Managing Strategic Knowledge: Building Momentum

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

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

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

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

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:

1. engage with people in the ways they're already engaging
2. explore through manageable pilot experiments
3. 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

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

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

[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

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

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

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:

1. the archives management unit of an international scientific research organization
2. the corporate records and information management department of an established business, a real estate management firm, say, or a family-owned insurance agency
   
3. the research management operation in a large philanthropic organization
4. a members' library in a private club or trade association
   
5. 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

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”:

1. Listening – use the groundswell for research and for better understanding users’ needs
2. Talking – use the groundswell for spreading messages about your business unit
3. Energizing – find your most enthusiastic customers (and sponsors) and use groundswell to “supercharge” world of mouth
4. 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)
5. 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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.