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Wednesday, July 24, 2002 |
WorldCom - Electronic postings and links bring vital information to the surface.. (SOURCE:John Robb's Radio Weblog)-Ironic that WorldCom, as John Robb points out, itself didn't blogvital information to the surface and that this article comes to light just as we see that blogging vital information could have helped. It is Radio, the program used by Kaye, that is poised to become the Weblog tool for businesses. John Robb, Userland president and COO, has coined a new term for the business blog—K-log, the "K" denoting knowledge. It is so named because it is a tool for capturing and leveraging the knowledge contained in the minds of individual employees, helping to bring about a more meaningful contribution to the organization. "Most workers are becoming knowledge workers," notes Robb. "Domain expertise, views, and knowledge are what the company should value." Organizations have authorities that are trained in a specific domain "and everything they come across that is related to that domain and that they think about should be captured and archived and put into a format that others can access quickly," says Robb. "And that is a Web site." This is in direct opposition to control sought by managers of information. But Robb says there is a growing consensus that too much control or too strict management of document stores locks up information, slows down the corporation, and stifles creativity and responsiveness. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:15:43 PM 
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Chapter 8 of BlogRoot - Using Blogs in Business. (SOURCE:Scripting News)-An excellent summary of how to use a blog in business! This chapter alone makes the book worth buying.Where are the benefits of using K-Logs in the enterprise? Where does the potential lie? Lots of benefits emerge. Here are a few: * Better documentation of process-shorter audit cycles. * An archive of contributions-when an employee leaves, an archive of their contributions still remains. * Shorter training time-a team could easily ramp up a new team member or new employee by saying, "read our K-Logs, all the documents, thinking, important e-mails, discussions, and process are there." * Better responsiveness to customer inquiries-help desks can easily find answers to customer questions by searching an intranet K-Log network. * Easier management of decentralized employees-K-Logs make it easy to find out what a specific employee in a remote office is doing right now. * Shorter decision cycles-need an answer to a problem, find an expert that can answer it for you. How? Search for people that write about the keywords you are interested in, read what they have written to qualify their expertise, and contact them directly. Remember, a K-Log is a horizontal tool. It isn't limited to specific functions. Like a word processor, what you do with it is limited by your creativity. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:15:06 PM
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David Watson: Moving to Klogs will require massive culture shift and integration into existing tools. This is true! But organizations that bite the bullet and introduce klogs and the "annotation culture" and take the corresponding pain sooner rather than later will have a competitive advantage.But are organizations ready to swallow this bitter pill on a large scale? I don't think so. John's got some interesting ideas that I largely agree with on a small scale. However, the 200 people example is not as simple as it sounds. The underlying problem is not one that software can easily solve. That is, the sociological change required by most organizations to implement a technology such as news aggregators or blogging is fairly massive. Just because some of us really enjoy documenting everything doesn't mean that the passion or skill is widely distributed amongst the population. If the 200 people being referred to are all enthusiastic technology professionals, then you might succeed, but this still assumes that they have great communication skills - not a valid assumption from my experience. I would estimate that the training costs of such a migration could be far greater than the cost of the software. Further, the support and maintenance costs could be even greater than that. I don't mean to rain on John's parade since I like Radio; however, right now, I don't believe Userland is set up to handle the support burden that volumes of naive users entail. And if you think a company will deal with the operational mistakes from Userland that some individuals have tolerated, you're sadly mistaken, no matter the price. In time, the kind of organizational software adoption that John describes will be possible and profitable for some organizations but a large number of organizations will remain unable or unwilling to adapt (see Geoffrey Moore). I would expect the rate of adoption for RSS news aggregators to happen more quickly when they are integrated in tools that already have broad penetration such as email clients (see Ximian Evolution for an example). Broad adoption of weblog tools is likely to be slower. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:12:19 PM
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Al responds to my post about tools enabling the blog revolution. (SOURCE:Al Hawkins: View From The Heart)-Al, I can't disagree with what you have written. People make weblogs not tools! However just like the printing press enabled great voices to emerge and create art that wasn't religious art, blogging tools allow great voices to emerge and create art on the Internet that would not have emerged with techie tools like Emacs and Apache (both of which I love BTW as a 100% red blooded techie :-) !). If the printing press had not been invented and lowered the barrier to publication, would we have all the great literature that we have today? No way! The Church would not have let that happen. Techies are NOT the Church but you get the idea!To stretch the artistic analogy a little further, Rembrandt would never be mistaken for Mondrian, nor Picasso. But they all use similiar tools, and produce something we all can recognize as art. Change the tools, and the form changes; Pollack may only use paint and no brush but it is still art of a sort. Tools do not make the weblog. People make the weblog; tools make the weblog easier. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:10:23 PM
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genehack: Blogs it's NOT about the software. (SOURCE:Al Hawkins: View From The Heart)-Yes, of course it's not TOTALLY about the software. However most blogs would not exist without the software. And how many of including the most hard core techie of us would actually blog if we did not have easy to use blogging tools like Radio, Manila, Blogger, Movable Type etc.? I'd wager hardly any! And the features that are accelerating blog adoption such as automatic chronological and category archiving, RSS, Google APIs, permalinks would be very difficult if not impossible to do by hand. For each of these features, since the mid 1990s by my recollection (I used a Frontier based web publishing system in 1996), Userland software has been there leading the way.
So yes Dave can be a curmudgeon but he does have a point about blog software helping to bootstrap the blog community.Next, to continue a back-and-forth that has been going on for quite some time: Dave, it is so very much not about the software, and it is even less so about the format. A "reverse chronologic structure"? Please -- ChangeLogs have that, and they aren't weblogs. A calendar? Comment system? This site doesn't have either of those, and it's a weblog. Weblogs are about content, and voice, and intent; I don't care if you produce your weblog by telneting to a box running AIX and using 'echo' to append to a txt file -- what matters is what you're echoing to that text file, and whether you're pointing outwards to other content, and if you have a brain that you can write with. The rest of the stuff is the icing, not the cake. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:09:35 PM
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Blogs and Business Relationships. (SOURCE:a klog apart)-Amen! One of my favourite slogans is:"Better business through blogging" (TM)! Since I started my Radio blog last November, I have had developed 2 or 3 significant business relationships that I would not have developed otherwise.I've spoken to others who have identified business opportunities from personal relationships they build through their blog. But the whole notion of blogs as business relationship-building tools has been largely unexplored. It's not something that can be institutionalized - to work, the relationships must be personal, which requires a certain credibility on an individual level - but I think it's a very significant aspect of professional blogs that would largely put to bed the question "are blogs fads?" Fads? Nope. If I continue to develop relationships (two in seven months isn't bad at all) that could yield significant six figures in revenues, then it's a no-brainer. Keep in mind that the R.O.I. calculation on this is almost laughable. I paid $40 for the software, and spend 15-20 minutes per day adding content to my site. Even if you assume a high billable hour rate for my time, my investment over a year might reach $10,000 - and that's a soft cost (time) not a hard cost. The hard cost is just $40. Just like a few years ago I would go out of my way to reward companies who had web sites, I am pre-disposed to work with people who have recognized the value of contributing to the weblog community - and as the blog model gains momentum, that will only get easier. What are you waiting for? Put your business where your blog is. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
9:49:41 PM
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The Downside of Knowledge Management. (SOURCE:a klog apart)-This is all very true but k-logging is so compelling that if one person (who isn't necesarily so senior) passionately k-logs then I think this is enough to get an enlightened organization over the tipping point. If this doesn't happen, then perhaps it's time to find an more enlightened organization! A successful KM initiative needs:
* a compelling reason why each employee should buy in - rewards are called for
* training so that everyone appreciates the value of context. You want to tell me about SOAP, DRM, XYZ? Fine, but tell me what they are first or give me pointers. Do it every day because I won't retain much faith in KM if I have to search back three months through your blog to try to figure out what you're talking about
* training so that people learn to write for an audience outside their own group of contacts. If I already know what you do I'm less likely to need to read your words of KM wisdom in the first place
* training so that people understand that most knowledge is specialized. Within an organization most people don't know much about HR, nor about data modeling, nor about Customer Relationship Management, nor about the firm's plans for the next 36 months, nor about debt factoring. Some of this knowledge does not need to be communicated, but some of it does and the people who write about it have to learn to write for an audience that is, in the nicest possible sense, ignorant. When they can do that, KM becomes truly valuable
* much better initiation classes than most firms give. How can anyone write for that group over by the far window on the second floor if they don't know what that group over by the far window on the second floor does? If you're a developer and you talk about languages remember that your audience might be the Localization group - to them German is a language and C isn't
* someone VERY senior to champion the KM cause. This person needs to actually read the KM blogs and give feedback. We're talking about a VP, not a Manager or a Director. If they sit back and just let KM happen, it won't
Wait a minute. This is beginning to sound expensive. I thought you could implement KM for $40 a desk.
Sorry. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
9:48:50 PM
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The Downside of Knowledge Management..
Hugh Madison, author of American Invisible, Inc., shares some common sense observations of KM.
Summarizing, success calls for:
- Motivation
- Training
- How to blog context.
- How to write for strangers.
- How and when to write for lay people.
- Orientation to peers
- CXO champion and reviewer
Two things implied but not stated:
- Free agent culture (temps, consultants, project teams) demands KM to assure continuity and flexibility.
- Insist that deliverables include usable documentation of all work, planning, and conversation.
When will Manpower and Kelly teach klogging the way they teach Microsoft Office and test for typing speed? [a klog apart]
9:45:47 PM
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Learning all around
TEE SEMINAR by Michael Kahn. Quote: "Why do you come to college? It has never seemed reasonable to me that one comes to college because of the professors. If the professors have anything important to say, it can be mimeographed and mailed to you back home in Redding. Nor can I believe you come here for the books. They too can be mailed to Redding. It seems to me the only reasons worth coming here for is each other. I believe that you are each other's most important resource along the path of this educational journey."
Comment: via Greg H. - Educational Barn-Raising. [Serious Instructional Technology]
It can be discouraging to think about all the learning that takes place outside of, and often in spite of, the classroom. It helps to have come to teaching after a long time in practice rather than straight from a Ph.D. program. It also helps to have finally reached a point where I see how little I learned inside classrooms. I would add, however, that another good reason for going to a physical place for school is to go talk to those professors outside the classroom.
9:40:55 PM Google It!
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Design for knowledge work
Designs for Working. Quote: "But when employees sit chained to their desks, quietly and industriously going about their business, an office is not functioning as it should. That's because innovation--the heart of the knowledge economy--is fundamentally social. Ideas arise as much out of casual conversations as they do out of formal meetings. More precisely, as one study after another has demonstrated, the best ideas in any workplace arise out of casual contacts among different groups within the same company."
Comment: via this elearningpost article on a space designed for conversations. [Serious Instructional Technology]
Worth a look - a topic that hasn't gotten enough attention.
9:36:35 PM Google It!
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Learning Circuits - Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Quote: "SMEs are the people who have the information training designers need for any given project. SMEs can be exemplary performers, supervisors, or even the end users of learning solutions"
Comment: For instructional designers in college settings, this is completely inaccurate, because the SMEs consider themselves the driving force. [Serious Instructional Technology]
9:35:03 PM
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It's Knowledge Sharing. John Robb passes along an article that tells us "Success lies in sharing knowledge residing in people's heads - not just the written stuff. So the term knowledge management is a misnomer." Something to think about. In fact, our (internal) document describing the content of our 'knowledge management' system does refer to Sharing Knowledge - "by writing ... you are sharing with the other users a complete understanding ..." With more than one person sharing, though, that knowledge's got to be put somewhere and - in at least some form - managed (backed up, indexed for searching, etc). One person can manage it using Radio (and let Google handle the indexing), or an adminstrator can manage it using Frontier or something else. [Steven Vore: KM]
7:46:52 PM
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The Downside of KM?.
Some cold water on the blogs as KM solution:
Given a choice people tend not to communicate. Some don't want to share, some feel threatened or diminished by sharing, some fail to understand that most things lose meaning unless they have adequate context, some enjoy a feeling of superiority by talking about their work in a way that others will have difficulty understanding, some get a kick out of doing things but not out of explaining things, some simply lack communication skills. Remember, most offices are political environments. That doesn't help.
The author, a former .com employee in charge of KM, rightly identifies a number of cultural challenges to getting people to share information. But these aren't really downsides, per se - more like hurdles. In any event, I like the recognition that there's more to KM than just software - that unless someone is committed, responsible and incented to make the thing work, it will be hard to succeed. (Not unlike the post I made a few weeks ago about Tom Jones' cross-selling efforts at Citigroup...)
The question is: does a simple software platform (weblogs) reduce the barrier to entry? It's not the answer, by a long shot - but if the software can make the sharing easier, then the efforts expended by the KM "owner" are far more likely to be rewarded. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]
7:41:24 PM
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KM: Think Small?.
The Downside of Knowledge Management found via Blunt Force Trauma.
This article provides a nice counter-point to the low-cost klog network. The article concludes that:
Here's the bottom line:
- for specialist communication between specialist groups, KM is a great idea
- for broader, much more useful communication across an entire enterprise, KM will not work very efficiently unless you implement a major awareness program
...
Wait a minute. This is beginning to sound expensive. I thought you could implement KM for $40 a desk.
Sorry.
This is a great piece to read if you are susceptable to being dazzled by the possiblities of technology (which certainly happens to me quite often).
The conclusion that the deployment of KM with cheap or free tools is still expensive is based on the requirements of senior level buy-in and staff training needed in order to deploy KM tools across the enterprise. These are items that a grass-roots implementation most likely lack.
I think there is an assumption at the base of that idea, however. The assumption is that KM solutions must be applied consistently across the entire organization in order to be doing KM well. Why? Can't a solution or tool be used by a small group within the enterprise and derive value and benefit from it? Does the entire company have to be wired into a KM network in order to consider a KM initiative a success?
Perhaps KM can only happen among small, informal groups within the organization. There have not been many success stories from enterprise-level deployments of KM systems. Maybe truly valuable knowledge sharing only happens with informal swarming connections and rapid permutations thereof.
I'm just thinking out loud here. I do believe that training is very important but probably less so than having an organizational culture that at a minimum does not actively discourage the sharing of information and knowledge.
I'm very interested in hearing some other opinions on micro vs. macro KM. [High Context]
7:41:02 PM
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It's not KM..
Not custody but movement of knowledge creates value.
Not management but sharing.
Robert Buckman: "It is movement in response to a need. That knowledge that moves in response to a need of the organisation is the valuable knowledge that you should capture for future reference."
Tacit.com built their products around this idea a few years' ago. Their whole emphasis is making it fast and easy to find out who knows about your kind of problem. [a klog apart]
7:11:57 PM
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© Copyright 2002 Jim McGee.
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