Collaborative Enterprise

Nick Bontis On KM

Found this talk by Prof.Nick Bontis on Google Video.He speaks about Information Bombardment,Intellectual Capital and KM. This seems to be from the APQC conference last year.Truly electrifying speaker!!

Dissecting Culture To Drive Change

Martin Dugage who writes Mopsos has written a wonderful entry titled No Pain,NoChange. He writes about the need for crisis situations for change to happen and how they can dissolve barriers between departments. (Which typically act as knowledge silos otherwise). He says:
"This reminds me of what my most admired OB professor Manfred Kets de Vries used to say at Insead

The only drive for change in the business world is pain

Developing a collaborative working environment coming from a rigid bureaucratic hierarchy is probably the biggest change a company can undertake. So unless there is a very good reason to go down that path, it won't, no matter how hard you try.

That's something we, collaborative leaders, should meditate more often."

On similar lines, in Working Knowledge-How Organizations Manage What They Know , the authors recommend instilling a sense of crisis before it exists arguing that "success can lead to an unwillingness to adapt". This probably points to the fact that crisis situations affect culture. Groups that otherwise would have hoarded knowledge start sharing because their very existence is challenged. Creating artificial crisis situations may be a good idea to generate new knowledge. However, creating sustainable change remains a challenge.

Before sinking a million dollars into deploying a "workflow enabled collaborative KM system" it makes sense to bring in a business anthropologist to identify all cultural enablers and disablers in the organization. This is crucial because while a Social Network Analysis may bring to surface the disconnect between two groups, for any intervention to have a sustainable impact we need to dig deeper and attack the underlying problems. To do this we need a trained anthropologist. Remember the devil is in the details (your complex cultural DNA). The results of doing this cultural audit could go a long way in improving overall organizational effectiveness. For instance, the anthropologist may discover that there is a "blame" culture or there is "fear" or that too many executives wear ambition on their sleeves and so on. These pieces of the cultural DNA need to be repaired. Change & adoption are always going to remain a challenge as long as we keep pretending that the next wave of tools and services will solve all our woes. IMHO, knowledge sharing like many other good things in life needs to be an emergent behavior - driven by positive strands in your cultural DNA.

What do you think are the right ways to create sustainable change?

KM & "Peripheral Vision"

HBS Working Knowledge has a nice excerpt from "Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Will Make or Break Your Company". The authors write about the differences between active and passive scanning to find new opportunities. Many of the inferences the authors make in this book remind me of the traits of a true learning organization. For instance:

"Active scanning reflects intense curiosity and emphasizes the further-out and fuzzier edge of the periphery."

"To improve the ability to capture the peripheral insights within the organization, there must be (1) appropriate and visible channels for sharing information, (2) wide knowledge of the questions guiding the scan, and (3) incentives for actually sharing useful information. People must engage in frequent and free dialogue for the necessary connections to occur spontaneously. This, in turn, requires a culture of trust, respect, and curiosity, plus the recognition that information sharing is crucial. Too many companies still operate in a mode where information is shared on a "need-to-know" basis only."

IMHO, many KM programs fall into this trap of becoming systems that drive knowledge sharing on a "need-to-know" basis. A debate culture that will hopefully drive deeper dialogue, multi-community membership that will hopefully bring in serendipity (at the intersection of practices) and a workforce that is curious (and allowed to innovate at the edge) are all KM interventions that may improve "Peripheral Vision" of organizations.

KM Is Losing Steam - Evidence From "The Database Of Intentions" ?

I was experimenting with Google Trends today. Incidentally, I remembered what Denham Grey wrote in his blog Knowledge-at-work in February, 2006 : "In an endless quest to discover our KM roots, articulate or bound a clear KM domain, and agree on basic postulates, we seem to be as scattered and divided as ever, in danger of falling off the corporate map and being absorbed by other fads.". I ran a query on Google Trends to see the search and news volumes for "knowledge management" over the past few years. The results are in the graphic you see. Bad news !! All of us have been hearing about the danger of KM getting sidelined because of numerous reasons. I am SEEING the threat for the first time. There has been an almost consistent reduction in search volumes over the years. 2006 in particular seems to be a very bad year. Other interesting statistics:

1. Most of the searches have happend from the APAC region (India in particular) and South Africa. There is no city in the US or Europe in the top 10 cities.
2. Indonesian and Thai are the top 2 languages in which searches were done. English is 3rd.
3. Interestingly, when I ran a query for "All Years", "United States" and checked the Languages tab, I saw Chinese was way ahead of English. This means most of the searches for "Knowledge Management" within the United States between the years 2004-2006 were done in Chinese. Very surprising !! or am I getting this wrong?

Is this a result of more "knowledge work" moving to countries like India,Indonesia,Philippines etc., over the past few years? I have seen many service providers in India turn to KM as a way to improve operational efficiencies and also innovate faster as competition intensifies and commodotization sets in.While I am not sure if this could be a cause,it is very very intriguing !!

I remember what John Battelle wrote in 2003 in his blog on The Database Of Intentions : "This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture."

Revisiting Incentives For KM

I was reading an interesting article, The Cost of Cutting In Line in HBS Working Knowledge. After reading it, I get the feeling that there are complex dimensions to be grappled with while designing incentive schemes for KM programs.

Quoting from the article:
"No one likes to waste time standing in line. So why don't more people try to bribe their way to the front? Should companies allow some customers to move to the front of the line for a hefty fee? Is there a market for time?

Felix Oberholzer-Gee began to ponder this issue as he was, of course, waiting in line at the airport. Later, he decided to conduct a field experiment to explore the question. He and a team of experimenters equipped with small bills approached 500 people in lines and offered a cash payment of up to $10 to cut in. Would the bribe be accepted? How much would it take to jump the queue? And how would social norms and a sense of fairness play out along the line?"

Quoting from the article again :

Q: What were the motives of people who allowed your experimenters to cut in line? Why didn't many of them accept payment? And if money wasn't an issue, why did higher payments correlate with a willingness by line-holders to allow a stranger jump the queue?

A: The data clearly show that you are more likely to be able to jump the queue if you offer more money. So first I thought that this was not an example of a missing-markets problem at all. But I was wrong. You can "purchase" a position in the line, but the people who let you cut in will not accept your money. Their behavior is motivated by a norm that says you should help others when they are in need, but you must not exploit this situation. Monetary incentives "work" in this instance because people read them as a sign for the needs of others. How hurried are you, really? If you offer $20, you must be really hard pressed for time.

Doesn't this remind us of the complexities of designing incentive schemes for KM programs?This is a nice example of a "proxy" economic incentive to signal a need and trigger a group norm. Let us try to extend this a bit further into KM terrain. The underlying question seems to be the same - Does time have a market? By allowing someone to cut in line, people stand to lose time - but in the process, they seem to be gratified for having helped the other person. So,when would people answer questions posted in discussion boards? What could act as a trigger to help surface a otherwise hidden group norm?

Taking the case of discussion boards further, what if we could allow the person who posts a question to add some kind of an indicator with the question to signal the that this is "urgent and important","not urgent but important" etc.,? I am sure there are social software systems that allow this in one form or the other. Does this have an impact on people who otherwise might not have answered the question? Perhaps there are other interesting ways of triggering the inherent helpful behaviour in people.

To summarize, I feel we need to :

1. Think of leveraging and triggering inherent group norms like "help others when they are in need". Perhaps, communities are the right units where these norms emerge.
2. Design Social Software systems that have features that allow the user to signal the urgency and importance of a need to a larger community of users. There should be a seamless way to convey - "Why am I asking this question and how is it going to help me and my group?". This in turn may help trigger helpful behaviour. Wikis and workspaces that emerged in the aftermath of Katrina and the July 7th, London bombings are solid examples. In these cases everyone saw the urgency and importance of the task at hand. There was "shared understanding" of what we were upto as a group. Wikis,IMHO are a nice way to build "sense and respond" kind of a systems. In the examples cited above,wikis conveyed the urgency of the situation (Very frequent updates that happend after the disasters) and at the same time allowed people who had the relevant information to quickly respond. As an individual you knew that the contribution you made will be helpful to people in trouble-in the process your sense of gratification was amplified. If individuals knew how their knowledge is going to be used and what difference it may make to other individuals/projects, they may be willing to contribute.
3. Revisit the classical "Whats In It For Me?" question. There are two answers to this :

• Category 1-Coffee Mugs, Knowledge Points, Tshirts and all the tangible stuff
• Category 2-Sense of gratification,self-motivation,Purpose beyond self etc.,

Core groups of the most active communities inside and outside the enterprise and people on the periphery who ask questions,report bugs or simply lurk do not ask "Whats In It For Me?"-They discover it by being a part of the community. And what they discover happens to be in category 2. These are the guys who matter. "Bribing" employees to share knowledge might not be sustainable. The people who will be champions of knowledge sharing are those who do not see any incremental value from tangible incentives.

Breaking Social Networks Versus Building a Learning Organization

FastCompany has an article by Chris Trimble of the Tuck School Of Business about the impact of social networks on innovation . He says while existing social networks are a necessity in the idea generation phase of innovation, they need to be broken and re-created in the execution phase. Quoting from the article :
"Breaking networks is the only way to prepare an organization to take innovation efforts beyond mere ideas. You can train an individual about what an innovation is and why it demands different behavior, but you can't retrain an organization simply by training the individuals within it. The individuals may acquire knowledge, but organizations are more powerful than individuals, and organizations reinforce the past.
So often in my work chronicling innovation efforts, I've observed major turning points for the better following substantial reorganizations. Why? Reorganizations break those involved with an innovation out of their existing network, and force them to forge new relationships and new networks from scratch. "

Interesting perspective !! More connections are not always good. However,I wonder if reorganization is a sustainable way to bring a change in behavior and execute innovative ideas? Just breaking out of an existing social network and entering into a new one does not necessarily guarantee different behavior. Being a part of a community or social network over a prolonged period of time influences individuals in a big way - in terms of the mental models and world views which in turn affect decisions made. My take is that if an individual has been affiliated with a social network for a sustantially long time there is a good chance of internalizing the "ways of thinking" of that network. So, even if one does break away from the network and enter a new one ,there is a good chance of being influenced by the old ways. My feeling is that managers need to be "aware" of the realities of the new business and the potential influence that their existing belief systems could have on decision making. Deep awareness of the rationale behind decisions is a more organic and non-disruptive way of driving innovation as compared to reorganization. This is a key trait of learning organizations.

Reorganization may put in place formal structures and systems in place for the new business to innovate. However, informal relationships in social networks go beyond work in many cases and that is the basis for trust. Disrupting this would mean destroying social capital in thorganization. Train managers not just on innovation but on becoming deeply aware of the subtleties of the decision making process. Reorganization, because organizations reinforce the past seems to be a quick fix - A classic case of addressing the symptom and ignoring the underlying problem. To build a debate culture, to surface assumptions as a group and challenge them, to question everything that is conventional wisdom would the key. And this is the training managers would need to ideate and execute innovation. Fundamental changes are tough but these are the long term capability building steps to be taken - IMHO, reorganizing for innovation might not be sustainable.

Media 1.0 Hangover In The Indian Mobile Data Market

Rediff has syndicated the cover story from India's leading business magazine Businessworld. Thanks to Mobilepundit for pointing to this. This story is a very through assessment of the emerging mobile data industry in India. It speaks about an imminent inversion of the pyramid sometime soon. Currently, the revenue sharing that happens between the operators,media companies and aggregators is roughly 60:30:10. However,IMHO bulk of the assesment shows all signs of the Media 1.0 hangover. For instance - read this conclusion of the author :

"It is not control over content, but the ability to offer loads of it that is relevant and connects, which will distinguish one good mobile data service from another. Maybe joint ventures or equity stakes in content companies will help. But they are just security blankets. Ultimately, in a fragmented, oversupplied content market, it should be easy to get good stuff if you have a sense of what will work and what won't. Media companies have a nose for it, mobile companies don't. You could argue that, maybe, even media companies are not clear on how to create programming for this new 'mobile snacker'.
There are several things that could happen. Mobile and media companies could build the skills (difficult) or buy the talent to do it. They could join hands to do it. A third set of companies such as Hungama or Soundbuzz might turn out to be better at picking and digitising what works best."

Underlying assumption: There is nothing called user-generated content.Consumers are not prosumers.This is just an extension of the Media 1.0 world. This is a vertical value chain.

These, I feel are very dangerous assumptions. Given that 50% of the content in the mobile web will be user-generated, how should companies be looking at their value chain ? Horizontalization will be the key. Operators,aggregators and media companies need to let go of control and allow users to create,share and repurpose content. Bring the customer to the center of your universe. Allow communities of mobile consumers to co-create the experiences the want. Let go of the Media 1.0 hangover. It is time to embrace Media 2.0 - Understand and ride on the advantages that the edge brings to you. Whether you provide relevant content or not, that space will get commodotized sooner or later. Understanding that truly sustainable value resides with communities of mobile prosumers is the key - Unfortunately, I see a huge vaccum in this space in the Indian mobile market. This is the space that is waiting to be addressed potentially by some creative startup.

Quoting Umair Haque of Bubble Generation [Via /Message] :

"There's no middle ground. Those players who stick to yesterday's models - whether content creators, distributors, publishers - get hypercommoditized. This should be crystal clear: just think of the huge number of media players getting killed, from newspapers like NYT and WPO, to magazines like Meredith, to broadcast networks like Sinclair, etc.

OTOH, those players who leverage the edge - who learn to create and capture value from the new forms outside the boundaries of the firms, like markets, networks, communities, commons - will capture the lion's share of returns. This should be crystal clear: think of players as different as Apple and Google, both of whom are turning the media industry inside out by using markets and networks.

There's another, simpler way to see this. It is a great economic discontinuity, which is already flowing like an avalanche across the economy: value will shift outside the boundaries of the firm, to more economical modes of coordination; it is those players who own or leverage them - who learn to build strategy and advantage around them - who will earn supernormal profits."

KM On Trial?

I was reading an interview that Verna Allee had given to the Knowledge Management Journal way back in 2003. All of what she speaks about is relevant today as Social Software makes its way into the enterprise. Some of the key concepts that caught my attention :[My comments inline]

1. Knowledge initiatives have actually been undersold in most cases....The bigger story about focusing on knowledge is how it can improve the underlying intangibles asset base of the organization—where you are building capacity for the future. If you want to build capability for the future, you must be able to understand and tell a story about the return on intangibles investment (ROII).
2. Eventually communities of practice, collaborative tools and portals, intangibles scorecards, and value network analysis will become common management practices. People will have courses on these in regular business degree programs, not just the special knowledge management track.People have to grapple seriously with themes such as knowledge economy, sustainable economy,transparency, risk, ethics and values, collaboration, learning and value networks—as well as what is really required of leaders and managers in this type of environment.
   
3. The greatest failing is the mechanistic thinking that pervades a lot of the actual practice. The default business model is the value chain and the most common analysis tool is still the process diagram. These are linear, mechanistic approaches based on the industrial age production line....We must move to more organic ways of supporting the enterprise as a complex, adaptive system – as a living system.
   
4. It is a real misfortune to be saddled with the label “knowledge management,” a truly awful term for describing the questions that people are trying to address. It is too big, too vague, and the term “management” is loaded with connotations about control and ownership that are in direct opposition to the way the knowledge economy is playing out....Personally, I try to avoid using the term knowledge management. In fact, I have never called myself a knowledge management consultant or practitioner. I am a business and organizational consultant. [My Comment: Every KM consultant needs to think about this. Social Software could eventually have a serious impact on how knowledge gets created and shared and in the process may challenge the notion of "managing" knowledge]
   
5. I see a clear pattern in the cases where a knowledge initiative didn’t take hold. The three levels of innovation that have to be addressed—the operational, the tactical, and the strategic—are basically technology innovation, social innovation, and business innovation...The most common failing is on the business side where intangible assets and conversion of knowledge to value are simply not taken
   seriously.[My Comment: Social Software by its very nature would lower technical barriers and lay the foundation for new forms of social innovation beyond teams-think communities,JIT teams,smart mobs etc.,But there would be a serious need for innovation on the business models side-Do these models acknowldge that value creation can happen at the edge?]
   
6. That is our greatest danger because that is exactly where we are in the knowledge field. The hype is diminishing and people are beginning to find new tools and practices to support the knowledge questions that must be addressed in any successful company. But there is also a tendency to pull KM back into the old mechanistic linear thinking that has dominated business in the industrial age. So we have to be alert as we begin to settle in to the core methods and tools that supposedly are KM. Are we holding the edge? Are we modelling and changing behaviours and infrastructure to support new social innovations and ways of working? Do we address the hard questions of ethics, risk, transparency, and relationships?Are we challenging ourselves to learn the new economic language of intangibles and value network dynamics? [My Comments: There have been two problems always. Tool complexity and Mechanistic mindset. Social Software has radically simplified the ways and means to create and share knowledge. Now,are enterprises ready to ride on the social innovation that these tools enable. Social Software in an enterprise caught in a "old mechanistic linear thinking" would set the stage for a second wave of KM failures. And yes, it is so easy to blame the tools!!]
   

Need For Inner Management

"If we are miserable, confused, chaotic within, by projection that becomes the world, that becomes society, because the relationship between yourself and myself, between myself and another is society - society is the product of our relationship - and if our relationship is confused, egocentric, narrow, limited, national, we project that and bring chaos into the world" - J.Krishnamurti on What you are,the world is.

The Rule Of 150 & Continuous Partial Attention

A recent comment on my blog kindled my curiosity to explore the cognitive implications of social tools . I get the feeling that there is a potential relationship between the popular "Rule Of 150"(Dunbar's Number) and Continuous Partial Attention (CPA). Dunbar's number is the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships" according to the Wikipedia.

As more people get on to the internet and as opportunities to expand our personal networks emerge like never before, we observe that we easily shoot past Dunbar's number. CPA in my view is an evolutionary response to rapidly expanding personal connections that challenge our cognitive capabilities to break the barrier of 150. As we shoot past the limits of 150 we no longer look for stable relationships, we move into a state of "peripheral awareness" even as we continue to focus on the meaningful connections and the task at hand. Quoting from Wikipedia again: "Dunbar has theorized that 150 would be the mean group size only for communities with a very high incentive to remain together". I am not looking for stable, meaningful and persistent relationships beyond a core group but I cannot ignore significant happenings outside my group of 150. I am slightly at odds with what Nat says on CPA:" Continuous partial attention isn't motivated by productivity, it's motivated by being connected. " There is also a motivation/necessity to be aware(and even reading 100 blogs kicks in CPA) which in turn might have an impact on the decisions I make.

Stowe Boyd nailed it when he said : "The reality is that we need to be constantly scanning the horizon for events that are worthy of our attention. We can't a afford to stay heads down for hours or days at a stretch when critically important events may be occuring that could require us to immediately respond to them. "[Via Smatmobs]. I agree when Nat says " The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus. In this new area, experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive. Trusted filters, trusted protectors, trusted concierge, human or technical, removing distractions and managing boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections, that make us feel secure, are the opportunity for the next generation. Opportunity will be the tools and technologies to take our power back." And yes, the tools and technologies should somehow limit trusted sources to some managable number less than 150 if we need to get rid of CPA.