Library clips

A little while ago I talked about not so much groupware, but a middle space, moreso activityware, where you create an object and invite people to add to it. I was looking for something where a conversation could revolve around a task object. You can do this on a wiki (with comments) or Google Docs (with comments), but the more robust tools I came across were Traction, Basecamp, and Activities on Lotus Connections.

The latter is a little different as it’s an on-the-fly tool to perform and coordinate tasks/conversations similar to email, but with less annoyance…sometimes called Activity-Centric Collaboration. From the screencast I find IBM’s Activities in tune with human behaviour. I have a task to do, I create a space, and interactions with people who help me, take place in a open task thread. But the beauty is they can add to the thread with a multitude of objects, they can answer a screenshot with an email, answer an email with a doc, answer a doc with an IM…it’s a thread made up of different objects.

Finally a task/conversation lives at a URL…but it’s not a blog, wiki, forum, online doc, but instead a task/conversation thread that can be made up of elements from different object types.

In email you have to reply with an email, you have to reply to an IM with an IM, you have to reply to a blog post with a comment, etc… Things are changing, now we can have a generic thread where the conversation elements can be made up of various formats.

This is important as we are not tied to one technology when contributing to the space. Currently if I’m in an email thread, but need immediacy for the next reply I will IM…and there you have it, I have just broken the conversation into scattered pieces. And the conversation doesn’t live at an open URL anyway.

I’m finding tools like IBM’s Activites and Google Wave as the new email/IM/attachments space…where conversations take place using a multitude of tools, are threaded in an open place, and don’t have to take place in an existing group space, but instead can be created on-the-fly when the activity arises. This is totally in tune with how we behave as it has very low barriers to start something, and to contribute, in fact it has the ease of email, but is less frustrating in coordinating…which means these spaces may just be the next killer app to solve our annoyance with current tools like email when trying to do tasks/collaborate.

As you can see, you don’t have to prior belong to a team or group, it’s on-the-fly creation of a collaboration space, which is increasingly important in the more role based networked organisation that we are moving towards. It’s more about interactions revolving around an activity, rather than general sharing or that activity having to take place in a best fit prescribed place eg. an existing CoP or team space (which is dire when the people you want to collaborate with aren’t on your team or CoP).
We need more process centric methods in enterprise social computing to make way for the acceptance of more opportunistic tools such as social networks. And for ease of use, we want to contribute via lots of tools eg. a bookmarklet, and as Jon Mell says (in reference to sending an IM via email), don’t make me think…and we want updates delivered any which way.

Basically what is happening is the technology, and what and how we want to achieve our aims, has become a tool designed for human behaviour. I have a task or start a conversation, I can do this from any app I’m in, others can reply from any app they are in, we are updated from the app of our choosing, the thread lives at a central open place…again “we don’t have to think, we just act”.

As Dave Snowden says:

“Technology is a tool and like all tools it should fit your hand when you pick it up, you shouldn’t have to bio-re-engineer your hand to fit the tool”

We find we need an activityware tool at work, as our online communities are not so much for specific tasks, you need to be a member of the community, and you can’t really create them at your disposable for a small task. What we do use is email, or a forum, or a wiki, but an activity space brings the thread together, accepts various object types in the thread, and membership is not based on requirements outside of the task.

Google Wave

I haven’t seen the Google Wave videos, but from reading blog posts and screenshots I get the idea, here are some posts.

Wave is the future of the Enterprise
Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?
Google Wave: A Complete Guide
The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave
Google Wave: Google Tries to Reinvent Email
Twave: Google Wave + Twitter
Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity
Live With The Google Wave Creators
Exclusive: Video Interview With The Google Wave Founders
Google Wave: The Full Video From Google IO
Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.

Lotus Connections Activities

NOTE: this is part of a blog post I drafted 2 years ago but never got round to posting.

The paper Activity management as a Web service is focused on integration of various clients and using various clients to action things, and having it all managed in the Wax collaborative activity web service. The beauty of it is that when starting an activity you can go look for content where ever it lies and bring it into the system, like an activity gateway or portal page…this again reminds me of widgets of information from elsewhere, and the widget is dynamically updated at the same time as the original. Read the rest about the task flow features.

The above paper is related to another article, Beyond predictable workflows: Enhancing productivity in artful business processes, which also explains the two ends of the specturum, using email for collaborative activities is clunky and not contextual, and using a centralised workflow system is to rigid and is not flexible to encompass the intricate flavours of all situations, there is calling to allow room for “artful processes” and a requirement is the “democratization of process”. Moving from here are more people focused, community or group based systems that have a more flexible bottom up approach (this also has the bonus of allowing innovation to sprout).

The most relevant paper would be, Activity Explorer: Activity-centric collaboration from research to product. The Activity-centric collaboration style:

“…is not to provide yet another collaboration tool. It is to provide a technology that can organize collaboration so that it reflects the work being done, rather than the tools that support the work.”

It delves into the Activity Explorer client based on activity being a thread of objects.
An activity thread can start with any object (file, chat, screenshot, etc…), someone may be notified by their prefered alert mechanism (also a current area of study about attention delivery, alert, urgency, etc…), this person will reply to the thread with any object, automatically notifying the original person and so on.

The power is that you can collaborate in real-time or asynchronously within the activity, it becomes a shared thread that harnesses different object types, all without needing a meeting or entering a dedicated group share tool.

Their example, just shows how simple it can be to initiate and action an activity (task) in one simple thread with multiple people without even having to be f2f, and by using a combination of external tools integrated into the one simple display screen.

Here’s the brief on the scenario:

NOTE: to create a new object in the thread, you just right click on the previous object

1. Celine starts a new activity by dragging a file into Susan’s name
2. Celine adds a 2nd object (via a right-click on the 1st object); this 2nd object is a message note asking for Susan’s comments
3. Susan is alerted via her systems tray, clicking it takes her to the thread
4. Celine sees Susan is reading the message via an online presence indicator on that object
5. Celine clicks on the message object and initiates a 3rd object being a chat (popping up a box on Susan’s screen)
“Celine wants to clarify about an image detail in the file”
6. Celine creates a a 4th object being a shared snapshot (popping up a snapshot on Susan’s screen)
7. They annotate the image in real-time (like a whiteboard)
8. They invite their boss, Ming, into the chat (popping up a box on Ming’s screen)
- Ming has only got access to the chat object and the shared snapshot object
and so on…

As you can see this diverts or the lessens cognitive stress of deciding which tool to use to start and action a task. A discussion may start on chat, and then be moved to email, and then to some kind of groupware…and it’s not always easy to move information from system to system. Another benefit is information pertaining to the activity is already organised into one thread or view as a result of the process.

From the paper:

“…a single collaborative activity is often managed with multiple collaboration tools and technologies at different levels of formality. These can include e-mail, chat, wikis […] This diversity means that people must monitor and participate in multiple shared venues, spreading their attention and their effort across multiple media. Even if they succeed at this context management task, they still face the difficulty of having to determine the scale of any new collaborative activity in order to select the best medium.”

“The technical goal of activity-centric collaboration is to bridge these gaps of rigidity and tool boundaries by horizontally integrating different collaboration tools and technologies through the concept of a work activity.”

The Activity Explorer is further referred to in the paper, Business activity patterns: A new model for collaborative business applications.

Another great paper about creating more flexible processes is, Ethnographic study of collaborative knowledge work.

As you can see IBM are right into communication and collaboration processes based around people and tool flexibility and bringing all this together in one interface full of connected components, instead of a centralised top down system.

The Clipper Group has a review on the whole Lotus Connections Suite.

Last year, The Connections Blog posted about one of Luis Suarez’s email detox posts, which references my post on re-purposing email.

Related posts:

Activity-Based Computing
Activity-Based Computing
Lotus Connections Activities Demo Video
Activity-based Computing Moves Forward at Lotus Connections
Comprehensive Tour of Lotus Connections
Activities in Connections 2.0
When disaster strikes, create an Activity!
Using Activities to plan your Lotusphere Session

Complements social networks

What I like about all this, is that it complements social networks. I use the network to find profiles (beehive) and read up on people (their microblog, blog, bookmarks, CoPs, etc.), or maybe they are already a contact, then I invite them into my activity. I wonder what move Google will take towards networks, maybe Google Profiles, I do have my Gmail contacts, but I need to go to their space and see what their all about, at the moment this is ruled by Friendfeed, Facebook, LinkedIn.

I guess why I call this middlespace/ware is that you have groupware like Communities of Practice, then you have social networks, and I find ad-hoc activity spaces somewhere in the middle. So I guess this is related to my post, How relevant are communities of practice in a network age?.

As I mentioned earlier this middlespace or activity collaboration is paralleling with the move to a role based organisation where we are connected in social networks and assemble together for activities and disband.

Where does workstreamr come into all this.

NOTE: to clear something up with another way the term “activity” is being used of late. The Facebook newsfeed has been dubbed an “activity feed” as it feeds you the latest on what people you are following have published on their profiles and elsewhere, and what other actions they have been doing in the network, what their friends have been commenting on their profiles, as well as stuff done to you (notifications).

A while ago I posted that size doesn’t matter when it comes to effective communities. You don’t need a lot of members to make a community of practice successful, you just need quality participation.

Whereas in a blog/micro blog social network you need lots of people in order to gain the network effect. That is, a network (individual centric) system like a blogosphere becomes more valuable as the number of players increases. The more bloggers there are, the more we have to read and learn, the more comments and linking result, and as a whole we have a richer distributed conversation. If there were only 5 bloggers in the world I would have not much to read, comment and link to…5 million diverse opinions are going to generate more material, discussion, points of view.

To re-iterate a community of practice does not necessarily become more valuable when the number of people increases…see fictional example:

“Our community was great, there were originally 10 of us that were of the same calibre, we had lots in common, we all trusted and relied on each other…now the community has 40 people, and it’s lost is attraction for me, there’s too much off topic content, and the conversations are too noisy and of lower quality, I really don’t know all these people…I liked the dynamic I had before with our original group, I was more prone to participate and felt much more comfortable among peers I trusted and had confidence in, we are thinking of branching off”

The thing about groups is that it’s a shared choice as it’s a shared space, whereas in a network it’s your own space, you just choose to ignore people, you only add friends to your contact list that you like or trust. Therefore you always keep the quality, at any time you can drop someone you lose interest in.

NOTE: Communities and networks are not substitutes, they both have unique purposes.

Why wikis have more adoption?

What sparked today’s post is a post from Sameer, 2009 is the year of Enterprise 2.0? Hold your horses….

In his post we see that Wikis are gaining more traction. I think this is because they are more:

• group based tools
• based around a task (an environment of certainty)
• help with process failure, and
• don’t require network effects like blogs and social networks
  …ie. wikis and forums don’t need lots of people to take off, all they require is a small group of people.

“To get maximum potential is so much easier when you don’t need lots of players, and so much easier when the returns/benefits don’t take long to come.”

I recently left a comment on Stewart Mader’s blog about how my boss and I (and a couple of others) are using a wiki for everything lately…it’s so much easier and less messy pointing to a URL than emailing an attachment.
This is a social tool we are getting great value from, and all it took was a group of under five people.

Another reason wikis are taking off is that so many people at work want to make topic, workaround, best of, to-do pages. The nature of knowledge work is that we deal with uncertainty and unique situations, we can only document so many official processes/procedures; often we need to bend these processes and use our thinking and conversation to respond or get things done on the fly. This is why we are the people for the job as we use our minds to get things done, we are not programmed robots in a factory, work these days cannot be programmed by management, we need to respond and act to all the different situations that face us.
OK, so after that long speel, I guess I wanted to say that sometimes we may like to communally create our own informal procedures or workaround lists that contain the ways we responded to situations. Or a list that contains the best documents on a topic; these documents may be scattered in different repositories, and a wiki can bring them together in a topic page…and of course everyone wants to make a wikipedia, or use it as a simple CRM type tool.

What’s happening is that wikis are actually replacing a process, they are becoming a new way to do group work. Just the same forums, as Sameer mentions have been round a long time, and are useful for discussions that would normally be done in email…we can often use a forum to discuss a task.

Both these group tools are about the nitty gritty work tasks that we do in email, whereas blogs and networks may not be seen as task oriented, they are more about learning, sharing, opportunities…something nice to have…and of course require network effects…and the returns of effectiveness, efficiency, productivity may take longer to reveal…in this light they may be considered an R&D thing, not something for Joe Bloggs (pardon the pun).

In saying this, our community/team blogs are also taking off because they are in a group space, and the postings are about a task, status, progress, tips (we also see posts about sharing links, and theory). But, if we were to have blogs out of a context, that is, social network profile blogs, then I think adoption would take much longer, people would feel more like they have their own publishing house (feels more serious and onus to regularly post compared to a group space like a forum), and the postings would not necessarily be in the context of a task. People would be free to publish what they know from their own individual context. Managers may see this as not contributing their time to achieving a deliverable, the question would be asked, what returns are you getting from this that you can feedback into your job.

Social tools can be used multiple ways

This comes to a fundamental question. New social tools can be used to achieve tasks, but they can also be used to be more effective, connected, tuned in, so your tasks can be more optimal, of better quality, quickly executed, of reduced cost… So if you want your tasks to be more effective, rather if you want your workers to be more effective and deliver quality and innovation, then workers need time away from their tasks to devote to informal learning. Actually, it’s not even necessarily time away from tasks, rather we need time to tap into co-workers in researching, finding, conversing, and learning. Some of this may be seeking stuff from people, some of this may be general talking about what we know so we become smarter people.

Either way social tools are here to stay, we can use them for tasks, and if allowed time, we can use them to become more effective and tuned in, which in turn make us more efficient and deliver quality tasks.

If the company devotes the time, social tools can be used in two ways, if they don’t allow the time, they can still be used to achieve tasks (what you are already doing with email and attachments and rigid process systems)

Jordan Frank says in the comments of Sameer’s post, that when the tools are more process centric they don’t seem so standalone, they are more in the flow of doing work, eg. beta bloggers vs alpha bloggers, and Directed/Volunteered.

I mentioned in my post, Conversations that revolve around task objects, certain social tools will get more adoption and credibility (acceptance) when they contribute in the flow of getting work done (more process-centric). Then later on when they become indispensable, there will be more acceptance in dedicating time to using these tools to become a learning organisation, ie. connecting and sharing what we know, more above-the-flow. James Dellow is also on this meme of social features to existing tools, rather than just having a blog or wiki, we can have blog-like and wiki-like features on existing products.

Do we face a catch 22?

I say we need to first use these tools in group spaces like communities or teams of practice, as you don’t need network effects, and they are based around doing existing work…the returns and usefulness are seen quicker.

Once people see the benefit and find the group spaces indispensable (eg. this is already happening at my work), then management may see the value in people having their own individual spaces in a profile based network.
Further to this I think a microblog profile network (like Socialcast) may get more traction than a regular blog profile network, as more people ask questions and have conversation, than having a publishing bent…lot’s of bloggers are also on Twitter, but lots of people on Twitter do not blog.

Now this is all OK when you have existing groups that want to use an online social space to work in, but what about when you want to find people with like interests in order to build a group.

There are two things happening, one is existing groups can work better in their online social space, but we also want to capitalise on unknown scattered experts…who are our people? what are they good at? let’s self organise to find this out! We need to capitalise on what we don’t know, we need to seize opportunities from our pool of talent. In this case it seems we need a social network in order to find each other, and then come together in a group.

I guess this is why most new social platforms (like Clearspace) have the social network and the group component.

Collaboration vs Participation

Olivier Amprimo has a really good point here, in relation to what I’ve mentioned above, organisations see more immediate value in collaboration spaces rather than participation systems.

“Collaborative tools are made to have people work together on common tasks. It is about team work. They are principally organized around emails and documents, detailed profiling, structured workflows (document approval or task management).”

“Participative tools are made to have people socialize their ideas and activity. It is about Flow and Networked Individualism (as Lee says). They are principally organized around blogs, social networks, social bookmarks…”

He also relates this to adoption:

“The adoption of a collaborative tool focuses on deployment. It is mostly technical, the rest is the job of the boss who will enforce its use and agree training sessions.”

“The adoption of a participative tool focuses on great user interfaces, quality people and quality content in the early days in order to create exemplary behaviors and interactions that will influence new joiners. No matter Free Will, Humans are rational herds : they copy early-adopters behaviors and reproduce it or modify it only on the fringe. It is mostly sociological, no one can be bossy to make that work. That’s OD work.”

From this we can see that participative networks are more bottom-up and don’t revolve around a task or a thing, they are instead nodes that collide together. This is more about a learning organisation, it’s related to know-how and work, but not directly (a deliverable)…it could be seen as replacing some training with informal learning.

Olivier Amprimo has another post related to this topic. In it he brings up a point related more to communities of practice rather than team spaces. He mentions that learning communities require dedication and work on borrowed/allowed time (our communities of practice at work have sponsors, which means they agree that’s is OK for these people to spend time in the community).

“Most people see online communities as communities of practices, which are known to be hard to implement because they require engagement of of members and managers. Immediately people associate engagement as costly (time consumption from the financial angle) if not dangerous for the corporate reputation (B2C). Communities of practices also have the reputation of being not successful, because most of them have low activity.”

Olivier compares these group spaces to participation networks which may generate value without needing to build group engagement.

“…my stake is that we can take advantage of the “crowd” without demanding any engagement from any of its members.
This is what I call a socialized service. A socialized service is a service where the activity of an individual is made visible to others, so that it creates awareness among service users.
It relates to concepts such as “social translucence” and “ambient awareness”. The concept of “social translucence (of technology)” is almost ten years old now. It suggests that communication systems can be designed in such a way that they support social processes. Social translucence proposes that three factors support social processes in computer-mediated work environments. Those factors are: visibility, awareness and accountability. “Ambient awareness” is similar, it actually surfaced in a NY times paper later.”

Activities and numbers

Which brings me round to Betrand Duperrin’s post, like me he see’s that numbers are essential in networks, but not for collaboration. Which means some tools are taken up much easier over others. He also relates this to activities; those that are more certain, target oriented and focused tend not to need critical mass to achieve success.

I’d like to simply say this the other way around: those activities or systems that are set up to tease out weak signals, deal with uncertainty, surface opportunities, find and learn; don’t have a focused purpose, rather they are a framework to naturally manifest into something, based on the level (critical mass) and quality of participation.

We know the aim is all the things I mentioned directly above, but we don’t explicitly work towards that aim, rather we just participate and value emerges that achieves these aims. ie we have a framework to surface innovation, but we aren’t trying to specifically innovate, it will just happen by default…the system creates the conditions for participation, and from there everything else may eventuate…we don’t directly knowledge share, it’s just a by product of participating.

Bertrand says:

“In the beginning, my idea was that is was depending on the kind of tool. It’s easy to understand that a 5 people team is enough to demonstrate the value of a wiki and that a social network, on the other hand, needs a critical mass of users. With hindsight I’s rather say that it depends on activities.”

Personally, I think the numbers and the activity goes hand in hand. If you want to tap into enterprise-wide diverse ideas and opportunities (which is not a focused task to achieve, like collaborating on an end product), you simply need critical mass.

“…social networks, being more flexibility-oriented and aiming at mobilizing expertises inside adhoc groups, need to be used by a lot of people to make sure the relevant resources (people and information) will be there when they’ll be needed.”

“That’s why wikis is often mentioned as the example of a tool that was easily adopter : defined human and functional scopes, defined goal. A contrario, tools which have a larger spectrum, more protean uses, such as blogs or social networks, need a deeper work to be a part of people’s day to day job.”

And this brilliant way of putting it:

“If we try to generalize, a small team is enough if there’s an identified purpose and that a larger populaton is needed if the tool’s purpose is rather to make things possible while these “things” are not predictable”

Again, some great insight:

“So it seems that the more certainties we have on what has to be delivered, who have to work on that, and the more mandatory the goal is, the less size is critical“

I can’t help these excerpts, I’ve nearly re-published Bertrand’s post here:

Size is not critical when a clear need exists about what people have to deliver so that people immediately understand what benefits they will get from using such or such tools. Here, the goal, what has to be delivered, who has to participate are known from the beginning. Use is led by work organization“.

I really like that Bertrand has included this middle space below eg. a team using a wiki to list workarounds, and using a blog for tips and tricks

“Size may be critical when social software is to overcome dysfunctions in the way the work is organized. Here the goal is defined, but the people who have to participate and the functional spectrum can’t be anticipated, nor when the software will be used. Use is led by circumstances“.

“Size is critical when social software is expected to help people to deliver their full potential. Which, said in other words, mean to allow their to use all their skills to make things the company may have never thought about. It’s typically the case in “innovation” projects, where it’s impossible to know who wll have ideas, who’ll be interested in joining the discussion to improve things….and what the idea will be used for. Use is lead by the will to participate“.

This post continues on from my post, Knowledge as Interpreter - ASPE.

In that post I riffed off some bloggers on the concept of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (D-I-K-W) not being of a hierarchial nature, and rather a loop, where knowledge is required to turn data into information, and the sensemaking process turning information into knowledge…and if that knowledge created were to be exchanged (written down/conversation), it would be back to data or information, depending on who was looking at it.

I also prefered the verbs in the diagram, Analysing - Sensemaking - Pathfinding - Executing (ASPE).

NOTE: I just had a flash of physics then with my phrase, “…depending on who was looking at it”. In physics sometimes things exist only if you look at them, the same goes with information, where information only exists if the receiver has the current knowledge to see data as information.
In physics, if you don’t look at the thing it doesn’t exist…if you don’t have the knowledge to see the data as information, then the information doesn’t exist to you. Someone help me here…

Knowledge Management is an oxymoron?

An oxymoron is a phrase combining opposing or contradictory terms

I’m not going to define KM, but here are 43 knowledge management definitions - and counting… I like the idea that it’s not about a means to an end.

For me it’s a way to augment the way you work, which is in a more open networked environment, where your information is visible, creating more chance for connections (conversations), awareness, relationship and trust building, in turn creating more opportunity to develop shared context with others (which increases the chances of successful knowledge transfers, ie. the meaning in the message is transferred).
This way of working (leveraging the social capital), creates interdependencies between people which solidifies the success to keep working in this style.

Oops, did I just try to define it…perhaps describe it…

This is really information openess and connection, perhaps this practice is “knowledge sharing.”
I don’t say information sharing, as the intention is for your knowledge to be received as knowledge to someone else, rather than just information. So knowledge sharing is the intention, but sometimes information sharing may only occur, or worse.

Is someone who is in charge of this way of working, a Knowledge Manager or more a steward or facilitator who instills a culture of Knowledge sharing practices or style of working, where the aim is to create shared context?

If knowledge is not an object, and is more personal know-how and is used to make sense of signals we receive, then how is it possible to capture knowledge, or for that matter transfer knowledge?

Further to this, then there is no such thing as managing knowledge.

We can only manage information, whether you get intended or unintended meaning out of this information is up to the receiver.

If you get someone to store and tag a report into the repository, this is the role of information management.
If you get someone to write down their know-how and store and tag it into the repository, this is still information management.

Anecdote realise this and rather use the term “Better Information Managment”, and “Improved collaboration and learning”.

We have to admit we are stuck with the term “Knowledge Management”, and it will continue to be used even though it’s not exactly what happens…what’s in a name.

Information has no meaning

An Anecdote paper, Our take on how to talk about knowledge management, tells us:

“Knowledge is the stuff in people’s heads which enables them to do things.”, and:

“Information is certainly valuable, but it is inert; it does not cause things to happen.
As described by Polanyi and Prosch,[1] information (suchas a map), no matter how elaborate it is, cannot read itself; it requires the judgement of a skilled reader who will relate the map to the world through both cognitive and sensory means. Debra Amidon, in 1991,[2] asserted that information, in and of itself, is not useful until it is embodied in a person’s awareness and related to business imperatives.”

Oscar Berg has being talking about the nature of information, and how the value derived depends on who uses it.

This is the very message of the late Frank Miller’s seminal paper, I = 0 (Information has no intrinsic meaning), which I re-read lately.

Miller says:

“…we’ve been led to believe that information contains meaning - rather than just standing for, provoking or evoking meaning in others.”

“…knowledge is the uniquely human capability of making meaning from information…”

“…information is intrinsically meaningless on its own and remains so unless - and until - it is interpreted by human beings, within some context.”

“…information become knowledge? The answer: at the moment of its human interpretation (and not an instant before!)”

One of the best quotes is:

“But if we then take the step of ascribing intrinsic meaning to the information itself, we cross the boundary of rationality and enter a bizarre world where we assume that impersonal stimuli have minds of their own and can have their own meaning!”

He gets more esoteric by saying that if we didn’t have information, ie. no sensory input, then there is no knowledge to be created…without information (therefore no sensory input) how to we know we even exist. Let’s not get into this here, as we could discuss non-materials planes.

Re-reading this paper was a very different experience from when I first read it a couple of years ago. Since then I have read and experienced more of life, especially in KM and related fields, and with all this knowledge I have amassed I got 10 times more meaning (and ideas) out of this paper.
There must be a term for this, my different experience in reading this paper demonstrated what the content of the paper is about.

The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’ is a paper, by T D Wilson, that is along this same line of thought:

“…’knowledge’ (what I know) and ‘information’ (what I am able to convey about what I know)”

You can’t capture knowledge, and there is no such thing as explicit knowledge

Miller says:

“…knowledge was only ever tacit. Once we attempt to make knowledge (i.e., what we ‘know’) explicit, it reverts immediately to an ‘information’ state again and requires human intervention anew for sense to be made of it.”

“Knowledge is, after all, what we know. And what we know cannot be commodified.”

“Knowledge (ie ‘what we know’) is only ever ‘tacit’ and can never be ‘explicit’. It must never be thought of as a commodity to be captured, processed, stored, transmitted, managed etc.”

Wilson says:

“‘Explicit knowledge’, of course, is simply a synonym for ‘information’.”

“…’tacit knowledge’ involves the process of comprehension, a process which is, itself, little understood. Consequently, tacit knowledge is an inexpressible process that enables an assessment of phenomena in the course of becoming knowledgeable about the world. In what sense, then, can it be captured? The answer, of course, is that it cannot be ‘captured’ - it can only be demonstrated through our expressible knowledge and through our acts.”

This nullifies the concept that you can capture knowledge, as it’s not possible to capture meaning, the meaning is derived by the person encountering it, all the capturing we do is simply information management.

This makes Nonaka’s SECI model (turning tacit into explicit then back again) a bad model of KM, which is a pity because it was “the” model that has defined KM for a decade.

Dave Snowden has more on KM sins, which includes, knowledge as more a flow, rather than an explicit asset:

“…put all their effort into knowledge as a thing; making tacit knowledge explicit…”, instead:

“…focus on creating connectivity between people to allow knowledge to flow, rather than worrying about the knowledge itself. Get the channels right and that is most of the battle. Generally if people have a working relationship, ideally a trusted one then in the context of need they will help each other without the need for direction, structure or technology.”

This leads to Dave Snowden’s three heuristics. Wilson seems to be in the same school of thought:

“The fact is that we often do not know what we know: that we know something may only emerge when we need to employ the knowledge to accomplish something. Much of what we have learnt is apparently forgotten, but can emerge unexpectedly when needed, or even when not needed. In other words we seem to have very little control over ‘what we know’.”

Shared Context creates more chance of the intended message being understood

As I mentioned earlier I think Shared Context is at the heart of KM, when you are in a conversation you hope what you are saying is understood, ie. the receiver has understood your intended meaning.

Frank Miller explains that the reality of information not possessing an intact meaning, can be felt in mis-communications or mis-interpretations.

Why do some people understand one thing, and others another, or nothing at all?

It’s because we use our current knowledge to derive the meaning, the information itself can’t do it for us.

He says:

“…although information certainly stands for meaning, it is never meaning itself. Meaning is a mental thing and is only ever tacit, that is to say, ‘in us’. Identical information almost invariably provokes (or evokes) different meanings in each of us.”

“…it is not what the message does to the audience but what the audience does with the message that really matters.”

This reminds me of a paper by Nancy Dixon, on the onus role of the knowledge receiver to tease out the desired exchange…I’ll get round to posting about this later on (it’s such as great paper).

Wilson has a similar thing to say:

“‘Knowledge’ is defined as what we know: knowledge involves the mental processes of comprehension, understanding and learning that go on in the mind and only in the mind, however much they involve interaction with the world outside the mind, and interaction with others. Whenever we wish to express what we know, we can only do so by uttering messages of one kind or another - oral, written, graphic, gestural or even through ‘body language’. Such messages do not carry ‘knowledge’, they constitute ‘information’, which a knowing mind may assimilate, understand, comprehend and incorporate into its own knowledge structures.”

Web 2.0 helps build abstraction with people in far places

Apart from information having no intrinsic meaning, Frank Miller goes on to talk about a very important point, in that the web has enabled people to get a message to a global audience.

These days you don’t really know much about the people you are working with or communicating.
This becomes a problem, because there already is the potential problem with people you know well mis-interpreting your message (information), when you work with people you don’t really know this is going to increase the chances.

Miller says:

“Our knowledge - that is to say what we knew from our direct experiences - was closely akin to the knowledge of others with whom we necessarily lived our lives in close proximity.”

“The “information age” changed all that.”

“We can send information and provoke a response in almost anyone we wish anywhere on the planet, but we can never be sure - unless we know these people personally - how they are likely to interpret (ie what meaning they are likely to make of) the information they receive from us.”

“Successful communications depends on knowing others well enough or caring about others deeply enough (the tacit dimension) to imagine how they are likely to interpret the (explicit) messages we exchange with them.”

Dave Snowden often refers to a level of high abstraction, the level of; intellect, shared experiences, style, character, that is known between a group of people, the more chance they will derive the intended meaning from information exchanges.

Along with this, as mentioned again and again, is a high level of Shared context. This is how much we both know about the context surrounding this information eg. are we familiar with the source, the background it’s based on, the topic, etc…this frame of reference helps in deriving the intended knowledge from the information.

You are having a conversation with a piping engineer:

1. in another company
2. in another office in your company
3. in your office
4. in your office and in your team
5. in your office, in your team, and your close colleague

Obviously number 5 is the person you will have a greater level of trust, inter-dependencies, abstraction and shared context.

These are the the necessary aspects of a relationship for not only successful information transfer, but collaborating, creating, evolving new information and knowledge.

The 5 point list above is based on the offline world, if we include the online world of networks, blogs, communities, etc…then geography really doesn’t make a difference.
In an offline world we can still get to know a colleague in another office using the phone, IM, email, etc…but in a community and network we get to know lots more.

To reprise Frank Miller’s paper I’d say that web 2.0 has evolved to enable us to retain and create close relationships like we have in the physical world…we are still able to know people (geographically distant) well enough that the information signals are no more misinterpreted than they are with people in the same office.

In fact the web now allows us to know a lot about people that we don’t even know, if anything we can connect to more like minds, form new relationships, get to really know other people well.

Social tools like blogs mimic the offline world:

- we can informally and casually talk about stuff
- others can subscribe (these people really get to know your character)
- these people can leave comments and talk about you in their own blog posts
- you subscribe to them
- this all happens on a daily basis

There is no doubt that face to face, audio/visual helps evoke more understanding, but casual and informal blog posts also have this effect, and according to the listed points above, blogs enable people to discover each other and connect into a close relationship where you develop trust, high abstraction and shared context.

So if anything, the Read/Write Web has taken us to the “Knowledge Age”, where we can connect and get to know people, without even having to have a relationship.
This certainly helps in the enterprise as we have to deal with all sorts of people from all sorts of departments. If we can visit their profile, see their network, see the contributions (blog posts, etc…), we can get to know their character, where they fit, etc…we know more about them, which helps a more successful interaction with them.

Miller says:

“Only human beings have the capacity to construct meaning from information and to sense ‘meaning’ evolving in themselves and in others. Only human beings can compare interpretations with a view to achieving a shared purpose.”

“Information, no matter how elegantly processed and presented, is incapable - on its own - of achieving anything!”

We need to increase the chances that when we confront information (read/conversations) we are able to get as much meaning as possible. Both what the sender is intending to transfer, and the stuff the receiver gets out of it, including the stuff that the sender didn’t think of.
This is what participation and collaboration (wisdom of crowds) is all about.

So rather than Knowledge Management (mandating/capturing/storing) we need to be focusing on connecting people, so we can increase the chances of collaboration and sharing what they know, and within this create a culture where this sharing and collaboration is successful in transfering and receiving intended signals, ie. by creating opportunities to create informal communities, networking, develop high trust, inter-dependencies, shared context and high abstraction…most of this is from Dave Snowden.

What is the role of a Knowledge Manager?

For starters, we have discussed that “Knowledge Manager” is an inaccurate job description, and what they currently do is more inline with information management, and people management.

This is a quick list:

NOTE: collaboration tools and the like means not just setting up, but facilitating and coaching…knowing human behaviour

- smooth out bottlenecks in processes
- online storage and search (re-use)
- openness and visibility
- collaboration tools (do work)
- communities (share/learn)
- networks (connect/discover)
- communication and awareness (esp. cooperation across business units)
- autonomy (being able to hook up with the right people and tasks)
- techniques (AAR, Peer Review, Open Space, World Cafe, Narrative, AI, SNA, etc…)

As a result you get more self organisation, learning, innovation, transparency, autonomy and emergence.

There is nothing about managing knowledge in this list, it’s all about connecting people, creating conditions for conversation, enabling more sharing and collaboration to occur, people leveraging each others talent.

The role of a person responsible for all this seems more like a facilitator, coach, and Corporate Anthropologist.

This type of person needs to have a handle on more humanistic fields like: Cognitive science, Learning, Psychology, and social behaviour.

Corporate anthropologist (enabler/facilitator)

- observe the processes and people
- create conditions for smoother processes
- create conditions to be able to find people and content
- create conditions for people to tune into each other
- create conditions for people to have conversations
- create conditions for serendipity
- create conditions for people to successfully understand other people and their content
ie. information signal conveyed is easily understood, and the receiver interprets the intended meaning from the sender.

Perhaps the name “Knowledge Manager” seems more appropriate when seen as a person who manages and is responsible for instilling and sustaining effective knowledge sharing activies. This way they are not managing knowledge per se, instead managing the activities. This could also be seen as the role of the Chief Learning Officer, or a practice of the Organisational Performance unit.

Karl Sveiby’s thoughts are more on the activity:

“Knowledge Focus” or “Knowledge Creation” (Nonaka) are better terms, because they describe a mindset, which sees knowledge as activity not an object. A is a human vision, not a technological one.”

Mike Gotta’s thoughts on the KM activity:

“Not that KM is dead – but KM is additive to other endeavors and not and end in and of itself. If we anchor the discussion around improving a process or ensuring that we have the right competencies and skills within the workforce (e.g., as part of succession planning) or improving group interaction around R&D activities, then we are speaking the language of business and that will lead to the business case and metrics.”

Dennis Pearce (AOK) mentions leadership is less required when things learn from networks (p44. anecdote):

“I have been looking at organisational learning from a process, connectionist perspective. Other “things that learn” (brains and neural networks) don’t require leadership — they just learn as a result of their networked structure and processes. So if I can embed KM activities into the existing processes of an organisational network, people aren’t “doing KM,” they’re just doing their jobs, but the organisation is learning.”

Joe Firestone says that using or processing knowledge does not mean you are doing “knowledge management”:

“Knowledge use occurs whenever any agent makes a decision. It is part
of every business process.
§ Knowledge processing is knowledge production and knowledge
integration [1] [2], two distinct knowledge processes constituting the
Knowledge Life Cycle (KLC) [1][2].
§ Knowledge management is knowledge process management, that is,
the management of knowledge production, knowledge integration, he
KLC, and their immediate outcomes [3].”

Joes excellent paper includes theory on the 3 worlds of knowledge types, and lots more.

Wilson says:

“‘…knowledge management’ is an umbrella term for a variety of organizational activities, none of which are concerned with the management of knowledge. Those activities that are not concerned with the management of information are concerned with the management of work practices, in the expectation that changes in such areas as communication practice will enable information sharing.”

Anecdote have a set of objectives on KM activities or knowledge strategy, and more.

Dave Pollard stresses the importance of direct experience in the learning.

Visions of KM 2 is a great paper by Miguel Cornejo Castro, it describes the 3 KM activity components:

Process execution
- Repetitive methods
- Smoothing out bottlenecks
- I see blogs used as communications, wikis for workarounds

Project development (essentially a special type of process)
- Since projects are unique, finding people and conversation (tacit) are more helpful than generic explicit stuff (which mostly works fine for Process execution)
- I see blog fragments, conversation, and expert locators

Capability building
- Spans the knowledge of tools, processes (methodologies), and practice (experience with tasks)
- Learning and building know-how to increase effectiveness in processes and practice (projects/tasks)
- The whole social computing and enterprise 2.0 concept (a networked conversation enterprise, emergence, platforms)

This notion is described in Knowledge and Talent in a People-Ready Business.

Stan Garfield from HP covers a lot of the KM pulse on his blog, here are some posts on KM elements:

Benefits of KM
- Avoid redundant effort
- Avoid repeating mistakes
- Take advantage of existing expertise and experience
“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.”

Key Activities of KM
- Share, Innovate, Re-use, Collaborate, Learn

The Role of Management and Knowledge Management

KM Tips and Myths

Stan points to the brilliant insight and realism of Andrew Gents, The four paradoxes of KM:
- Tacit vs. Explicit
- Local vs. Global
- Open vs. Closed
- Quantity vs. Quality

End thoughts

Frank finishes by saying:

“…the importance increasingly being placed on accessibility to information is seriously out of balance with the importance that needs to be placed on interpretation and sharing of information, and that this imbalance needs urgent action to redress.”

Wilson finishes with:

“…these latter practices are predicated upon a Utopian idea of organizational culture in which the benefits of information exchange are shared by all, where individuals are given autonomy in the development of their expertise, and where ‘communities’ within the organization can determine how that expertise will be used.”

Now to catch up on complexity, narrative inquiry, sensemaking (situational awareness), self organisation….a good start is unblocking streams so knowledge can flow, a bit like acupuncture.

Related

K-flow
Tap into the social capital
Knowledge Sharing in the new KM
More on the new knowledge diffusion
Participation is the currency of the knowledge economy
KM 2.0 model

I came across a post on Knowledge Futures quoting Dave Snowden, about knowledge as an interpreter in the abililty to turn data into information. And then using a sensemaking process (making sense of this information/understanding it) which can create new knowledge to you.

This throws the hierarchy view of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom as separate steps or levels, into more of a flux environment.

From the post on the role knowledge plays in data and information:

“…knowledge enables me to interpret information. If I acquire knowledge of management accounting then a chart of accounts informs me, if I have no such knowledge then it is data. Knowledge management this has, as one of its primary tasks the creation of sufficient shared knowledge to enable the use of information.”

From the post on Information Management and Knowledge Management:

“I do see utility in understanding the different between what it means to manage knowledge and what it means to manage information. I normally do that with a metaphor of the difference between using a london taxi (knowledge) and a map (information) to get around London. The map is data which has been structured to inform and if I share sufficient context with the map maker then it informs me and I can take action on it. I can also get a taxi where not only has the taxi driver internalised the map, but lots of other things as well. There is for example evidence of significant changes in the Hippocampus in London Taxi Drivers as a result of the two plus years of training they go through. Compete with a taxi driver (as a map user with a hire car) and you will loose. The map may get you there, but the assumption of shared context can be dangerous. I once used a map in New York and almost got mugged for exactly that reason. Its like the point on french cuisine - you may have the recipe but that is just a starting point it is not complete of itself.”

An object like a map is more static (unless it’s a wiki or a blog) so it only has set information, and depending on your know-how of maps, you will be able to read the map, and create new know-how and use it to get around town…the map is only information, it’s up to you to create the know-how (meaning).
The taxi driver is a dynamic information base that continually learns about the area the map represents. She contains lots of informal information that is not normally represented in maps, as that’s not really a maps job or purpose.

Shared Context

What Dave Snowden hones in on is that the shared context with the map is assumed. Shared context is one of the most important aspects of successful information transfer, it’s assumed that you know the context of your activity eg. an understanding of the topic, an understanding of how your team deals with this topic, establishing aspects of the topic. The more existing know-how you have on the information and its context, the more chance you have of successfully acquiring new knowledge and taking action accordingly.

Knowledge as interpreter

I really like knowledge as the interpreter, similar to what was said on Anecdote a couple of years ago, including this amazing diagram.

“Knowledge acts as an interpretant to turn data into information. The information we notice (we don’t notice all information channelled toward us), might create some level of dissonance (its surprises us or we ask ourselves, “What’s the story here?”) and if we care about resolving this dissonance we create knowledge. Knowledge is created through a sensemaking process.

But data to one person is someone else’s information. A commodities trader might stare at a computer screen of numbers which would look to most people as raw data. To the commodity trader, however, slight changes in the numbers conveys messages which act as information they might convert to knowledge (via sensemaking) and take action. Consequently, context is a key ingredient acting as an underlay to all three concepts of data, information and knowledge.”

Dave Snowden also has a similar diagram.

[ADDED 1/7/08: Joe Firestone’s paper, Key Issues in Knowledge Management, also deconstructs the Knowledge pyramid. This paper goes into a lot of theory related to this blog post.]

My stream of consciousness

You use your current knowledge or understanding to see data as information (not sure if you are actually turning data into information)

If you don’t possess the knowledge then all you see is data.

If you do possess the knowledge, you then make sense of this information in the sensemaking process where you may gain new knowledge (understanding).

I like how Anecdote say that the information you see may create a “dissonance” (kind of like you understand the information, but how does it relate to the whole), this is done by a sensemaking process, and “if successful” you have gained some knowledge…and perhaps take some action.

In theory, next time you are in this same exact situation (ceteris paribus), the level of dissonance would be non-existent, meaning there is no need for the sensmaking process and no new knowledge is created.
If this happened all the time you may feel you need a new job that is more stimulating and challenging.

Where there’s dissonance, there’s learning to be done…and knowledge gained.

Is it possible to never experience dissonance because you have reached nirvana?
I personally don’t think a highly evolved spiritual person, living in the now, means you have finished learning.

Experience as Interpreter

The above describes that you need knowledge in order to have the opportunity to create (discover/acquire) new knowledge.

But this can’t be right.

As a baby I may burn myself by touching a flame, as I have no knowledge that the flame will harm me.

How does this work, was the flame data to me, as I didn’t have the knowledge to be informed that it will burn me if I touch it?

And have I created new knowledge (not to put my hand near a flame again), all this without having knowledge to act as an interpreter to turn data into informatiom.

Since I could not turn data into information, then how could I possibly go forward in the cycle to use sensemaking to create new knowledge.

In this example rather than requiring knowledge to interpret data to information, an “experience” has become the interpreter.

I’d like to read about knowledge from an infant psychology perspective (if there is such a thing). Because if you have knowledge of nothing how do you ever start?

Etienne Wenger briefly mentions the need for social learning theory to connect with developmental theory.

[ADDED 1/7/08: Joe Firestone’s paper helps out here, on page 16 he says:

“…we are born with genetically encoded knowledge that enables us to interact with the external world and to learn…”

He desribes this as world 1 knowledge:

“…encoded structures in physical systems (such as genetic encoding in DNA) that allow those objects to adapt to an environment”]

Dissonance?

If a piece of data on a screen is flashing, “anyone” can notice that something has just happened to the data, it’s flashing, and if you possess the knowledge about what this signal means then it informs you, ie, it’s information to you…I guess it becomes knowledge if you can successfully interpret the meaning of the information.

Even though you know what this information means there is still a level of dissonance as you don’t yet know why it occured, you try to make sense of it and work out what’s going on, once you work it out, you have created new knowledge.

Structured to inform

Dave Snowden says “The map is data which has been structured to inform…”

He says:

“We have a mess of unstructured data to which we apply structure or interpretation in order to inform others, we put the data in context”

“If I structure data through process of abstraction and possibly codification then I create messages with which I seek to inform someone else. If that person understands the message they are informed; however if there is no shared context between message creator and message receiver then we are left with data, no information is created.”

A whole heap of random names means not much, but if the list is titled “customers aged 12-20″, then this becomes a structured message intended to inform.
If a person has shared context they will receive the message signal as information, ie. that these random names are people in an age bracket.

This does not imply that structured data equals information.

The data is structured or in an organised format, and whoever understands this organised data receives it as information.

Knowledge is the tool to achieve understanding and interpreting this process, but not only that, your knowledge has to have a shared context to receive the intending meaning.

Without the title these random names are just data, more precisely unstructured data.

According to the model in Dave Snowden’s post once you go through the sensemaking process, ie. you understand what the information means, eg. making inferences from comparing two lists you may work out that, “customers aged 12-20 tend to have more overdue books than customers aged 21-35″, then you can go through a path-finding process and take action.

The action you choose from your path-finding process could be sending a reminder out more often to customers aged 12-20.

Another Example

If someone gave me a project management schedule (eg. MS Project) it would be data to me as I don’t understand the technique and the symbols.

But if I was proficient in MS Project then it would be information as I can understand (interpret) this software.

But if I don’t share context with the author (know the person, history of the project, etc) I may have a hard time understanding (sensemaking) this information completely in order for it to become knowledge for me.

Conclusion

Knowledge is not a thing or object, it is what a person uses and creates.

Dave mentions that the knowledge management is about providing or creating conditions for shared context.
Shared context enables you to get to first base, which is being informed…to be able to use information, so we can take it to the second base in the sensemaking process.

I’m using a step process to explain, but really this happens more fluid or in a flux…all the steps mentioned could be happening at the same time.

Rather than the loop of Data - Information - Knowledge - Options - Actions being the main components, I’d rather think of what happens (based on Dave Snowdens diagram) as Analysing - Sensemaking - Pathfinding - Executing (ASPE)

To be continued…

KM 2.0 in writing

If you read this blog (and others) it’s clear that knowledge flow is the competitive edge.
The more we share know-how and collaborate, the more we are aware, and the more we can hook up with the right people.
The more open and transparent an environment, the more a range of voices can be heard and ideas evolve.

We are capitalising on opportunies by leveraging the social capital (connecting human assets), using the wisdom of crowds.

Connecting and conversing with people is how we work in the physical world and KM 2.0 is extending this to the online world.
People get things done by talking and learning with others, therefore the concept of codify and store isn’t really in tune with human nature.

If we get things done in the physical work by participating, connecting and conversing, it seems logical the this approach works in the online world…especially so for the current climate of remote working and virtual teams.
People already get work done using email, but this doesn’t quite mimic the benefits of the physical world (it lacks visibility and discovery). Rather, an ecosystem with online profiles, social networking, group conversations is similar to how we congregate, network, and discover in the physical world.

KM 2.0 in talking

Sometimes I feel explaining the concept is hard to absorb for some (it really has to be experienced), so perhaps weaving together some quotes is more articulate and succinct.

Some of my favourite excerpts on this concept are by Chris Fletcher, Rachel Happe, Larry Prusak, Ross Dawson, Michael Idinopulos, Don Tapscott, Jay Cross, JP Rangaswami, and Chuck Hollis.

KM 2.0 in pictures

Another idea is trying to capsulate the essence of a concept in a diagram.

NOTE: I’ve missed out some pieces in this picture, such as: bookmarks, rss, attention, personalisation.

Actually this is a diagram I made for our communities at work, so I guess it’s centred around this notion. I was driving home Chuck Hollis’s perspective of “creating conditions for conversation leads to collaboration”.

Collaboration is the enterprise nirvana as we have the best minds working together on a task, ie. there’s no other better people that could work together on this task. They know about each other from participating (being visible) and discussing, so maybe participation, emergence, and conversation (which leads to collaboration) is the nirvana…that is the ecosystem that enables collaboration (between the best experts) to occur.

CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW