Knowledge Needs Action To Create Value

The theme for the forthcoming KIN Workshop (1st December 2015) is "Knowledge in Action". Hopefully a title that will resonate with anyone who practices knowledge management, since it reminds us that knowledge without some form of action is worthless.

We consume knowledge in a variety of ways, e.g. through academic courses, reading or experiential learning. But what's the use of all of this accumulated knowledge while it remains dormant in our heads, or stored on our bookshelves? We can only realise the value of knowledge if we do something with it, and we all know that "to do" is a verb. So knowledge plus some form of action will release value.

Readers will have noticed that I've used a stock image (with permission) by John Antonios which is a variation of my equation, i.e. knowledge plus action equals power, which perhaps give more emphasis to this 'knowledge + action' dynamic, but I prefer to think of value rather than power, partly because some people may associate "power" as "self empowerment". And no doubt we can all think of examples (mostly bad) where that has happened throughout history....or in our workplace?!

Value is a different matter, because it can't be personalised or self-attributed; it's a measure of the benefit that might be gained by other people, for example from goods or a service.

One of the simplest ways of creating value from knowledge is by sharing it. We may not realise what value has been created by sharing our knowledge. We don't know what decisions we have influenced or the impact of those decisions. We can sometimes recognise the value of something we've said or done by the reactions of others, or the feedback we've received over time, but that's not always the case.

Speaking for myself, I've learnt far more from people than I've ever learnt from books, though I don't wish to dismiss books as a very useful source of knowledge. However, the power of tacit knowledge can't be underestimated, and we've never had better opportunities to tap into this knowledge through our networks - personal, private and social.  Belonging to and growing these networks is no longer an option; it's an absolute essential if we want to ensure our knowledge and skills are continually honed and adapted to the rapidly changing environment around us. Darwin called it evolution, but it's more fundamental than that, it's about surviving.

So, coming back to the point about knowledge and value. Knowledge without action has no value. We can be the brightest and most intelligent person we know, but unless we do something with this knowledge we are as useful a chocolate tea-pot (I think that might be a British idiom, but I hope the meaning is apparent).  Doing means sharing, helping, supporting, tacit-to-explicit, speaking, mentoring, teaching....I'm sure you can think of many other action verbs. Doing nothing with our knowledge is an opportunity wasted, and our net worth (value) equals nothing, zero, zilch.

I'm looking forward to the KIN Workshop in December, and listening to the knowledge being shared by our line-up of presenters and facilitators, the knowledge shared between delegates during lunch and coffee breaks and doing my bit to share. For those unable to be with us, knowledge sharing doesn't end at the workshop. It's made available on-line (explicit), the action verb in this case is - you've guessed - "published".

I can't yet put a figure on the value of all of this shared knowledge, but I know we're going to have a room full of knowledge, plenty of actions, so one thing for sure is that lots of knowledge + lots of actions = lots of value!

Hope to see you at the workshop or online.

Steve Dale

KIN Member Organisation Maturity Benchmarking

We presented the results of the KIN 2011 Maturity Model at yesterday's Spring Workshop.

The results graphically show the delta between those with a high level of maturity in certain components and those with a desire to improve.

The components assessed were: Knowledge sharing strategy, Measuring impact, Learning and innovating, Collaborating and Re-using. We will use the benchmarking results to ensure the KIN programme for the year reflects this need.

It is also an invaluable signpost to how KIN Members themselves can:

• Connect peer-to-peer to learn and improve in those knowledge-sharing aspects where they see a capability gap
  
• Benchmark their own improvement over time (we will make this an annual exercise)
• Identify pockets of excellence and demand within their organisation (the tool is available for use by Members at a more granular level)Image via Wikipedia

Image by williamcho via Flickr

Wow, two blog postings in a week, both based on Dave Trott's output (here's the other).
The KIN Summer Workshop on 15th June is on 'the psychology of knowledge sharing'. Something dear to the hearts of all KIN member organisations trying to achieve collaboration and knowledge sharing in increasingly tough times.
Dave Trott's blog posting on 'Singaporean Choice Architecture' is not some a missive on Oriental building design, but rather on 'how to engineer choice'. This is particularly appropriate for our Summer Workshop theme, as I think what we are trying to be is 'architects of collaboration'.
Dave concludes with a great quote from McDonald's Ray Kroc; “The art of salesmanship is letting people have it your way.”

Saboteur's tools - nails and knowledge

A fascinating Saboteur's Field Manual has been declassified by the US Military. As well as the usual nails and home-made explosives, surprisingly it presents sophisticated methods of disrupting organisational knowledge. A kind of knowledge management, in reverse. Knowledge mis-management?

For example:
"A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt an uncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another".
Sounds familiar? For tools, read documents.

How about: "More important ... would be to create a situation in which the citizen-saboteur acquires a sense of responsibility and begins to educate others in simple sabotage".

And my favourites in relation to Knowledge Mis-Management:

• "When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
• To lower morale... be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers.
• Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done".

Remember this was 1944. Those damn office saboteurs have been perfecting their technique for 65 years.

Finally, I couldn't resist this one:
"Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks".

I am indebted to Jenny Ambrozek for pointing me to Don Burke of the CIA who referenced the Handbook in his talk to The Tap Collective

IDeA's innovative ideas

I was a guest at the IDeA 'Community of Practice' facilitators' conference in London today. This organisation, which supports knowledge sharing and improvement across the 367 UK Local Government Authorities, has achieved some remarkable results since I last looked at it a couple of years ago. An example is the really interesting way of recording the conference. They start simply with the agenda and embedded presentations (in this case hosted on Slideshare) in a Wiki page. They then add content to it contemporaneously during the event. This includes specific quotes, notes, links, bookmarks, a twitter feed, vox pop video snippets and audio clips. It does take a lot of dedicated effort, for example several people using Flip videos, someone dedicated to updating the page and a red hot broadband connection. In effect it appears as a narrative and would replace an Event Workspace/ site or a set of PowerPoint slides. IDeA have some very ambitious plans to utilise 'social technologies' to create a knowledge hub over the next year or so. If their success with online communities of practice (they have about 800) is anything to go by, they will be way ahead of most other public sector organisations and dare I say it, many private sector too.

Enabling Technologies

Last week we held the first non-specific Enabling Technologies (ET) Special Interest Group (SIG). It was, I think, a success!
We had an ambitious agenda but just about managed to get through it all.

This meeting took place at the Swan at Streatley the day before the KIN Summer Quarterly workshop.

Scott Gavin was our guest speaker. Some of you may be familiar with Scott's work in the 'Meet Charlie' series of Slideshares - I've certainly used them at a couple of meetings I have run and if you haven't seen them and have an interest in things 'WEB 2.0', you should.

At this meeting, one of our activities was to define what technologies we want to focus on. It was emphasised that Enabling Technologies are not 'just about the Technology' but have People and Process aspects also. So we won't be just talking about the technologies themselves, but looking at the pragmatic issues around their implementation and effective use.

I found this little clip which helps illustrate the issue!



We started the process of constructing a map of the technologies that KIN members are using (of which just the central part is shown here. This will be expanded over time so that KIN members will be able easily to identify who to talk to if they want advice and expertise from other KIN members in the use of any given technology.

We developed a draft 'charter' for the SIG to clarify it's purpose, scope and objectives:

Purpose:
The purpose of the SIG is to share Knowledge and Experience to enhance members' ability to select, implement and support enabling technologies in their organisations taking into account people, process and culture implications
Scope:
IT Tools to facilitate and enhance the KM processes of Location, Collection and Connection within organisations
Objectives:

• To enhance awareness of what's available by mapping what KIN members are currently using and/or have considered using.
• To add to the map other technologies/tools that might also be considered
• To use results of the mapping exercise (and other feedback) to drive focussed K sharing events between member organisations and acquisition of K from expert
• To develop an ET 'toolkit'

Following on from Scott Gavin's presentation where one of the things he talked about was the benefits of tagging and social bookmarking, I continued to encourage SIG members to try out Social Bookmarking both as a benefit to KIN and to look for the value such a tool could bring to their own organisation. To help anyone who would also like to 'have a go', I've adapted two presentations I found that shows you how to get started.

Get Started with Diigo Pt1 - Set up your account

Get Started with Diigo Pt2 - Using Diigo

And a simple demonstration of just one of the benefits of using Diigo (there are many others - but one step at a time!)

Diigo vs adding links manually

All the web resources referred to at the meeting can be found in this list.

And Finally: A look at how the future was expected to look in the 60's. Interesting that the 'people aspects' were probably more inaccurately foreseen than the technology itself!

What's in a title?

Having met with a few organisations that are interested in joining KIN, I was struck by the absence of the term 'Knowledge Management' in our discussions. Whilst all these firms are doing interesting and innovative things around organisational learning and knowledge sharing, none of them have 'KM Teams' or 'KM Programmes'. I discussed this with two organisations that I met recently; one a top recruitment consultancy (no, I was not going for a real job, though it did cross my mind) and the other an international NGO/charity. Both confirmed that knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer and other related techniques were central to their collaboration and change programmes. It was the 'KM' term they had problems with. One told me " 'Knowledge sharing' is something everyone here has an immediate and common understanding of. 'Knowledge Management' is a much more obscure concept, is interpreted in a variety of ways, or even worse associated with a failed information database project".

I absolutely agree with Nick's Milton's premise that knowledge can be managed. Techniques and interventions for transferring and sharing knowledge are well proven. However, Nick's considered blog postings on coming up with a common definition for Knowledge Management underlines the problem for me. If someone can't envisage what you mean without a formal definition in front of them, you are starting with a handicap.

A KIN member organisation that I was with today has a sophisticated knowledge sharing programme underway, simply but effectively 'branded' as SHARE. They are considering dropping the term 'knowledge management' as the sub-brand as they realise it simply didn't add anything.