Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Question, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week

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KM Question of the Week

Q: I'm in the planning stage for a project to encourage communities of practice. To start with I want to conduct a survey to identify where we are now. I am looking for some example surveys.

A: From pages 60-61 of Implementing a successful KM programme here is a Resource Survey. Also see Opportunities Survey and Community Leader Survey.

Use this survey to evaluate existing knowledge resources and to determine which ones to add. It allows you to learn which resources are worthwhile, which ones are not, which ones you should learn more about, and which ones should be added. This should be conducted once when starting a KM initiative to help select the KM components to use, and every one to three years thereafter to make adjustments to the ones selected.

Here is an example of a survey you can use.

Demographic Questions

1. What is your e-mail address?
2. What is your location?
3. What is your organization, including group and sub-group?
4. What is your job role?
5. How many years have you worked in the organization?

Multiple Choice Questions: For each of the following knowledge resources, please answer the first question. If the answer is "Yes," please also answer the second question.

Provide a complete list of knowledge resources currently available in your organization.

1. In the last 30 days, have you used this resource?
1. Yes
2. No
3. Don't Know
2. If you have used the resource in the last 30 days, how useful is this to you in your work?
1. Very useful
2. Moderately useful
3. Not useful
4. Don't Know

Open-ended Questions

1. Are there other valuable knowledge resources you use frequently? If so, what are they?
2. When you need to find knowledge to help you learn, where do you go first?
3. When you want to share your knowledge, where do you go first?
4. When you need to find knowledge to reuse, where do you go first?
5. When you want to collaborate with colleagues, where do you go first?
6. When you need to find knowledge to help you innovate, where do you go first?
7. Do you have comments about any of the knowledge resources mentioned in the survey?
8. What knowledge resources would you like to see added or created?
9. Are there knowledge resources you would like to see improved? If so, how?
10. What knowledge resources do you need to access but don't know if or where they exist?

KM Blog of the Week

Technology Enhanced Learning by Mohamed Amine Chatti

My Personal Learning Environment...My Personal Knowledge Management System

• Communities
• Social Media
• Actions

1. Comment
2. Collaborate
3. Network
4. Reflect
5. Analyze
6. Discuss
7. Manage
8. Share
9. Search
10. Rate
11. Subscribe
12. Read
13. Write
14. Access
15. Tag
16. Remix
17. Save
18. Publish
19. Aggregate
20. Bookmark
21. Organize
22. Create
23. Consume

KM Link of the Week

Open and transparent? by David Gurteen

When considering knowledge sharing or creating a more collaborative culture, we often talk about the need for people to be open and for more transparency. These two concepts are usually used interchangeably and often without too much thought as to what they really mean.

If you are open-minded, not closed, you are open to new ideas, to new thoughts, to new people and to new ways of working. When you come across new things you are curious and eager to explore them. You are non-judgmental and you look to engage other people in conversation - not so much in debate, but more in dialogue.

If you are transparent, you work in a way which naturally enables people to see what you are doing. You publish your activity and your ‘work in progress’ as a by-product of the way that you work. You deliberately go out of your way to try to be honest and open about who you are. There is no façade, no pretense - with you, people get what they see.

KM Book of the Week

Making Common Sense: Leadership As Meaning-Making in a Community of Practice by Wilfred H. Drath and Charles J. Palus

John Smith of CPsquare suggested this short book.

A widespread way of viewing leadership is as a process of social influence. In this report, the authors offer an alternative perspective: seeing leadership as a process of social meaning-making. The practical and research implications of such a view are considered.

Executive Summary

If different definitions of leadership share similar perspectives, then a natural question may be what really forms the difference between views of leadership. The difference may lie in the view of leadership as an individual capability versus a view of leadership as a communal activity. Changing our perspective on what leadership is may give us a more useful notion of what we can expect from individuals in positions of authority.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements vii
• Preface ix
• Introduction 1
• Discussion of Terms 7
• People in Positions of Authority: A New View of Five Concepts 13
• Implications: So What Is Leadership Development? 21
• Conclusion: Changing Constructs of Leadership 23
• Bibliography 26

Electronic Versions

• Center for Creative Leadership
• eBook
• Google Book

-END-

[The contents of this KM blog are my personal comments and do not reflect the official views of Hewlett-Packard Company.]