November 2003 Archives

I have always been wondering why KM programs were so controversial, why they could flourish only « with a strong support of top management », why there were so many social activists among bloggers…
Reading a book recently about Louis XIV ("le roi soleil se lève aussi" of Philippe Beaussant ), I found out that the Palace of Versailles was indeed a KM project, and very similar in spirit to the widely acclaimed “Future Center” of Skandia.

How many forum members does it takes to change a light bulb?

This is fun. And so true... That's why I moved to blogging. It's only part of the solution though.

I just came back from a three day company seminar. We had good food, nice entertainment, beer mugs with the corporate logo, little gifts and awards... More than a hundred people attended. We were celebrating the progress of a knowledge network of communities of practice I have been supporting since two years now. It was fun. Sort of.

I should have been happy, and yet I felt uneasy. I kept on thinking that maybe it wasn't worth the spending. Guests were by and large employees of the company. Only one individual from another partner company was invited. No client. I had this nagging impression of being part of a exclusive group of priviledged employees who were allowed to travel around the globe, sit around in cocktail parties and engage in political lobbying among themselves, with no real justification (Why are we doing this? What's the business problem we are trying to solve here?) while the rest of the company is struggling to make business and keep their jobs.

It made me think of the soviet Nomenklatura of Party members, who had the right to shop in supermarkets, while the people were standing in the line before empty grocery shops.

Indeed, the justification for events like these is not to reward a homogeneous group of people for "good work", but to establish relationships between people that the company believes should know each other, and for a good identified business reason. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have fun, but that the event should be organized to make sure that this actually happens. How many business cards were exchanged for future joint work? Very little, I suspect.

Clear business purposes, clear metrics, clear reward schemes... Transparency is the only way to fight against tyranny, in the political sphere as well as in the corporate sphere. That's what I believe, and that's why I joined the Knowledge Management movement.

PS: The title is a quote from Jean Giraudoux in the play "the war of Troy will not happen". In French: "C'est le privilège des puissants que de voir les catastrophes du haut d'une terrasse"

The KM Europe event took place in Amsterdam between November 10. And 12. I attended the two first days. This is a quick report on what I found to be of interest, even though I saw maybe only 30% of everything.

Carla O'Dell, president of APQC, gave a speech at the KM Europe Conference in Amsterdam on November 11.
These are a few quotes I took from her speech:
“Technology is non sufficient, but it is necessary. You can’t imagine a KM project without technology. ”
“Developing a knowledge sharing culture is a consequence of KM, not a prerequisite ”
“In 2001, we found out that Communities of Practice were central in all successful KM initiatives ”
“Retaining knowledge. If you wait until the last moment to take care of the problem of retirees, you will fail ”
“Teams use 3 or 4 collaboration tools before they settle on one ”
“The key to measuring the value of KM initiatives : link them very tightly with business objectives and business processes. Don't measure at the corporate level but at the process level ”
“We have found out that financial officers don't buy the 'time saved' argument. We have not found it useful to audit a KM program without an underlying business problem ”
"Successful pilots in KM are most of the time focused on the client, and address a burning business need."
"Always address the measurement issue from the beginning. This is how KM project teams start focusing on the right questions"
"Assets make things possible. People make things happen."

Thanks, Carla!

Fantastic suggestion by my friend Gilbert Brault: Using student interns as core group members for communities of practice in our company.

Can you imagine the learning potential? Students are always looking for internships in large corporations, and large corporations often have a hard time giving them traditional marketing, R&D or even production jobs. If students could take some of the leadership roles in our communities of practice, not only would they learn a lot about the company and the business, but our community members would learn a lot as well because they suddenly would have access to relevant academic research and expert networks through those students. I would be delighted to have a junior mechanical engineer in my woodworking community of practice. Not only could he or she alleviate some of the day-to-day logistical hassles of running the community, bu he or she could bring valuable insights, new ideas, new contacts...

Just think about it as a fascinating new way to build valuable bridges between the academic and corporate worlds. Has anyone tried this before?

Dave Pollard’s paper, « the future of knowledge management » addresses the need to reinvent knowledge management after the failure of big K programs to deliver on their promises. Dave discards the old corporate-centric idea of KM, focused on ‘capturing best practices, success stories and lessons learned’, which has resulted in repeated failure, and advocates a new people-centric focus for KM, which should be about ‘improving personal productivity and effectiveness of front-line workers’ (Drucker).

Though this paper is full of excellent ideas, especially the implications of this new focus on the KM practice of large organizations, I have to disagree with this either/or thesis, which swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.
Indeed, KM has failed when it has focused too much on explicit and codified knowledge - the needs of the organization - at the expense of tacit knowledge and social connections - the needs of the front-line people. But a new approach that would focus on the needs of the people and forget about those of the organization would be doomed as well, for lack of support and lack of structure.

Beckhard : « Enterprise managers today are deeply concerned with the dilemma of how to (a) fully mobilize the energy of the organization’s human resources towards achievement of the organization’s performance objectives, and (b) at the same time, so organize the work, work environment, the communications system, and the relationships of people, that individuals need for self worth, growth, and satisfaction are sigificantly met at work. To resolve this dilemma in our rapidly changing environment, new organization forms must be developed ; more effective goal setting and planning processes must be learned, and practice teams of interdependent people must spend real time improving their methods of working, decision-making and communicating. Competing or conflicting groups must move toward a collborativ wy of work. In order for these changes to occur and to be maintained, a planned, managed change effort is necessary – a program of organisation development. »

KM is about leveraging the knowledge of others AND about capitalizing experiences, constructing new knowledge and make it available to all. Successful KM programs manage to take into consideration both the needs of the individuals and those of the formal organization, recognizing that they differ but complement each other. Front-line individuals must see the immediate operational benefit for them, which usually builds on tacit knowledge and problem solving, and organizations must see the longer term enculturation benefit, which usually builds on explicit knowledge and categorizing.