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KM/Knowledge Services: 3 Cs for Strategic Knowledge Professionals

A recent reference to Adam Bryant's 3 C's for managers struck a chord.

Bryant - then Accenture's CEO - commented last year that three things matter for managers:

Competence, Confidence, and Caring.

As knowledge thought leaders in our organizations, strategic knowledge professionals are already there, and the challenge (another "C"!) becomes how to apply those criteria for strategic knowledge management for the organizations where we are employed.

Here's a story:

Jerry Thomas is at the mid-point of a very successful career in strategic knowledge management. His KM/knowledge services competence is evidenced by his experience as a specialist librarian for a large manufacturing company. In that role, Jerry learned not only how to use his formal education for providing his KM/knowledge services customers with the strategic knowledge they require for their work. He also was able to build on each of his customer interactions to share his own knowledge gathering and knowledge transfer expertise. He had the competence to do what needed to be done.

Jerry's confidence grew with his growing competence. With all his interactions with his customers, Jerry's role seemed to expand, to the point that he was soon - early in his career - being asked to advise or serve as a sort of internal consultant in KM/knowledge services matters. Indeed, his confidence in his ability to provide excellence in KM/knowledge services grew so much that not only was his expertise being recognized in his own organization, he was pursued for jobs in other companies. Jerry's confidence was attached to and resulted from his competence in what he was able to do for his customers (and others in his organization).

Jerry's caring expanded along with is confidence, for he learned early on that just "providing the information" was not really what his customers wanted. Regardless of the customer's professional level, Jerry made it his business to make sure he understood - and positioned himself to respond to - his clients' expectations. Of course different people had different expectations but that didn't stop Jerry. He became particularly skilled at identifying what each client is looking for. His approach to strategic knowledge management and delivery was simple: he made sure the customer knew he cared about what that person was seeking. Then he arranged for his customers to know, first off, that caring is the key characteristic in dealing with Jerry and his team, as the customers work with them in pursuing strategic knowledge.

Management competence - Management confidence - Management caring: Thanks, Alan Bryant.

SMR International: Building the Knowledge Culture

SMR International has adopted Building the Knowledge Culture as its corporate statement of purpose. In this statement, the company announces its philosophy of service and contribution.

Shared both implicitly and directly with clients, colleagues, and affiliates, Building the Knowledge Culture declares SMR International’s intention to use its influence to ensure that knowledge is used both to enable employees to do their best work and to empower the organization to act responsibly in the larger global social environment.

At SMR International, it is our belief that all institutions, including those in the private sector, have a responsibility to all of society. We believe, as Peter F. Drucker wrote in the Preface to Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices(1973) that “if the managers of our major institutions, and especially of business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will.”

As a management consulting practice specializing in knowledge strategy development, it is our goal to enable and empower organizational leaders for addressing the responsibility gap in management and in society.

Learn: Your Role as KM/Knowledge Services Director

Save the date: Saturday, June 12, 2010 - New Orleans, LA USA

The course: KMKS12. The Knowledge Director: Competencies and Skills

Learn what's expected of you in your role as KM/Knowledge Services Director for the organization. This course defines the responsibilities of the organization's knowledge thought leader/corporate spokesperson and provides a description of organizational duties and expectations for knowledge services leadership. You'll learn what your role is with respect to the value of KM/Knowledge Services, the role of KM/Knowledge Services in organizational success, organizational strategic learning, and service delivery. When you have completed the course, you will have a clear understanding of your leadership role in moving the organization to and helping it grow as a knowledge culture.

KM/Knowledge Services experts Guy St. Clair and Dale Stanley facilitate the course, which is open to all knowledge workers (you do not have to be a participant in Click U's Certificate Program to attend).

All course participants who complete the course (whether for C.E. credit or not) will receive a free copy of Building the Knowledge Culture: The Knowledge Services Effect, St. Clair and Stanley's report on what you can achieve as the company's KM/Knowledge Services Director. Prepared for SMR International clients, this SMR International Management Action Plan (SMR MAP) is sold through The SMR Knowledge Store. A $385.00 value, Building the Knowledge Culture will be given free to participants in KMKS 08 Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services.

Learn more and register here.

KM/Knowledge Services: Four Keys to Culture Change

A universal attribute of KM/Knowledge Services is culture change. As a society, we generally do not focus on knowledge and how information, knowledge, and learning are part of our lives. Knowledge is just there. It is simply part of the human condition and how we - as human beings - process and use knowledge is not something we think about very much.

Not so in the workplace. When we work with KM/knowledge services, we are confronted with a whole host of conditions and environmental issues to deal with, and one that is on the minds of strategic knowledge specialists on an-almost ongoing basis is culture change. How do we get people to think about knowledge, the value of knowledge, and the role of knowledge in their work? All of us who work with strategic knowledge agree on the foundational characteristic of KM/knowledge services: the better workers manage knowledge, the better the work.

So how do we get colleagues in the workplace to pay attention to knowledge?

The subject was much discussed in Kenya on Thursday, 8th April. Meeting at the Faculty of Architecture and Building Sciences of the University of Nairobi, the 7th UN/University Librarians Meeting and Workshop heard SMR International's President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services speak about KM/knowledge services.

In a day-long workshop focused on KM/Knowledge Services in institutions of higher learning, St. Clair frequently addressed the subject of culture change, which he asserts is fundamental to the successful management of KM/knowledge services in any environment, regardless of the organizational framework. The workshop presentation called attention to the critical role of university librarians in leading culture change, and an ongoing theme in the presentation and the group's discussions had to do with identifying specific steps to take, to move the process forward. [See: Shaping the Knowledge Culture in the Academy: The Librarian as Knowledge Thought Leader - Knowledge Management, Knowledge Services, and Change Management]

In a key take-away from the workshop, the group discussed of the importance perception and culture change, and St. Clair provided four "key steps" (he called them) for success:

1. strategic learning: if KM/knowledge services and an organizational re-structuring to a knowledge culture is to be successful, the organization must have a formalized and operational functional unit for managing strategic learning and training. Knowledge workers cannot be expected to grow intellectually unless they have a structure to use
2. awareness raising: whoever is in charge of KM/knowledge services - whether it is the university librarian or corporation's Chief Knowledge Officer, opportunities for knowledge sharing, discussion, communities of practice, and knowledge networks must be provided - and on a continuing basis
3. sponsorship: KM/knowledge services won't succeed if it is just a "good idea" of someone somewhere in the organization; a key member of strategic management must agree to sponsor the KM/knowledge services function, to express his/her enthusiasm for KM/knowledge services-related activities, to utilize knowledge tools and techniques in his/her own office, and to reinforce the value of knowledge in the organization to that everyone throughout the organization "gets the message": it's done at the senior management level and the rest of the organization might be wise to do it, too
4. succession planning: the formalized "passing on of information and knowledge" is essential if time and energy is not to be wasted in learning what the previous employee in the position knew, and took away when he or she took another job or retired - the essence of knowledge sharing is to ensure that the knowledge can still be used under different (and often later) circumstances.

Learn: Measuring KM/Knowledge Services

Save the date: Friday, June 11, 2010 - New Orleans, LA USA

The course: KMKS 08 Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services

Learn techniques and tools for measuring success in knowledge services in this popular Click U course. You'll learn about the value of metrics in the KM/knowledge services process and have the opportunity to focus on organizational service comparisons for continuous improvement. Once you've had this course, you'll understand how you can use benchmarking, user evaluations, discussion tracking, and how to deal with intangible assets. This is your opportunity to show management just how good your work is (and how important KM/knowledge services is to your company).

KM/Knowledge Services experts Guy St. Clair and Dale Stanley facilitate the course, which is open to all knowledge workers (you do not have to be a participant in Click U's Certificate Program to attend).

All course participants who complete the course (whether for C.E. credit or not) receive a free copy of Critical Success Factors: Management Metrics, Return-on-Investment, and Effectiveness Measures for Knowledge Services, St. Clair and Stanley's report on how to evaluate KM/knowledge services. Prepared for SMR International clients, this SMR International Management Action Plan (SMR MAP) is sold through The SMR Knowledge Store. A $385.00 value, Critical Success Factors will be given free to participants in KMKS 08 Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services.

Learn more and register here.

News: SLA in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences

The third edition of Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Editor(s): Marcia J. Bates, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA;   Mary Niles Maack, University of California, Los Angeles, USA has been announced, with an article on the Special Libraries Association (SLA) written by three members of the association.

Co-Author Guy St. Clair is the President and Consulting Specialist in Knowledge Services for SMR International in New York, NY, USA. Rebecca Vargha is Library Director at the Information and Library Science Library of the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science in Chapel Hill, NC, USA, and Andrew Berner is Library Director and Curator of Collections at The University Club, New York, NY. All three authors have been prominent members and leaders of SLA.

The abstract for the entry reads:

“Founded in1909, the Special Libraries Association (SLA) serves the members of that branch of the library and information science professions generally thought of as “non-traditional.” Special Libraries Association members work in corporate, research, scientific, institutional, and government libraries, as well as in other settings where their work is characteristically described as being in support of the organizational mission or enterprise of which their libraries are a part. With more than 10,000 members in 75 countries, SLA’s role is to support professional knowledge workers in their work as they provide practical and utilitarian information, knowledge, and strategic learning to their identified knowledge customers and clients. The association has 58 regional chapters located throughout the world.”

The citation for this Article is: St. Clair, Guy, Berner, Andrew J. and Vargha, Rebecca (2010) ‘Special Libraries Association (SLA)’, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition, 1: 1, 4975-4983

KM/Knowledge Services: Can We All Play? Are Universities Included Too?

The traditional "home" for KM/knowledge services has been the corporate workplace, and while this is probably not the place to go into the reasons why (a future post, perhaps? or a guest post from a reader? a KM/knowledge services specialist?), we can quickly speculate that the for-profit field has often been the breeding ground for innovation.

And with accelerated innovation one of the four identified deliverables, you might say (along with strengthened research, contextual decision making, and high-level knowledge asset management) of knowledge services, it seems reasonable to latch on to the idea that the non-profits and the not-for-profit institutions have lagged behind.

Not so. Every day we hear about new venues for the study and implementation of KM/knowledge services, and a fascinating stream in this direction is higher education. Strategy development (ex - "strategic planning") has long been a mainstay of academic administrative focus, and many companies and organizations specializing in knowledge strategy development have happily found a welcome on the campuses of some of the more forward-thinking universities.

For academics - whether part of the faculty, administrative staff, or having some other connection with the academy (university librarians, for example) - how might to KM/knowledge services be approached? Is it simply a matter of changing the words and phrases? When we define knowledge management with Prusak's and Davenport's working with knowledge for the organization do we make it work in the academy simply by defining knowledge management as working with knowledge for the institution?

And for that matter, is the management approach for an academic institution (OK - the administrative approach) the same as it is for a corporation? A research institute? A manufacturing plant? What are the differences? Are they subtle or are they major? Can an academic institution embrace Peter Drucker's philosophy as willingly and as successfully as a for-profit operation (and, yes it can, for we all know of Drucker's solid connection with the academy and his great success with charitable institutions and other non-profits)?

The question then becomes simply one of direction, doesn't it? How can the principles and philosophies behind successful change management, say, in the KM/knowledge services environment be stated for an academic institution? What language do we use? And is that language going to work in other operational structures?

Let's find out.

Knowledge Sharing at the Mega-Level: World Urban Forum 5 in Rio de Janeiro

Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in late March, some 10,000 specialists in sustainable urbanization gathered for the Fifth Session of the UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum. Clearly the need is there, and as experts, heads of state, government ministers, mayors, executives of leading global foundations, business leaders, and interested observers met March 24 – 26, it was obvious that the work UN-HABITAT is doing is critical. And becoming more critical all the time.

The numbers are slightly overwhelming, but when you stop to think that just a little over 50 years ago one-third of the world’s population lived in cities and now it’s over 50% (and expected to climb to two-thirds of the global population – six billion people – by 2050) you recognize that a sense of being overwhelmed is absolutely appropriate. Attention must be paid.

The main theme of the conference – Bridging the Urban Divide – provided the occasion for much open and frank debate, and UN-HABITAT’s oft-expressed characterization of “sustainable urbanization” as simply “a better city, a better life” provided many conference attendees with a noticeable attitude of uplift and enthusiasm. For these folks,  WUF5 (as the forum was called) provided the impetus for going back to their homes and workplaces with an optimism that many global citizens aren’t in a position to share.

Which made the whole experience that much more exciting, for now charged-up urban studies professionals will have the energy and motivation to see that attention is paid.

For KM/knowledge services professionals, the Rio pay-off came with the many discussions, strategic learning opportunities, and just plain networking that took place. Both formal and informal knowledge-sharing activities were happening all over the conference venue (unused dock warehouses that were being converted into a huge conference center), and a highlight for those of us who look to KM/knowledge services as the bridge across any of the professional, societal, or economic divides we encounter was the opening of UN-HABITAT’s new World Urban Campaign. In announcing the campaign, Nicholas You noted that the agency’s next major effort would acknowledge and focus on the role of knowledge sharing in achieving the agency’s mission.

That mission, generally referred to as the Habitat Agenda, is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. In launching the new initiative, You – who serves as Strategic Policy Advisor to Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, UN-HABITAT’s Executive Director – made it clear that there would be two key areas of focus to the campaign, one of which is the agency’s knowledge network system (with the other being The 100 Cities Initiative, an experimental initiative in which 100 cities would make pledges for urban reform).

The knowledge networking system has a more fundamental purpose, one that affects all levels of all the many efforts involved in the larger sustainability movement. As You described the initiative, the UN-HABITAT knowledge networking system is defined by and being developed to enable all people working with sustainable urbanization to take full advantage of the diversity and wealth of knowledge, tools, and methods being gathered by UN-HABITAT. The system will focus on lessons learned from best practices, good policies and operational tools and methodologies, and constitute a one-stop shop for knowledge, expertise, and experience.

With the sustainable urbanization knowledge services community poised to reap the rewards of strengthened information management, KM, and strategic learning, could not other organizations take up the knowledge networking system as a model, to achieve their own organizational effectiveness?

Strategy Development: Descriptive or Prescriptive?

A long time ago (1966 was a long time ago, wasn’t it?), George A. Steiner was well recognized as one of strategy planning’s most famous authorities. While KM/knowledge services directors in the 21st century might use slightly more up-dated language than Steiner used 44 years ago, developing knowledge strategy still works from Steiner’s “common characteristics” of strategic planning.

One of these especially still hits the mark: the whole idea behind the development of a knowledge strategy is “the futurity of current decisions,” thinking about how current (or recent past) decision making affects what will happen as the KM/knowledge services function proceeds into the future.

Our good friend Peter F. Drucker also brings knowledge workers closer to understanding the true impetus behind planning  knowledge strategy: planning for the future. In his classic Managing in a Time of Great Change, Drucker could be writing for knowledge strategists in 2010 (for could there be a time of greater change than the times we’re living in today?): “Traditional planning asks,” Drucker wrote, “‘what is most likely to happen? Planning for uncertainty asks, instead, ‘what has already happened that will create the future?’”

For Drucker, “strategic planning is not a box of tricks, a bundle of techniques” (Drucker’s emphasis). For our great management hero, strategy development was summed up in four important activities which can be applied directly to the development of knowledge strategy:

§  Analytical thinking and the commitment to resources in action

§  A continual process of making present entrepreneurial decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity

§  Organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decision

§  Measuring the results of these decision against expectations through organized, systematic feedback

So there’s the answer to our challenge. Developing knowledge strategy is both prescriptive and descriptive, and the knowledge strategist simply has to position himself/herself to drill down as deep as it’s necessary to go. The task is to find the nuances, the private (or public) agendas, and the organizational goals that will bring forward the information the organization requires for managing its knowledge. Only when the knowledge strategy is developed in an atmosphere that includes both “how-things-are” and “how-things-ought-to-be” can the strategy lead to the results the organization is seeking.

John Cotton Dana and Knowledge Services

A recent post reported on a presentation about the history of the Special Libraries Association and how the association's history will influence the management of strategic knowledge in the future. Much discussion about this topic is captured in the final two chapters and the Epilogue of SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge to Work to Building the Knowledge Culture, the centennial history of the association (slightly different versions of those chapters are available at SMRShare). In the presentation, an introductory thought asked about the connection between knowledge services and SLA’s founder, John Cotton Dana.

If there is some skepticism about such a connection over the (now) 101-year span, that’s an understandable reaction. In fact, though, when we think about what John Cotton Dana was trying to do, the similarities between his “new library creed” and knowledge services becomes pretty clear:

Knowledge services – as defined in today’s workplace – looks at the management of strategic knowledge from the perspective of the knowledge user, at what that user’s needs might be and how the strategic knowledge being sought is going to be used. In the classic definition, we describe knowledge services as the management and service-delivery methodology that converges information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning into a single, overarching operational function. Putting a knowledge services “spin” on SLA’s famous motto, used since 1916, the goal of knowledge services is to “put knowledge management to work.” In the 21st-century workplace, knowledge services is – in Dale Stanley’s version –  ”the practical side of knowledge management.”

While he did not use our terminology, couldn’t this have been John Cotton Dana’s goal when he called together a group of specialist librarians (that’s what he called them) to think about how they worked? He and his colleagues wanted to determine how their services could be of better use to the businessman (and, yes, that was the term used in 1909, just as the term “man of affairs” was often used – and often by Dana – to describe people who worked in business, probably a link to the French phrase for businessman,l’homme d’affaires).

In his professional work, Dana had concluded that businessmen were too busy to read, and that was just the point: “I am not asking the businessman toread books,” he said. “I am suggesting that we persuade him to use some of them.”

It was a vital distinction, and it would become an important driver as specialized librarianship began its development. So much so that as they talked, Dana and his colleagues realized that they needed a new organization, an association of people like themselves, librarians who would lead a “movement” (yes, they used that term, without apology), a new movement that would replace the old library method, which they described as “Select the best books, list them elaborately, save them forever—that was the sum of the librarians’ creed of yesterday….”

But they went on, and Dana articulated the new “creed” which is particularly familiar to today’s knowledge services specialist:

• Select a few of the best books and keep them, as before, but also…
• Select from the vast flood of print the things your constituency will find useful…
• Make them available with a minimum of expense, and…
• Discard them as soon as their usefulness is past.

By the end of their first year, the nascent SLA had held its first meeting in New York City. It was a meeting at which Dana—SLA’s first president—spoke eloquently about the role of specialized libraries in society:

• “Here in the opening years of the Twentieth Century,” Dana said, “Men of affairs are for the first time beginning to see clearly that collections and printed materials are not, as they were long held to be by most, for the use simply of the scholar, the student, the reader, and the devotee of belles lettres. … [They] are useful tools, needing only the care and skill of a curator, of a kind of living index thereto … to be of the greatest possible help in promoting business efficiency.”

“The care and skill of the curator….” Surely that is the role of the knowledge services specialist in today’s workplace, to take ownership of the strategic knowledge that ensures organizational effectiveness be the organization’s “living index thereto.” Could there be a higher professional calling?

Specialized Librarianship - Thinking About the Future

Guy St. Clair, SMR International President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services, has been named the Alice Rankin Distinguished Lecturer for 2010 by the New Jersey Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA).

Speaking to the New Jersey Chapter at the Rutgers Club in New Brunswick on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, St. Clair discussed his recent work researching and writing SLA's 100-year history and used the lecture to bridge SLA's past with the future for specialized librarianship and the discipline's contribution to organizational effectiveness.

Asked to submit 10 reasons why "chapter members should hear him speak," St. Clair prepared his audience with the following, and during the presentation used these topics to stimulate discussion with chapter members and guests:

1. 1.    Learn how John Cotton Dana was creating what we now think of as "KM/knowledge services" when SLA was born
2. 2.    Why is specialized librarianship a distinctive branch of librarianship? Or more provocatively: is specialized librarianship a branch of librarianship?
3. 3.    Hear how the President of the United States recognized the professional skills of specialist librarians
4. 4.    Hear about the three times in SLA's history when specialized librarianship had the opportunity to make history and advance the profession but stepped aside
5. 5.    Since specialist librarians have been combining ICT management, KM, and strategic learning for 101 years, they are the natural “knowledge thought leaders” for their employers. Are they up to it? Are they brave enough?
6. 6.    Find out why other knowledge workers are moving ahead of specialist librarians – and fast
7. 7.    Find out why managing strategic knowledge is the future of specialized librarianship… and why specialist librarians can’t go back
8. 8.    Learn a clear, straight-forward statement of the mission of specialized librarianship (whatever it’s called and however it’s structured within the organizations that employ specialist librarians) – and how it’s not about membership in any professional association
9. 9.    Hear how specialist librarians can get comfortable with their role in “building the knowledge culture”
10. 10. Learn why – if their professional lives are going to be professionally satisfying – specialist librarians must “make no small plans.”

Culture Change: The KM/Knowledge Services Perspective

Now that KM/knowledge services has made its way into the corporate management lexicon, developing an enterprise-wide knowledge strategy becomes the next step (unless, that is, enlightened corporate management got the message early on and devised a corporate knowledge strategy before it was accepted practice to do so).

We know what we want to do with KM/knowledge services. Our objective is clear: We expect to establish a knowledge culture, a workplace in which KM/knowledge services is exploited (in the positive sense of that good word) to support and advance a workplace environment in which we all work smarter. And, once the knowledge culture is established, KM/knowledge services will be the management methodology we will use to sustain it, to ensure the highest levels of research, contextual decision making, and innovation in the future.

But to achieve that knowledge culture (or to achieve any objective as we seek to strengthen organizational performance) requires developing a strategy, a framework for how we’ll get there. In dealing with a KM/knowledge services strategy, one of our first findings is that we must first focus on another culture, the larger organizational culture that defines and distinguishes the overall enterprise.

And here is when we start to get a little nervous, because as we look about we find any number of possible impediments to moving forward to our goal, and practically all of these will have something to do with that larger corporate culture. And this is when we begin to speak about “culture change,” with the message that to move to the implementation of the new strategy, to set things up so the new strategy will be implemented with success, some elements of the corporate culture will need to change.

These considerations are especially relevant with KM/knowledge services (even under the new management circumstances in which ICT and KM are recognized as the critical enablers they are). For some reason, a lot of people aren’t very interested in the methods, principles, or even the results of a successfully integrated knowledge strategy. Despite the fact that there are obvious and easily documented costs (often very high costs) to sticking with the status quo, many people just can’t handle moving to a new way of dealing with the information and knowledge they must have for their work. They do not have the time, their managers are not interested and discourage their participation (so they think), or they are just not the type of people who are ready to take on something new and different while they try to deal with what they think of as their day-to-day work.

So culture change is hard to come by, and we all know why. As organizations develop, the people involved in developing the organizational structure bring their own ideas and – not to put too fine a point on it – their own agendas to the workplace. As a result, a great many points of view, organizational arrangements, and personal interests become associated with the larger enterprise, to the extent that some of these – over time – become literally embedded in the organizational structure. “It’s what we do,” people say. “It’s what our company is all about.”

That’s what we mean when we speak about the corporate culture, the one that is in place. It has to do with shared beliefs and values, an accumulation of shared beliefs and values about how the organization functions and about how its people succeed. And the organizational culture is – especially – about how those shared beliefs and values converge for the benefit of the larger enterprise, for groups of people working within it, even for individuals as they devise strategies to succeed at what they are trying to do in the workplace. It’s our challenge to work with that, to change that culture, if you will, and to re-frame it so that it will include the elements that support the  knowledge culture.

So what do we do? How do we “fix things” and come up with some techniques and methodologies we can take up – or put before the organization to take up – to ensure that change happens?

A cool first step is to initiate the discussion among people you’ve already identified, folks who have a stake in working smarter, who understand the value of information, knowledge, and strategic learning in the workplace and who would welcome bringing a good strategy for KM/knowledge services into the picture. In my work, what I’m seeing (very often) is that among the people who are going to be implementing KM/knowledge services strategy on the floor, so to speak (not necessarily the company’s leadership), there is great enthusiasm for undertaking whatever steps are necessary to bring about culture change. They are ready to move forward with KM/knowledge services, but no one has ever invited them to think about the subject before.

I know this because when I meet with them individually, these company employees are amazingly willing to go forward. The problem is that in the past the subject just hasn’t come up. And then when they come into a meeting to discuss the subject with other people (also people I’ve identified as being enthusiastic), you can almost feel the eagerness to get moving, to come up with some speedy and high-profile solutions and get started. Since these people have not come together before to talk about how they might use KM/knowledge services to help them work smarter, just the opportunity to brainstorm and explore a few KM/knowledge services recommendations is welcomed. They get to jumping all over the place, and the suggestions fly back and forth like crazy.

So it’s pretty exciting, this experience. It is very gratifying, too, especially for those of us who focus our professional energies on looking at KM/knowledge services applications as the way to go. I can't help but wonder if our success with KM/knowledge services enthusiasts relates to what Peter Bregman talks about in an interesting little thought piece from last June, the idea of finding the right stories to tell. These meetings I’m describing are full of story-telling (even if it’s not called that) and the discussion often begins with everybody talking about how this doesn't work or how that needs to be fixed. But once the attention is re-focused, with some prodding to get people in the group to share their own ideas of what they think could be done to solve whatever problem is being described, things move forward at a very fast pace.

It's amazing what these people come up with, and I think the main thing that makes it work is just bringing people together – often people who don't even know each other, or if they do know each other, not in a KM/knowledge services connection. Guiding the conversation so they talk about what works, what could work, what might work is a very gentle way to get things moving. And soon the discussion isn't about what's wrong, it's about what we can do to make it right for the future.

The Strategic Knowledge Connection: KM/Knowledge Services Makes it Happen

Certainly the "Only Connect" concept was alive and well long before E.M. Forster made it famous in Howard's End. We're all grateful to have had that particularly erudite introduction to the value of connections when we were youngsters, and we've learned by now that the value of connections only becomes stronger as we move into our work and develop professionally. It is no surprise that much of what we undertake as strategic knowledge managers has to do with identifying, strengthening, and exploiting (in the classical sense of that great word) our connections. It's how we ensure our work in KM/knowledge services succeeds.

Continuing an earlier frame of thought, it is good to think about where we are in KM/knowledge services. Given the movement of organizational management toward understanding and recognizing the value of knowledge to organizational effectiveness and the critical role of managing strategic knowledge as the high levels of excellence that essential for corporate success, it is gratifying to see our influence. We are now seeing the results of that renaissance Judith Field spoke about more than a decade ago when she urged information professionals to join the "knowledge age." For those who did, who were smart enough to recognize that their roles in their employing organizations would only be strengthened if they took on KM/knowledge services leadership, the effort paid off. The knowledge age is here  and we are all obliged to meet corporate management where it expects to be met: at that juncture where the precepts of information management meet the principles of KM/knowledge services. It's where we connect. Management now understands that managing the organization's strategic knowledge ensures organizational success, and management is not be at all subtle about its expectations from those who work in KM/knowledge services. We provide the connection.

We aren't surprised. When we think about how society is changing, about how society at large (and not just the management and academic communities) focuses on the value of knowledge, we understand what Peter Drucker was referring to when he urged us to look at the "underlying systems." When things weren't going right, as Rosabeth Moss Kanter has wisely pointed out, Drucker wasn't in the business of blaming individuals. He found the root causes in the design of the organization, as Kanter put it in her homage to Drucker in The Harvard Business Review last November, "in the stuctures, processes, norms, and routines" of the larger organization.

Of course. KM/knowledge services managers long ago picked up on the idea that the capture, organization, storage, and dissemination of strategic knowledge was going to be required - in any organization - if the organization is going to be successful (however success is defined in the particular situation).  And strategic knowledge managers realized that connecting would not be limited to research or activities traditionally thought of as "knowledge" related.

Now that organizational management - even down to the level of those over-worked middle management staff caught in their famous "black hole of middle management" - is recognizing that "we've got to figure out what to do with all this information and knowledge we collect and use," everybody is looking at strategic knowledge and wondering what to do. Why? Because strategic knowledge is everywhere, in every department and functional unit, and it must be managed if the organization is to succeed. And as part of the deal, companies are turning to the people who know how to do this work, to the organization's "knowledge thought leaders," the company's KM/knowledge services managers who are taking on the leadership role of seeing that strategic knowledge is managed for the good of the larger organization.

Let's have a case in point: A financial services company located in the American heartland has made quite an impact in the industry. It started with a bang, it hired the best whiz kids it could find, and in all the excitement of making all that money and - yes - providing a very reasonable ROI for investors, the routines of day-to-day management sort of got lost in the shuffle, as they say. Naturally all the compliance documentation was taken seriously and submitted appropriately (there are laws for that) but much of the organization's captured content - it's corporate history - was pretty casually pushed aside. Once in a while this or that observant manager would ask about this or that document describing a historical event, or wonder aloud about what was "happening" in the area of legacy documentation with respect to the company's background. Not the legal content, of course, as noted, not the compliance or regulatory material. All that was duly handled, and handled well. But much of what was left over, well, it didn't seem to be all that important.

Now it is. Now there is interest in moving the company into another product line, one very different from what it has offered in the past, and no one can find what they need. They will, of course, and the company will succeed in moving into the new product line, but the costs of dealing with identifying, codifying, and sharing the knowledge have been very expensive. The knowledge was there all the time. The challenge was to find it and format it so that it could be used for background and shared in whatever knowledge-sharing the deal required.

Lesson learned (and in this case management learned it well): Be prepared with the knowledge the organization uses and will need to re-use. Take a page from the Drucker handbook and ensure that structures, processes, norms, and routines are captured, that the management of strategic knowledge in each is part of the organizational framework.

And turn the job over to the KM/knowledge services management team. These people know how to handle strategic knowledge, and managers - not just in examples such as this but throughout the management field - are heeding the call. They get it. They understand that accessing and using strategic knowledge is critical to corporate success, and they're willing to pay to ensure that it's done right.

KM/Knowledge Services: This is the Time We've Been Waiting For

Good news.

We're seeing something new in organizations these days, both in the corporate world and in the not-for-profits and the non-profits. Within the past two years (the exact timeframe might be a little vague but it's been somewhere during the past two, three years or so), there has been a critical turnaround in the management community. KM/knowledge services is now part of the management agenda. The people who do the managing in our companies now understand the good management means good KM/knowledge services.

Well of course. We've been trying to tell them that for years. Whereas just a few short years ago those of us working with knowledge workers found ourselves leading, cajoling, persuading, doing everything we could to get senior management to pay attention to knowledge value, the opposite seems to be the case today. We worked so hard to get them to listen to what we had to say about how knowledge development and knowledge management - our good ol' KD/KS - and sometimes we were successful but most of the time (if we are truly honest with ourselves), it didn't work. They weren't very interested.

You remember the scenario: Not so long ago, to be called in to meet with management about some KM/knowledge services project (or even just a concept - forget about something as mature as a concept - meant days of preparation, with most of the preparation having to do with coming up with definitions, case studies, examples, and just plain old story-telling to make sure the people you were meeting were on the same wave length as you. Of course you had to do a lot of what the kids call "dumbing down" because you learned - early on - that anything that smacked of "knowledge" or "learning" was 'way to academic for these folks. So you went in assuming they would not have any idea of what "knowledge management" meant (you had been through this often enough that you could hear it coming - and usually not far into the conversation - "what's this about managing knowledge? knowledge can't be managed? you can't buy and sell knowledge?"). And you replied dutifully, "Well yes, sir. That's true, but let me explain...."

And off you went, you and the team in the organization that wanted to move forward - in tiny steps, remember, we don't want to get things too confused. And step by step, all the way along you worked very hard to make sure that you were getting through, that company leadership - the people who were going to authorize the funding - understood that there would be value in managing knowledge (but value of course being defined in terms that were explicitly understood by management, usually with a big ROI sign on it).


Not any more. We can't (yet) understand how the change came about, but nowadays we are living a totally different story. Now when you're introduced to someone in senior management, it's a very short trip from "we're not taking advantage of what our people know" to Peter Drucker to Larry Prusak to Tom Davenport to David Gurteen and even - surprising me! - on to David Snowden. And then the conversation turns to the others who pop up in the business magazines.

I'm loving it. Aren't you?

And get this: These managers are not interested in taking cautious, "tiny steps." They've figured out that it's not all about managing ICT (which used to be the case with the MBA folks), it's not even about having the ICT people turn themselves into "knowledge managers." It's about - these managers tell us - how people use information and communications technology to work better, more efficiently, and - not to put too fine a point on it - to work together, to work more collaboratively.

Senior management knows this now, and knows that good KM/knowledge services means the whole organization is more effective, leading to success with that over-arching goal so clearly sought in modern management terms: the company must be effective. Organizational effectiveness - however defined in the particular organization - is today's management mantra and organizational effectiveness comes from one source and one source only: the competencies and the energies of company staff in developing and sharing knowledge. Management knows it, we strategic knowledge professionals know it, and the organization's employees know it. This is the time.

KM/Knowledge Services: Is "Trust" the New "Confidence"?

When we speak about KM/knowledge services and the essential first steps we take in managing change, one phrase always comes to mind. If we - as change agents - are going to be successful in moving our organizations to a knowledge culture, we must first of all become "change leaders." Or, as my colleagues usually put it, our clients and their organizational leaders must move to "knowledge thought leadership."

Fine. Well and good. You and I and they all know what we mean. We want to set up an environment in which knowledge management and knowledge services are recognized as the critical drivers for organizational effectiveness. We use the term a lot. I find "knowledge thought leader" sneaking into conversations probably more often than is really necessary, because it's become part of the jargon for me and my clients (the people who've hired me, not to put too fine a point on it, so it's essential that we agree on the basics). But isn't that preaching to the choir?

What about the other side of leadership? What about the followers, the people who work in the organization who will - when you get right down to it - be doing the heavy lifting when it comes to connecting KM/knowledge services to organizational effectiveness? Should we - as leaders - not give some attention to how these people perceive us, and what they think about what we are doing, and how they react to what we are saying to them about knowledge and the organization - about their organization, the place where they come to do their work? Doesn't it make sense to think about the organization as a knowledge culture from their point of view?

I think so. And what we need to provide them with is something we assume they already have. We need to give them the confidence that they are going to be participating in something that will benefit them. In the long run, yes, the organization will be a better organization, a more effective organization, but let's not forget about WIIFM - the old joke line about getting people to take action: "What's-in-it-for-me?" We can be as altruistic and forward-thinking about KM/knowledge services as we like - and we are, by nature, or we wouldn't be doing what we are doing - but the people on the line, so to speak, need to be given the opportunity to figure out how their workplace activities are going to change for the better, how they - as they work smarter and have better jobs - are going to contribute to organizational effectiveness.

There are a couple of people we can turn to. One is the estimable Peter Drucker. In Bruce Rosenstein's book about putting Mr. Drucker's principles to work in our daily lives, he writes about Drucker's commitment to things like self-development, self-reflection, self-organization, generosity, teaching and learning, and social entrepreneurship. If we can get the people who are turning to us for advice about how to move the organization to a knowledge culture and at the same time help them have a better work experience, we need to tell them about these, to use Mr. Drucker's buzz-words that convey so much of what we need in our corporations and organizations. And to get them to do that, to listen to us, we have to ask them to trust us, to take us at our word and be involved in what we are doing. We have to bring them to the table - these knowledge workers - and we have to listen to them as we seek to move toward the knowledge culture. All of which, in Mr. Drucker's parlance - leads to a "total life" experience.

And the other expert we might listen to? None other than Danial Goleman in his comments about emotional intelligence. Paralleling very neatly (at least to my way of thinking) the direction Mr. Drucker was taking us in, Goleman asks us to think about - and convey to those who report to us - the values associated with self-awareness and self-regulation in the workplace, the ability to convey empathy for a knowledge worker colleague's concerns about "moving-too-fast" (the one we hear so much), the "lack-of-time-for-new-stuff," and my favorite: "they-(who are they?)-don't-want-me-to-innovate-because-it's-too-disruptive."

What's called for here is trust, leading to the new confidence that people will feel when they become knowledge thought leaders for their organization or their department, the confidence that comes from trusting their managers and, at the same time, building on the trust their organization has in them.

Information Africa Organization (IAO): Leadership for ICT and KM/Knowledge Services in Kenya

Strengthening Young People Through a Focus on KD/KS

The latest SMR International e-Profile takes a look at the Information Africa Organization (IAO), reflecting on the potential that this exciting new initiative has for KM/knowledge sharing in Eastern Africa, as well as for Kenya’s role in the global economy.

With this new organization, ICT and KM/knowledge services leaders in Kenya are seeking to – as stated in  the IAO constitution, “recognize and document the experience and resources of youth in order to facilitate knowledge management that would otherwise go underutilized….” Other specific objectives listed in the IAO constitution speak of such KM/knowledge services-related activities as the development of a resource center or databank, training and relevant skills and expertise, communication, awareness, advisory services, and facilitated KM, all of which are features of and connect to any well thought-out knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) initiative.

Pictured here are the Hon. Rev. Moses Akaranga, former M.P. and Minister of State for Public Service and now IAO’s Vice-Chairman, and IAO Executive Director William Mibei. Working with other members of the IAO board and a group of young KM enthusiasts, they are building a framework for Kenya to strengthen its youth and provide employment through information, knowledge, strategic learning, and communications management.

The January, 2010 SMR e-Profile can be accessed directly. It is also available at SMRShare, SMR International’s knowledge capture site. The contact address for IAO is wkmibei@yahoo.com.

Getting Ready: Future Trends in KM/Knowledge Services

SMR International’s January 15, 2010 Spot-On Seminar

“Getting Ready: Future Trends in KM/Knowledge Services” was the theme for the January 15 SMR International Spot-On Seminar.

Billed as “A Conversation with Cindy Hill, Dale Stanley, and Guy St. Clair,” colleagues joined these KM/knowledge services leaders to talk about trends and exciting new concepts in KM/knowledge services.

A full report on the seminar and the slides displayed in the program are published at SMRShare, SMR International’s knowledge capture site.

Designed to bring colleagues together at the end of a busy week, SMR’s monthly Spot-On Seminars provide an opportunity to talk about work and share ideas. To be added to the mailing list for future Spot-On Seminars – which are free – go to info@smr-knowledge.com.

For more on subjects dealing with KM/Knowledge Services, check out the courses offered in  the Click U Certificate Program in KM/Knowledge Services, which begin again on February 8 with KMKS 11 Knowledge Management Project Management . Guy, Dale and Cindy are team-teaching the courses, with Cindy as the Lead. Come study at Click U and keep the conversation going.

 

Strategic Knowledge Repositories: An Informal Survey

What Do We Call Them?

Sara Douglas has been given a daunting challenge. She is in charge of research management at a company providing outsourced editorial services for magazine publishers (primarily working with free-lance editors and writers). The company is successful and continues to grow, but Sara finds herself almost overwhelmed with keeping up with the changes in handling information, knowledge, and strategic learning for the staff.

It’s a classic knowledge services scenario, and it isn’t limited to just dealing with records and information management (RIM) issues or corporate archives or HR compliance documents. It’s the whole strategic knowledge picture, and Sara knows she needs to be dealing with strategic knowledge management at its broadest, most wide-ranging level. She needs to use knowledge services implementation to build a knowledge culture for the entire company.

And she’s stuck. Sara has some language issues. She’s OK with ICT management, and she’s fine with strategic learning, simply because she’s come around to the fact that the knowledge she’s dealing with is absolutely strategic. It’s what the company must have and use if it is going to succeed.

But the KM picture is keeping her up at night, and based on her own observations and conversations with others in the company, she’s not alone.

And not just in Sara Douglas' office. Apparently there is a continuing struggle in conveying the concept of KM/knowledge services to people who are not particularly focused on knowledge and the value of knowledge in organizational effectiveness. Especially for executives with management responsibility who deal with research (people like Sara Douglas), there is in describing all the strategic knowledge that KM/knowledge services is supposed to fix. Sure, talking about bits and pieces of the strategic knowledge picture is pretty easy, but what terms do you use when you want to be inclusive, when you want to describe all the strategic knowledge that the organization must deal with?

How do we pull it all together?

Electronic Strategic Knowledge. The “naming” problem doesn't seem to affect what we call repositories for electronic information and knowledge capture. There are all sorts of definitions, most of them coming down to something along the lines of a computerized system that systematically captures, organizes and categorizes an organization's strategic knowledge, a repository that can be searched to ensure quick retrieval of the data.

Fine and dandy. But printed materials and other objects and artifacts can also “contain” knowledge to be accessed and shared, as do collaborative groups.

So what do we call these?

Here's what some of us have come up with:

Materials Knowledge Repository (printed materials and other objects/artifacts). We’ve lived with these for a long time, and we have no problem speaking about the hard-copy materials we collect. Some companies might refer to these materials as a “library,” or even have them captured in a functional unit referred to as a “specialized library” or “research library.” On the other hand, when that functional unit expands to include electronic strategic knowledge capture and advisory, synthesis, and interpretive services, it becomes more of an “information center” or “knowledge center” or “knowledge services center,” terms we hear pretty often.

And, yes, this category does include more than hard-copy books, periodicals, and the like. In today’s KM/knowledge services environment, no one is surprised to hear people refer to objects or artifacts like photographs, videos, artworks, historical objects and the like for their “content,” the knowledge that one takes from observing or using them. We could say they are contained in a Materials Knowledge Repository.

And then we come to the strategic knowledge captured and shared within networking or working groups – most often tacit knowledge, of course – and usually brought to the group in a knowledge transaction between or among people. Can we get away with referring to this as a:

Collaborative Knowledge Repository (communities of practice, working groups, social media networks, etc.). We know that is an incredible amount of information, knowledge, and strategic learning content captured by, shared, used by, and sometimes even retained by individuals working in such groups (perhaps we should refer to this knowledge store as a Personal Knowledge Repository). Indeed, whole new industries seem to have popped up in the KM/knowledge services field, just to help us figure out how to deal with, coordinate, manage, and make available for sharing knowledge that is not captured in any formal sort of repository. We know there is a huge quantity of knowledge people use all the time, carrying it around with them and pulling it up when it’s needed. But they don’t think about it in terms of knowledge or knowledge value. And when we are successful in collecting this knowledge, getting it to the point that we can engage in network value analysis and determining how to collected tacit knowledge so it can be shared, what do we call it?

How are you referring to the entire knowledge base of your organization or company? Do you have a single phrase or term? Is it used enterprise-wide?