SMR Int'l - Knowledge Services Notes

SMR Int'l - Knowledge Services Notes Has Moved

2010-05-02T06:57:00.003-04:00

SMR International's corporate blog is now the
Home Page of the new SMR International website.

Please visit us and post your comments at:
SMR International
(http://www.smr-knowledge.com)

KM/Knowledge Services: 3 Cs for Strategic Knowledge Professionals

2010-04-20T00:00:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-13T00:14:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-10T07:07:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-10T05:40:00.000-04:00

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:

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
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
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
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

2010-04-10T03:58:00.003-04:00

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

2010-04-09T00:13:00.001-04:00

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?

2010-04-07T23:37:00.002-04:00

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

2010-04-07T15:25:00.000-04:00

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?

2010-04-07T15:17:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-16T10:36:00.004-04:00

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

2010-03-07T21:21:00.003-05:00

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. Learn how John Cotton Dana was creating what we now think of as "KM/knowledge services" when SLA was born
2. Why is specialized librarianship a distinctive branch of librarianship? Or more provocatively: is specialized librarianship a branch of librarianship?
3. Hear how the President of the United States recognized the professional skills of specialist librarians
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. 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. Find out why other knowledge workers are moving ahead of specialist librarians – and fast
7. Find out why managing strategic knowledge is the future of specialized librarianship… and why specialist librarians can’t go back
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. Hear how specialist librarians can get comfortable with their role in “building the knowledge culture”
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

2010-03-02T09:45:00.001-05:00

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

2010-02-14T07:32:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-09T13:22:00.000-05:00

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"?

2010-02-01T21:26:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-25T11:47:00.039-05:00

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

2010-01-23T00:21:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-17T12:49:00.001-05:00

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?

The "Big Picture" - And Our KM/Knowledge Services Targets

2010-01-05T10:30:00.005-05:00

As managers pay more attention to organizational effectiveness, an important parallel development has to do with the way enterprise leaders are looking at KM/knowledge services.

In the not-too-distant past – back when we had to argue and cajole and use all our manipulative tools to get management to have some interest in KM/knowledge services – one trick we used was the old “low-hanging fruit” idea. We would find some high-visibility, catchy KM/knowledge services technique, go to management with some discussions about how the organization needed to be thinking about how we were dealing with strategic knowledge, and make a case for putting it in place. Usually on a sort of experimental basis, focusing on one department or functional unit – probably a fairly small operation – and we would work on it as a “pilot” project, just to be safe and just to be sure too many fingers weren’t burned if we failed.

That’s not so much the case anymore. What we’re seeing now is management coming to us, the KM/knowledge services professionals, and asking us to prepare a business case for figuring out how the organization can deal with strategic knowledge. And as often as not, management (at least up-to-date and well-educated senior managers who recognize the viability of KM/knowledge services in the organization) is not asking for pilot projects or some easy-to-fix situation that has little risk. Now management is looking for an enterprise-wide KM/knowledge services strategy, and the gauntlet has been thrown down. It’s up to us to rise to the challenge.

So how do we do it? How do we tackle this “big picture” opportunity?

One scenario I’m seeing in my work has to do with taking advantages of the enterprise-wide approach: since you’re working with such a large group, you get to identify the different layers and operational functions in place throughout the company and you work with different people to understand what information, knowledge, and strategic learning is required for them, at their particular level. Meaning of course that the people working in production on the shop floor are experiencing one KM/knowledge services need, the people in middle management with another, the employees in the executive suite with even another (or several if you separate out what the executives themselves require as opposed to the office management staff, personal assistants, and others).

You get the picture. We’re now at the point where it’s OK – even good – to identify that managing strategic knowledge is not going to be the same for everyone in the organization. Indeed, it will be this over-arching collaboration and knowledge-sharing experience that will enable the organization to break down those “silos” and “smokestacks” we hear so many managers lamenting about. If we – as the KM/knowledge services authorities – are able to get our arms around the enterprise-wide strategic knowledge challenge, our colleagues and co-workers will be able to do the same.

Is this a new direction? I think so, and it might be one of the future trends in KM/knowledge services people talk about from time to time.

And certainly the beginning of a new year (and of a new decade as my pal Cindy Hill has pointed out) is the ideal time to identify some of the new trends in KM/knowledge services that are coming down the pike. And talk about how we can adapt them in our own workplace.

And we’re going to do that, if you want to join us.

On Friday, 15 January, at 1:00 PM PT and 4:00 PM ET, SMR International is sponsoring another of its Spot-On Seminars, the webinars we put together from time to time so people can share ideas and thoughts about KM/knowledge services.

The topic this time is “Getting Ready: Future Trends in KM/Knowledge Services,” and we’re calling it a “conversation” with Cindy and Dale Stanley and myself. But it’s not really a conversation. Dale and Cindy and I will start, but we also want it to be a dialogue, so after we’ve had a few things to say, we’ll open the lines (as they say) and let you have your turn. We want to hear from others who work with strategic knowledge what they’re seeing – and doing – and we’re anxious to know what you are anticipating.

So join us. If you would like to sign up, get in touch with Cindy Hill at cindyvhill@HillInfoConsulting.com and let her know, and we’ll put you down.

See you - electronically of course – on the 15^th.

Managing Strategic Knowledge: Building Momentum

2009-12-20T09:08:00.000-05:00

KM/Knowledge Services Success Depends on Staff Motivation

For every knowledge services director, there comes a time when enthusiasm turns to something akin to frustration. You know you have made progress in bringing the organization toward (if not yet to) recognition as a knowledge culture, and you have in place a number of initiatives that – while not making any particular headway – are understood to be “good for the company.”

But something’s missing, and you know what it is. The enthusiasm that you and some of your colleagues in the organization bring to the knowledge development and knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process seems not to be shared. Not always, and there are “pockets” where you might be making a little headway, you're happy to note. Yet you sometimes get the impression that while the people you work with are very willing to follow direction, to hear what you have to say, and, indeed, might sometimes come up with an idea or an objective or two, they are not especially excited about KM/knowledge services.

The spark isn’t there, and you need to figure out how to get people involved. You want them to be as committed to KD/KS as an organizational objective and you and a few other colleagues are, and they need to understand (or at least recognize) that strategic knowledge is something the organization cannot succeed without.

What should you do? How can you motivate people to get interested in what you and your staff are trying to accomplish with KM/knowledge services? How about a few tips from SMR International’s workbook?

1. WIIFM. Start with the basics. While the more idealistic of us might like to think about our workplace interactions from a “higher-level” perspective (e.g., everyone who works with us is as committed to the successful achievement of the organizational mission as we are), let’s get real here. Most people don’t come to work to “change the world.” They want to do their work – which they hope is interesting and rewarding (at least that’s what they tell the HR staff when they fill in those career-development forms) – but when they get right down to it, they’re not very interested in performing a task that they cannot connect to their own interests and their own advancement.

The answer is obvious: if “what’s-in-it-for-me?” is the driver for these employees, identify some low-hanging fruit (excuse the cliché) and find a KM/knowledge services solution that matches their success in their work with a problem that others have as well. Do you know a staff member who is continually forced to request information or forms from another department, but cannot get into the other department’s database to obtain the information? And is the problem such that people in both departments speak about how much time they waste going back and forth? Put them together, create a tiny working group to look at the problem and come up with a solution. When you’re finished, make sure all parties understand that what they’ve come up with is a KD/KS solution that – using the same types of activities – can be applied to other problems.

2. Convey the costs. Another useful step is to ensure that the KM/knowledge services commitment is part of the planning that takes place for any new endeavor, program, or product development scheme being considered. All of us have experienced the “catch-up” knowledge-sharing crisis that comes about when “what-we’ll-need-to-know” is left out of early discussions. The most well-known of these is the situation where program managers are surprised to learn that research costs for a proposed idea are going to knock a hole in the program budget, to say nothing of time and labor costs when the research team has to start paying to acquire essential information to pass on to the program team. Talk with staff early on to be sure they convey to their customers that research doesn’t come free. At the same time, work with program managers and others in positions of responsibility (and influence) to see if KM/knowledge services requirements cannot be incorporated into basic planning discussions. Talk about costs from the get-go. [And this technique, not so incidentally, sends a very strong message about the value of KM/knowledge services.]

3. MBWA to MBL. Managing-by-walking-about continues to be the knowledge services director’s most effective communications tool, and it comes in pretty handy for performance evaluation as well. But if we really want to get a handle on what people in the organization think about the KD/KS process, listen to what they are saying. In conversations about research issues, tools, techniques, knowledge services staff, or whatever other topics come up, take the initiative and slant the conversation so you – as the knowledge services director – can get a “snapshot” of what’s going on. Do you need more information? Is there a “tone” or an underlying reticence for entering into new programs because of some perceived barrier with respect to strategic knowledge? You can find out by listening, and if you add what you hear to what you observe when you’re walking about, you’re going to come away with more than a snapshot. You’ll have a good picture and, more important, you will now have enough information to take action.

4. Sponsorship. In every consultancy we undertake, Dale Stanley and I look first at the relationships in place in the organization. We particularly focus on senior management and the commitment of people at the senior management level to the KD/KS process. When you meet up with organizational leaders (casually or formally), what’s your take on their understanding of the role of strategic knowledge in the organization? Do they understand the value of strategic knowledge? Are they in tune with the organization as a knowledge culture? Does their understanding of organizational strategy include a reference point for knowledge strategy? If so, does the knowledge strategy match the business strategy?

Dale and I make a point of trying to get enterprise leaders to work with the knowledge services director to, as Dale puts it, “express, model, and reinforce” an organizational commitment to excellence in KM/knowledge services. We try to pin senior management (or even a single senior manager) down not only to saying they support good KM/knowledge services. We look for more, and we encourage them to take on a particular KM/knowledge services tool or technique and spread the word that they are using it (or support its use, if direct use of the tool isn’t germane to their work). Finally, we invite them to put some strength into their commitment, to let the word out that not taking advantage of good KM/knowledge services opportunities will influence their judgment about professional performance.

5. Organizational effectiveness. In the long run, it is organizational effectiveness that we’re going for, and that quest just might be the best motivational tool we bring to the organization. Today’s enterprise leaders are naturally interested in organizational development and in strengthening the organization – after all, it’s what we seem to be working on most of the time, and what we’ve been doing for over forty years now. But the true focus in the 21st century workplace is on organizational effectiveness. Effectiveness is our new organizational purpose. How well is our company (organization, agency) doing what it is supposed to be doing? How successful are we in delivering on our organization’s desired effects? This is a very powerful paradigm in today’s workplace, and knowledge workers know it and relate to it. If we can bring to our people a desire to commit to the effectiveness of the larger organization, their commitment to KD/KS will fall into place.

Strategic Knowledge Services Management: The Essentials

2009-11-20T11:19:00.024-05:00

Here we are, knowledge services directors with responsibility for the management of strategic knowledge in our employing organizations.

Most of the time we're required to deal with standard management functions. Once in a while, though, a real opportunity comes along, and we find ourselves positioned to move the organization forward in terms of knowledge services.

Two recent queries from colleagues got me to thinking about how we might prepare for such an occasion.

One colleague asks what essentials he should have in his basket "as he floats through the KM/knowledge services cloud on a balloon" - as he charmingly puts it. Another colleague notes that he may likely be presented with the opportunity to re-structure his organization's specialized library into the company's knowledge center, a knowledge nexus for all knowledge services-related transactions and functions.

Here are the "essentials" I would aim for:

Extremely high visibility in the organization Make it your business to ensure that everyone understands what strategic knowledge is. Make sure they know that if they have any exercise, task, product development idea, project, or just plain ol' document management issues to deal with or choose from, your strategic knowledge management skills make you to go-to person (or your team if you have several people in your office).

Structural "fit" Position your knowledge services functional unit to ensure it supports units and programs where the action is. You and your staff want to be known for taking on the tough tasks, the hard stuff that no one else - even the subject experts - can figure out for themselves (or who get it wrong). Stay away from the kid stuff. And when you and your team are part of a successful strategic knowledge sharing scenario, promote the hell out of it. Let anybody who gets within ten feet of you know how tough the job was and how great it was to pull it off. And be sure to give credit to the people from outside your unit who worked with your team to make it a successful.

Build your troops Within every department or functional unit in the organization, identify someone to be that unit's designated person who - while focusing on the specific subject or functionality of the unit - has responsibility as the knowledge services point person for the unit. This person doesn't have to be an information, knowledge, or strategic learning "professional" per se, but it should be someone who is assigned when hired to "help" the unit in terms of information, knowledge, or strategic learning (and the person doesn't have to have top-heavy qualifications - just an interest in helping people find what they need to know). Once you've identified the point person for the unit, you and your team take responsibility for and work with unit management in mentoring, advising, and coaching the point person so they learn to direct people to your knowledge center - the organizational knowledge nexus - for any query having to do with finding and learning what they need to know

Leading to...

Knowledge leadership Establish yourself and your team as the strategic learning specialists for the organization. Your goal is to make sure the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process is "built in" to the organizational culture. Talk about what Dale Stanley refers to as the "catalytic" quality of knowledge services, how KD/KS enables you and the people you come in contact with to create knowledge value through KD/KS. Use the language. Get people to talking about strategic knowledge and what strategic knowledge is for each person's workplace. Create the KD/KS buzz in your organization.

Go holistic. Finally (and very appropriate for this week, in which we are observing the 100th anniversary of Peter Drucker's birth), take whatever steps are necessary to see that you and your team support the entire organization. A recent article in Harvard Business Review offers that Mr. Drucker's real contribution lies in his "integrative, holistic thinking." Integrative, holistic thinking works in managing strategic knowledge services, too. Make it enterprise-wide. Don't allow yourself and your staff to become the intellectual "pets" of this or that research unit or function. If that's what's needed, get yourself or a staff member embedded in that unit's projects, on a case-by-case basis. Your job is to be the KD/KS process managers, the knowledge thought leaders, for the entire organization.

Strategic Knowledge - A Letter to SLA's Members

2009-11-10T14:03:00.000-05:00

If I were invited to send a letter to SLA’s members at this particular time in history, here is what I would say:

Dear Colleagues,

This letter is being sent to you a few days before polls open for the historic vote on the name of the association.

I am writing to you today because I will not be in my usual workplace during the 16 November – 9 December voting period. I will vote though, because we live and work in a society that is connected globally. Even though I will be at a remote location – on assignment for a client – SLA is an international association and is managed so that I can vote in the election from wherever I am.

To me, this happy state of affairs exemplifies what this election is about. I know the history of SLA pretty well, and I’ve researched and studied how decisions were made over the past 100 years. Until the last few years, any SLA election required a mail ballot, or the presence of members in a single meeting room.

We don’t have to do that anymore, because we are part of a society in which economic, technological, and sociological advances have eliminated such restrictions. We can all vote, and we can do so from wherever we happen to be at the time the ballot is sent to us electronically. We are a boundaryless organization.

Our membership should be boundaryless as well. The work we do – providing management and service delivery functions for strategic knowledge relating to whatever organization, group, team, task force, or other entity we’re associated with – is critical, essential, and highly desirable. Regardless of our job titles or individual roles in the management of strategic knowledge assets, we are the guardians of strategic knowledge for the organization. We have the decidedly honorable task of ensuring that strategic knowledge assets – however defined and however utilized – are maintained and accessed as well as they can be maintained and accessed. Excellence of quality in strategic knowledge asset management is not an exception with us – it is our fundamental purpose. It is why we do what we do.

With this election, we have the opportunity to take our dedication to excellence to a new level. When we have identified ourselves as strategic knowledge professionals, we will find ourselves recognized and acknowledged for the excellence and dedication with which we manage strategic knowledge assets for our employers. When that happens, an accumulation of professional barriers will be removed and we will be positioned as knowledge thought leaders in our organizations.

Let me share two examples. In one, a speaker at a recent public event described the pollution in two important bodies of water on opposite sides of North America. In his presentation, he spoke strongly about the need for knowledge sharing, for the development of a knowledge strategy through which the leaders of the various industries, academic institutions, government agencies, and other affected societal entities could pool their intellectual efforts, their intellectual infrastructure as it were, and devise a plan for dealing with the pollution and resolving the problem.

In another example, a consulting company specializing in KM, knowledge services, and the building of the organizational knowledge culture is called to a developing country to create a knowledge strategy for a humanitarian body, an organization that seeks to improve the lives of millions of disadvantaged people who simply want – and deserve – to live a better life. The organization exists to help these people, and to achieve organizational effectiveness, a knowledge strategy for managing the vast accumulated body of knowledge related to the organization’s work must be devised. The assignment is to align the organization’s strategic knowledge assets with its organizational purpose.

In both examples, it is knowledge – strategic knowledge specific to the support of the organizational performance strategy – that must be developed, organized, managed, analyzed, delivered, and shared. And the people with responsibility for this management and service delivery function are strategic knowledge professionals.

It will be an honor to cast my vote in what is arguably the most important decision of my professional life. It will also be a deeply humbling experience, because in voting in this election I have the opportunity to be part of moving my and my colleagues’ professional work into a position of influence it has never known before. In both the larger professional world of KM/knowledge services and in society at large, we strategic knowledge professionals will now be perceived and accepted as the knowledge thought leaders we are. Now we will be recognized – at long last – for what we do well. It is a privilege to vote in this election.

Strategic Knowledge - Leading the Knowledge Revolution

2009-11-09T13:33:00.004-05:00

SLA’s Alignment Success Provides the Opportunity of a Lifetime for Knowledge Workers

During the centennial year of the Special Libraries Association, I was honored on several occasions to be asked to speak about the growth and history of SLA. This topic was the subject of SLA at 100: From Working with Knowledge to Building the Knowledge Culture, the association's commemorative history which I was kindly invited to write. The book was published in January, 2009.

As with the book, it seemed important for those presentations to connect SLA's 100-year history with what would be expected of specialized librarianship in the future. Both in the book and in the presentations, one of the points I found myself making related to how close – as an association of professional knowledge workers – SLA came to taking a leadership position only to step back when confronted with the challenges the proposed change would require. Indeed, it was sometimes quite disheartening to research a topic and learn how people so talented and so smart – when they really needed to exercise their leadership – were not able to do so.

I’m put in mind of these several situations, what I’ve come to think of as SLA’s missed opportunities, as we engage in our discussions about the name of the association. I can’t help but wonder if once again we are going to not recognize a very special opportunity that is right in front of us.

So here a few thoughts from a colleague who has been a member of the association for nearly forty years, loving every minute of it and extremely proud and honored to be part of what I’ve always referred to as the most prestigious professional association of knowledge workers in the world. Perhaps these thoughts will be helpful as we think about the significance of SLA's Alignment Project and its impact on our future.

In my work as a management consultant specializing in KM, knowledge services, and the development of the organizational knowledge culture, one of the most valuable goals we seek with our clients is the achievement of organizational effectiveness. Indeed, it’s not all about vision, mission, and values, for in the management community we long ago learned that there is more to it than dealing with the vision-mission-values framework. We must use the organizational vision, mission, and values to move the organization forward.

But what does an organization move forward to?

It’s organizational effectiveness, a phrase that represents a relatively new way of thinking about organizational success. Organizational effectiveness builds on the vision-mission-values construct and incorporates what we used to refer to as organizational development, but it is more, too. Now the emphasis is on what we are going to achieve, whether the organization is going to be effective in its dealings with customers, suppliers, workers, leadership staff, indeed, with anyone affiliated in any way with the organization.

And in SLA’s centenary year – as we also observe the centenary of the birth of Peter Drucker, coming up on November 19 (and also written about here, on October 29) – it seems only appropriate to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Since Mr. Drucker helped us come to terms with the importance of effectiveness, this is a good time to think about how SLA can be more effective as an organization.

We know why the organization exists. We know that SLA is an organization created – in terms of our own vision, mission, and values – to provide education, networking, and advocacy for its members. What we also know – thanks to the excellent and so carefully planned work of the Alignment Project – is that we have a long way to go before we can say that we are effective in doing these things. We’ve tried on many occasions, of course, to move in the direction of organizational effectiveness (even when we weren’t calling it that) and some have been very successful (I’m naturally very proud of the efforts made especially since 1990, with activities like the work of The PREPS Commission and the publication of Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century, possibly the most important publication the association has ever produced).

But we’re not there yet. We’ve not succeeded yet.

I think we’ll succeed when we recognize that we – as members of this association – have the opportunity to go further. Indeed, at this moment we have – if I may be so bold – the opportunity to lead a revolution in the world of knowledge, knowledge management, and knowledge services. Out in the larger world today, there is a new focus on knowledge; we see it in business, in the academy, in research, in the humanities, in government, in the sciences, and just about anywhere else specialist librarians are employed. Indeed, throughout society at large – both locally and globally – we are seeing an important new attention to the value of strategic knowledge and the management of strategic knowledge assets in the success of just about every organization. Equally important, it is an attention that is being recognized as an important and valued element in the management of organizations, of any type of organization.

And who knows more about the management and use of knowledge assets than us? Through our expertise in knowledge development and knowledge sharing – what we like to call KD/KS – we now have the opportunity to take the new focus on strategic knowledge forward, to bring about a revolution in how people think about knowledge and about the role of strategic knowledge in the workplace, and we are the very people who can lead them there. We can connect strategic knowledge to organizational effectiveness.

It’s a role we’ve been thinking about for a long time, from the days when we chose “putting knowledge to work” as the association’s tagline in 1916, all the way up to 1997 when President Judith Field pointed out that we – as leaders in our field – were positioned to transition from a library and information focused profession to one in which attention to knowledge would bring success. “The information age,” Field said in 1997, “has matured and we are seeing the rebirth of our profession and of our association.” Even as early as 1997, we could see that it was time for the association to take the logical next step, to “focus on what we must do to adapt to the knowledge culture…”

Well of course.

And now – 12 years later – the Alignment Project has given us the research, the background, and the authority of evidence-based study to establish our effectiveness. We will begin with our name, and with our new name and our new “game” we will go even further, ever upward and onward. We can no longer be the librarians of the past. We must now be the knowledge thought leaders – the strategic knowledge professionals – of the future. We will build on our past, of course, and we will combine our finest and most valuable attributes as librarians with the strengths and competencies of others who aspire to join us.

And it will be in doing this – in all of us coming together and combining the best of what we do – that we will lead society’s knowledge revolution.

What a grand and glorious future we will have! Let’s not let it slip away from us. We’re too good at what we do to slide, once again, into the background.

Our entire society is moving into a magnificent new world of strategic knowledge. Let’s be its leaders.

[SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge to Work to Building the Knowledge Culture is available through SLA. Draft versions of the sections relating specifically to SLA's future – the two concluding chapters and the Epilogue – can be found at "The Knowledge Culture" at SMRShare, our company’s knowledge capture site. The text of the presentation on the history of SLA is at "SLA at 100," also at SMRShare.]

Learning & Connecting: 3 Tips for Using Social Media Networking

2009-11-07T08:58:00.011-05:00

SMR International's Spot-On Seminars continued on Friday, November 6 with the topic "Learning & Connecting: 3 Tips for Using Social Media Networking" an online conversation with Dale Stanley, Cindy Hill, and Guy St. Clair.

Dale facilitated the discussion, beginning with an overview of SMR's Spot-On Seminars, conversations designed to provide colleagues the opportunity to communicate, share, and converse on topics most germane and relevant to information and knowledge professionals. He set the context for the discussion with a few questions:

Why all the buzz about social networking?
How do managers with responsibility for strategic knowledge management and service delivery handle the "tools vs. toys" controversy?
How can knowledge services professionals enhance the learning and collaboration experiences of their colleagues using social networking tools?

Guy spoke about the concept of knowledge services, and how knowledge services contributes to the effectiveness and success of the larger organization. In merging information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, knowledge services enables strengthened knowledge asset management and accelerated innovation and takes advantage of the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process. Not surprisingly, social media networking is ideal for connecting people as they seek to share what they've learned and/or developed.

Cindy referred to the five techniques for using social media identified by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing - discussed in a previous post). Building on Cindy's comments, Guy offered the first tip for the seminar. As Guy describes it, the biggest challenge in learning and connecting with social media networking is to recognize that different media are required by different populations, with learning styles, generational interests and differences, and value-driven purpose all coming into play as people think about learning what they need to know. So Guy's suggestion is that in attempting to set up a framework for learning and connecting, the strategic knowledge professional must - returning to Li and Bernoff - listen carefully to what each of these different populations requires.

Cindy's tip for learning and connecting suggested three practical steps for moving social networking media forward in the workplace:

engage with people in the ways they're already engaging
explore through manageable pilot experiments
provide multimedia experiences

For each of these, information and knowledge services professionals can look around and identify examples at hand, as when colleagues engage successfully in web-based conference calls (with the current
meeting presenting an immediate example), using total learning products, or holding meetings or learning sessions in virtual worlds.

Dale's tip had to do with how we implement the use of social networking media, and he too had a three-part approach: partnering, planning, and publicizing. He pointed out that when implementing social networking tools, new relationships occur, particularly in terms of subject matter experts and librarians coming together with IT specialists to achieve a goal. Dale recommends considering such a relationship a "partnership," moving beyond the provider/consumer model.

As for planning, the knowledge professional's primary responsibility is to clarify outcomes and deliverables, It's very easy to be swayed by the "coolness" of a new tool, but everybody involved - the knowledge professional, the planning team, the partners, and the audience - all have to see the effort in terms of the desired effect. Publicizing - including training and rollout - is too often left as an afterthought and not given serious attention until too late in the life of the project. Dale pointed out how it is only natural to think of social media applications as intuitive and easy to use, expected to just spread virally throughout the organization. In fact, making such assumptions can be a mistake, and the best way to ensure sufficient uptake by users is to address the existing - and the desired - knowledge sharing culture of the organization and seek ways to take advantage of and/or change the culture so that social media networking can become part of the culture.

Participants in the seminar continued the discussion, with comments posted in the chat as well as shared verbally. Cindy commented that the session itself is a good example of how social media networking can be used, with several thoughts and responses shared at the same time. Attendees discussed how some research is beginning to show that social media is being embraced by much wider populations than previously thought, with the idea that social tools are the domain of younger generations now being disproved to some extent (the average age of Twitter users is much older than most people expect). The group also discussed the idea of pilots, with consideration being given to perhaps selecting different pilot programs for different populations.

Another comment from the group had to do with the seemingly large number of social networking tools available, and how people in different workplace settings choose what to work with and what to leave alone. Once participant lamented the fact that there are not more aggregation tools for all the different media available, and expressed the concern of many managers that too many tools and applications might impede workflow rather than improve it. Finally, it was agreed that there is no "final" choosing point with respect to social tools. Social media networking and the tools we use are continually evolving, and at some point we just have to make a choice - "put a stake in the ground," as one attendee put it.

Slides used in the Spot-On Seminar are at SMRShare.

The next SMR is tentatively scheduled for Friday, December 11, 2009 at 4:00 PM ET. Contact smrknowledge@gmail.com to be added to the mailing list, or check for a meeting notice on LinkedIn at the SMR International Spot-On Seminar Discussion Group and on Twitter (check #SMRSpotOn).

Strategic Knowledge - What's Being Taught

2009-11-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

Nancy Gershenfeld at the UWiSchool is Putting it Together

In the latest e-Profile from SMR International, Marcie Stone interviews Nancy Gershenfeld, Senior Lecturer at The Information School at the University of Washington.

Stone’s conversations with Gershenfeld bring to light several noteworthy connections between LIS graduate learning and the requirements of employers seeking to operate in our continually evolving knowledge culture.

And the connections are perhaps not all that surprising, when you review what’s going on at the iSchools (as they are popularly known). There’s a welcome and very strong philosophy behind the work of these institutions as they seek to learn more about the relationship between information, people, and technology and connect all they learn with the strategic learning “piece” of knowledge services. With the good work being done in the iSchools, the future for strategic knowledge professionals seems bright indeed.

And who better, over in the education wing, to lead the charge than an experienced veteran of the corporate world, a knowledge thought leader who now has a new role, helping to design the evolving curriculum for people who will be doing this work?

As it happens, Gershenfeld’s career – as Stone makes clear – has paralleled the emergence of the new corporate knowledge culture. Having worked as an information manager, an online database trainer, a litigation support database specialist, and as a consultant, Gershenfeld went to Microsoft. Working in the company’s Information Services operation, Gershenfeld was able to acquire particularly unique qualifications for teaching graduate students pursuing the MSLS and related degrees. In Stone’s essay, which with a nod to Stephen Sondheim is titled “Putting it Together – Creating New Leaders for the Knowledge Culture,” it becomes evident early on that Gershenfeld is a person who attracts people who want to learn about how to lead in the new knowledge environment. As for Gershenfeld, she delights in bringing them together with the expectations, requirements, and, yes, even the sometimes difficult challenges of the business world. Having made that point, she then emphasizes to her students the need for businesslike management in knowledge services.

At the same time, Gershenfeld is careful to recognize that all concepts do not transfer automatically from one management arena to another. Gershenfeld gives considerable attention – as Stone puts it – to ensuring that students understand the value of striking a workable balance. If knowledge services as an operational function is going to perform as a strategic partner with the many and varied other perspectives at play in the corporation, balance will be key. The benefit of maintaining this balance is found in the working relationships that come about between strategic knowledge professionals and the affiliates and colleagues who benefit from the services they provide. It is, as Stone points out, an important step in identifying and cultivating the next generation of leaders for the profession.

Read “Putting it Together – Creating New Leaders for the Knowledge Culture” here at the SMR Site. You can also see this e-Profile at SMRShare, SMR International’s knowledge capture site.

Strategic Knowledge - Learning Together

2009-11-03T19:53:00.002-05:00

New Roles and New Responsibilities for Strategic Knowledge Workers

Regardless of what happens over the next month, knowledge services professionals have a new and commanding description of their work and their function in the workplace.

As noted here on October 18, strategic knowledge has entered the professional lexicon. As a phrase, strategic knowledge correctly depicts the thing we work with. It's not an artifact (a book or a journal article) or content (digitized or otherwise). It's not even a person or group of people who come together to do some work, such as a community of practice, a working group, or an individual’s interactions with a co-worker. Regardless of how we get it, strategic knowledge is what we develop and share, and when we undertake knowledge development and knowledge sharing – what we like to call “KD/KS” – our employing organizations succeed. It's knowledge, it's strategic, and we are the strategic knowledge professionals who make it work.

But what about you? Do you have a clear understanding of your roles and responsibilities as a strategic knowledge professional? Do you know what your organization expects of you (and your information center) for developing, managing, and sharing your company’s most valuable knowledge assets?

Here’s your chance to find out. You’ve heard all the questions… Or you’ve asked them yourself: “What is strategic knowledge?” “Why should I learn more about it?” “What’s the pay-off for me?”

Now we have the answers for you.

In January, just before SLA’s Leadership Summit in St. Louis MO, SLA’s Click U and SMR International are continuing their strategic alliance by presenting two courses aimed at taking the mystery out of working with KM, knowledge services, and participating in the knowledge culture. As we transition to our critical new roles and new responsibilities as strategic knowledge professionals, we want to keep up, to develop new competencies and skills on the foundations of our already well-developed professionalism.

That’s what these courses are all about. They have been specially chosen and designed to bring KM and knowledge services to specialist librarians who cannot travel to SLA’s Annual Conference (or who – during the busy conference week – just can’t find the time to get involved in professional development activities).

The courses are Fundamentals of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services, offered on Tuesday 26 January 2010 from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT and The Knowledge Audit, offered on Wednesday 27 January 2010, also from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT. Both courses will be taught at the St. Louis Station Marriott Hotel in St. Louis MO (click on the titles for more information and registration information).

In these courses, you’ll work with Guy St. Clair, Cindy Hill, and Dale Stanley as they lead you through KM/knowledge services concepts and show you how to undertake an inventory of your organization’s intellectual infrastructure. These are in-person, face-to-face courses, team taught by three recognized strategic knowledge specialists, people you already know (you’ve probably participated with them in SMR International’s Spot-On Seminars, or had another course with them). Here’s your chance to work directly with Cindy and Dale and Guy, who will give you the tools you need to succeed as a strategic knowledge professional. With what you learn, you’ll be able to go back to your workplace and collaborate with your management to build a knowledge strategy that matches the company’s business strategy. It’s a win-win situation for you.

This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Don’t pass it up. Sign up now and position yourself and your knowledge services workplace for enterprise-wide success. Whether you have management and service-delivery responsibility for a specialized library, an information center, a records and information management department, corporate archives, or any other knowledge-focused operation, these courses will provide you with what you need to guarantee the effectiveness of your work.

Strategic Knowledge - Defining Moments

2009-10-29T23:03:00.020-04:00

[The following is an abridged version of an essay prepared by SMR International President Guy St. Clair in observance of the centenary of Peter F. Drucker's birth. The full essay is published here, at the SMR International site and at SMRShare, the company's knowledge capture site.]

The Drucker Centenary Approaches:
Developing, Managing, and Sharing Strategic Knowledge

For many who work with strategic knowledge, the upcoming Drucker Centenary carries with it something akin to confirmation or affirmation. Considering Mr. Drucker's contributions, the observances focused around 19 November acknowledge that we are ready to move to a knowledge society. For many of us, we can't help but be grateful that - as a society - we're getting beyond the affectation of ignorance that seemed to characterize such a large chunk of our recent past.

As we think about what is available to us as citizens, the application of knowledge services becomes something of a lightning rod for us. In today's workplace, strategic knowledge as a construct provides us with the opportunity to clear out what no longer works (even if it worked in the past), to move forward in taking advantage of the innumerable opportunities we have for knowledge development and knowledge sharing (what some of us refer to as "KD/KS"), and to find in the effective management of strategic knowledge the bridge to our shared culture as a knowledge society.

Such are the thoughts that come to mind after an evening with colleagues in The Drucker Society of New York, for meeting with us were Frances Hesselbein, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management), and Bruce Rosenstein, author of Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker's Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life.

As might be expected from these two expert storytellers, the evening became one of shared experiences (not only from the two of them, but from audience members as well) and ideas flowed freely. Indeed, it would be extremely gratifying to capture all that was discussed but highlights must suffice. And providing highlights is not such a difficult task, since Lee Igel, the group's leader, used the concept of "defining moments" - those times or events in our lives that guided us to our association with Peter Drucker - to help us focus our thoughts.

Hesselbein went back to her childhood to describe her defining moment, telling about how she had determined from her grandmother's good influence that there is no place in our society (or in the workplace) for prejudice and exclusion. Rosenstein chose as his experience the time when, as he worked toward his book about Drucker's influence, Drucker used the phrase "living in more than one world," providing Rosenstein the concept he knew he wanted to convey.

We all have these moments. For some, the defining moment comes when - in a secure profession or field of work, perhaps - there's a desire to do more, to put one's self on the line and seek work in which one either supports organizational effectiveness or finds one's self on the street looking for a job! And, yes, we're speaking personally here, for as a young librarian my defining moment came when I decided that I wanted to be accountable for my work. The positions in which I had been employed up to that time were not asking enough of me, and I wanted very much to be judged for my professional performance. At about the same time, something led me to specialized librarianship, where my work would either be part of organizational success or I wouldn't have a job. It was that simple, my defining moment, and it led me down paths I never even knew existed. And, as can be inferred, to a focus on the role of management, individual competencies, and, yes, the influence of a philosophy like that of Peter Drucker's, as we seek to achieve organizational effectiveness.

So what we are experiencing - as we think about what Drucker was leading us to - turns out to be something of an affirmation after all, doesn't it? For those of us looking to understand the place of strategic knowledge in our lives - and our professional roles in developing, managing, and sharing strategic knowledge - it is something of a pleasure to be so affirmed and to learn to recognize that defining moments that lead us onward and upward.

Hill - St. Clair - Stanley: Free SMR Int'l Spot-On Seminar on Social Networking

2009-10-28T17:53:00.002-04:00

Learning and Connecting through Social Networking Media

Come join Guy St. Clair, of SMR International, Cindy Hill of Hill Info Consulting Group, and Dale Stanley of Gilead Sciences for the next SMR International Knowledge Services Spot-On Seminar.

This time, the topic is technology and how we’re using social networking media in our work:: "Learning and Connecting through Social Networking Media – A Conversation with Cindy Hill, Dale Stanley, and Guy St. Clair."

We’ll meet on Friday, 6 November, from 4:00 – 5:00 PM ET (one of our colleagues has commented that these seminars are a really nice way to wrap up a busy week at work, and we agree).

The Webinar is free (but limited to the first 50 people who register).

Register by sending an e-mail with the subject Spot-On Seminar in the subject line to smrknowledgeatverizondotnet. All registered participants will receive a confirmation notice.

At SMR International we characterize knowledge services as the management and service delivery methodology for "putting KM to work." Come join us as we share more secrets about the practical side of KM.

[And note that this subject is also being covered in depth in the course Hill and Stanley and St. Clair are teaching for Click U. The course is "Using Technology: Connecting People with Knowledge," and the course begins November 2. Registration is here and more details are here. We invite you join us in the Click U course as well.]

Using Technology: Connecting People with Knowledge

2009-10-22T06:08:00.002-04:00

Colleagues in the wider management community are invited to register now – or register staff – for the next course in the SLA Click U Certificate Program in KM/Knowledge Services. If you are interested in the connection between technology and knowledge services delivery – or if you have staff who are – this is the course to take.

Beginning Monday, November 2, Using Technology: Connecting People with Knowledge will explore the relationship between technology and knowledge.

Recognizing that technology enables knowledge management and knowledge services, our goal is to examine how course participants can strengthen the role of knowledge development and knowledge sharing (KD/KS) in the larger organization and establish KD/KS as the foundation of organizational effectiveness. The critical result is the development and on-going implementation of an enterprise-wide knowledge culture supporting the organizational vision, mission, and values. In this course, we identify, develop, and learn how to obtain the support of all organizational knowledge stakeholders in managing the relationship between technology and knowledge.

There are five course meetings, all online: three Monday lectures (November 2, 9, and 16) and a live discussion with a Guest Participant on Thursday, October 12. A final course meeting, our course wrap-up and thematic discussion, will be held on Thursday, November 19. All programs begin at 3:00 PM EDT, and recordings of all meetings are available for re-play immediately following each meeting (an added bonus for international participants located in different time zones).

I am the course instructor, and Dale Stanley and Cindy Hill teach with me. Both Cindy and Dale are well known to SMR Int’l colleagues, as we three join together in SMR’s Spot-On Seminars, monthly online conversations about strategic knowledge, specialized librarianship, and other topics of interest to knowledge workers.

Please join us. Also, please note that participation in all certificate courses is not required and any of these courses can be taken individually (although there is considerable financial incentive for joining the certificate program). For more information about SLA’s Click U courses, go here . Membership in SLA is not required for participation, so feel free to share this message with others interested in learning more about the connection between technology and knowledge.

Strategic Knowledge Professionals

2009-10-18T10:29:00.025-04:00

Finally a Name For All of Us

While many SMR International clients and other readers are not affiliated with specialized librarianship, many others are, and the current activity relating to the recommended new name for the Special Libraries Association (SLA) offers a remarkable naming opportunity for all knowledge workers.

SLA has long been recognized as the preeminent international professional association for specialist librarians and other information professionals. For a decade or more SLA has struggled with how to broaden its membership base and provide a professional "home" for people engaged in knowledge work, regardless of job titles and departmental affiliations. The many people who work with information, knowledge, and strategic learning have until now not had a single organization to meet their networking, professional development, and advocacy needs. SLA has tried many times to assume this role, but its name - with its difficult construct that confuses "special" and "libraries" equally - has excluded many knowledge workers who require an association to support them in their work.

Now things have changed and SLA has found a solution. Recognizing the last decade's attention to knowledge management, knowledge services, and the role of knowledge professionals as knowledge thought leaders - both in developing organizational knowledge strategy and in building the organizational knowledge culture - SLA's leadership recommends that the association be known as an organization for strategic knowledge professionals.

In taking this step, SLA now gives the professional knowledge worker the opportunity to be established as the "go-to" person for any interaction having to do with information, knowledge, or strategic learning, regardless of how their operational business unit is designated or what the individual job title is. Indeed, SLA has made it clear that in seeking the new name, it is not seeking to change job titles or "take anything away" from current members and their working relationships. It is a name change for the organization that is being recommended, not for individuals or their professional roles.

From a different perspective, though, what is being offered by SLA is not just a name change for one organization. It is an important next step in how we think about knowledge, KM, and knowledge services.The new phrase takes the attention from any single or particular branch of knowledge work and moves us to that larger realm in which many, many knowledge workers are employed . Whatever they are called in their workplace (according to some sources, SLA members have more than 2,000 job titles!), being affiliated with the newly christened field we'll call strategic knowledge finally gives knowledge workers an important new function in the workplace. Now, without question or explanation, the strategic knowledge professional automatically becomes that "go-to" person for questions and policy having to do with organizational information, knowledge, and strategic learning.

It makes so much sense. We all know what the words mean, and if we don't, SLA Past President Steven Abrams offers guidance in his essay on the SLA name change:

Strategic: "highly important to or an integral part of a strategy or plan of action"
Knowledge: "The sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned"
Professional: "A skilled practitioner; an expert."

So how does one know if they are working as a strategic knowledge professional? How might the phrase apply in the workplace? Mary Ellen Bates, just elected to SLA's Board of Directors, provides a useful picture: "I know that I have to see myself," Bates writes, "as someone who looks strategically at my clients' information needs, who is able to provide added analysis to my research, and who is always staying on the leading edge of the information industry. I expect to lead my clients' expectations of what I can do; I'm not just responding to what they ask for."

Dan Trefethen, too, helps us out. Trefethen, a long-time member of SLA, a former Board of Directors member, and now just elected again to the board, this time as the association's Treasurer, takes a singularly clear-cut approach to how we can think about our work.

"I also think that 'strategic knowledge' can be a canny phrase for us," Trefethen says. "Let me illustrate that by comparing it to what it isn't: it isn't common knowledge. 'Common knowledge' is a more well-known phrase, and it used to be a staple of our service when I first began my career. We called it ready reference. Now, it is all available for free on the Internet. At least it is PERCEIVED to be free, by those who employ us. This means we must differentiate ourselves from the free Internet. One way is to use an evocative term that moves away from language that implies 'free'.

"Unfortunately," Trefethen continues, "'information' is a bit compromised for our purposes, in my opinion. 'Information' is closely associated now with software engineers and, well, Information Technology. People also think 'information wants to be free,' the paradigm we are trying to get beyond. 'Knowledge' has always worked well for us. It's been in [the SLA] motto from the beginning, putting knowledge to work. It consists of valued intelligence and wisdom, not just facts. I believe this is the path we can successfully pursue, and I think 'strategic knowledge' is a phrase that can work for us."

Well said. And while I'm not sure Abram and Bates and Trefethen were suggesting that their association adopt phraseology that would translate into a descriptor for an entire profession (although, knowing them, they probably were), their cogent thoughts lead to a useful pathway in that direction.

At SMR International, we too - not surprisingly - have our own take on the the role of the strategic knowledge professional. Using other phraseology of course, we have discussed the subject often over the years, both with clients and colleagues, and - truth to tell - in almost any other conversation about building strong relationships between knowledge workers and management. Especially when the focus is on knowledge services and we are seeking to describe the function of knowledge services in developing and sustaining a corporate knowledge culture, there have been many, many conversations about linking knowledge workers to organizational success. We even found ourselves developing our own slide show, just to try to clear things up when we needed to speak about these things. Now, with the new phrase re-naming what we used to refer to as the "knowledge services professional," the story make a lot more sense. And it will make sense to organizational managers and enterprise leaders.

Examples abound, and five come immediately to mind, all of which (and many others of course) can be used to illustrate the wide range of professional services provided in a strategic knowledge environment:

the archives management unit of an international scientific research organization
the corporate records and information management department of an established business, a real estate management firm, say, or a family-owned insurance agency
the research management operation in a large philanthropic organization
a members' library in a private club or trade association
a library in a law firm

In each of these examples, the organization has a specific mission and each organization utilizes knowledge services to support the achievement of that mission. In doing so, each organization functions as a knowledge culture because knowledge development and knowledge sharing, the famous "KD/KS" of knowledge services, connects the organization's knowledge strategy directly to the organization's business or mission strategy. And in each situation the management and service delivery function of the knowledge services business unit is not constrained by what it is called, nor are the knowledge services director and the strategic knowledge staff constrained by job titles. They use what works in the specific, individual environment, yet each business unit connects with strategic knowledge for the larger organization and each strategic knowledge professional supports and sustains the larger organization as a knowledge culture.

And to prove it works, here's an exercise: let's start using the term "strategic knowledge" to describe that thing we work with. It's not an artifact (a book or a journal article) or content (digitized or otherwise). It's not even a person or group of people "containing" (excuse me) the content, such as a community of practice or a working group or even the guy in the next cubicle. Regardless of how we get it, it is what we develop and share. Job titles and business unit functions don't matter, and by applying KD/KS in the workplace, our employing organizations succeed. It's knowledge, it's strategic, and strategic knowledge professionals put it to work.

Thank goodness we now know what to call it.

Groundswell in KM/Knowledge Services

2009-10-13T14:27:00.002-04:00

Very impressed with the thinking of Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff and the concept they identify as "groundswell." In fact, it's the name of their book from last year (Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies). Published by Harvard Business Press, the book puts forward ideas (and explanations) about how leaders in companies and organizations (including ourselves as knowledge thought leaders) must think about the social media "groundswell" that seems to be affecting the way all of us do business and interact with one another. And it's that interaction that companies and organizations must take note of.

Li and Bernoff define groundswell as “a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”And - not to put too fine a point on it - they make it clear that we are nowhere near realizing the potential of this trend. We're not even near how we are going to be applying it in the workplace (although Li and Bernoff offer some mighty useful case studies to demonstrate how some companies and organizations are succeeding in incorporating groundswell into their overall management structure).

Naturally, for me I want to take the groundswell concept into our work, into the development of knowledge strategy and the alignment of knowledge strategy with the company's business strategy. Then I want to follow the groundswell along as I see things change - for the better, of course.

For some, the groundswell idea might seem like just one more practical management technique in a new dress, but I don't think so. The different social media we're all dealing with - combined with the whole framework of network value analysis - gives us incredibly fine opportunities for moving beyond what we've been doing in the management arena in the past. It's a totally new management environment, and. I'm excited about it. I'm not sure I want to just sit back and watch.

So how might we use some of Li and Bernoff's approach in the KM/knowledge services workplace?

I start with something the authors refer to as their POST method (and, yes, they're as caught up in acronyms as all the rest of us!). Here's what you get when you think about transitioning POST over into KM/knowledge services:

People: What are your customers ready for? Li and Bernoff recommend creating a customer profile and asking yourself questions like “How will your customers engage, based on what they are already doing.” But be careful. They also caution about making guesses about what might work and what won’t.
Objectives: What are your goals? Do you want people to come to you for consultations, for help-desk type queries, for in-depth research? What is your knowledge services business unit there for? Do you want to use the groundswell to help your own team work more efficiently? effectively? (see below for Li and Bernoff's “most powerful objectives”)
Strategy: How do you want relationships with your customers to change? Is it all really about change management? Probably, but before you can manage change, you need strategy. It's required up front for planning changes. And of course strategy is also required for measuring desired changes once the strategy is under way.
Technology: What applications should you build? Decide first on people, objectives, and strategy and then you can move on to determining whether you’re going to be looking at blogs, wikis, social networks, etc. (or whatever else has just come down the pike).

Then Li and Bernoff give us what they characterize as their five “most powerful objectives”:

Listening – use the groundswell for research and for better understanding users’ needs
Talking – use the groundswell for spreading messages about your business unit
Energizing – find your most enthusiastic customers (and sponsors) and use groundswell to “supercharge” world of mouth
Supporting – set up groundswell tools to help customers support each other (generally requires some support resources and customers who have an affinity for working and speaking with one another)
Embracing – “integrate customers into the way the business works, including their help in designing products." This is the most challenging of the five goals and, as Li and Bernoff acknowledge, best suited to companies that have already succeeded with the other four goals.

It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? As we look at all the variations we're dealing with in KM/knowledge services, our concerns with leadership, our need to measure and develop metrics, our attempts to strengthen the relationship between technology and knowledge, and our goal of devising a workable knowledge strategy for the larger organization so we can accomplish all this, it's good to have this useful concept to think about. Congratulations (and thanks) to Li and Bernoff for introducing us to the "groundswell."

Effective Executive? CKO? Knowledge Services Director?

2009-10-07T18:14:00.000-04:00

Finding myself situated between two very linked courses, I'm surprised at how much of my focus these days is on how we perform in positions of leadership in the organizations where we're employed. Just completed teaching - with my colleague Dale Stanley - a course in measurement and metrics for knowledge services, and next Tuesday we move on to The Knowledge Director: Competencies and Skills.

So it makes a certain kind of sense to be thinking about what some of our responsibilities are, if we're employed in a management position. As managers, we have responsibility both for supervising the knowledge services business unit and for establishing metrics about how well service delivery is implemented. It's a big job.

When I'm thinking about these things, quite naturally I take a look at some of the Drucker ideas I have been exposed to and come to the conclusion that these two directions are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are very much bound together, and the best thing I can find to demonstrate how measurement and management link up in the knowledge services environment is Drucker's comments about decision-making (and coincidentally the excerpt included in today's page of The Daily Drucker just happens to be given over to describing the elements of the decision process). The connecting link - from my perspective - has to do with two concepts that form the baseline for decision-making and at the same time lead to that goal all executives strive for. The first is to know when a decision is necessary. The second is to build implementation and effectiveness into the decision-making process.

As effective executives, knowledge leaders recognize that measuring performance and the connecting knowledge strategy and business strategy are critical factors in their list of criteria for success. Whether they are designated - as continues to be the case in some few companies and organizations - as the company's "chief knowledge officer" or whether they are knowledge professionals with management and service delivery responsibility for a single knowledge-focused business unit, knowledge managers recognize that they must follow Drucker's first rule: know when a decision is required. For many of us, beauty of our academic learning leads us to make attempts to "move forward," to see if we can't do something better, just because we can visualize just - as the old phrase has it - "how good it can be." But judgment and caution are sometimes called for, not to inhibit our desire for innovation but to determine if the situation - the predicament we've identified - requires a decision at this point in time.

So the first question to ask, if the knowledge services director is going to be effective, is simply this: "Is the decision necessary?" If it is, and if we go through the decision-making process (Drucker recommends that we define the problem carefully, then think through what the right decision would be, and understand that some level of compromise might be necessary), we move on to planning out how we will implement the decision and how we will determine the decision's effectiveness - how we'll measure its success.

It all seems pretty clear-cut, doesn't it? I wonder if we can come up with a scenario or two that demonstrates how we put Drucker's decision-making "elements" into practice in the KM/knowledge services workplace. Examples and experiences are welcome.

Professional Development: Skills and Competencies for the Knowledge Director

2009-10-04T09:47:00.004-04:00

Knowledge professionals with management and service delivery responsibility for KM/knowledge services should sign up now for KMKS 12: The Knowledge Director: Competencies and Skills, beginning October 13. If you aspire to be recognized for your management of a knowledge services business unit (whether it is a specialized library, information center, or any other parallel function with a knowledge services focus), you should focus on the required skills and competencies. This course enables you to do just that.

Open to both SLA members and non-members, full information and registration information are available here.

There are five course meetings, all online: three Monday lectures (October 13, 19, and 26) and a live discussion among participants on Wednesday, October 21.Guy St. Clair, working with Dale Stanley, is the instructor for the course, and you can hear Dale and Guy talk about the course here.

For the October 21st meeting, Cynthia V. Hill, SLA Past President (and currently pictured on the cover of the current Information Outlook) will be the Guest Participant for the course.

A final meeting, the course wrap-up and thematic discussion, will be held on Thursday, October 29.

All programs begin at 3:00 PM ET, and recordings of all meetings are available for re-play immediately following each meeting (an added bonus for international participants located in different time zones).

Come join us. And remember that membership in SLA is not required for taking this course, so feel free to share this message with others interested in learning more about management and service delivery from the knowledge director’s perspective. All knowledge workers are welcome.

SMR Spot-On Seminar: Discussing the Knowledge Thought Leader

2009-10-03T09:03:00.060-04:00

On Friday, October 2, 2009, SMR International offered its second Spot-On Seminar. These free seminars - open to all - are designed to give knowledge workers the opportunity to discuss issues relating to information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning in a relaxed online environment. Content is not published, and participants converse with one another without concern about proprietary or confidentiality restrictions.

"The Knowledge Thought Leader - Stepping Up and Stepping Out - 3 Tips for Knowledge Leadership - A Conversation with Cindy Hill, Dale Stanley, and Guy St. Clair" was the published theme for the October 2 Spot-On Seminar. Cindy Hill facilitated the discussion.

In presenting their 3 tips, Cindy spoke about the value of volunteering, Guy conveyed his thoughts about how knowledge thought leaders can be influential in their organizations, and Dale gave emphasis to the critical importance of good communication.

Participants then offered a variety of tips of their own for taking a leadership role in managing knowledge services and as the seminar ended, the group gave its attention to defining KM.

There was reference to the recent definition from David Snowden that begins with Davenport and Prusak’s definition of knowledge: “a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, process, practices, and norms.”

Seminar participants then commented on Prusak’s definition of KM: “working with knowledge.”

In his post, Snowden comments: "While the [Davenport and Prusak] definition has stood the test of time it is focused on, and would only be fully understood by, someone with experience of knowledge management. Given the overall levels of cynicism about knowledge management, together with issues of initiative fatigue and excessive communication, it is proposed that a simpler and more common place definition be adopted together with some clearly business orientated guiding principles."

Snowden then offers his first draft for a definition of KM:

The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programs.

For Snowden, the definition is built on four guiding principles:

All projects will be clearly linked to operational and strategic goals
As far as possible the approach adopted will be to stimulate local activity rather than impose central solutions
Co-ordination and distribution of learning will focus on allowing adaptation of good practice to the local context
Management of the KM function will be based on a small centralized core,with a wider distributed network.

The next SMR International Spot-On Seminar is scheduled for November 6 (topic to be announced). To be added to the notification list, send contact information to SMR International. Slides used in the SMR Spot-On Seminar can be accessed at SMRShare.

The Peter Drucker - Ken Burns Connection

2009-09-29T08:04:00.006-04:00

Now deep into Ken Burns' magnificent film on the American national parks, I keep thinking - along with the purely visceral pleasures of viewing some of the most beautiful photography I've ever seen - that there is a big, big message here for us knowledge workers. Of course Burns and his team meant for the film to be enlightening as well as entertaining, but as I think about some of our field's work with the concept of the knowledge culture, I'm wondering if there isn't a natural link here between what Burns is trying to do and what we're trying to do.

And I wonder if we shouldn't take it further. Should we go beyond our stated goal of creating a knowledge culture in the workplace to seeking a knowledge society? Perhaps it would be useful to start thinking about how we can take knowledge development and, especially, knowledge sharing - what we like to call "KD/KS" - out of the workplace into society at large.

It isn't such a far-fetched idea. One colleague in a country in the Middle East describes how his country's leadership is seeking to skip quickly over the usual steps to national development from its past to its future (and especially in the country's educational framework). In their work, the leaders are seeking through a variety of mechanisms and activities to establish that the country exists as and functions as a knowledge society. In fact, the country's leaders use that very phrase to describe what they are attempting to do.

But how does it all get managed? What steps can we take to enable a knowledge society?

Obviously, since we are so successful with media management here in the United States, we might think about how we use the media. There's no question but that spectacular presentations like Ken Burns' current film on television - "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" - have an impact. And watching it, I would challenge anyone to deny that the knowledge being shared is too "removed" or too "historical" to give us ideas about how to deal with some of the questions challenging our own society. It's through KD/KS at this level that we become a knowledge society.

How so?

In a recent interview with Doris Drucker, Peter Drucker's wife of almost 70 years and an amazingly accomplished person in her own right, Mrs. Drucker made it clear that the key to Peter Drucker's success as a thinker and as a leader had much to do with his skill in listening to what others had to say, And with learning about and understanding history. Even though his own field of expertise was management science his major focus was learning from history, especially from American history. And from hearing what others have to say.

So it is with Ken Burns' film. And others like it. To hear the facts of history - the photographs, the quotations - and at the same time take in the commentary from the impressively informed people brought in to share with us and for us their knowledge and their personal interpretations of this splendid history.

I've commented before about the role of generosity in Drucker's management teachings. Although not usually characterized as such, it's clear that a "generous spirit" (as it's sometimes called) is a critical element in the management process. So it is with building a knowledge culture and as we do so, to move our social framework to its proper function of enabling a knowledge society. Generosity of spirit is the critical essential of the KD/KS process. Perhaps that generosity of spirit can be re-focused - if Ken Burns' films are any example - into building a knowledge culture and a knowledge society.

Free Seminar: Want to be a Knowledge Thought Leader?

2009-09-23T12:35:00.016-04:00

Sign up now for the next SMR International Spot-On Seminar:

"The Knowledge Thought Leader: Stepping Up & Stepping Out - A Conversation with Cindy Hill, Dale Stanley, and Guy St. Clair."

The Webinar is free and limited to the first 50 people who register.

The date is Friday, 2 October at 4:00 PM ET.

Register by sending an e-mail with the subject: Spot-On Seminar in the subject line to smrknowledgeatverizondotnet. Please include your telephone number and time zone.

All registered participants will receive a confirmation notice.

At SMR International we characterize knowledge services as the management and service delivery methodology for "putting KM to work." Come join us as we share more secrets about the practical side of KM.

KM/Knowledge Services at Work: Ken Winter at VDOT

2009-09-17T12:15:00.004-04:00

Conversations with colleagues continue to convince me that the underlying strengths of KM/knowledge services is its focus on change management and communication. We don't specifically teach courses or write books on these two critical elements in the KM/knowledge services "package," but it seems that every time I'm thinking about the KM - knowledge services - knowledge culture continuum, my thoughts always seem to come back to dealing with change and communicating the value of the knowledge development/knowledge services (KD/KS) process.

Case in point: The content in SMR International's newest e-Profile, just published today. Ken Winter at VDOT: KM/Knowledge Services = Innovation, Opportunity, and Influence has the themes of change and communication running throughout, and it's not hard to see why. Massive change is taking place throughout society (excuse the cliche), and there are few places where change is more obvious (or scarier) than in the transportation industry.

Ken Winter's work at the Virginia Department of Transportation - along with that of his boss, Maureen Hammer, who manages the agency's KM Division - is clearly directed at dealing with change, and with communicating with the scientists, engineers, and even the politicians about how knowledge is used to strengthen the agency and contribute to its efforts to keep moving transportation progress moving forward.

Read the e-Profile and then share your thoughts and comments here. We would like to know what your think about the role of KM/knowledge services in successful change management and organizational communication. What role does KM/knowledge services play in organizational effectiveness? In building an organizational culture?

Knowledge Work - We're Going to Win This War After All

2009-09-13T15:45:00.007-04:00

There was a time, not so long ago, when one of my colleagues - a smart man who was a serious student of philosophy and was himself what I could only characterize as "deeply philosophical" - moved over into information management. He become a specialist librarian, had something of a career in that field, and was (by the time I knew him) teaching in a graduate LIS program.

On many occasions we had great discussions about the role of the knowledge professional in corporate and organizational effectiveness, and despite the strength of my argument or my passion about the knowledge professional as knowledge thought leader for the organization, my friend was always quick to make a point - almost any point - by saying, "Just give it up. The engineers have won."

He meant that the battle - as many described it in those days - between the people who build the pipelines and the people who manage the content was lost. The IT community was going to always be in control, according to the conventional wisdom, and nobody really cared about the opinions and leadership of the people who managed, advised about, and shared content.

He was wrong. My friend was dead wrong.

We now know that that time in the history of knowledge management, knowledge services, and the knowledge worker was just a skirmish, not even a battle. It was just a period of time that we had to wait out, to be patient about while the rest of the world caught up with us.

I always knew it, of course. Not that I could have predicted what the outcome would be. I'm not that smart, and there's no way I could have predicted things like SaaS, remote data centers, social networking media, and all the myriad other products and tools that enable such strong communication nowadays. I knew it because it was the way things worked. In every encounter I had, having to do with information management, knowledge management, or strategic learning - those three elements that merge together to make up what we refer to as "knowledge services" - it was always a collaborate effort. It was always the engineers and the content people working together (in the successful efforts, that is) and while some of us were perhaps anxious to "push" the process toward one end of the spectrum or the other, that's not what happened.

And look where we've come.

I'm impressed to see Dan Holtshouse's lead article in the current KMWorld. In "The Future of Knowledge Workers," Holtshouse writes about research into long-term trends that demonstrates how companies and organizations are preparing to leverage "the best of the knowledge workers of the future."

OK. Perhaps I'm a little bit pollyanny-ish here, but reading what Holtshouse writes sends me a very clear message. The battle between the "engineers" and the "content people" is long over. Now, according to the research he describes, companies are preparing proactively for the future, with managers giving serious attention to how to retain knowledge that would be lost during retirements. And they are recruiting aggressively for high-quality knowledge workers (or outsourcing knowledge management), and among those who are recruiting the best people to come into their own shop, their top recruiting strategy, according to Holtshouse, turns out to be "an emphasis on flex telework/telecommute programs that reflect the era of the mobile work force." Equally important in effective recruiting for knowledge workers (why are we not surprised?) is an "emphasis on opportunities for personal growth through mentoring/coaching programs, advanced degree support, and integrated life/work programs."

Well said, Dan Holtshouse. I think we can now put away our "fears" (if that's what they were) about IT "taking over" or KM functioning as a separate, stand-alone management methodology. We're all in this together, and now that organizational management recognizes that fact, organizational effectiveness and success are closer that we ever thought.

Knowledge Services Metrics - Two Foolproof Questions

2009-09-08T16:46:00.011-04:00

As I described in a post several days ago, knowledge workers face few challenges as daunting as coming up with workable measurements and metrics for knowledge services.

I think it's very much a value issue, having to do how we communicate and differentiate the strategic value of knowledge, especially if the road to that knowledge is through a specialized library or similar knowledge services business unit. There seems to be something about the relationship between organizational management and knowledge workers that puts some distance between them, that seems to prevent them from communicating with each other in ways that get to the point.

We know why we measure. First of all, it's part of being a manager. If we're not willing to step back and ask how well our unit is doing, we have no business being in a management position.

But it's more than that. We also have an obligation to review what we're doing so we can figure out how to do things differently as we move forward. Simply put, the status quo won't cut it in today's workplace, and the sooner we grab on to that little piece of the management process, the better off we're going to be.

Don't let me get preachy, though. Measuring what we do also enables us to conceptualize new tasks relating to how we provide knowledge services for the organization, how we capture the impact of knowledge services in the workplace, and - as significant as anything else we do with management and metrics - to help us monitor and keep things "on track."

As knowledge services directors, though, we don't always give measurement and metrics the attention this important discipline deserves, and sometimes we get caught up short. Here's an example:

Bill Slidell is a thoughtful, user-focused knowledge services director. He manages a corporate information center with four information professionals and five support staff. He is often not in his office because he is known in the company as the go-to person when anyone, in any department, has a question about where to find anything. So Bill is out and about a lot, meeting with colleagues as they seek to work through various issues.

Because he has a loquacious and very open personality, Bill is often called into meetings simply to be the “point person” for this or that discussion, whether the topic has to do with KM/knowledge services or any other information, knowledge, or strategic learning-related subject. He’s a good listener, and his suggestions for the next step are very sound and usually lead to good results.

Bill’s functional unit prides itself on its KD/KS success. Today Bill was informed that he is to supply metrics for the unit’s performance, and that past performance measures are not to be revisited. He is to come up with something new.

What two questions must Bill ask before he can provide the metrics he’s been asked for?

To find out, join the next Click U KM/Knowledge Services Certificate Program Course. In Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services, we tackle measurement and metrics for knowledge services head-on. In five one-hour meetings, we’ll work together on how to evaluate (and convey the value of) information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning in the organizations where we work. The course is part of Click U’s Premium Programs series, sponsored by SLA (but membership in SLA is not required to take the course). The course begins on September 14. Go here to listen to Dale Stanley and me talk about the course, and go here for more information and to register.

Measurement and Metrics for Knowledge Services

2009-08-28T12:12:00.006-04:00

Registration is now open for Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services. For knowledge workers, few subjects generate as much interest (and discussion) as measurement and metrics. In Critical Success Factors, we tackle the subject head-on, spending three weeks working together to identify methodologies, tools, and techniques that we can put to work in evaluating (and conveying the value of) information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning for colleagues in the parent organization.

The course is part of Click U’s Premium Programs series, sponsored by SLA (but membership in SLA is not required to take the course). Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services is offered both as an individual course and as part of the certificate program, and although there are considerable financial advantages to signing on for the certificate program, all courses are offered à la carte and all knowledge workers are welcome to participate.

Critical Success Factors: Measuring Knowledge Services begins on September 14. There are five course meetings, all online: three Monday lectures (September 14, 21, and 28), a live discussion among participants on Wednesday, September 23, and a course wrap-up and thematic discussion on Thursday, October 1. All programs begin at 3:00 PM EDT, and recordings of all meetings are available for re-play immediately following each meeting.

Go here for more information and to register.

Connecting Drucker's "Meaningful Outside" to Knowledge Services

2009-08-26T16:02:00.013-04:00

With management and service delivery responsibility for knowledge services, the organization's knowledge services director has a unique two-sided role to play. On the one hand, this person is the knowledge thought leader for the entire enterprise, with all the innovation-directed and future planning pressure that goes with that role. On the other hand, as the manager of the knowledge services business unit, however it is structured in the larger organization, this manager must ensure that information, knowledge, and strategic learning products and services are delivered as required. It's a challenging task, this business of being two things at once.

And part of the challenge is defining the "audience" (we might call it) for the knowledge services work. Who benefits?

Peter Drucker might have provided us with an answer. Or at least with a provocative way of thinking about the people we're trying to reach.

One of Drucker's concepts, discussed last night among the participants at a meeting of The Drucker Society of New York City, is the role of the CEO in linking between what Drucker referred to as the Inside - i.e., "the organization" - and the Outside, all those external infuences that drive our work. And why is it important to make that distinction? Drucker answered that in an article in The Wall Street Journal in 2004 ("Management Today: The American CEO" - December 30, 2004): "Inside, there are only costs. Results are only on the outside."

Well, of course. And it's the results we're after, isn't it, as we seek to use knowledge services to ensure that the company is functioning as a knowledge culture? So how do we arrive at that "meaningful Outside" Drucker wrote about and apply those principles to knowledge services?

For the knowledge services director, it is important to recognize that there are two "Outsides." Thinking in terms of the larger enterprise, that Outside can be described as Drucker described it: "society, the economy, technology, markets, customers, the media, pubic opinion." For the knowledge services business unit - whether it is a research department, a specialized library, a knowledge center, or any of a variety of other business units providing knowledge services - the Outside is everybody and everything affiliiated with the company for which knowledge services are provided.

There are many, many practical applications that can be used to demonstrate how these Outsides become "meaningful," and we can look at a couple. And they apply - going back to the conundrum posed in the first paragraph - whether I'm doing my job as enterprise-wide knowledge thought leader or as the manager of a single, specific, knowledge-focused business unit.

For example, we can identify at least one element of Drucker's "Outside" for providing "meaningful" results if we have built, say, an expertise database (for the company or for an individual business unit) and we are able to monitor how many people - outside the domain of the knowledge services business unit - are working with this tool without being directed to it or shown how to use it by the knowledge services staff. The users are "outside" my realm of responsibility but how they use the tool provided by my business unit is meaningful, telling me much about my success. And I'm doing the same thing Drucker's CEO is doing, I'm serving as the link between my unit's Outside (the larger enterprise) and the Inside (the knowledge services business unit and its staff).

Another example might be on a less specific level, to think about the effect or impact of some action I take without having a measurable result in hand. As the knowledge thought leader, one of my jobs is to give attention to how people act differently in the workplace after they have been exposed to or participated in some initiative from my unit. If it's the result we are looking for, what might be the result after several weeks (months? years?) of working with staff in team-building situations, working with them in programs and learning activities relating specifically to knowledge sharing or in activities having to do with a project focus that is not especially knowledge related? It all boils down to the same thing, doesn't it? The impact or the effect is an organizational ambiance in which team work is expected, trust is a given, and collegiality is built into the process. It might not be a result that can be measured in quite the same way as the number of hits in an expertise database but it is, nevertheless, a result to be desired and sought after.

From Communication to KD/KS

2009-08-23T13:14:00.013-04:00

We spend a lot of time thinking about our work as knowledge thought leaders, driving the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process in the organizations where we are employed. And as I've been re-reading Brain Reich and Dan Solomon (their book Media Rules! Mastering Today's Technology to Connect with and Keep Your Audience), I'm even more convinced now that it's the communication "piece" that makes success happen when we're seeking to build a knowledge culture in workplace.

Whether we're dealing with an external goal (like trying to bring a product to market - or keep it there) or working within the organization (like seeking to meet the needs of the people who come to the knowledge services business unit), we have to give attention to how people get the word, how they learn about what we have to offer, and how to take us up on it.

It's communication, and communicating with specific and directed tools to different target groups. But that communication has to be built on a foundation that gets people interested enough to learn what we do and to have respect for what we do (as well as understand what the pay-off will be for them, of course).

Reich and Solomon give us the clue: "Everything is social," they say. "All of it is reputation driven."

Reputation. And influence. Because the people who are listened to in the larger enterprise, the people with influence, are the people who have the reputation for being right, for being worth listening to. How do they do it? How do we build influence and strengthen our reputation?

There are five critical elements.

Core Vision and Responsibility
The knowledge services business unit - and the services it provides - won't go far if the director/manager and organizational leaders have not agreed on what they want to unit to be. It's time to get rid of old-fashioned words and descriptions that call up an image that does not relate to the work being done. If the business unit is supporting the corporate business strategy, that must be stated. What words are used to title the knowledge services business unit and describe its products, services, and consultations? Do they make sense?

Related to this (from an organizational management perspective) is responsibility. Who has management and service delivery responsibility for the knowledge services unit? What happens when its work is not successful? Who gets the kudos when the services of the knowledge services business lead to an enterprise-wide success?

The Best Team
The playing field is full these days, and there are a lot of knowledge workers out there who are - how do we say it kindly? - perhaps not up to the demands and do not have the qualifications to perform as well as the company requires. Move on, and establish the knowledge services business unit as the best managed and best staffed business unit in the organization. In today's knowledge workplace, the company can't afford mediocre knowledge services professionals. So hire the best people and give them the best and most interesting work you can find.

At the same time, we know success in knowledge services is all about partnering, so link up with other business units that are doing really good work. Identify departments and sections that are succeeding and succeeding well. Identify (with their leaders, of course) how the knowledge services business unit and that department can share resources, responsibilities, and - of course - success.

Perfection? Perhaps Not

Relax about seeking perfection. We knowledge workers know that our profession's reputation (especially when we were librarians) was built on tracking down every last resource to ensure that the patron got every bit of information we could provide, just in case they needed it.

Perhaps that approach is not necessary anymore. As Anh Huynh points out in a recent article about specialized libraries working with a company's business development staff, it's important to understand clients' needs and preferences. It's our job to "seek to determine the 'good enough' point" when providing information and knowledge services. We need to work with the user to ensure that we don't go overboard, wasting scarce resources. Sometimes "good enough" truly is good enough.

Integrity, Honesty, and Openness
There shouldn't be any need to mention this when we speak about knowledge services, but we still find ourselves hearing about ethical lapses, betrayed confidences, and inattention of intellectual property basics.

Not good. Word gets around. Whether inside the company or through some public awkwardness, people will know (probably sooner rather than later) when some stupid decision has damaged the reputation of a colleague or, worse, of a department or business unit. Transparency - except in proprietary or otherwise privileged situations - does much to sustain integrity, and it should be encouraged in all transactions involving the knowledge services business unit.

Generosity Trumps Privacy
If there's any single attribute that guarantees KD/KS success, it's generosity. Bruce Rosenstein describes beautifully how generosity was built into Peter Drucker's management philosophy in his new book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker's Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, and I'm so taken with this idea that I'm sure I'll be coming back to it from time to time. For now, though, let's just remember that it is through the generosity of knowledge professionals - and their generosity in giving of themselves and their time to see another person or another unit succeed - that ultimately builds the reputation of the knowledge services business unit. The success of knowledge professinals is summed up in their generosity.

Kindle Thoughts (2)

2009-08-14T10:55:00.012-04:00

The last post was Mr. Guy asking us to be a little patient with the so-called problems some folks are having with the Kindle.

And I promised another post about a second subject having to do with the Kindle, but now there might have to be a third, since B&N has now entered the electronic reader marketplace in direct competition with Amazon.

No. Don’t worry. Won’t get into that.

This second Kindle post is about a more important subject relating to what’s happening in the Kindle marketplace. This is a much more disturbing story, and connects, I fear, much more directly to our work as knowledge services directors in our companies and organizations.

By now we’ve all heard about the Kindle 1984 “scandal,” as it’s been called, Amazon’s remote deletion of e-books from the Kindle. On July 20Farhad Manjoo posted on Slate his reaction to the story.

Turns out it wasn’t just Orwell’s titles but Ayn Rand’s as well, as perhaps others. Amazon acknowledged the error and, according to Manjoo, promised that it will no longer delete customers’ books.

Not too impressed, Manjoo is wondering if Amazon’s action (the deletions, not the apology) “paves the way for book-banning’s digital future.” Now this is truly a scary proposition, with enormous implications for knowledge workers. For people like us, we live and die (professionally speaking – and hopefully even personally as well) by our ability to distinguish between what’s good and what’s bad in the information, knowledge, and strategic learning realm. We also, as knowledge professionals, willingly share our skills for making such distinctions with our corporate affiliates, and if we have recommended to or assisted a colleague in accessing an electronic tool that one day just isn’t there anymore, we have a bleak future waiting for us.

Anne Mintz and her colleagues got us to thinking about these things in her book, Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet. While the disappearance of information wasn’t the subject of the book, much of the advice contained therein can be applied in the current environment (especially the advice provided in Carol Ebbinghouse’s essay on legal advice on the Internet: “Make Sure to Read the Fine Print”). And, as Manjoo notes, in Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain’s book (The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It), the concept of “tethering” appliances and, in our case, content is dangerous if that “tethering” is under the control of forces that are not, ultimately, concerned with the benefit of the appliance – or the content – to the person or organization that has acquired it.

But we are so tempted by the newness of it all, aren't we? And we’re just human after all. We want to trust the people and the companies that are bringing us information that reports on and describes other people’s knowledge development experiences, information that – fundamental to our work – is then made available for sharing as needed. So what’s the solution for those of us who build our careers on advising others about these matters?

For one thing, we have to use incidents like the recent Amazon deletions to keep the dialogue going. We have to make sure that our intellectual and professional leaders and, yes, even our political leaders are made aware of how important it is to figure out how to prevent such incidents in the future. And the time to do it is now – as the growth of digital information still accounts for only part of all recorded information. In the current environment, hard copy books and other hard copy materials are purchased and become the property of the buyer, who cannot necessarily be forced to return the materials, as Manjoo points out. But with an electronic reading device, the “purchaser” is acquiring a service, one which can have a multiplicity of variations and restrictions, depending on what is stated in the service’s terms of agreement?

Knowledge professionals can also – in discussions in the workplace, in brown-bag lunchtime workshops, in project teams and task forces, in practice groups – review company practices and procedures. Beyond the immediate discussion, when informed (and even legal) advice is needed, experts can be identified and invited to contribute to a strategic learning activity, either in the workplace or – more likely – at professional conferences. There are definitely ways to keep thinking about this scary possibility. We’re the knowledge thought leaders in our companies and our opinions count. We should be advising our organizations about this.

Kindle Thoughts

2009-08-10T09:10:00.009-04:00

Not just thinking about Kindle, but trying to connect some of the current Kindle controversy to what we do for our clients and users with KM/knowledge services. And to our role as knowledge thought leaders in the companies where we are employed.

Two recent articles caught my attention, not surprisingly since (full disclosure) I’m a serious Kindle user. I’m what some people refer to as a “big reader,” currently plowing through the recent translation of War and Peace on my Kindle, and really loving the experience (this book is much better now than when I first read it at 22!). So I’m not a disinterested spectator in the Kindle discussions, and I can’t help wondering how the perspectives offered in two recent articles transition over to our tasks as knowledge professionals.

First of all, I should point out that we are dealing with two different subjects here. In one, Nicholson Baker – famous for his distress at the closing of library card catalogs and the disposal of hard copy newspaper collections – writes in the August 3 issue of The New Yorker about the Kindle as a product. Baker shares with us his disappointment that what he sees on the Kindle – if he is reading a book – isn’t a book. Or if he is reading a newspaper, that what he’s reading isn’t a newspaper. All he’s getting is the content, conveyed to him through an electronic medium that is sort of book-like (or newspaper-like).

And to be fair, Baker puts forward some very legitimate complaints, as when he describes scientific journals that in print display important color-coded charts which, on the Kindle, aren’t color-coded. But that takes me back to my original problem with this whole discussion: if the content isn’t appropriate for reading on the Kindle, why view it on the Kindle? Why would anyone purchase the Kindle version of a scientific journal that required color-coding? And of more concern, why would Amazon sell it? My guess is that Amazon acquired the publisher’s entire list – or the portion of the list that happened to contain these materials – and simply didn’t road test the material before it was made available.

That’s why I’m having a little problem with this particular piece of the Kindle controversy, and that relates to my attempt to connect the Kindle “idea” with our work in KM/knowledge services. Our job is to get the user the content, in the format he/she requires. If all the user needs is the text (like me with the new translation of War and Peace), what’s the difference if it’s read on Kindle? And especially if I prefer to read it this way, since I am the reader and it’s my choice. If I want to, I can purchase the hard copy or the paperback and lug it around with me, but I travel a lot and carrying around the Kindle is much easier. And I don’t remember having any problem accommodating (if that’s the right word) myself to the format. It works for me.

So perhaps thinking in terms of the-one-or-the-other isn’t the way to go here. Perhaps “balance” is a more appropriate attribute, as Mary Tripsas writes in yesterday’s New York Times. In her article about how innovation often takes a long time to take hold. Tripsas makes it clear that just thinking about the “old” as a cash cow or as a source of inertia holds us back. She asks for “selective, intelligent innovation” and perhaps that’s what we’re looking for as we – as knowledge professionals – seek to move our companies toward a knowledge culture.

And not to be in too big a hurry (after all, as Tripsas coincidentally just happens to note, “despite the recent buzz over the Kindle and other electronic reading devices, e-books are still less than 5 percent of overall book sales”). So perhaps the future for us, for the Nicholson Bakers of the world, and particularly for our users who come to us for KM/knowledge services advice, is to take it easy and recognize that reading newspapers and books represents one way of acquiring content and using a Kindle (or Kindle-like) device for the same or similar content is another way. It all just depends (very simply, really) on which version of the “content” the user wants or requires.

Up-Coming: PKM and the Mission-Specific Focus

2009-08-06T09:36:00.005-04:00

What: Click U Course: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and the Mission-Specific Focus
When: August 10 - 27
Who: Guy St. Clair, Instructor, with Dale Stanley
Where: Online
Cost: $495.00 (SLA Members) $595.00 (Non-Members)
Register online at Click U - PKM
Learn more: Hear Dale Stanley and Guy St. Clair talk about the course and about PKM here. Or contact Guy St. Clair directly at smrknowledge@verizon.net

The course begins August 10, and includes three online lectures, on August 10, 17, and 24.

Also included is a facilitated live discussion (online) on Wednesday, August 19, with Guest Participant Libby Trudell, Senior Vice President, Market Development at Dialog, a ProQuest Company. Trudell is a recognized leader in KM/knowledge services, and just recently completed a term on SLA’s Board of Directors. She will join participants to discuss her experience and recommendations for PKM applications in the workplace.

The course concludes with a course wrap-up and thematic discussion (online) on Thursday, August 27. All programs begin at 3:00 PM EDT.

Note that membership in SLA is not required. Non-SLA colleagues are welcome.

What's the Opposite of a Knowledge Culture?

2009-07-29T10:37:00.017-04:00

We're living in interesting times, as far as KM, knowledge services, and the knowledge culture are concerned.

In the workplace, we focus on developing and sustaining the organization or the corporation as a knowledge culture. And we give much attention to the role of the information or knowledge services professional as the natural knowledge thought leader for the organization, as the responsible employee who smooths the progress toward the knowledge culture.

All good stuff, right?

And all based on a number of assumptions, such as "knowledge is good," "the more we know the better our chances of success," "the knowing organization is automatically going to beat out the competition," etc.

And perhaps the most popular assumption of all: "every organization has a knowledge culture, because all the people in the organization know something."

Well, yes. But isn't that the crux of the matter? It's not that those of us affiliated with the organization or the corporation don't know anything. It's just that there are so many distractions - so many paths, you might say, away from the knowledge culture - it becomes very difficult to get to where we need to go. We can't quite reach that knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) state that ensures our work will be successful.

So instead of thinking about the attributes of the knowledge culture that lead to organizational success (attributes identified in a number of places, including work done at this company), what if we went in the opposite direction? What if we thought about the attributes that prevent the development of a knowledge culture? Or impede the organization's success in sustaining a knowledge culture?

We might begin with human nature. In his helpful description of how Western philosophy was developed, Thomas Cahill writes about how, once knowledge was no longer the sole province of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers and started to include attention to human nature and a "close consideration" of human affairs, new principles about knowledge, about how knowledge is used to guide humanity came into the picture (the reference is to Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter). Built into that close consideration should be, it seems to me, attention to the role of the worker and - for our discussion - the role of the knowledge worker in relation to that of other workers affiliated with the larger organization.

What are the impediments to the knowledge culture? What constitutes an organization that is the opposite of a knowlege culture? If we take the organization apart, recognizing that an organization is, at its most basic level, a group of people working together, we soon come to realize that it is indeed human nature where we must focus our energies.

For example, we speak about the importance, indeed the necessity of collaboration in the knowledge culture and about how collaboration, transparency, and a respect for KD/KS are built in, are part of the management framework of the organization that is structured as a knowledge culture.

Are they present in the organization or company where you are employed? How do people feel about collaboration, about being open about their work (unless there is a valid reason or requirement for privacy, as with security or proprietary information), about sharing the knowledge they develop in the workplace?

When these attributes are not present, yes, the company might still succeed in achieving its organizational mission, but that success is realized not as the result or effect of a well-managed KD/KS process. In these cases, success comes in spite of the lack of KD/KS. In other words, those affiliated with the organization who make success happen learn to work around the lack of a well-managed KD/KS process, recognizing that they are working in an organization that can be characterized as - and which if they think about it they very likely characterize - as the opposite of a knowledge culture. It's a situation ripe for intervention, and the knowledge professional who identifies that he or she is working in such an organization is provided with a splendid opportunity to get things on track.

KM/Knowledge Services in the Legal Profession

2009-07-25T08:13:00.005-04:00

For many of us who contribute to this discussion - or others like it - our concepts about KM and knowledge services in the legal profession are pretty much limited to our experiences or connections with law librarianship. Yet we're speaking much these days (and for me and my nearest-and-dearest) about collaboration and the integration of KM/knowledge services throughout the larger organization, regardless of the particular focus of any single business unit.

Where else in law firms - that is, in what other functional units - are we seeing KM/knowledge services integration taking place? Perhaps we'll find out soon, for I've just put a notice on the discussion board for our new KMKS Alumni & Interest Group at LinkedIn (feel free to join - always looking for interesting participants). I've asked law librarians at the AALL Conference in Washington to be on the lookout for KM/knowledge services themes.

All of us in this field would like to know what's going on in law firms with respect to knowledge development and knowledge sharing, but we particularly want to know what's happening beyond the law library. I know of some information/knowledge managers who have transitioned from the law library to other types of management positions in law firms, and they are working hard to bring along some of the professional tools and techniques from law librarianship to their new positions.

So there are linkages here, connections that can be of value to all of us, if integration is truly our goal (and surely it is, at this point).

And there is evidence that some good work is being done in this area. Last year I was privileged to facilitate a summit meeting on the future of KM in legal librarianship for EOS International. At the summit, attractive predictions were shared, both theoretical insights and practical observations (particularly, with the latter, the increasingly recognized value of identifying and exploiting - in the positive sense of the word - the sponsorship of senior staff in the firm). Obviously this is an important progression toward the further integration of KM and knowledge services throughout the firm. I wonder what some of the others might be. And how they can be adapted in other environments.

On August 10, we begin the next course in the Click U KM/Knowledge Services Program. This one is PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) and the Mission-Specific Focus, and our goal is to connect our PKM skills with what happens in the larger organization. I am sure there are PKM best practices in law firms that we could latch on to, enabling our work to be further integrated into that of the larger enterprise. What might they be?

Thinking About... The Knowledge Thought Leader

2009-07-20T13:47:00.000-04:00

If knowledge workers aspire to be knowledge thought leaders for the organizations in which they are employed, how do they go about it? Is there a list of qualifications or attributes that define the knowledge thought leader?

It's no struggle to find a few. Simply by defining the terms we can move forward in identifying some of the attributes of a knowledge thought leader. First of all, as someone once wrote (Peter Drucker?), a leader is someone who has followers, so perhaps a quick way to define a knowledge thought leader is to look around. In terms of KM/knowledge services/managing the organization as a knowledge culture, who's being listened to? Who is the "go-to" person for issues, questions, intellectually provocative conversations relating to KM and knowledge services? Is there such a person who can be identified (if there isn't I would question the organization's commitment to the value of knowledge in organizational effectiveness - if knowledge isn't being shared, I'm not sure knowledge is important to the company)?

A second attribute might be visibility. Not speaking about popularity here. Lots of folks are popular but you wouldn't go to them for guidance when you have a question about how to handle a particular knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) situation. A knowledge leader is probably known to a lot of people as just that, a recognized leader in the organization who is known for his or her skill in managing knowledge-related situations.

If you were looking (all other things being equal) to identify the perfect knowledge thought leader for your company or organization, what would you be looking for? What do you define a knowledge thought leaders?

Social Media - Answering Those Questions

2009-07-18T10:21:00.000-04:00

If you are employed in a KM/knowledge services business unit, and if your situation is like most, you're spending a lot of time speaking with clients about social media.

"What is it?" they're asking. "How do we use it?" "Why is it important?"

There is help at hand.

Big Duck, a company that works with nonprofit organizations to transform the way they communicate, is sponsoring a webinar next Wednesday. Called "Social Media - Is It For Your Organization?" you can find information and register here.

There will be some answers for those times we try to explain about social media to our colleagues in the organization.

Also check out a link Big Duck has shared, to a good video from Common Craft on the topic. Take a look at "Social Media in Plain English." You (and your clients) will have some fun with this.

What's the Environment for the Knowledge Culture?

2009-07-13T12:29:00.000-04:00

The concepts relating to building and when built, to sustaining the corporate knowledge culture continue to intrigue.

Today I'm getting ready to start a new course in the subject - connecting the knowledge culture with leadership and the management of knowledge services - and as always, I'm curious about what drives us as we think about this critical subject.

[If anyone wants to sign up and start a little late, the course, which begins at 3:00 PM ET, is Click U's The Knowledge Culture: Leadership and Knowledge Services. The lectures - all online - are recorded and available for re-play if you don't participate in real time.]

My focus these days (in class and out) is on trying to figure out where the "push" comes from.

Knowledge is like the flag and mom and apple pie. No one is going to say that knowledge is a bad thing (well, except for Alexander Pope's comment about a little of it being dangerous, and he actually uses "learning" rather than "knowledge"). But to get people to actually give attention to how they collect, retain, use, and preserve knowledge assets is a challenge.

I've written about the knowledge culture (both in the last two chapters and the Epilogue of SLA's Centennial History and in the SMR Management Action Plan on Building the Knowledge Culture that Dale Stanley and I wrote) and I have some ideas, but I think other people have ideas, too. And probably different ideas. What are they?

Does the drive come from management? Don't think so. A knowledge culture cannot be imposed, and while management can enable a move toward a knowledge culture by supporting and recognizing successful change that comes about from good KD/KS practices, doesn't the true success of the knowledge culture come from all the other organizational stakeholders?

And if that's the case, how do people desire and commit to good KD/KS practices? It's not just professional development, training, and collegial conversation, is it? What makes the knowledge culture happen?

IT or KM?

2009-07-07T10:01:00.000-04:00

Two posts at other blogs have caught my attention, and since our goal here at SMR Int'l is to be provocative, let's see what they say about this whole idea of moving KM, knowledge services, and the support of the knowledge culture beyond the professional and academic and out into the workplace, as I've written about in earlier posts.

A colleague sends along Greg Lambert's fascinating piece Has "IT" Killed "KM"? and in his comment on another subject, Alex Feng puts forward very clear distinctions between the work of information professionals and that done by knowledge professionals (what I call "knowledge professionals," generally characterizing these knowledge workers as "knowledge thought leaders" for their employing organizations).

So the question seems to be one of both collaboration with other information- knowledge- and/or learning-related business functions and moving away from concepts and processes that inhibit the successful interaction of knowledge professionals with others in the workplace. If these colleagues require some sort of assistance, conversation, etc. as they seek to create and use knowledge, I'm not sure IT in and of itself can guarantee success. And indeed, if IT has in fact transitioned KM into nothing more than tools and those famous "pipelines," the battle might be lost.

But I'm not so sure. When I think about the people I know who are successfully performing KM - as a business function - in their organizations, I think the collaborative role kicks in, and it's those interactions with others that keep KM alive. Think about how we define knowledge services (the whole convergence idea, the convergence of information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning). Isn't that what keeps this work from becoming only an IT function?

The Knowledge Worker Redux (2): How We Got Here

2009-07-06T10:50:00.000-04:00

It’s been – and continues to be – a fantastic journey, this quest for KM, knowledge services, and building and sustaining the corporate knowledge culture.

And in many respects, we’ve been pretty successful. From our perspective (that is, from the perspective of the information managers, knowledge managers, and strategic learning specialists who focus professionally on these subjects), we’re pretty much there now.

Thanks to 40+ years of wrestling with how we can apply knowledge most effectively, to ensure that our employing organizations achieve their defined organizational mission, and thanks to all the academicians, theoreticians, specialists in organizational development (which today we generally refer to as organizational effectiveness), a large population of professionals now discusses KM, knowledge services, and the knowledge culture with considerable ease and sometimes considerable passion.

And since Thomas A. Stewart identified intellectual capital as a corporate asset in the 1990s, positioning intellectual capital right up there with financial assets and all the other corporate assets, the concept of the “knowledge economy” seems to have come into its own.

The challenge now is to move the subject from the academic and the theoretical into what I’ve begun to think of as the real workplace. There is an enormous population out there doing just this kind of work, dealing with knowledge in the workplace on a daily basis, in millions of offices and who knows how many remote locations.

But is all this work being done well? Can't it be done better? Why do we still hear stories about this deal being lost because somebody didn’t know something? Or that legal action being taken because somebody didn’t understand that there was a format, a regulation, a frame of reference that should have been identified? How can this work be done better?

Our struggle these days is how to get past what we know about knowledge and “working with knowledge” (as Larry Prusak defines KM) and move into that larger workplace, getting what we’ve learned to that population of workers who are not information professionals, knowledge services specialists, corporate archivists, specialist librarians, records and information management professionals.

How do we translate what is being done in the academy and by the many KM theorists (affiliated with the academia or not) into every office and every workplace? Is there some secret formula we’re missing? If we are the “knowledge thought leaders” in our organizations, as many of us think of ourselves, how do we take the expertise of the knowledge thought leader and move it beyond our own work into that of every employee of the organization?

Knowledge Worker Redux

2009-07-06T10:41:00.000-04:00

About forty years ago, Peter Drucker brought the idea of the knowledge worker to the workplace. Defining the knowledge worker as someone who works primarily with information and/or who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace, Drucker pushed the whole discipline of organizational management into a new space.

It was the beginning of a new age, an age in which workers moved from working with their hands (agriculture, industry) to working with their minds. What a concept! And what a splendid opportunity for the educated worker who wanted to think about his or her work while pursuing a paycheck!

We know the basics:

If an organization is to succeed, it must be structured and managed as a knowledge culture
Knowledge services is the organizational management methodology that converges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning
The knowledge culture builds on and is supported by knowledge services

Understanding this, we’ve become pretty skilled at dealing with knowledge in the workplace. We know what knowledge is (although many of us define it differently), and since we’re trying to deal with knowledge in an organizational or business management framework, many people – as we do at our company – make defining knowledge a little easier by thinking about knowledge in terms of knowledge assets. It's not uncommon in management circles these days to hear people speaking about knowledge assets (and, yes, SMR International has given attention to the subject, in a white paper published in December, 2008). At our company, we define a knowledge asset as “any collected information or knowledge within the larger enterprise that is used to help the organization achieve its goals.” We also very carefully point out that all operational units create and retain knowledge assets, not just business units concerned with research.

But whether we’re speaking about “KM,” “knowledge services,” “the knowledge culture,” or "knowledge asset management," when we're interacting with colleagues (and management) in the workplace, who knows what we’re talking about? What are we saying? What do these phrases mean to the knowledge worker in the next cubicle? Does anybody else care about knowledge management, knowledge services, or managing knowledge assets? Or in managing the company as a knowledge culture? Of course they do, but they probably don’t use these terms.

What terms do they use? What do they say when they are trying to figure out how the company dealt with this issue the last time it came up? Or when a corporate threat looms and everyone has an opinion but no one has the facts? What do they do? What do they say they are looking for?

So my quest is very simple: how can we take what we do to another level, all this energy being focused on knowledge management, knowledge services, and the knowledge culture? How can we make knowledge asset management everyone’s job?

Postscript: Actually, “redux” is probably not to most accurate word for the title here, since “redux” means something along the lines of “bringing back” or “reinstating.” That’s not really been the case with the idea of the knowledge worker. The knowledge worker hasn’t gone anywhere, so we’re really not concerned about bringing back the idea of the knowledge worker. Now we are more about expanding, you might say, the professional and academic and experiential insight we’ve developed over the past 40 years. Now we’re trying to figure out how we move KM, knowledge services, and the organizational knowledge culture beyond the academic and the professional. How do we move knowledge into the working habits of the office manager, the IT support staff, the HR file clerk, the records manager, the marketing support staff, the regulatory compliance specialist, the editorial assistant? What do we do next?

Learn about Building & Sustaining the Knowledge Culture

2009-07-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

SMR International, through a strategic alliance with SLA’s Click U, offers knowledge workers the opportunity to strengthen their expertise by participating in the Click U Certificate Program in Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services. Attendees are not required to be members of SLA, and the next course in the series is a perfect place to begin your study of this critical discipline. The Knowledge Culture: Leadership and Knowledge Services, beginning July 13, provides participants with skills and practical applications for moving ahead as knowledge thought leaders in their employing organizations.