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.

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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.