Award winning KM

The Parsons Brinckerhoff Australia-Pacific knowledge management program and team have been recognised by the actKM Knowledge Management Excellence Awards held in conjunction with the 2011 actKM Conference in Melbourne.

We won the Gold Award for the program that has been delivered over the last 5 years. A big thank you to the team of Christine Harding, Sarah Crealy, Deborah Houlahan, Bridie Sampson, Erin Hamalainen and Jody Chant as well as David Kent and Mark LePla who started us on this journey several years ago and the staff at PB who have come to realise the value in leveraging and sharing what they know.

Article on actkm.org

Thanks

Cory

Motivating people to learn

I have just been asked a question from a mate of mine and thought others might like to hear the answer.

Just wondering what your ideas are for online learning resources and how to make them a sought after commodity? #### has an immense library of “stuff” but no one goes there…

Without going into the pros and cons of elearning as a vehicle, I put together the following response. They are more around the change, motivation and engagement than the actual material itself.

One thing and two ideas

The thing is motivation. You need to think about what motivates people in the organisation. Importantly: this is not an assumption made by HR people or Managers. You have to ask the people.

Now the two ideas.

1. Alignment

• If they have a development plan then showing them how the courseware helps them achieve that can be a motivator.

2. Gamification

• Make it a competition.
• Make it fun.
• Score points.
• Have a variety of leaderboards.
• Make up silly awards. E.g. Most courses taken on a train; completed a sequence ( full house, straight, royal flush etc…)
• Or you have to build up ‘credits’ to ‘level up’.
• Allow people to exchange credits.

3. Accessibilty

• Make sure people can get to the stuff offsite.
• This allows them to fill in time anywhere with a learning activity.
• Make it convenient.

4. Go viral

• Constrain access.
• Go for scarcity.
• You can only do a course by being invited by a colleague or earning credits.
• Allow people to recommend courseware to colleagues.

As you noticed, I can’t count. What can I say? I’m an ideas person.

What have you done to improve the takeup?

Thanks

Cory

Google+ thoughts and ideas vol 1.

It’s all the buzz (no pun intended) at the moment in internet and social media circles. Google’s latest offering in the social space. Google+ (G+).

You can have a look at the introductory information at G+ and here are some articles from

• Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web – Official Google Blog
• Google+: The Pros & Cons – Mashable
• Why Google+ Will Make A Splash, Not A Wave, In The Community Pool – FastCompany
• What MySpace’s Tom Anderson Thinks of Google+ – Mashable
• Behind Google+’s Stealth March On Foursquare, Instagram, Gaming, Facebook, Your Life – FastCompany

I’ve got some thoughts that I want to share and where better to do it than here.

Read the Disclaimer

Google+ has come with a disclaimer but many seem to have forgotten this and have criticized the limited release of not fully functioning platform.

Why is Google+ invitation only?

This new service isn’t ready for public use just yet. Google is making the service available for field testing meaning they’d like a handful of regular people to use it and give feedback so they’ll know what to improve and wether there are bugs that need fixing. So once again there’s no point in complaining that you can’t join freely or add people instantly since that’s not the purpose at the moment. This is not a public release.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/learnmore/forum/

First Impressions

Google has been working hard on improving the look and feel of some of it’s offerings going back to the iGoogle customisations, Gmail themeing and Priority Inbox, Google Reader modifications, to Google Groups returning to it’s roots as a discussion forum.

What we have seen is a total interface redux thanks to Andy Hertzfeld (original Macintosh UI) and I like it.

Different but good (Going round in circles)

There is a good break from what has become tradition on other social platforms where you would usually ‘friend’, ‘like’, ‘favorite’, ‘follow’ or ‘share’ something.

In G+ a different paradigm has been embedded around the ability to ‘share’ and ‘+1′ (+1 had already been out there but really needed something like G+ or the Google Bookmarks tools for it to truly generate value) and the way you can push that to specific groups instead of them sorting through the stream you produce looking for something useful.

An example at the moment is in Twitter I can share something, but it is shared with all who folllow me. I can help them sort things out by using appropriate hashtags but they still get the lot. With Google+, for each message I can tailor the audience (by selecting one or more people or circles – group of people) or choose to make the post public. I control the audience instead of the audience controlling me (well they can still control me but I can be more selective).

Wishlist

Tags: We have labels in Gmail and tags in Reader & Bookmark. Let’s get it consistent and into G+.

Circles: Allow circles within circles. I need to think more about the idea of public and private circles. Will be interesting if GGroups could be replaced by a circle concept as they have now stripped it back to discussion forums.

Search: Difficult to believe that there isn’t a search feature in a Google product to allow you to search your stream (currently you can only search people). Can Understand that this would be tricky with circles but needs to be here.

Improving Possibility

Integration is going to be key. Integration with the rest of the Google deck of tools but also with third party services and critically I think with the Chrome browser/OS.

I see the potential for a few of the google tools such as Bookmarks, Reader, Buzz and even Groups to be rolled into or taken over by the G+ platform. We are already starting to see a few gaps filled by Chrome Apps and Extensions to improve G+ function. Give me a G+ +1 button in my toolbar and a status indicator and I’ll be happy.

There is potential here as well for integration into Google Sites and Blogger for better social features on sites and blogs.

I am really looking forward to the possibilities for google apps as an improved social business platform with this social glue holding it all together.

Oauth is another aspect. A majority of online and device based apps utilise your twitter and Facebook logins as accounts and authentication e.g. Rockmelt, Klout, Instagram etc.. (some even use Yahoo! – how outdated is that). There are some out there that allow you to use your google login but that will need to increase to gain traction in this space. When the ability to use your google credentials to authenticate is beside the twitter and Facebook options then we’ll know they have cracked it.

3rd party photo app integration will be important so I hope they can improve the picassa APIs to allow the posting of images to G+. A number of third party apps allow you to store in flickr or photobucket etc…

There will be more but if I don’t get this published now it will stay in draft and keep getting added to for ever!

Keen to hear what you think about these ideas and your views of G+?

Thanks

Cory

In pursuit of collaboration…

“Go forth and collaborate!”

Wouldn’t it be good if it was that easy.
Just tell people to collaborate and away they would go, knowing

• what to collaborate on
• who to collaborate with
• and how to collaborate (effectively)

Do we make these assumptions?
Do we assume that

• everyone has a consistent perception of what collaboration is?
• everyone is capable of working collaboratively?
• or even worse, we give them collaborative technologies and they know how to use them effectively and productively?

<sarcasm>
Everyone knows how to use social media. Everyone is on Facebook.
</sarcasm>

Call it collaboration. Call it Enterprise 2.0. Call it Social Business. Call it what ever you want.
It’s different. It’s a change. To assume that people will just pick it up and run with it is very risky.

I’ve been sharing a model that hopefully leads people to understand what collaboration is and some of the fundamentals that are needed to give people the best chance of success through collaboration. Here it is. See what you make of it.

In pursuit of collaboration we build up through communication and cooperation.

Communication

I see this as a foundation for collaboration. You need to be aware of what others are doing and what they are capable of. What’s more you need to keep others up to date of what you are doing and capable of as well. It’s a two way street. Be aware and raise awareness.

Cooperation

If this communication is flowing then it is very easy to identify opportunities where you can support others to achieve their objectives and gain support from others to achieve yours. I’m calling this cooperation is the context that there is a lead and a supporter. The lead has to enroll others to achieve it’s objective whilst at the same time may be providing support to someone else to achieve the outcome they seek.

Collaboration

Finally through the flow of communication and having a cooperative mindset, we can start to identify the particular areas where a collaborative effort will give the best results. In this I talk about partnerships and alliances where two or more areas come together as equal partners to deliver something greater than they could achieve in isolation or through cooperation. They may still enroll others in a cooperative relationship to achieve the objective.

Through discussing this approach people start to realise how poorly they communicate and how they don’t actually engage in cooperative endeavors, but expect to operate effective and successful collaborations at all levels of scale and complexity.

This then gives us good grounding in efforts to improve communication and leverage collaborative technologies for a purpose, as opposed to ‘keeping up’ with others or being instructed to collaborate.

Happy to hear from you on your views of this or what other factors should be considered when looking at collaboration capability?

Thanks

Cory

Tool Time – Livescribe Pen

At a recent KM Roundtable meeting in Melbourne, Michelle Lambert shared her experiences with using a Livescribe Pen.

Using the pen and special paper, you can record your notes and drawings visually and (if you desire) record the audio of conversation that is going on at the same time. These are then synchronised so you can come back to a point in your notes and replay the audio at that point.

The big thing for me was that you could search your notes (the ultimate searchable notebook!!).

It has definitely gone to the top of my wishlist and may even be closer to landing in my hot little hands due to Amazon currently discounting the price of the pens.

With the exchange rate the way it is and next pay due Friday, there is a real danger of my cunning plan for global domination coming to fruition!! [insert maniacal laughter]

Thanks

Cory

Using Knowledge

I’ve recently had a couple of conversations with people returning to our organisation after working on long term infrastructure projects. Despite having spent the last three years here designing and delivering a KM program, these Executives had been away longer and have returned to an organisation that has been through two restructures, had a new intranet, doubled in size and moved into new premises.

After hearing them voice their predicament in a couple of forums, I tracked them down to see how I can support them with their integration back into the business. After listening to their perspective and perceptions their first question was “So what do you do?”.

As we all do, I’ve got a couple of elevator speeches to try and communicate what possibilities KM can create in the context and words of the business and here is the one I used.

We can look at how we need to manage knowledge from the perspective of where does it get used, and then work backwards from there.

A couple of areas where we use knowledge to create value are in solving problems and making decisions. These are closely related and are basically what we do as an infrastructure consulting firm. We help our clients decide what the problem is and what the best solution is.

If we work backwards from making decisions, we look at:

• the data and information do we need to collect and analyse
• the expertise and experience do we need to have,
• the process, governance and authority
• what happened last time
• the options we have
• the impacts and consequences

So in working backwards from there we can see we need to know what we know and who knows it, the processes and systems we need to operate within and the thinking we have to do.

Thanks

Cory

Sharing my KM Brain

I had done some work to pull together a collection of KM resources, tools, methods and concepts.

I had put it in Personal Brain and now The Brain offeres a online space to share personal brains.

So here it is: KM Universe

It’s not complete. It’s still a work in progress. Hopefully it makes sense to others. Feel free to comment.

Thanks

Cory

KM in Brisneyland

What a way to start the day. Breakfast with peers and colleagues with an interest in Knowledge Management on a wonderful sunny morning in downtown Brisbane. It doesn’t get much better (professionally that is).

I am speaking of the breaky catchups of the QKM Forum here in Brisbane known as ‘KM over Coffee’. This is held on the third Thursday of the month at a nice spot in Brisbane Square at the Shingle Inn cafe.

The catchups were originally an alternative to organised activities and presentations and have been going on for the last 18 months. It was much easier on all of us to just set up a time and place and see who could make it. We are now planning on maintaining the catchups for those who can make it and complement these with some other activities (site visits, peer assists, guest speakers etc…).

Mostly we have two or three people available on that morning to catchup but today was a bumper crop (14 of us. Tables had to be rearranged several times to cater for the volume).

During the limited time we had, we were able to do a round of ‘classic’ introductions (name, role, current priorities) and we then broke the group up into 3 teams which were each given the task of discussing and deciding:

 ”If you could ask this group of fellow KMers one question, what would it be?”

The responses were:

1. How do we get senior leadership to buy-in to KM?
2. How would you monitise the value of KM in an organisation?
3. How do you motivate people to adopt KM practices?

We then used the first question to share our experiences and views on the point. The other two we’ll save up for next time.

A big thankyou to all those at the recent actKM Conference who pointed some Brisbane KM orphans our way.

Next catchup will follow a slightly different format and involve festive season drinkies. See you all there.

Thanks

Cory

KM Australia 2010

Had a great time at KM Australia in Sydney last week.

Great to catch up with fellow kmers (old and new) and always fun to take people on a journey.

Hopefully people were able to take something away from the interactive sessions that Michelle Lambert and myself ran.
We got some great feedback from people on the day.

For those who didn’t make it there was a torrent of tweets flowing forth from the Crystal Pallace Ballroom at Luna Park on Sydney Harbour.

Thanks to Kerri Anne Christian for capturing these and storing them on Slideshare.

I have dumped them into Wordle and here is what popped out.

Thanks

Cory

Repositories are for sharing, not storing

A recent thread on actKM.org caught my eye. The problem of getting people to read documents got me thinking about some of the situations we are currently dealing with and I felt the urge to share.

My first response to the question from Jim Brander:

“Jim,

I would say assuming people will read your document is what gets people into trouble. It is also an assumption that just producing a document is enough.

We are looking at a few things related to this at the moment.

Firstly we communicate a clear message through our induction modules/sessions, intranet and workshops that storing a document is only half the job. You have to make sure that the document gets to someone who will generate value from you knowledge. This may require extra effort in either adding metadata or notifying a relevant COP of it’s existence. Repositories are for sharing, not storing.

Secondly we are dealing with assumptions that because I documented findings from a lessons learned exercise and filed it that others a.) will look for it b.) will find it c.) will read it and d.) will interpret my findings correctly.

We now work with the project on developing a communications plan to figure out who needs what message through which best channel. In some cases this may mean a practice note drafted, issued and communicated or in others it may mean sending a team of three people on a 3 week road trip to run workshops with everyone in the discipline to make change happen.

The third relates the wonderful assumption people have that a.) they will receive an email you send them b.) they will read said email and c.) that the recipient will interpret your meaning correctly.

If you want the information/knowledge to get read then you need to look at a whole change management approach, not just restrict yourself to the good old fashioned way of doing things.

A different interpretation of your point is also around the quality of documentation that people produce. These sorts of documents should always go through a rigorous editing, review and approval process. I would suggest this include some user acceptance testing. Far too often the document is written for the authors peers when the actual audience may not be as knowledgable on the topic.”

Here is a followup post:

“Another way I have tried to get this challenge across to people is talking about ‘the gap’. The gap between sender and receiver.

The sender cannot assume that the receiver will close the gap where the sender has left off (publishing a document).

More and more we are seeing efficiency drives to reduce the amount of work, time it takes or cost in providing something. This has in most cases resulted in the work required to close the gap having to be undertaken by the receiver (self service).

A classic situation I have experienced recently is some processing work that was previously undertaken by our finance area has now been moved onto staff to achieve a cost reduction in the finance area, yet has increased the workload of frontline staff and could impact on capacity and even utilisation/billability.

We need to be aware of the gap and give ourselves the best chance of success by working out the most effective way to close it, from both sides of the chasm.”

If you want to make sure you successfully communicate your message, get your point across or transfer some knowledge then you need to do a lot more than draft a document and upload it.

Thanks

Cory