Weekly Knowledge Management blog by Stan Garfield

KM and Sports Part 2, Disciplined KM, Why start doing KM, Does KM pay off, Living Networks

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:45:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

In a previous post, I answered the question "Can the world of sports teach us anything about knowledge management?" using an example from basketball. This was also recently featured by KnowledgeBoard in Scoring points in the knowledge game.

Here are additional examples of analysis and KM in sports.

Baseball

Whiteyball is a style of playing baseball that was developed by former MLB manager Whitey Herzog. The origins of the term stem from the 1982 World Series Championship Herzog's St. Louis Cardinals won. Shocked by the team's success without having even one typical power hitter in the lineup, members of the press started using "Whiteyball" to describe a style of play based on speed on the base paths, excellent defense, and an emphasis on line drive base hits.

Herzog used the squeeze play often, choosing just the right count on the batter to surprise the opposition. Jim Leyland, another World Series champion manager, hates the squeeze bunt, claiming that whenever he calls for the play, it fails. His aversion to using it has left many a runner stranded on third base after arriving there with fewer than two outs. Leyland can increase his team's scoring by taking advantage of what others have used successfully, in this case, Herzog's squeeze play strategy.

In 1985 World Series Game 6, Herzog suffered from a bad call by the first-base umpire. He could have survived this bad break by having made a defensive change in the ninth inning or having kept a valuable pinch hitter on his roster instead of selling the player's contract to the opposing team. In the fateful ninth inning, the Cardinals' Jack Clark couldn't reel in Steve Balboni's popup in front of the Royals' dugout. Given a second chance, Balboni singled through the hole on the left side. Pinch-hitter Dane Iorg later looped a two-run single to right, forcing Game 7.

At first base, Herzog could have replaced Jack Clark, a good hitter but weak fielder, with Mike Jorgensen, a former Gold Glove winner. Had he done this, Jorgensen most likely would have caught Balboni's popup. Dane Iorg was the Cardinals' designated hitter in their 1982 World Series championship, and led the team with a .529 batting average with 9 hits in 17 at bats. In 1984 the Cardinals sold his contract to the Royals. Had the Cardinals kept him, he would not have been able to deliver the game-winning hit against them.

Gil Hodges was unusually innovative as the manager of the New York Mets. He used platoon players at every position except shortstop, left field, and center field. He used Rod Gaspar as a defensive replacement in right field every time the Mets had a late-inning lead to protect. He moved an outfielder into the infield in obvious bunting situations. He moved the third baseman to provide a fourth outfielder and shifted his infield around to the right when facing Willie McCovey.

These strategies helped the Mets win the 1969 World Series over the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles, a team with greater talent. In the final game, Cleon Jones was hit by a pitch in the famous shoe polish incident, when manager Gil Hodges came out to argue the original call that Jones had not been hit. Hodges retrieved the ball and showed it to the umpire, who saw the polish mark, and awarded Jones first base. Donn Clendenon followed with a two-run homer, and the Mets were on their way to winning their first World Series.

KM for Marketing, Bill Ives, 4 Paradoxes of KM, Tools for Communities Wiki, Pleased but Not Satisfied

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:25:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: What can knowledge management processes and tools do for corporate marketing?

A: Traditional marketing communications methods include:

Direct mail, email, and voicemail messages
Web sites
Links from other web sites
Conference calls and virtual meeting rooms
Periodicals and publications
Meetings, events, tradeshows, conferences, seminars, and training sessions
Audience surveys and focus groups
Advertising
Public relations and analyst relations
Interviews, news stories, and published articles

Using Web 2.0 technologies often associated with knowledge management, corporate marketing can better engage with both employees and customers. Here are ten ways to do so:

Threaded discussions: forums for carrying on discussions among subscribers on a specific subject, including online and email posts and replies, searchable archives, and discussions grouped by threads to show the complete history on each topic

Internal: Allow employees to collaborate with one another, ask and answer questions, and share information.
External: Encourage customers to help one another, suggest products and services, and engage with each other. Example: HP IT resource center forums

Social software: a range of tools which facilitate social networking, typically personal web pages including bios, photos, interests, audio and video, links to friends, messages from friends, and personal networks; often referred to as Web 2.0 to include a broad range of tools such as blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds

Internal: Allow employees to have similar functionality to what they are used to externally. Encourage them to gain experience in using these tools.
External: Encourage customers to build networks built on products and services, interests, preferences, etc. Examples: Facebook, Digg, Technorati

Bookmarks and tags: information about information – data fields added to documents, web sites, files, or lists which allow related items to be listed, searched for, navigated to, syndicated, and collected

Internal: Allow employees to bookmark their favorite sites.
External: Encourage customers to tag their favorite company-related sites. Example: del.icio.us

Community spaces: Collaboration sites to share files, hold meetings, conduct polls, and maintain lists

Internal: Allow employees to collaborate on topics of interest.
External: Encourage customers to collaborate on company-related topics. Example: Yahoo! Groups

Portals: Unified user access interfaces and repositories of documents and information

Internal: Allow employees to interact with a single site which integrates content from multiple sources.
External: Encourage customers to visit a single site for all of their support needs. Example: HP IT Resource Center

Wikis: Web pages which can be edited by any user for interactive content development by multiple people

Internal: Allow employees to create and collaboratively edit their own content pages.
External: Encourage customers to collaboratively edit community pages. Example: IBM wikis

Webcasts and webinars: Web-based broadcasts of video, audio, and slides; allow questions to be entered anonymously

Internal: Communicate useful marketing information to employees to help them better do their jobs.
External: Communicate useful marketing information to customers to help them better understand company offerings. Example: HP webcasts

Blogs: Web logs to post news updates, solicit comments, and take advantage of RSS syndication capability

Internal: Give employees a voice, solicit their inputs and suggestions, and make executives more approachable and real.
External: Communicate useful information to customers with a personal face to build credibility and increase engagement. Example: HP blogs

Podcasts: Recorded broadcasts available on demand or by subscription for those who prefer audio, like to listen while performing other tasks, or who are not usually connected to the network and subscribe for automatic downloads of the broadcasts through RSS syndication

Internal: Allow employees to receive communications in a way which is more convenient for them.
External: Encourage customers to subscribe to receive audio communications on a regular basis. Example: HP podcasts

Videos: Recorded videos available on demand for those who prefer video, when there is important visual content, or for special occasions

Internal: Allow employees to record and upload their own videos to share information, create excitement, and emulate YouTube.
External: Encourage customers to view product and service videos to learn more about offerings in an appealing way. Example: HP videos

KM Thought Leader of the Week

"I would say that some principles still hold after 15 years. Align your KM efforts with business processes and measure them by the impact on these processes. Do not create disconnected document libraries. I would add now to explore the opportunities that Web 2.0 brings to the table. There is the potential for creating searchable knowledge bases as a byproduct of working in the new transparency offered by these tools.

However, I would not abandon the first two principles as you explore these tools. Some of the newest generation Web 2.0 tools for business use behind the firewall have gone beyond blogs and wikis to create workflow applications that incorporate this new transparency. This allows for better teamwork AND a searchable, archived window into to what the organization is doing for all who need to know, should know, and can benefit from this knowledge.

Now, when I say workflow or work process, I do not mean the static inflexible workflow of old-style content management or project management tools. The advantage of these new tools is that they allow work processes that are more organic and dynamic. They allow the users to control the workflow or process, build it up from tasks and make changes as needed. And, to repeat, they allow for transparency and archiving, and thus KM, to be a byproduct of work, rather than an added requirement."

KM Blog of the Week

Due to a recent reorganization, I need to find new positions for members of my KM team. Here are links to more information:

Marcus Funke – KM Process Designer, Project Manager, and SharePoint Expert
Andrew Gent – Knowledge Architect, SharePoint Expert, and KM Technologist

If you would like more information, please contact me and I will be glad to provide it. Here are two recent examples of Andrew's insights on KM.

The Four Paradoxes of KM

The four paradoxes of KM are the following:

Tacit vs. Explicit
Local vs. Global
Open vs. Closed
Quantity vs. Quality

Enterprise 2.0, Revisited

The two basic facts that need to be accepted are:

A business is not a democracy. It cannot be run by the wisdom of the crowd. You can delegate responsibility, but ultimately management is responsible (legally and financially) and will dictate the direction of the company.
Employees are individuals and will decide for themselves whether they believe a decision, a direction, or an activity is good or bad.

So, very pragmatically, the following actions are needed at specific points of intersection:

Search & User-Generated Content
Employee Directory & Social Networking
Corporate Intranet Banner & Tagging, Bookmarks, Etc.

KM Link of the Week

Tools for Communities Wiki

This wiki is a companion piece to a forthcoming book Stewarding Technologies for Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith. The report gives a great deal more context to the information in this wiki, but it is our hope that this wiki can be useful by itself, especially with contributions from you.

Like all Wikis, this is a work in progress. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. The vision is to provide a community perspective on these tools and their key features. By "community perspective," we hope this means that you will add your perspective to ours!

KM Book of the Week

I attended the 2008 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting on May 3 in Omaha, Nebraska. It was an enlightening experience to hear Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger answer questions for hours on end.

Some of the most challenging questions were answered by David Sokol, whose book was on sale at the meeting and is featured this week.

Pleased, but Not Satisfied by David Sokol

The chairman of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company explains that Pleased, but Not Satisfied is a state of mind and that running a business is a journey never finished. He emphasizes that business basics are fundamental to creating long-term value in any enterprise. Conservative economic analysis and disciplined, detailed management practices may not be flashy, but they consistently deliver high quality results.

Table of Contents

Preface by Walter Scott, Jr.

Foreword by Warren E. Buffett

Background – Good Judgment Comes from Bad Experiences
Core Principles – The Six Commandments of Business

Customer Commitment
Employee Commitment
Financial Strength
Integrity
Environmental Respect
Operational Excellence

Goal Setting and Budgeting – Simple Concepts That Create Uncommon Outcomes
Plan, Execute, Measure and Correct – The Four Steps to Achievement
Acquisitions/Business Expansion – A Pro Forma Is Not a Business
Individual Improvement – How to Get Noticed the Right Way
Balance in Business and Personal Life – A Successful Life's Journey Must Be Individualized
Conclusion – Get the Basics Right and Success Will Follow

Addendum – The Power of Brands – A Speech by Kenneth I. Chenault

Sokol's book sees brisk sales by John Keenan and Steve Jordon of the Omaha World-Herald

David Sokol may no longer be chief executive of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., but the Omaha businessman has a new title: published author. "Pleased But Not Satisfied," a slim business volume published by Sokol's company, has been selling briskly at the Bookworm at Countryside Village.

Manager Diana Abbott said she expects the book to be a huge seller at this year's Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. Sokol said his book stemmed from an internal training program at MidAmerican that is part of the company's overall succession plan.

"I saw it as an opportunity to put down our general business philosophy," he said. "I wrote it last spring, just to have it for our internal use."

All proceeds from the bookstore sales are going to the MidAmerican Charitable Foundation.

-END-

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

SHAM Discussion Group, Fred Nickols, Creatively Encouraging User Adoption, Government KM Community, KAM, Levity Effect

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:22:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: How can you start a discussion group where people talk about subjects of some depth in a thoughtful manner?

A: Discussion groups have been called by a variety of names, including salons. The Algonquin Round Table was a group of journalists, editors, actors and press agents that met on a regular basis at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. The group began lunching together in June 1919 and continued on a regular basis for about eight years.

John Smith sent me an example of how Robert Textor sends out invitations to his local community called Thirsters. Anybody who passes through Portland, Oregon gets button-holed and he has perfected the art of tagging people in interesting ways.

Dave Pollard pointed out that March 24-30 was Conversation Week:

Its founders encourage people to get together with others for conversation on things that matter, particularly these questions:

How can we best prepare our children for the future?
What does sustainability look like and how do we get there?
How do humans need to adapt to survive in the 21st century?
How do we shift from 'me' to 'we' to solve our problems?
How can we 'be the change' we want to see in the world?
What kind of economy supports sustainable living?
How do we reinvent politics so people have a real voice?
What kind of leadership does the world need now?
How can we balance personal needs with those of the community and world?
How can we end violence everywhere?
What is the most important question in the world today, to you?

Every month, starting in September 2007, a group of friends interested in stimulating conversation gather for dinner and discussion in the metro Detroit area. We call it SHAM (Society for Hot Air Meetings). As Woody Allen's character Fielding Mellish said in Bananas, "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."

I serve as the moderator for the discussion. I started by sending an email to my friends whom I thought might be interested in participating, asking them to reply with the following information:

What topics are you interested in discussing?
Are there others whom you would like me to invite?
Do you have other ideas and suggestions for how to make this succeed?

Here are the ground rules we set for our discussions:

Everyone will get their turn to speak, and should do so uninhibitedly.
We will actively listen to each other, consider the merits of our different views, and try to learn from one another.
If we disagree on something, we will do so in a good-natured and pleasant way.

Here are the topics we have discussed so far.

September 2007

Think of three turning points in your life.
Be prepared to talk about what they were, when they occurred, and their impact.

October 2007

Who are three people whom you admire, and why?
Tell stories about each one.
You might choose relatives, friends, or public figures (hero, survivor, performer, artist, writer, leader, athlete, etc.).

November 2007

When you started college, what career did you have in mind?
As you approached graduation, what did you want to do?
What are your thoughts about your life since you graduated?
What alternative careers might have been interesting to pursue?
What would you like to do next?

December 15, 2007

You have just been appointed as the leader of the United States.
You will be able to implement three major policies without having to get Congressional approval or Supreme Court review.
What three policies would you implement?
What are your reasons for choosing these three?
What positive outcomes do you expect as a result?
What are the possible negative consequences, and how will you deal with them?

December 31, 2007

What are your hopes for 2008?
Think about three types:

Personal – what do you plan to achieve?
Serious – what do you wish for the world?
Frivolous – what will make you happy if it happens?

January 2008

What are your core values, principles, and insights?
Think about three types:

The ones your parents exemplified and tried to impart to you.
The ones you have tried to live by.
The ones your children have learned from you.

February 2008

What are your three most memorable dinners of the past?

The occasion
The setting
The people
The menu
Why it is memorable

March 2008

What political topics would you like the group to discuss?
For each topic, address:

Why is the topic of interest to you?
What is your position on it?
What are the pros and cons of the different positions?

April 2008

You have been awarded a grant which will allow you to purchase three different homes anywhere in the world at no cost to you, with no limit on the cost of each one.
Where would the homes be located?
Describe the features of each one.
When would you stay at each one?

We rotate the host every month. Twice we have dined out and then returned to our home for the discussion.

We are planning to go on the road for a SHAMROCK (SHAM Raucous Overnight Conversation Klatch) this summer. This will allow for longer and more varied discussions.

And we have had two Fam SHAMs with my family. Over the holiday season we reviewed personal highlights of 2007, and at my sister's 60th birthday party we shared stories about why we appreciate her.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

"It seems to me that KM, like lots of other things (e.g., reengineering, change management, and communities of practice to name three) has been hijacked by the information technology (IT) folks. Abraham Maslow is often credited with saying that “If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.” To paraphrase him, when your only tool is a computer, then every problem reduces to the bits and bytes of data. For me, people should be front and center in any true KM effort and, as far as I can tell, they are not. As a consequence, neither is the most important form of knowledge: the kind that resides in human beings.

I typically don’t quibble about definitions of knowledge but, when asked, I generally point to some different forms it can take. There is, of course, the explicit form found in books and manuals and even in help screens on your computer. This is the kind of knowledge that can be articulated. Then, too, there is the tacit kind about which Polanyi wrote – the kind that can’t be articulated and thus can’t be documented. And there is a third form: the implicit, which is knowledge that resides in people and can be articulated but hasn’t yet been articulated. This is the kind of knowledge that can be teased out by a skilled observer/analyst. Explicit, tacit and implicit – these are the three forms of knowledge that I find useful to contemplate. Computer-centric KM efforts can cope only with the first kind, leaving the other two to go begging hat in hand.

It further seems to me that the really important meaning of knowledge – that is, a state of being in a human being that provides that individual with the capability for effective action – has gotten lost in the shuffle. As a consequence, we have huge databases and huge piles of documented practices, etc., etc., but we are no closer to being able to manage knowledge (i.e., concentrate and channel the capability for action along productive lines) than when the KM movement began. Many others will no doubt argue otherwise, but they have a huge investment to protect and I don’t.

So, we have these huge investments in KM and, as far as I can tell, not a great deal in the way of demonstrable returns to show for them. And, at the same time, managing human capability for effective action – what for me should be the true focal point for KM – goes largely unattended and unaddressed. Moreover, were it to receive attention, those doing so would quickly encounter a requirement to shed much of what is believed about managing people in the workplace. Why? Because people – especially knowledge workers – aren’t programmable machines, or even compliant servants; they are autonomous, living control systems and they must be viewed and dealt with as agents acting on their employer’s behalf. As Peter Drucker said of knowledge workers a long time ago, they can’t be managed; they must manage themselves.

The net of all this is that I have largely lost interest in most of what now passes for KM. I’m still interested in communities of practice – the kind that center on people and practices – and I’m still intensely interested in knowledge as the capability for effective action but I don’t pay much attention to the rest of what bears the label KM."

KM Blog of the Week

Encouraging User Adoption – Get Creative! by Susan Hanley

Several of the really interesting discussions I had at the SharePoint Summit in Montreal were about encouraging user adoption of new SharePoint collaboration sites. You need to choose creative adoption techniques that work for the culture of your organization, but here are a few ideas we’ve tried in the past:

“Get Sharp on SharePoint”
“Stall” Stories
Scavenger
Birth Announcement
Web Cam Window

KM Link of the Week

In km4dev from Giora Hadar, Knowledge Architect, Federal Aviation Administration: The new Federal Knowledge Management Working Group (KMWG) site km.gov collaborative environment is now ready for use. The site includes a Wiki and a Forum for threaded discussions. Get Started Using The KMWG Site has a link to contact the Site Administrator to request a user account.

In km4dev from Lina Salazar, Ph.D., Knowledge and Learning Department, Inter-American Development Bank: The World Bank's Knowledge Assessment Methodology - The KAM is an interactive benchmarking tool created by the Knowledge for Development Program to help countries identify the challenges and opportunities they face in making the transition to the knowledge-based economy.

KM Book of the Week

From Reading for Leading by Dan Mulhern

The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher

If you think work is no laughing matter, the joke's on you. The Levity Effect uses serious science to reveal the remarkable power of fun and humor in building a productive, engaged, and loyal workforce...and a more successful you.

If you doubt levity is good for business, consider this: lighthearted leaders earn more on average than their more dour peers; entertaining workplaces breed more loyal employees and happier customers; and employees who are considered humorous are vastly more likely to get promoted - especially to senior positions.

The benefits of the levity effect are built on extensive research and case studies from some of the world's most successful organizations. Bestselling author Adrian Gostick and humorist Scott Christopher provide powerful examples of leaders from Boeing, Nike, KPMG, Yamaha, Enterprise, Zappos, and dozens of others, all of which prove that lightening up leads to real business results.

The Levity Effect also presents extensive research into the subject - including compelling data from the Great Place to Work Institute's one million-member database - that cuts against the grain of traditional business thinking to reveal that great companies consistently earn significantly higher marks for fun.

The Levity Effect is for anyone who wants to build an engaging, productive work culture and a more successful career. With interviews, extensive research, and lighthearted insight, The Levity Effect turns traditional business thinking on its head to prove again and again that a fun and engaging workplace leads to better business, more focused employees, and satisfied customers.

Table of Contents

PART I: The Case for Levity

Chapter One: Levity Is a Funny Thing: If They’re Busting a Gut, They’ll Bust Their Butts
Chapter Two: Levity Effect - Communication: If They’re Laughing, They’re Listening
Chapter Three: Levity Effect - Innovation: With Comedy, There’s Creativity
Chapter Four: Levity Effect - Respect: In You They Trust
Chapter Five: Levity Effect - Health: Good for What Ails You
Chapter Six: Levity Effect - Wealth: Laughing All the Way to the Bank

PART II: Getting Lighter

Chapter Seven: 142 Ways to Have Fun at Work: How to Bring the Levity Effect to Work
Chapter Eight: Overcoming Objections to Levity: So What if I’m a Brow Knitter?
Chapter Nine: Levity for Life: Bringing Home the Fun

Conclusion: Your Levity IQ

Authors' Site

Did you know? Levity-minded individuals:

climb the corporate ladder faster
make more money than their peers
are more creative
close more sales
have more trusting relationships
and live long, full lives (though accidents can and will happen... you can't just step in front of a subway or bus)

-END-

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

Internal Communications, Fluor CEO Letter, Knowledge Sharing Toolkit, Long Live The Platform, Outsmart

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:36:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: What are the differences between internal communications and knowledge management?

A: Internal communications uses many of the same components as knowledge management, and plays a key role in supporting a KM program. KM includes many other components, and has many other applications.

Internal communications includes:

Email and voicemail messages: Communications sent to broad or narrow distribution lists
Web sites: Intranet pages
Team spaces: Collaboration sites to share files, hold meetings, conduct polls, and maintain lists
Portals: Unified user access interfaces and repositories of documents and information
Wikis: Intranet pages which can be edited by any user for interactive content development by multiple people
Conference calls: Regular telephone calls for two-way communications, status updates, and learning
Webcasts and webinars: Web-based broadcasts of video, audio, and slides; allow questions to be entered anonymously
Virtual meeting rooms: online, real-time tools designed to allow teams to share presentations, applications, and white boards during meetings
Blogs: Web logs to post news updates, solicit comments, and take advantage of RSS syndication capability
Newsletters: Periodicals sent to subscribers to provide regular updates, stories, and useful content to interested parties
Podcasts: Recorded broadcasts available on demand or by subscription for those who prefer audio, like to listen while performing other tasks, or who are not usually connected to the network and subscribe for automatic downloads of the broadcasts through RSS syndication
Videos: Recorded videos available on demand for those who prefer video, when there is important visual content, or for special occasions
Distribution lists: Lists of email addresses used to send email messages
Progress reports: Details for communicating status to interested parties
Articles: Articles submitted to newsletters and web sites to inform those who may currently be unaware and point them to other available communications vehicles
Links: Descriptive titles with associated URLs which appear on other web sites to attract visitors from other high-traffic web sites
Meetings: Face-to-face gatherings to build trust, establish direction, and solicit inputs
Coffee talks and town hall meetings: Informal chats at local offices to allow a leader to converse with employees
Training sessions: Live or on-demand presentations and interactive e-learning to increase awareness, influence behavior, and educate
Audience surveys and focus groups: Ways to solicit inputs from target audiences to determine users' likes and dislikes, desired changes, and suggested improvements

Knowledge Management includes:

Internal communications supports KM, and KM components can be used as part of internal communications. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two functions.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

Larry Prusak wrote to me "I recently received the 2007 Annual Report from Fluor and was very pleased to see that their KM efforts were highlighted in the President's letter - a very, very rare event for KM in my experience. I thought your blog readers might find it interesting."

I asked John McQuary, Vice President of Knowledge Management and Technology Strategies at Fluor, to comment on the 2007 Annual Report. Here are the highlights John selected from the CEO's letter.

"Over the years, we have made investments to ensure our execution platform is consistent and scalable, which is why we are able to meet the tremendous demands in today’s marketplace. We use information technology to harness the company’s considerable intellectual property and leverage our award-winning, knowledge-management system to solve complex problems other companies cannot. To sum up, Fluor is uniquely able to bring together the best combination of our regional, industry and technical expertise, as well as our project management, financial, risk management, health, safety and environmental and business strengths to serve our clients’ needs.

While our systems, procedures and technologies are indeed world class, the primary reason for Fluor’s record achievements is fittingly symbolized in the photos of this annual report - our employees. In today’s rapidly changing business environment, the most potent competitive weapon any company can have is skilled, dedicated people working hard to ensure its success. At Fluor, we are blessed with a community of outstanding individuals who come together to accomplish things that no one else can. Each of our global employees brings a unique set of assets to the job, collectively resulting in greater knowledge, better decisions and premium quality and value."

Also on PDF page 26 / annual report page 23:

"Fluor’s investments in training and strong culture of knowledge sharing enable individuals to learn and grow, and those who show strong technical, business and teamwork skills are progressively moved into roles of greater responsibility and advancement."

KM Blog of the Week

Knowledge Sharing Toolkit by Mary Abraham

The ICT-KM program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has created a Knowledge Sharing Toolkit that provides guidance and resources for organizations interested in developing knowledge sharing among their employees and constituents. Nancy White at Full Circle Associates asks that readers take a look at the Toolkit and send in their feedback.

They are particularly interested in feedback from nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations and international development organizations. But even if you work outside those areas, it would be well worth your time to consider the materials provided by the Toolkit. You're sure to find information on tools and methods you haven't yet tried in your organization.

KM Link of the Week

The Long Live The Platform Conference: A Collective Report by Sue Wolff, John D. Smith, and Lynn M. Tveskov for the CPsquare Community

This paper describes the method of organizing the conference, the sustaining motivations driving participant roles, and some of the memorable learning gained by the CPsquare community.

Reflecting on the LLP Conference in com-prac

As part of the process Lynn Tveskov interviewed John Smith about what went on behind the scenes. He got into telling her the story, even going a bit overboard. After she wrote up the notes, he came up with a more analytical description of what he did as a conference organizer.

KM Book of the Week

Outsmart! - How to Do What Your Competitors Can't by Jim Champy

Jim Champy revolutionized business with Reengineering the Corporation. Now, in Outsmart! he’s doing it again. This concise, fast-paced book shows how you can achieve breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting your competition. Champy reveals the surprising, counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have achieved super-high growth for at least three straight years. Drawing on the strategies of some of today’s best “high velocity” companies, he identifies eight powerful ways to compete in even the roughest marketplace. You’ll discover how to find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in products, services, delivery methods, and unexpected customers with unexpected needs.

How to reignite growth by:

Seeing what others don’t
Using all you know
Changing your frame of reference
Thinking outside the bubble, not the box
Tapping others’ successes
Creating order out of chaos
Simplifying complexity
Doing everything yourself

Table of Contents

It's a Smart, Smart, Smart, Smart World 2
Compete by Seeing What Others Don't: How Sonicbids Spotted a $15 Billion Market 20
Compete by Thinking Outside the Bubble: MinuteClinic Delivers Healthcare Retail 38
Compete by Using All You Know: Basics Are Blazing at Smith & Wesson 58
Compete by Changing Your Frame of Reference: How Shutterfly Saw the Bigger Picture 80
Compete by Doing Everything Yourself: S.A. Robotics-Reaching Into Every Detail 96
Compete by Tapping the Success of Others: Jibbitz Wins by Riding a Croc 114
Compete by Creating Order Out of Chaos: Partsearch Finds the Item You Need 130
Compete by Simplifying Complexity: SmartPak Brings Stability to the Stables 146

Articles, Video, and Audio

-END-

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

Smartest Person, 7 KM Lessons, Build It and they won't come, Managing Organizational Memory, The Social Atom

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:27:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: Who is the world's smartest person?

A: Here are some candidates

Marilyn vos Savant

My good friend Bill Sterling, a classmate of mine at Northwestern University, is from Oak Park, Illinois, where I was born. There he knew Ed Zotti, "editor and confidant" of Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope: Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It's Taking Longer Than We Thought).

From FAQ Or Fiction? (You Be The Judge): "Cecil Adams is the world's most intelligent human being. We know this because: (1) he knows everything, and (2) he is never wrong."

Cecil's take on Why did William Sidis, the world's (2nd) smartest human, achieve so little in life?

Bill does not claim to be the world's smartest man, only that he knows him. He does write a very insightful World Report about the world of finance and investments. Check out his review of a recent book of the week: The Black Swan Says We’re Birdbrains.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

I posed the following question to many KM thought leaders and will be featuring their answers in this section. "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?"

This week's answer is from Carla O'Dell, President of APQC.

KM Overview

Lesson 1 - Secure Senior Management Support for KM by building a strong business case
Lesson 2 - Move beyond "Knowledge for Knowledge's Sake"
Lesson 3 - Determine What Knowledge is Critical
Lesson 4 - Knowledge is sticky
Lesson 5 - If You Build It, They Will Not Necessarily Come
Lesson 6 - Focus on breaking down structural barriers to the flow of knowledge between people who have it and those who need it - not changing the "culture"
Lesson 7 - Measure

KM Blog of the Week

Build It (and they won't come) by Marc Solomon

Call them ECMs or KM Hubs or Knowledge Nets or enterprise portals. Yesterday's sand castles? Meet tomorrow's ivory towers without the sustaining investment of your content producers. Here are five KM construction fictions and the corrections necessary to debunk the myths and get your users engaged as participants.

Myth #1: Increased traffic to your site(s) means that users feel compelled to share their own experiences.
Myth #2: Producing content is its own reward -- Users are inspired by altruism, team play, and a sense of community.
Myth #3: Users want to stay in-the-loop and feel compelled to check in by using a central KM system to stay up-to-date.
Myth #4: Your search engine is revving like never before. Everyone is using it. So content submissions should be edging up too, right?
Myth #5: The case of network effects has sold itself. Your executives all agree: we've got to let our people use KM to find each other, not just documentation. How do you re-deploy an internal resource as a social network?

KM Link of the Week

Recommended by Dale Arseneault in the SIKM Leaders Community

Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory

The Management of Memory
Diagnosing the Workplace
Taking Action

General Approaches
Specific Approaches

After-Action Reviews 31
Exit Interviews 32
Learning Histories 34
Lessons-Learned Inventories 35
Communities of Practice 37
Guided Experience 38
Learning Events 40
Job Overlap and Knowledge Zones 41
Phased Retirement and Succession 42
Network-based Solutions 44
Document Repositories and Portals 45
Automation and Self-Serve 47
Knowledge Centres 48

KM Book of the Week

The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You by Mark Buchanan

Synopsis

The idiosyncrasies of human decision-making have confounded economists and social theorists for years. If each person makes choices for personal (and often irrational) reasons, how can people’s choices be predicted by a single theory? How can any economic, social, or political theory be valid? The truth is, none of them really are.

Mark Buchanan makes the fascinating argument that the science of physics is beginning to provide a new picture of the human or “social atom,” and help us understand the surprising, and often predictable, patterns that emerge when they get together. Look at patterns, not people, Buchanan argues, and rules emerge that can explain how movements form, how interest groups operate, and even why ethnic hatred persists. Using similar observations, social physicists can predict whether neighborhoods will integrate, whether stock markets will crash, and whether crime waves will continue or abate.

Brimming with mind games and provocative experiments, The Social Atom is an incisive, accessible, and comprehensive argument for a whole new way to look at human social behavior.

Recommended by Steve Denning in the SIKM Leaders Community

It's a slim, well-written book, which is always a plus for me. And it's one of the best short diagnoses I've read of what's fundamentally wrong with traditional economics. It also deals with the basic issues of group vs. individual, and cooperation vs. competition. It explains how evolutionary processes can explain something that seems incompatible with Darwin: why do people collaborate, when collaboration is against their self-interest?

Fundamentally, collaboration is irrational. Attempts by economists to rationalize collaboration as indirect self-interest don't really work: there are many phenomena that can't be explained away like this. So why do people collaborate, against their self-interest? Why do some organizations while others die? What's the underlying dynamic? The book suggests that the strength of the collaborative culture is one of the key determinants of long-term organizational survival. It may not explain the demise of any individual organization. But viewing numbers of organizations over time, organizations with hard-working collaborative cultures will tend to win out over organizations marked by internal competition.

The hypothesis is that at the center of the modern firm, it is the same precious resource of energized collaboration than enabled our hunter-gatherer ancestors to survive, one hundred thousand years ago.

Reviews

Links

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

KM and Sports, Dave Pollard and Bruce Hoppe, Regional Knowledge Resource Kit, KM Toolkit, Managing Knowledge-Based Initiatives

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

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

[Blogroll - KM Home Page - Send a Question - Implementing a successful KM programme]

KM Question of the Week

Q: Can the world of sports teach us anything about knowledge management?

A: Yes. The most recent example is Monday's NCAA men's basketball championship game between Memphis and Kansas.

At the end of the game, Memphis led Kansas by 3 points. This situation is a much-debated one in basketball - should the team which is leading by 3 points commit a foul to prevent the other team from making a 3-point basket to tie the game?

My son Roger, a former college basketball player and now a sports journalist, called me during the 2004 NBA Finals to emphasize that our hometown Detroit Pistons should foul the Los Angeles Lakers in this situation. Detroit failed to do so, even though they could have fouled Shaquille O'Neal, one of the worst free-throw shooters of all time. Their failure to do so allowed Kobe Bryant to make a tying 3-pointer, and the Lakers went on to win the game in overtime.

Last night I called Roger to point out that Memphis had the same chance but did not take it (he said he was expecting my call). For more on the debate, see Memphis Doesn't Foul with 3-point Lead and C(h)alm in the Clutch.

Late in the game, Memphis showed three examples of the knowing-doing gap: "why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge."

Joey Dorsey of Memphis committed his fifth foul when he knew that he shouldn’t have. This stopped the clock, allowed Kansas to score two easy points, and removed a key player from the game due to Dorsey fouling out.
After Kansas missed a layup, Memphis had a two-on-one fast break with time running out. They should have tried to run out the clock, but instead, Derrick Rose attempted a shot and was fouled. This stopped the clock and set up the 3-point lead scenario when Rose missed one of two free throws. Players know that running out the clock is more important than scoring, but their instinct to score sometimes takes over, as in this case.
Memphis coach John Calipari said in a post-game interview that his team was trying to commit a foul to prevent the tying 3-pointer. So they probably knew what to do, but were unsure or unable to carry out the strategy.

What can be learned from this, both for sports and other settings?

Regularly spend time explaining, discussing, and practicing key strategies. Repetition is important.
Review examples and stories from important precedents to reinforce the point you wish to make. For example, in last year's tournament, Ohio State forced overtime when Xavier failed to foul with a 3-point lead. A video replay of the end of that game could have been shown regularly to the team to demonstrate the impact of not fouling.
Coaches should not assume that their players will be able to carry out previously defined strategies in the heat of the moment. They should take timeouts at key points in the game to explicitly remind the players what is at stake, what the strategy is, and the roles of all team members in implementing it.

KM Thought Leader of the Week

This week's answers are from Dave Pollard and Bruce Hoppe. I invited them to talk to the HP KM Community, and they took turns leading a stimulating conversation.

Dave Pollard

KM is simply the art enabling trusted, context-rich conversations among the appropriate members of communities about things these communities are passionate about. Most of this KM 0.0 stuff is inexpensive and ubiquitous, so enterprising information and IT professionals can introduce it without having to get permission and resources from management. Here's a walk-through of what it comprises:

Personal content management tools
RSS-publishable and subscribable personal web pages, blogs and small-group-created wikis
Communities of passion
Stories and visualizations as the principal formats of content
Open access
Reintermediation

awareness alerts (what's new that's important to our organization?)
research (what does it mean?)
guidance (what should we do about it?)

A simple set of connectivity enablers

IM
virtual meeting tools
organization and facilitation of real & virtual events
people-finding and community-creating tools

Public site geared to what the customer wants to know

These eight components of KM 0.0 / PKM are the antithesis of what most large organizations provide as Knowledge Management resources. Most of them are quite simple and inexpensive to implement. They simply enable trusted, context-rich conversations among communities that care. Imagine that.

Bruce Hoppe

Those who want to support Dave's "KM 0.0" notion will do well to notice how 1920's anthropological study of archaic societies anticipates this 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review cover on "Enterprise 2.0." The good part of the article is McAfee's list of six components of Enterprise 2.0, which conveniently yields the acronym SLATES:

Search - keyword search is becoming increasingly powerful
Links - density of links is increasing, providing ever richer context
Authoring - more and more people are creating both content and links
Tags - emergent categories make content easier to navigate
Extensions - generate useful recommendations based on other people like you
Signals - RSS and news aggregators protect users from information overload

My main complaint about the article is how McAfee associates SLATES with "the dawn of emergent collaboration." People have been practicing emergent collaboration ever since we dropped out of the trees and learned how to walk and make tools.

Dave's poem also deserves more consideration:

Content, collection;
Context, connection.

I interpret this poem as a tribute to Amazon.com and other exemplars of the Long Tail phenomenon - digital hosts who provide not only content but also ways for users to interact through their experience of that content. It's an amazingly successful network recipe cooked with equal measures of centrality, clustering, and structural equivalence.

KM Blog of the Week

Regional Knowledge Resource Kit by Luke Naismith

My good friend Nerida Hart, who is now working at Land and Water Australia, has pointed me on a number of occasions to the Regional Knowledge Resource Kit. I have had some cursory looks at it in the past but over the past couple of days I have looked at it in more detail and it is an incredibly valuable KM resource. The work that they have done with the various regional bodies is amazing, brokering conversations amongst local practitioners to share knowledge and build connections.

The Kit itself is full of great information and links to valuable resources. It does not just have utility for regional land managers but for anyone who needs to work with a community to find out their particular needs, develop trusted relationships and develop strategies for implementing concrete actions that will create value for them. One of the key insights for me from the conversation with Nerida and delving into the site is that anecdote circles work best when the group knows each other a bit - so therefore it’s best to have anecdote circles during the middle of the process rather than at the start.

KM Link of the Week

From Paul McDowall in IKMF / FIGS (Knowledge Management in the Canadian Federal Government)

Knowledge Management Toolkit

Here we present methods and tools for knowledge sharing and learning. Every month from April 2007 to December 2008, a new method will be added. The aim is to help people getting familiar with methods and tools for planning and reflecting own activities, drawing lessons and sharing insights and applying them. The full toolkit will comprise a number of useful methods to be applied at personal, team and organizational level.

The method descriptions are provided in four languages (English, French, Spanish, and German). To make the transfer to daily life attractive, the methods are presented in two forms: a calendar sheet with a concise description and a credit card size short summary. For each method, a comprehensive description is provided in English only, with links to websites where you can find more information about the respective method.

Tools

After Action Review (AAR)
Collegial Coaching
Yellow Pages
SWOT (Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats)
Good Practice
Knowledge Fair
Exit Interview
Story Telling
Experience Capitalization
Mentoring
Visualization
Peer Assist
Briefing

Links to other KM Toolkits

KM Book of the Week

Managing Knowledge-Based Initiatives: Strategies for successful deployment by Stacy Land

Keeping the unique challenges of knowledge-based work in mind, Stacy Land explores what knowledge managers/project managers must know to effectively navigate within their organizations, position their work in a value-based framework, and publicize their work to increase buy-in. Topics include avoiding common sand traps, working with committees and multiple departments, compliance, entering a new world of politics and funding, achieving organizational alignment, developing and executing on a value proposition, negotiating executive sponsorship, and more.

Step-by-step guide on how to successfully move your knowledge-based initiative from pilot to enterprise deployment
Covers how to develop and implement your value proposition to align with organizational objectives and values
Shows how to prepare for an executive meeting, how to work with IT and how to navigate through levels of committees and bureaucracy

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Baseline Points of Understanding
Chapter 2: Before You Get Started
Chapter 3: Understanding and Mapping
Chapter 4: Executive Sponsorship and Network Building
Chapter 5: Executive Sponsorship from the
Chapter 6: Value Prop 101
Chapter 7: Using Your Value Props
Chapter 8: Committees, Committees, Committees
Chapter 9: Working with PMOs
Chapter 10: Making Sense of Dollars and Cents
Chapter 11: IT Friend or Foe?
Chapter 12: Expert Q&A With Brandon Goldfedder
Chapter 13: Engaging the Help Desk
Chapter 14: The Corporate Red Carpet
Chapter 15: Selling Knowledge-Based Work in Real Life

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