I wanted to give some money to charity over Christmas so I decided to make a few more Kiva loans. You can see my loan portfolio here. I have now made ten loans of which three have been fully paid back.
What I like about Kiva is that I get to decide who my money goes to. And if I am lucky I get to see an update on how the money is spent. It's a great idea and makes giving so much more personal and rewarding. The loans and repaid to me without interest and I can then use the money to make further loans. The repayment rate is an amazing 98.94% and 81% of the loans are to women entrepreneurs. Here are the full stats.
I am not telling you this to show how good I am - each loan is only $US25 after all. What I am hoping is that you might take a look and make some loans yourself and help support this way of giving.
I have made the Gurteen Knowledge Community Group on LinkedIn an open group.
The major advantage of this is that discussions are now indexed by search engines and anyone on the web can read the discussions. It is also now possible to Tweet interesting discussions.
To contribute to the group, however, you still need to be a member.
Discussions created before the switch have automatically gone into a members-only, read-only Archive and cannot be seen by anyone who is not a member of the group.
An unfortunate side affect of this is that discussions that were active before the switch, although still readable by members, are now frozen and not clearly visible.
If you wish to continue your open discussions I think you will need to repost them. I am sorry for the inconvenience but this was not clear before the switch. To my mind, LinkedIn have done an extremely poor design job here.
The bottom line though is that we should now have a far more useful place for group discussions that can be shared with the rest of the world.
The other good news is that over the past month, as a result of my mail-shot, the membership of the group has grown by almost 700 people to 1,989 members.
I have made the Gurteen Knowledge Community Group on LinkedIn an open group.
The major advantage of this is that discussions are now indexed by search engines and anyone on the web can read the discussions. It is also now possible to Tweet interesting discussions.
To contribute to the group, however, you still need to be a member.
Discussions created before the switch have automatically gone into a members-only, read-only Archive and cannot be seen by anyone who is not a member of the group.
An unfortunate side affect of this is that discussions that were active before the switch, although still readable by members, are now frozen and not clearly visible.
If you wish to continue your open discussions I think you will need to repost them. I am sorry for the inconvenience but this was not clear before the switch. To my mind, LinkedIn have done an extremely poor design job here.
The bottom line though is that we should now have a far more useful place for group discussions that can be shared with the rest of the world.
The other good news is that over the past month, as a result of my mail-shot, the membership of the group has grown by almost 700 people to 1,989 members.
I hope you have better things to do than read my newsletter at this time of year so like past years I have kept it short. But if you would like a bit of fun and explore what the Nativity might have looked it in the modern world of social media then take a look at this short video The Digital Story of the Nativity.
And let me wish you a very happy Christmas and a New Year full of fun and lots of knowledge sharing!
I received an email from a student a month or so back in which she asked for my advise.
She told me that she was working on her KM thesis and thought she was doing well as she had received a merit on her literature review but was devastated when her supervisor told her 6 months later that she was doing worse than other undergraduate researchers as she had a very poor understanding of the main points.
In my reply I suggested that she found a small group of her fellow students whom she could come together with once or twice a week over coffee and have conversations around the work (a mini knowledge cafe) and that she would soon get to see that other people had different points of view - not necessarily right or wrong but different and this would cause her to think more deeply about the topics and reflect on her own perspectives and that this should help lead to a deeper understanding.
She replied very excitedly that she thought it was a brilliant idea and would try it. I have yet to hear back but I hope it works for her.
Funny though, when I think back to my undergraduate days - I never ever had conversations with my fellow students about our work. I recall once a few us thought about getting together to form a study group and my tutor urging me not to waste my time.
Now where did I read something recently that the critical success factor at Harvard was not innate intelligence (you need that to get there) or hard-work but the ability to network and to form study groups and learn informally and socially. I wish I could find the article.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Good advice, given its 2,500 years old! Almost everyday I seem to trip over recent and not so recent research that shows that much of what we take for granted and never question has little or no evidence to support it whatsoever.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Good advice, given its 2,500 years old! Almost everyday I seem to trip over recent and not so recent research that shows that much of what we take for granted and never question has little or no evidence to support it whatsoever.
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Good advice, given its 2,500 years old! Almost everyday I seem to trip over recent and not so recent research that shows that much of what we take for granted and never question has little or no evidence to support it whatsoever.
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of November 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
APQC 2011 Knowledge Management Conference Call for Presentations http://bit.ly/d7AheY #KM 2010-11-22 15:59:31 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy." Anne Frank #quote http://bit.ly/7ROqfy 2010-11-21 13:55:56 UTC
RT @JohnGirard: David Gurteen’s keynote at KM Middle East 2011: Don’t do KM!, Abu Dhabi, 15 March 2011, http://bit.ly/9Urw0P #KM #KMME 2010-11-21 00:50:48 UTC
Key outcome from a knowledge cafe is what people take away in their heads http://bit.ly/9rnbpC /nice summary of my process 2010-11-20 07:02:33 UTC
Video: Hole-In-The-Wall-Education http://linkd.in/bA0Teo #socialgood /love it 2010-11-20 06:46:03 UTC
Listing of Bill Ives KM World 2010 session notes http://bit.ly/aLk0pu #km 2010-11-19 15:28:14 UTC
RT @AlecJRoss: 20 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web. The proposal http://bit.ly/bDgwb9 2010-11-19 11:54:44 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Quotation: On what GNP means. by Robert F. Kenendy http://bit.ly/du3Tcl 2010-11-19 06:51:41 UTC
RT @rotkapchen: "The only way you can understand a complex system is by engagement with it." @snowded #KMW10 #UX #ethnography 2010-11-19 06:48:44 UTC
RT @complexified: RT @snowded: Slides and podcast from #kmw10 loaded http://bit.ly/a8E5zn #km 2010-11-19 06:47:50 UTC
The Death -- and Reinvention -- of Management: A draft synthesis http://bit.ly/a3ceoO 2010-11-18 07:45:47 UTC
100 INSPIRING WAYS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM http://bit.ly/9WR55b 2010-11-17 10:31:03 UTC
KM World 2010 notes: Stan Garfield on Communities of Practice http://bit.ly/arSLEG #km #kmw10 2010-11-17 08:38:37 UTC
My KM World 2010 + Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Notes: Tom Stewart Key Note http://bit.ly/bbfpde #km #kmw10 2010-11-16 18:33:40 UTC
RT @amcafee: 1 of Gartner's 4 trends that will change IT + biz over next 20 years = Business impact of social computing http://bit.ly/97BqNq 2010-11-16 18:11:36 UTC
Video: Facebook’s New Messaging System Explained http://on.mash.to/9UvR9N 2010-11-16 06:24:13 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around. Robert M. Pirsig http://bit.ly/aqmR4 2010-11-16 05:56:57 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Share: Scott Berkun Covers the Many Myths of Innovation http://j.mp/cNJXdu 2010-11-15 00:23:13 UTC
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions http://bit.ly/bdQ1sO #km 2010-11-15 00:20:56 UTC
RT @AlexGoodall That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way Dorris Lessing 2010-11-14 02:29:49 UTC
I have most common followers with @snowded (1318), @NancyWhite (809), @euan (764), @hjarche (718), @jclarey (714): http://tweeple.me 2010-11-01 04:48:43 UTC
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of November 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
APQC 2011 Knowledge Management Conference Call for Presentations http://bit.ly/d7AheY #KM 2010-11-22 15:59:31 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy." Anne Frank #quote http://bit.ly/7ROqfy 2010-11-21 13:55:56 UTC
RT @JohnGirard: David Gurteen’s keynote at KM Middle East 2011: Don’t do KM!, Abu Dhabi, 15 March 2011, http://bit.ly/9Urw0P #KM #KMME 2010-11-21 00:50:48 UTC
Key outcome from a knowledge cafe is what people take away in their heads http://bit.ly/9rnbpC /nice summary of my process 2010-11-20 07:02:33 UTC
Video: Hole-In-The-Wall-Education http://linkd.in/bA0Teo #socialgood /love it 2010-11-20 06:46:03 UTC
Listing of Bill Ives KM World 2010 session notes http://bit.ly/aLk0pu #km 2010-11-19 15:28:14 UTC
RT @AlecJRoss: 20 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web. The proposal http://bit.ly/bDgwb9 2010-11-19 11:54:44 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Quotation: On what GNP means. by Robert F. Kenendy http://bit.ly/du3Tcl 2010-11-19 06:51:41 UTC
RT @rotkapchen: "The only way you can understand a complex system is by engagement with it." @snowded #KMW10 #UX #ethnography 2010-11-19 06:48:44 UTC
RT @complexified: RT @snowded: Slides and podcast from #kmw10 loaded http://bit.ly/a8E5zn #km 2010-11-19 06:47:50 UTC
The Death -- and Reinvention -- of Management: A draft synthesis http://bit.ly/a3ceoO 2010-11-18 07:45:47 UTC
100 INSPIRING WAYS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM http://bit.ly/9WR55b 2010-11-17 10:31:03 UTC
KM World 2010 notes: Stan Garfield on Communities of Practice http://bit.ly/arSLEG #km #kmw10 2010-11-17 08:38:37 UTC
My KM World 2010 + Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Notes: Tom Stewart Key Note http://bit.ly/bbfpde #km #kmw10 2010-11-16 18:33:40 UTC
RT @amcafee: 1 of Gartner's 4 trends that will change IT + biz over next 20 years = Business impact of social computing http://bit.ly/97BqNq 2010-11-16 18:11:36 UTC
Video: Facebook’s New Messaging System Explained http://on.mash.to/9UvR9N 2010-11-16 06:24:13 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around. Robert M. Pirsig http://bit.ly/aqmR4 2010-11-16 05:56:57 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Share: Scott Berkun Covers the Many Myths of Innovation http://j.mp/cNJXdu 2010-11-15 00:23:13 UTC
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions http://bit.ly/bdQ1sO #km 2010-11-15 00:20:56 UTC
RT @AlexGoodall That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way Dorris Lessing 2010-11-14 02:29:49 UTC
I have most common followers with @snowded (1318), @NancyWhite (809), @euan (764), @hjarche (718), @jclarey (714): http://tweeple.me 2010-11-01 04:48:43 UTC
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of November 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
APQC 2011 Knowledge Management Conference Call for Presentations http://bit.ly/d7AheY #KM 2010-11-22 15:59:31 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy." Anne Frank #quote http://bit.ly/7ROqfy 2010-11-21 13:55:56 UTC
RT @JohnGirard: David Gurteen’s keynote at KM Middle East 2011: Don’t do KM!, Abu Dhabi, 15 March 2011, http://bit.ly/9Urw0P #KM #KMME 2010-11-21 00:50:48 UTC
Key outcome from a knowledge cafe is what people take away in their heads http://bit.ly/9rnbpC /nice summary of my process 2010-11-20 07:02:33 UTC
Video: Hole-In-The-Wall-Education http://linkd.in/bA0Teo #socialgood /love it 2010-11-20 06:46:03 UTC
Listing of Bill Ives KM World 2010 session notes http://bit.ly/aLk0pu #km 2010-11-19 15:28:14 UTC
RT @AlecJRoss: 20 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web. The proposal http://bit.ly/bDgwb9 2010-11-19 11:54:44 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Quotation: On what GNP means. by Robert F. Kenendy http://bit.ly/du3Tcl 2010-11-19 06:51:41 UTC
RT @rotkapchen: "The only way you can understand a complex system is by engagement with it." @snowded #KMW10 #UX #ethnography 2010-11-19 06:48:44 UTC
RT @complexified: RT @snowded: Slides and podcast from #kmw10 loaded http://bit.ly/a8E5zn #km 2010-11-19 06:47:50 UTC
The Death -- and Reinvention -- of Management: A draft synthesis http://bit.ly/a3ceoO 2010-11-18 07:45:47 UTC
100 INSPIRING WAYS TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM http://bit.ly/9WR55b 2010-11-17 10:31:03 UTC
KM World 2010 notes: Stan Garfield on Communities of Practice http://bit.ly/arSLEG #km #kmw10 2010-11-17 08:38:37 UTC
My KM World 2010 + Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Notes: Tom Stewart Key Note http://bit.ly/bbfpde #km #kmw10 2010-11-16 18:33:40 UTC
RT @amcafee: 1 of Gartner's 4 trends that will change IT + biz over next 20 years = Business impact of social computing http://bit.ly/97BqNq 2010-11-16 18:11:36 UTC
Video: Facebook’s New Messaging System Explained http://on.mash.to/9UvR9N 2010-11-16 06:24:13 UTC
RT @GurteenQuotes: The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around. Robert M. Pirsig http://bit.ly/aqmR4 2010-11-16 05:56:57 UTC
RT @GurteenNews: Share: Scott Berkun Covers the Many Myths of Innovation http://j.mp/cNJXdu 2010-11-15 00:23:13 UTC
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions http://bit.ly/bdQ1sO #km 2010-11-15 00:20:56 UTC
RT @AlexGoodall That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way Dorris Lessing 2010-11-14 02:29:49 UTC
I have most common followers with @snowded (1318), @NancyWhite (809), @euan (764), @hjarche (718), @jclarey (714): http://tweeple.me 2010-11-01 04:48:43 UTC
My son Jonathan bought me Clay Shirky's book Cognitive Surplus for my birthday and I am looking forward to settling down to read it.
Clay Shirky has been talking about the Cognitive Surplus for a couple of years now and I have blogged about it in the past and I had assumed that everyone was aware of the concept but during my recent travels I was surprised how many people had not heard of Clay nor Cognitive Surplus so here's the gist and video talk here.
The central theme of the book Cognitive Surplus is that people are now learning how to more constructively use the free time afforded to them since the 1940s for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration.
It goes on to catalog the means and motives behind these new forms of cultural production, as well as key examples.
While Shirky acknowledges that the activities that we use our cognitive surplus for may be frivolous (such as creating LOLcats), the trend as a whole is leading to valuable and influential new forms of human expression. He also asserts that even the most inane forms of creation and sharing are preferable to the hundreds of billions of hours spent consuming television shows in countries such as the United States.
My son Jonathan bought me Clay Shirky's book Cognitive Surplus for my birthday and I am looking forward to settling down to read it.
Clay Shirky has been talking about the Cognitive Surplus for a couple of years now and I have blogged about it in the past and I had assumed that everyone was aware of the concept but during my recent travels I was surprised how many people had not heard of Clay nor Cognitive Surplus so here's the gist and video talk here.
The central theme of the book Cognitive Surplus is that people are now learning how to more constructively use the free time afforded to them since the 1940s for creative acts rather than consumptive ones, particularly with the advent of online tools that allow new forms of collaboration.
It goes on to catalog the means and motives behind these new forms of cultural production, as well as key examples.
While Shirky acknowledges that the activities that we use our cognitive surplus for may be frivolous (such as creating LOLcats), the trend as a whole is leading to valuable and influential new forms of human expression. He also asserts that even the most inane forms of creation and sharing are preferable to the hundreds of billions of hours spent consuming television shows in countries such as the United States.
Over the past month, it has grown by over 100 people to 1,308 members. It's a great place to post questions and slowly more discussion and interaction are taking place on the forum.
Over the past month, it has grown by over 100 people to 1,308 members. It's a great place to post questions and slowly more discussion and interaction are taking place on the forum.
Maggie Doyne is an amazing young woman. This is how her story starts (watch the video):
After my senior year of high school, as my friends were heading off to college, my parents dropped me off at Newark Airport where I boarded a plane and set off to travel the world. It was just me and my backpack on my first solo trip away from home. Four countries and 20,000 miles later, I was trekking through the Himalayas in war-torn Nepal, where I began to meet hundreds of orphan children. I fell in love with their bright eyes and beautiful smiles, but was shocked to see them barely surviving without the most basic things that I had grown up with as a child.
As I shared my dream to build a safe home for these children, with my hometown in Mendham, NJ, I was astounded by the outpouring of support. Three years ago, I officially opened the frontdoor of Kopila Valley Children's Home, built brick-by-brick, by me and the local community in Nepal. There are now 35 children living in our home.
Maggie Doyne is an amazing young woman. This is how her story starts (watch the video):
After my senior year of high school, as my friends were heading off to college, my parents dropped me off at Newark Airport where I boarded a plane and set off to travel the world. It was just me and my backpack on my first solo trip away from home. Four countries and 20,000 miles later, I was trekking through the Himalayas in war-torn Nepal, where I began to meet hundreds of orphan children. I fell in love with their bright eyes and beautiful smiles, but was shocked to see them barely surviving without the most basic things that I had grown up with as a child.
As I shared my dream to build a safe home for these children, with my hometown in Mendham, NJ, I was astounded by the outpouring of support. Three years ago, I officially opened the frontdoor of Kopila Valley Children's Home, built brick-by-brick, by me and the local community in Nepal. There are now 35 children living in our home.
Maggie Doyne is an amazing young woman. This is how her story starts (watch the video):
After my senior year of high school, as my friends were heading off to college, my parents dropped me off at Newark Airport where I boarded a plane and set off to travel the world. It was just me and my backpack on my first solo trip away from home. Four countries and 20,000 miles later, I was trekking through the Himalayas in war-torn Nepal, where I began to meet hundreds of orphan children. I fell in love with their bright eyes and beautiful smiles, but was shocked to see them barely surviving without the most basic things that I had grown up with as a child.
As I shared my dream to build a safe home for these children, with my hometown in Mendham, NJ, I was astounded by the outpouring of support. Three years ago, I officially opened the frontdoor of Kopila Valley Children's Home, built brick-by-brick, by me and the local community in Nepal. There are now 35 children living in our home.
I recently attended ECKM 2010 in Portugal and one of the participants, Kalle Tomingas, an amateur photographer, captured the social side of the conference so well in his photographs.
In an email, later, to Daniela Castrataro I commented:
"Yes I loved Portugal and Kalle's photos really captured the conference. I do like the ECKM conferences as they are so social. I think every conference should have a professional photographer to capture the spirit of the event - and its not that its an expensive thing to do :-)"
To which she replied:
"I think you're right about the photographer but I think that when we start adding the word "professional" to things, we somehow limit them. Talking about a photographer at a conference, he would certainly capture beautiful images and colours, actions, important moments, but the real essence will probably be missed out. If Kalle was called to take pictures at ECKM as The Professional Photographer, he would have seriously focussed on his job and probably missed the interaction and the 'social' of those days, and with that the true spirit of the event.
It's exactly the same difference that we have between conferences and your Knowledge Cafes. Conferences put pressure on people to do their job in a serious, formal and "professional" way. This will never change. I'm not saying that nothing good comes out of conferences, but it's a very slow process and often an empty exercise, which keep the brains stuck on the same ideas and beliefs for too much time. In just one hour of knowledge cafe you can get as much content, interactivity, flexibility, new ideas, opinions..., as you will get in 10 year of ECKM (maybe)!"
Daniela is of course right. I never do like that word "professional" and I am not too sure why I used it. I have written about my dislike for it in the past.
Some how "being professional" seems unnatural and is the antithesis of "being human".
In this one on KM Team Development she makes a point that I make time and time again, where she asks "At all times we must ask ourselves - what is the value that we are contributing to the organization?" Enjoy :-)
In this one on KM Team Development she makes a point that I make time and time again, where she asks "At all times we must ask ourselves - what is the value that we are contributing to the organization?" Enjoy :-)
Introduction to the November 2010 Knowledge Letter - Comments (0)
I am now back home after six weeks on the road (Singapore, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore and home - phew!).
This is the third year I have made such a journey and I am still amazed that these trips go off without a hitch!
I met a lot of great people - many whom were good friends or I had met on earlier trips and many who introduced me to clients, hosted me for the night, bought me dinner and more. But also a lot of new people who so enthusiastically engaged in my knowledge cafes and workshops. To all of you a BIG thank you.
While travelling I have been making much more use of Foursquare and Facebook Places. And something quite beautiful has dawned on me. If bars, restaurants, coffee houses, hotels and the like wish to be serous players in this game then it is going to be in their interest to provide free wifi :-)
In the words of Euan Semple from a recent blog post "Listening to endless presentations about business and technology as I do it becomes more and more obvious that the opportunity to capitalise on increased connectivity, and the need to reinvent our institutions, are entirely dependent on the quality of our relationships. Shame people are still squeamish about talking about this."
Funny reading this, as only hours earlier in a Knowledge Cafe here in Melbourne, someone reminded me that the most important benefit of conversation was improved relationships. Why is it that some many people see conversation as a waste of time? I will never know.
Increasingly, I think that is there is any hope left for this world the answer lies in conversation.
I am still pondering whether to give up all the other stuff I do and just focus on my Knowledge Cafes and bringing people together to have "interesting conversations" :-)
I gave the keynote speech at the actKM conference in Canberra last week. Its one of my favorite conference and this was the third time I had participated so I felt right at home with a great a bunch of people. The dinner on the first night will long be remembered for the KM fables that we wrote and acted out and the KM song!
In my talk, I took the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the underlying principals that has made Positive Deviance a success and the lessons that KM practitioners can learn from this approach to complex social problems.
I gave the keynote speech at the actKM conference in Canberra last week. Its one of my favorite conference and this was the third time I had participated so I felt right at home with a great a bunch of people. The dinner on the first night will long be remembered for the KM fables that we wrote and acted out and the KM song!
In my talk, I took the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the underlying principals that has made Positive Deviance a success and the lessons that KM practitioners can learn from this approach to complex social problems.
As Cory concludes in his post "If you want to make sure you successfully communicate your message, get your point across or transfer some knowledge then you need to do a lot more than draft a document and upload it."
As someone else once said, databases are where documents go to die!
As Cory concludes in his post "If you want to make sure you successfully communicate your message, get your point across or transfer some knowledge then you need to do a lot more than draft a document and upload it."
As someone else once said, databases are where documents go to die!
Imagine a hotel consisting of three tall 55-storey tower blocks with a ship perched on top. I am serious. Well, something that looks like a ship LOL - an incredible roof top garden called a SkyPark. They have built one in Singapore - the Sands SkyPark.
I don't know how I am going to do it but I want to run a Knowledge Cafe up there :-) Has anyone got any ideas on how to make that happen?
Imagine a hotel consisting of three tall 55-storey tower blocks with a ship perched on top. I am serious. Well, something that looks like a ship LOL - an incredible roof top garden called a SkyPark. They have built one in Singapore - the Sands SkyPark.
I don't know how I am going to do it but I want to run a Knowledge Cafe up there :-) Has anyone got any ideas on how to make that happen?
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of October 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
David Gurteen (DavidGurteen)
Doctors And Nurses Prove Clinical Sucess. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201010115758767
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of October 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
David Gurteen (DavidGurteen)
Doctors And Nurses Prove Clinical Sucess. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201010115758767
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of October 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
David Gurteen (DavidGurteen)
Doctors And Nurses Prove Clinical Sucess. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201010115758767
When I was in corporate life, many things were inflicted on me that I either hated or felt very uncomfortable with. Brainstorming was one of them. I can't recall one where I felt anything useful resulted from them other than a pile of flip-chart paper.
It just never jelled with the way my mind works. I always felt the process far to controlling. I wanted to have conversations but that wasn't allowed. So I would accept and go along with brainstorming as no one else seemed to question it.
This to me, sums it up: "Ideas come out of relationships, they come out of conversations." and "good ideas are more likely to be the product of rambling conversations than brainstorming." Oh and yet another post from Johnnie Moore: Where (and when) ideas happen - "people simplify their ideas as solitary, Eureka moments, whereas ideas often happen in social environments."
There are some other good points made in the article too. "That people are attracted to the idea that complex things can be explained by a simple formula, or achieved by a step-by-step process. In this way, personalities are reduced to a number of types (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and pathways to success are promoted with the packaging of a number of rules."
How many times have I been asked for ten simple steps to implement KM? The world is too complex for that! And those of you who have seen Dave Snowden speak know his views on Myers-Briggs.
There is a lot of fundamental things that we have long taken for granted that need questioning.
When I was in corporate life, many things were inflicted on me that I either hated or felt very uncomfortable with. Brainstorming was one of them. I can't recall one where I felt anything useful resulted from them other than a pile of flip-chart paper.
It just never jelled with the way my mind works. I always felt the process far to controlling. I wanted to have conversations but that wasn't allowed. So I would accept and go along with brainstorming as no one else seemed to question it.
This to me, sums it up: "Ideas come out of relationships, they come out of conversations." and "good ideas are more likely to be the product of rambling conversations than brainstorming." Oh and yet another post from Johnnie Moore: Where (and when) ideas happen - "people simplify their ideas as solitary, Eureka moments, whereas ideas often happen in social environments."
There are some other good points made in the article too. "That people are attracted to the idea that complex things can be explained by a simple formula, or achieved by a step-by-step process. In this way, personalities are reduced to a number of types (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and pathways to success are promoted with the packaging of a number of rules."
How many times have I been asked for ten simple steps to implement KM? The world is too complex for that! And those of you who have seen Dave Snowden speak know his views on Myers-Briggs.
There is a lot of fundamental things that we have long taken for granted that need questioning.
When I was in corporate life, many things were inflicted on me that I either hated or felt very uncomfortable with. Brainstorming was one of them. I can't recall one where I felt anything useful resulted from them other than a pile of flip-chart paper.
It just never jelled with the way my mind works. I always felt the process far to controlling. I wanted to have conversations but that wasn't allowed. So I would accept and go along with brainstorming as no one else seemed to question it.
This to me, sums it up: "Ideas come out of relationships, they come out of conversations." and "good ideas are more likely to be the product of rambling conversations than brainstorming." Oh and yet another post from Johnnie Moore: Where (and when) ideas happen - "people simplify their ideas as solitary, Eureka moments, whereas ideas often happen in social environments."
There are some other good points made in the article too. "That people are attracted to the idea that complex things can be explained by a simple formula, or achieved by a step-by-step process. In this way, personalities are reduced to a number of types (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and pathways to success are promoted with the packaging of a number of rules."
How many times have I been asked for ten simple steps to implement KM? The world is too complex for that! And those of you who have seen Dave Snowden speak know his views on Myers-Briggs.
There is a lot of fundamental things that we have long taken for granted that need questioning.
When I was in corporate life, many things were inflicted on me that I either hated or felt very uncomfortable with. Brainstorming was one of them. I can't recall one where I felt anything useful resulted from them other than a pile of flip-chart paper.
It just never jelled with the way my mind works. I always felt the process far to controlling. I wanted to have conversations but that wasn't allowed. So I would accept and go along with brainstorming as no one else seemed to question it.
This to me, sums it up: "Ideas come out of relationships, they come out of conversations." and "good ideas are more likely to be the product of rambling conversations than brainstorming." Oh and yet another post from Johnnie Moore: Where (and when) ideas happen - "people simplify their ideas as solitary, Eureka moments, whereas ideas often happen in social environments."
There are some other good points made in the article too. "That people are attracted to the idea that complex things can be explained by a simple formula, or achieved by a step-by-step process. In this way, personalities are reduced to a number of types (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and pathways to success are promoted with the packaging of a number of rules."
How many times have I been asked for ten simple steps to implement KM? The world is too complex for that! And those of you who have seen Dave Snowden speak know his views on Myers-Briggs.
There is a lot of fundamental things that we have long taken for granted that need questioning.
Johnnie Moore recently blogged on The Danger of Safety and pointed to some evidence that although you would expect that better brakes made for safe driving that is exactly the opposite of what happened in an experiment with a fleet of taxis.
So better brakes - can lead to more accidents!
This reminded me of some other articles I had read.
So improved road signs may lead to more accidents and posting calories counts on food may lead to people eating more food rather than less.
The lesson? Many things we do, we do for what seem like good intuitive reasons. We don't question things enough. Where we can, we need to back decisions up with evidence not intuition.
Johnnie Moore recently blogged on The Danger of Safety and pointed to some evidence that although you would expect that better brakes made for safe driving that is exactly the opposite of what happened in an experiment with a fleet of taxis.
So better brakes - can lead to more accidents!
This reminded me of some other articles I had read.
So improved road signs may lead to more accidents and posting calories counts on food may lead to people eating more food rather than less.
The lesson? Many things we do, we do for what seem like good intuitive reasons. We don't question things enough. Where we can, we need to back decisions up with evidence not intuition.
Johnnie Moore recently blogged on The Danger of Safety and pointed to some evidence that although you would expect that better brakes made for safe driving that is exactly the opposite of what happened in an experiment with a fleet of taxis.
So better brakes - can lead to more accidents!
This reminded me of some other articles I had read.
So improved road signs may lead to more accidents and posting calories counts on food may lead to people eating more food rather than less.
The lesson? Many things we do, we do for what seem like good intuitive reasons. We don't question things enough. Where we can, we need to back decisions up with evidence not intuition.
Here is an interesting post from Gautam Ghosh entitled Driving Enterprise 2.0 behavior change where he points to an article Not every blog has its day in the Sydney Morning Herald. The article makes the point that "Fostering collaboration in the workplace involves more than just building platforms".
I had to smile as its really about E2.0 folks learning what KM folks have long known.
I learnt this myself with Lotus Notes 1989 - 1999 (in fact it was one of the prime motivators for my moving away from technology and starting to focus more on the people side of things); KM folks then learnt it 1999 -2009 and now the E2.0 folks are learning it.
To my mind, the lesson: "Don't implement a technology tool (impose it on people) and expect them to see the benefits and use it. Work with them to help them solve their problems and introduce them to new tools that you think will help. Let them select the tools that work for them. They need to have ownership."
But it takes time ... 20 years or more and people are still learning :-)
DavidGurteen if you wish to track my personal feed that I use to point to interesting stuff, keep people updated on where I am, what I am doing, thinking etc.
GurteenQuotes if you would like to receive a quotation each day.
GurteenNews if you would like to track new and updated pages on my website.
The last two feeds, Gurteen Quotes and GurteenNews and automated Tweets fed by RSS feeds from my website. Up until recently, these have only been working intermittently but I think I have the problem cracked now by switching from twitterfeed to dlvr.it
I don't know about you but I have always been confused by the different types of Facebook entities: Profiles, Pages and Groups. Here is a brief description of each entity and how I am using them.
A Facebook Profile is meant for individuals. This is what most people use. You can see my profile here:
To build a fan base on Facebook, in addition to a Profile, you can set up a Page. Pages can be for individuals, such as authors or celebrities, or for non-human entities such as products, companies, organizations and campaigns. I have created a Page for the Gurteen Knowledge website though I am not making much use of it at the moment:
A Facebook Group used to be the only place to really build a community on Facebook. However, now Groups look similar to Pages, which look similar to Profiles. Groups on Facebook are where deeper discussions can take place, whereas Pages and Profiles tend to be used for shorter comments.
I have created a Group for the Gurteen Knowledge Community. This has a little activity and I would encourage you to use it more. But the prime on-line location for the community is the Gurteen Knowledge Community Group on LinkedIn.
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of September 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
RT @MadanRao: Eric Tsui, #KM Research Centre at Hong Kong Polytechnic University: “The world can be viewed as an open KM laboratory” #KMsg
Fri Sep 17 11:59:59 +0000 2010
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of September 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
RT @MadanRao: Eric Tsui, #KM Research Centre at Hong Kong Polytechnic University: “The world can be viewed as an open KM laboratory” #KMsg
Fri Sep 17 11:59:59 +0000 2010
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of September 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
RT @MadanRao: Eric Tsui, #KM Research Centre at Hong Kong Polytechnic University: “The world can be viewed as an open KM laboratory” #KMsg
Fri Sep 17 11:59:59 +0000 2010
I find it amazing and inspiring what some people manage to achieve almost by accident. They start out simply helping someone, doing what they love and it mushrooms into something much bigger without their really planning it. There is a lot of power in following your passion :-)
I find it amazing and inspiring what some people manage to achieve almost by accident. They start out simply helping someone, doing what they love and it mushrooms into something much bigger without their really planning it. There is a lot of power in following your passion :-)
I find it amazing and inspiring what some people manage to achieve almost by accident. They start out simply helping someone, doing what they love and it mushrooms into something much bigger without their really planning it. There is a lot of power in following your passion :-)
I find it amazing and inspiring what some people manage to achieve almost by accident. They start out simply helping someone, doing what they love and it mushrooms into something much bigger without their really planning it. There is a lot of power in following your passion :-)
I am about to enter a busy travel period between now and the end of the year, including what is starting to become an annual event: five weeks in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand-Singapore.
I occasionally get called a "KM guru". I appreciate the compliment but I don't like the term and I don't like being labelled a guru.
I usually laugh it off by objecting that I am not a "Kangaroo". Say KM guru fast enough and it sounds like KM guru. LOL.
Given this, I rather liked this blog post by Rick Ladd Dont Call Me a Guru and Peter Drucker's observation that the only reason people called him a guru was that they did not know how to spell the word "charlatan".
Oh and one other pet peeve. If you call yourself an expert then you are most likely not one. To my mind only other people can bestow that honour on you. And even then, like the word guru, I am not so sure I like it. Both words smack of elitism and marketing hype.
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of August 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of August 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
Here are some of my more interesting Tweets for the month of August 2010.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
I was talking with my friend David Pottinger the other day over a beer or two.
David has attended a number of my London Knowledge Cafes, including the last one at Arup.
He was particular interested in the conversations that took place before and after at the Arup event and had blogged about them.
As we talked we came to realise that there were up to eight quite distinct phases of the Cafe were different types of conversation took place.
This was something I had not seen before. Here are eight potential conversations:
Conversation with a friend at a pre-Cafe meeting and on way to Cafe on the tube
Conversation during the pre-Cafe networking session
Speed networking conversation at the start of the Cafe
Conversation in small groups as part of the Cafe
Conversation in whole group as part of the Cafe
Conversation during the networking session after the end of Cafe as people are leaving
Conversation at a local pub after the Cafe
Conversation on the tube or train on the way home
Not everyone gets to experience all eight of these conversations but many do. I for one, often meet up with someone before the Cafe and travel with them to the venue. There is conversation down the pub and I frequently travel home to Fleet with David as we live in the same town and of course the conversation continues.
That's a lot of conversations and each one is quite different. David's particular interest was the post-Cafe conversations as he felt this was the most interesting and productive phase. People are at their most relaxed and unfocused and thus the conversations often took an unexpected direction. People were also more likely to be themselves and not act out their job role.
Quite a fascinating insight. Its got both me and David thinking about how the nature of all of these conversations might be improved.
Since then, over 120 people have registered and we are now up to 1,120 members or thereabouts. A few new discussions have started also.
If you are not a member, you can find more information here and register.
Please join-up and start to use the forum, as apart from Facebook, it is the best place to meet and have discussions with other members of the community.
Since then, over 120 people have registered and we are now up to 1,120 members or thereabouts. A few new discussions have started also.
If you are not a member, you can find more information here and register.
Please join-up and start to use the forum, as apart from Facebook, it is the best place to meet and have discussions with other members of the community.
Dan Remenyi is a visiting professor at the School of Systems and Data Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
He is also a good friend.
Dan has created a new resource called Academic Talk on the Academic Conferences website.
It is a collection of videos of talks that should be of interest to researchers. I find the one on "The Moral Side of Murder" by Michael Sandel of Harvard University quite fascinating. Go take a look!
Dan Remenyi is a visiting professor at the School of Systems and Data Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
He is also a good friend.
Dan has created a new resource called Academic Talk on the Academic Conferences website.
It is a collection of videos of talks that should be of interest to researchers. I find the one on "The Moral Side of Murder" by Michael Sandel of Harvard University quite fascinating. Go take a look!
Dan Remenyi is a visiting professor at the School of Systems and Data Studies, Trinity College Dublin.
He is also a good friend.
Dan has created a new resource called Academic Talk on the Academic Conferences website.
It is a collection of videos of talks that should be of interest to researchers. I find the one on "The Moral Side of Murder" by Michael Sandel of Harvard University quite fascinating. Go take a look!
Everyone loves Dilbert. Over the years there have been some gems relating to knowledge management, collaboration, knowledge sharing and the like.
So I thought I would start to dig them out and create a collection of Dilbert comic strips on KM that can be viewed through my media player. You may find a lot of other interesting stuff there too. Enjoy!
A 1998 Dilbert Comic Strip taking a poke at Knowledge Management. Unfortunately, that language "We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key leanings" is still only too common in KM circles.
I only recently realised that I did not need a Kindle to read Kindle books or magazines and that quite a few Kindle books where the copyright has expired are free.
You can currently download free Kindle readers for the iPhone, Android smartphones, the iPad or your PC or Mac. There are probably other devices but try as I may, I can't find a definitive list.
I have downloaded Henry David Thoreau'sCivil Disobedience for now to see how I get on reading a book on my iPhone. So far, despite the small screen size, I am finding it easy going .
But do I buy a Kindle? At just over Ł100 its not a big decision but I still like traditional books. Amazon would make the transition so much easier if their ebooks were only a few pounds each but every time I have toyed with buying an ebook it is only slightly cheaper than the paper version. Some are even dearer!
"Buy a paper version - get the ebook free" would be cool. I'd even pay a few pounds extra to get the ebook thrown in. I hope its only a matter of time :-)
I only recently realised that I did not need a Kindle to read Kindle books or magazines and that quite a few Kindle books where the copyright has expired are free.
You can currently download free Kindle readers for the iPhone, Android smartphones, the iPad or your PC or Mac. There are probably other devices but try as I may, I can't find a definitive list.
I have downloaded Henry David Thoreau'sCivil Disobedience for now to see how I get on reading a book on my iPhone. So far, despite the small screen size, I am finding it easy going .
But do I buy a Kindle? At just over Ł100 its not a big decision but I still like traditional books. Amazon would make the transition so much easier if their ebooks were only a few pounds each but every time I have toyed with buying an ebook it is only slightly cheaper than the paper version. Some are even dearer!
"Buy a paper version - get the ebook free" would be cool. I'd even pay a few pounds extra to get the ebook thrown in. I hope its only a matter of time :-)
I only recently realised that I did not need a Kindle to read Kindle books or magazines and that quite a few Kindle books where the copyright has expired are free.
You can currently download free Kindle readers for the iPhone, Android smartphones, the iPad or your PC or Mac. There are probably other devices but try as I may, I can't find a definitive list.
I have downloaded Henry David Thoreau'sCivil Disobedience for now to see how I get on reading a book on my iPhone. So far, despite the small screen size, I am finding it easy going .
But do I buy a Kindle? At just over Ł100 its not a big decision but I still like traditional books. Amazon would make the transition so much easier if their ebooks were only a few pounds each but every time I have toyed with buying an ebook it is only slightly cheaper than the paper version. Some are even dearer!
"Buy a paper version - get the ebook free" would be cool. I'd even pay a few pounds extra to get the ebook thrown in. I hope its only a matter of time :-)
I only recently realised that I did not need a Kindle to read Kindle books or magazines and that quite a few Kindle books where the copyright has expired are free.
You can currently download free Kindle readers for the iPhone, Android smartphones, the iPad or your PC or Mac. There are probably other devices but try as I may, I can't find a definitive list.
I have downloaded Henry David Thoreau'sCivil Disobedience for now to see how I get on reading a book on my iPhone. So far, despite the small screen size, I am finding it easy going .
But do I buy a Kindle? At just over Ł100 its not a big decision but I still like traditional books. Amazon would make the transition so much easier if their ebooks were only a few pounds each but every time I have toyed with buying an ebook it is only slightly cheaper than the paper version. Some are even dearer!
"Buy a paper version - get the ebook free" would be cool. I'd even pay a few pounds extra to get the ebook thrown in. I hope its only a matter of time :-)
I am starting to build a new section of my site dedicated to newsletters on KM and related subjects. I only have three or four newsletters at present and have yet to create the section page but here is one of the KM newsletters for you to be going on with.
Its from Nick Milton and Tom Young of Knoco.
Please let me know if you are aware of any other publications.
Nick and Tom have a YouTube channel with over 40 KM videos that you may also find of interest.
I am starting to build a new section of my site dedicated to newsletters on KM and related subjects. I only have three or four newsletters at present and have yet to create the section page but here is one of the KM newsletters for you to be going on with.
Its from Nick Milton and Tom Young of Knoco.
Please let me know if you are aware of any other publications.
Nick and Tom have a YouTube channel with over 40 KM videos that you may also find of interest.
I hoped someone would take the bait and ask what I meant by the question and one or two did.
Personally, I beleive that some conversations are totally pointless but I suspect far less than we think otherwise as Johnnie Moore quipped "if "pointless" why are we having em?"
My response is that we are having them to get to know each other better. Conversations help build and sustain relationships regardless of the value of the content - amongst other things they reveal the other persons values. Conversely they can also destroy relationships - often for the bad but sometimes for the good. There are some people whose values I so dislike that I don't want a relationship with them LOL
To my mind then trivial everyday conversations aren't pointless though like Theodore Zeldin I would love for many of them to be more meaningful.
Euan Semple also chipped in on the tweet to say this
@johnniemoore@DavidGurteen what a crap article! Now that technology is encouraging less face to face interaction," - rubbish!
Now this I would agree with. I think Theodore has got this wrong. "Conversational" technology such as blogs, Twitter, Skype, Facebook etc have connected me with many more people than the past and allowed me to stay in touch with them and keep up with their lives and interests. Thus I want to meet them more and enjoy their company and their conversation face to face and of course the technology allows me to do this too. I see this not only in myself but in my three children (Y-geners). They have phenomenal social lives compared to me when I was their age - where of course a lot of "pointless conversation" goes on LOL
I hoped someone would take the bait and ask what I meant by the question and one or two did.
Personally, I beleive that some conversations are totally pointless but I suspect far less than we think otherwise as Johnnie Moore quipped "if "pointless" why are we having em?"
My response is that we are having them to get to know each other better. Conversations help build and sustain relationships regardless of the value of the content - amongst other things they reveal the other persons values. Conversely they can also destroy relationships - often for the bad but sometimes for the good. There are some people whose values I so dislike that I don't want a relationship with them LOL
To my mind then trivial everyday conversations aren't pointless though like Theodore Zeldin I would love for many of them to be more meaningful.
Euan Semple also chipped in on the tweet to say this
@johnniemoore@DavidGurteen what a crap article! Now that technology is encouraging less face to face interaction," - rubbish!
Now this I would agree with. I think Theodore has got this wrong. "Conversational" technology such as blogs, Twitter, Skype, Facebook etc have connected me with many more people than the past and allowed me to stay in touch with them and keep up with their lives and interests. Thus I want to meet them more and enjoy their company and their conversation face to face and of course the technology allows me to do this too. I see this not only in myself but in my three children (Y-geners). They have phenomenal social lives compared to me when I was their age - where of course a lot of "pointless conversation" goes on LOL
This is the kind of research that is so important as it questions ways of thinking and working, so deeply entrenched that we take them for granted. For example, how many self-help books go on and on about the importance of clarifying and focusing on your objectives. Wouldn't it be tragic if this were actually counterproductive?
I am very much in the camp of "figure out broadly where you want to go and the rough direction and start walking today" - you never know you may see things along the way that are far more appealing than your initially desired destination and the walking is part of the living :-) Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau.
This is the kind of research that is so important as it questions ways of thinking and working, so deeply entrenched that we take them for granted. For example, how many self-help books go on and on about the importance of clarifying and focusing on your objectives. Wouldn't it be tragic if this were actually counterproductive?
I am very much in the camp of "figure out broadly where you want to go and the rough direction and start walking today" - you never know you may see things along the way that are far more appealing than your initially desired destination and the walking is part of the living :-) Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau.
This is the kind of research that is so important as it questions ways of thinking and working, so deeply entrenched that we take them for granted. For example, how many self-help books go on and on about the importance of clarifying and focusing on your objectives. Wouldn't it be tragic if this were actually counterproductive?
I am very much in the camp of "figure out broadly where you want to go and the rough direction and start walking today" - you never know you may see things along the way that are far more appealing than your initially desired destination and the walking is part of the living :-) Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau.
This is the kind of research that is so important as it questions ways of thinking and working, so deeply entrenched that we take them for granted. For example, how many self-help books go on and on about the importance of clarifying and focusing on your objectives. Wouldn't it be tragic if this were actually counterproductive?
I am very much in the camp of "figure out broadly where you want to go and the rough direction and start walking today" - you never know you may see things along the way that are far more appealing than your initially desired destination and the walking is part of the living :-) Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau.
I recently read an interesting article on Do your employees think speaking up Is pointless?
I think there are many reasons why people do not speak up and ask questions or make suggestions in meeting. Here are a few:
I might ask a stupid question and make myself look foolish.
I might ask the speaker a stupid question and make him or her look foolish.
Who am I to ask questions?
I have never asked questions in my life. It doesn't even occur to me to ask questions.
I don't feel confident in this group of people.
I am an intensely shy introvert.
I have asked questions in this setting in the past and have been put down by the speaker or others in the room. I am not taking that risk again.
It was a great presentation. I just don't have any questions to ask.
I was so engaged in the presentation that I did not take time to think of questions to ask. And you have given me no time to reflect.
In the past no one else asks questions its not just done.
If you try to force me I will just clam up.
This presentation was totally boring and I am not going to spin it out any longer.
Although they ask for questions - they don't really want any - that's why they leave so little time.
Fear in various forms is one of the strongest reasons but in the article it is stated that futility was 1.8 times more common than fear as a reason for withholding ideas from direct supervisors in a large multinational corporation
I have had several conversations recently with clients who have problems getting people to speak up and contribute in meetings. It is always difficult to advise them without being there to observe and without knowing the history or the culture of the organisation.
Several managers have told me that they do their best to encourage participation; that they ask for questions and even refuse to end a session until say they have had three questions from the group.
But like all targets - this fails - people will ask a few easy, safe questions, to get the hell out of there.
To my mind, the managers are still trying to do things to people i.e. make them ask questions rather then work with them.
This is where I think Knowledge Cafe format type meetings play a part: simply allow people to have informal conversations about things that matter to them - don't try to force them into a rigid workshop format or Q&A sessions. Get them talking together and asking questions of each other in a natural way.
Once you stop talking at them and allow them to engage with a topic, questions, comments and good ideas will naturally follow. You still need to listen, enegage with them and act though else that futility will set in!
I have been Tweeting since 11 February 2007 and tweet most days when I am not too busy.
That's over 2,800 tweets in a little over 3 years.
Other then my website and this knowledge letter of course, it is one of my main ways of sharing and communicating.
I have never tried to capture and store these Tweets in anyway.
I had assumed Twitter threw them away after a certain time period but recently I discovered BackupMyTweets which has allowed me to capture all my past Tweets as an HTML file (it supports other formats too) and hence create a page on my website for all my past Tweets.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
But what it does also allow me to do - is to share with you a few of my favourites each month:
I have been Tweeting since 11 February 2007 and tweet most days when I am not too busy.
That's over 2,800 tweets in a little over 3 years.
Other then my website and this knowledge letter of course, it is one of my main ways of sharing and communicating.
I have never tried to capture and store these Tweets in anyway.
I had assumed Twitter threw them away after a certain time period but recently I discovered BackupMyTweets which has allowed me to capture all my past Tweets as an HTML file (it supports other formats too) and hence create a page on my website for all my past Tweets.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
But what it does also allow me to do - is to share with you a few of my favourites each month:
I have been Tweeting since 11 February 2007 and tweet most days when I am not too busy.
That's over 2,800 tweets in a little over 3 years.
Other then my website and this knowledge letter of course, it is one of my main ways of sharing and communicating.
I have never tried to capture and store these Tweets in anyway.
I had assumed Twitter threw them away after a certain time period but recently I discovered BackupMyTweets which has allowed me to capture all my past Tweets as an HTML file (it supports other formats too) and hence create a page on my website for all my past Tweets.
Take a look, if you are not a Tweeter, you will get a good idea of how I use it by browsing the list of micro-posts. And if you like what you see then subscribe to my Tweets.
But what it does also allow me to do - is to share with you a few of my favourites each month:
In the embedded video Devdutt Pattanaik makes the statement that while the rest of the world believes that "Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he will not be hungry again" in India the belief is "help him discover his own way of catching fish, because then that is his own!"
I so liked this, that I tweeted it and in turn it was automatically posted onto my Facebook wall. I was then delighted when Ana Neves chipped in with this comment "Or introduce him to some fishermen who can fish for him in exchange for something he can do really well :-)"
In the embedded video Devdutt Pattanaik makes the statement that while the rest of the world believes that "Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he will not be hungry again" in India the belief is "help him discover his own way of catching fish, because then that is his own!"
I so liked this, that I tweeted it and in turn it was automatically posted onto my Facebook wall. I was then delighted when Ana Neves chipped in with this comment "Or introduce him to some fishermen who can fish for him in exchange for something he can do really well :-)"
You can see more information here and register, if you are not a member. Please, please join-up and start to use the forum, as apart from Facebook, it is the best place to meet and have discussions with other members of the community.
If you are not familiar with LinkedIn or not a member, could I encourage you to take a look. Its effectively the professional business equivalent of Facebook and to my mind anyone who is not a member is not taking their career or professional life seriously :-)
Also, please do connect with me, out of the 17,000 members of my community who receive my knowledge letter about only about 2,500 of you are connected to me personally and only about 1,000 are members of the LinkedIn Community group.
You can see more information here and register, if you are not a member. Please, please join-up and start to use the forum, as apart from Facebook, it is the best place to meet and have discussions with other members of the community.
If you are not familiar with LinkedIn or not a member, could I encourage you to take a look. Its effectively the professional business equivalent of Facebook and to my mind anyone who is not a member is not taking their career or professional life seriously :-)
Also, please do connect with me, out of the 17,000 members of my community who receive my knowledge letter about only about 2,500 of you are connected to me personally and only about 1,000 are members of the LinkedIn Community group.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
I came across the Red Campaign by accident when browsing my RSS feeds. Wondering what Red was I clicked through and discovered a film called The Lazarus Effect. Thirty minutes later with tears streaming down my face I came to end of the video. Watch it - is one of the most moving videos I have seen in a long time.
Education has to some degree lost its way; forgotten its identity. We've allowed ourselves and our institutions to be led away from our core value of openness -- away from generosity, sharing, and giving, and toward selfishness, concealment, and withholding. To the degree that we have deserted openness, learning has suffered.
We've been blessed with incredible technical capabilities in our day. Will we use them to increase the openness, generosity, and sharing of our institutions? Or will we use them perversely, against their own potential, to further close, conceal, and withhold?
Education has to some degree lost its way; forgotten its identity. We've allowed ourselves and our institutions to be led away from our core value of openness -- away from generosity, sharing, and giving, and toward selfishness, concealment, and withholding. To the degree that we have deserted openness, learning has suffered.
We've been blessed with incredible technical capabilities in our day. Will we use them to increase the openness, generosity, and sharing of our institutions? Or will we use them perversely, against their own potential, to further close, conceal, and withhold?
Education has to some degree lost its way; forgotten its identity. We've allowed ourselves and our institutions to be led away from our core value of openness -- away from generosity, sharing, and giving, and toward selfishness, concealment, and withholding. To the degree that we have deserted openness, learning has suffered.
We've been blessed with incredible technical capabilities in our day. Will we use them to increase the openness, generosity, and sharing of our institutions? Or will we use them perversely, against their own potential, to further close, conceal, and withhold?
Please help me expand the readership of my knowledge letter - Comments (0)
I have been writing and publishing this newsletter for ten years and there are now 17,000 or more readers in something like 160 countries - having grown from an initial circulation of about 300 in May 2000
I don't think that's too bad for one man but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the number of people on the web.
I receive frequent votes of thanks and complements and many of you have been readers for several years. Some of you for the full ten years!
And I would love is to significantly expand the readership. So here is the favour I ask.
Please, could you tell people about it. Email them or post an entry on your corporate intranet or whatever but help me push the readership through 20,000 by the end of the year. Point them to here for back copies and to sign-up: http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/knowledge-letter
Think of it as your way of saying thank you to me! Its not often I ask for something quote so explicitly. LOL
I get several emails a week asking for help in some form or another. Often its a very specific question that I can answer in a sentence or two. But more often than not - its a broad, generalised, conceptual question that cannot be answered easily and even if it could I suspect it would be of litte value. Here are some examples:
Could you tell me all there is to know about KM?
How do I create a knowledge driven culture in my organisation?
How do I implement KM?
What are the KM issues and the best tools to use in my industry?
Could you give me a few tips and pointers on change management?
How do I roll out communities of practice?
How do I demonstrate the benefits of KM?
How do I measure the ROI of KM?
How do I make everyone in my organization share all their knowledge?
What are the best exit interview techniques?
When I get these type of questions I am concerned. I am concerned that I am talking to someone who has not the slightest clue of what KM is about. Its not the question itself or the knowledge they are seeking but the fact that they think I can effectively answer the question they pose.
Look at the questions above. What is missing? Yes the businesss context! None of them tell me anything about their organization or what they are trying to achieve for the business. And you know what when I ask they rarely can tell me!
We are discovering in this new realm that public exposure is not just a matter of egotism or idle voyeurism. This past year, several friends of mine have blogged their way through their battles with cancer. By taking their ordeal to the valley, they got valuable advice from strangers who posted comments and helped form an online support group — and an archive that could help future patients who happen upon it via cancer-related queries on Google. One of my friends -- writer Jeff Jarvis, now happily in good health -- talks about his experience as a lesson in the virtues of publicness. The Constitution may not contain an explicit reference to the right to privacy, but the notion that privacy is worth cherishing and protecting needs little justification. What Jarvis suggests is that the opposite condition needs its defenders: oversharing, in a strange way, can turn out to be a civic good.
As you know, I am often quoted as an example of a good knowledge sharer. There is not a lot I won't talk about in this newsletter, blog or website but I do tend to keep my intimate personal life to myself - no problem talking about my family etc but would I, could I, say talk about a battle with a serious illness? I am not so sure. But the above gives good reason to be more open and more public in our most intimate thoughts and private lives. Worth reflecting on :-)
We are discovering in this new realm that public exposure is not just a matter of egotism or idle voyeurism. This past year, several friends of mine have blogged their way through their battles with cancer. By taking their ordeal to the valley, they got valuable advice from strangers who posted comments and helped form an online support group — and an archive that could help future patients who happen upon it via cancer-related queries on Google. One of my friends -- writer Jeff Jarvis, now happily in good health -- talks about his experience as a lesson in the virtues of publicness. The Constitution may not contain an explicit reference to the right to privacy, but the notion that privacy is worth cherishing and protecting needs little justification. What Jarvis suggests is that the opposite condition needs its defenders: oversharing, in a strange way, can turn out to be a civic good.
As you know, I am often quoted as an example of a good knowledge sharer. There is not a lot I won't talk about in this newsletter, blog or website but I do tend to keep my intimate personal life to myself - no problem talking about my family etc but would I, could I, say talk about a battle with a serious illness? I am not so sure. But the above gives good reason to be more open and more public in our most intimate thoughts and private lives. Worth reflecting on :-)
The traditional way of thinking in business is that if some change is implemented you need to add measures and rewards/punishments associated with that change. You force people into the change, willingly or not. This can't work with the culture that needs to exist for Enterprise 2.0 to work. This has to be a culture of working together because we want to, particularly when it comes to using the tools. Forcing me to "share knowledge" doesn't even make sense. Neither does "you must ask for help."
I am delighted that Inside Knowledge have taken some of my best Gurteen Perspective articles and re-published them as a special Inside Knowledge supplement in the form of a commemorative compilation of my "10 years in KM".
Better still, as a member of my community, if you would like a hard-copy please e-mail Kate Clifton at kclifton@waterlow.com with 10 Years in KM copy request as the subject line along with your full name and postal address in the email body and they will send you a free copy. Note: if you already subscribe to Inside Knowledge then you will receive this supplement automatically and do not need to request it.
I would like to give a great big thank you to Inside Knowledge and especially to Kate Clifton for all her hard work in putting this together and helping to make "my ten years in KM" something special. Thank you!
I am delighted that Inside Knowledge have taken some of my best Gurteen Perspective articles and re-published them as a special Inside Knowledge supplement in the form of a commemorative compilation of my "10 years in KM".
Better still, as a member of my community, if you would like a hard-copy please e-mail Kate Clifton at kclifton@waterlow.com with 10 Years in KM copy request as the subject line along with your full name and postal address in the email body and they will send you a free copy. Note: if you already subscribe to Inside Knowledge then you will receive this supplement automatically and do not need to request it.
I would like to give a great big thank you to Inside Knowledge and especially to Kate Clifton for all her hard work in putting this together and helping to make "my ten years in KM" something special. Thank you!
At KM UK 2010, I was delighted to receive a "Lifetime achievement award for services to KM" from the Ark Group as part of their inaugural KMUK Awards 2010.
This is what the judges said about me (blush!)
We wanted to recognise David's 10 years of achievement in KM and to celebrate him as a thought leader in collaboration, through techniques such as his knowledge cafe concept. An excellent manager and willing sharer of his own personal knowledge, David has been instrumental in showing KM managers what social media can do for them.
I was in good company with Dave Snowden winning the award for "Best advance of KM as a scientific discipline"; Nick Davies for "Best KM presentation at an Ark conference"; ERM for "Best KM initiative or implementation in a professional services firm"; the Welsh Assembly Government for "Best KM initiative or implementation in a government organisation" and Pfizer for "Best KM initiative or implementation in a corporate enterprise".
Some time back I talked about TED Talks. These talks are still some of the most exciting, provocative presentations on the web and I am surprised by the number of people who have not discovered them yet.
Some time back I talked about TED Talks. These talks are still some of the most exciting, provocative presentations on the web and I am surprised by the number of people who have not discovered them yet.
I tweet most days especially when I am office based. Some tweets are personal comments or reflections but most are pointers to interesting articles, blog posts or videos that I trip over as I read my RSS feeds via Google Reader. Its quite slick. I mostly read my feeds on my iPhone and star the ones that I particularly like which gets synched back to Google Reader in my browser. As I step through the articles later I choose to tweet some of them by using a small Bitly Sidebar Bookmarklet that I have installed on my tool bar. It takes seconds to tweet an article in this way. Often it is just two clicks of the mouse.
One person I seem to be tweeting more and more is Robert Patterson. Almost everyone of his blog posts is a gem - he seems to find the most interesting articles out there on the web and then blogs them with his own insightful comments. What does he blog about? Well its quite diverse but the focus is on what's wrong in the world and needs fixing and that's not in a negative sense but more about here is a problem and here is what we could be doing better to respond to it.
Most of his posts have little to do with KM in a direct sense but all of them deep down are about how we manage and act on our knowledge.
Take a look! If you like the stuff I natter on about, I think you will love Robert's material too.
Here are three recent posts of his to wet your appetite.
In sum, there is no best way to do anything independent of context, so the leader cannot have privileged information. When leaders keep everyone in their place with the illusion of knowability and possession of this privileged knowledge the benefit to them is that we "obey" and leaders feel superior. The cost is that they create lemmings. Their mindlessness promotes our own mindlessness which costs us our well being and health. Net result, the leader, the led, and the company all lose.
This is all about knowledge management! We all need to be more mindful. Take a look at Ellen's two books that I reference above and you will start to see the importance of message!
In sum, there is no best way to do anything independent of context, so the leader cannot have privileged information. When leaders keep everyone in their place with the illusion of knowability and possession of this privileged knowledge the benefit to them is that we "obey" and leaders feel superior. The cost is that they create lemmings. Their mindlessness promotes our own mindlessness which costs us our well being and health. Net result, the leader, the led, and the company all lose.
This is all about knowledge management! We all need to be more mindful. Take a look at Ellen's two books that I reference above and you will start to see the importance of message!
Take a look at this blog post from Steve DenningHow do you subvert the world of Dilbert cartoons?. I am not so sure its the cartoons I would like to see subverted but the Dilbertesque business world we live in! But that is exactly the point that Steve is getting at!
The quote from Frederick Winslow Taylor's book on The Principles of Scientific Management jumps out from the page and clearly is the root cause of so many of the problems in the world today. But take a look at the quote in its original context. I am not so sure Frederick Taylor quite meant Man to be totally subverted to the System! But maybe he did - his ideas were for a past industrial age - not our modern knowledge based one.
Take a look at this blog post from Steve DenningHow do you subvert the world of Dilbert cartoons?. I am not so sure its the cartoons I would like to see subverted but the Dilbertesque business world we live in! But that is exactly the point that Steve is getting at!
The quote from Frederick Winslow Taylor's book on The Principles of Scientific Management jumps out from the page and clearly is the root cause of so many of the problems in the world today. But take a look at the quote in its original context. I am not so sure Frederick Taylor quite meant Man to be totally subverted to the System! But maybe he did - his ideas were for a past industrial age - not our modern knowledge based one.
Take a look at this blog post from Steve DenningHow do you subvert the world of Dilbert cartoons?. I am not so sure its the cartoons I would like to see subverted but the Dilbertesque business world we live in! But that is exactly the point that Steve is getting at!
The quote from Frederick Winslow Taylor's book on The Principles of Scientific Management jumps out from the page and clearly is the root cause of so many of the problems in the world today. But take a look at the quote in its original context. I am not so sure Frederick Taylor quite meant Man to be totally subverted to the System! But maybe he did - his ideas were for a past industrial age - not our modern knowledge based one.
How do you prevent people from stealing your ideas? - Comments (0)
I recently received an email from someone who pointed to an article on my website Creating a Knowledge Sharing Culture where I said the following:
Some people object to sharing as they feel that others will steal their ideas and reap the rewards rightly theirs. This is a fallacy. Knowledge sharing isn't about blindly sharing everything; giving away your ideas; being politically naive; or being open about absolutely everything. You still need to exercise judgment. If you have a great idea - don't share it with a competitor - external or internal but on the other hand don't try to develop it on your own and don’t sit on it for fear of it being stolen from you. Figure out how you can bring it to fruition by collaborating with other people.
He asked: "Easy said. For years I have had ideas I would like to bring to fruition, but have no idea how to protect myself. Have you any practical solutions to sharing ideas without losing out on the benefits. e.g. I tell you of a good business idea and you do it without me."
And here is an expanded version of my response:
There are no magic bullets, I am sorry to say, but my key piece of advise would be to only share those ideas with people you really trust - that's where the judgement comes in.
Or, depending on the idea, it may be patentable, but most ideas are not patentable and can be taken and applied by other people - in which case don't worry about the idea being taken but make sure you are first to market with the best implementation of the idea. And if the application of your idea is internal to your company - ensure that everyone knows it is yours by publishing it broadly in some way such as on an internal blog.
It also seems to me that ideas are like knowledge. The important thing is not to have an idea but to have the ability to act on it. Without that ability: the knowledge, the skills, the contacts, the political nous, the passion, the energy and much more - the idea is probably worthless to you. In which case give it away!
Finally, Howard Aiken has an interesting perspective :-)
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
I have long had a book section on my website with links through to amazon.com and amazon.uk to make it easy to order the books. (Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I so I earn a small percentage on most items that your order.)
I also have an Amazon banner ad on the left hand side of most of my pages which I have cleverly programmed to display ads pertinent to the topic of the page. Using the keywords I provide, Amazon determines the books to display in this panel and so they are not necessarily ones I would recommend but it makes a great serendipitous search and I often spot interesting books that I was not aware of.
These features have been on my site for many years and recently I thought I would take a look to see what Amazon had done to update things and found that I could actually create my own Amazon stores. What's more, the effort was trivial. So you will now find a stand-alone Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.com store and a Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.co.uk store and also find them embedded on my site: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I have yet to fully configure the stores with the books and products I would recommend but take a look at the work in progress. You will find a lot of good KM books in both stores.
Its all very easy to do and those of you with your own sites or blogs might like to take a look and build your own store!
I have long had a book section on my website with links through to amazon.com and amazon.uk to make it easy to order the books. (Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I so I earn a small percentage on most items that your order.)
I also have an Amazon banner ad on the left hand side of most of my pages which I have cleverly programmed to display ads pertinent to the topic of the page. Using the keywords I provide, Amazon determines the books to display in this panel and so they are not necessarily ones I would recommend but it makes a great serendipitous search and I often spot interesting books that I was not aware of.
These features have been on my site for many years and recently I thought I would take a look to see what Amazon had done to update things and found that I could actually create my own Amazon stores. What's more, the effort was trivial. So you will now find a stand-alone Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.com store and a Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.co.uk store and also find them embedded on my site: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I have yet to fully configure the stores with the books and products I would recommend but take a look at the work in progress. You will find a lot of good KM books in both stores.
Its all very easy to do and those of you with your own sites or blogs might like to take a look and build your own store!
I have long had a book section on my website with links through to amazon.com and amazon.uk to make it easy to order the books. (Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I so I earn a small percentage on most items that your order.)
I also have an Amazon banner ad on the left hand side of most of my pages which I have cleverly programmed to display ads pertinent to the topic of the page. Using the keywords I provide, Amazon determines the books to display in this panel and so they are not necessarily ones I would recommend but it makes a great serendipitous search and I often spot interesting books that I was not aware of.
These features have been on my site for many years and recently I thought I would take a look to see what Amazon had done to update things and found that I could actually create my own Amazon stores. What's more, the effort was trivial. So you will now find a stand-alone Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.com store and a Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.co.uk store and also find them embedded on my site: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I have yet to fully configure the stores with the books and products I would recommend but take a look at the work in progress. You will find a lot of good KM books in both stores.
Its all very easy to do and those of you with your own sites or blogs might like to take a look and build your own store!
I have long had a book section on my website with links through to amazon.com and amazon.uk to make it easy to order the books. (Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I so I earn a small percentage on most items that your order.)
I also have an Amazon banner ad on the left hand side of most of my pages which I have cleverly programmed to display ads pertinent to the topic of the page. Using the keywords I provide, Amazon determines the books to display in this panel and so they are not necessarily ones I would recommend but it makes a great serendipitous search and I often spot interesting books that I was not aware of.
These features have been on my site for many years and recently I thought I would take a look to see what Amazon had done to update things and found that I could actually create my own Amazon stores. What's more, the effort was trivial. So you will now find a stand-alone Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.com store and a Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.co.uk store and also find them embedded on my site: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I have yet to fully configure the stores with the books and products I would recommend but take a look at the work in progress. You will find a lot of good KM books in both stores.
Its all very easy to do and those of you with your own sites or blogs might like to take a look and build your own store!
I have long had a book section on my website with links through to amazon.com and amazon.uk to make it easy to order the books. (Disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I so I earn a small percentage on most items that your order.)
I also have an Amazon banner ad on the left hand side of most of my pages which I have cleverly programmed to display ads pertinent to the topic of the page. Using the keywords I provide, Amazon determines the books to display in this panel and so they are not necessarily ones I would recommend but it makes a great serendipitous search and I often spot interesting books that I was not aware of.
These features have been on my site for many years and recently I thought I would take a look to see what Amazon had done to update things and found that I could actually create my own Amazon stores. What's more, the effort was trivial. So you will now find a stand-alone Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.com store and a Gurteen Knowledge Amazon.co.uk store and also find them embedded on my site: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I have yet to fully configure the stores with the books and products I would recommend but take a look at the work in progress. You will find a lot of good KM books in both stores.
Its all very easy to do and those of you with your own sites or blogs might like to take a look and build your own store!
I am often told that there is shortage of KM jobs or that people do not know where to look to find them. To help with this, for some time I have had a KM Jobs section on my website and you can access this via one of my RSSJob feeds. You might like to subscribe to the Global Jobs feed as this is the most comprehensive.
Alternatively you can subscribe to my Job Alerts Service which sends you an email whenever a new job is posted on my site.
But recently I have added a Twitter Job Feed to my Jobs Section. Quite simply, I have embedded a Twitter Search Widget at the bottom of the page that searches for Tweets that contain the words "knowledge management" and "job". Unfortunately the Twitter search syntax is extremely limiting and despite a lot of experimentation this turns out to be the best search.
But take a look - I think you may be surprised - there are more KM jobs out there than you might think. Also if you see a KM job - Tweet it and add the hashtag #kmjob so that myself and others can pick it up.
I am often told that there is shortage of KM jobs or that people do not know where to look to find them. To help with this, for some time I have had a KM Jobs section on my website and you can access this via one of my RSSJob feeds. You might like to subscribe to the Global Jobs feed as this is the most comprehensive.
Alternatively you can subscribe to my Job Alerts Service which sends you an email whenever a new job is posted on my site.
But recently I have added a Twitter Job Feed to my Jobs Section. Quite simply, I have embedded a Twitter Search Widget at the bottom of the page that searches for Tweets that contain the words "knowledge management" and "job". Unfortunately the Twitter search syntax is extremely limiting and despite a lot of experimentation this turns out to be the best search.
But take a look - I think you may be surprised - there are more KM jobs out there than you might think. Also if you see a KM job - Tweet it and add the hashtag #kmjob so that myself and others can pick it up.
Victoria Ward recently emailed a bunch of people to ask the question "What do you reckon the best pithy read on social capital is?" and like many a web conversation, what started off with a simple question, quickly turned into an interesting exchange on a related but tangential topic!
It was so good to see that people like Madelyn Blair, Seth Kahan and Steve Denning HATE the way that people are referred to as "human capital" or "human resources" and the like. I have been gently ranting about this for some years and I back searched my blog and came up with this post from May 2003 People are people - not things!.
In the email exchange, Steve Denning captures the issue well:
There are thus two deep streams in management in today.
They are like oil and water. We can pretend that they are just evolutions or developments or nuances or verbal nitpicks and that it would be divisive to draw sharp distinctions between them.
But the reality is that these two ways of interacting with the world are incompatible and don't have much to say to each other.
One stream is about turning into people into things--human resources, human capital, social capital--which can be manipulated as things to produce goods and services (MORE THINGS) or profits (MONEY) for the organization and its shareholders. A dispiriting activity for all involved.
The other stream is about inspiring people (i.e (PEOPLE) doing work to generate continuing delight for clients and customers (also known as PEOPLE).
One is a simple linear activity under the control of management. And if it isn't under their control, the object is to get it under their control, as soon as possible.
The other is a complex undertaking in which only successive approximations can make progress to the goal. No one is in control. It is an interaction, a conversation, a joint voyage of discovery. The aim is delight. Generating that is more fun than fun.
Victoria Ward recently emailed a bunch of people to ask the question "What do you reckon the best pithy read on social capital is?" and like many a web conversation, what started off with a simple question, quickly turned into an interesting exchange on a related but tangential topic!
It was so good to see that people like Madelyn Blair, Seth Kahan and Steve Denning HATE the way that people are referred to as "human capital" or "human resources" and the like. I have been gently ranting about this for some years and I back searched my blog and came up with this post from May 2003 People are people - not things!.
In the email exchange, Steve Denning captures the issue well:
There are thus two deep streams in management in today.
They are like oil and water. We can pretend that they are just evolutions or developments or nuances or verbal nitpicks and that it would be divisive to draw sharp distinctions between them.
But the reality is that these two ways of interacting with the world are incompatible and don't have much to say to each other.
One stream is about turning into people into things--human resources, human capital, social capital--which can be manipulated as things to produce goods and services (MORE THINGS) or profits (MONEY) for the organization and its shareholders. A dispiriting activity for all involved.
The other stream is about inspiring people (i.e (PEOPLE) doing work to generate continuing delight for clients and customers (also known as PEOPLE).
One is a simple linear activity under the control of management. And if it isn't under their control, the object is to get it under their control, as soon as possible.
The other is a complex undertaking in which only successive approximations can make progress to the goal. No one is in control. It is an interaction, a conversation, a joint voyage of discovery. The aim is delight. Generating that is more fun than fun.
Victoria Ward recently emailed a bunch of people to ask the question "What do you reckon the best pithy read on social capital is?" and like many a web conversation, what started off with a simple question, quickly turned into an interesting exchange on a related but tangential topic!
It was so good to see that people like Madelyn Blair, Seth Kahan and Steve Denning HATE the way that people are referred to as "human capital" or "human resources" and the like. I have been gently ranting about this for some years and I back searched my blog and came up with this post from May 2003 People are people - not things!.
In the email exchange, Steve Denning captures the issue well:
There are thus two deep streams in management in today.
They are like oil and water. We can pretend that they are just evolutions or developments or nuances or verbal nitpicks and that it would be divisive to draw sharp distinctions between them.
But the reality is that these two ways of interacting with the world are incompatible and don't have much to say to each other.
One stream is about turning into people into things--human resources, human capital, social capital--which can be manipulated as things to produce goods and services (MORE THINGS) or profits (MONEY) for the organization and its shareholders. A dispiriting activity for all involved.
The other stream is about inspiring people (i.e (PEOPLE) doing work to generate continuing delight for clients and customers (also known as PEOPLE).
One is a simple linear activity under the control of management. And if it isn't under their control, the object is to get it under their control, as soon as possible.
The other is a complex undertaking in which only successive approximations can make progress to the goal. No one is in control. It is an interaction, a conversation, a joint voyage of discovery. The aim is delight. Generating that is more fun than fun.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
Many of you are familiar with my views on Measures,Targets and Rewards so you will understand my pleasure at discovering the work of John Seddon. Just take a look at this talk of his entitled Cultural change is free. Its almost one hour long but I would strongly recommend you watch it.
Targets and all other arbitrary measures make your system worse - always - you can't do the wrong thing right - there is not a good way to set a target.
There is a systemic relationship between purpose measures and method .... when you impose arbitrary measures into a system like targets you create a de factor purpose which is "meet the targets" and you constrain method. On the other hand when you derive your measures from the purpose of the service from the customers point of view and put those measures in the hands of the people doing the work you liberate method, innovation occurs.
One of the major objectives of Knowledge management is improved decision making and so anything that helps us think better about a subject to me is KM. Take a look at these ten thinking traps (part 1) and ten thinking traps (part 2) and how to avoid them.
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Only last week I was pondering what would happen if all global flights were suspended for some reason for several months. What would be the impact on the global economy? Would we cope? Or would it be disastrous? Just how fragile is our high-tech civilisation? I pondered what might cause this? Maybe a solar storm wiping out all GPS and communication satellites (and our electricity grids) or a major volcanic eruption grounding flights across a large part of the globe.
And then what happened only days later - the Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still cant believe the coincidence in my thinking. I really hope our governments have thought these sorts of scenarios through and have contingency plans.
But the long term solution is to recognise our vulnerability and build more adaptable, less interdependent systems. What would happen if air flights were grounded for months or maybe even shipping? What would happen if we lost all power for as little as 2 weeks? What would happen if all our communication and GPS satellites were wiped out overnight? Could our civilisation survive? My best guess at the moment is no!
Conversational lessons from Jakarta - Comments (0)
I was recently in Jakarta to run a 2-day workshop for KM-Plus - Learning Lead. One of the challenges of such workshops is the language barrier. Although everyone can understand English and speak it quite well - it is not their native language and so me talking in English all day is huge a strain on people.
It also makes interactive sessions difficult to run as clearly the conversation with me is not so smooth flowing and it makes sense for me to allow conversation at tables in Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia). But of course this means that I can't listen in and get a sense of what is being said.
At an earlier event in Jakarta I ran an "Introduction to KM" workshop for a large Indonesian Bank and although going fine the language barrier was clearly an issue. And so my host Alvin Soleh stepped in and we modified the day's format on the fly. I would present for about 20-30 minutes and then Alvin would run an interactive piece in Indonesian.
We carried this format through to my main two day public workshop and it worked well.
During Alvin's sessions I had time to observe and reflect and I came to the decision that I was never going to speak for more than 20 minutes again (well 30 minutes at most) before turning my talk or that part of my talk in to an interactive session of some description.
At the very least and at its simplest I will do what I often do and that is come to the end of my "chalk-and-talk", pose a question relating to my talk and then ask the participants to have a conversation at their tables. Optionally asking each table to report back to the group and for me to take questions.
First I like his suggested skills for managers. Clearly I like his last two items regarding conversation.
Self-reflection
Noticing what is going on
Facilitating free-flowing conversations
Articulating what is emerging in conversations
And his concluding paragraph:
The competencies in competency frameworks do not acknowledge the interdependence of human beings and the importance of context. If you are using competency frameworks, it is likely then that you are using the wrong competencies and you should therefore limit the importance you place on such competency frameworks.
I love my iPhone and would be lost without it but increasingly I feel I have made the wrong long term choice. Apple has done an amazing job and I am sure the iPad also will be a huge success. But I hate the fact that the Apple products are closed and how Apple is using its power to crush Adobes Flash.
I think Jeff Jarvis hits it right on the nail in this recent article iPad danger: app v. web where he says that "The iPad is retrograde" and that "Google is competing with openness, Apple with control". I have no doubt that openness will win in the long run but the Apple products are so good that could be several years away. In the meantime I still might buy an iPad but there will be a big part of me trying to resist.
I love my iPhone and would be lost without it but increasingly I feel I have made the wrong long term choice. Apple has done an amazing job and I am sure the iPad also will be a huge success. But I hate the fact that the Apple products are closed and how Apple is using its power to crush Adobes Flash.
I think Jeff Jarvis hits it right on the nail in this recent article iPad danger: app v. web where he says that "The iPad is retrograde" and that "Google is competing with openness, Apple with control". I have no doubt that openness will win in the long run but the Apple products are so good that could be several years away. In the meantime I still might buy an iPad but there will be a big part of me trying to resist.
It reminds him of the classroom and the industrial age educational system where the one and only right answer comes from the lectern which I would like to see burnt!
Read the comments on his post, most people agree (but not all) and despair of the educational system!
There are many ways of breaking the "chalk-and-talk", "sit-and-git", "death-by-power-point", "preach from the lectern" paradigm of the "industrial age classroom". But a simple "no-brain" start is to turn them into a Knowledge Cafe format. Cut the speakers speaking time and then follow with a period of conversation around the speakers theme and finally Q&A. This is easy to do in most contexts and if you are the speaker you need no permission to do it.
It reminds him of the classroom and the industrial age educational system where the one and only right answer comes from the lectern which I would like to see burnt!
Read the comments on his post, most people agree (but not all) and despair of the educational system!
There are many ways of breaking the "chalk-and-talk", "sit-and-git", "death-by-power-point", "preach from the lectern" paradigm of the "industrial age classroom". But a simple "no-brain" start is to turn them into a Knowledge Cafe format. Cut the speakers speaking time and then follow with a period of conversation around the speakers theme and finally Q&A. This is easy to do in most contexts and if you are the speaker you need no permission to do it.
It reminds him of the classroom and the industrial age educational system where the one and only right answer comes from the lectern which I would like to see burnt!
Read the comments on his post, most people agree (but not all) and despair of the educational system!
There are many ways of breaking the "chalk-and-talk", "sit-and-git", "death-by-power-point", "preach from the lectern" paradigm of the "industrial age classroom". But a simple "no-brain" start is to turn them into a Knowledge Cafe format. Cut the speakers speaking time and then follow with a period of conversation around the speakers theme and finally Q&A. This is easy to do in most contexts and if you are the speaker you need no permission to do it.
It reminds him of the classroom and the industrial age educational system where the one and only right answer comes from the lectern which I would like to see burnt!
Read the comments on his post, most people agree (but not all) and despair of the educational system!
There are many ways of breaking the "chalk-and-talk", "sit-and-git", "death-by-power-point", "preach from the lectern" paradigm of the "industrial age classroom". But a simple "no-brain" start is to turn them into a Knowledge Cafe format. Cut the speakers speaking time and then follow with a period of conversation around the speakers theme and finally Q&A. This is easy to do in most contexts and if you are the speaker you need no permission to do it.
This comment from Steve Jobs (via my friend David Pottinger) in a great article by Stephen Fry on the Launch of the iPad:
"I don't think of my life as a career. I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That's not a career -- it’s a life!" really resonates with me. I like the concept of just "doing stuff" - love that fuzzy word "stuff".
People are always telling me that if I wish to build a business I should do "x, y, z" and I reply "I am not looking to build a business I am looking to do stuff that I enjoy and earn a living in doing it".
To my mind, life is not a career, its not a business, its not a profession - its just about doing fun worthwhile stuff!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Dave Snowden also posted an item on the conference and there was a lot of good tweeting going on mainly from Bill Proudfit.
I also ran a post-conference Knowledge Cafe Masterclass - slides here and photos here. I am getting better all the time at capturing "people in conversation" but I really need to get a better camera that works well in low light conditions.
All in all, a very good conference with some excellent speakers but like most conferences I attend, it was no where near as interactive and participatory as I would liked to have seen it. I would love to see my "20:10:10" format as standard, that is 20 minutes presentation; 10 minutes conversation and 10 mins Q&A rather than 40:1 i.e. 40 minutes presentation and 1 minute for one rushed question and answer else the conference will overrun!
Excel makes a poor shared database! - Comments (0)
Fifteen years ago or more when I was developing Lotus Notes applications I was often asked to take an Excel spreadsheet and turn it into a Notes app. A common way of sharing information then was to create an Excel spreadsheet and store it on a shared disk drive where people could access it and update it or to pass it around by email.
Why Excel and not a database? Well Excel was the only tool that everyone had easy access to. Either they did not have access to a database tool because IT would not allow it or they did not have the skills to develop a database application themselves and could not afford to ask IT. But everyone had Excel and everyone knew how to program it - however crudely. Turning a spreadsheet into a Notes app was usually trivial and only took an hour or two but hugely improved the quality and accessibility of the information.
Using a spreadsheet was a very poor fudge back then but today its a crazy solution given all the modern tools we have! But guess what I came across an organisation a week or two back that were sharing information just that way - Excel spreadsheets on a shared drive! I still find it hard to believe.
I recently discovered Cinch and I love it! It's a really easy way to create and share audio, text and photo updates using your phone or computer. Using a simple interface, you can take a photo and annotate it with a short piece of audio. You can then notify people through Facebook, Twitter or CinchCast. Its very simple and very effective and has the potential for being a powerful sharing tool. For example, photos could be taken of artifacts and annotated with a short voice description to form a simple library of sorts. Here are my Cinches so far.
I have run Knowledge Cafes in lots of interesting places but this Kcafe at the Indosat Innovation Week last week in Jakarta was the first time I had held one in a reception area with people walking by :-)
To my mind the failure by business but more so governments to understand the adverse affects of measures, rewards and targets is a colossal Knowledge Management failure. As far as I can tell nearly all the research and evidence shows that rewards and targets do NOT work in complex environments. In fact they have the opposite effect of what is intended! But despite all the evidence to the contrary they continue, out of habit, to put their heads in the sand and do not change.
This post from Ron Donaldson on A blind pursuit of targets points to yet more evidence. I really wish I had collected all the stories of the failure of targets by the Labour government over the last 12 years or so. I think there is enough to write a book! As Ron says "Is anyone in Govt health, education or the environment listening?"
This really is a KM issue. We have the knowledge but we refuse to act on it!
But apart from anything else "we really must stop trying to do things to people and to start to work with them".
I am not so sure I am comfortable with the style of this speaker Dan Brown on the theme An Open Letter to Educators but I have learnt over the years to try to overlook the presentation style and focus on the content. I may not like his style but although Dan is only 20 years old he is already a minor YouTube celebrity with over 100,000 subscribers and 2 million page views to his credit.
Two messages jumped out at me:
"Society no longer cares how many facts we can memorize because in the information age, facts are free."
" Education is about empowering students to change the world for the better."
The first point is clearly a somewhat similar message to my recent post on Father Guido Sarduccis Five Minute University. Interestingly, Dan claims to have recently dropped out of school as his "schooling was interfering with his education". I think he will be one of the first of many!
This is so funny because at its heart it is so true. Universities, schools and other educational establishments in their current form have had their day!
Take look at what Chris Brogan. has to say on Revolutions. My way of looking at this is that you get to achieve major revolutions one day at a time or as Chris puts it one tiny revolution at a time. Its pretty much the way I have worked over the last fifteen years or so. I have had a vision in my mind of what I have wanted to achieve and each day I have tried to take small steps in that direction. No grand plan but learning and adapting as I go. Chris describes the process well.
If someone asked you for a bribe and you offered them a zero denomination note, how do you think they would react? Woild they get angry and demand the full bribe they were asking for or apologise and back down?
I often think that confronting people with the reality of their actions or behaviour in an in indirect, non-threatening way can cause them to reflect and change. Maybe we should experiment more with counter-intuitive ideas like this one. So often our intuition gets things wrong - nothing beats testing ideas - even crazy - ones in practice.
Its great to see a Linkedin KM discussion group Women in KM set up only for women! And by four of my favorite KM women at that - well done Karen, Nerida, Diana and Jeanne :-)
As they explain in the Group description, they have set it up to see if it would be beneficial for women who are in a field that is often male-dominated. And that it is a chance for women to explore, network, share ideas about KM among other women.
Interestingly, I have noted that online forums are male dominated but I tend to find at conferences, workshops and certainly my knowledge cafes there are more woman - often a 60:40 or even 70:30 ratio of women to men.
You may be familiar with Douglas McGregor's "Theory X and Theory Y". Theory X says that "employees are lazy, inherently dislike work and will avoid it if they can" and thus Theory X managers believe that workers need to be closely supervised and comprehensive systems of controls developed. On the other hand Theory Y managers believe that, given the right conditions, most people want to do a good job.
In Theory Y, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties. According to Papa, to them work is as natural as play. They possess the ability for creative problem solving, but their talents are underused in most organizations.
Given the proper conditions, theory Y managers believe that employees will learn to seek out and accept responsibility and to exercise self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives to which they are committed. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work. They believe that the satisfaction of doing a good job is a strong motivation. Many people interpret Theory Y as a positive set of beliefs about workers.
A close reading of The Human Side of Enterprise reveals that McGregor simply argues for managers to be open to a more positive view of workers and the possibilities that this creates. He thinks that Theory Y managers are more likely than Theory X managers to develop the climate of trust with employees that is required for human resource development. It's here through human resource development that is a crucial aspect of any organization. This would include managers communicating openly with subordinates, minimizing the difference between superior-subordinate relationships, creating a comfortable environment in which subordinates can develop and use their abilities. This climate would include the sharing of decision making so that subordinates have say in decisions that influence them. This theory is a positive view to the employees.
The more I talk to KM managers the more I come to believe that Theory X thinking runs deep in KM even when people strongly deny it. KMers frequently ask me or others in on-line forums - "how to do you motivate or incentivise people?" "how do you make people share their knowledge?" or they are looking for ways to manipulate people into using some KM tool or another. I can often discern in their wording that just beneath the surface they think other people are lazy or stupid. It's Theory X thinking!
To my mind - the problem does not lie with the employees - it lies with the managers and a deeply rooted Theory X mindset!
I am often asked what I think about KM Certification and whether it is of value or not. This is a hotly debated topic and much has been written and discussed on the web and so I have created a page on my website dedicated to the subject of KM certification that I will update from time to time.
My bottom line is this: On KM certification - go for the best course regardless of whether it is certified or not - do you wish to genuinely learn or buy an expensive bit of paper!
I often catch myself using the word "solution" or the verb "to solve". But slowly but surely I am eliminating these measly marketing words from my vocabulary. Let me explain.
We talk all the time about "solving business problems" or of "business solutions" or "KM solutions. Marketers love such phrases. But there are no solutions to complex business problems. There are only partial solutions. And even these may only work for a limited period of time in an ever changing business environment. And there are always unintended side-effects that can often be more detrimental than the original problem.
Thus we can only ever "respond" to problems in a continuous adaptive way. So we really need to stop using the word "solution" as it tends to seduce us into a false sense of security that problems can be solved once and for all.
There are NO "solutions" to complex business issues – only “responses” to them.
I am a keen follow of Chris Brogran - he writes some insightful stuff.
I particularly liked this recent blog-post entitled Pursue the Goal Not the Method as it reminded me of what so many people do wrong with KM. They pursue KM for its own sake and ask questions like "How do you do KM?" Doing KM is not the goal. Responding to business objectives, problems, barriers, opportunities and risks is the goal. KM is just an affective approach.
In other words - merging the two tag lines: "Don't do KM - Pursue the Goal Not the Method"
There has been much discussion on the web recently about the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom or DIKW hierarchy and it is described by Patrick Lambe as "that most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations".
Here is a little bit of reading for you. I have started with Patrick as I think he provides a very balanced view of the concept. Like most diagrams of this kind so much depends on how you interpret its meaning.
Personally, I have never thought of it as a model and have never tried to use it to describe any form of process of moving from one to the other. I have simply seen it as a pretty diagram and have used it when explaining the differences between, data, information and knowledge and in recent years dropped it from my slide-set.
There has been much discussion on the web recently about the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom or DIKW hierarchy and it is described by Patrick Lambe as "that most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations".
Here is a little bit of reading for you. I have started with Patrick as I think he provides a very balanced view of the concept. Like most diagrams of this kind so much depends on how you interpret its meaning.
Personally, I have never thought of it as a model and have never tried to use it to describe any form of process of moving from one to the other. I have simply seen it as a pretty diagram and have used it when explaining the differences between, data, information and knowledge and in recent years dropped it from my slide-set.
There has been much discussion on the web recently about the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom or DIKW hierarchy and it is described by Patrick Lambe as "that most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations".
Here is a little bit of reading for you. I have started with Patrick as I think he provides a very balanced view of the concept. Like most diagrams of this kind so much depends on how you interpret its meaning.
Personally, I have never thought of it as a model and have never tried to use it to describe any form of process of moving from one to the other. I have simply seen it as a pretty diagram and have used it when explaining the differences between, data, information and knowledge and in recent years dropped it from my slide-set.
There has been much discussion on the web recently about the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom or DIKW hierarchy and it is described by Patrick Lambe as "that most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations".
Here is a little bit of reading for you. I have started with Patrick as I think he provides a very balanced view of the concept. Like most diagrams of this kind so much depends on how you interpret its meaning.
Personally, I have never thought of it as a model and have never tried to use it to describe any form of process of moving from one to the other. I have simply seen it as a pretty diagram and have used it when explaining the differences between, data, information and knowledge and in recent years dropped it from my slide-set.
I recently read an interesting article entitled Our Panarchic Future by Thomas Homer-Dixon about the work of the ecologist Buzz Holling. In the article, he concludes:
Holling thinks the world is reaching "a stage of vulnerability that could trigger a rare and major pulse of social transformation." Humankind has experienced only three or four such pulses during its entire evolution, including the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to agricultural settlement, the industrial revolution, and the recent global communications revolution.
Today another pulse is about to begin. "The immense destruction that a new pulse signals is both frightening and creative," he writes.
"The only way to approach such a period, in which uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living."
I agree, in a complex world, it is impossible to predict or to plan the future -- we need to experiment and learn what works and what does not work and continually modify our actions accordingly.
Yes I do it. I started doing it about ten years ago. And yes I too have something to sell at times. Ten years ago almost no one was doing it and I had many a debate with people who thought I was crazy.
Today many more are doing it and as Hugh MacLeod says in his post on Selling by giving in another five years it will probably be considered normal.
I am still surprised how few conference organisers have really caught on to social media and have learnt how to use it effectively. So much can be done with social media to help market an event and make it more participatory and engaging but one of the simplest things is to agree and communicate a conference tag as early as possible.
At KM India recently tweeters had to guess the tag which resulted in two tags being used #KMIndia and #KMSummit which resulted in a lot of confusion.
This great post on Tagging and face-to-face events by John David Smith makes the case for conference tags and gives some solid tips.
Why oh why do we still use podiums at conferences? I was at a conference recently and there was no lapel mike available and no hand mike - just a fixed mike on the podium which meant I had to stand behind the damn thing, not walk around and not move my head too much. How can you relax and interact with your audience tied to the spot like that!
And then in South Africa, at a recent conference - again only a fixed mike on the podium but the podium was a large wooden one, at least four feet high maybe higher. Two of the African women who spoke were not much taller than the podium!
Take a look at the photo - yes there really is a speaker behind that podium! Crazy!
In this year’s letter Bill talk's about the importance of innovation for solving some of the world’s biggest problems and how he and Melinda see innovation as the factor that will make the difference between having a bleak future and a bright one. The letter explains how they decide which ideas to fund and talk about the benefits, time frame, and risks of each one.
If Bill and Melinda only achieve a fraction of their vision they will make a real difference in the world.
Also take a look at Bill's new website Gates Notes if you want to track what he is up to. He has also just started a twitter account and already has over 300,000 followers.
In this year’s letter Bill talk's about the importance of innovation for solving some of the world’s biggest problems and how he and Melinda see innovation as the factor that will make the difference between having a bleak future and a bright one. The letter explains how they decide which ideas to fund and talk about the benefits, time frame, and risks of each one.
If Bill and Melinda only achieve a fraction of their vision they will make a real difference in the world.
Also take a look at Bill's new website Gates Notes if you want to track what he is up to. He has also just started a twitter account and already has over 300,000 followers.
I have long admired Lilia Efimova's work on blogging. If you are interested in what it means to blog within an organisation then I suggest you read this recent article by her on Blogging for knowledge workers: incubating ideas.
Here is a little taster:
Blogging is primarily known as an instrument for personal publishing, reaching a broad and often unknown audience without pushing content on them. While blogging is personal, most of its advantages are the result being part of an ecosystem, where weblogs are connected not only by links, but also by relations between bloggers. Those relations do not appear automatically: it takes time and effort before one can enjoy social effects of blogging. To sustain blogging before those effects appear it is important to find a personally meaningful way to use a weblog.
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