Learn: Measuring KM/Knowledge Services

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more and register here.

John Cotton Dana and Knowledge Services

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strengthening Young People Through a Focus on KD/KS

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

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

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

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

Strategic Knowledge Repositories: An Informal Survey

What Do We Call Them?

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

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

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

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

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

How do we pull it all together?

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

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

So what do we call these?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

Kindle Thoughts (2)

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

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

No. Don’t worry. Won’t get into that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kindle Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up-Coming: PKM and the Mission-Specific Focus

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

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

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

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

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

What's the Opposite of a Knowledge Culture?

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

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

All good stuff, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KM/Knowledge Services in the Legal Profession

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking About... The Knowledge Thought Leader

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

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

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

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

Social Media - Answering Those Questions

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

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

There is help at hand.

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

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

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

What's the Environment for the Knowledge Culture?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IT or KM?

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

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

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

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