Stan Garfield's Blog, page 12

Knowledge Management Thought Leader 57: Ana Neves

Originally posted 01-Feb-24

Ana Neves, based in Lisbon, Portugal, is the founder and managing director of Knowman (a consulting company focused on knowledge management and enterprise social networks), author and host of the KMOL portal, and organizer of the Social Now conference. She is the coauthor of the Social Collaboration Maturity Benchmark and author of the biannual study on Knowledge Management in Portugal and Spain. Her specialties are knowledge management, communities of practice, organizational learning, social networks, social tools, internal communication, and cultural change management.

She was a Senior Consultant at a social business consultancy firm; Knowledge Network Manager at the NHS Modernization Agency and the Institute for Innovation and Development, both part of the British Department of Health; and Cultural Change Manager at a financial institution, leading a cultural change program for a team of 4000+ people.

In 2008, 2010 and 2011 Ana was president of the jury of the Prêmio Intranet Portal, an award that recognizes the best intranet in public and private organizations in Brazil. In 2001 she created KMOL, a Portuguese-language site dedicated to knowledge management and organizational learning.

She is an honorary member of the Directive Commission of the Federación Iberoamericana de Comunicación Interna (FIDECI). She has a Licenciatura (5-year Bachelor’s) degree in Computer Science from the University of Coimbra.

Through Knowman, Ana shares her experience, skills and passion with organizations looking at knowledge management, social networks, and social tools to increase their performance. She is the host of the KMOL podcast, the first Portuguese-language podcast dedicated to KM and organizational learning.

Ana organizes Social Now, a unique conference on the social organization, exploring both tools and processes to improve the way organizations communicate, collaborate, learn, and share knowledge. She is responsible for Cidadania 2.0, a platform to promote examples of social tools being used to improve dialogue and civic participation.

BackgroundEducationUniversidade de Coimbra — Licenciatura, Informatics Engineering / Computer Science, 1993–1998ExperienceKnowman — Owner and Management Consultant, 2001–PresentStraits Knowledge — Associate Consultant, 2017–PresentHeadshift (UK) — Senior Social Software Consultant, 2006–2009Unisys — Consultant, 1998–2001ProfilesLinkedInKnowman — LinkedInFacebookKMOLTwitterKMOL — TwitterContentSocial NowLinkedIn PostsKnowman: Knowledge, Collaboration and CommunicationNewsKMOL: Knowledge Management and Organizational LearningArticlesInterviewsBooksCasesBlogKMOL ArchiveMediumQuoraSlideShareVideosBooks

Gaining Buy-In for KM — edited by Laura Slater, with Nick Milton, Stan Garfield, Bill Kaplan, Ian Fry, Keith Power, Michel J. Boustani, Gavin Ireland, Simon Yelsky, and Paul McDowall

Chapter 8: No pain and a lot to gainCase study: Cablinc engineersCase study: Public sectorCase study: A private bankAna Neves is a chapter author in a recent Ark Group publication

Knowledge Management Tools: Main Selection Criteria

Knowledge Management and Innovation in the Public Sector

PodcastsKMOLBecause You Need To Know — Pioneer Knowledge ServicesBYNTK 2 — Pioneer Knowledge ServicesNarratives of Work: Social Collaborations in Organizations — Pioneer Knowledge ServicesYou’ve got cash just laying around your workplace — The Digital WorkplaceArticles by Othersknowledge et al — Paul CorneyWhat is the right culture for your organization? — Jack VinsonThe Right Organizational Culture: A Requirement?ArticlesLinkedIn ArticlesHank Malik: Creating Value from Lessons LearnedPaul BurnsStuart TownsendThe New Leadership Playbook​ by Andrew BryantBecoming Adaptable: a book reviewCristian Salanti on designing good intranetsCéline Schillinger on leadership, culture and knowledge managementDare to Un-Lead: a book reviewHow to Fix Work for Good with Neil UsherAbout Intranet Governance and Microsoft Viva, with Susan HanleyDoes your organization also face these challenges?Bonnie Cheuk: a KMer at heartHybrid Work: a manifesto by Isabel De ClercqJane McConnell on gig mindsettersThe Gig Mindset Advantage​ by Jane McConnellSerendipity, great conversations and an eye on 2022Change? Elemental, says dear UsherVictoria Ward on Storytelling and Collaborative WorkspacesData to Knowledge to Innovation“Will we leave the crisis less stupid?”​ — a podcast interview with Ravi VenkatesanTeams, Communities and Networks: a few challenges and opportunitiesHow can Teams, Communities and Networks add value to your organization?Teams, Communities and Networks: Differences and SimilaritiesThe KM Cookbook — what a feast!A Bag Full of Beautiful IdeasDesigning Knowledge​: a book reviewRachel Happe on Successful CommunitiesTalking About Internal Communication with Alejandro Formanchuk5 Flavors of Enterprise Social ToolsKnowledge Management in the Third and Public Sectors: an interview with Edwin K. MorrisDeveloping Today’s Networked and Digital LeadershipRethinking collaborative sessions through digital technologyStories I’ve never listened to beforeJoão Baptista on Enterprise Social MediaMeet Paulo Nunes de Abreu: a Collaboration ArchitectDigital Workplace Strategy and Design​ — a book reviewHarold Jarche on Sensemaking and Life in Perpetual BetaBlogs: find your voice or adapt itHow to create a fantastic workplaceProven Practices for Promoting a Knowledge Management Program — a reviewDaria Vodopianova on Mastermind GroupsA guide about The Right Way to Select TechnologyThe Social Organization: a book reviewArthur Shelley, master of The Organizational ZooA Café with David GurteenA Practical KM CompanionSocial Technologies in Business: my summary and thoughtsEric Lynn on conversations, cultural change and trustPatrick Lambe on knowledge audits, evaluation, and organizational culture The Knowledge Manager’s Handbook I’m Not an Event OrganizerIs knowledge social or is it better when it is social? What is knowledge management?

Ten interviews with Portuguese-speaking KM professionals showed that knowledge management is seen and implemented very much according to the person in charge and the focus and maturity of the organization. Perhaps it would make sense to have a single definition of knowledge management. At the same time, if we can adapt our approach to knowledge management according to the organization’s pains, priorities, culture, and maturity, we may get more traction for our efforts and, consequently, better results.

Read these ten definitions and perspectives. Think about which ones might make the most sense in your organization, challenge yourself to discover angles you’re not yet exploring, and identify interesting arguments to use. If your activity is related to knowledge management or if you would like to find arguments to improve knowledge management in your organization, do yourself a favor and go listen to the ten interviews. Believe me, you won’t regret it!

Data to Knowledge to Innovation [image error]

Knowledge Management Thought Leader 56: Victoria Ward

Originally posted 25-Jan-24

Victoria Ward has worked at the forward edge of organizational change, narrative at work, and knowledge management since 1996. With a background in finance, she has held roles such as head of research, chief operating officer, chief knowledge officer, and has done terms on the FTSE 100 Index Steering Committee, the Board of LIFFE, and the Financial Services Tribunal. Her role in directing and contributing to projects is to apply strategic storytelling, transformation, knowledge management, collaboration, design, and facilitation of participatory processes. Her work aims to empower individuals, groups, and organizations to build momentum, meaning, and coalitions for change.

Since 2019, two themes are her focus:

Reconfiguring the collaborative workplace: What is the next normal of work, the future of knowledge working, evolving human/machine, human/nature relationships within and beyond the workplace?Liminal leadership: What kinds of shifts in skillsets and mindsets are needed for leaders to inhabit the second horizon of change, in between now and the longer future? What are the conditions needed for effective decision-making, in terms of leadership qualities, and in response to accelerating digital change. What does it take to produce environments in which sound decisions are made, in turbulent conditions?

She also specializes in retrospectives and reviews that:

witness and celebrate individual and collective contributionscreate a textured understanding of the shared present realitypay forward insights in creative ways to amplify their future impact with diverse groups of stakeholders

Jigsaw Foresight, cofounded with Wendy Schultz, traces its origins back to 2006, when Victoria first met Wendy while conducting a retrospective of Defra’s investment in horizon scanning and foresight research. The purpose of Jigsaw is:

to produce exceptionally distinctive work, through unusually social and creative participatory experiencesto invest everything Victoria has learned about work since 1996 into an experimental model of a cooperative and networked place where:belonging matters as much as what gets donelong future timelines as well as the immediate are held in active tensionplaces in between people and timelines are inhabited and can come alive

According to Victoria, this is the result of failing to do an MPhil in 20th century art in 1981, and of a grounding in exchange-traded derivatives and operational risk, followed by leaning in to knowledge management in 1996. The rest is fellowship, persistence, synthesis, and chance encounter. The evolving experimental model of Jigsaw aspires to be about more than money in every layer and to make work that endures, while making spaces in which shifts in systems become possible along the way.

She is a keen, and pretty decent, amateur musician playing oboe, oboe d’amore and cor anglais. Victoria is based near Cambridge, England.

BackgroundEducationSelwyn College, Cambridge University — MA, Modern and Mediaeval Languages, 1978–1981Tavistock Institute — Post Graduate Certificate in Working Groups, 2011Experience2015-present, Jigsaw Foresight, Co-Founder & Chief of Ideas2019–2022, Leading Edge Forum, Research Associate2017–2022, Victoria Ward Limited, Director1997–2017, Sparknow, Founder and Director1992–1997, NatWest Markets, Managing Director, Futures and Options, Chief Operating Officer, Capital Markets Chief Knowledge Officer, NatWest Markets1987–1992, LIFFE, Director, UK Business Development Director, Product Development, Education & Statistics1986–1987 Michael Page City, Consultant1982–1986 L Messel & Co, Messel Futures Ltd, Director, Messel Futures1981–1982 Fiamass & Co, Graduate traineeProfilesLinkedInKnowledge Management for DevelopmentGurteen KnowledgeLucidea’s LensContentUnfold/Fold — SubstackLinkedIn PostsJigsaw Foresight: Putting all the pieces together for better futuresLinkedInBrochurePodcasts and VideosSparknow on SoundCloudStrategy and StoryOrganizational StorytellingVideosDigital ProxemicsBelonging in a Digital WorldLead in a Distributed WorkplaceBe a translator and bridgerRenewal in a digital worldDeepened Network StrengthSelected PublicationsGritty lessons and pearls of wisdom: using oral history interviews to draw deep insights from past action, illuminate heritage and catalyze learning with Stephanie ColtonStory Guide: building bridges using narrative techniques with Stephanie Colton and Jeannine BrutschinReconfiguring the collaborative workspace: making the most of time, space & attitude with Caitlin McDonald and Joseph CookGetting down to business — a collection of essays and experiences from the Knowledge Transfer Program in London’s museums, libraries and archiveADB: Reflections and Beyond with Paul Corney, David Gunn, Laura Nokes, and Carol Russell — memories, experiences, and human perspective on dealing with the challenges of the development world at the Asian Development BankCrowdsourcing The Future: Summary of Results and Insights — Deep Transitions with Wendy Schultz and Jenny WitteHandbook of Futures Studies (to be published in 2024) edited by Roberto Poli: Chapter — Between: a fieldnote on moving from futures and foresight to effective action (and back again) ResearchGate Postcards as DoorwaysNarrative enquiry: A way to get organizations (and the people in them) talking and acting differentlyStart to breathe: using story to carve out spaces in which the organization can start to breatheStory as a Tool to Capitalize on Knowledge AssetsThe role of private and public spaces in knowledge managementPeople and patterns: a case study of the relationship between risk management and knowledge management in financial servicesDesigning Knowledge Spaces That Work for Learning: The Experiment of the Art Exhibition and the Garen ShedSlow Knowledge: uses of the postcard in re-forming organizational time, place and meaningLessons for liberating knowledgeArticles by OthersAnecdote — Shawn Callahanknowledge et al — Paul Corney Content Creation: Create, Collect, Curate  — interview by International Training Centre of the International Labor Organization

Q: What’s curation about?

A: Curation is a way to collect extensively and document each phase of your projects and meetings to create a body of materials and assets for future use. It helps to weave red threads and helps projects “travel” beyond the limitations of single encounters. It is considered as one of the critical new skills in developing one’s own subject matter domain and structuring and organizing content. As an organizer, it’s natural to focus upon “getting things done”, on delivering particular events or programs. Both for the animation of workshops and as a personal facilitation practice, curation is often neglected. This often impoverishes the potential richness of a collaborative working session.

Q: How do you develop curation practices?

A: As an individual, I always push people I am collaborating with to cultivate that habit of self-reflection; logging and examining how you yourself respond to different situations and contexts. I personally keep a field note diary, reflect upon how I responded during a particular encounter, and then return to this note sometime later to see what it might teach me. Another good practice to develop would be to conscientiously work on curating a collection of raw materials generated throughout projects and then reuse them later to bring the ideas, voices, and content from different encounters into contact with one another.

Victoria Ward on Storytelling and Collaborative Workspaces  — interview by Ana Neves

Q: How has knowledge management evolved since your days as Chief Knowledge Officer at NatWest, back in the 90s?

A: I don’t do a great deal of knowledge management nowadays in a direct way, so this isn’t a very well-informed answer.

In some ways, I see no evolution — today’s arguments about information management versus knowledge management, where it lives, what influence it has, echo back down to the very first arguments I was part of in 1996 and 1997. In others, I see a renaissance and a new validity for the principles and practices of knowledge working in the years to come.

The new Chartership is an evolution. Knowledge management is moving around and aligning with digital workplace, learning, collaboration, so is shapeshifting to form alliances.

The emergence of the social organization is another evolution. The emergence of big data sets which invite new kinds of skills in discernment and pattern recognition. Being a human bridge builder between people and data, hosting the spaces in which new knowledge and insight are produced, was always how I conceived of knowledge management, and I think that’s coming into focus as more relevant than ever as a networked stabilizing system within and between organizations. I’m optimistic.

Since leaving NatWest you have set up your own practice and you made storytelling a distinctive tool in your approach to KM. What is it about storytelling that makes it so effective?

I fell into storytelling early, seeing stories and storytelling as the most powerful small units and local spaces for sense-making and the exchange and development of knowledge and insight. At heart, what has always interested me about storytelling is the way it redistributes power and authority, creates local peer to peer trust and relationship, moves knowledge and insight sideways and redistributes power and agency. In one word, witnessing.

Storytelling creates witnessing systems — both the telling and the listening — and reinvents the space between people.

Q: What makes communities of practice so special?

A: Essentially, it’s about nonhierarchical ownership and home, belonging, being part of something bigger than you, more important than ever as organizations fracture and boundaries are porous and confusing.

Q: How does your experience in knowledge management influence the way you look to create collaborative workspaces?

Knowledge management makes you alert to the invisible forcefield that is playing out between individuals and institutions, tacit and explicit.

A storied approach to knowledge management makes room for complex emotions, and a tug and pull of fluid sense-making in which all data counts towards understanding and decision-making. Knowing this means that I design, host and curate collaborative spaces with many layers of production of knowledge and skills in mind.

If I were to pick a single thing though, it would be curation — the curation of a collaborative experience in a way that consolidates it and helps it travel forward in multiple ways. See the answer on storytelling above for more.

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Knowledge Management Thought Leader 55: Kaye Vivian

Originally posted 18-Jan-24

Kaye Vivian is professional genealogist, but previously she was a knowledge management thought leader. Her personal website featuring content on knowledge management, communities, and gaming is no longer accessible online. I retrieved it through The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive and have included some of her many posts in this article.

BackgroundEducation

The University of Texas at Dallas

MA, Interdisciplinary StudiesBA, cum laude, Interdisciplinary StudiesExperienceMNESIS, LLC — Business Development Consultant, 2008–2011Accenture — Senior Manager — Knowledge Management & Learning, 2007–2008The Hartford — Director of Strategic Intelligence (KM and CI), 2001–2005GE Financial Assurance — Director of Internet Communications, 1998–2001It’s All Communication — Principal Consultant, 1993–1998Deloitte & Touche — Senior Proposal and Presentation Strategist, 1990–1993PwC — National Director, Proposals and Presentations, 1986–1990ProfilesLinkedInFacebookProfiles in KnowledgeContentBook

Winning Proposals: A Step-By-Step Guide to the Proposal Process

Posts by OthersJack VinsonAs quoted by meBlog: Dove LaneGood KM QuotesKM BloggersBlogrollComments on CommunitiesGrassroots Knowledge Management

Presentation at KMWorld 2005

Session A104: Grass-Roots KM: Learnings. For nearly 3 years a small, dedicated team has attempted to focus a Fortune 100 financial services company on the need for KM and the value KM offers. Our strategy, the team, our presentations and the benefits promised were widely acclaimed. We applied the concepts of KM’s top thought leaders — yet failed to get funded. Can a grass-roots KM approach succeed? This session revisits KM’s success factors and value proposition and challenges the common wisdom of starting small.

Post

For some people, knowledge management means capturing and storing information. For some people it means finding an expert who knows the answers to your questions when you need them answered. For some it is cultural change and for some it is technology. All these are partially right. The lack of an accepted boundary around what KM is makes it difficult for many business leaders to understand — and to understand the value it can bring.

Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, KM is happening in your organization. One department is operating a portal, one group is testing message boards, one is piloting a collaboration tool, one is building a new repository, one is working on a taxonomy for a shared drive, one is trying to get just-in-time information to call center representatives. According to research by Michelle Delio, only 8% of knowledge initiatives are driven from the top. A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation at the KMWorld conference in San Jose called Grassroots KM: Learnings from the Front Line. For the 92% of people who are participating in or leading a grassroots or bottom-up KM initiative, here are some pointers I covered in that presentation:

Where do you start?

First! Develop a strategic vision. Write it down. It drives everything.Have a champion.Start where you can win.Define the business needs explicitly before deciding upon the technology.Don’t let the IT group or technology drive the train.Make a detailed communication plan.Don’t start with customers, learn on your own employees.Use before and after metrics.Realize that KM has no “completion” date.

Some personal learnings:

Scale down your grand ambitions and get specific. Don’t try to boil the ocean.Tie your proposals to business issues; help to ease pain points in critical processes.Find the like-minded people in your organization and create an ad-hoc KM team. Create a Knowledge Panel or support group of believers and make them your advocates.Identify possible champions; court them openly. Active executive leadership involvement is critical!Determine your biggest barriers and create plans to get around them.Formalize the KM team/project as an organizational initiative (even if you don’t have a formal budget).Cultural change is the biggest nut to crack. Everyone is too busy to change what they do right now unless they are forced to.People want to share when they think it’s valued.KM is not a technology, but technology can cause it to fail.It’s happening, even if it’s not called KM. Gather all the tests, prototypes, pilots and one-off projects under your umbrella. (Hint: you’ll be able to show big organizational savings just from eliminating redundancies!)

The truth about hoarding

You may hear or read in publications that people hoard knowledge. If you find that to be true in your organization, dig a little deeper. People actually like to share their knowledge, to feel like they are having a positive impact, to help others, to contribute to an effort that is bigger than themselves. If they are overworked, get no recognition for their contributions, and/or other people take credit for their work, they are not likely to share. People will almost always share one-on-one. If you ask them a question, they will give you as complete an answer as they know to give. The secret is they need to feel that their knowledge and the time it takes to share that knowledge is valued. Figure out how to recognize and value contributions, and you will not have a hording problem.

The need for communities

The real knowledge work of an organization happens in the networks of people who share a common interest. Community is about people and how they work, not technology. Communities have to be a major element of your knowledge strategy and can be especially valuable to a grassroots KM initiative. If your organization sees KM as another database (knowledge base) or wants to work on documents and content, it’s important to change the discussion and get people and how they interact into the mix. Knowledge is embedded in people, information is stored. It’s perfectly legitimate for an organization to want to have an information or data storage strategy, but that’s not KM. Communities feel ownership of the information that is important to them, and they will keep it up to date, create a network of experts related to their information, and create valuable organizational intellectual assets. Identify some existing networks that would benefit from better information sharing, and bring them on board first. Even a simple technology can be a good starting point and show good results.

Have a communication plan

Once you have a pilot or project underway, remind people of how it was before KM. Contrast for employees the difference between now and the way they used to work. Don’t take for granted that everyone understands what you are trying to build or accomplish OR what you have accomplished so far. A good internal communication plan is critical! Just like the advertising approach says, tell ’em what you are going to tell ’em, tell ’em, and tell ’em what you told ’em. Be sure that all your key audiences are kept up-to-date for all phases of your initiative, and that you give them a way to value the success you achieve. Give participants information about goals and reports on their success.

It’s obviously easier to bring KM into an organization if you can be part of a top-down program, but if your only way is to do it from the ground up, it’s still possible to succeed. The critical factor is to choose your battles and be armed to fight them!

KM, Knowledge Transfer and Outsourcing — Discussion thread from ActKM community, May 2006

One KM trend I have been seeing relates to outsourcing and the need for “knowledge transfer” in both directions. A company that is outsourcing work needs to provide a database of information for the offshore company to use, and the offshore company needs to update it or create a new database that can be passed back to the outsourcing company in the event they later choose to bring the processes back under their own roof, so to speak. While this overall process might rightly be considered “information management”, the processes that go into collecting and capturing what is put into the database(s) on both sides of the ocean are KM processes — communities, technology, processes, capturing stories/anecdotes, taxonomy, search/find, expertise location, strategy, rewards and recognition, content management, ROI, etc.

One company I know spent months interviewing several large Indian outsourcers, and in the end, what appealed to them most was the technique of “shadowing” workers to capture the daily steps and procedures of the workers (in this case, COBOL mainframe programmers, most of whom were near retirement). They proposed to send a team of Indian workers in to follow a predetermined slate of programmers through their days over about three weeks. As the worker did his/her job, the Indian outsourcer would make notes and ask questions, and basically write up a procedures guide for each person’s role. All these writeups were to be put into the outsourcer’s proprietary database system and referenced when questions came up.

What appealed to the employer about shadowing employees was:

Many of the programmers had been doing the same job on the same system for more than 20 years, and had lost initiative to improve what they did every dayAll of the programmers complained they were too busy to document their work (there was an element of job protection there, too…if it wasn’t written down, no one else could do it)These important systems would finally be documented. Too often repairs, quick fixes and shortcuts made were permanent, and the only person who knew why it had been done that way and what it affected was “Bob, who retired last November”.They thought it liberated them from the tyranny of key employees who made a career path of retiring as soon as possible and returning at about double their salary as a consultant to do the same job (though this point was only mentioned unofficially in small meetings).

In the end, the cost was so prohibitive that the employer decided not to spend the money for shadowing, and to start by having the workers write down how they do their jobs and who they call for what. I don’t have to tell you how effective and complete that was. As Dave said, why would workers tell everything they know so they can be replaced? There were also some concerns about who would own the “knowledge” gained from the shadowing process if it were only available from the vendor’s system.

Truths of Knowledge Management

For the last few months, I’ve had an opportunity to step back and reflect on KM after having been heavily involved in trying to get a grassroots initiative off the ground in my former company for more than three years. Here are a few of the things I believe to be true.

KM is a business discipline powered by exchanges of information between people. It is a business process that creates value and enables learning transfers.KM is a business process enabled by technology. It is not a technology.Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is the personal experience, associations and information that exist in each person’s head. Knowledge is a fluid mix of personal experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provide a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.Knowledge is the product of human activity. When it is documented, it becomes information. Information becomes knowledge again when other people learn it themselves. KM is the process of capturing and making available information for reuse and learning.KM is a duality. The “social side” includes collaboration, conversation, community, meetings, discussions, lectures, classes, and live help. The “static side” includes repositories of documents, images, video, sound files, directories, web pages, records and help files. Both aspects are necessary and important.People are wealth and capability generators who can profoundly affect market appeal, reputation and performance. Value and reward subject matter experts.These environmental factors are needed for KM to succeed: Strong and committed leadership (without it, don’t start), Well-defined strategy integrated with business objectives, Measurable goals, Rewards and recognition for participants, Mindset/culture of knowledge sharing, and Right technologies.Capturing knowledge and making the information available to replacement workers can greatly reduce the negative impact caused by loss of key employees, enable new workers to become effective more quickly, and help to build the intellectual capital assets of the business.A knowledge strategy has two aspects: Cost control/avoidance and revenue/value generation. Different areas of a business will benefit from one aspect or the other, and both are equally important.Knowledge management requires a long-term commitment from the organization to change processes and culture, as well as the tools to facilitate data capture.Thoughts on Communities in KM

While it’s hard to imagine an organization that would not be better off with communities of interest, an amazing number still don’t have them. One reason is because of legal concerns, especially in the financial services and consulting businesses. They worry that a member or visitor will get bad advice from the community and act on it — then hold the organization responsible for any losses that result. Another reason is that business managers may not have much personal experience in a community, and are uncertain how to be effective at managing one, so they ignore them. Another reason is that communities are self-governing and discuss topics freely. Most organizations still believe in top-down, carefully crafted messages from executives. Executives fear loss of control over information (which, as we all are taught, is power).

In the 25 or so years that I have participated in and managed online communities, I’ve learned a few things that I believe to be true. Here are my Principles of Community:

Communities are voluntary associations of individuals who share interest in a common topic. A business community can be formed around a professional discipline, a skill or a topic. Other communities can be formed around any topic or interest.A community can be a small, active core with a narrow focus or a larger group with diverse voices, opinions, learnings and experiences.Communities have value when they are focused around data, not organizational structures.Workers participate in two dimensions –vertical business heirarchies and horizontal roles that cross the business. Role-based communities provide an important context for work improvements, value creation, learning and efficiencies across the enterprise.Communities require moderation. Moderators should be members from within the community, and moderators must be coached and supported.Unless managers give workers time and encouragement to participate, communities will fail.Key thought leaders must be involved in the community for it to succeed.Communities play an important role in content creation and management.Communities are the asset generators of a knowledge management system. Knowledge is shared between people, and capturing that exchange has value.Members of communities develop trust and a strong camaraderie that results in candid questions/answers and effective problem solving. Community dynamics are important motivators for subject matter experts and can help in SME retention.

Management guru Tom Peters said, “It’s a cross functional world — removing/trashing/obliterating any and all barriers to cross-functional communication is nothing short of our single highest priority. However sophisticated the technology, however grand the vision of integrated solutions and great customer experiences, the business is doomed without real human communication.” Communities fill that need, and all organizations have informal communities or networks, even if they are not supported by technology. Communities develop intellectual capital that can add to the market value of organizations. Giving communities the tools to function more effectively and create information archives is a priority for any knowledge management strategy and any smart business.

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Knowledge Management Thought Leader 54: Keeley Sorokti

Originally posted 11-Jan-24

Keeley Sorokti is a strategist who specializes in guiding organizations and teams through transforming the design of distributed work, digital workplace, communities, customer and employee engagement, learning, communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration practices and systems. With co-designed, people-centric solutions, she has helped multiple technology, non-profit, and higher education organizations improve how their staff, students, customers, partners, and prospects create and share knowledge, connect across boundaries, collaborate, and learn.

She is currently the Director of Knowledge and Collaboration at Sift and an adjunct instructor at Northwestern University in the MS in Learning and Organizational Change program (MSLOC). She co-leads the Chicago Online Community Professionals community of practice.

Keeley’s specialties include knowledge management, digital workplace, knowledge sharing, internal communications, social learning, and online community strategy, remote work, distributed work, community management, change management, learning and development, and human-centered design. She is adept at technology selection, implementation, and management.

BackgroundEducationNorthwestern University — MS, Learning and Organizational Change, 2009–2011Tufts University — B.A., International Relations & SpanishExperienceSift — Director of Knowledge and Collaboration, 2021 — PresentNorthwestern University — School of Education and Social Policy, Master of Science in Learning & Organizational Change (MSLOC)Adjunct Instructor, 2020 — PresentAssistant Director of Academic Services | Community Strategist, 2012–2015Instructional Technology Coordinator. 2009–2011Chicago Online Community Professionals — Co-Founder, 2017 — PresentStart Early — Director of Knowledge Sharing, 2018–2021Commvault — Community and Knowledge Management Strategist, 2016–2018MapR Technologies — Senior Manager/Community Strategist, 2015–2016Independent Consultant, 2007–2011Second Unitarian Church of Chicago — Director of Education, 2005–2007Endeavor Information SystemsGlobal Customer Support Manager, 2001–2005Library Support Team Leader, 2000–2001Library Support Analyst, 1999–2000PeopleSoft — Regional Sales Specialist/Higher Education Business Unit, 1997–1998World Learning — Director of Student Services/English as Second Language Programs, 1994–199ProfilesLinkedInPersonal WebsiteFacebookTwitterContentPortfolioLinkedIn PostsSlideShare12CommunitiesChicago Online Community ProfessionalsAboutPostsSIKM Leaders Community — PostsArticlesLinkedIn ArticlesBorderless Sift: Designing distributed work and knowledge sharingIA before AI: How to go beyond search to build a knowledge hubIt’s not about you! Or is it? Creating online community content that serves your audienceLearning “beyond the classroom” within an enterprise social network system — ScienceDirect with Kimberly Scott and Jeff MerrellManaging Boundaries Between Work and Family: Comparison of Satisfaction Levels Between Part-Time and Full-Time Working MothersGather with Purpose: intersection of community, learning and technology with Alyssa DyarPresentations and PanelsThe Strategy and Organizational Design of Hybrid Work Webinar — RecordingDesign Projects for Knowledge Sharing & LearningBuilding a Knowledge, Networks and Collaboration Center of ExcellencePreparing for Transformation with a Community MindsetGaining and Maintaining Adoption in a Social Intranet with Tracy MaurerConnect, Enable and Inspire: Our Journey with a Modern Intranet with April King and Eliza Mixon — RecordingSelling is a Team Sport: Integrating Jive-n into All Aspects of a Sales New Hire Program with April King and James Visher — RecordingUsing Jive to Enhance Your Organization’s Capacity to Learn, Innovate, and Activate Knowledge (recording of panel discussion)n incremental strategy for building relationships with your customers and prospects: MapR online communityLearning Beyond the Classroom: Designing an Enterprise Social Networking System to Support a Program-Wide Community of Inquiry with Jeff MerrellShift Your Mindset: Creating a Learning Culture on Your TeamLearning out Loud: Networked & Social LearningSocial Technology & Learning: Converting the Non-believer with Jeff MerrellEDCMOOC: A Maiden Voyage — Final Digital Artifact for Coursera E-Learning & Digital Cultures CourseCase Study: Creating a Collaborative Learning Community

IA before AI: How to go beyond search to build a knowledge hub with Mary Ann Garwood

Organize, Curate, and Promote Key Resources for Your Audiences

Content and Places need to:Be well organizedProvide contextConnect employees to similar resourcesBe situated in a larger ecosystem / information architectureBe accurate and up-to-datePlan: Build Use Cases & Content MapsStep 1: Planning the Use CaseStep 2: Content Map and Taxonomy before DesignStep 3: Design & LaunchStep 4: Comms PlanCreate Consumable Content That Can Be FoundTitles MatterAdd DescriptionsProvide Additional ResourcesAdd TagsInclude CategoriesCurate the Content: Index DocumentsAdd a link to the associated index documentEmbed key index documents on space landing pagesYou don’t have to be a designer to create good index docsPromote in SearchPush key content to the top of search resultsOnly 2 pieces of content per keywordOrder mattersSeparate multiple keyword(s) or phrases with commasMulti-word phrases require an exact match

Facilitating Knowledge Sharing for Innovation with Margaret Sullivan and Beth Black

Knowledge Sharing Strategies

To prevent knowledge lossKnowledge JamStorytelling/Anecdote Circles“Think Aloud” Concept MappingApprenticeshipsCoachingMentoring/ShadowingCommunities of PracticeExpertise LocatorsInterviewingRules of ThumbSocial Network AnalysisPortals/Repositories/KM TechnologiesTo increase efficiencySmall & Large Group Meetings / WorkshopsKnowledge JamStorytellingLessons LearnedAfter Action ReviewsSocial Network AnalysisPortals/Repositories/KM TechnologiesTo promote innovationSmall & Large Group Meetings / WorkshopsKnowledge JamLessons LearnedAfter Action ReviewsCommunities of PracticeDocumentationExpertise LocatorsMapping Human KnowledgePortals/Repositories/KM TechnologiesRules of ThumbAwards

2017: Jive Digital Transformation Award Winners  — Commvault

2018: The Community Roundtable Network Pack Leader

“TheCR Network Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network. TheCR Network Pack Leader: Keeley Hanson Sorokti, Community and Knowledge Management Strategist, Commvault

2018: Social Intranet Winner — Ragan’s Employee Communications Awards

A 2015 survey of employees working for data backup and recovery company Commvault found senior management was not doing enough to keep employees informed. The company’s intranet was little more than a collection of outdated SharePoint sites with no social functionality, no mobile access and a challenging user interface. The overhaul undertaken by the communications team has won first place in the “Social Intranet” category of Ragan’s 2018 Employee Communications Awards.

The effort was focused on providing easier access to the right content, and communication that engaged employees rather than simply pushed out messages, as well as creating a platform to build on the company’s culture. The result was a decision to adopt the Jive platform, which has social functionality built in.

Among the uses to which this functionality was put was a knowledge base and Q&A forums that simplified the process of asking and getting answers to questions; as a result, an average of 250 questions are answered each quarter on the page.

Social elements are also used to promote events. For example, during the company’s global customer conference, employees shared blog posts, photos and social content. During the 20th anniversary celebration, employees shared their own histories at the company and recognized their peers. The team also developed “People Side of the Business” social spaces on the intranet where employees could share ideas and concepts from beyond their own day-to-day work.

“Commvault Life” is one of these spaces, where employees share photos and write posts about company culture, including volunteer work, holiday parties and personal notes. Jive also enabled the Commvault Women in Technology group to launch a special interest group site on the intranet.

Ninety-eight percent of employees have adopted the new intranet, CONNECT, with active use increasing to 84 percent; average daily views grew 38 percent in CONNECT’s second year, and employee survey feedback has also been positive.

Congratulations to Brittany Lamb, Eliza Mixon, Keeley Sorokti, and Tracy Maurer.

2023: Internet Time Alliance Award in Memory of Jay Cross

Keeley Sorokti’s career as a knowledge management professional has been marked by her expertise in guiding organizations and teams through transformative journeys in designing and sustaining social learning, online community, and knowledge-sharing practices. Her impact can be seen in her work with multiple technology, non-profit, and higher education organizations, where she has improved knowledge creation and sharing, cross-boundary connections, collaboration, and learning experiences.

In addition to her role at Sift, Keeley Sorokti’s influence extends beyond her workplace. She actively shares her expertise and insights. As an instructor, she co-teaches the Creating and Sharing Knowledge class in the Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC) program at Northwestern University. She co-founded the Chicago Online Community Professionals peer-to-peer community of practice and coworking group where KM, L&D, online community, and digital workplace professionals from around the world support each other as they work to transform the way we work, learn, and share knowledge in our organizations.

Keeley has shown a commitment to advancing the field of workplace learning and her passion for working out loud and making work visible exemplifies her humanistic approach to learning and performance.

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Gordon Petrash: Profiles in Knowledge

Originally published January 9, 2024

This is the 99th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. The late Gordon Petrash (1950–2021) was a pioneer and thought leader in the field of intellectual capital. His expertise was developing and implementing processes and cultures that enable companies to maximize the value of their intangible assets.

Gordon’s work on Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) at Dow Chemical showed how corporations can manage their intellectual capital to improve the bottom line. He was a former Partner in the IAM Financial Advisory Services practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was responsible for the development and implementation of approaches, processes, and tools that maximized the value of PwC clients’ patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how. From there he moved on to become the Chief IP Strategist and VP for Delphion Inc. He was a part of the senior management team and was responsible for developing the IAM enterprise software and consulting arm of the company. He then worked for Cargill and finally opened his own consultancy, GPPIAM.

Gordon’s specialties included:

Intellectual Asset ManagementIntellectual Capital Value ExtractionCorporate and Business ManagementPatent ManagementBusiness ProcessesChange ManagementBackgroundEducationIndiana University Bloomington — Business, International Business Management, 1984–1985Kent State University — M.Arch, Architecture and Urban Planning, 1976–1978Case Western Reserve University — BS Arch, Architecture and Urban Studies, 1970–1972The Ohio State University — Architecture, 1968–1969ExperienceGPPIAM — Value Creation and Leveraging Consultant, 2011–2021Cargill — Director, 2006–2011Hyperion — Consultant, 2011Delphion — VP, 2003–2005PwC Consulting — Partner, 1998 — J2002The Dow Chemical Company — Global Director, 1986–1998ProfilesLinkedIn

Gordon P. Petrash, age 71 of Midland, passed away May 16, 2021 at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. Petrash was born in Uniontown Pennsylvania on March 14, 1950. Gordon graduated from Case Western university with a degree in architecture. He had been employed with Dow Chemical for over 20 years; he then went to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers for 5 years and then was a consultant for Cargill Foods.

National Law Journal: Intellectual Property Trailblazers & Pioneers 2014

As an R&D director for Dow Chemical in the 1980s and 1990s, Gordon Petrash helped develop a regimented method for intellectual asset management. “We treated it like a portfolio. We were getting licenses and royalties and suing people.” Dow saw the value and tapped Petrash to build a program companywide. “At the time patents were not really valued very highly and not looked at by legal systems as very strong.”

Petrash developed a process across more than 20 business units, managing more than 20,000 patents and untold trade secrets. “We saved the company tens of millions in renewal fees and also helped it realize more than $100 million in value over 10 years.” By 1994, Dow and Petrash had gained some prominence, including a cover feature in Fortune magazine in 1994. “Over next 5 to 10 years many companies realized that IAM was a big part of corporate strategy.” In 1998, Petrash left Dow to build an IAM consulting practice at PwC Consulting, before stints in-house at IBM spin-off Delphion and Cargill. In 2011 he opened his own consulting shop, GPPIAM.

“Today’s litigious environment takes a toll, and governments are still developing their rules about patents. The rules are changing, and it’s going to be a moving target.” Petrash expects companies to get more cooperative and pool more resources. “It will happen by necessity. Any successful patent is going to get litigated. Anything that valuable is going to have some claims. But these pools could help manage that.”

ContentDefinitionsIntellectual Capital: ‘knowledge with potential for value”Knowledge Management: “getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time”Articles

Dow’s journey to a knowledge value management culture

Intellectual Capital/Knowledge Management is not the next silver bullet or fad that we should rally around. We need to ask is knowledge management important for the sake of ‘what does it have to produce?’ It is the creation of value for customers, shareholders and employees.

The Dow Chemical Company has spent the last four years developing a vision, functional systems, and tools, for the ‘value management’ of its Intellectual Assets (IA). During this effort, it has developed some competencies in the area of ‘measuring and valuing’ IA, and in developing systems that support the leveraging of IA for maximum value. In this article, Dow shares its experiences gained and reveals some of the lessons learned from this highly successful endeavor. The article also gives a glimpse of Dow’s future direction in the area of Intellectual Capital Management.

Visualizing, Measuring and Managing Knowledge with Wendi R. Bukowitz

As companies continue to trade at many multiples of their book value, executives are beginning to look for ways to manage and measure the intangible assets that are increasingly recognized as large contributors to their organizations’ market value. Companies such as The Dow Chemical Company, Skandia and Buckman Laboratories International are developing measurement systems to assess how well they leverage organizational knowledge to create value for customers, which is ultimately reflected in stock prices. These organizations are developing measurement systems for intangibles that can:

align individual actions with organizational strategy, andanticipate positive as well as negative financial outcomes in enough time to enhance the former and possibly avoid the latter altogether.Articles by Others

Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset: Intellectual Capital by Thomas A. Stewart of Fortune Magazine

Business pioneers are finding surprising ways to put real dollars on the bottom line as they discover how to measure and manage the ultimate intangible: knowledge.

Dow Chemical had something like that in mind in 1993 when the company created a new job, director of intellectual asset management. The idea was to turn a passive function — central record keeping for Dow’s 29,000 in-force patents — into active management of the opportunities patents represent. Says Gordon Petrash, who holds the job: “Patents aren’t the only intellectual assets — there’s art and know-how — but they’re the easiest place to start.”

Easiest doesn’t mean easy. Petrash found that Dow exploited fewer than half its patents. Worse, most were orphans: No business unit was responsible for commercializing or licensing them. Surprised, Petrash checked with other companies and found that most have at least as high a percentage of unused, unattended patents — some worth potential millions but all costing money. (Keeping an invention’s patents in force over their lifetime costs some $250,000 in legal bills, filing fees, taxes, and so on.) Just from working with business units to create and weed patent portfolios, Petrash’s group has saved more than $1 million in its first 18 months.

Petrash’s chief contribution, though, is a six-step process for managing intellectual assets.

It begins with strategy: Define the role of knowledge in your business — for instance, the importance of intellectual investments to develop new products, vs. brick-and-mortar spending to achieve economies of scale.Next, assess competitors’ strategies and knowledge assets.Third, classify your portfolio: What do you have, what do you use, where does it belong?Fourth, evaluate: What are your assets worth; what do they cost; what will it take to maximize their value; should you keep them, sell them, or abandon them?Fifth, invest: Based on what you learned about your knowledge assets, identify gaps you must fill to exploit knowledge or holes you should plug to fend off rivals, and either direct R&D there or look for technology to license.Sixth, assemble your new knowledge portfolio and repeat the process ad infinitum.

The method is straightforward, says Petrash, “but we don’t find anybody else doing the whole package.” Just making intellectual asset management an explicit task pays benefits. When Dow discovered a new way to make polyolefin plastics (one use: coating wire and cable), the six-step process — especially analyzing competition and technology gaps — led the company to plan its research and write its patent in ways that make it tough for rivals to work around Dow.

Petrash and Patrick Sullivan, a Berkeley intellectual property expert, are training Dow managers to master the process by sharing tips and best practices. Petrash says: “The business guys understand how to do this with their hard assets. We help them do the same with intellectual assets.” The long-range goal is to make managing patents as routine as managing any other asset — and to extend the work into less defined areas of intellectual capital, such as trade secrets and technical expertise.

The Gathering: Small But Perfectly Formed by Jeff Wild

“I had just finished a presentation at an LES (Licensing Executives Society) meeting in San Francisco in 1993 when a man came up to me and said that I was using his slides,” says Patrick Sullivan. “Having registered my surprise, he said that of course this was not literally true, but that he used a very similar set in the talks he gave at the company where he worked. He then introduced himself: it was Gordon Petrash, the head of intellectual asset management at Dow Chemical.” It was a meeting to be quickly followed by a further introduction, as a writer from Fortune magazine, researching an article on intellectual capital management, put Sullivan in touch with Leif Edvinsson, intellectual capital director at Swedish financial services company Skandia. Like Petrash, Edvinsson was charged with finding ways to capture and then convey the value of the intangible assets his company owned. “After years of working in isolation we were all beginning to find each other,” Sullivan says.

A Brief History of the Intellectual Capital Movement by Patrick H. Sullivan

Gordon Petrash Originally trained as an architect, Petrash joined Dow in 1986 as a development manager for construction materials. After successes in both construction materials management and in managing Dow’s Styrofoam films business, he was asked to create an intellectual asset management function to identify innovations or ideas that might have been overlooked by the corporation and bring them to commercialization if possible. Petrash developed an intellectual asset vision and implementation model, including approaches and tools to enable the company to maximize the value of its existing portfolio of intellectual assets. The success of this work led Dow to expand his responsibilities, Petrash was Dow’s Director of Intellectual Capital/Knowledge Management. Since 1998 he has been a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in consulting on intellectual assets with an emphasis on tax donations.

Knowledge Management (KM) and its Relationship to ICM

It should be noted that the term “Intellectual Capital Management” (ICM) was introduced by Tom Stewart through an article on Intellectual Capital published in Fortune magazine in October 1994 after it was first mentioned in discussions in his presence. The key creators of the term ICM are: Leif Edvinsson (Sweden), Gordon Petrash (USA), Hubert St. Onge (Canada), Patrick Sullivan (USA) and their associates. The first company to adopt a full ICM approach was Skandia (a Swedish Insurance company) in the 1990s under the leadership of Leif Edvinsson. The early pioneers (seven companies that include Dow Chemical, DuPont, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Space and Communication, Hoffman LaRoche and Skandia) also got together in January 1995 to exchange notes and formed the first ICM Gathering in Berkeley, California, USA. From the “Value Creation” stream as practiced in Europe by ICM gurus such as Leif Edvinsson and the “Value Extraction” stream as practiced by leading US companies a holistic approach now embracing value creation, value extraction and value release has emerged as a powerful business tool which is the new and more powerful form of Intellectual Capital Management practiced by far seeing organizations to stimulate long term sustainable value.

A Discussion About Gordon Petrash’s Role at Dow Chemical

If money talks, then no one has more credibility to speak on the subject of intellectual capital management than Gordon Petrash.

Indeed, Dow Chemical, the $21 billion company that has elevated him to the position of global intellectual asset director, has witnessed first-hand the power of knowledge. As a result of his groups strategic efforts to manage intellectual assets, the Midland, Mich.-based manufacturer of everything from adhesives to polymers to polystyrene has already heightened the value of its patents by more than 400% and will save in excess of $50 million in related tax obligations and other costs over 10 years.

Dow’s vision, explains Petrash, is to develop a management process that maximizes the business value of its existing intellectual assets and helps to create new ones. The people who are involved in [these efforts at Dow] get excited about it, he adds. It captures their imagination.

The company, which was formed in 1897 and is now celebrating its 100th birthday, sells over 2,000 chemical-related products worldwide. It is organized into 15 major businesses and is engaged in more than 40 joint ventures. Half of its revenues come from international markets. Dow, which considers itself technology-driven, employs about 4,000 R&D people and spends $30 million a year maintaining and supporting its patent portfolio.

The company’s story illustrates the challenges that face other enterprises that hope to capitalize on knowledge. But it also clearly shows the rewards the tangible payoff that can be gained through the effective management of intangibles.

Dow first began exploring new ways to manage intellectual assets five years ago. With the support of high-level executives, a small group of individuals, which included Petrash, came together to examine how the company might reengineer its systems and processes to create more value. Out of this relatively unstructured and uncharted early effort arose an interest in rigorously managing the firm’s intellectual assets.

Corporate Strategist: Gordon Petrash by Barb Cole-Gomolski

Knowledge-management effort at Dow helps company rein in patents, dataDow Chemical’s Gordon Petrash is harnessing the know-how of the chemical giant and making it available to the masses so the company can prosper

Gordon Petrash trained as an architect, but these days the only thing he’s building is a culture where corporate knowledge is seen as a precious business asset.

As the global director of intellectual asset management at Dow Chemical Co., Petrash heads up a group that determines how the Midland. Mich.-based chemical giant manages its intellectual assets. Those include patents. trade secrets and the collective know-how of the company’s knowledge workers.

Petrash’s goal isn’t just to harness information, but to use it to increase revenue, cut costs and make Dow — which has annual revenue of more than $20 billion — more competitive in the marketplace. Focusing on intellectual asset management also helps reveal what the company lacks, Petrash said.

Getting its patent portfolio in order revealed that maintaining those patents cost about $2 million over 10 years. And about half of the patents “were basically an insurance policy that we never intended to use.” As a result, the company weeded out some unused patents, Petrash said.

He said Dow also has been able to enter into two ventures in which it contributed knowledge and its business partner contributed all the hard assets. Though he said the ventures were lucrative, Petrash wouldn’t provide details about them.

Steve Grace, the company’s general patent counsel, said Dow was like a lot of companies in that ‘a lot of our information scattered throughout the organization in different places.”

Grace said the asset management system has turned his team of attorneys from knowledge caretakers into advisers. “We’re a lot better at providing our clients (within Dow) with the information they need to make decisions,’ he said.

Petrash said companies starting out in intellectual asset management should begin with the most tangible parts of the business.

In Dow’s case, that was its patents. “We didn’t manage them well, and everyone understood them,” Petrash said.

Only now — five years into its asset management efforts — is the company looking to capture employee know-how.

Many companies appoint a chief knowledge officer (CKOJ to build a system for delivering corporate know-how to the masses, but Dow hasn’t.

“The ultimate CKO needs to be the chief executive officer” said Petrash, who believes that asset management needs to become ingrained in the corporate culture and “integrated with everything” to be successful.

In terms of technology, there is no silver bullet, Petrash said. Dow doesn’t have Lotus Notes, which is a popular platform for such applications.

“We use electronic mail, the Internet, databases, patent-tracking software, voicemail and document management systems,” Petrash said. They are all part of Dow’s intellectual asset management system, he said.

Incentives

But putting the technology on workers’ desktops is only part of the picture. Petrash said. It is just as important to build a culture of sharing.

Petrash said Dow has benefited from being a “technology-driven company that is used to sharing.” Still, Dow rewards mentors and those who share knowledge with faster promotions and bigger raises, he said,

Managing knowledge isn’t new, Petrash said. “Successful companies have been doing it for a long time,” he said.

Dow’s ability to profit from its knowledge management program is unusual, said Carl Frappaolo, vice president of The Delphi Group. a research firm in Boston.

“Dow has discovered that there is great value in just knowing something, and they are not afraid of selling that know-how,” Frappaolo said. “The days of coming out with a product that is your cash cow are gone. Now, it’s just a short amount of time before your competitor figures out what you are doing and duplicates it.”

The value then isn’t in your trade secret, it’s how you got there, Frappaolo said.

“What Dow is doing can enable them to be one of the pioneers in the knowledge-based economy’ he said.

Book Chapters

Profiting from Intellectual Capital: Extracting Value from Innovation by Patrick H. Sullivan — Chapter 15: Intellectual Asset Management at Dow Chemical

Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works edited by Daryl Morey, Mark T. Maybury, and Bhavani Thuraisingham — Section Introduction: Strategy: Compelling Word, Complex Concept

Strategy: Webster’s definition

A: a careful plan or method: a clever stratagem.B: the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

The way the word “strategy” is defined and understood within an organization is critical before any meaningful discussion about “Strategy” (with a capital S) can take place. This is somewhat evident in the chapters that make up the knowledge management strategy section. Each of the authors advances the notion of strategy with a slightly different definition and in varying contexts. All of their uses of the word and concept are valid. The imperative is that the author defines the term and that the reader understands the context.

I am continually perplexed with discussions regarding mega-terms and concepts like Strategy, Learning Organization, Leadership, Intellectual Capital, and Knowledge Management because of the shear challenge of bringing the participants to a common understanding of the definition of terms being referenced. It doesn’t matter that there may not be a common agreement on these terms as long as I understand your meaning and you mine.

Therefore, for the sake of this discussion, my use of the word Strategy is defined and elaborated as follows — a plan and a process that accomplishes the enterprise’s desired outcome. It is a plan for action with clear and measurable goals linked to these outcomes. It is many times dynamic, having the ability to adapt to new information or situations. In the end it is the enterprise’s best knowledge and collective experience focused on the accomplishment of its goals.

The Enterprise Strategy is the road map of how to get to the desired destination. It is not the primary purpose of the strategy to determine whether the destination is correct. That is left to the “vision and purpose” of the enterprise. The strategy may reveal things about the vision and purpose and certainly can impact them. But all too often within organizations, the strategy and the vision get intertwined and begin to cause each to lose focus and discipline.

Peter Senge addresses the importance of the definition of terms in context. His paper “Reflection on ‘A Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations,’” characterizes part of the problem with the advancement of the concept with the “sloppy use of the word leader.” How the word is used in organizations is different from how it is used within the literature. He points out that leader is often meant to mean executive, which in many cases preempts leadership from occurring elsewhere in the organization.

Peter has adopted the definition for leadership by organizations as the following: In the abstract — “leadership is the capacity of a human community to create its future.” In operation — “leadership is the ability in an organization to initiate and to sustain significant change, to work effectively with the forces that shape change.” I find these definitions of leadership very palatable.

Peter also defines “knowledge” “as the capacity for effective action, clearly distinguishing it from data and information.” Knowledge and Knowledge Management are words and terms that are being bantered around quite a bit today. Peter makes an observation that these are terms that have become fads. He makes the point that Knowledge Management is just another term in the ongoing continuum of business management evolution.

Leaders enable transformation. Creating a learning organization is one of the vehicles for accomplishing this. Peter’s paper is thought provoking and challenging regarding these often-used terms and concepts.

David Skyrme’s paper, “Developing a Knowledge Strategy: From Management to Leadership,” supports the premise that knowledge management has flirted with becoming a fad but in fact, has move beyond fad to take its place as part of the ongoing business management improvement evolution. The management of knowledge has firmly taken its place as one of the fundamental elements required for developing strategy. David attributes knowledge management’s attainment of this stature in the past few years through the following sequence of events.

Recognition that knowledge and other Intellectual Capital have value by underpinning value creation and future value, both of which impact share priceDemonstration of clear business examples where management of knowledge has given companies competitive advantageAvailability of improved collaboration technologyThe realization that business processes are a continuous evolution and knowledge management was the logical next step

The integration of knowledge management processes and principles into business strategy has significant measurable benefits that are outlined in his paper “The Knowledge Advantage.” David certainly helps to make the case for knowledge management as a real part of the business management process and strategic thinking. He breaks the knowledge contribution to strategy into two “Thrusts.”

Making knowledge that is already known easily accessible.Innovation, the creation of new knowledge that has value.

David advances the value of knowledge management by referencing very clear and measurable “Levers.” Knowledge management in practice is not linear; it laces the management of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge together with the value proposition cited in the strategy. Managing knowledge is not an easy task. He describes the management of tacit knowledge as an “oxymoron.”

Because it is difficult and messy doesn’t mean it cannot be done. David presents very real approaches to managing knowledge more effectively and as an element of the business strategy. I particularly subscribe to his prediction that future business success will be determined through “Knowledge Leadership” rather than “Knowledge Management.” The enabling of the knowledge movement and innovation rather than the hard processes of disciplined management would seem to be more palatable to creative people, thus encouraging better performance and more successes.

“Knowledge Sharing Is a Human Behavior,” by William Ives, Ben Torry, and Cindy Gordon, really focuses on people as the key element of successful knowledge management. “Sharing insights and best practices is a human behavior that is critical to the success of any knowledge management system yet it is counter to the culture found in most organizations.” This is a fact that we all know and experience day in and day out in our work and personal lives. Andersen Consulting has developed a human performance model that specifies what a person needs to optimally perform any business task, as well as what leadership must be provided in order to align performance with business strategies.

They have identified the following principal factors:

Understanding the business context.Organizational performance factors — structure and roles, processes, culture, and physical environment.Individual performance factors — direction, measurement, means, ability, motivation.

These factors must work in concert in order for human performance to be optimized. Each is necessary but by itself, not sufficient.

Knowledge management is personal. It is difficult and uncomfortable to put performance perimeters around humans. But it can be done and is being done every day in every organization. In many cases it is not formalized or explicit. The authors have put together a compelling argument that for organizations to be successful, they need to share knowledge. Their paper effectively shows the key factors that must be managed in order for this to effectively happen and ultimately impact organizational performance.

I think this chapter will stir some controversy among those that feel we are coming ever closer to managing and measuring people by some overriding business management process. And in doing so, we may start to lose the individual’s face in the attempt to more effectively manage human capital to enhance organizational performance. I conceptually buy into the Andersen Consulting “Human Performance Model.” How it is implemented and presented by leadership, as in so many cases of implementing business models, is critical to its success.

“Building Intangible Assets: A Strategic Framework for Investing in Intellectual Capital” by Patricia Seemann, David De Long, Susan Stuckey, and Edward Guthrie, addresses intellectual capital, its definition, and how better managing the raw material “knowledge,” builds more of it.

The authors describe Intellectual Capital as being composed of Human, Social, and Structural Capital. All three are further defined in the paper. I particularly like their definition of knowledge management — ”the deliberate design of processes, tools, structures, etc., with the intent to increase, renew, share, or improve the use of knowledge represented in any of the three elements of intellectual capital.”

I have used Figure I.1 to define Intellectual Capital and show the impact the management of knowledge has on it. The knowledge flows grow each of the types of capital and at the same time, brings them into a more coincident position. In both dynamics, the area in the center, “Value,” increases in size. This is the conceptual high ground, high value that is targeted by Intellectual Capital Management, Knowledge management, and Learning Organization concepts. This paper fits nicely into my own philosophy of Intellectual Capital.

Each of the papers has different definitions and approaches to key elements that are critical to strategy. These differences in no way should distract the reader from seeing the underlining similarities in the analysis and themes of all four of these papers. I have gleaned the following from them:

The definition, and the context of the terms must be understood before dialogue and action take placeKnowledge management is but another step in a continuum of the ever-evolving business management processIntellectual Capital, Knowledge Management, and Learning Organization are terms rooted in action and the creation of valueAn integrated approach that blends into existing business practices is the most effect way to cause sustainable positive changeMeasures are critical for successful implementationAn enabling leadership approach is the preferred approachCultural change is needed for sustainable benefitIt all starts with the individual and ends with the individual. Models and processes do not create new knowledge or value only people doA winning business strategy must have the management and leveraging of knowledge as one of its cornerstonesStrategy is the implementation of knowledge toward measurable objectives that accomplish the enterprises vision and purpose

To quote Charles Savage, a leading thinker and mentor in the area of Strategy Development, Intellectual Capital Management, and Knowledge Management, “we are on a long journey and the trip has just begun.” These papers will catalyze readers to focus their thinking on a critical aspect of business management and possibly advance their own and our journey toward an ever evolving business model that enables the creation of “value.”

Book References by Others

Intellectual Capital: The new wealth of organizations by Thomas A. Stewart

By the same token, companies that have begun digging into their knowledge assets have discovered that they are at the mouth of a gold mine. Dow Chemical Corp. found its rich seam of gold almost by accident. The company had spring cleaning in mind in 1993 when the company created a new job, director of intellectual asset management. The idea was to turn a passive function — central record-keeping for Dow’s 29,000 in-force patents — into active management of the opportunities patents represent by cleaning up the portfolio and seeing what additional licensing revenue might be obtained from them.

Says Gordon Petrash, who holds the job: “Patents aren’t the only intellectual assets — there’s art and know-how — but they’re the easiest place to stan.” Easiest doesn’t mean easy. Petrash found that Dow exploited fewer than half its patents. Worse, most were orphans: No business unit was responsible for commercializing or licensing them. Surprised, Petrash checked with other companies and found that most have at least as high a percentage of unused, unattended patents — some worth potential millions but all costing money. (Just as the owner of an empty building still owes property tax and has to keep the plumbing and the roof fixed, so it is with intangible assets: Keeping an invention’s patents in force over their lifetime costs some $250,000 in legal bills, filing fees, taxes, and so on.) Just from working with business units to create and weed patent portfolios, Petrash’s group saved more than $1 million in maintenance costs in its first 18 months.

The value of the gold that was hidden inside Dow is stupendous. Over ten years, Petrash figures, Dow will save about $50 million in tax, filing, and other maintenance costs. Even better: By bringing valuable but unused patents out from the corporate attic, he estimates that the company will increase its annual revenue from licensing patents from $25 million (the 1994 total) to about $125 million by the year 2000. And these, remember, are the savings and revenues just from attending to Dow’s most obvious intangible assets, the codified know-how represented by patents. The long-range goal is to extend the work of knowledge management into less defined, and more valuable areas of intellectual capital “art and know-how,” trade secrets and technical expertise. That, Petrash asserts, is worth billions.

Comprehensive Intellectual Capital Management: Step-by-step by Nermien Al-Ali — Chapter 9: The Pioneers of Intellectual Capital Management — Skandia and Dow Chemical

“It’s certainly not to say that Dow or any other corporation has not managed its intellectual assets; in fact, I believe there is a direct correlation between how well the intellectual assets of a corporation have been managed and its financial success. The opportunity is in being able to visualize, better measure and manage them.” — Gordon Petrash, formerly of Dow Chemical Company and the leader of the Intellectual Asset Management initiative and currently chief strategy officer at Delphion

Petrash continues to explain that though many corporations now know how to manage their intellectual assets, particularly when it comes to innovation and intellectual property (IP), the real challenge lies in two areas — knowing the “how” of managing knowledge, and adopting an appropriate model of intellectual capital management (ICM) as a whole wherein all forms of IC are visualized and managed.

Petrash’s IAM: Paving the Way

Dow’s IAM is one of the most advanced models for managing patents and technology and one that gained widespread popularity. It took IPM out from the legal department to over 100 teams spread throughout the organization. Most importantly, it aligned managing intellectual assets, starting with patents, with the strategic management of each of Dow’s businesses. Dow’s IAM model started with an assignment to one of the R&D managers at the time, Gordon Petrash. With Petrash’s demonstrated success in commercializing patents in his own business unit, top management at Dow wanted him to transform his knowledge into a working system that the whole organization could implement. Petrash started with a patent audit of the 29,000 patents that Dow owned at the time. Applying valuation methods, Petrash and the auditing team gathered evidence as to the value of the audited patents. Of course, some patents had demonstrated value reflected in sales of patent-associated products, and thus the growth of the business unit. The largest number of patents, however, did not fall under this category and had to be properly classified.

In addition to the auditing phase, the classification phase went a step further by determining the use of the patent. Each business was required to classify the patents it had into one of three major categories: “use, will use, or will not use.” This was followed by the strategy and investment phases wherein the business uses a number of valuation and competitive assessment tools to assess the commercial value of the patent(s) and devise a plan for their exploitation. For valuation purposes, Dow developed with A.D. Little the Tech Factor method in which the value of the patent is estimated as a percentage of the total net present value of the business unit that owns it. Patent citation trees were also used to evaluate the significance of the patent in the market and to gain insight into the competitive and technological landscape.

Patents falling in the second category are then evaluated as to their values to other parties outside Dow. The auditing team took a broad approach, looking at universities and government labs, as well as competitors and noncompetitors in local and global markets. The surprising result was that only 30 percent of Dow’s patents at the time were of strategic value to Dow, while the others were expendable either as donations to collect tax deductions or to be sold or abandoned. The result was an instant savings of $50 million over a period of 10 years, drawing support and commendation to the effort. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. This big savings allowed the IAM program of Dow to receive resources beyond the initial $1 million and the handful of personnel that Petrash started with. Dow’s IAM model was launched and later integrated as a business process permeating the management of each business at Dow.

The $50 million that Gordon Petrash proved the company can save through effective IAM not only paved the way for a more robust IAM program (what is called intellectual property management under the CICM), but it also created the right mindset and culture required to embrace the IC concept — an opportunity that David Near grasped to take Dow into the world of ICM, and in so doing shape that world as well.

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Knowledge Management Thought Leader 53: Lesley Shneier

Originally posted 04-Jan-24

Lesley Shneier’s specialties include Online Facilitation, Collaborative Technologies, Communities of Practice, Narrative & Storytelling, Workshop Facilitation, Change Management, and Thematic/Knowledge Networks.

A native of South Africa, she joined the World Bank in 1985, served as Senior Knowledge Specialist, and retired in 2011. Much of her World Bank career was spent helping people work more effectively through training or using internet technology. From 1996 until she retired, she worked at the heart of the knowledge management program. Since retiring, she has consulted for the World Bank and is currently a member of the board of the 1818 Society. She lives in Washington, DC.

Lesley has a background in social work, human resources, organizational change, and management consulting. In her 27 years at the World Bank, she focused on change, knowledge sharing, innovation and collaboration, communities of practice, and the impact of ICT tools. She now works with the 1818 Society alumni to capture, curate, share, and apply their development expertise with current staff. Her experiences relate to mainstreaming the knowledge sharing program across the World Bank and beyond to include clients and partners; working with the leaders of the communities of practice (called Thematic Groups); organizing large knowledge sharing events such as knowledge conferences, knowledge fairs and expos as ways of communicating the knowledge sharing message to many people in and outside the World Bank. She holds degrees in Social Work and Personnel Management from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

According to Lesley, “Since 1996, I was fortunate to be one of the pioneers implementing the Knowledge Bank at the World Bank. Along with other organizations embarking on the same journey, we learned a great deal, especially about the importance of modeling the required behavior. Internally, we shared openly and widely what we learned from other organizations. We collaborated with APQC and IBM’s former Institute for Knowledge Management in undertaking research and benchmarking studies. I participated in several such studies, particularly on communities of practice. There were over 100 communities in the World Bank, which we called “Thematic Groups” or TGs. For several years, I facilitated monthly workshops for the TG leaders, in what Etienne Wenger, guru of CoPs, called the ‘master CoP.’

Education

University of the Witwatersrand

Master’s — HR management, organization development, human resources development, personnel management, 1975Bachelor’s — Social Work, psychology, sociology, industrial sociology, 1967–1970Experience1818 Society World Bank Group Alumni — Social Media Activator and CoP Facilitator, 2013 — PresentColumbia University Master of Science in Information and acknowledge Strategy — Adjunct Faculty, 2013–2018World Bank Group — Senior Knowledge and Learning Specialist, 1985–2011Profiles LinkedIn Blogger KM4Dev Facebook Twitter Profiles in Knowledge: Columbia University IKNS Book Chapters

Bursting the Big Data Bubble: The Case for Intuition-Based Decision Making edited by Jay Liebowitz — Chapter 19: Let’s Have a Knowledge Conference!

Intelligent Learning Infrastructure for Knowledge Intensive Organizations: A Semantic Web Perspective edited by Miltiadis Lytras and Ambjörn Naeve — Chapter 16: Case Study: Knowledge Sharing, Communities of Practice, and Organizational Change at the World Bank Group

Getting Change Right — Seth Kahan’s Visionary Leadership — Chapter 6: Generating Dramatic Surges in Progress — Expert Input: Lesley Shneier on the World Bank’s Knowledge Fairs

Next Generation Knowledge Management: Transforming theory into practice, Volume 1 edited by Jerry Ash — Chapter 1: Are There Laws of Knowledge Management? with Stephen Denning and Michel Pommier

Videos KM at World Bank Storytelling KMWorld

2014 Knowledge: Transferring Across Generations  —  Slides

Current and Next Steps

Focus on increasing connection between supply (alumni) and demand (staff)Recent working lunch with new Global Practice leaders matched with Alumni Community of Practice leadersConnect with GP knowledge focal point“AskSofi” — advisory service to include alumniNeed a “connector” to help identify expertsPlanned re-launching Alumni Knowhow Network

2011 KM Tips & Tricks  —  Slides

Five key initiatives to build a robust KM function

Incentivize staff to create / share knowledge — global practice communities, participative management, budgeted time, reward and recognition mechanisms, collaboration and co-generation with external experts / clientsEstablish a K&L Network to implement Knowledge and Learning solutions across all Global Practices — with KM focal points by region, clear roles and reporting lines, joint action plan, standards — virtual teamsLaunch a Knowledge and Collaboration platform — internal: World Bank access to vetted experts, consultants, key documents, projects, results, etc.;
external: engage clients, donors and partnersIntroduce a K&L Governance body to ensure sector-wide accountability, strategic direction, priorities, linkages with operations, knowledge flows and budget allocationsDevelop guidelines, procedures and metrics to sustain client centric K-creation, sharing and management, and measure impact

What did we learn?

People are the platformPilot, adapt and scale upBalance executive support with staff buy-in and engagementBuild on existing culture, do not try to change itAvoid paralysis — identify quick wins and share success stories as you progressArticles

The Bank’s First Knowledge Fair (from Best of the World Bank — Selected Essays by World Bank Alumni edited by Swati Srivastava, pages 36–38)

After the Annual Meetings in October 1996, when Jim Wolfensohn, then President of World Bank Group, announced that the Bank would become a “knowledge bank”, Steve Denning was appointed Director of Knowledge Management.

Together with a small group of staff, and a knowledge board which met weekly, we all set about learning what knowledge management meant, We went to conferences, meetings with other organizations, and shared everything we learned with one another. This was also when the Intranet was first being developed! The foundation of the “knowledge bank” was to share development knowledge with staff, partners, and clients.

To find out what knowledge and information people wanted to share or learn about, and how they wanted it presented to them, we held focus groups with each sector, starting with education. We discovered nascent groups, later called thematic groups, where people already had distribution lists with members both inside and outside the Bank. They would engage these members to create and curate the knowledge. From these beginnings, a “knowledge management system” was created, which later morphed into the Intranet and then much of the content was moved to the Internet.

In late 1997, I was charged with designing some knowledge management training for all Bank staff. I responded that people wouldn’t attend training for something they knew nothing about, and suggested we do something to show staff what we meant. The idea was for an open house; however, as a really small team, we didn’t have a “house” to open. As I walked through the relatively newly opened atrium in our main building, I realized here was space we could use. So, I suggested we have a “knowledge fair”. As it turned out, no one knew what that was, since no one had ever done such a thing.

However, the event gained momentum and traction as soon as I announced that Jim Wolfensohn would open the fair. Organization units began begging for spaces in the atrium. The real challenge came from the facilities management people, who were concerned that their pristine atrium would be turned into a “Middle Eastern souk” — which was exactly what I wanted! They were so concerned that they specified exactly what size fonts we could use in our displays, even what color text to use — blue, to match the hyacinths in pots climbing the stairs! Lo and behold, the day before the fair opened, another part of facilities management changed those plants to yellow daffodils!

When he opened the fair, in late March 1998, a smiling Jim Wolfensohn looked around the makeshift booths and said we had brought his vision of a knowledge bank to life. He asked us to arrange a similar fair during the annual meetings of the Bank and Fund later that year, which we did, this time with 50 booths, He later showed us a letter from someone who said that after spending 2 hours at the booths he had learned far more about development and the World Bank Group than he had learned in twenty years of attending the annual meetings.

Soon afterwards, the first Innovation fair was held in the atrium. This was an internal event, for various units or teams in the Bank to showcase innovation in development, with the premise that they had to show that they had partnered with other units, both in and outside the Bank. Money was awarded to about a dozen units to further develop their innovation. This led to the Development Marketplace, where organizations, mostly from outside the Bank, showcased their ideas for development. Winners were awarded grants similar to venture capital to further develop their ideas. Other knowledge for development initiatives developed in various areas of the institution, including the Global Development Network and the Global Distance Learning Network, which is a network of distance learning centers that were initially based in or near Bank country offices.

Toward the end of 1999-early 2000, when it became clear that protestors meant to demonstrate outside the main complex and disrupt the Bank-Fund spring meetings, Wolfensohn asked if we would hold another knowledge fair. Very importantly, he gave us the funds to pay for it, too. Within 24 hours, 30 thematic groups had pledged to participate. When the various TV news channels came to film the demonstrators outside, they then came in and marveled at how organized the Bank was, how generous we were in sharing our knowledge. It was at this time, too, that Wolfensohn shrewdly invited the various non-government organizations into the Bank to meet with him and discuss their concerns.

These types of events have grown. Knowledge fairs, the Development Marketplace, and other similar events continue to be held, mainly in conjunction with sector weeks, though not always called “knowledge fairs”. Other organizations have developed their own versions of knowledge fairs. They have become acknowledged ways of sharing knowledge, enabling groups to showcase their work, their results, and bring people together.

More recently in 2012, I organized a knowledge conference called “Networking Knowledge for Development”. Thirty development organizations came at their own expense. They shared their activities in development in plenary sessions, in concurrent breakout sessions, and in a huge knowledge fair in the atrium. Three hundred people attended in the Preston Auditorium, with an additional 200 online participants. There was even a Twitter feed to enable broader sharing of knowledge. And in 2014, I helped organize a knowledge forum for what was then called SDN sustainable development network which included urban, transport, agriculture, environment and many other sectors.

Rather than renting equipment to create the booths as was the case for the first knowledge fair, the Bank has bought equipment for booths and poster displays. The atrium has been fitted out with sufficient electrical outlets to power computers and TV screens. And the facilities people now have a huge book of plans and layouts and are eager to help bring such fairs to life. Knowledge fairs and similar events have become de rigueur in the atrium.

Organizational Knowledge and Learning

The thing that I’m struggling with at work is what I perceive to be a disconnect between “learning” as an individual and “organizational learning” as a work group/unit/organization. People around me seem only concerned about their own learning, which for most of them translates as “my next career move”. Then, they resent their managers and/or organization if their attendance at some course or conference doesn’t almost automatically lead to a promotion or job change (conveniently forgetting, of course, that the average number of promotions in our organization is less than 2 in a career!). The other disconnect for me concerns the use of one’s talents and skills. For me, having a job that uses my talents and skills is highly motivating. I like being involved, being able to apply my brain in different situations, and find that I learn a lot in such situations. But, though most of our staff say (in our regular staff survey) that they have opportunities to use their skills and talents, they don’t see this as motivating at all, but complain about lack of promotions aka staff/career development. My job is to develop the staff into a high-performance work-force, to bring in concepts like capturing and sharing knowledge particularly in areas with higher staff turn-over, yet individuals just want me to finance some course or other for them.

So, here I sit, struggling with bigger concepts such as organizational learning, while the people around me care little about their colleagues’ work groups and are out to maximize their own careers! What’s a girl to do in this situation?

Perhaps the above characterization is a bit over the top. I am in the middle of another survey, to gather information about the various learning needs. I asked respondents to tell me what “learning”, “training”, “career development” and “staff development” mean to them. What’s interesting is that those staff who are on short (3–5 year) assignments define all these terms with reference to developing a high-performance work force. On the other hand, those staff who have long tenures (10+ years), define all these terms with reference to themselves and their wishes for promotions.

Law #4: Passion is the driver of communities of practice (from Passion is the driver of KM with Michel Pommier and Stephen Denning)

The success of the industrial revolution and the modern enterprise in building wealth has been based on a rational engineering approach to problem solving. Clearly documented procedures and guidelines left little place, if any, to human emotions. The notion of an untidy ecology is foreign to this thinking.

The experience of knowledge sharing is showing, however, that communities of practice only flourish when their members are passionately committed to a common purpose, whether it be the engineering design of water supply systems, the pursuit of better medical remedies, or more efficient economic techniques.

Efforts at building communities in a hierarchical or top-down fashion are at best successful on a temporary basis. Soon they come unstuck as members refuse to contribute their time to activities which have no meaningful purpose for them. Instead, they will be looking for professional interest groups which will give them a sense of professional and personal raison d’etre.

The necessity for passion in the workplace is a hard lesson for companies and executives who have spent their lives trying to keep emotion out of the workplace. Nevertheless, the lesson repeatedly emerges from case studies and benchmarking of knowledge sharing programs. As a result — for reasons of sheer efficiency and effectiveness — the modern workplace is finding it necessary to provide time and space for both the head and the heart.

In the process, it is discovered that communities also enrich organizations and personal lives. Nurturing communities of practice and building on positive human emotions in the workplace provide a key to creating and developing healthier forms of organizations. The limited liability company has been an invention that has helped generate immense wealth. It has also led for the most part to emotionally desiccated lives for the individuals who work in these organizations. The emergence of non-hierarchical communities of practice and the central role of passion in cementing them can lead not only to an enhanced form of organization capable of generating even greater wealth, but would also provide more meaningful lives for those who work within.

Book Preface

The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning

One tremendous source of strength was the team of people that I had to help implement the vision. Roberto Chavez, Carole Evangelista, Adnan Hassan, Seth Kahan, Peter Midgley, and Lesley Shneier constituted one of the very few high-performance teams with which I have had the good fortune to be associated in my career. I benefited from their unflagging energy and support and learned much from them. Lesley Shneier showed everyone how to launch knowledge fairs.

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Knowledge Management Thought Leader 52: Catherine Shinners

Originally posted 21-Dec-23

Catherine Shinners helps teams build effectiveness and leaders master new competencies in the digital workplace. She specializes in change management, internal communications, strategy, program management, and knowledge management. She guides clients in navigating organizational, business process, technology, or workplace change, drawing on her professional background in software product management, corporate business development, SaaS marketing, and digital transformation programs.

Catherine uses collaboration and digital technologies to accelerate and amplify change outcomes. She helps organizations adapt to remote, in-office, or hybrid models. She is a certified Prosci change management practitioner and holds certificates in Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy from MIT/Sloan School of Management and Foresight Essentials from the Institute for the Future.

We have been together at many KMWorld and Columbia University events. She has been active in the SIKM Leaders Community, including frequently being a live tweeter during the monthly calls.

EducationUniversity of Wisconsin (Madison) — B.A., AnthropologyExperienceMerced Group — Principal, Founder, 2008 — PresentThe Henne Group — Senior Director, Projects, 2020–2022Columbia University — Adjunct Faculty, Information and Knowledge Strategy Master’s Program, School of Professional Studies, 2014–2018Western Digital — Digital Workplace Manager, Internal & Executive Communications, 2016–2017Integral Development Corporation — Director, Marketing, 2007–2008WebEx Communications Inc. — Senior Product Manager, 2005–2006Hewlett Packard — Senior Director, 1997–2001Profiles LinkedIn About Facebook Profiles in Knowledge: Columbia University IKNS Book Chapters

Changing the World of Work. One Human at a Time.

Chapter: A Network Mindset

Smarter Innovation: Using Interactive Processes to Drive Better Business Results edited by Katrina Pugh

Chapter 11: Innovation by design with Susan Scrupski and Joachim StrohIntroducing Change Agents WorldwideHow we work, our practicesNetwork mindset and operating modelsStewards, facilitators, leadersThe future of workContent Merced Group Blog: Collaboration in Context Blog: Cathexis  —  Archives LinkedIn Articles LinkedIn Posts Twitter Mastodon SlideShare SIKM Leaders Community Posts Videos YouTube Enterprise Social Networks: Your Launchpad for Digital Leadership Power up your remote working and spend less time in video meetings: Tips on digital tools, modalities and practice Working Out Loud — Fireside Chat with Change Agents Presentations

SIKM Leaders Community

January 2014 — Building Community: A Conversation on planning, stewardship, and keeping it human August 2017 — Enterprise Social Networks and the Digital Workplace

KMWorld

2019 W4: Increasing Digital Fluencies & Knowledge Sharing 2018 W9: Adapting to Complexity: Critical Practices for Human Networks 2014 W9: Flexible & Agile Workstyles & Processes for the 21st Century Organization W16: Enterprise Social Networking: Business Case, Adoption, & Engagement 2012 C301: Online Communities Roadmap  —  Slides Articles

Enterprise Social Networking Mindshifts

Think Community Why Community Matters Managing Social Working Social

Social Collaboration: The Dynamics of Working Out Loud

A significant benefit for users and organizations who employ social collaboration solutions such as enterprise social networking (ESN) is that it supports a more transparent, conversational way of working, enables more visible communication flows, and asynchronous yet interactive problem solving.

Organizations and workers struggle to address burgeoning workloads, to be able to create group cohesion and awareness for joint project work among globally dispersed teams, and often use static document production and email to collaborate on work and content production. Important comments or inputs are often buried in fractured email alleys and dead ends.

One of the major goals of more social ways of working is to enlist and open up the tacit know-how and experience that people possess. Workers have often been trained that they must do their work and bring back finished products to a group as ‘deliverables’. They can be concerned about being evaluated on generated their own completed work product before they expose the work to colleagues.

Bryce Williams, a colleague at Change Agents Worldwide came up with a brilliant shorthand description for this social modality, in 2010 — he called it working out loud. Social collaboration allows knowledge workers to ‘narrate’ their work and helps them provide co-workers and team members a better sense of the immediacy and context of activities.

There’s an important set of dynamics that is encompassed by ‘working out loud’ that also engenders a new set of behaviors and interactions. Here’s a view to the flow of these dynamics and key engagement activities and results:

Transparent, conversational flow of work — social collaboration brings a more natural human, narrative flow to asynchronous group interactions around workflows and business processes and surfaces perspectives of people working together on projects or artifacts. The transparency and persistence of conversation threads in social collaboration tools let’s groups and team more visibly co-create content, and share and receive feedback, not just ‘in the moment’, but most importantly, in the current context of the flow of work. The structure of many social tools let’s groups more directly connect their content to a dialogue around the work with commenting, feedback mechanisms and tags.

Content awareness and accessibility — Social collaboration tools are designed keep people in the flow of work throughout a project. The experience in social collaboration creates an awareness of content changes and current conversational elements. People can get a view to this flow of dialogue and work by using activity streams, tags, or alerts to other mediums (i.e. email). This awareness lets people bring in immediate comments or insights, or references to important resources. They can see where content has moved along a workflow and avoid working on versions of artifacts that are outdated. Connecting content no longer means attaching a document in an email. New habits for working out loud include using the tools to create awareness — tagging, using affirmation signals (like button), creating and using filtering mechanisms in activity streams, linking other content into conversational flows. Developing awareness skills includes actively setting and modifying alerts and filter options.

Network-based group cohesion and connection — most social collaboration tools support ways for people to create rich and robust profiles. Organizational directories often simply feature contact information, obscure job titles, and perhaps reporting structure. Rich profiles help an individual create an awareness of their background, work projects, their social roles in the network (answers questions, subject-matter-expert). Bringing a deeper, richer set of information about an individual’s experience and background can be used by teams to quickly orient to one another, as they move from project to project, gives everyone a greater context of the talents and expertise accessible to the team. The variety of interaction options also supports dynamic, open ways of connecting the insight and knowledge that people bring to the work process — sharing updates with microblogs, or comments, creating and contributing to discussion forums.

Knowledge building — as the work and conversations build and remains transparently persistent, access to group knowledge also builds. Important insights, viewpoints and problem-solving dialogue is not just retained, but can be viewed more relevantly in the context in which it was applied. The workflow process becomes a vital social learning process.

Articles by Others

Real voices about the collaborative mindset by Jane McConnell

One hurdle for organizations is to find ways to enable people to feel proud of their skills and knowledge, and to involve them in real discussions where their input matters.

“Individuals have to consider their own connections, showcase their own background and knowledge, as a key knowledge asset for themselves and their organizations.” — Catherine Shinners, Charter Member at Change Agents Worldwide LLC

Organizational Collaboration’s Dirty Little Secret by Wharton Executive Education

Catherine Shinners, principal and founder of Merced Group, a Silicon-Valley-based social business consulting firm, helps implement technology that supports collaboration and reduces over-reliance on meetings. “There are ways that people can use collaboration tools and enterprise social networks to stay connected and aware without having to be in a meeting,” Shinners states.

She says that such technologies can also wean people from the inefficient use of emails, which causes versioning problems and broken conversational threads. “People’s behaviors are still so stuck in the 1990s modalities of email communication with attachments…It is absolutely astonishing to me how much people are still using [this for] complex project workflows,” Shinners says.

Shinners further recommends having employees maintain a profile on a company-wide network similar to LinkedIn. She says this lightens the load on frequent collaborators by making others within the company more visible as potential helpers. For example, an employee could search for someone with agile development experience, and a list of relevant co-workers would come up.

On Shinners’s blog “Cathexis: Collaboration in Context” she notes that companies with teamwork problems actually may have deeper issues for which over-collaboration is only a symptom. These include poor interaction and knowledge management practices, and vague or irregular governance. Some firms don’t recognize that these persistent issues are eating away at their progress and productivity. Corporate culture begins to erode, and the business finds itself at a competitive disadvantage.

Savvier firms realize that professional development is essential to strengthen their executives’ competencies around collaboration. A good executive education partner program can be invaluable for helping leaders root out and address what’s actually causing the perceived “collaborative overload.”

Digital Workplace Vendors May Come and Go, But Own the Experience and Your Workplace Will Thrive (reworked.co) by David Weldon

What’s Table Stakes for a Digital Workplace

Traditional, table-stakes elements of a digital workplace are now well established and have served fairly well for many organizations.

“Companies have moved towards a cloud-based infrastructure over the past few years allowing them to broaden their portfolio of tools for their workforce away from the baseline email, desktop productivity tools, and one-to-one instant messaging and intranet-only-based search,” said Catherine Shinners, a director at Merced Group. Shinners has worked with leading companies in high tech and the financial sector to guide and develop digital workplace strategies.

“Organizations have integrated digital platforms that support group-level content creation and publishing (i.e., SharePoint, Jive, wikis); varied tools that support more immediacy of interactions and communications such as web-conferencing and group messaging; and have broadened search across platforms. Social collaboration elements have also been added (enterprise social networks), to create more online commons for employee communications and employee engagement,” Shinners said.

Changing the world of work by Harold Jarche

“In a knowledge economy, it’s the talent and knowledge of people, and the results of their productive interactions that create value — solving complex problems, inventing new solutions, engaging with customers.” — Catherine Shinners

Joining the dots of the Digital Work Disruption conference by David Terrar

Catherine Shinners talked about mastering digital leadership. She explained the importance of showing up, being a connector and an influencer. She talked about each of our digital homes being a sustained and sheared experience. Before you send the next email, rethinking and think about the better ways you could publish and share that information. She talked communities of practice, and a new style of leadership navigating and cultivating networks.

Presentation

Building Online Community from Strategy, Planning and Launch to Effective Engagement and Adoption

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Knowledge Management Thought Leader 51: Nancy Settle-Murphy

Originally posted 14-Dec-23

Nancy Settle-Murphy is an award-winning facilitator, virtual team alchemist, navigator of differences, presenter, author, and the OG of remote work.

Her specialties include meeting facilitation, virtual collaboration, virtual team leadership, facilitation skills training (both virtual and face-to-face meetings), project team communications, strategic communications during times of change, cross-cultural communications, and leadership coaching.

Nancy is President of Guided Insights, a firm she created in 1994 to provide strategic consulting, training, and facilitation services to companies around the world. She has been a renowned expert in the field of virtual/hybrid leadership and remote collaboration since 2001. Nancy’s primary focus is helping distributed teams and their leaders find new ways to build trust, cultivate healthy relationships, and collaborate more successfully.

Based in Boston, she helps virtual/hybrid teams get important work done, faster and with less friction. Using a combination of consulting, training, coaching, and productivity tools, Nancy helps create environments where virtual teams can thrive, focusing on meeting design and facilitation, running engaging virtual/hybrid meetings, navigating cultural differences, discovering unconscious bias, and strategic planning.

Nancy worked at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) from 1980 to 1994 (we worked together from 1983 to 1994) and at HP (Hewlett Packard) from 2004 to 2011 (we worked together from 2004 to 2008). I have been a subscriber to Communiqué, her quarterly newsletter, since 2001, when her company was known as Chrysalis International.

EducationTemple University — BA, Communications: Focus on anthropology, communications, theology, and documentary filmmakingExperienceGuided Insights — Owner, 1994 — PresentHewlett Packard — Organizational Development Consultant, 2004–2011Digital Equipment Corporation — Business Consultant, 1980–1994Profiles About Me — Facilitator, Coach, Consultant LinkedIn Twitter reworked Profiles in Knowledge: Hewlett-Packard Books

IS Management Handbook edited by Carol V. Brown — Chapter 66: When Meeting Face-to-Face Is Not the Best Option

Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results

Table of Contents

Unique Challenges of Virtual Teams and Their LeadersSizing Up, Onboarding, and Mobilizing Your Virtual TeamBuilding Trusting Relationships across BoundariesBest Practices Operating Principles for Virtual TeamsCommunications for Collaboration and CohesionManaging Performance from AfarNavigating across Cultures, Time Zones, and the Generational DivideTroubleshooting Tips for Virtual TeamsSpecial Challenges of Facilitating Virtual MeetingsABC s of Designing Great Virtual MeetingsKeeping Remote Participants EngagedTroubleshooting Virtual MeetingsContent Guided Insights Communiqué Archive Articles & Guides Virtual Meetings Conversations LinkedIn Posts LinkedIn Articles SIKM Leaders Community Posts Podcasts Making Virtual Meetings Efficient and Engaging Cultural Differences in Global Teams Facilitating Virtual Meetings Leading Virtual Teams (transcript) Videos YouTube

Leading Great Virtual Meetings That Actually Get Work Done

https://medium.com/media/415a9425c62338d513f5d14d9c57aaa3/hrefPresentations Leading Great Virtual Meetings with Rick Lent Naked Meetings III: Going Virtual with Rick LentSIKM Leaders Community September 2009: Planning & Running Successful Virtual Meetings March 2013: Leading Effective Virtual Teams Articles Helping virtual teams learn to collaborate from afar Just Because You’re Silent, You May Not Be Really Listening 10 Tips for Uber-Efficient Meetings — Making Every Minute Count Coalescing a New Team — Creating Ties That Bind How Virtual Leaders Can Help Others Thrive in a World of Complexity Organizational Change: Ignore Roadblocks at Your Peril Great Global Meetings: Navigating Cultural Differences Coping with travel restrictions: When meeting face-to-face matters (and what to do when you can’t) Preparing for Virtual Meetings When Face-to-Face Gatherings Get Cancelled Overcome the Worst Facilitation Fears of Introverts (and Everyone Else) Facilitating your way to successful projects Create a Sense of Community with Questions That Connect How to Improve Hybrid Work: Think Remote-First Don’t Doom Your Voice of the Employee Program Before You Even Launch It Essential Skills for Today’s Hybrid Managers Sharing Knowledge by Design — Building Intellectual Capital in a Virtual World with Stan Garfield

In an increasingly competitive and volatile world, the ability to share knowledge is a prerequisite for successful growth, especially for organizations that prize intellectual capital as one of their most valuable assets. With organizations becoming more dispersed and complex, it can be an especially daunting task to create an environment where knowledge is easily and freely exchanged among those who have it and those who need it. As today’s baby boomers retire in droves, the imperative to capture and share vital knowledge is critical.

Building a companywide system of knowledge-sharing may take years and sizeable investments in resources and technology. However, there are many practical steps that team leaders can take today to create an environment that encourages and enables the exchange of vital knowledge.

In this Communiqué, we map out ideas about how team leaders can create a knowledge-sharing system in their own virtual backyard. Who knows? One relatively modest knowledge-sharing system may be the springboard by which an enterprise-wide system is born.

Sell the benefits. Senior management needs to be persuaded of the value, given that they may have to lay out additional funding and resources to set up even a modest knowledge management program. Tip: try to estimate the cost of not reusing knowledge. For example, how many people have to spend how many hours generating how many proposals throughout how many organizations each year? How many prospects choose other vendors when proposals are delayed? Chances are, with some simple math, you can make the case for some initial investments.Appoint a knowledge management leader who can dedicate meaningful time to building the right infrastructure. While this need not be a full-time job in many cases, you will need a sharp person who is conversant in the field of knowledge management to spend dedicated time for the design and launch of any knowledge management program.Set up a community of practice to start. This community should include people of a certain function, discipline, area of expertise, or field of interest that all share. Make it easy to join and participate. You can start with something as simple as a newsgroup or an email list. Convey the benefits of membership clearly to give people a reason to join. Find venues by which you can promote the available communities of practice to those most likely to be interested.Create a formal repository in which knowledge can be dropped off. Using a web collaboration technology or a shared messaging system, such a repository needn’t take a lot of time or money to set up. Ask participants to help brainstorm a logical construct, to make loading and accessing relevant knowledge more intuitive for all. Start with a few categories and be prepared to refine after an initial period. Plant a few examples in each category so people will see what type of documents best belong where. Focus efforts on the type of content that has the greatest potential for reuse by others.Think globally. When setting up a community of practice, be sensitive to cultural differences and local requirements. Make sure that local leadership is in place to tailor the knowledge management program to each region or country as needed. For example, local language may be required in some cases, or a different web portal may be used as the gateway for knowledge in some locations. Strive for a universal look and feel when possible, to make searching and retrieving information easier across all locations.Encourage the sharing of knowledge by embedding related activities within existing work processes. For example, make it a requirement that post-mortem documents following a consistent format are submitted at the close of a project, or make it mandatory to store proposals in a shared space.Reward those who show special initiative in sharing knowledge, whether through formal recognition, financial remuneration, or promotion. Consider including knowledge management leadership as part of performance reviews or as a basis for bonus plans, from senior management on down.Cultivate senior management as champions. Help them to promote the benefits of knowledge management in their lines of business. Provide them with actual case studies and examples they can showcase for others to aspire to. Encourage them to model knowledge-sharing in visible and meaningful ways.Create a network of knowledge advisors. These people are subject matter experts who help others to leverage available tools and methods so they can help create self-sufficiency among members of the knowledge community. Depending on what percentage of time these people have to devote to their roles, these knowledge advisors can also be instrumental in helping to set up new communities of practice and guiding participants in the creation of principles and norms.Open the lines of communications among knowledge management subject matter experts, regardless of their exact titles, roles and locations. Encourage them to communicate frequently using multiple channels, sharing what works, what doesn’t, and working to connect different communities of practice. Suggest that they model their own knowledge-sharing techniques for others to learn from.

Laying the foundation for a worthwhile knowledge management program takes careful thought, focused resources, and visible commitment by senior management. You can start with a few straightforward steps within a single organization, and then expand the program as other organizations realize the value.

Networking in a virtual world an essential skill for success with Patti Anklam

Finding the right connections to help you do your job, or to grow into the next one, requires a significant investment of time and effort even when you know all of the right players. But when you’re part of virtual organization, effective networking can be considerably more challenging.

While you may be able to see who’s who from the org chart, the real influencers, potential mentors and key contributors tend to be less obvious. When you are physically surrounded by many of the key players, you can make connections fairly easily with a bit of planning. But when you’re part of a virtual team, you have far fewer opportunities to make the kind of deep connections so important for networking.

This edition of Communiqué provides practical guidelines for productive networking in a virtual world, focusing on finding the right people who can be part of your personal network. Such a network has great intrinsic value, providing a venue for mutual support and enrichment. A thoughtfully-developed network can also help you achieve job and career objectives, both near- and long-term.

Building and sustaining a network consists of four cyclical elements: defining your goal; researching the network; creating conversations; and reciprocating and following up. We will cover the first two elements in this edition. Subsequent issues will cover the final two.

Define your goals: You need to be clear about what you want to achieve by becoming better networked. For example, are you interested in a new job elsewhere in the company? Would you like to improve how you do your current job? Would extending the boundaries of your local network help your team accomplish more? Do you have ideas that you are passionate about sharing with others? While many people thrive on the very act of networking, having a goal can keep you focused on the hard work of getting introductions and braving those “get acquainted” conversations.Research the network: Networking is very much a task of ferreting out the informal networks in an organization, discovering how work really gets done. However, familiarizing yourself with the formal power base is also important. Learn about reporting relationships, both direct and indirect. Review organizational charts, newsletters, emails and web postings to determine which leaders tend to make important announcements. These may not be the people who actually make the decisions, but you’ll get a good sense for the figureheads in your organization.Scrutinize company websites for clues. Very often, the real movers and shakers work under the radar, making them more difficult to discern. Scan chat forums to see who responds to important questions. Read blogs to discover who some of the most creative thinkers are. Find out who’s really behind some of the most important and illuminating content on relevant websites.Identify the boundary spanners. Which people tend to work as part of cross-functional or organization-wide teams? The people who act as bridge-builders are very often those who are regarded as the most trusted, credible and effective by their peers. In addition, they tend to carry a more holistic view of the overall organization than their colleagues who may take a more myopic view as they work primarily with colleagues from their own organizations.Look for the real thought leaders. Who’s speaking at industry association meetings? Who’s quoted in the press? Who meets regularly with key clients? The real thought leaders are not always those with the loftiest titles. Scour your company’s intranet site as well as the internet to find references that hold clues. Search industry association websites, events calendars and press releases, among other places.Make friends with people in the know. Pick up the phone and introduce yourself to those who might be able to help you identify key influencers. The people who work in organizations that span the organization may be able to offer the most help. Try asking administrative assistants, chiefs of staff, communication managers, strategic planners, and financial analysts. Don’t be afraid to ask for help in gaining entree to important people.Spend time with people who get things done. People who consistently deliver quality results and meet important commitments are very likely the ones you’ll benefit by working with in the future. Find opportunities to work with them on future projects, or seek their advice when direct collaboration is not possible.Make connections with people actively involved in Knowledge Management (KM) activities. People who participate in some kind of KM network, including communities of practice, tend to value the moving and sharing of information as a means to successful collaboration. Introduce yourself to some of the KM leaders and see how you can get involved.

Finding the gatekeepers and influencers within a geographically dispersed organization can take dozens of calls, scores of emails, and hundreds of web searches. But if you want to thrive as part of a virtual organization, you need to invest the efforts required to form vital connections that will enrich your personal and professional life.

Listening Tips Great Virtual Leaders UseRead the signs. Are certain people on your team cancelling status report meetings? Taking longer to reply to emails? Becoming noticeably withdrawn on con calls? All of these can be signs that people need a catalyst to get back on track. Your instincts are to offer help and advice. But tread lightly. If these people doubt their skills or suitability for the task, your offer of help could reinforce those fears. What could be needed is simply time with you acting as a vital sounding board, helping to motivate and focus.Reach out. If face-to-face is not possible, schedule time to speak. Both of you will need time to prepare for the conversation. Before you pick up the phone, find a quiet place to speak, away from your computer, phone or other distractions. (Nothing can kill an earnest conversation faster than multitasking!) Have your notes in writing in front of you with any details that may be important, as well as a calendar and a project plan.Listen deeply. Once you have stated your observations, without judgment, simply be quiet. Allow the other person time to gather her thoughts and find the right words, even if it means a minute or two of silence before she speaks. Take notes on a piece of paper and paraphrase every so often to ensure understanding in the absence of visual cues. Carefully ask probing questions for clarification, and only if needed. Refrain from giving advice during this time.Summarize what you’ve heard. Once you’re satisfied that you have a good understanding of what’s going on, summarize what you’ve heard as objectively as possible, much as a journalist would report the facts. Pause and seek validation. Ask whether there’s anything else that’s important for you to discuss before moving on to the next part of the discussion.Diagnose the real need. Perhaps the trickiest part of the whole conversation is knowing how to determine what kind of support a person really needs from you. In some cases, you can come right out and ask. (Be very cautious of your wording and tone here. Asking, “Just what do you want me to do?” is very different from asking: “What would be the most helpful actions I can take on your behalf at this point?”) Validate the kind of support you believe he is asking for.Circle back. Before you end this call, set a time/day with this person to check in to see whether the combination of support and guidance you have offered has made a difference. Also agree on how you will both be kept apprised of actions taken or progress made in the interim. (Once again, use the phone in a quiet, undistracted location for your follow-up meeting to demonstrate how seriously you are taking your commitments to provide her with the needed support.) If you must resort to email, take the time to ask specific questions, referring to notes you have made, versus a terse: “How’s it going?”[image error]

Knowledge Management Thought Leader 50 — Céline Schillinger

Knowledge Management Thought Leader 50: Céline Schillinger Originally posted 07-Dec-23

Céline Schillinger is Founder and CEO of We Need Social and author of Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World. A global engagement influencer, Céline helps leaders and organizations succeed and grow by engaging their clients, partners, and employees. Engagement is the active mobilization of many talents, to deliver value together. This requires new leadership methods, tools, and behaviors. A change activist and social collaboration leader, she specializes in engagement leadership, mobilization, and community building in international environments. Based in Lyon, France, Céline is a TEDx speaker and a recipient of the National Order of Merit.

EducationCELSA Paris-Sorbonne — Professional Master, Corporate Communications, 1990–1992Sciences Po Bordeaux — Master’s Degree, Political Science, 1987–1990ExperienceWe Need Social — Founder and CEO, 2018 — PresentChange Agents Worldwide — Charter Member, 2013 — PresentSanofi Pasteur, 2001–2018Head, Quality Innovation & EngagementSenior Director, Stakeholder EngagementDirector, Commercial Operations, Asia & other internation areasDirector, Human Resources, InternationalLagardere GroupLagardere Media — General Manager, China, 1999–2000Matra Systems & Information — Sales Manager, Asia, 1997–1999Setraco — Country Manager, Vietnam, 1993–1997Lisa Engineering — Communication & Public Relations Manager, 1991–1992Profiles LinkedIn My Journey Twitter Mastodon Facebook Instagram Books

Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World

Changing the World of Work. One Human at a Time

Our Journey to Corporate Sanity Quote Book

Content Blog Medium LinkedIn Posts LinkedIn Articles Podcasts Dare to Un-Lead Guest Appearances Creating Organizational Capacities: Networks, Leadership, and Community Andrew Trickett’s Comments How Community Building Can Go Beyond Language Engagement and Community — The Days of Change Relational and engagement leadership — The Brand Called You World’s Greatest Business Thinkers #1  — the importance of digital and social networks in modern day organizations; Community leadership and how to embed it in your organization Connected Innovators and Humble Rebels — Women Who Innovate  — how sending one email led to transformation of a more gender balanced corporate culture; how companies need to become more social to engage their audiences and grow their business; the importance of community; how social networks enable human networks and social impact; how social engagement at scale, speed, and agility, frees the rebels; value those who see things differentlyVideos We Need Social YouTube Interviews Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2014 Interview Impossible Things with David Terrar  — community building, social media, collaboration, digital change, engagement, team building, and leadership Forget social networks, think social impact — TEDxBedminster Presentations SlideShare Impactful Virtual Communities Articles Using quality as a lever for transformation Focus On Your Purpose, and Everything Changes Do You Dare To Un-Lead? Enterprise 2.0 Summit Interview How We Need to Adjust to the Future of Work by Karen Mangia The art of relational management in a fragmented world by Stowe Boyd Forty Over 40  — Using Innovative Social Media Approaches to Disrupt Industry and Save Lives Redefining Leadership: Authenticity, Diversity, and Collective Intelligence by Selda Schretzmann2022 Internet Time Alliance Award Winner

The Internet Time Alliance Award, in memory of Jay Cross, is presented to a workplace learning professional who has contributed in positive ways to the field of Informal Learning and is reflective of Jay’s lifetime of work.

Recipients champion workplace and social learning practices inside their organization and/or on the wider stage. They share their work in public and often challenge conventional wisdom. The Award is given to professionals who continuously welcome challenges at the cutting edge of their expertise and are convincing and effective advocates of a humanistic approach to workplace learning and performance.

Following his death in November 2015, the partners of the Internet Time Alliance — Jane Hart, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and Harold Jarche — resolved to continue Jay’s work. Jay Cross was a deep thinker and a man of many talents, never resting on his past accomplishments, and this award is one way to keep pushing our professional fields and industries to find new and better ways to learn and work.

The 7th annual Internet Time Alliance Jay Cross Memorial Award for 2022 is presented to Céline Schillinger. In her recent book, Dare to Un-lead, Céline asks, “Can there be liberty, equality, and fraternity at work?” Then she shows examples of how this can be achieved. As Head of Quality Innovation & Engagement at Sanofi Pasteur Céline helped to create the ‘Break Dengue’ global community to fight dengue fever. Céline understands the power of community. She says that “If you cannot find a community of practice for your professional development, then create one.” Céline has often challenged the status quo, especially regarding the lack of diversity in many workplaces.

“What really matters is to mirror the diversity of the world we serve. We need more women… more humanities majors… more people of color… more professionals coming from other jobs… in short, a much bigger diversity of viewpoints at all levels. We also need more network and co-construction across levels, as the old pyramidal system is no longer fit for purpose.” Céline has said that companies must cultivate their rebels in order to remain relevant to their workers, while staying competitive in their arenas. These rebels can let them see beyond the organization’s walls. We are sure that Jay Cross would agree.

10 steps HR could take to really be at the forefront of change & improvementFocus on groups rather than individuals.Focus on people opportunities rather than people problems.Actively expand knowledge of what could be different.Experiment more.Focus on community members — and the frontline — rather than tops of pyramids.Build the courage muscle.Evolve perceptions of what leadership truly is.Reduce effort spent at rigidifying structures.Resist the urge to follow trends.Think twice (or more) before cracking down on change agents.Knowledge Management by Ana Neves

Q: You write about knowledge sharing and retention, mostly in the context of communities. I see those as two knowledge processes which should be addressed as part of strategic knowledge management. What is Knowledge Management for you?

A: Throughout my career, I have experienced two main types of knowledge management.

The classic approach, based on taxonomy, delineations, authorizations, education, storing information… It is certainly necessary, but unfortunately it serves a very outdated conception of the work group, it is very boring, and it gets contradicted by each redundancy plan aimed at senior employees — where we observe that reducing personnel costs is always a priority over knowledge management.The other approach I have seen work is to make people want to do things together. It is based on engagement, on creating favorable conditions for connection and exchanges. This approach is extremely beneficial to enterprise knowledge, which circulates and increases at all levels: within communities of practice, volunteer networks, the enterprise social network, etc. I think that it is in our interest to develop it, and I hope that my book will give some ideas in this direction.

Q: Is knowledge an ingredient of change or is better knowledge an outcome of change?

A: I think it’s more of an outcome. We often mistakenly believe that knowledge generates change, but knowledge does not exist as such, there is knowledge that makes sense to people and not to others; there are interpretations; there are times when we are open to certain knowledge, and others when we are not. This is why pushing knowledge on people, trying to convince them with information, is insufficient — even counterproductive. At the origin of change, there are stories, collective representations, a connection process. From these comes knowledge

Three Ways Social Media Make You a Better Leader

1. Better decisions through easier access to unfiltered information

Using social media is one way to overcome the barriers to information. This is particularly important for senior leaders whose accessible information gets shaped by numerous filters. Be it competent and well-intended, or self-protective and risk averse, CEOs’ entourage form a distorting bubble. Ever wondered about the perception gap between managers and employees? Or the service gap? A personal use of internal and external social media balances the bubble effect, enabling leaders to grasp the reality on the ground in a fast, continual, and accurate way.

But the positive effect goes well beyond executives’ increased awareness. By role modelling curiosity for unfiltered information and by exchanging thoughts and ideas directly through social media, leaders give symbolic “permission” to their organization to do the same. From there, information flows increase, liberated from obsolete precedence or secrecy rules. This is critical to success for the large, global, complex systems that our organizations have become. Businesses can’t afford to wait for information to reach the “right person” at the right time. Myron Roger writes that “The easier access to information is, the richer it becomes — and the better decisions are.

2. Better business performance through relational engagement

The world of business has become more relational than ever. Brian Solis writes, “Brands are co-created by consumers through shared experiences.” Work, according to Esko Kilpi, “is increasingly understood as “interaction” rather than “job” or “organizational activity” — even leadership is contextual and relational.”

Thus, relationship building is now a required core competency for all professionals — and for senior leaders in particular. We’re not talking about just transactional relationships based on status codes, the organizational hierarchy or reciprocal exchange. We mean connections that arise within communities, born from a shared sense of belonging, acknowledgment of emotions and co-creation of work. This is what really engages consumers and employees.

3. Better odds to succeed with transformation through mindset change

The use of social media is often described as transformative for good reasons. These new channels generate new types of interaction — they create new ways to relate to one another. This is why it is fundamentally experiential and cannot be delegated without dampening its impact.

Social media evolves collective identity from “territory” to “network.” This enhances the capacity to welcome diverse input. As a result, culture becomes reflective of more voices and becomes more capable of synchronizing with the complexity of the world to transform disruptions into opportunities.

When some leaders at Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of a multinational pharmaceutical company, decided to get personally involved in an internal online community, the result was unprecedented improvement of the company’s manufacturing quality worldwide. Every week, they interacted directly with the broader employee community on the social network: asking questions, sharing insights, recognizing achievements, and “liking” posts. Just a few minutes each week had a huge positive impact on their own perception, their leadership, and the flows of knowledge between employees.

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John Lewis: Profiles in Knowledge

Originally published December 6, 2023

This is the 98th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. John Lewis is a CKO, consultant, speaker, author, and coach on the topics of knowledge management, organizational learning, and leadership. He is a scholar-practitioner who has pioneered new business and learning models, found in his books, The Explanation Age and Story Thinking.

John has worked for several leading global organizations and his career highlights include launching GPS satellites and being recognized by Gartner with an industry best practice paper for a knowledge management implementation. He earned his doctorate degree in educational psychology from the University of Southern California, with a dissertation focus on mental models and decision making. John lives in Glen Allen, Virginia.

BackgroundEducationUniversity of Southern California — Doctorate, Educational Psychology and Technology, 1993–1997San Jose State University — Master’s, Education / Instructional Technology, 1987–1989Towson University — Bachelor’s, Mass Communications, 1980–1982College of Southern Maryland — Associate, Computer Programming, 1978–1980ExperienceSearchBlox Software, Inc. — Chief Knowledge Officer, 2021 — PresentExplanation Age LLC — Chief Story Thinker — Owner / CKO, 2009 — PresentIknow LLC — Knowledge Management / Change Management / Leadership Specialist, 2016–2021Kent State University — Adjunct Faculty, 2012–2020The CoHero Institute — Co-founder / Leadership Coach, 2013–2019Capital OneSenior Manager, eCommerce, 2005–2009Head, Knowledge Systems, 1999–2005PwC — Principal Consultant, 1998–1999Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory — Research Faculty Member / Consultant, 1995–1998Adobe — Manager of Instructional Design, 1994–1995Sun Microsystems — Project Manager, 1990–1994Lockheed Martin — Manager, CBT, 1983–1990ProfilesLinkedInFacebookIknow LLCThe CoHero InstituteInternational Institute for Knowledge and Innovation: IIKI Brain Trust

Lifeboat Foundation

John Lewis is Digital Learning and Knowledge Strategist and Owner at Explanation Age and Chief Knowledge Officer at SearchBlox Software. He is a member of the Review Board for the Journal of Knowledge Management and Associate Editor of the Journal of Innovation Management. John is also a founding member of EBLI (Evidence-Based Learning Institute), where has served as its President.

His research interests are in cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and organizational psychology. His unified model for learning and change, ADIIEA, is the first strategic business model designed specifically to support a learning organization. This unified model is featured in his book Story Thinking: Transforming Organizations for the Fourth Industrial Revolution with replacement models for Bloom’s Taxonomy, Double-Loop Learning, Six Sigma, and Policy Making.

At SearchBlox, John serves as Chief Knowledge Officer and provides thought leadership on insight engines and cognitive computing. Their enterprise search products securely deliver the right data to the user. John was at Iknow as Change Management and Leadership Specialist and was Co-founder and Leadership Coach at The CoHero Institute for Collaborative Change Leadership.

John earned his Doctor of Education Degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Southern California, with a dissertation focus on mental models and decision making. He earned his Master of Arts Degree in Instructional Design and Technology from San Jose State University and received its outstanding graduate research award. He earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications with a Mathematics minor from Towson University and an Associate of Arts Degree in Computer Programming from the College of Southern Maryland. He also earned a Six Sigma Certification (Green Belt).

Previously, John worked for several leading global organizations including Adobe Systems as Manager of the Instructional Design, for PricewaterhouseCoopers as Principal Consultant, for Capital One as the Head of Call Center Knowledge Systems, for Lockheed Martin as Lead Instructional Designer, and for the Applied Research Lab at Penn State University.

As a consultant, he was acknowledged by Gartner with a business KM Best Practice paper and has delivered a Thought Leader presentation at the Canadian Society for Training and Development conference, and a Masters Series presentation at the International Society for Performance Improvement Conference.

KMWorld

John Lewis, Ed.D. is a speaker and mindset coach for change, learning, and leadership. He has authored the books, The Explanation Age (beyond the information age) and Story Thinking (beyond storytelling). John is currently the Chief Knowledge Officer at SearchBlox Software Inc., where he brings his expertise to enhance the enterprise search journey. He is also on the advisory board with the Lifeboat Foundation, a member of IIKI (International Institute for Knowledge and Innovation), and an associate editor for Leadership and Organizational Behavior with the Journal of Innovation Management.

His unified model of change represents the fundamental structure of stories, and encompasses a majority of earlier models, including Kahneman, Kolb, Kotter, and Kubler-Ross. It solves for the “fragmentation” problem described by Peter Senge and fulfills on the quote by W. Edwards Deming: “We will never transform the prevailing system of management without transforming our prevailing system of education. They are the same system.”

Information Today

John Lewis is a leadership coach, teacher, and speaker, with a background in psychology and experience in Big 4 management consulting. He has also been an adjunct professor on the topics of organizational learning, thought leadership, and knowledge and innovation management. His book, The Explanation Age, was described by Kirkus Reviews as “An iconoclast’s blueprint for a new era of innovation.”

John was a co-founder of The CoHero Institute for Collaborative Change Leadership. He facilitated team workshops and teaches the certification program for Change Leaders and Change Coaches. He also provided coaching for the CoHero Leadership Profile assessment which helped leaders understand their strengths related to leading change. John has a certificate in Leadership Coaching with The John Maxwell Team and a certificate in Six Sigma.

John delivered a keynote presentation at the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Research Studies. He also spoke at the Georgetown University Institute for Transformational Leadership Conference, the International Conference on Intellectual Capital, and the European Conference on Knowledge Management.

ContentTwitterLinkedIn PostsSite: Explanation AgeStory Thinking Cycle (Innate Lesson Cycle)Option Outline8 Degrees of ReasonThe Symbiotic Table of KnowledgeStory Thinking Leadership (archive)The CoHero Institute for Collaborative Change LeadershipView of Blueprinting a Knowledge Sciences Center to Support a Regional Economy with Denise Bedford and Brian MoonResearchGateThe Bifurcation: The Choice. A Self Readiness Assessment to prepare for the profound choice facing humankind todayPresentation: The Explanation Architecture for General Artificial IntelligenceKMWorld ArticlesEnough information already: Bring on the Explanation Age with Art MurrayThe curious case of a broken crumb trail with Art MurrayBringing together innovation, learning and people with Art Murray

K4DP: Knowledge for Development Partnership

I was just 6 years old when I attended the 1964 New York World’s Fair, but I remember seeing the fair’s theme which was prominently displayed: “Peace Through Understanding.” The memory that stands out for me was not the amusement park rides or cotton candy, but the questions I had at an early age about this event: “Is peace such a difficult goal, and don’t we already have an understanding?” Over the years, the answers have become more apparent: “yes” and “no.”

To reach a shared understanding, “Knowledge for Development” cannot be just another knowledge-sharing program — it needs to provide transparency into the “process” that creates and defends knowledge — particularly the policymaking process. When a cognitive model of policymaking is directly compared to the practices of politics, we begin to see the difference between sensemaking and corruption, and the difference between a knowledge-driven policymaker and a politician. One such cognitive model is called ADIIEA (pronounced uh-dee-uh), based on the six phases of the change cycle: Automation, Disruption, Investigation, Ideation, Expectation, and Affirmation. Using this cognitive modelling approach towards a shared understanding, we find that knowledge is just an output, and policy is just a type of knowledge that defines a mandated routine.

A knowledge society requires shared values and a shared understanding of the natural storytelling pattern behind lessons and change, from which knowledge is derived. And shared understanding within this cognitive model requires more than publishing the decisions that have been chosen — it also requires providing the trade-offs and error preferences with the options that were not chosen. It requires more than a compelling argument behind the vote — it requires access to the argument behind the dissenting opinion.

A functional knowledge society cannot be obtained until we acknowledge that we are born as “learners” and not “knowers.” With this fundamental acknowledgment, there are implications for discovery education, corporate innovation, and governmental policymaking. A functional knowledge society is one that may be best called a transparent learning society.

ADIIEA: An Organizational Learning Model for Business Management and Innovation

Change and sustain management within the innate lesson cycleQuotes

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QuestionsYou will only find answers to the question being asked.Knowledge is no longer the ultimate power — questioning is power.You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you cannot make it thirst.All knowledge is just an answer to a question. We should teach questioning skills before knowledge.You are what you ask.One man’s HOW is another man’s WHY.Are rhetorical questions really rhetorical?Are you asking me a question from curiosity or from conviction?We control our destiny from the balance of curiosity (?) and conviction (!).Curiosity killed the cat, and conviction killed the rat.Three strikes and you’re out because three curiosities brings conviction.Without curiosity, there would be no significant innovation, or significant foul-ups.A fact is just today’s conviction, which may or may not be true, today or tomorrow.Are you fact-finding or truth-seeking?There will always be those who give themselves the false sense of limited choices.Question everything, including the limitations of your perspective.You can keep people from questioning if you can convince them it’s still working.You will eventually lose if you refuse to muse.If a leader is not leading change, then what are they leading?LearningWe are born as Learners, not as Knowers.We learn by trying, not by doing.If learning is fun, then learning about learning should be ecstatic.Starting with WHY is good (your motive). Starting with WHEREFORE is better (your story).Learning is the gaining of knowing, satisfied with some degree of reason.The fast learner can recite the answers, but the slow learner can solve the problems.You can teach wisdom to the ignorant but not to the arrogant.Most people are Knowers not Learners, because they know how to memorize (and defend) but not how to learn (and unlearn).The worst possible mental state of any organization is having a poor definition of learning.To become a Thought Leader there is a period of time that must be spent being a Pioneer.Thought Leaders understand that learning is more than just memorizing “what works.” They also know what to do when it “won’t work” and what to do when it “could work.”Perspective drives perception. What you see is what you are positioned to see.Situational awareness requires an understanding of both the observed and the observer; both insight and perspective; both evidence and premise.Too often, we view innovation as an unpredictable event, which is set apart from us, as if there is no way to prepare for, initiate, and capture the process.Judgment helps us learn, but condemnation only serves our confirmation bias.Single loop learning is for productive goals; double loop learning is for inventive goals.Productive goals involve mistakes; inventive goals involve learnings.History repeats itself for one reason and one reason only: the generational loss of lessons through the erosion of appreciation within education.Appreciation is a required organizational learning objective, regardless of whether Bloom can measure it in the classroom or not.When you can teach a course on Critical Thinking, but can’t test the students for understanding, pedagogy is the problem, not the curriculum.All organizations are “learning” organizations — some with more learning disabilities than others.The only real sustainable solution is a real learning organization.Education is currently run from evaluation models, not learning models — and the base measurement is memorization skills, not questioning skills. This is why we are unprepared for the Fourth Industrial Revolution — we are promoting the wrong skills and the wrong people.KnowledgeMy answer is not simplistic; it is elegant.There is no singular without a set.While dichotomies appear equal, IS has more power than NOT.The real problem with stupidity is that it doesn’t stop at the doorstep of self-assessment.Stop seeking concise knowledge and start seeking consequential knowledge.Science becomes an obstacle to progress when we forget that this shorthand term represents the scientific method of reasoning.We act on what we understand and should expect poor results from poor understanding.The reasons for and behind everything we know come from an explanation.Sometimes we pretend we are listening to the voice of a viable alternative opinion, when in actuality we are just hearing a classroom interruption by an uninformed student.What gets measured gets done — but what gets modeled gets measured.Those who understand the least are the most confident.You’re either telling the whole story or usurping authority.A Change Agent is only as good as their model.OCR works because of the R.Expedience towards knowing can limit the questions towards understanding.After decades of developing knowledge workers, it’s time to start developing knowledge leaders.Understanding is the knowledge of the whole story from at least two perspectives.If you are just an Expert, your job is about to be outsourced or embedded in a microchip.Without a map we are lost, in geography and epistemology.DecisionsPolicymaking is mandatory — politics is optional.It is better to decide based on error preference than on preference alone.Data without knowledge is useless. And knowledge without data is a useless education.For matters of the heart, I trust the musician over the scientist.Being reckless is not wreck-less.Life is not a linear equation.I can write, and I can edit, but I can’t edit what I write.If you want to go all out, you have to be all in.In an operating room, I prefer my doctor’s name be followed by M.D. rather than Ph.D.You will not reach your potential until you realize you have more than 5 senses.You can rely on your eyes as long as your goals are not over the horizon.When we don’t think from our sense of balance, we appear like children gathering fish on a pre-tsunami beach.When we don’t think from our sense of balance, we think with the minds of locust.These words are the primary enemy of innovation and sustainability: It works for me today.A lie of omission, ironically, is the biggest lie we can tell.Within dysfunction, authority is granted to those who are the most offended.The implication, not the evidence, is what stops many from accepting the truth.As now fights later, only maturity considers the now we will want later.Stop trying to build trust. Build transparency — the trust will follow.LifeIt is easier to believe in something than to research it beforehand.If you want to understand the world, understand organizational learning disabilities.The meaning of life is to determine whether our life has meaning.I explain, therefore I am.Intention is a dimension.Hear at 528 Hz, because we are not just listeners of sound, we are resonators of soundwaves.Find a good addiction before a bad one finds you.Our educational institutions operate from evaluation models, not learning models.Our educational institutions are unfortunately driven by the tyranny of the tester.It is impossible to deny yourself something and not gain something else.It is impossible to have disruption without both problem and opportunity.Some will sacrifice themselves to give to others; they are the stars. Some will sacrifice others to give to themselves; they are the black holes.Teaching/Parenting is a balance between looking out for, and giving in to, the Student/Child.Recognizing that we may want what does not work, that there is such a thing as insidious want, is what separates the adults from the children.The truly ingenious ideas can only come from the truly tortured mind.A horse that has been broken does not know it is broken — such is the nature of blindness — and total control.Though we may stand so close today, you and I travel through space and time on vastly separated planes, which merely intersect, here, and now.Society can be explained, knowing it is full of pampered children that have not yet learned consequence, and unloved children that are still acting out.Our life’s struggle is like an undercover cop, remembering the good of our purpose while surrounded by evil.Falling in love with this world would be like the caterpillar falling in love with the silky cocoon.First we say someone should do something; then a few say they will do it; then fewer still get it done.Many are Knowers; Some are Learners; Few are Truth Seekers.Flow is normal. Mindless routine is abnormal.Content by Philip SissonECKM Presentation — Elegant and Practical Explanation Age ConceptsVerifying the Unified Theory of Knowledge Management’s Operationalized Functions Using Macro Verb and Attribute Concepts

Exploring Elegant and Practical Explanation Age Concepts: KM as Learning

Community, Training, and ConferencesSIKM Leaders Community PostsInnovation Management CourseICICKM 2013–10th International Conference on Intellectual Capital, Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning: The ADIIEA Cycle: Creating an Intergrated Framework for Business Processes and Organizational LearningKMWorld Conference

1. 2023 Keynote: Unlocking Knowledge Through Conversational AI

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Maximizing knowledge value with conversational AI by Sydney Blanchard

John Lewis, chief knowledge officer, SearchBlox Software Inc. and Explanation Age LLC, focused his section of the keynote on the digitization of dialogue, examining how AI can bridge the gap between novice queries and expert content.

Lewis argued that search is the method in which enterprises unlock knowledge. There are two mindsets that further surround this concept: innovation and productivity. When GenAI hit the scene, it seemingly struck the metaphorical gold of these two attributes.

However, Lewis suggested that this may not be the reality.

“The hype curve for ChatGPT was off the chart,” said Lewis. “It was the hammer and anything it looked at was a nail.”

“Everything as a nail” fundamentally lacks nuance, generating a wild misunderstanding of how to leverage GenAI to its maximum capacity and efficacy.

Lewis then introduced SearchBlox’s unified AI strategy as a remediation of this GenAI issue, which features an intersection between search, FAQs, and chatbots. This included the following technologies:

Document and URL search with PreText and SmartSuggestGenerate answers from knowledge silos with private LLM-based chatbotsFind an answer with SmartFAQs

SearchBlox’s unified AI strategy enables organizations to create personalized, configurable AI implementations that offer chatbot insights based on an enterprise’s unique content, accompanied by a user-friendly UI.

SearchBlox’s offering takes the disruption out of GenAI, empowering it to spark KM joy as opposed to AI-phobia.

2. 2022 W16: Beyond Storytelling: Using Story Thinking for KM Strategies

Transforming KM strategies with Story Thinking at KMWorld 2022 by Stephanie Simone

Storytelling uses story as a communication strategy and Story Thinking uses story as an operational strategy. Story Thinking goes beyond the foundations of story psychology and focuses on applications for KMers.

At KMWorld 2022, John Lewis, chief knowledge officer, SearchBlox Software Inc. and Explanation Age LLC, discussed story structure as a fundamental sense-making framework, during his workshop, “Beyond Storytelling: Using Story Thinking For KM Strategies.” Specific approaches and exercises were included to support strategies around KM systems, cultures, leadership, knowledge sharing, project documentation, evaluation, and continuous improvement.

KMWorld 2022 is a part of a unique program of five co-located conferences, which also includes Enterprise Search & Discovery, Office 365 Symposium, Taxonomy Boot Camp, and Text Analytics Forum.

“In a nutshell, we know we’re wired for story,” Lewis said. “We want to think about how we create knowledge, capture it, and transfer it.”

Epistemology is a study of what we know and how we know. Knowledge and information management should be applied epistemology, Lewis said.

“Story is a map, everything happens on it,” Lewis said.

Knowing the underlying framework allows us to work more efficiently and effectively. It’s not about what you think, but what you think from.

The classic story pattern is called The Hero’s Journey, he explained. This was popularized by Joseph Campbell, which shaped George Lucas’s Star Wars saga.

“You didn’t just do something, it changed you,” Lewis said. “There’s a cycle that looks something like this.”

A generic story pattern is a story that begins and ends in a settled state, like gravity, that takes more energy to overcome. Marketing uses this concept operationally, he noted.

The underlying story structure for workability beliefs include:

Automation: does work / reactiveDisruption: won’t work / questioningInvestigation: won’t work / questioningIdeation: could work / questioningExpectation: could work / reflectiveAffirmation: does work / reflective

Working in automation is the beginning and end of transformational change and you’re operating on autopilot. Key disruption characteristics prioritize situations that are out of the ordinary. It is the key to innovation, Lewis explained. Disruptions are not problems.

Investigation allows you to ask questions to understand and reveal. Ideation is brainstorming and diversity of initial ideas. Questions create and clarify designs and plans. Expectations are the development of ideas, capabilities, and people. Affirmation confirms what we thought works.

“When we’re in a story, we’re operationalizing it,” Lewis said.

KM strategies should include KM systems throughout the Story Thinking cycle to maximize organizational peak performance. Utilizing a story structure while sharing knowledge can create a more robust experience, according to Lewis.

A productivity tip Lewis offered was organizing email with Story Thinking. Every conversation, decision, and activity happens somewhere in the Story Thinking cycle.

Learning involves periodic “revolutions” when the current model cannot be maintained, Lewis explained. There are two primary navigation paths for Story Thinking, this includes: The Full Cycle and the Half-Pipe. The Full-Cycle is for meaningful learning and thinking while the Half-Pipe is for rote learning or thinking fast.

“Creativity is an innate ability, and we have to get back to that,” Lewis said.

Good change management includes stakeholders during the entire change cycle. It engages everyone in the organization in the change process to address root problems. Sometimes the strategic improvement needed is so large that it requires multiple cycles of transformational change. Each generation funds the R&D for the next generation, Lewis explained.

According to Lewis, the ILEDEM Story Thinking change method when approaching projects includes:

Identifying opportunitiesLook into gap analysesEnvision solutionDevelop solutionEvaluate truenessMaintain status quo

“A problem can become an opportunity,” Lewis said.

Strategic planning is being challenged by the need for companies to operate faster and with greater agility, he explained. Change is happening so fast that leaders need to capture ideas conversationally within teams.

Given the non-linear growth patterns between our desire to influence versus our desire to understand, the “sophomore leader” emerges early as the leader in many organizations due to their leadership confidence. However, this can be dangerous as the sophomore leader doesn’t have enough experience to influence those around them even though they may have a great deal of knowledge, Lewis explained.

“Learning is not one-dimensional,” Lewis said.

The key is to operate from a learning-based model — where learning is not an “add-on” to business, but they way of business — and this is what Story Thinking is about.

3. 2021

Community Chats — Stories & StorytellingSharing Knowledge With Intelligent Search

4. 2020 A204. Story Thinking for Knowledge Sharing & Organizational Learning

5. 2018 A203: Optimizing Collaborative Intelligence in Your Organization

6. 2016 C305: Cognitive Learning Models: Automating Learning Discovery

SlidesPaperPodcastsKMWorld 2022: More Highlights from the Knowledge Cast Lounge — Enterprise KnowledgeBecause You Need to Know — Pioneer Knowledge ServicesVideosTop Trends in Knowledge Management 2022https://medium.com/media/78da8862686afd6c0514e93b515c4cc0/hrefStory Thinking for Knowledge Sharing & Organizational Learninghttps://medium.com/media/1d70bf538d57b5318467ee02bd34ab40/hrefInnovation Management: What Knowledge Managers Need to Know for Successhttps://medium.com/media/d5f315fbc77482a91d025c82b72c686a/hrefUsing Story Theory to Improve Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Learninghttps://medium.com/media/8cbde63a25253d7058de61ed554b94fa/hrefWhy Governments May Need to Reevaluate Their Enterprise Search CapabilitiesStory Thinkinghttps://medium.com/media/5cac34463db010daa856227bdda2c8b5/hrefExplanation Age: The Explanation Architecture for General Intelligence Part 1https://medium.com/media/ff35d00d46e99d637bebe55a8d752ffd/hrefExplanation Age: The Explanation Architecture for General Intelligence Part 2https://medium.com/media/6b999b20c1a9d8278707ef6a09c5e265/hrefImprove Self-Service with SmartFAQs Powered by AIhttps://medium.com/media/1d37249e69d65dec051dad49b85a8dfd/hrefUpgrading to Intelligent Search for Increased Findabilityhttps://medium.com/media/b8e040d5f1b8cf01473aa29dec427ffd/hrefMoving Beyond Traditional Enterprise Searchhttps://medium.com/media/7cf44fffaaf1151850de93c770ea6e7b/hrefHarnessing intelligent content services with SearchBloxhttps://medium.com/media/7ef19f09ef3e512a194b982cc3c5f017/hrefKMWorld 2023 Keynote: Unlocking Knowledge Through Conversational AIhttps://medium.com/media/e699721d7651f372ae049189b1e08ecd/hrefBooksAmazon Author Page

1. Leading with the Future in Mind: Knowledge and Emergent Leadership with Alex and David Bennet

2. The Profundity and Bifurcation of Change: The Intelligent Social Change Journey (5 book series) with Alex and David Bennet, Arthur Shelley, Theresa Bullard, and Donna Panucci

3. The Intelligent Social Change Journey: Foundation for the Possibilities that are YOU! with by Alex and David Bennet, Arthur Shelley, and Theresa Bullard

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4. The Explanation Age: Inspiring Visualizations of the New Learning Organization

Kirkus Discoveries

Lewis poses the tantalizing proposition that poor results in education, innovation and policymaking are rooted in a breakdown between the rational mind and the fundamental models that govern institutions.

Kirkus Reviews

Lewis’s guide to the changing landscape of modern society calls for a new method of processing information.

The mental models that drive businesses, schools and government institutions are outdated, Lewis contends. In today’s economy, ideas are currency and creativity is essential to effective decision-making. So why rely on old, factory-inspired thought models from the Industrial Age? Lewis argues that it’s time to move into the “Explanation Age” with a new model more aligned with how the human mind actually learns. Drawing from the brainy field of epistemology, he aims to combine “First Philosophy” with today’s technologies. Doing so, Lewis says, will allow readers to recognize that explanations, not simply data and information, provide the foundation on which innovation stands.

Once we understand our own “Innate Lesson Cycle,” Lewis says, we’ll embrace mental models that produce pioneers and thought leaders rather than simply experts. Corporations will cultivate inventiveness, not just productiveness; Internet search engines will present explanations, not just data. Armed with tools like the “Options Outline,” policymakers will be able to untangle society’s most contentious issues, such as climate change.

Grasping the topics Lewis covers may require more than one reading, but his nimble style and simple analogies can make intimidating subjects more accessible, although readers may be put off by the book’s many diagrams, which sometimes stumble when translating complex ideas into visual form. This can be forgiven because the text never strays far from practical, real-world applications: Lewis applies his concepts to everything from how the Wright brothers built their airplane to the invention of the Post-it Note. His “8 Degrees of Reason,” alongside other models, illuminates not only how people learn but also, he says, how you know what you know. Ultimately, wisdom still reigns, but it rests on lessons and decisions — not just data and knowledge.

An iconoclast’s blueprint for a new era of innovation.

5. Story Thinking: Transforming Organizations for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Contents

Part I — Change

1. Story-based Change

2. Chancing Mindsets

3. Continuous Improvement

Part II — Learning

4. Continuous Feedback

5. Objective-based Learning

6. Continuous Learning

Part iii — Leadership

7. Leading Learning Organizations

8. Leading with Transparency

9. Collaborative Policymaking

Summary: Applying Story Thinking

Appendix: Model Comparisons

My Review

John Lewis has written an important new book on story thinking and sensemaking, including sections on change, learning, and leadership. The purpose of John’s book is to prepare organizations for a fourth industrial revolution based on a new capacity to change and learn. Story Thinking can be applied by knowledge managers, change agents, learning professionals, and leaders of all kinds.

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