The Missing Piece

Business-IT Alignment

Posted on May 15th, 2010

Okay, so this isn’t a post about Knowledge Management, but it’s an issue that reared it’s ugly head recently in a KM context, so I’m going to blog about it.

What happens when IT loses sight of the user? You might hear comments like, “it’s only one more click,” or “your configuration isn’t supported, and we won’t give you one that is (so suck it up and live with it).” Two things I have heard that have made my blood boil, because I was being asked to do something and IT, in my opinion, was making it as difficult as possible for me to do that.

IT, in my opinion, is supposed to support the business, enable users to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, not make it so difficult that users don’t do what’s been asked of them.

This is why there is often such a combative relationship between business and IT. Business wants quick, efficient, effective ways of meeting the organization’s objectives, and IT wants to maximize standardization? reduce cost? do what’s easiest for them?

There has to be a middle ground where business needs are met and standards and costs are not disregarded, it just might take some effort and communication on both sides to make that happen.

Posted by sbarnes under Business-IT Alignment ::

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Collaboration

Posted on April 7th, 2010

What does collaboration mean to you? Does it mean doing what you’re told? How about finding someone else to do the work? Telling someone else what to do?

I hope none of those are your definitions of collaboration, and I hope that your definition of collaboration looks nothing like any of those.

Wikipedia defines collaboration the following way:
“Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group.” or at least it did the day I wrote this, April 5, 2010 at 9:14am EDT.

I like this definition of collaboration, but it does not always mirror my experience of collaboration. I like this definition because it talks about working together for common goals; sharing, which is a big part of Knowledge Management; building consensus; and that leadership comes through a decentralized and egalitarian group. I really, really, like this last part.

Leadership can come from anywhere and when I am working on a team that is collaborating effectively leadership does come from anywhere and everywhere, it is not hierarchical or command and control style. Everyone contributes, and everyone reaps the benefits. Everyone gets a chance to have a voice and contribute to the end product, diversity of opinion is valued and the end product is better than any one of us could have done on our own.

Unfortunately, I have also worked with groups/people that do not collaborate effectively. They wait for someone else to do the work, make things happen. Wonder why deadlines are missed, why communication is a challenge, or why the team doesn’t function effectively.

Things happen too quickly now, in this information age, with instant or near instant access to information. No one can know it all, if we don’t work together towards our goals, breaking down hierarchies, which only slow things down, we will be left behind, and no one wants that.

Posted by sbarnes under Knoco, Knowledge Management, Organization models ::

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Succeeding at Change in a Knowledge Worker World

Posted on February 11th, 2010

The only thing that is certain is death and taxes…and change. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars on knowledge management technology solutions, focusing on the technology, because the technology is easy to focus on, it’s visible: buying the servers, installing the software, testing it, releasing it, those are activities that are very visible. Involving stakeholders in the software selection process, understanding what helps versus what hinders them in their performance, providing training, communicating, these are invisible, “soft” activities. Soft-skills/activities are often ignored, or down-played in organizations, sometimes it’s because of cost, sometimes it’s a lack of understanding of their importance, sometimes because there’s “no time.”

Projects fail because of this lack of attention to soft-skills, especially Knowledge Management projects. With Knowledge Management projects knowledge workers have already found a way to get their jobs done, it may not be the most efficient and effective way to get it done, but they get it done, that’s who they are. They may miss opportunities to share and leverage other people’s experience or create something new because they didn’t know there was a possibility to share/leverage/create, but they get their job done. In implementing a Knowledge Management project knowledge workers are being asked to do things differently, whether that’s share information in a repository or micro-blogging site, or participate in a Community of Practice; chances are it’s different than what they are doing now, and they will keep doing their “old way of doing things” unless they are given a reason to change.

Why/how do people change their behaviours? Because they have a reason to change, they understand the “what’s in it for me.” A good program manager will have included key stakeholders in the whole process from the strategy and requirements gathering stages to roll-out to the organization. Stakeholders, who include front-line employees who will be using the system, have contributed their needs and requirements to the selection of the technology, so the technology is actually supporting them, not causing more work. Connecting with stakeholders is critical, this helps them understand the change that is coming and to have influenced it so that they can feel proud of what’s being build and act as change agents with their peers, when the time comes to start using the technology.

Once the connection is made, communication has to maintain and inform the relationship. Tell the stakeholders the truth, own up to any changes in the plan or scope or functionality, the situation will only get worse if the organization tries to hide or sugar-coat changes that were not agreed to by the team.

Communication and training will drive the adoption and acceptance of the technology and process changes. The IT team can get the technology 100% right, and if they ignore the people and process side of the equation, they will fail. These people and process side often gets cut or short circuited when budgets tighten, this is short sighted. Better to reduce the scale of the project or extend a timeline than to skimp on training, communication, and involvement of stakeholders. If the organization has time to do it wrong and fail and fix it, then they have time to get it right the first time at a much lower cost than doing it wrong and then fixing it.

Involving stakeholders in all stages of the process, ensuring that the technology enables them and that they have the communication and training that they need to be successful, will ensure that the organization’s Knowledge Management investment will have an ROI to be proud of.

Posted by sbarnes under Change Management, Knoco, Knowledge Management, knowledge workers ::

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Knoco.ca

Posted on January 27th, 2010

Just a quick blog post to let everyone know that I am now the Canadian Franchisee for Knoco Ltd., www.knoco.com. Knoco is a Knowledge Management consultancy based in the U.K. and with franchises in South Africa, USA, India, and Indonesia, as well as training partners in Spain. They offer KM people and process consulting, and training. I am excited by the opportunities that this expansion in my network and services will bring. You will see some changes to my website over the next while, although my Missing Puzzle Piece Consulting branding will remain unchanged and I will continue to do the business-IT alignment work in the KM domain that I have always done.

Posted by sbarnes under Business-IT Alignment, Knoco, Knowledge Management ::

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Knowledge Management Models

Posted on December 8th, 2009

There seem to be as many models as there are KM practitioners. I have collected many over the years, from conferences, white papers, books, articles, research reports. There are similarities and differences among them for sure and I often find I spend a lot of time (depending on the project) trying to customize a model for my client’s specific situation.

Models are useful for describing something, you know, drawing a picture to help someone understand: a picture’s worth a thousand words, so they say.

I like models as much as the next person, in fact I am often trying to create a model in my head when I’m talking to people; I’m a process person at heart, so if I can’t understand something as a process, I’m a bit lost. Things never really make sense until I understand them as a process. My challenge with models is that a lot of people seem to think they are the be-all and end-all of work, especially consulting work, whereas I see them as only the start. I also don’t belong to the school of thought that says just because someone has published a model, that it’s automatically something I should use in every situation that comes up–it’s the old “if I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” situation.

The real value in a model is knowing what to do with it once you have picked/developed one that works in your situation. It’s nice drawing a picture, but if you can’t answer the “so what?” then what’s the point? I’m all about being practical, it’s nice to know where you are and where you’re going, but if you can’t figure out how to get there, then it doesn’t do you much good.

Now, I realize some people/organizations, don’t actually want to to get to where they’re going, they’d rather make it look like they were going somewhere than actually get there, change is scary after-all–let’s just stay here and look like we’re doing something and pretty charts and graphs and models make it look like we’re doing something, doesn’t it?

Posted by sbarnes under Knowledge Management ::

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Who buys Knowledge Management?

Posted on September 26th, 2009

I was going to write about Knowledge Management models, at least that’s what I thought earlier in the week when I started to write this, but I have discarded that notion, at least for now.

As some of you will know, I have been out on my own doing Knowledge Management consulting for almost 6 years, after spending 4 years implementing it in a business unit at a large technology company, who will remain nameless. During this time as a consultant I have often pondered who to target with my sales pitch and marketing strategy, business or IT?

Certainly the projects that I have done seem to turn out better when the business brings me in, and we work with IT as a stakeholder, since technology is inevitably part of the KM strategy implementation. But people are often trying to connect me to IT people as they perceive that my services are IT, not business-related.

It all became clear to me the other night at the Knowledge Worker Toronto event http://www.meetup.com/Knowledge-Workers-Toronto/calendar/11140670/, thanks goes to Graham Westwood for pointing out what probably should have been obvious to me, except that it wasn’t. What did Graham point out? That it is usually, HR, Finance, or the CEO who have the most control/say over the budget, IT usually is perceived as a cost centre so doesn’t get the same say in budget decision making.

Why was this not obvious to me? I was coming at the problem from a different direction. I focus on solving business problems by using Knowledge Management activities to improved efficiency and effectiveness. So I was asking the question, “who has business problems that they want solved?” The answer anyone and everyone, which doesn’t help me target who to talk to. Asking the question differently, “who controls the budget purse-strings?” gets a much different response.

Anyone have any different/additional thoughts?

Posted by sbarnes under Decision making, Knowledge Management, knowledge workers ::

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Information Overload

Posted on July 24th, 2009

Information overload seems to be coming up in a lot of my conversations lately, I’m not sure if it’s one of those things that once you start looking you see it everywhere, or if it’s that we’ve all gotten so overloaded with stuff because of changes at our jobs (doing more with less), or if there’s more stuff out there to sift through, e.g. Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, LinkedIn updates and group questions, etc.

Anyone have any thoughts?

The Knowledge Worker Toronto group (there’s a link on the left-hand side) that I organize with Martin Cleaver and Connie Crosby is actually having an event in August to discuss Information Overload. It was a topic suggested by member Ben Hong back in June. We’ve asked our members to share tips and tricks and what they have found helps either on a personal or a professional basis, it should be a great event.

There is so much stuff to sift through and figure out what is important, and what’s important to me may not be important to you, how do you decide?

Posted by sbarnes under Information Overload, knowledge workers ::

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