Innovation. Incubation. Growth

 BITS, Pilani recently announced that students and faculty would be allowed to take a year of to go and build their own startups (read the article here).  This seems like a brilliant idea to create greater institute-industry collaboration.  At the same time this is likely to foster innovation too. This also reminded me of my days at 3i Infotech.  PREMIA, the insurance software, had established itself as a market leader in the Middle East and Africa, and plans were afoot to expand its footprint to Europe and the USA.  This vision meant that we would have to scale up significantly, both in terms of people and technology.   Here’s how we went about it:

1.      Aavishkar: An innovation forum with a contest was launched to get people to work on technological aspects that would enhance functional and technical capabilities, create integrations to third-party applications, and mobility applications.  Enthusiastic participants offered several innovative ideas, some of which were incremental, while there were some  game-changing entries too.

2.      PREMIA University: We also figured out that we would need to create a huge resource pool to support the development and implementation efforts.  PREMIA University was set up with the intention of creating a resource pool that would ensure a continuous stream of students who were familiar with the domain, and were familiar with PREMIA.   A PREMIA lab was set up at VIT, and we spent time teaching students the nuts and bolts of software implementation, including domain knowledge.   

Both these initiatives helped us scale quickly.  The PREMIA Lab we set up at some of the colleges went on to create job opportunities for students, who later went on to join some of our clients in the Middle East and Africa.  The Great Resignation has created this need to increase interaction with universities and colleges, to support and nourish innovation so that companies are able to scale up their productivity, and benefit from the huge opportunities that technological advancements are bringing up.  The BITS experiment seems to be a step in the right direction, and it would be good to see industry also step up and meet this initiative half-way.

 The Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), keeping pace with advances in technology announced add-on covers to the Motor – Own Damage Policy; The Pay-as-you-Drive and Pay-How-You-Drive are two add-on covers intended to harness technology giving insurers the ability to customize their motor insurance.  Version 1.0 of these add-ons are based merely on declarations made by customers and providing information on odometer readings.  However, given the advances in automobile telematics, Pay-as-you-drive and Pay-how-you-drive will soon become more than just catch-words.

On-board Diagnostic and Reporting devices, GPS, and wireless communication capabilities come together to provide the ability to compute premiums based on vehicle usage, driver behavior, location, and vehicle condition. This opens the possibility for dynamic pricing of premiums based on how often owners use their vehicles. Where owners have more than one vehicle, it also gives the opportunity to apportion premiums across these vehicles based on how often each of these vehicles are used.

On-board technology can also provide information on routes through which the vehicle passes, speed at which the vehicle is driven, distance covered, and other parameters such as wear-and-tear on brakes and clutch. This makes it possible for  insurers to get even more accurate pricing algorithms that reflect the true risk to the insurance company.  Customers also benefit from customized premiums instead of the one-size-fits-all premiums that are prevalent today.

With ADAS technology getting more sophisticated in automobiles, we will have many more parameters that can be tracked for ensuring safer driving habits and adjusting premiums according to driver behavior.  For example, Heads-up-display ensures that drivers can keep his eyes on the road and not be distracted by digital information being pushed to them. It may soon be possible to correlate this data with information being passed on from wearable devices to track driver alertness, stress levels, and the like. Research has shown that installation of safety and monitoring devices improved driver behavior.  The day will not be far off, when machines will be reporting on our performance, rather than drivers reporting on car performance!

“Thank you, Mark!  It was a pleasure having you at the wheel.  You did not get distracted – the phone was on silent during the drive, you changed radio stations only once, and overall your attention to what was happening on the road was good.  You did brake hard once at the Metro Square Junction.  That could have been avoided had you slowed down as you approached the junction.  Nevertheless, overall the car handling was also good. Air pressure and other vehicle parameters are also good.  Car maintenance has also been good. Overall, you deserve a 4.5.  Good Night.”

This might very well be a report that will go out to the owner at the end of each day!  Some of that data may also go to the insurance company.  And if he has been speeding, the Motor Vehicle Department may also get notified.  Interesting times ahead!

Solsten has been at the leading edge of building intelligent solutions for businesses by collating data from various sources and providing visual insights that allow businesses to make better decisions.  For more information, get in touch with us

To "Like" or Not to "Like"

"To be, or not to be..." is the opening phrase from Shakespeare's play, Hamlet that has become one of the most widely quoted phrases in the English language.  Ever since the advent of Facebook and other Social Media tools, the one thing that pops up in everybody's mind is "To Like, or Not to Like…”.  It seems to be the simplest way of acknowledging one’s presence on social media; apart from ensuring that a similar thumbs up is reciprocated on your Facebook page when you post something!  But do all these Likes and Comments add up to anything?
Enterprise Social Media, as it is known when such tools are used in organizations to crowd-source ideas, generate opinions, and solicit solutions to problems also have these ubiquitous “Like” buttons to record user participation.  However, what do these translate to, and how one can make meaningful measurements about the impact it has on creating and disseminating knowledge within the organization is a subject of intense study in all organizations.  Here are a few measurements commonly used to analyse traffic on your social media page:
Page Likes: This includes the number of people who “Like”, “Comment”, “Tag”, “Share” or in some manner indicate that they have viewed the content you have posted on your social page.   When any of these actions are performed, this invariably serves up as a notification on the user’s page, thus allowing people who follow this to be notified of content that may be of interest to them.  This is especially useful, when someone is following a topic of interest.  For example, as a curator of several topics on Social Learning Theory, I compile lists of content from various sources that are of interest on the subject.  When I create several lists of such topics (categorized based on complexity, or topic), it becomes easy for someone who is following me to gain access to such content.  The count of such Page likes, their frequency, and half-life are of interest – they provide insight into the longevity and importance of a topic, often giving clues about the shelf-life of some topics.   Of special interest is the “Viral reach” – an indicator of how far and wide the content has spread.  A topic of organizational importance spreads across the entire organization, whereas a topic that is of interest to a limited circle spreads only within that circle.  When such a topic moves across circles, it is an indicator that a new idea has possibly been generated.
I have used the term “Page Likes” in a generic manner.  This could be a comment or reply to a post, or a tag, a share or any such action that can be performed when you post content.  Similarly, each of these actions could individually spawn several measures, many of which when seen in perspective, can provide valuable insight into the nature of collaboration that occurs within an enterprise.  For example, in an enterprise some of the measures that are of value could be:
·         The number of employee-to-employee relationships spawned through various knowledge sharing activities
·         The re-use rate of frequently accessed content
·         The capture of key expertise – key concepts that make the transformation from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge.
·         The dissemination of knowledge to appropriate individuals – here the definition of “appropriate” could be nebulous and depend on specific scenarios.  However, the general intent is that when a content is used in specific context, then it is considered to have reached the appropriate individual.
·         The number of new ideas generated – captured in specific forms, or deduced from new projects that are created with the key concept
·         The number of new lessons learned and best practices created – identified by changes in Package of Practice, or discussions in Communities of Practice, or content which find their way into structured lessons
·         New case studies that are presented based on experience shared
·         The number of apprentices one mentors – the earlier concept of a lesson portfolio or lists that are maintained and accessed by employees with a lower skill or competence level
Several of these measures can eventually be tracked to operational measures – those that define business performance.  This in turn provide some indication of the impact knowledge management processes have on organizational performance.  However, there is a need to understand that business performance measures are usually far more complex in terms of the factors that affect them, and any correlation can at best be tenuous.  However, over longer periods of time, it is possible to empirically ascribe significant weightage to knowledge and learning initiatives on the overall impact in the business.  In the short term, specific instances have clearly been identified which have provided quantum breakthroughs in performance – either in the form of cost reduction, improved productivity, or entirely new products and services.   

Meaningful measures in Knowledge Management #Knowledge-Management #Knowledge-metrics #enterprise-social-media 

And now The Mentalist shares his wisdom...

“Long before we stuffed knowledge into graphs and charts, we used older, and in some cases more entertaining ways to remember things.  Grids, Lists and Classification is a nice way of organizing things.  But it is not the way the world works; and it is certainly not the way the brain works.” ~ Patrick Jane in “The Mentalist”

Predictive Analytics and Big Data are the buzz words making the rounds today, as organizations – especially online organizations try to get better at predicting customer tastes and preferences.  The entire supply-chain then bends backwards trying to fulfil the prophecy, and works overtime making and stocking the shelves with what has been forecast.  In an earlier post, I had mentioned about the over-dependence on data – grids, lists, charts and graphs – the elusive hunt for that pattern which reveals how a whole host of people are thinking or what is influencing their purchase decisions.  No doubt, all of this is very useful. Today, the ability to collect, collate and analyse data from so many different sources has gotten better.  However, I suspect the ability to interpret this in a meaningful manner – has somewhat diminished – decision makers are trying to replace the critical element of personal knowledge, emanating from skills and experience with mechanically interpreted data.

So, I am drawn into wondering how personal knowledge that emanates from skill and experience can coexist with the interpretations and conclusions that we draw from charts and graphs.  Do they predict the same thing – or are they too many variables for either of them to be reasonably accurate.  More importantly, how can the two work together to improve the ratio of successful predictions.  Like the apocryphal story about the old worker who charges $100 to fix a boiler by tapping it with a  hammer (read that here) where personal knowledge is shown as being extremely important, to the other story about Wal-Mart placing diapers next to beer because sales patterns revealed increase in sales (read it here) where analytics is shown to be the hero – we are left wondering where the twain can meet.

Personal knowledge – that intricate mix of learning, practice, sharing and experiencing – is what goes into creating organizational knowledge.  The ability of the expert to share that knowledge in a vivid and memorable manner enables the organization to embed that knowledge – institutionalize it.  In a similar manner, when patterns emerge from the way the organization interacts with its ecosystem, the ability to identify it, and make it available to the expert to create another memorable story is what analytical tools should become good at.  A picture is worth a thousand words – they say; with data visualization getting better by the day, it should be possible to create memorable images that then become stories that get embedded as part of organization’s knowledge. 

Have you come across any graphs or charts that have helped you change the way you work?

Knowledge Sharing - Lessons from Grey's Anatomy

“Dr. Richard, today’s lecture day…and I have one open spot”.

I had been idly surfing channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when for no particular reason I paused to see what this all about.  It was a scene from the American medical drama television series Grey’s Anatomy stopped me in my tracks.  It seemed like it was right out of some Knowledge Management lecture, that I was tempted to sit and watch more.  Here are some interesting insights and thoughts that occurred to me as I watched this episode.

“You brought back lecture day?”  

Probably an age-old custom of this hospital which quietly disappeared as people became too busy to learn.  So, Dr. Richard seems rather incredulous when he is offered a slot to speak – which incidentally happens to be his “swan song” lecture.  Very often, good initiatives that were intended to create knowledge, promote best practices, and stimulate collaboration peter off into meaningless ritual – more because of apathy than because there is nothing to be gained from it.  The very senior management that initiated such good practice within the organization often end up sabotaging it by pulling out people from such activity, thereby sending a strong signal that it is after all “not that important”.  Of course the flip side to it is just that – it becomes a ritual – something to be gotten over and done with – the inability to inspire people to tell a good story often rings the death knell for such initiatives.

·         “We are a teaching hospital.  We learn by doing.  We can also…should also learn from others’ experiences.  Their mistakes saves you mistakes…their losses saves you losses…their victories will inspire yours. “

Every organization needs to have some form of formal learning mechanism; be it classroom led lectures, webinars, blended learning models or a pot-pourri of other learning technologies, the one sure-fire way to ensure that the lessons learned from an organization’s experience need to be shared so that everyone can learn and benefit from it.  With a rapidly ageing workforce, especially in some of the older industries, a lot of knowledge that was gained through the experience of people who have done the same kind of tasks for over 20 to 30 years seems to be going away.  In the medical field, for example, where doctors could just look at patients and make an intelligent diagnosis, today’s physicians need the aid of scans and images, blood samples and what have you, to make a tentative guess of what the probably symptom could be.  How can organizations preserve that expertise and skill gained from the experience of so many years of work?

"Eyes forward and pay attention. If you are caught dozing you get chalk on your face. Ask Dr Yang! my aim is exceptional.  If you answer right you get a chocolate! "

Although Dan Pink may disagree, at least during the initial stages, the carrot and stick approach often is quite a strong driver to ensure that there is sufficient participation in such initiatives.  While, of course, as can be seen, chocolates are seen more as a means to make it interactive and fun, rather than sit back and snooze off without getting caught.  The other interesting aspect is that Dr. Miranda Bailey makes it very interactive by inviting the audience to become real characters in her story.  As the story unfolds we see other doctors actually trying to guess how the story would end.  Goes without saying that for knowledge to get strongly embedded a good story that can hold it together is an important aspect.

"Single most important step in the treatment process…patient history…thank you. Catch…"

Dr. Miranda Bailey quizzes the audience on what they think is the most important aspect of diagnosis.  Knowledge is about knowing…and what better way to know than to understand what has happened.  In business parlance, that would translate to looking at the information available so we get a measure of the issue on hand.  Quite often, this will also involve going back in time to identify trends and patterns that could indicate what could potentially be the problem.  This, in essence, is where experience meets data – where the numbers tell the story which forms on the basis of experience and skill….more about this another 

   “…..every test I could think of – negative.  I did what I told you all to do when you are stuck.  I hit the books. I hit them hard"

A good knowledge repository is like “sitting on the shoulder of giants”.  In present day context, knowledge repositories enable two aspects of knowing – it connects people to people – helps you identify the experts; it also connects people to content – enables you discover content.  When an organization’s knowledge base is organized well around a well-defined taxonomy, then discovering content, connecting content to content, and people to content becomes easy.  It makes the prospect of “hitting the books hard” a pleasurable exercise.

 "If you looked further and talked to the patient…your patient who has been sliced nine ways to Sunday has porphyria…you know the difference between you and me…I learned."

As organizations get adaptive and responsive, they are building a knowledge ecosystem that brings in all players in the ecosystem to collaborate and come up with a solution.  The customer (in this case the patient) is often the one best equipped to provide you with inputs and insight that could lead to innovation and process / product improvement.  Keeping the communication lines open and collaborating with the customer is as much if not a more important aspect of knowledge sharing than any other I can think 

"Good Morning! Once upon a time long before I was chief of surgery, I was a resident…just like you.  You learn from everything in your residency. But you don’t realize how much you learn from each other. Look around…the biggest influences in your life are sitting next to you…in this room"

The one who shares knowledge best, is the one who can tell a story well.  And here, we have Dr. Richard telling a compelling story – and even better – exhorting the doctors to rely on each other, share ideas and collaborate.  The biggest influences in your life, are after all the people you get to see every day, and spend quite a lot of time with.  If you cannot rely on them to enhance your skill and experience, who else will be able to do that.  The most important lesson in knowledge sharing is about getting your team and your colleagues to inspire your victories…and learn from your losses.  This is clearly a message that needs to be driven home strongly in every organization that intends to 

The Hippocratic oath (The declaration of  Geneva)

This aspect of knowledge sharing I see whenever I interact with microfinance and self-help groups.  The self-help groups and joint liability groups develop a strong sense of sisterhood (more than 90% of borrowers are women)! J  And one way they do this is to wear uniforms and take a pledge at every group meeting.  Over time, this helps create a strong sense of identify and also helps in bonding.  While the Doctor’s oath, is slightly different, it sort of reinforces the inherent need to practice their profession with conscience and dignity.   

Watching this episode I got the impression that there were several important lessons one could take away and it touched upon the essence of Knowledge Management.  It also brought to fore the art of storytelling as a key tool of Knowledge sharing. Do you know of any other tele serial from which there were some nice knowledge nuggets you took away?   

Note: Grey’s Anatomy is an American medical drama television series.  You can find more information about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey%27s_Anatomy . This was Episode 15 of Season 6 titled Time Warp. 

Smoke on the water

The river, as it meanders through the plains gathers momentum, and then falls from great heights crashing down on the rocks below creating a misty spray; this process effectively transforms a small part of the gushing river to its almost elemental state of water droplets. They soon gather themselves and continue their journey downstream.

Observing this phenomenon at Hogenakkal, I was reminded of a question someone asked me recently, on how tacit knowledge becomes explicit in an organization? In other words, when does personal knowledge of an individual become organizational knowledge? In his magnum opus, Personal KnowledgePolanyi talks about the 'knowledge continuum' between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge.

Knowledge can be categorized into three broad categories based on how it impacts business:

• Process-related
• Organization and Culture-related
• Tools (Information technology)

Broadly speaking, all business performance is streamlined into tasks, procedures, processes with measures to determine how it is impacting the business. For example, revenue v/s target is an indication of how close the business is towards achieving its sales objectives. The underlying processes provide the mechanism to achieve that, which in today's world, for the most part is executed through tools (CRM / ERP, etc). So, we also measure process performance to assess the efficiency or effectiveness of the process. The productivity of the personnel who execute these processes are also measured to enable improvement in their performance.

The second aspect relating to organization and culture is largely defined by:

• Skills and level of mastery
• Work environment
• Training and Development
• Motivation factors

Post-industrial era has seen a large change in the work environment, and the behavioral characteristics of the workforce. A recent Gallup report described the current workforce to consist of more than 40% of knowledge workers, which is growing every year. The standard motivational factors that motivated industrial era workers do not work in this environment any longer. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, talks of the death of Management principles that were based on Taylor's measurement techniques, largely because there is less and less work that is monotonous and requires just a pair or arms or legs.

As we have seen, culture has also been significantly influenced by Technology and tools that have helped in breaking silos and bridging chasms - creating the ability to collaborate across boundaries. Tools come with integral collaboration capability and workflows that support seamless involvement of people across tasks. 

So, how can the impact of KM be measured on the organization?

• The impact of Knowledge on the business process, as measured by metrics which determine underlying causes for the change in business measures
• The inter-relation of these underlying causes which can be attributed to change in skills, work environment, learning and motivation factors
• The impact of tools in enabling change in culture - creating a collaborative and connected community

In the absence of clear metrics that link business performance to changes in process, the impact of implementing Knowledge Management in an organization on creating greater cohesion, collaboration and ability to reach out to a larger community will have to be used as an indirect measure on the overall improvement in the business.

For example:

• How can we relate activities at the two ends of the knowledge spectrum - a user accessing a procedure document or content in the knowledge repository to tacit knowledge which is measured as conversations that occur in the collaborative work-space;
• Or the ability of the Knowledge environment to bridge the transition from personal knowledge to organizational knowledge by connecting a seeker of knowledge to an expert on the subject
• measuring the decibel levels in a community or discussion forum to associated change in processes - which result from the community making innovative changes in the way the business process is executed

These by themselves will have no direct impact on business performance. However, they are the cogs in the wheels which turn bigger wheels which result in generating huge momentum and force. Viewed in isolation, it may not be possible to determine their end impact, but recognizing the role in the overall work environment will definitely help in ensuring that organizations organize themselves towards a knowledge-driven strategy for growth and sustainability.

So back to my original question: at what point does personal knowledge become organizational knowledge? I think the SECI model proposed by Nonaka provides a framework in which to understand this transformation. Technology and the rapid adoption of social media tools in the work-place has enabled us understand this phenomenon better.

What do you think?

It’s (knowledge about) the Customer, Stupid!

 

"Salesforce CEO admits 'social enterprise' pitch didn't work. Apparently no one knew what 'social enterprise' meant – not even the guys who coined the term." (http://www.zdnet.com/salesforce-ceo-admits-social-enterprise-pitch-didnt-work-7000023336/)

This article by Rachel King for Between the Lines
caught my attention for its validation of a fundamental premise – that the much-hyped term would do little to push the case for business unless it could deliver value in tangible terms. A tool's value would be determined by whether it was fit-for-purpose. The problem with most "me"-centric terms is that they get caught up in the narcissistic web of looking at how they become the centre of attention. And in the process fail to meet their raison d'être – to serve the customer.

Marc Benioff has moved on to a new term – the Internet of Customers. And at least this time, the focus is on the customer – and hopefully, this coinage will probably have a longer and more useful lifespan than the declaration at Dreamforce 2011. It has become quite clear that collaboration and social media tools without any specific purpose do not really end up being very useful knowledge tools. While there may be traction in terms of getting people to create some chatter, the real value that one gets from providing direction to the conversation is missing.

I think it is this perspective that Marc Benioff seems to have gotten right the second time around, with the launch Salesforce One, and the "Internet of Customers" pitch. Here, clearly, the focus is away from product-centric statements that highlight messaging prowess, and instead focuses on what it can do for the customer. This was highlighted during a recent conversation with my good friend Sukumar Rajagopal, when he spoke about bringing "purpose" into the equation when implementing KM initiatives at Cognizant. From the initial thrust of generating a buzz – primarily through getting people to participate in social media, the focus shifted towards innovation as the reason for KM activities. This clearly ups the ante in terms of engaging people in conversations that have a clear purpose. What also becomes apparent is that it is not about the tool or the employee – it is about his participation in making a difference to the customer. The interesting aspect is that this also enables performance measurement. We are able to clearly identify if the KM initiative is headed in the right direction.

How well-defined is the purpose of your KM initiative? Share your feedback.

 

Making Organizational Learning stick

This post has been stuck for a while in the space between the keyboard and the fingers…more out of inertial than anything else.

How can a learning organization ensure that its organization learning methodologies are being put to good use? In an organization that is steadily climbing up the knowledge maturity curve, chances are that they will have a very structured knowledge repository and processes that enable this knowledge repository to get populated with content periodically. It is also highly likely that they have the tools and mechanisms in place for knowledge exchange on a social platform. And most definitely, they will have a formal learning program in place that enables employees continuously upgrade their skills and competencies.

How does one put all of this in perspective, such that each of the programs feeds the other, and there is tangible evidence of social learning that is occurring in the organization?

When enterprises are able to integrate formal e-learning methodologies with social collaboration, a social learning platform emerges. What this means is that the e-learning tool becomes an integral part of the social collaboration environment. For example, if it were possible for me:

1. to follow up a post with a short quiz
   
2. or conduct a survey
   

It would enable the organization get a sense of the level of understanding of the context and concepts underlying the article.

In a dynamic learning environment, I would be able to :

• Discover similar stories and notes
  
• Manage an ordered list of similar topics
  
• Test my understanding by taking tests or quizzes
  
• Look up a hint or follow a link in response to a question that I got wrong
  
• Read up content for more insight into a particular topic
  
• Identify an expert on the subject and get into a private conversation
  
• Join a discussion forum or a Community of practice in this domain
  

From an organization perspective, this kind of a learning environment would enable the organization:

• To go beyond structured learning methodologies
  
• Discover topics and subjects that are of interest to a larger section of the organization
  
• Identify niche subjects where expertise is scarce and develop a Community of Practice around that
  
• Discover experts in the organization and make them available to a larger group of people
  

Such a tool would have the following capabilities:

• Provide the capability to frame questions around a topic
  
• Enable objective and subjective responses to a question
  
• Provide the capability to conduct a survey or a poll
  
• Allow users to discover related topics to a response
  
• Provide valuable insights into organizational learning capabilities based on the responses
  

NEPHILA, integrated with marksplus has the ability to integrate Organizational learning to Knowledge Management thus enabling the enterprise become a learning organization.

 

Camel or horse: Wisdom of the crowds

"A Camel is a horse designed by a committee" – so goes the old saying. However, Gen Y believes differently; with online communities becoming a powerful way of sourcing information, collaboration and co-creation is becoming the preferred way of working. In 2005, the word "Crowdsourcing" was coined – a portmanteau word originating from "Crowd" and "Outsourcing".
"Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas or content, by soliciting from a large group of people, and especially from an online community."
~Source: Wikipedia
In his book, Crowdsourcing, Brabham classified crowdsourcing into the following types:

• Knowledge Discovery and Management: Where an online community is tasked with the responsibility of collecting and collating information relating to a particular topic. For example, when I put out an online question asking people of a Knowledge community for their definition of knowledge management, I am collating the different responses from group members, identifying key words used in the definition, the frequency of occurrence of specific key words, to come up with a definition that best expresses Knowledge Management.
  Interdisciplinary annotations and trends are yet another example of using the crowdsourcing approach to emergent semantic networks (a network that represents relationships between two concepts – for example, ontology and taxonomy, knowledge and intelligence)
• Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking: This is actually more of micro-task management. A large task is split up into smaller components and distributed across several people. This is then assembled to arrive at the final objective. Analysis of large data sets is usually carried out this way. Large projects which can be deconstructed into micro-projects are also usually crowd-sourced, with people bidding for the smaller projects. Organizations which have formal tie-ups with Universities as part of their University-Industry Linkage, have been known to adopt this approach.
• Broadcast Search: Ideation problems typically fall into this category. This is also what we usually find in online communities and forums. When people have a specific problem, they broadcast their question to the online community, for example, StackOverFlow, and then review the results to decide on the best result. This kind of problem usually has a definite answer – for example, "Why does 'Tour De Flex' show I am not connected to the internet, although I am online".
• Creative Production: The most famous example is possibly Threadless (https://www.threadless.com/make/submit/). This company encourages you to submit designs for t-shirts, and you get paid whenever a t-shirt manufacturing company selects your design for mass production. This is usually done when we need a creative design, not necessarily a single correct answer, and we end up asking the community for ideas. When Lays reached a plateau in sales, they turned to crowdsourcing ideas for new flavors – a competition resulted in several ideas for new flavors coming up from amateur flavor experts – housewives and children – reviving flagging sales by introduction of new flavors.

So, is all social collaboration Crowdsourcing. In a very loose manner of speaking, any collaboration that involves people outside a formally defined team can be called crowdsourcing. However, where the results cannot be quantified or substantiated as having been derived specifically as a result of participation of external resources, it cannot be called Crowdsourcing.
What are the characteristics of a Social Collaboration tool that supports Crowdsourcing?

• Online participation: The most fundamental aspect of course, is that the participation happens beyond the borders of an organization (or a business unit, in the case of very large organizations).
• Context: Crowdsourcing is most effective when there is a definite context in which participation occurs. Examples are:
  • A problem or issue that requires resolution, and internal sources may not have the requisite experience or know-how to address the issue
  • Data or Content Collection and collation: Used for obtaining data from a large group of people, which is collated. For example, research citations and profiling
  • Survey: Polls or surveys conducted to obtain data from a large source of people which is then used for research and analysis
• Platform: Ideation or Innovation platforms – this is usually organized around a domain or topic – where idea generation is the objective. The idea generation can take many forms – suggestion box, prototype presentations, contests – the platform usually supports reward and recognition mechanisms
• Micro-tasking – This is usually a specific configuration of generic crowd-sourcing tools – where the key functionality of project or task management will exist. However, the focus is on being able to generate participation externally, and the task is of a nature where it can be distributed.

Managing knowledge through Communities of Practice

A Community is defined as a social or other group sharing common characteristics or interests, and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists. In the organizational context, a Community of Practice (CoP) is a group sharing common interests or profession in a particular domain. The community evolves through the sharing of knowledge and experiences, learning from each other, and building tight bonds as a community on account of such shared interests. Of course, some organizations create these communities (as a task force) with a specific objective of gaining knowledge in a specific domain.

The key characteristics of a Community of Practice are:

• The domain in which the CoP situates itself
  
• The members of the community
  
• The practice
  

Domain is defined by who participates and who is a member; participation evolves over time through engagement and is further refined by alignment to a common shared vision. Some communities are self-organizing – it evolves based on the level of engagement and participation, the relationships it develops, and the shared experiences that become part of the way it works over a period of time. In some cases, they work within a framework or structure, and build their network of relationships along the way. A central organizing body usually formed from among the community members itself, defines the broad framework within which they operate, and define the vision for the community.

The practice itself defines what the community does, the value it creates, the actual practice it sustains and develops, and how it grows through the development of these practices. A community distinguishes itself from the larger society within which they operate by the boundaries they create – usually defined by relationships, connections and artefacts that they develop. It therefore stands to reason that for a Community of Practice to be successful, it has to develop around a common agenda, be able to engage and participate through shared experiences, and members need to develop a sense of accountability towards the community. Each community develops its own mechanism and process for knowledge creation and transfer; a community lacking foundational knowledge in its domain is likely to be able to sustain itself, since the concept of shared knowledge or experiences will be minimal or non-existent.

How can organizations empower strong and meaningful communities of practice that will be sustainable and create value?

• A Community of practice is based on shared experiences. This will essentially come from participation of its members. Recognition of member's participation will encourage active involvement which eventually will help build relationships across the community. An active community is able to draw in more members to its fold, enhance the level of participation, capture and build its repository of shared experiences, which eventually becomes the knowledge that the community shares with the rest of the organization.
  
• A community that has greater locality – not necessarily geographically, but in terms of shared interests, is more likely to sustain itself because of the sharper focus of the mutuality of their engagement. The commonality of beliefs and values, and the knowledge thus generated will carry more meaning for the community which set itself on a self-sustaining cycle.
  
• Learning and passing on common memories is essential to the power of practice. Community members become invested in other members through this common learning activity. Some examples of such learning are:
  
  • Codified knowledge in the form of user manuals, processes and written procedures
    
  • Rituals and shared beliefs which may even be part of the culture. For example, Friday 'brown-bag lunches' is a common ritual carried out in some organizations where members of the community get together, away from the work environment, to share their experiences and learn from each other.
    
  • Teaching and structured content which is prepared and delivered to members. In the technology-driven world, webinars are a means of engaging the community through structured presentations.
    
  • Everyday practice by the members – Members of the community develop a strong sense of bonding by actively engaging themselves in the code they have formed within themselves. For example, a CoP that prides itself on developing clear coding standards, diligently applies the learning and rules evolved by the community. This eventually leads to organizational level standards – sometimes extending to an international standard itself.
    
  • Enterprise activity that engages the members on a daily basis – this is usually driven by the enterprise itself to engage the members in an active manner. It could mean creation of surveys, polls, quizzes and other activities that will draw out participation and make the community a vibrant organism that is able to interact and contribute to the larger society in which it exists in a very dynamic environment.
    

  While the core principles that drive a Community of Practice are very much culture oriented, technology can play an important role in making it sustainable and available beyond geographic limitations. Active participation, however, will depend on how dynamic and participatory the individual members are.
  

  
   

  How do Communities of Practice operate in your organization? How effective are they in driving strategy?
  

Meaningful measures for managing knowledge

"Peter Brand: Billy, this is Chad Bradford. He's a relief pitcher. He is one of the most undervalued players in baseball. His defect is that he throws funny. Nobody in the big leagues cares about him because he looks funny. This guy could be not just the best pitcher in our bullpen, but one of the most effective relief pitchers in all of baseball."

~From the movie "Moneyball" (2011)

I was reminded of the movie during a recent conversation when someone asked me "Will a CEO be happy implementing a large scale solution to know that "nn" documents were shared in a group"? Measurement myopia leads us quickly to the maxim "What you can measure you can manage". However, as Einstein said" Not everything you count, counts; not everything that counts is counted". In knowledge management especially, establishing a relationship between business growth (and profitability) and organizational knowledge, is at best tenuous. While there are several research papers to establish that knowledge leadership has a definite impact on sustainable competitive advantage, growth, profitability, innovation and several other business performance attributes, it would be foolhardy to attempt to establish a formulaic method to arrive at this conclusion. Study of several organizations that have implemented knowledge management systems, and have progressed along the knowledge maturity path demonstrate empirically, that an organization that is able to leverage its intellectual capital is definitely better off than an organization that is struggling to get its thoughts organized. Enterprises with a higher level of knowledge management maturity have a higher potentiality to strategize and innovate. (Hagel et al, 2002)

That said, meaningful measures of knowledge management definitely have their place under the sun. It allows the organization insight into behavioural, cultural and aspects of organizational dynamics that facilitate or hinder collaboration, sharing of knowledge and therefore the capability to innovate. More importantly, it provides an anchor to correlate organizational performance to knowledge management, thereby enhancing the ability of the organization to improve business performance, by enhancing its capability to organize its knowledge management competencies. What then are some of the measures
^(*) that will eventually help link up to business performance?

• Number of sharing relationships resulting from exchange of knowledge (especially when it is across boundaries) – an indicator of innovation
  
• Re-use rate of frequently accessed content – an indicator for improvement in efficiency and quality
  
• Competency enhancement – A measurement of conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge evidenced from the conversion of online content into process / knowledge repository
  
• Lessons learned and Best practices implemented
  

At higher levels of maturity, organizations even go on to discover the accuracy of knowledge dissemination – the number of times a knowledge nugget reached / or was discovered by the right person at the right time. This along with other metrics like number of new ideas that translated into innovative products, practices or services, and so on provide valuable clues to the organization on the impact of knowledge on the organization's ability to lead them on a path of growth and sustainable competitive advantage.

Personally, I don't believe it is possible, as yet, to establish with any level of accuracy that sharing "nn" documents resulted in a $yy savings to the company. However, I think it will be possible to empirically show that such a relationship does exist. Knowledge Management is no longer that "leap of faith". In fact, with an ageing population, rapid change in technology and various other parameters, it is fast becoming a resource that no organization can do without.

How did your organization take its decision to implement a KM system? Write in with your feedback and comments.

^{(*) –} Adapted from the Knowledge Management Handbook – Edited by Jay Liebowitz.

Making sense of everyday chatter

"Benioff explained on Monday's call that Salesforce reps took the social enterprise mantra to customers, but "couldn't find the buyers," suggesting even Salesforce.com didn't exactly understand what it meant." After all the hype during the launch of the "Social Enterprise" in 2011, it was time for a new mantra "The Internet of customers". And as we hop from one jargon to another, customers are left pondering on what exactly they wanted when they bought what they did! (http://www.zdnet.com/salesforce-ceo-admits-social-enterprise-pitch-didnt-work-7000023336/)

Recent articles point to the growing disenchantment with social media tools as a powerful way of capturing knowledge. While they still may be a good medium to stay connected within the enterprise, there is growing realization that they do not exactly contribute to enterprise knowledge 
(http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/how-yammer-is-killing-enterprise-social-networking/). One of the reasons for this has been the absence of a definitive context – one of the key strands in the DNA of a Knowledge Management System. While most social collaboration tools advertise themselves as KM tools, the ability to transform chatter to tacit knowledge (one that gets embedded in the DNA of the enterprise) is still some distance away. It is just not sufficient to say that it has been captured in the knowledge repository of the organization, and therefore the knowledge now exists in an explicit form.

Why is this so? Knowledge is an active process of knowing, the processes and results of participation in organizational practices. At one end of the spectrum we have technical knowledge – knowledge relating to skills and expertise required to perform tasks. At the other end of the spectrum, is the knowledge required for strategy and innovation – the translation of experience and expertise into actions that promote sustainable competitive advantage and growth. While to a large extent the knowledge required to perform tasks can be codified, stored and retrieved, the other kind of knowledge is mostly tacit. The success of any knowledge initiative will depend on how well this tacit knowledge is elicited and used. Such knowledge in action results in new products and processes which are then institutionalized and become new explicit knowledge.

So, if we were to consider an oft-quoted statement "Knowledge walks out when your employee leaves the organization"… it is true only to the extent of social collective practices that the organization engages in. So, the real question that the organization needs to deal with is on how to create the context in which social engagement takes place. Social media cannot do this…it is only a facilitator for recording the process. Social tools can enable this process effectively if they are grounded in the context where participation results in exploiting the weak ties and enabling greater collaboration, outside the circle of influence. For example, induction programs in many organizations is merely a set of PowerPoint presentations and canned lectures that purportedly gives the new hires a bird's eye view of the organization. However, engaging the new hires in conversations that relate to real-world problems exposes them to the organization in a manner that no induction program can achieve; more importantly, the organization gets to benefit from the experience of the new hires from day one. How can a social collaboration tool enable this? This, I believe is the challenge that social media tools need to surmount.

Conversations need to connect people to people, people to content, or content to content, for it to be actionable. When this happens the tacit nature of knowledge lends itself to transformation – to becoming assimilated by others in the enterprise, and thereon to getting embedded in the organization's way of working. This sharing of experience that occurs results in higher forms of learning – those that can impact more than just transaction-level activities; resulting in the manner in which an organization innovates and strategizes.

Collaboration goes beyond just working together on a project; in today's world, where technology has made the world smaller, it means a whole lot more. Social learning, Communities of Practice, and the good old chatter we see on social media all contribute to some form of collaboration. In fact, social media has almost become synonymous with social collaboration in the enterprise. Yet, how much of this actually adds up to enterprise knowledge is anybody's guess.
What has been your experience with the use of social media tools in your organization?

Social Learning: Bandura and beyond

Social Learning theory postulates that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in the social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory). Albert Bandura is credited with making significant contribution to this theory which integrated behavioural and cognitive theories of learning in order to provide a comprehensive model for the wide range of learning experiences that occur in the real world. However, Bandura's theory is quite different from how the term "Social learning" is being used today. With the advent of the digital age and social media, social learning has acquired a new flavour – one influenced by learning that occurs assisted by social media and collaboration. As a means of knowledge acquisition, learning from peers and through interaction has always been a considered a key component of the process of imbibing knowledge. So, social learning by itself, is not very new; the technology has however changed. It has become ubiquitous and with social media becoming a key element in almost every aspect of work life today, it is inevitable that learning would remain unaffected by it.

In the context of the enterprise, learning is an invaluable tool – one that ensures productivity and helps sustain competitive advantage. From Peter Senge who popularized the term "Learning Organization" to Berger and Luckman who brought social learning theory into Organizational Learning literature, there have been several proponents of the concept that an organization that is able to learn continuously is the one that will have a sustainable competitive advantage. Over the years, this has been implemented in several ways in organizations:

• Structured learning through formal training programs
  
• Apprenticeship and Internship which allowed employees to learn on the job
  
• Post-situational learning – learning from mistakes / introducing changes based on experience
  
• Collaborative learning – Learning through sharing insights and experience with colleagues and others
  

The internet and collaborative technologies have given rise to newer methodologies to implement these age-old practices viz. e-learning, blended learning models, Communities of Practice and so on. With Social Media taking centre-stage we are also witnessing an attempt to use social media tools for organization learning. Discussion Forums, Communities of Practice and other collaborative learning models have been on the rise. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is yet another term that has gained popularity – structured learning programs have now been blended with a collaborative tool giving rise to several streams of discussions, insights and opinions becoming available on a single subject. While these have benefited the users by making available content, the likes of which we have never seen before, a concomitant headache has been the information overload that has accompanied this. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff? With nearly a million voices speaking at the same time, how do we identify what is valuable for us, in the current context?

What does Organization learning mean in the context of your enterprise? How close would you say your organization is to becoming a Learning Organization?

 

 

Knowledge Management – Defies definition

"There are many words and definitions I have never lost. But some I am only just beginning to truly understand"

~Mary E Pearson

How often have we used words fully comprehending the context in which we are using it, yet when asked the meaning of the word we would be stumped to give an accurate definition? Knowledge is apparently one such word; and when that becomes "Knowledge Management" you could actually end up writing a book of definitions.

This is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines knowledge. If so, how can knowledge be managed? Peter Drucker is credited with the quote "You can't manage knowledge. Knowledge is between two ears and only between two ears." And quite rightly so. If you were to manage the acquisition of skills through education, then that would be termed training and what is gained through experience can hardly be managed. An ancient Sanskrit text describes the process of how people acquire knowledge:

"Achaaryaath paadam aadatthe

paadam sishya swamedhayaa

paadam sa brahmachaaribhya

sesham kaala kramena
cha"

It explains:

From the teacher you receive a quarter of your knowledge
A quarter the disciple learns by his own efforts (practice)
A quarter he gains through interactions with his peers (fellow students)
The remaining comes only as time passes by (from experience)

I found this quite insightful, because it delineates the knowledge acquisition process and therefore gives us access to managing the acquisition process. It also appears that this could be equally effectively applied in the context of the organization. The organization, like the individual also learns in a similar manner; the only difference being that the teacher here might actually be the market place (in the case of organization's learning) and in some cases the market regulator.

Given this definition, I was trying to fit it into the current context of organizational knowledge and definitions by different leading knowledge management experts. Every organization which engages in some form of learning intervention, be it formal training and development programs or more unstructured learn-on-the-job forms, is providing employees with a "teacher" who imparts some learning. Similarly, as employees use their skills on a regular basis and learn from their experiences, they begin to know more than what they knew previously; the third kind of learning happens when employees engage in social interactions with other colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers etc. Every interaction will leave the employee enriched with a new learning and experience. The question then is, how can the organization manage these individual experiences and learning such that the sum total of this far exceeds the individual knowledge of each employee. And when this is put to use effectively, the organization benefits many fold than would be possible if each individual or group were to work in silos.

So, Knowledge Management then is the process by which an organization taps into the education and experience of individuals and makes it available in a manner that it can be used for the productivity and growth of the organization. This becomes possible by creating an ecosystem that fosters the creation, acquisition, collation and dissemination of knowledge. And we will know that such initiatives have been successful when we can measure the impact of this process on the ability of the organization to grow and profit from such knowledge.

With the advent of social collaboration and knowledge repositories, technology will also play a big role in enabling knowledge management by:

1. Making it possible to have social interactions and capture such tacit knowledge
   
2. Providing a structured and collaborative learning environment
   
3. A mechanism to capture insights and share it with other employees
   
4. And allowing people to benefit from the experience of others
   

While, seemingly it may not be possible to hasten the knowledge acquisition process, in an organizational context, what is important is how individual experiences can be collectively employed by the organization such that the organization's knowledge far exceeds its experience. Knowledge Management, then becomes a process of enabling individual skills and experiences to be gathered, collated and used contextually for enabling the organization progress in a sustainable manner.

A good knowledge management system would therefore have elements of collaboration and learning in order to be effective. By being able to integrate this to the performance of the organization it would enable the organization drive strategy and innovation.

When viewed from this perspective, we are able to appreciate the reason for Knowledge Management to exist as a strategic tool in organizations. We also realize the complexity of being able to gather such knowledge, process it in a meaningful manner, and share it with the entire organization such that it is available for use when needed. The challenges in enabling such a mechanism are multi-dimensional and involve people, processes, technology, organization structure, human behaviour and culture. When we look at the magnitude of activities that this will then encompass, it is quite easy to understand why a single definition eludes this subject.

Here are some definitions that are commonly used to define this subject:

• Knowledge Management is a concept in which enterprises consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares and analyses its knowledge in terms of resources, documents and people skills
  
• Knowledge Management is the process of applying a systematic approach to the capture, structuring, management and dissemination of knowledge throughout an organization to work faster, reuse best practices, and reduce costly rework.
  
• Knowledge Management is the deliberate and systematic coordination of an organization's people, process, technology, and organizational structure in order to add value through reuse and innovation.
  
• Strategies and processes designed to identify, capture, structure, leverage, value and share an organization's intellectual assets to enhance its performance and competitiveness
  
• Knowledge Management is a collaborative and integrated approach to the creation, capture, organization, access and use of an enterprise's intellectual assets
  
• Knowledge Management is understanding the organization's information flows and implementing learning practices which makes key aspects of its knowledge base available to the organization when required….
  

And so on it goes…

What is your definition of Knowledge Management? How would you go about explaining it?

 

 

 

 

Knowledge Management - The hydra-headed jargon

“Knowledge is as old as the rocks and as changing as the sea, enmeshed inextricably in its ways. And you want a clear definition of Knowledge Management? You must be daft!”

                                                                                         ~Paraphrasing Bedford in “The Quality of Travel”

One of the biggest challenges I have faced, especially facing people from a non-IT background is to explain what I do! “Knowledge Management? What exactly does that mean?” is a question I frequently encounter.  This post is a result of my quest to come up with an answer that will get me past a response that I hear “That’s very interesting”…but which I know really means “ I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about”!!! J

The reason for this ambiguity is not very hard to understand; Knowledge Management as a term entered the lexicons only about thirty years ago.  And even when it did, it came as an offshoot of an attempt to explain other terms like “knowledge acquisition”, “knowledge-base systems”, artificial intelligence, expert systems and computer-based ontologies – sort of a “basket-term” for all of these and much more.  Early management theorists like Peter Drucker, Paul Strassman and Peter Senge contributed to the growing understanding of knowledge as a key organizational resource with Senge contributing the cultural dimension with his seminal work “The Fifth Discipline” where he introduced the concept of “the learning organization”.  By the mid-1990s the word had become pretty much part of organization strategy with important contributions from researchers like Christopher Bartlett, Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Chris Agyris, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi…to name a few.

Knowledge Management became the new mantra for consulting companies; organizations that had not had much success with TQM and other business process re-engineering initiatives now embraced KM as the panacea for all their previous management blunders.  Along the way, the term came to acquire attributes of performance management, Quality management, Business Intelligence (the new Decision Support Systems), and what have you.

The rise of the digital age has added new flavours to knowledge management; Web 2.0 introduced social collaboration to the list of things that KM already stood for.  And with the number of social tools available in the market, and their attempts at capturing a slice of the enterprise space, Knowledge Management has never had it so good…in terms of popularity.  Never mind that people still are unable to define what it really means! J