A note for my future self on “where is Knowledge Management going”

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. 

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. 

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. 

I noted down 5 questions and I like to share with my future self (and with my blog readers):

1. 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?

2. The ISO KM standard is coming soon, what does that mean? Should we be happy or should we be worried? Is that an opportunity or a threat? 

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? 

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?

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 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? 

I wonder what my answers would be when I look back in a couple of years time. 

Knowledge Management in disguise: What do I do?

My best friend came to London for a study tour and she stayed with me in my London home. 

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?”

Such a great question. A lot of things come to my mind, as I reflect on my career. 

What do I do? 

1. I find ways to promote knowledge flow across boundaries for multinational companies. 

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. 

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”.

Some colleagues think my work relates to IT. 

Other colleagues think my work relates to communication. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to new style informal and social learning. 

2. I find ways to take people on a journey to embrace a culture of knowledge sharing. 

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”. 

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. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to culture change. 

Other colleagues think my work relates to employee engagement. 

3. I study people’s needs, pains and dreams in order to design systems that are relevant. 

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. 

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. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to agile and design thinking. 

I am wary they are buzz words. To me, these concepts are not new. 

4. I practise strategic knowledge management. I work with senior executives to create knowledge-driven business strategy. 

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. 

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. 

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?”

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. 

Because of this aspect of my work, some colleagues think my work is in strategic consulting and business transformation. 

So... what do I do? 

My work is multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary and involve working with multiple business stakeholders. I don’t think KM sit in a box. 

What assumptions do you make when designing human-centric practices or systems?

In this article published in KOSMOS Journal for Global Transformation (Winter 2017) titled “Luminal Leadership”. 

https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/liminal-leadership/

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. (...) But short of a fundamental reorganizing of embedded assumptions of life and being alive, humanity may not make it. So, are we ready?”

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. 

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,...). 

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:

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).

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. 

Company-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

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/23/from-inboxing-to-thought-showers-how-business-bullshit-took-over

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). 

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."

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 Is "how" to design culture program in a coherent, practical and repeatable way (that is not based on a cookie cutter recipe)? 

I try to experiment and practice in my corporate life the following:

- 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. 

- 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. 

- 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. 

- 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. 

- 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 in a communicative way. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

I welcome your thoughts and anyone who are willing to share any alternative approaches to design culture program. Get in touch! 

Information Literacy in the Workplace: Who cares?

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.

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?  

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? Outside the library and information science community, does IL mean anything? 

Having worked in numerous global companies and working with senior executives establishing information/knowledge management strategy to become knowledge-driven companies, 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.

In fact, the embeddedness 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)! 

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. Consider these 3 angles:

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. Information literacy is obviously needed. IL is "hidden" in their respective function labels. 

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. 

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 hierarchical, command-and-control culture would not value information literacy as much.

I am going to be a keynote speaker for the European Conference on Information Literacy ECIL 2017  and I look forward to explore these topics in more depth with the conference delegates. My 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 "Information Literacy in the Workplace, edited by Marc Forster, published by Facet Publishing in Apr 2017. 

Digital Transformation inside Enterprise: Redefining the Future of Work

I recently presented in a Conference Board unConference event in Brussels. The theme of the event is the Futue of Digital Transformation and Innovation. I presented on the topic "How will the work change as we digitalise the workplace: new leadership, new work practices, new relationship?"

In this event, I am privileged to 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. 

See this infographic created by Conference Board which sums up the keynote sessions:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Conferenceboard/status/784056423802101760/photo/1

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. 

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:

- 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?

- 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?

- 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?

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 getting it right, the outcome is impactful and transformational. 

Digital transformation with business purpose: Leadership 2.0 required at all levels

Talking about digital transformation. Does digital come first or the business need to transform come first? 

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:

- We have always done it this way and it works, why should we do it differently?

- 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? 

- 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.

- 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. 

The challenge does not stop here. The next challenge is what is this "digital thing" suppose to transform? Could it be: 

- 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").

- 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.)

Who ultimately make the decision on digital transformation? I would say the business with a digital mindset (and if in the transition period when a company is building up the digital capabilities, business with input from the digital transformation team).

Why do I mean?

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.

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? 

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.

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. 

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. 

8 weeks after launching a social intranet and collaboration platform: What are the surprises?

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.

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 business area (e.g. HR, communications, marketing, operations, IT, risk management, legal, leadership development, sales, senior executive). 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.

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, 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

And the change journey continues.

Social business and business transformation: where are we heading?

I am preparing my talk at the Henley Conference Forum 25 and 26 Feb this month. Reflecting on my publication on Social Strategies in Action: Driving business transformation (2013), my experience in the past 12 months driving business transformation within a highly regulated financial institution , and on McKinsey's latest research on Transforming business through social tools, I understand the huge challenge leaders are facing and I am also excited about the future.

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.

What do I mean? Here is how I experience it and where I am playing my humble part to shape:

1. Enterprise 2.0 is no longer about introducing new digital social tools to employees

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. 

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. 

4. Enterprise 2.0 requires Leadership 2.0 (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.

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. 

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.

I look forward to exploring my ideas further at the upcoming Henley Conference in Feb, and with my blog readers here.

On a social collaboration platform, knowledge does not sit still...

On a social collaboration platform, Knowledge never sits still....

What do I mean?

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:

- instead of going to the intranet homepage to check out what is new, employees receive real time updates on their acitivity steams.

- instead of waiting for the newsletter curated by the communication or knowledge manager to summarise all the useful resources, employees are following people, content relevant to them, and getting the updates before they receive the newsletter

- instead of waiting for the next knowledge sharing meeting to connect with other community members, employees can connect with one another online before the event. 

- Instead of only getting to knowing colleagues via face-to-face meeting or working on same project/team, employees can get to know, exchange ideas and learn from colleagues belonging to a completely business different network

- instead of relying on knowledge managers to organize and categorise approved content which goes into a knowledge base, employees can organize what they need according to their own preference, employees can create their own set of dynamic feeds and alerts to useful resources. 

- When employees need something, they can do a search, or ask a question on the community, and go direct and interact with the experts (but not via the intermediaries).

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.

So what is the role of knowledge manager in this networked workplace? 

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.

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 paper I co-author with my mentor Dr Brenda Dervin)

We need to continue to acquire new skills and embrace new mindset to operate and add value in the networked enterprise. 

Fellow knowledge managers, what are your latest innovation to facilitate knowledge flow? Please share....

Knowledge management: a journey from 15 years ago....

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:

- we built best practice knowledge base to enable the consultants to re-use good practices

- we created top down communities of practice

- approved resources were posted up by knowledge managers

- members of the communities were brought together because of their industry focus

- members of an industry segment community were added to a email DL, they received newsletter with latest updates, wins, best practices every week

- 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

- KMers were there to understand consultants' information needs, and give them what they want 

- the consultants had limited channels to find information other than the centrally design KM platform (or use their own personal network). At that time, Internet was not as a rich resource as we are today. Consultants rely on good KMers to organize knowledge and make them accessible.

Just over 10 years ago, in 2001, I became the Knowledge Management Director of the British Council. I recalled the KM focus has evolved:

- knowledge management started to move away from building best practices knowledge base and centrally controlled intranet

- static intranet was still an important KM tool, but it was starting to show its limitation

- the intranet navigation was corporate controlled, stable, and required approval to make changes

- for a global company with cross-country initiates to be rolled out globally, the project team need to coordinate amongst themselves, learn from one another quickly, they need collaboration space connected with the intranet

- 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

- collaboration tools became common: email DLs, Sharepoint team sites (Sharepoint 2003)

- KMers became community facilitators not only managing content, but facilitate learning, conversation to help members to learn from one another

- knowledge sharing event / communities of practice / After action review became popular

That was the age of collaboration, more specifically, I call it the age of collaboration in silos because:

- it was difficult then to see the connections across communities

- good KMers put in so much effort to try to create vibrant communities, and engage with all the members, with tools such as meetings, phone calls, collaboration sites, intranet

- good KMers became facilitators / community managers, not just knowledge base, intranet or content managers.

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.

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.

This is also the time (roughly about 4 years ago) that a few other banks are starting to invest in enterprise social collaboration program to test the water. I noted these programs tend to be led by the communications team or IT team, and not business-led.

The technology is so disruptive that initially, managers and employees have no idea how they use the shiny new tools. I remember:

- intranet managers wanted to replicate traditional intranet on the new platform, wanting the same level of control, taxonomy structure

- communications managers asked for creating default setting when they can force email notification to all employees worldwide

- 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).

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.

Knowledge managers started to realise the power of social collaboration platform, ie:

- 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.

- Content, communciation, community, collaboration converge in context, they cannot be handled separately if we want to give a holistic experience to the end users. 

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?

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?

What is Knowledge Management becoming?

The world has changed, consumers are connecting, collaborating and sharing information in a new way. What about at work? Where is our knowledge?

Many (most) companies have not caught up yet. 

• Information is locked in shared drive, emails, team sites 
• Intranet content is static, and search you cannot find
• Employees are geographically dispersed. They need to connect (whether it is by email, phone and F2F meeting, online chat, conversation or latest digital tools)
• Employees and expertise are locked in functional silos, organisation hierarchies. Cross boundary collaboration is not easy and can be political.

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".

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.

The question is HOW? How do we get knowledge flow across boundaries, and let the knowledge reach the right person at the right time? 

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. 

Last year, August, I published this book titled social strategies in action: driving business transformation. 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.

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.

In the pass 10 years, although the job title had not changed, the scope of knowledge work has been transformed significantly:

• I see I am moving away from managing information, content, intranet, categories to managing communities, conversation and dialogue. 
• I see internal communication and engagement (and even marketing) being put under my knowledge management remit
• 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
• My work is started to be labelled differently such as creating a digital workplace, building responsive organisation, defining the future of work. 

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?

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....

My advice for someone new to Knowledge Management

Paul Corney, a great facilitator asked me recently: If you were talking to someone new to Knowledge Management what advice would you give them?’

Here is my response:

"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). I have been in this field since 1996, I am regenerating myself every few years, I never have a dull moment. Go for it!"

My unconference reflection

I 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 (Social Business Collaboration 2013 #wcsocbiz)

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?

What I like:
1. The novelty effect of allowing agenda to emerge and no pre-defined agenda
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.
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.

What I struggle with:
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.
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.
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?"

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.

I think I need to tweak the approach, perhaps by considering the following:
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?
2. Could the participants who put a discussion idea forward post a 1 min video prior the event to promote their discussion topics?
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.
(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: http://tinyurl.com/odzdpno)

Is that just me who have the above thoughts? I wonder what other participants think?

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!


I wonder what other participants think?

Positioning enterprise social collaboration at the heart of business transformation in 2014: Be mindful of 5 pitfalls

Since I published the book "Social Strategies in Action: Driving Business Transformation" (Ark Group) 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.

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?

This critical success factor is highlighted in a number of enterprise social media/social business conferences I have attended recently. Here is my observation:

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. 

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?" 

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.

The 5 pitfalls are:

1. We are perceived as too passionate. 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.

2. Social collaboration is not always "best practice". 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.

3. We tend to position ourselves as social business evangelists, it is time to position ourselves as executives and think like business executives. 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.

4. Generic use cases are too bland to excite and drive behavioural change. 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.

5. Driving change is extremely hard inside a company. Recognize this is a fact. 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. 

Thinking ahead as we enter 2014...

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. 

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.

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 free chapter here. I welcome your feedback.