Tag: knowledge

All quiet on the career front?

Been having a chat with 2 of my intranet colleagues on the question of where careers are heading. Everyone says the intranet role is changing. Jane McConnell stresses this in 2010 global trends and on the ground I see rocky times ahead. It looks like intranet careers are being driven down 2 pathways. Either embedd in IT or a future in communications. When intranets first started to develop I’m sure the majority of the early adoptors had a knowledge background. This appears to be forgotten.

With so much top down communications, and even bottom up I see the niche area being able to develop the horizontal channels – good old knowledge and collaboration between people who need to work together.

However, I wonder if the collaboration piece may also be a fad. In a few years will we see it as leaders washing their hands or responsibilty by asking all to collaborate. Return of authority and gatekeepers may be the trend for 2011?

Getting the community ready

This weekend sees the final content loading for one of our new online knowledge communities. Next week the site goes for stakeholder sign-off and then a week of user testing. Training is being organised for the 12 appointed content publishers. Subject to no major issues being reported the area should launch on 7th December. Nearly 20% of the community has been involved in its development, therefore we already have a core group of stakeholders eager to seed the site within the infrastructure of the community. Once the site is bedded into the stream we then look at the physical and social aspects of their knowledge networking and sharing.

Barriers to knowledge sharing

Continuing my list of the four main barriers to knowledge sharing.

Possible barriers to knowledge sharing

2 – Technology

Lack of or insufficient search solution for knowledge

No engagement tools to rank and rate – “like minded” tools

No opportunity to find ‘people who know people’

Social media is all about participation – all content is collaborative. I have to search to collaborate

Data management ??? a strong data management structure helps to support Knowledge Sharing

Barriers to knowledge sharing

Mentioned in a previous post the barriers to knowledge within my organisations. In 2008 we undertook a knowledge survey with over a third of the organisation taking part. Survey was a mixture of online polls, face-to-face interviews, anecdotal evidence and telephone interviews. We found there were four main barriers to knowledge sharing. Over the next 4 days I’ll run through these. Looking back over the last 12 months I’m not sure they have changed.

Possible barriers to knowledge sharing

1 – Culture

Knowledge Sharing not seen as a priority

Lack of awareness of the potential role of Knowledge Sharing

Not aligned to processes

Not essential for daily work

Silos and rigid reporting lines

To many firm bottlenecks and roadblocks that prevent holistic approaches to knowledge sharing

No time invested in creating a passion for knowledge sharing

Trust

The long journey to knowledge begins

Had a really enjoyable brainstorming session today with representatives of one of our largest communities. They have a very well used online knowledge community (or in reality a good information sharing model and validated sharing) but little physical structure when it comes to knowledge networking and sharing.

The introduction of a Knowledge Sharing strategy to this community is a very large undertaking both in terms of change management and stream buy-in. A robust structure and understanding of what Knowledge Sharing means within the community is needed to ensure that this roll out is a success both initially and in the long-term. Therefore, not only were their community respresentatives but also stakeholders from our IT department, Learning & Development function and similar knowledge communities within the firm.

After detailing the hurdles to knowledge sharing in the physical, virtual and social spaces we looked possible achievements within 3 months, 6 months and future down the journey. We went away with a shopping list of actions to progress.

Within wishing to preempt the findings I believe the keys elements will be ensuring top level sponsorship and visible; action support for the initiative; some tangible expectations of what is required from key groups within the community; a physical structure for networking; reward for networking and sharing; and key to all of this help, guidance aqnd support for the community to know how to share knowledge – in terms of how to access knowledge, how to use the knowledge, and how to network with the providers of this knowledge.

Really looking forward to this developing.

Communities – the soul of our intranet

Our intranet is focused around the services we offer our clients. Each service has a community presence on the intranet – some thriving, some not – allowing document management, communications and aspects of collaboration.

Most of our musings on to intranet stakeholders focus about communities. We have a belief that people share knowledge to a far greater extent within communities – groups they know, understand, relate and engage with (rather than capture/management systems that failed in the late 90s), hence much of our work is about building online communities as the foundations of knowledge sharing.

My background was in psychology and organisational development so I use work such as McMillan & Chavis (1986) with a hint of psyco babble to form a strategy for community building.

We generally take the following 5 step approach when looking at building the community:

1 – Sponsorship. Ensure you have the right level of sponsorship that has the mussel and weight within the community and the organisation

2 – Governance. Ensure there is a strategy, process for escalation, management structure, workflow, risk assessment and a good business case before any build takes place

3 – Content. Look at the content available or required to be created

4 – Technology. Source the correct technology for the content requirements

5 – Training – provide publishers the tools and knowledge to sustain their community

6 – Adoption – once built and launched work with the community to ensure the sustainability of the site

Within these processes come tasks such as stakeholder collaboration, user surveys, design briefs, user testing etc. One of the benefits of building a virtual presence is that the aspects of sharing knowledge in the physical space becomes more realistic to users within the community.

The value is in the playground

I always use analogies to simplified and understand the world of online. Its helps me make sense of things. At my job interview back in 2000 I used analogies for cooking and football to explain my methods.  

 

When I first started developing websites I used the analogy of a supermarket, linking comparisons with usability, unique visitors, length of visits etc – you should have heard it, a master class if I say so myself.

 

The intranet world has moved on and my analogy now for intranets is a school. At a school we have formal classes, play time, assembly, registration and after school activities. The structure of an intranet is the same. We have formal document areas (class time); assembly (internal communications); registration (all the HR elements within the site); and communities (the various after school activities). Play time is where we introduce the collaborative elements of an intranet. It’s unstructured but it’s where the intranet can provide most value. Looking at our role within intranets we could see ourselves as playground assistant – monitoring what occurs in the playground, ensuring  nothing dangerous is happening, and then learning, reporting and structuring around what we learn from these social collaborative gathering.  By the way the intranet canteen menu is dinner time.

 

Knowledge sharing on a shoestring

Here is my methodology of doing Knowledge sharing on a shoestring.

The focus has shifted from ???collection??? to ???connection???. No known resource is now given to any firmwide ‘capture/collection’ systems we have (employee directory, project workspaces etc) therefore we have a decentralised approach. The emphasis has been on creating a informal structure within our business units, based around a ‘KS supporting team’, business unit Knowledge Champions with a core team behind them.

Stream Knowledge Champions have strong business knowledge and advanced social competencies.

The core stream teams have substantial technical competencies

The KS supporting team provide support for initiatives and projects in the start-up phase and implementation responsibilities are then generally transferred to the business unit champions and core team.

A key advantage of the decentralised structure is that the KS ‘ supporting team’ can be flexible/fluid to meet the needs of the business units??? structure “Embedded within business units, the Knowledge champions can immerse themselves in the business of the business and deliver greater value

A second benefit of the decentralised structure is that the KS supporting team can objectively audit and measure the performance of the knowledge champions. By uncovering strengths and weaknesses in the KS implementation within individual business units, the core team provides the required checks, balances and governance framework”.

A ‘knowledge positioning statement has been created, revised and agreed with key business units. From this statement each stream are adopting their own knowledge sharing strategies.

I have learned not to invest large amounts of resources or make sweeping changes across the organization in a short period of time to get quick returns from knowledge sharing. KS is a slow and incremental process. Economy in all aspects of deploying a KS solution, leads to a greater acceptance of KS and yields better results over time. That’s the plan anyway!