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I perpetually point out the difference to the old and new KM in this blog, but I’ve never thought of it in terms of ROI for the knowledge worker. I have only thought of this in terms of the incentive and motiviation for knowledge sharing. When you think of the big picture of the need for a return in knowledge sharing, we can say this is the ROI for the knowledge worker.

My thought are if the ROI for the knowledge worker is high, ie. high reciprocation of value for participating, then in aggregate the enterprise ROI from a social computing ecosystem will be high.

The old KM was not about people, it went for the knowledge as a separate thing, and knowledge as a separate act approach, where the participants really had no return on their contributions, and no self motiviation to want to participate. In essence this process didn’t blend with human nature at all. Plus there is the other end of naturally seeking know-how off people, that’s just it, you were meant to seek it from a database (not people), and what you find, if you do find something relevant is meant to be context objective so it will suit all needs.

Whereas the new KM is not really KM at all (considering the key to KM is sharing what’s in our heads), it’s not a separate act, it’s embedded into our regular routines. In an ecosystem where we are networked to people and we participate as we do our work, as well as the finished product of our work, there is no conscious effort to make sure you are sharing your know-how, it’s just happening from being, just like in the offline world. In the offline world I don’t make sure I’m sharing know-how, it’s just blended into how I am as a person, it comes out when I act and speak whether I like it or not.

Quite simply when my wife is on Facebook, she doesn’t feel that she is being altruistic and sharing know-how, she is just using Facebook, and that’s that. As a result of being connected everyone wins and learns off each other continuously, just like we do in the offline world.

Anyway, this post all started from a great post on the AppGap group blog by Matthew Hodgson. For some of my similar posts see KM round 2.0 and KM 2.0 culture, read on:

“…our misplaced trust that the newly emerging web technology would somehow deliver something that is essentially a people process, because collaboration and knowledge management is about people, not technology. The other failure is in our management practices and a missunderstanding about how people work — that information is somehow a product, a Word document for example, that, like an engine in a car factory, is produced by the end of a hard days work. There’s no return on investment to be had in this paradigm.”

“The truth of most modern work is that we analyse data and information and reach out to our networks in order to gain access to knowledge. We collaborate on ideas and then have a burst of work that reflects the sharing of ideas. And, of course, once we have produced something, we then tend to socialise it again within our networks in order to refine the ideas we’ve produced. This is knowledge work in action and people are at the centre of it.”

Knowledge Worker

The concept of the knowledge worker is that workers have unique (and welcomed) talent that they can apply to their job and beyond, and in the knowledge era this is not only recognised but it’s a requirement in these fast changing conditions, and where a lot of work is becoming specialised…less micro-managing (local experts know best).

This differs from the extreme top-down industrial era (scientifc management) where a worker was seen in a de-humanised role as a cog in a wheel. A person’s job was like a piece of machinery (a replaceable part), they were programmed to do one thing, they didn’t need to bring any of their knoow-how to the table, they were to do as told…the big picture of this is a fetish for efficiency or hedonistic productivity.

With our fast paced, specialised and global workforce the new model is more about “effectiveness”, and people need to go beyond org charts to get work done, favouring a networked ecosystem. The old system doesn’t lend to innovation or invention at all, as it lacks the notion (or doesn’t care) that a worker has expertise or thoughts about and beyond their immediate task at hand.
Each person has become valued not just for their output, but what we can all learn from their input (knowledge creation). Jim McGee says it so well:

“The challenge is that we have been trained and conditioned by the industrial economy to strive for uniformity and to see uniqueness as undesirable variation instead of the essential quality it has become.”

“Our inappropriate habits stem from assumptions about industrial work. With industrial thinking, once you’ve created a new product the goal becomes how to replicate it predictably. You specify the characteristics of the output precisely, lock down the process, or, ideally, do both. That works if you need to manufacture cars or calculate every employee’s pay stub correctly. It doesn’t when the goal is to create the new product. The primary challenge here is to shift focus away from the issue of replication and toward creation. The question becomes “how do we manage to create this?” instead of “how do we create the same thing all over again?””

If knowledge workers take a more bottom-up (and autonomous) approach, and the unique talent and responsibility is given to workers to run some of the business, what happens when they are absent or leave the company?

It was easy in the past, you just replace the cog, whereas now you can’t replace a brain, as brains are unique, and you have to deal (learn) with what that brain has left behind, ie. the momentum, processes, procedures, workarounds…the unique effective style of doing work. I think this is what Jim McGee means by “invisibility”:

“…one unintended consequence has been to make the execution of knowledge work essentially invisible, making it harder to manage and improve such work. Attacking that invisibility opens an important path to making knowledge work manageable and improvable.”

As a result of the knowledge worker concept (or due to this invisibility) there has been a reaction to capture what’s inside their heads, otherwise they are harder to replace, and it’s harder to know the method and thinking behind their output and processes.

If so much reponsibility is placed on workers to run the business all together, we have to know how they went about it once they leave or move position, we have to know how to fill the gap, if we don’t know this (in time) business can start to drop.

Hence the reaction and creation of the notion of knowledge management…well, I think anyway.

And here’s the irony!

We now understand that a person has unique talent and know-how to bring to the business, and we rely on them exercising that know-how…compared to the machine-like view of industrial man (like they were a spare part that could be replaced).

But our original concept of knowledge management was still treating the knowledge worker as if they were a machine…old KM is industrial in it’s process.

To recap:

- Industrial era (people are told what to do and to do it efficiently)
- Knowledge era (we need people to have autonomy, we need their talent to survive and be effective)
- New problem is people that move on leave a gap of how things are done (invisibility), this can be deterimental
- Reaction (knowledge management), treat people like machines, command them to log what they know into the central databank, for the good of the business as a whole. And when they need information the worker is to rub the databank and ask the “km genie” their wish and it will be granted.

So what resulted, I think, is KM as a top-down (mandated) process to a bottom-up knowledge worker…this just ain’t gonna work.

In comes visiblity

In comes social computing, and we now have an even more augmented way for the knowledge worker to network and perform work, spread their talent, learn off others, etc…what an ideal system for the needs of a knowledge worker.

Plus it becomes the new KM, as now people are sharing know-how as a part of doing work, and because there is a return on investment for the individual, in the big picture is an ROI as a whole.

The talent is documented in the open, it is visible. When someone moves on we know how to fill their gap, we don’t have to always ask them (and they wouldn’t be able to remember everything they know anyway), as they have already told us indirectly, we can read their visible workings out of how they did their job as a result of their participation using social computing tools.

The worker gets work done, and the business gets to know their know-how all within the same motion.

In a few posts I have talked about a support team using blogs (micro-blogs), forums, and wikis to get work done.

In regards to blogs the idea is to that we have an unstructured, low barrier to entry type tool to quickly publish fragments about experiences, tips, solutions, ideas…in fact we can publish by email, so this blends in with current rountines.
BTW - this isn’t just altruistic, I often do it as a way to remember what I know, but at least I’m keeping notes in the open for all to see.

Can blogs be harmful? I think it’s how you use them.

I think it’s of absolute importance that people understand that blogs are based on a currency format, they are similar to a newspaper or a journal.
A blog entry that was true last month may no longer be true anymore or correct, or there may be a better way to do the same thing.

So even though a blog is technically a database, I feel that it shouldn’t be a solutions database, especially when it’s a massive group blog.

eg.
POST 1
2 months ago someone may of posted about a feature in the software that has an error with editing a file
- someone may leave a comment saying we are working on it, and here is a workaround

POST 2
2 months later what could happen is that someone else (different to the person who created the comment) may post that the problem with editing will be fixed in the next release and we won’t be getting this till next year. Plus we have made some patches to our software and the workaround that people were using to edit files no longer works

Now someone searching a blog may come across the first post, try the workaround and it fails.

What should of happened?

The person who made post 2 should have also left a comment on Post 1.
- but 2 months have past, are they going to remember, especially when they didn’t participate in the first post

Or perhaps the person searching could of browsed the tag “edit”, and would’ve found the most recent post about “editing”
- this wouldn’t be viable if 20 posts since then have been made about “editing”
- plus we have to assume the authors are using the correct tags

What would be good practice is that the URL of Post 2, be included in Post 1, this way Post 1 will have a trackback link, that takes you to the new post.
- even better, is something I have posted called “Sparklines” which rather than add a trackback link to Post 1, will automatically edit Post 1 and put the trackback link in the post itself.

But regardless of all this, we are relying on people to follow all these subtle rules.

The point I’m trying to make is, just because blog content is visible, it doesn’t mean it’s all correct, it’s not a website that is re-edited and updated, rather it’s a blog, where you write a new post as an update…old posts may be incorrect as time goes on.

Another example…

I made a blog post describing a particular functionality of a piece of software.

We now have a new release of this software and this month old blog post is now outdated.

What’s good practice?

I need to make a new post about how this feature now works.
Then re-edit the old post to point to the new post or a leave comment on the old post
- but what happens 5 releases later, will I have to update each past post?

What are your views?

Do we have to retro edit or comment on all blog posts to keep things neat and tidy?

Wikis for solutions

I’m much more inclined to use a wiki for a solution database, as the concept is more about going back to “the entry” and re-editing it.

In this instance the blog post is not the solution, but the messenger.

eg.
1. This wikipage is solutionA for errorA
2. Write blog postA to tell people about it, include perhaps some casual (personal) and contextual content
- also include the link of the blog post in the wikipage

So far this makes sense, but it has a high process barrier to entry as you have to share twice
- write the wikipage (perhaps via email), then write the blog post (perhaps via email)

A new patch on your software means that solutionA for errorA no longer applies
3. you re-edit the wikipage
4. Write blog postB to tell people about it, include perhaps some casual (personal) and contextual content
- also include the link of the blog post in the wikipage

In this example the wiki is the solution database that gets corrected and updated, where the blog is just the messenger, and old message become out-dated, but that’s OK, because we know the blog is currency based. This doesn’t matter too much anyway because if someone visits blog postA it will still link to the same wikipage, so they will land on the correct solution.

NOTE: it would be good to re-edit blog postA and include a link to blogpostB, or use trackbacks to link them together, or perhaps grouping them with the same tag is enough…either way re-editing blog posts is higher maintenance, or not as common as old posts fall off the radar, and people may be aware they are date-stamped and may be outdated.

A blog is a blog and a wiki is a wiki

The case I’m making is that I don’t think it’s safe or good practice to use a blog as a solutions database, it’s more for sharing current happenings, where posts do not get re-edited, rather a new post is made (just like newspapers).
The blog post is not limited to just pointing to the solution, it can involve some personal context and peripheral information, or workings out (experience) that led to the solution, whereas the wikipage is a more focused formal and official solution.

The scenario comes to mind of someone following what is said in a blog post causing some kind of error or disaster. It’s essential people understand the nature of blog posts, and that they are not official…perhaps a message could be reinforced in the banner, and people can leave comments to clarify before acting on information in a blog post

Whereas a wiki is generally not a newspaper, it’s moreso a book that never goes out of date as it’s pages are continually re-edited.

In saying this it seems, you could always trust the support wiki, and you can trust recent blog posts, but how recent?
Do you trust a blog post 2 weeks old, a week old…who knows that could now be old news.

I think as long as a blog post points to the wikipage solution, then whether you click on an old or new blog post about the same solution you will always land on the correct wikipage.

What about wiki comments?

I suppose an alternative is to subscribe to wiki comments
- if a wikipage is updated, a comment can be left to let everyone know
- in this respect the wiki comments double up as a notifications feature of current happenings (which is what a blog does best)
- it doesn’t make wiki comments a blog, but the comments can be used for a blog-like way of updating people

This post is the reversal perspective on the flexibility and visibility of social tools. That is these tools are so unstructured and flexible that we can use them for unique purposes (as Ross Mayfield says, we, the users, put the complexity into the software).

I don’t think blogs are harmful, but I think they are so unstructured that people may decide to use them for inappropriate purposes. The problem is that it may work at the input stage, but it may not work at the seeking stage. I have demonstrated a scenario above where it’s so easy to post solutions in a blog, but people seeking a solution may find an old entry of that solution…this is not friendly and may have consequences. Instead a wiki is a more official solution as only one page always represents the solution, and even better is combining its use with a blog so we can explain how we came to the solution.

Just consulting a wiki solution page we get a focused error and solution, but reading a companion blog post we get what happened at the time and thought processes involved. This blog post may give away clues or trigger a thought to solving another solution that the wikipage didn’t reveal, as the blog post is more diffuse, not as focused on the endpoint.

Unstructured tools like email have been used for purposes that just don’t stretch, eg chain conversations and announcements, problem being that it’s too closed and messy.

Social tools are not immune to being used the wrong way either.

It’s really important to get closure on communications and discussions when they are done out in the open.

Email

- Someone emails a question
- A person phones you with a solution

What you have here is an unanswered email, as the answer was via the phone

But who cares, you know the answer, and on-one else can see that email

Forum

This scenario changes when the interaction is out in the open

- Someone posts a forum topic
- A person phones you with a solution

What you have here is an unanswered forum topic, as the answer was via the phone

A who cares approach is unwise

- others may be interested in an answer
- they may think these forums don’t work every time as there are lots of unanswered topics
- someone searching the forum in the future will see a topic without an answer when indeed an answer did result, but they weren’t physically there to be part of it.

My word of good practice is always answer that forum topic if an answer exists
- even if all members of the forum know the answer as it was discussed in a meeting, still document an answer, so future people will also be informed (and also to remind ourselves, as we are often forgetful)

The forum or community Facilitator can convey this recommended behaviour to members, but in the end it’s up to them to pick up the pieces or reinforce the correct behaviour

What if no-one answers the forum topic?

Well, so be it. But it’s also good practice if the Facilitator tries to source an answer for their member, or at least contact them individually to let them know they are not being ignored.
- this is more for new communities as people are finding their feet…and wouldn’t be practical for communities with large numbers

What about forum topics that are off-topic?

Thankfully in the forums we use we can move a forum topic (with its replies) to the correct forum

What about forum replies that are off-topic?

Now this is something we can’t do anything about.
Often our forum topics are long threads and people do their best to rename the subject line when the topic veers off a little, but sometimes a reply becomes so off topic that I would like to move it or rather make it into a new topic.
That is, I would like the ability to convert a reply into a topic

In a past post I wrote about this as the gardening aspects of a Facilitators role.

Distilling Conversations

Another gardening task is to take the cream of the conversations and reference them elsewhere, otherwise they just fall off the radar, and you have to rely on search. I posted about this as distilling conversations, which kind of reminds me of those review type blog posts. Some might think that structuring this information in a MSWord document or a wiki, may lose it’s value or become too narrow and focused, but I think it’s important that you include the forum URL’s, the raw conversations that led to this document.

In regards to a support team or customer service I’m thinking a micro-blogging network (like Twitter) behind the firewall is a good idea. Some options are ReVou, SocialCast, and other Open Source offerings.

Using wikis and blogs are a great idea for support staff to inform each other of findings, experiences, workarounds, solutions as they happen.
This is called social learning where we learn from each other, which is essential as whoever wrote the procedures is not going to know the context of every unique situation upfront (the procedures may sometimes be a “dead-end”, and errors occur anyway), so leveraging user captured informal nuggets in blogs and wikis enables you to go “through the wall”.

But from my experience, not everyone could be bothered sharing, or has time before they move onto their next task.

The idea is we use blogs and wikis rather than an email list, but what about those people who didn’t even share using the email list.

There are many times when colleagues at work discover something in our office, but are too busy to blog about it, this is when micro-blogs comes into the picture.
People may find blog posting takes up too much time because they treat it as formal publishing, and fair enough (I covered this in my KM 2.0 Culture post). We have tried to overcome this with posting to a blog by email, making it feel very informal, now you can “flick a blog post”, just like you “flick an email”.

Anyway I feel that people will indeed post to a micro-blog as the content is the length of an SMS, ie. a max of 140 characters. This is not hard at all, and the format encourages a type of informalness.
Another low barrier is posting via email or some sort of app that’s real easy to get to and post, perhaps via the browser or a desktop widget. Actually micro-blog posting via IM feels right, it feels more casual and something people may be inclined to do, unlike a blog they are not fearing that lot’s of people will see their published post, in fact micro-blog streams fall off the radar quite quickly.

This is not a mirror replacement for typical blog content, using micro-blogs we also tend to share stuff we wouldn’t blog, more akin to IM…so this makes blogs and micro-blogs (or presence networks) very complementary.

eg. word 2003 is giving me grief with editing documents in our DMS…arghh
eg. server 3 is down, hmmm
eg.@colleagueA what dates will you be away again?
eg. wondering why personA can’t create a project
eg. it seems we don’t communicate enough to groupA, they need to be in the loop
eg. does anyone know where pluginA lives?
eg. hmm, we need a new drop down menu reason for supporting CoP issues in our database
eg. @colleagueB how did you go with getting that a user an external login?

None of the above examples suit a regular blog post, some resemble quick emails and IM, but some don’t even suit IM eg. word 2003 is giving me grief with editing documents in our DMS…arghh
- this is not a blog post, it’s more what you are experiencing now, but still you are publishing like a blog post
- it’s not email or IM as you are not directing this at anyone, you are just thinking out loud

Some of the other examples could be an email or IM, but micro-blogging allows more of an open conversation, anyone listening could jump in.

Essentially micro-blogs are very effortless and more chatty and I feel the format and social experience we have will lend it to being used more, I elaborated on this in another post:

“…I think Twitter is more prone, easier, less commited than blogs to express tacit know-how, and to offer help which also shares tacit know-how. Actually conversation is where it’s at, and an internal Twitter marketed the right way will be the optimal example of what we want out of KM 2.0 (conversation exchange).”

I expressed this in my Tumblr a little while ago:

“Twitters value contribution to the knowledge flow-spontaneous, unpolished, work in progress, thinking out loud-lends itself to this type or quality of participation due to its brief, immediate, and intimate publishing format…let’s hope internal blogs generate the same calibre of tacit value without being hindered by their format.””

It seems some special type of Google Reader users are allowed to list their subscriptions or a selected type of reading list (or blogroll) on their “Shared Items” webpage.

Compare my “Shared Items” webpage to Barack Obama.

Now check out this promo page where you can choose from a list of Google Reader Users “Shared Items” webpages.

This is coming into the newsmastering territory, because we also get merged streams of “Shared Items” pages.

For example on this promo page it offers a link to the “Shared Items” webpages of both Barack Obama and John McCain, but it also shows a merged stream of content from both these pages, and a merged feed.
Also on this promo page are links to the “Shared Items” webpages of several journalists, and it also shows a merged stream of content from all these journalists, and a merged feed.

Both of these merged streams have webpages of their own, here’s Barack Obama and John McCain, and here’s the journalists.

So imagine…

…making your own “Shared Items” group pages, I think this will be available soon.

Get ten of your friends and create a group “Shared Items” webpage…list a link to each person’s “Shared Items” webpage, and display a mixed stream of content from all ten “Shared Items” webpages, and to be able to subscribe to one spliced feed from all these pages.

I wonder if it would delete duplicates, and if the duplicate had a “note” it would also appear on the original item.
It would also be good to click on a person from the list and limit the stream to just their “Shared Items”, rather than only having the option to launch to a new window.

Actually this kind of reminds me of a FriendFeed Room, but these rooms don’t just re-syndicate content, you can also manually post right into the page, and on top of that also have discussions.

I also wonder whether the stream will do the FriendFeed type of thing or TechMeme where you can have a popular filter.