Thursday, August 22, 2002

Digging into k-logs 3 Fixing intranets with klogs. Fixing intranets. It's interesting how the same issues seem to come up in bunches. Over the last month, I have now talked... [Column Two] » James has written an interesting post about some of the common problems with intranets that he encounters with his clients.  As someone interested in how klogging (I'll use the term for now!) could affect the role of intranets and content management his issues seem particularly relevant to me.  In preface to my remarks I should point out that I am choosing to address static content rather than the possible dynamic web applications you might find on a typical intranet. The issues, re-ordered slightly to suit my responses, are: The intranet has grown over time. Manual processes (using Frontpage or Dreamweaver) are used to publish pages. A lot of information has been published, but the site isn't being used. There is little high-level structure, and users are not able to find information. 1. If you want a logical hierarchical structure then organic growth is a problem.  It's like running water, it flows down along the path of least resistance and doesn't care about the direction.  Same with people, they'll squirrel stuff anywhere that makes sense today (have you taken a good look at your my "My Documents" directory lately?).   Of course if you're klogging then this organic growth is part of the package.  Whether that bothers you is probably a factor of points (2), (3), and (4).  2. This is most obviously solved by klogging software.  It's one of the fundamentals. 3. Hard to say but I guess much of the information published may be of low quality.  In my experience no matter how hard publishing to an intranet can be, creating information is harder still.  This leads to variable quality in that information.  Variable quality leads to low usage.  Low usage provides little incentive for new information to be created and so on. Klogging address this in two ways I think: When you have something to publish it's dead easy: click, type, click. You can publish in bite-size chunks.  This means that if you have a small but useful piece of information you can just klog it.  You don't have to pad it into a long document to make it worthwhile.  You also don't have to find "just the right place" for it to go, it just gets klogged.  That chunk can exist in it's own right, waiting for the day someone needs it. Which brings us rather neatly to (4) 4. As it stands klogging is a decentralizing technology that doesn't encourage a formal hierarchical structure.  You klog and, if all goes according to plan, people will subscribe to you and they will link to you.  Will they be the right people?  Does it make information any easier to locate?  Not automatically no.  But then hierarchical structures don't necessarily make life any easier.  Once a hierarchy is more than about 2 levels deep it can cause it's own navigation issues. Some people might argue that a healthy klogging culture coupled with a Google search appliance (or any search engine that has a pageranking algorithm I guess) could well make it easier to find what you're looking for.  I think theres something to be said for that. My own approach is to allow for easy metadata-enabling of klogs.  My hope is that combining klogs with topic maps will allow new structures to be grown from them automagically.  This can complement the pagerank based search and provide new ways of finding and traversing group knowledge. So should you scrap the intranet and replace it with klogs? I don't think so.  But perhaps you should think carefully about what you want your intranet to achieve and whether some of your goals for information publishing and dissemination couldn't be better achieved with a klogging strategy. [Curiouser and curiouser!] 12:18:53 PM

Digging into k-logs 2 Dear Amy Wohl, the Baby Bust is enough reason to klog widely and soon.. Hi, Amy.  You wrote via Ernie the Attorney via snowdeal.org | conflux: One of the tough tasks in KM is getting expertise located in an organization (that is, figuring out who has it on a subject by subject basis). Tougher still is validating its credibility with other members of the organization. Toughest of all is getting the experts to agree to share their expertise with others, except as part of their regular job. Employees who have spent a career lifetime enhancing their value because they "know" something others don't are logically reluctant to give away their valuable expertise...   Amy, the baby boomers are starting to retire in droves (you know who you are). How competitive is a firm when 20% to 40% of its most experienced people leave? You can fight to get and keep talent but that doesn't fix Mary-who-left-Tuesday being the only one who knows how to get that payroll program to work. There is no technology fix. Just a human one. Whether you call it a Learning Organization campaign or a Knowledge Management program, you still have to get people engaged. Talking. Sharing. Growing. Enjoying the process. Becoming more effective, more marketable. Making their workplace better. The only tools that matter are ones people really use. That's where klogs (knowledge or enterprise weblogs) come in. KM Systems are to Treacle as Weblogs are to Honey. People gag on most KM systems. And get a sugar high off of blogging. So people use them. Start your engines and gun your motor, your KM go-cart is off and running. It isn't ready for NASCAR, it won't make it to the moon and back. But your project, your people, are going in the right direction. Can you say that now or for any other toolset?   btw, if you know anyone interested in setting up a consulting practice to help large orgs, public or private, survive the coming Baby Bust, drop my name. pwolff@dijest.com. Ever yours, - Phil Wolff [a klog apart] 12:18:16 PM

Digging into k-logs 1 Of Tom Gilbert and K-logs. A while back, I had offered a challenge for McGee to pass along to his students. He did so, but none of them stepped forward. I was disappointed, but am willing to accept this as an indicator of their intelligence. :-) So I guess I'll have to do the heavy lifting, and that means all this will dribble out over some time. Bad for my readers who might want to get this in one chunk; Good for me to have more time for reflecting about this. I'll start off with a direct quote from Tom Gilbert's Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, p178-9. BTW, if you are interesting in management, Human Performance Technolgy, KM/KS, behavior analysis, or performance improvement, you should get two copies of this book (one to keep clutched tightly in your hands, and one for loaning to others). Principles of Information Flow The requirements of an information system sensibly designed to give maximum support to performance are absurdly simple, and they can be summarized in eight steps: Identify the expected accomplishments, mission, responsibilities, and duties. State the requirements of each accomplishment. If there is any doubt that people understand the reason why an accomplishment and its requirements are important, explain this. Describe how performance will be measured and why. Set exemplary standards, preferably in measurement terms. Identify exemplary performers and any available resources that people can use to become exemplary performers. [Gilbert defined (p40) "exemplary performance as the most sustained worthy performance we can reasonably expect to attain." So an outlier achievement (e.g., an NFL running back having back-to-back 1,000+ rushing yards seasons) should not be held up as a standard, since it is unlikely to be sustainable.] Provide frequent and unequivocable feedback about how well each person is performing. This confirmation should be expressed as a comparison with an exemplary standard. Consequences of good and poor performance should also be made clear. Supply as much backup information as needed to help people troubleshoot their own performance and that of the people for whom they are responsible. Relate various aspects of poor performance to specific remedial actions. These steps are far too simple to be called a "technology," but it may be that their very simplicity helps explain why they are so rarely followed. I suppose that people tend to look for more complex reasons for seemingly complex problems, and therefore more complex solutions. I believe the following about these principles: It is indeed a "technology", just as the socratic method might be considered a technology of learning. A k-log could certainly be used to help accomplish some of these steps. These are precisely the things a good manager should be doing (and more importantly, has direct control over!), to promote an efficient and effective work environment, whether they use a k-log or not. [gRadio] 12:17:45 PM

LiveTopics 1 Playing with liveTopics. Just downloaded liveTopics, an interesting extension of Radio that adds potentially valuable meta data to weblog posts. This is a tool developed by Matt Mower, and represents an important "next step" for Radio as a KM tool. From Matt's site: Topics are used on your weblog to provide cross-reference links to related items and can also show what you are and have been talking about in your postings. Cross-referencing is further enhanced by the ability to publish a Table of Contents (ToC) for your weblog (note the ToC uses the excellent activeRenderer by Marc Barrot). The two-level ToC liveTopics creates shows all the topics used in your weblog. Under each topic is a chronological list of each posts associated with the topic. In turn, under each post is listed the other topics associated with that post. This is a powerful addition to your weblog and greatly enhances it's navigability. Here's what I love. Marc Barrot builds activeRenderer, a great UI enhancement to Radio. Matt takes that and builds on it to extend the UI by creating new ways of navigating through weblog content and adding meta data to boot. I haven't learned all the ins and outs yet, but I think this is big. Stay tuned. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] 12:06:17 PM

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