.</div>
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In the pass 10 years, although the job title had not changed, the scope of knowledge work has been transformed significantly:</div>
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<li>I see I am moving away from managing information, content, intranet, categories to managing communities, conversation and dialogue. </li>
<li>I see internal communication and engagement (and even marketing) being put under my knowledge management remit</li>
<li>I see I am moving from managing specific knowledge repositories with a clearly define scope and boundaries, from managing a highly centralise intranet to managing an interconnected ecosystem that is organic and constantly changing</li>
<li>My work is started to be labelled differently such as creating a digital workplace, building responsive organisation, defining the future of work. </li>
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I wonder what is going on? What is KM becoming? What is my role? What is the role of my fellow knowledge managers / knowledge directors / CKO?</div>
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Do you share similar experience? Do you feel the change as I have experienced? More in my next blog post as I further reflect on my knowledge management journey....</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-13087265229463829302014-05-29T15:09:00.001-07:002014-05-29T15:13:18.900-07:00My advice for someone new to Knowledge Management<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.knowledgeetal.com/?author=1" target="_blank">Paul Corney</a><span style="font-size: small;">, a great facilitator asked me recently: If you were talking to someone new to Knowledge Management what advice would you give them?’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Here is my response:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">"My friend, if you stay focus on the business goals and understand what is high up on your management team's radar, you can make Knowledge Management whatever you want it to be. By the way, avoid using the term "knowledge management", just talk about how best to connect, collaborate and share knowledge to get work done better and faster (and to develop talents)</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">. I have been in this field since 1996, I am regenerating myself every few years, I never have a dull moment. Go for it!"</span></div>
Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-75634822385100036932014-05-10T16:16:00.002-07:002014-05-10T16:43:39.322-07:00My unconference reflectionI am grateful to #ResponsiveOrg for inviting me to the first London event on 10 May. It was a Saturday and over 150 people self select to spend one full day to discuss and exchange ideas on changing the way we work and creating a movement to build responsive organizations. It was the first time I participated in a full day unconference with no predefined agenda and speakers. The closest I have had similar experience was my hosting of a World cafe in Berlin last year Oct (<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Social Business Collaboration 2013 </span><a class="twitter-hashtag dir-ltr" dir="ltr" href="https://mobile.twitter.com/search/?q=%23wcsocbiz&s=hash" style="direction: ltr; outline: none; text-decoration: none; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="opacity: 0.6; outline: none;">#</span>wcsocbiz</a>)<br />
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Coming out and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the end of the day, I ask myself what have I learned? How would I evaluate my own experience of a full day unconference?<br />
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What I like:<br />
1. The novelty effect of allowing agenda to emerge and no pre-defined agenda<br />
2. Setting interaction protocol at the beginning so participants understand they can "vote with their feet" and can move from one discussion group to another. This also set the expectation to the speakers that don't be hurt if people leave the session you host half-way into the discussion.<br />
3. Some great discussions and ideas came out from the participants (some are thought leaders / prolific blogger in the field which I did not recognize initially; others are enthusiastic and have interesting point of view even though they have much less experience). Everyone is treated equal.<br />
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What I struggle with:<br />
1. The ideas emerging are very similar. Many of the ideas are not new, they are common sense. (Perhaps I have already been reading their work on the Internet. Perhaps we are all converts and influence by the same authors). I was hoping to hear more radical ideas and join in debate. Overall, there is not a lot of disagreement or controversial discussion. Everyone seems to be nice and polite.<br />
2. How each session is conducted depends solely on the style of the facilitator. In certain sessions, some people talked a lot, others were quiet. I wonder how could we make the best use of the 1 hour+ facetime to have deeper dialogue, to listen to one another and give time for reflection on how the ideas relate to myself and my work.<br />
3. There is a lot of talk, and it is not clear (nor it is the expectation at the beginning) that one need to identify actions to take. I guess a lot of participants leave with "So what? Now what? What is next?"<br />
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Wearing my practitioner's hat, I like some of the concepts and some of the experience I have had today. I wonder how I can bring some of the unconference concepts back to work to create/nurture/energize a global champions network to promote a new way of working (including promoting the usage of an enterprise social networking platform). My colleagues are busy and hardly can spend time to attend a full day training. I think they are going to find unconference too unstructured, too fluffy, too abstract, and lack of specific outcomes.<br />
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I think I need to tweak the approach, perhaps by considering the following:<br />
1. Allowing emergence happen before the face to face event. E.g. Could the participants propose the discussion topic online prior to the unconference event?<br />
2. Could the participants who put a discussion idea forward post a 1 min video prior the event to promote their discussion topics?<br />
3. Could the discussion be facilitated with a more structured communication protocol. Eg Ensure everyone have a voice, provide a note taking form to encourage participants to jot down what they agree, disagree and actions they can take back to their workplace, people they want to follow up with.<br />
(Note: my view is informed by Dr Brenda Dervin's Sense Making Methodology, for those who would like to dig deeper, here is an article: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/odzdpno">http://tinyurl.com/odzdpno</a>)<br />
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Is that just me who have the above thoughts? I wonder what other participants think?<br />
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I certainly have had a great experience today, and glad to meet so many Tweeter avatars face-to-face. Thank you to the organizer for giving me this experience!<br />
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I wonder what other participants think?<br />
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<br />Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-56699852206374072322014-01-18T09:11:00.001-08:002014-02-08T04:39:03.285-08:00Positioning enterprise social collaboration at the heart of business transformation in 2014: Be mindful of 5 pitfalls<br />
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Since I published the book "<i><a href="http://bonniecheuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/my-new-book-social-strategies-in-action.html" target="_blank">Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation</a></i>" (<a href="http://www.wlrstore.com/ark/social-strategies-in-action-driving-business-transformation.aspx" target="_blank">Ark Group</a>) in Sept 2013, I had some in-depth discussions with business executives, technology leaders, social business consultants and in-house evangelists who have hands-on experience introducing and using social collaboration technologies to transform the way we work within companies.</div>
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Through these conversations, I am made aware of a gap in my book which on hindsight I should have paid more attention to. I have emphasised throughout the book that successful social business (defined as using "enterprise social collaboration platform" and introducing "collaborative way of working" to drive business transformation within companies) must align with the company's strategic business objectives. The question is how do we (as social business leaders) position enterprise social collaboration program as strategic and critical to deliver the company's business strategy, and how can we engage with the senior executives to establish the much needed strategic alignment?</div>
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This critical success factor is highlighted in a number of enterprise social media/social business conferences I have attended recently. Here is my observation:</div>
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1. In a typical panel discussion, increasingly, I noted the panel comprise of speakers talking about enterprise social collaboration platform being adopted in their global companies for over 5 years, as well as speakers who have just started the journey a few months back. </div>
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2. These practitioners both share the passion in rolling out enterprise social collaboration in their organization, and interestingly, they ask similar questions. The company with more social business experience asks "Now what after 5 years? How we can ensure what we are doing still align with the business goals? How do we (re)engage with senior executives and demonstrate value?". The company with less social business experience asks "How do we start in a way that is business focussed, on strategy and enable the company to deliver his objectives? How do we engage the executives and show them the value of a different way of working?" </div>
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To engage with the business executives on a strategic level, to get buy in from business, and to truly put social collaboration on executives' radar, here are the 5 pitfalls that enterprise social collaboration leaders (myself included) need to be very mindful of. I am keeping them in mind to guide my thinking and practice in 2014.</div>
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The 5 pitfalls are:</div>
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1<b>. We are perceived as too passionate.</b> As enterprise social collaboration leaders, we tend to see every opportunity that social collaboration can bring to an organization in a positive note. We see potential use cases to deliver business value and transform business anytime anywhere. We ask "how could employees work and communicate in outdated mode and waste so much time". I am full of passion to drive the change, but I have also learn that we should not forget the business executives, team leaders, functional heads have a business to run and a P/L to manage. For them, social collaboration is an enabler to deliver their business goals (and only if they see it can help them immediately). They don't need to be passionate about using the enterprise social collaboration platform like we do. We like them to be passionate about empowering their team and creating the right environment to deliver their goals. We need to be pragmatic, learn to re-set our expectations as to what we want the business executives to be passionate about. We can do so by seeing the world through the executive's eyes and thinking like an executive.</div>
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2. <b>Social collaboration is not always "best practice".</b> An experience senior executive reminded me that social collaboration is not a panacea to all business problems nor can it meet all business needs. Not all business activities require crowd-sourcing for input, not all business communication requires feedback and follow up discussion. Some companies have been effectively engaging with employees before social media technologies come into picture. We need to recognise and admit we are here to introduce appropriate communication tools for the right purpose. Listen carefully to the executives' needs and do not assume going social is "the only right way". I also learn one should not pitch social collaboration as if all existing communication practices are ineffective. Business executives can be pissed off. We need to learn to be humble, recognise existing strength and good practices, and present a more balanced view when introducing social as a better of working to address specific area of concern.</div>
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<b>3. We tend to position ourselves as social business evangelists, it is time to position ourselves as executives and think like business executives.</b> It is easy to suggest any enterprise wide social collaboration program need to align with the company business objectives. In practice, the alignment is often very difficult to achieve, especially in large companies where there are multiple products, sales and operations heads operating in multiple locations. Having direct access and buy-in from the CEO and the next level down is a great start. Having a mandate from the executive team that social collaboration is a key enabler to drive business performance is critical. To align with the business objectives, we need to focus on implementing early use cases that contribute directly to the success of the strategic initiatives that are on the executives' radar. Continuously demonstrate strategic alignment by reporting success alongside other established business reporting metrics. Very often, in the spirit of driving early adoption, we take a scattered gun approach to reach as many users as possible, which drives short term success, but unless this approach converge with the company's strategic business goals, the momentum will remain at a grassroots level and the benefits delivered become patchy or hidden to senior executives. The senior executives attention will soon fade away, and so will the social collaboration program.</div>
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<b>4. Generic use cases are too bland to excite and drive behavioural change.</b> As enterprise social collaboration becomes mainstream, consultants and social business leaders are sharing more use cases to illustrate the power of a different way of working. Unfortunately, many use cases I come across are too generic and out-of-context. For example, social collaboration can improve communication, employee engagement, document sharing, improve learning etc. They are too bland to create emotional attachment to get the executives excited and take further action. If this is about transforming the way we work, then the context to introduce social collaboration at work has to be artfully crafted to create a realistic image in your audience's heads. The business lingo we chosen to introduce these use cases are critical to get attention. I remember a colleague asked me, "So what does social collaboration really mean for a sales manager who are busy meeting clients and closing deals? Why should one be bothered?". Telling the sales manager to embrace social collaboration platform to improve document storage, sharing, commenting and findability is meaningless. In fact, he is probably doing all this by email. Explaining to him that he can address a telco client question faster by leveraging the global network, finding the winning sales presentation Tony (or insert any real name) has developed for a client based in Hong Kong and saving him 8 hours reinventing the wheel, and that he can keep his finger on the pulse on a key account (insert a real client name) and know the real-time insights the global sales team are gathering from client meetings will stimulate the sales manager and his whole team to want to come onboard. Social collaborations leaders need to be the "translator" to turn generic use cases into business-specific use cases. By doing so, we can show the executives vivid examples as to how benefits are delivered in real business context.<br />
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<b>5. Driving change is extremely hard inside a company. Recognize this is a fact. </b>There are many social business thought leaders and consultants who champion new ways of working and manage to get the CEOs buy-in to make an investment. However, once the enterprise-wide program is kicked off, the real change and resistance happen. I know of consultants/evangelists who are frustrated by the slow pace of change, and they complain about entrenched behaviours/culture. As a result, they move to other assignments only to find out they experience the same slow pace of change and get frustrated once more. We need to accept changing employees' day-to-day work habits is very very hard. We need to be determined to embrace the challenge, be persistent and even better learn to love the challenge. We should tell it like it is to the business executives who understand how hard it is to drive change. One executive suggests to me that it is helpful for the social collaboration leader to set expectation upfront that there are going to be numerous failures along the way amongst other emerging successful use cases. </div>
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Thinking ahead as we enter 2014...</div>
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2014 is going to be an exciting year for us to reflect, consolidate and learn from the past 5 years as we strategically move forward and position social collaboration at the heart of business transformation agenda. </div>
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Whether you are 5 years into your social business journey or just starting now, I hope by being mindful of the above pitfalls, you can build rapport with business executives and establish closer alignment with the business strategy.</div>
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Once you get the executives buy-in, there are other useful tips you can draw on to drive social business adoption within companies. You can read them in my book titled "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation". You can download a <a href="http://www.ark-group.com/downloads/SocialStrategies_TOC-and-sample.pdf" target="_blank">free chapter here. I welcome your feedback. </a></div>
Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-45194604574725885072013-09-17T08:38:00.000-07:002015-10-21T15:23:04.325-07:00My new book "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation"<span style="font-family: FuturaBT;">I have not taken any vacation this summer because I want to take time to reflect. I want to pause and think and write down what I see, what I experience, and I hear from my peers as to how social media technologies have been utilised within companies to drive business transformation. The result is my new book (my publisher prefers to call it a report) titled <a href="https://www.ark-group.com/product/social-strategies-action-driving-business-transformation#.VigQFcR4WrV" target="_blank">"Social Business in Action: Driving Business Transformation</a>" which has just been released. You can see the Table of Content and <a href="https://www.ark-group.com/sites/default/files/product-pdf-download/ARK2497%20-%20Social%20Strategies%20in%20Action%20-%20Driving%20Business%20Transformation_Sample%20chapter.pdf" target="_blank">download a free chapter here.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: FuturaBT;">When I read articles about social business, many of them focus on how marketing, PR or customer service team are using social media to reach and engage their target audience. This is not what my book is focussing on. There is not a lot of published examples as to how social media is being used within companies (behind the firewall). For those I am aware of, many are produced by consulting companies and they tend to be a bit high level. I know a lot of great work has been done within companies, but they are hidden and not easily accessible with the depth that is needed to guide practical actions. So I decide to put together 13 examples in this report. For each use case, I introduce what the business is trying to achieve, what changes (sometimes quite unexpectedly and radical changes) are needed to drive a new way of working; what worked and what did not work; and end with the lessons learned. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: FuturaBT;">These use cases, all showcasing how business transformation is happening from the inside out, cover a wider range of business areas and are all very very business focus. In other words, no social chit chatting, no sharing of grandma photos, and mostly not even the word "social" is being mentioned. I started reflected on practical examples around these 16 area, and eventually zoom down to 13 examples.</span></div>
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Innovation – crowdsourcing ideas
from employees, inviting them to build
on one another’s ideas and voting for
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Employee consultations – seeking input
and ideas to drive improvement in
business processes;
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Online internal communications –
increasing staff engagement with
a new style of newsletter and
executive communications;
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Knowledge marketplaces – creating
a place to allow people who do not
know one another to interact, for
example with a question and answer forum, or
the ability to anyone a question at an
‘online water cooler’;
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Expert communities – connecting
people who share subject matter
expertise so they can learn,
discuss ideas, and share best practices
and mistakes with one another;
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Knowledge bases – using the social
intranet to create and curate product
and marketing materials and share
them with the sales team. This can
also include subject matter experts
blogging their insights to reach a
broader audience;
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Product innovation and life-cycle
management – enabling product teams
to gain insights from client-facing
teams to enhance products and build
employees’ excitement to share new
product releases; </li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Expertise location – finding experts
based on the content they share or
comments the post; following experts so their updates and knowledge ‘follow’
the employees;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Events management – building and
continuing momentum for strategy
meetings or employee events;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Process improvement – streamlining
business processes by bringing
unconnected and fragmented processes,
content, updates, meetings, all in one place, e.g. for account
planning, safety logging, and risk
management processes;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Project management – enabling project
managers to connect with project team
members, sharing updates, meeting
minutes, project documents, and
facilitating discussions;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Sales enablement – connecting the
sales team to align priorities,
developing account plans or pitch
decks, connecting the global sales
team to share client insights to spot
opportunities (some call this ‘social
CRM’), and sharing real time market
and competitor insights;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Operational efficiency – reducing
support costs, building a dynamic
knowledge base, and improving
response time to support questions;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Learning and development – enabling
social learning to allow deeper self-
reflection and learning from peers,
enabling leaders to reflect and share
leadership experience to help junior
staff to learn, and improving job morale
and job satisfaction by enabling
employees to learn on-the-job in
real-time;</li>
<li style="font-family: FuturaBT;">Onboarding new hires – enabling
new colleagues to tap into the global
network on day one; and</li>
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Research and development – collecting
market research and competitors’
insights from external sources and
publishing latest research findings to
reach followers.<br />
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This is the first time I author a whole book, and the learning curve is huge for me. I welcome readers' comments (whether you resonate with the examples or not) and feedback (good or bad) to enhance my journey. Leave me a comment here.</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-63180054562945280042013-06-21T05:43:00.001-07:002013-06-21T05:43:20.041-07:00Are we entering the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption?I have been leading and driving the use of Enterprise 2.0 in a large complex bank in the past three years, and I have been watching closely how my peers are doing this in similar and different industries. Everything seems going well, the picture seems rosy. <div>
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<li>Research from McKinsey Research Institute titled T<a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy" target="_blank">he social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies</a> suggests a US$1.3 trillion of unlocked value for business to reap. </li>
<li>Many large multinational companies and vendors declare success and have been sharing impressive adoption rate within a short deployment timeframe (e.g. <a href="http://www.informationweek.co.uk/social-business/strategy/10-social-business-leaders-for-2013/240155934" target="_blank">10 social leaders for 2013</a>)</li>
<li>Others are starting their pilot and plan to move in the same direction. </li>
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Compare to 2 years ago, I see we have come out of the "age of ignorance" when business leaders do not think they need to pay attention to the use of social media technologies within the firewall. We now enter the stage where business leaders want to do something about it, but not sure how best to do it so it is purposeful and embed it into the core business processes; and make it part of the employees' digital workplace experience. </div>
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With all the great examples/use cases I have orchestrated and many more examples implemented by others, I wonder are we heading into the right direction to use social technologies to transform business? or are we entering the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption? </div>
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Some examples for you to consider:</div>
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<li>Business are using the social technologies, however, they can be using the social technologies to do exactly what they have been doing in the past (e.g. product information or marketing brochures sitting on static intranet is moved into the social intranet with like-for-like functionality and navigation design; executives communications are posted onto the social platform as "blogs" which are written in exactly the same old way; online discussions are hosted inviting employees to have their say and the "usual suspects" have a lot to say and the quiet group stay silent). Yes, social platform allows more content to being shared and become much more searchable. However, the fundamentals as how work gets done have not changed. </li>
<li>Business want to leverage the power of their employees' network to gain insights, intelligence from people on the ground. Social platform are introduced to allow employees to easily provide comments, feedback, ideas. However, the perception is that as a result "there is just too much noise", and "we have to find the gems from the haystack". So who decide what are the "gems"? Most likely the seniors/subject matter experts who have the power, knowledge and who maintain the status quo. With all the good intention to drive efficiency and time savings, they want to eliminate the "noise" so our employees can find exactly what they want the employees to know quickly. So how is the business going to get any new insights when the experts already know what the "gems" are and also play a role to eliminate noise? </li>
<li>Business are using the social platform to organically form communities around strategic initiatives, clients, projects, industries, functions etc. Many communities sprung up, many may have similar names, some have similar purposes, and they are set up as separate communities with no intention to connect. The social platform surface these hidden issues, it does not mean all communities with similar purpose must come together, but who is going to help to build bridges and facilitate the connection. How would companies break down silos?</li>
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I worry we have entered the age of superficial Enterprise 2.0 adoption. Social platforms are being used, the adoption rate is going up, but we are using the social platform in a sub-optimal way. (Think about how we use current technologies in a sub-optimal way: how many time wasting meeting do you attend each week? How many cc emails you should not sent or received? how many conferences you have been to that push powerpoint slides at you and you wonder what have you learn at the end of the day?)</div>
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I see opportunities to take Enterprise 2.0 to the next level, and this requires leadership, discipline, courage to transform business processes (ie not just embed social in the the existing business processes), rethinking of the digital workplace experience and it is going to be hard work to get there. </div>
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If, like me, you are trying to figure out how best to make the social platform purposeful to your business, I find it useful to remind myself the focus should not only be on driving user adoption of the social platform, instead, it should be on redefining some fundamental work practices ('habits') such as: </div>
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<li>Reset communication protocols within your company: define what is considered appropriate to voice in public, what to share by email, make it clear to welcome dissent (public or private), invite views that contradicts the status quo, and treat them with respect (even if they are not taken up at the end)</li>
<li>Facilitate online conversation and communities: if you throw 500 people in a meeting room and ask them to talk, you can imagine the chaos, the loud people shout loudest, people talking over one another. It is no different online, to open the space for online conversation, set ground rules for participants and for the facilitators, ensure hidden voices are expressed, help each individual to make sense of others' contribution. This does not happen by chance, it has to be designed. </li>
<li>Embrace change as the new constant, accept best practices can be outdated quickly (in weeks, not months): coach the subject matter experts/people who have a dominant voice in the organization to step back and listen, and have an open mind, watch the trends and activities in social ecosystem, make adjustment as they discover anytime new to refine existing best practices. Social technologies when properly deployed provide agility, not just efficiency. </li>
<li>Redefine business processes: coach managers not to assume the current business process is the most efficient way to run a function. These processes are designed based on existing communication tools (namely email, phone, shared drives, intranet, collaboration sites), the business process does not need to stay the same way in a networked world. When a team/function embrace social technologies, it is also redefining their current business processes. The outcome is not going to be a more efficient process, but a different process.</li>
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Are you ready for the transformation?</div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-77381325483941793742013-04-07T08:24:00.001-07:002013-04-07T08:24:20.812-07:00This is not a recipe! What is the process to develop a knowledge management strategy?<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); color: #1f497d;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">I was recently asked to share my personal views on the process to develop a knowledge management strategy with some university students in 5 minutes. I have written up these thoughts so I thought I should post to my blog in case my blog readers are also interested in this topic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Based on my experience formulating and executing KM strategy in the past 15+ years, here are my thoughts. Please do not take this as a recipe, use it to inform your thinking if it helps. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Typical process to develop a KM strategy is as follow:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(a) seek senior executive's buy in, especially the CEO, the senior executive in charge of transforming the business model. Confirm the commitment to support the delivery of a KM vision, and recognise there are tons of resistance along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(b) articulate in very simple terms (visually if possible) what KM means to the business. Companies define KM in different ways, from data/information management, collaboration, social business, communities of practice, business intelligence, market research to people development/human capital management. Most companies include a number of these components in the KM strategy. There is no one size fit all KM definition, so it needs to make clear what this KM vision is.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(c) align 100 percent with the business strategy and direction. KM is a means to an end, the end game is where the company wants to head towards. Any KM projects which derive from the KM strategy have to clearly enable the delivery of the business strategy whether it is to increase revenue, improve staff engagement, improve customer service, sales enablement or process improvement. Work extremely closely with the senior executives who are in charge of these business goals. Show them the possibilities using internal and external use cases to get buy in.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(d) measure the success and report the success along the way. Set KM goals and targets which align with business goals, show the direct connections. this is easier said than done, capture and share stories to highlight early benefits along the way. Make these stories part of the reporting. Celebrate success to create buzz. In all my KM roles, I have collected numerous testimonials from employees to show how KM has benefited them and increase their work productivity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(e) stay flexible with the KM strategy, business and external market conditions changes very quickly nowadays, stay align with any changing business directives. Be ready to drop certain initiatives and bring in new initiatives as the business needs arise.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(f) don't forget to build the bottom up groundswell. Buld personal engagement with staff of all levels, get to know them in person, understand their pain points and their information needs. Encourage them to participate, seek their feedback along the way, ask them to show others the way. Recognise their contribution. They are critical advocates to make any KM program works, ultimately they allow the top down strategy and the bottom up needs to be met. Most importantly, any KM program's ultimately empower every individual staff to work better (not just the senior executives).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.00390625); color: #1f497d; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What do you think? Do you share similar views? Are there things that I miss out? Let me know.</span></div>
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-39557065232971075892013-04-07T08:05:00.001-07:002013-04-07T08:05:34.846-07:00The end of business as usual: is it possible in the workplace? (Part 2)Continuing from my last blog, I wonder if the 10 steps to use social media in the consumer world could work within the firewall. (Sorry for the long delay to publish this blog, I drafted it long way back, but have been finessing my thoughts for a long while).<br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">1. Working as a team at work, it is about getting things done. If you are the team lead and you want the members to get their work done (enabled by social platform), do you consider why your team members want to engage with you (other than the fact you are the defacto leader). What would make your team willingly engage with you even if you are not in your position? Could it be working with a leader who cares, who is inspiring, who help their team members to develop and grow in their job.... Have you considered why your staff want to engage with you? Do you bother? Why should your staff bother? Do you invest in content and in engagement? (This also speaks to point number 9)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">2. What brings people together at work is based on projects, functions, tasks to deliver specific business goals. Good conversation within a team help every team member to see their purpose, how they can play a part, and answer what's in it for me. How many managers and/or team members do this effectively offline in face-to-face events/meetings? Can we assume we can/will have great conversation online because your company is rolling out a new social platform....? (This also speaks to point number 8)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">3. Identify who are the influencial people in your organization who can make or break the initiative you are trying to roll out. Find out who they are, and then create a dialogue online (on the social platform) that is mutually beneficial. We know how to do this offline, go and talk to the key stakeholders, influence them, convince them, get them on your side, get them share their support in important meetings. Can we replicate this model online? Start a conversation, get the key stakeholders to comment postively to show "public" support. This is all about reinforcing existing power structure. What is interesting is to discover "influential people" who may not be in power, but attracts a lot of followers/interaction in a specific topical area but whom you do not know personally, they are the additional people to watch and engage.... They create the new rule of the game in a networked organization. How do you think the people in power would think/feel? Smart leaders will leverage the power of these hidden network.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">4. Study what best practices other organisations are embracing internal social platform to transform their business model. McKinsey has published a great report on "unlocking the value of social networks", it is definitely worth reading. Also share early success examples to make it real for the late adopters (or people who do get it initially) to come on board.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">5. Translate early learning into opportunities to share with business executive. Yes, this is so needed in any internal social platform roll out to continue to get senior support and buy in. Unfortunately, the measurement and reporting system in a traditional company does not help to present the value created by social business, I don't think we have a measurement and reporting model which can showcase the benefits of emergence yet! (David snowden certainly is doing great work in this area, I do not see any other examples. If you know of any, leave a comment here)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">6. Listen to what the employees are saying to identify insights and opportunities. The social platform allow these voices to bubble up. Who's responsibility is it to listen to the voice of employees ( and I do not mean an annual HR survey)? Employees are chattering about business intelligence, competitors movement, latest wins and losses, customers' feedback, have your company invested in an approach to analyse and bring these intelligence shared into insights? Are these insights funnel to the right function for action? Who is in charge?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">7. Observe what social tools are used by the employees. Give employees the tools they need to get their work done. This does not mean you force one single platform to do everything. Instead, make the social platform part of their day-to-day experience, make it part of their email, mobile experience.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">8. See above</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">9. See above</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">10. Give employees value in using the social platform which they cannot get anywhere. It has to add value to each individual. And each individual will get something different out of it!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The conclusion is that these 10 steps are as relevant to introduce social platform internally within an enterprise. However, I would argue that the maturity level is so much lower than in the consumer world, and it is going to take a long time to change, especially in these area:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- invest in content and engagement with employees (We have managing employees in a "mechanistic" way since the industrial revolution. Here is an opportunity</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> to go back to basic and treat each employee as valuable living breathing human beings with passion, dreams and emotions and listen to what they can offer)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">- good dialogue (Good leaders do it all the time. Look around the workplace, and you notice that most dialogue is one-way, directional, with no give-and-take. Here is the opportunity to bring back two way dialogue and listening in the workplace)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is tough. Not only seniors have to change, employees have to "unlearn" and take responsibility </span><br />
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Companies are way ahead in the consumer world to embrace social technologies, including defining the processes and new roles to listen, engage and serve the customers. Within the firewall, whilst new social platform is being put in place, the required change in management practices has yet to catch up to fully realise the potential.<br />
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-34904363031036062262012-12-31T09:27:00.000-08:002012-12-31T09:27:58.568-08:00The end of business as usual: is it possible in the workplace?I was reading brian Solis blog titled "this is the end of business as usual and the beginning of a new era of relevance. <br />
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http://www.briansolis.com/2012/11/this-is-the-end-of-business-as-usual-and-the-beginning-of-a-new-era-of-relevance/<br />
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In this blog, he focuses on the consumer world and how social media has required people to adopt 10 Steps Toward New Relevance:<br />
1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you<br />
2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation<br />
3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship<br />
4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benchmarking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities<br />
5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive... make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together)<br />
6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights<br />
7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention<br />
8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask<br />
9. Invest in the development of content, engagement<br />
10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity!<br />
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All 10 steps point to one simple fact - there is a major shift in empowering the consumers, companies have to learn to listen, engage and give them what they want!<br />
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I wonder how much we can apply these 10 steps when introducing social platform within the workplace, when groups and team come together to get things done (whether to create new solution, serve clients' needs, solve a problem, set the strategy, execute an initiative), but not necessarily working as "equals" (and so the power structure and individual ego kicks in).<br />
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In the next blog, I will assess to what extent do these 10 steps are useful to guide the introduction of social platform inside an enterprise.<br />
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Let me know what you think by leaving a comment here.<br />
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<br />Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-65484172471541871252012-10-30T11:20:00.000-07:002012-10-30T11:22:22.713-07:00What is the future of information professionals? What do information professionals do? What do others think we do? What should we be doing now? What is our future? How should we define it? <br />
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Information professionals seem to be undergoing enormous transformation in the past 15 years as internet/mobile technologies and social media open up new ways to communicate, share, seek and use information on personal, community-based and global-level. Personally, I think the major shift is not about technology, it is how we redefine information from "static, objective" information that we can manage as objects to "communicative" information whereby information is a "process of becoming" (the process to inform, to understand, to share common struggles, to look for facts, to look for multiple perspectives etc). Through this "communicative" process, the user who look for information changes, the information being retrieved takes on new meaning in new context, and even the author of the information can increase their own understanding of the information they've shared as they learn and listen to the users. This shift is fundamental, it is still ongoing (accelerated with the rise of social media usage), and it requires a rethink of the role of information professionals in creating value for your companies or stakeholders. <br />
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What should information professionals be doing (or should have been doing) if we embrace this alternative approach to define information? Where are the future opportunities? <br />
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First of all, let's do not start thinking about us, us, us - the information professionals. Let's switch our attention to understand where the problems are which require our users to engage with information (and with the author of the information).<br />
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Based on personal experience working with business executives, middle management, knowledge workers, enterpreneurs, educators and parents, these are problems they face:<br />
1. How do I stay agile in an ever changing external market? There is so much information (facts, opinions, news, advertisment, comments) out there, how do I pay attention to what matters to me/my business to stay ahead of the game and make the best decision? <br />
2. How can I enable my workforce to connect and share information to drive revenue growth and avoid reinventing the wheel or making the same mistakes?<br />
3. How do I get my messages/directives across to my team/workforce (as well as customers) and make them pay attention to it and take action, when they are facing "information/email overload" and ever increasing workload in their day-to-day work? <br />
4. How can I function effectively as a knowledge worker when there is so much relevant information/experts out there which I will never have the time to fully understand (or to connect with the experts)? and at the same time there is so much "junk" information out there that creates noise? How do I stay on top of the game? <br />
5. How do I educate my children/students on the best/worst practices to engage with information (and with other people) on internet/social media sites when I have limited exposure and understanding of these tools myself? <br />
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I think these real emminent problems present the opportunities for information professionals to lead and exert positive influence on the world now in the future, starting now. The opportunities are:<br />
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1. Be a strategic partner of business leaders - help to resolve real business problems whether it is cost pressure, retaining talents, innovation or improve team collaborate or internal communication. <br />
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2. Offer new perspectives and practical solutions to enable and facilitate knowledge sharing in the organization in the context of people's day-to-day work - it goes beyond managing document repositories, intranets, library and information center. It requires us to play a role in shaping a company's strategic IT roadmap, business model, communication practices, talent development programme, innovation and more. <br />
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3. Be a trsuted advisor in helping senior/middle managers to understand what/how to share information to engage with their team/workforce (and customers) in the networked world? Can we help them to be successful without taking credit away from them? <br />
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4. Be a champion of new way of working - Many of the employees do not grow up with training how to seek, use and engage with experts using a range of new technologies, they do not feel comfortable with the change. Can we help every individual to be more effective? more critical when engaging with information? Can we share ways to relieve painpoints and encourage them to empower themselves and continuously learn in the networked world? If we don't do it, who will?<br />
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5. Partner with educators to prepare our students for now and in the future - The fact that milleniums and new recruits grow up using internet/social media does not mean that they are reflective of how they use and share information in the public online space. Can we partner with educators to bring the awareness and prepare them from unintended consequences? <br />
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I see opportunities everywhere. Our challenges are:<br />
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1. Do we have the skills and competence ourselves to become the trusted advisors? Are we ready to lead and have the confidence to partner with business leaders. Can we get a seat at the senior table? <br />
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2. We cannot just talk, we need to demonstrate by showing what we can offer, and show the results as a result of our intervention. We need to share examples where it works. We cannot be seen as "idealistic". <br />
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Why I still believe information professionals should fill this gap and lead the world into the future? It is because: <br />
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1. We understand the history, the past, and how information has evolved. The best people to solve tomorrow's problem is the ones who understand the history and where we are today, and how we get here. <br />
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2. Traditional information management is a subset of the future solution, and we understand it very well. Progressive information professionals building on our strength (and awareness of potential weaknesses) when designing innovative information solutions such as social intranet, interactive information centers which seamlessly integrate in user journey, collaboration, social network etc, many of us are already in the frontier. <br />
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There is only one thing which hinder us from leading in the new world, i.e. our own confidence and our own committment to help shape the world. Information professionals out there, are you ready? Leave me a comment here.<br />
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Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-9231190172649055812012-10-21T14:33:00.003-07:002012-10-30T11:23:02.528-07:00I don't understand social business..."I really don't get it" said a colleague. "it does not wow me." "May be I am slow, tell me what value does it add in the work context?" Some confess "I am not using social media in my personal live, I am not sure I can manage it at work..." I know a lot of friends who are interested in the potential power of using social platform in the business setting, however, they have not experienced its power yet and they are not sure where to start. To help to make it real, I look for great videos to explain the concept, read books, mckinsey's research report (unlocking the value of social business) and thought leadership blog (@johnstepper, @euan), collect use cases where it work for companies, and I share those stories. I realise no matter how much I try to say, and try to explain the value that embracing social platform can brings to companies, and how much I try to explain how twitter or LinkedIn or blogging works, the starting position has always been positioning my colleague (who is willing to learn) to look from "outside" in, as if social platform can be learned objectively and experience as an outsider (perhaps even like an objective scientist) trying to understand how it all works. What is missing? Unless one swim in it, you will never get it. Trying to teach people conceptually how twitter or blogsphere work is really pointless. The best training manual wont cut it. To really learn how social media works for you personally, you have to look at it from "inside", ie look inside in. Why? Because social platform is personal. Try look at your friend's or colleague's activity stream or twitter homepage, it makes no sense to you and it is full of noise. Of course, they are not meant for you to consume or interact with. When you start to share your thoughts, and when you receive responses and comments to the area which interest you (personally and/or professionally) and you truly care about, you will get your first aha moment. Until then, you will continue to observe as an outsider and wonder what's in it for me. Do you agree with me? leave me a comment here.Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-10936764800368725532011-11-29T15:38:00.001-08:002011-11-29T15:49:05.082-08:00Leadership 2.0 in ACTION: A journey from knowledge management to “Knowledging”Here is an abstract and link to a full paper which I co-authored with Dr Brenda Dervin.
Cheuk, B. & Dervin, B. (2011). Leadership 2.0 in Action: a Journey from Knowledge Management to "Knowledging“. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL), Vol 3, No 2 (2011).
<a href="http://kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/article/view/107/87 ">http://kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/article/view/107/87 </a>
Leadership 2.0 is a set of alternative management values and practices driven by a set of coherent assumptions about the nature of human communication. In this paper, the authors argue that Leadership 2.0 is critical to make Web2.0 work. This paper is informed by Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) as an approach to design knowledge sharing platform incorporating Web2.0 features which allow user-generated content and have a stronger emphasis on collaboration and interaction amongst users. SMM is a philosophically derived approach which allows knowledge management (KM) researchers and practitioners to more fully understand and listen to user’s needs so as to inform the design of dialogic KM practices and systems to promote knowledge sharing. This paper presents a “Safety Moment” project to illustrate how SMM has been applied to inform the design of a Web2.0 enabled ‘knowledging’ application in Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the world’s largest all-environmental consulting firm. The project discussed has been implemented since January 2008 as part of ERM’s commitment to improve Health & Safety Performance to ensure all ERM employees, contractors and clients are safe at work. The use of SMM informed Web2.0 application has correlated with increased staff satisfaction, increased company reputation and reduced risks.
If you have the chance to read this paper, I like to invite you to share your comments with me and the blog readers. Do you share my experiences? Do you have different experiences to share? How do what we have shared in this paper connect with your work, your life, your organization?Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18985877.post-13188082297370591272011-07-17T15:39:00.000-07:002011-07-17T16:29:04.855-07:00Social business in the enterprise: two storiesThere has been a lot of interests introducing social platform within enterprise to improve knowledge sharing and business interaction. Putting in place the tools are relatively easy, identifying the opportunity to use interactive 2.0 tools to add value to the business is an art (as it requires good understanding of business needs and organisation culture), ensuring the online interaction/conversation is authentic, meaningful, genuine and deep is the hardest.<br /><br />Here are two stories to get me/you recognise the challenges in using 2.0 tools to flatten hierarchy:<br /><br />1. A senior executive is hosting an online discussion with his global team. He invites everyone to ask questions and leave comments relating to a strategic topic. One staff has a question, but instead of posting on the forum, the staff feels more comfortable sending the question to his line manager, asks his line manage to review and edit the question before he posts it up to the forum. What intrigue me is that on one hand the senior executive wants to break down hierarch using the forum, on the other hand, the hierarchical structure continues to reinforce the norm to seek line manager's approval before one can speak, and even so, what he posts up is not his authentic voice. Does the discussion forum achieve the purpose of supporting 2-way dialogue to break down hierarchy?<br /><br />2. A blogger posts a blog post with a controversial title which gives the impression that he does not agree with a senior executive's judgement. Within 24 hours after the blog post went up, the blogger receives a call from someone working in senior executive office sharing the feedback that blog post may give the wrong impression to other readers and suggests the blogger to edit the blog title. What intrigue me is that many enterprise wants to promote blogging to improve knowledge sharing, but on the other hand are not ready to tolerate diverse views and perspectives. What is the point of blogging when blog posts can only agree with the status quo?<br /><br />It is a long journey for business to go social within the enterprise (Euan Semple asks us to be patient in his recent <a href="http://www.euansemple.com/theobvious/2011/7/7/be-patient.html">blog</a>), because it is not system implementation, it is not even cultural change, it is a fundamental change in how the hierarchy works and how every individual interact with one another and establishing new norms. And when we get there, it is going to be satisfying to look back and realize so much has evolved and everyone has changed.Bonnie Cheukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01003810304718039206noreply@blogger.com4