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Blog silenceWithin a day after Sebastien Paquet announced he was going to reduce his blogging activities, my own blog fell silent as well. Which was rather an untimely event since Sebastien was advocating me as a possible destination for a daily dosis of blogging on what he describes as 'human knowledge management', to compensate for missing his own daily posts. By the way I am delighted by the term Sebastien coined: 'human knowledge management'. I don't know if it is a comprehensive description of where my professional interests are, but it certainly is spot on regarding the angle I take. An angle I had not put into words, so this is progress.
permalink | Flying CoPsAndrea Janssen posts a text by Diane Le Moult of Siemens with lessons and guide lines concerning Communities of Practice. I could have, or maybe should have, seen it myself, as I am a frequent visitor of KnowledgeBoard. In our company we have transformed the way we work in the last year. Earlier we had senior researchers, all responsible for acquiring accounts, with a pool of junior researchers that were asked to participate on project to project basis. The problem was that most of the time the seniors did not know for sure if they could claim enough time with juniors to get the work done, as they were all competing for the same people. Now we have built teams, based on their field of research, with at least two seniors and a group of juniors. One senior is primarily responsible for client contacts (next to doing research of course), the other primarily for making the projects run smoothly (also next to doing research). The juniors now have time for building up more specialist expertise, while the seniors exactly know how much work they can give them. Reading Diane's text on CoPs I think it is time to review our first experiences with having teams in the light of her guide lines and lessons. It'll probably turn up a nugget of two, to improve the work in our teams. permalink | Fun is in! Or is it?While on KnowledgeBoard the role of having fun in motivating knowledge workers is highlighted, and attempts are made to identify the building blocks of having fun in your work, counter initiatives are reported from elsewhere. Via the Trust e-mail group Nick King of BT points me to an attempt to bring back Prussian discipline to the workplace. Thirty year old Judith Mair published "Fun is Out" in German (Schluss mit Lustig!), including these golden rules: I could agree if the fun factors at work were not part of the work, and added as extra's. But I strongly believe that work has to be fun, for me to be motivated, creative, and productive. So from her list I can understand the skateboard and baseball caps, if that's not the image your company needs or wants to project. But a ban on laughing? Only this week, as I wrote here earlier, I've witnessed our most productive sales meeting in years.... It was also the first sales meeting where people were laughing. Or is she targeting the definitions of fun where it has become ok to lessen quality and effectivity levels? That would be understandable, since I would look for fun to boost quality awareness and effectivity because of motivated people feeling responsible for their work, and the end results they help to bring forth. Might it just be that Mair is successful with her ban on fun ONLY because the German economy is slowing down, so that her employees have nowhere else to go? That would turn the causality she implies completely around. To take an extreme example: dictatorships only function as long as there are no alternatives for dissenters. As soon as an alternative arises, the dictatorship will collapse. It might also well be that Mairs golden rules are the first steps of a vicious circle: if productivity falls further, oppress them more. I would be very interested in employee satisfaction surveys in her company. All in all Mairs proposals sound like a step back towards the 'industrial era' paradigm that turns employees into cost-sources, and interchangeable parts of the production process, wage slaves. A paradigm knowledge professionals work hard to replace. permalink | Blogging Cold TurkeyLilia Efimova returns to the Blogosphere with Mathemagenic after being unable to blog for two weeks due to the fire at Twente University that knocked out both her work and home internet connection. She describes the effects of not being able to blog: thoughts and ideas not followed up on, notetaking on articles frustrated, and concludes that her productivity was lower than compared to when she did blog. permalink | Grass Roots: Learning to ShareMe, I'm more of a thinker than a practitioner, and that is also the case for a significant part of my colleagues I believe. This translates into lengthy debates on almost anything in our company, without resulting in decisions, and implementation thereof. Part of the problem is, in my view, that we're good at thinking up grand schemes concerning internal organisation and not so good at getting stuff done. As I fit this profile as well as any, you can imagine that I have problems getting KM-initiatives of the ground. The result is that some colleagues are wondering what the heck it is I'm doing here. That is something that needs to be remedied fast, as it diminishes the chances of any of the changes I propose actually making it into our everyday practice. So now I'm purposely setting out to bridge the gap between theory and practice. First of all I have been engaging in conversations with a trusted colleague to try and unearth why it is that I personally have difficulties seeing ideas through to the implementation stage. It has certainly to do with roles I am comfortable with and not. Maybe delegation to others is a possibility, or maybe it's a question of building up more experience. That's one track.  The other is to try and stop mentioning KM, but start offering help in (grass roots) initiatives of colleagues, and thus assuring KM-style input into these initiatives. In this second track an example: our researchers that have roles in accountmanagement meet regularly to share experiences and learn from each other, or so it was originally intended. In practice it is nothing more than people recounting what clients they have met, and which assignments they've taken on. Nothing that can't be found in the acquisitionreports we all get anyway. A colleague, irritated about the unfulfilled potential here, came to me and asked for my assistance. We decided not to debate our issues at length (see first paragraph) but just go ahead and try a different approach, and see how it works out. First we have changed the way acquisitionreports are made. They used to list clientcontacts by researcher. We've turned it around and now list contacts per client, as we think we should talk about client-contacts and not researcher-contacts. The second change is that we asked all researchers that will attend the meeting to not talk about what exactly they talked about with clients, as was the routine untill now. Instead we asked them to select one example from their recent contacts that says something about the impressions we make on our clients. How do they see us, and is that image the one we want to convey? Is there a pattern in the observations we make? As an example I recounted in my introductory instructions my recent visit to a prospect. This prospect viewed us a software company as the only productinformation he saw from us was one having to do with some software we happen to sell as a tool. This tool is part of a larger product that is in the area of consulting. So I talked with this prospect about what it is we actually do. Now how is it that this prospect got the wrong impression? Is our productinformation not clear enough? These are the sort of things my colleague and I want to talk about when meeting the other accountmanageing researchers. Oh and third is, that we got the one chairing the meeting on our side for this experiment. So at 13:00 we'll see how the first steps in this experiment will work out, as that is when the meeting will get underway. The reason I'm telling you this is two-fold. By publishing this, even though it is scary as I recount weaknesses in me, and in our organisation, I'm creating a permanent reminder that this is what I set out to do. The second reason is that I hope to get some feedback from you as a reader. Are there grassroots examples you would like to share? How do you bridge the gap between theory and practice, or do you have problems connecting practice to theory? Feel free to comment, e-mail, or cross-reference! Update after the meeting: it went very well. People seemed to enjoy it. It is the first time I have seen people laugh with eachother at a meeting like this. Also discussions yielded far more than I have witnessed in the last 2 years, in an much more open and collaborative way. Participants definitely want to do this again, and suggested maybe picking a theme each time around which to focus remarks/anecdotes and resulting discussion. Also the stuff we usually talk about in these meetings was addressed, but now as it naturally came up during the discussions. The secretary taking minutes was surprised at the amount of notes she had to work out. Let's see how it works out the next time (Jan. 7th) permalink | Appreciating Your NeighboursSebastien Paquet uses Thanksgiving as a trigger to start putting into words what it is that other people add to his life: So on this occasion I've started a Neighborhood Tour page where I try to acknowledge how the various people listed in my sidebar influence my thinking and actions. Expressing thanks and acknowledgements are very important in creating a knowledgesharing culture. Often it is by giving such acknowledgements that others become really aware where their strengths lie, and what it is that they are good at. Seldom have I learnt more than when friends or colleagues shared their observations on me with me. And it is on such occasions that became clear to me what I had that was worthwhile to share. A common enough observation is that people say "sure sharing knowledge is a good thing, but there's just nothing that I can contribute". Constructive criticism, sincere praise, and thanks, to me also are expressions of trust, a confirmation of strong ties. And even though we say "thank you" a lot routinely, never underestimate the power it might have. Here's a little anecdote from my own experience: "A few years ago a new secretary came to work at our company and she came to me after a few weeks to tell me how very nice it was that I always said "thank you" to her whenever I asked her something to do. This wasn't the way she was brought up, wasn't the way she was treated in her earlier jobs, and it wasn't the way my colleagues were behaving. I never thought twice about it before, but since then I've noticed that people are a lot more eager to share their experiences with me than some colleagues....all by just saying "thank you", something my parents taught me was just appropiate to say. Since that time I always make sure to respond positively when someone says thank you to me, in the hope that it might trigger the same effect with them." So, hopefully one day I'll show up in Seb's Neighbourhood Tour. Not only because it is always nice to hear you're appreciated, but also because it is another chance to learn more about myself. And of course I'll be sure to thank him for it! permalink | Karl Sveiby's key note speech at KM in Europe 2002As I wrote before, I visited the KM in Europe 2002 convention in London November 13-15th. On the last day Karl Erik Sveiby held his key note speech. I did not find time before to make a report from my hand written notes, so I'm doing it now. The powerpoint presentation (even though he thinks powerpoint is a very bad way of 'pushing' information at people) of Sveiby's talk can be found at the KM Europe download page. You will also find all the other key note presentations there.  Sveiby started his talk with an exercise: close your eyes and touch your nose with your right index finger. About 3 people couldn't. Now talk your neighbour trough the same exercise by giving him precise instructions on what to do. About 3 people could. That, says Sveiby, is the difference between knowledge and information. So to him all knowledge is implicit. "Knowledge is the capacity to act within context." Both the emphasis on action and context are important I think. He then continued to define KM, a term coined by Karl Wiig in 1986, something Wiig "now bitterly regrets". Sveiby defines KM as the management of a company/organisation that consists only/mostly of "knowledge workers". Knowledge workers here are highly educated, highly skilled and experienced. So to Sveiby not everybody is a knowledge worker, as can be heard quite often lately. The latter would also render the term useless by the way, as it does away with all the distinctive qualities of the phrase. The next step was connecting the definition of knowledge to the definition of KM. In essence he closely follows his own 1997 book The New Organizational Wealth. He talked of internal structures, external structures and competences in both the book and his speech. However, where in the book all three are presented more or less at once, in his speech he explained more clearly the way internal and external structures come forth from individual competences. And this deepened my own insight.  As an individual uses his knowledge, his capacity to act within context, to do just that, act, he "stretches" himself into the outside world, he is reaching out. The result of this, relations, transactions, etc, are the external structures. It is by putting individual competences to use that external structures are built. So now you have two circles, competences and external structures, with a two-way link between them. The third circle, internal structures is added as you become succesful in the outside world. You start to need other people to help you, you start building an organisation. The internal structures are the translation of your own individual competences into a larger scale. This cluster therefore has a two way link to your own competences, but also starts to interact with the already existing external structures in its own right. You end up with three circles, each dually linked. Value is created in the overlap of all three circles, and is the product of all interaction taking place. The one thing I value the most in this description is that it takes the individual as a starting point. This also emphasizes to me that humans are at the heart of KM, whatever the IT-boys might think. (Sveiby: "Alas, Knowledge management has been hijacked by IT") The three circle picture identifies 10 strategic issues. One for each circle in itself (3), two for each two way connection between circles (6), and the tenth is the overall question how the value creation capacity of the whole system can be maximised. In the sheets, examples of all ten strategic issues are described. I will give a list of them here: The three circles: The two-way links between each pair of circles: And, as mentioned above the tenth strategic issue is how the value creation capacity of the whole system can be maximised. You can now proceed by identifying bloccades on each of these ten issues. Sveiby gave some good and bad practices he encountered concerning these ten issues. The last part of his talk was about the benchmark system he helped make, the Collaborative Climate Index. In three years of testing, with 20 questions, 12.000 respondents in 80 organisations he created a database for benchmarking. Some of the general results can be seen in the sheets. Most of what is described above, you are propably already dealing with in some way or another in your organisation. But not consciously as Sveiby pointed out. And that is precisely what I am constantly pleading for: conscious choice making, based on self knowledge (in this case of your competences). Sveiby also named trust as the one vital ingredient for knowledge sharing. One last remark that Sveiby made: "Value is independent of the way it is measured." Euro's and Dollars are not equal to value, but merely one way of trying to measure it. permalink | My BookshelfI don't know about you but the first thing I do when I visit a friends house I've never been in before is take a look at his or her bookshelves. It gives me extra insight in interests, scope and depth of interests, and more often than not points me to interesting reads I had not discovered yet myself.  To create a bit of that feeling right here in my blog, I've added the titles that I'm reading at the moment. Adding all the hundreds of titles on my shelves would be to much, of course. So now you have some impression of what is keeping me thinking/entertained. And of course, thanks to Amazons associate program, if you decide to click on the book and go ahead and buy it for yourself, this will result in some discount on my next purchase with them. permalink | Join a Tribe!The historical development of western man went from hunter-gatherers, to nomads, to tribal farming villages, to industrial age towns, and now to cybernavigating city-dwellers. And this week I took a step back and joined a tribe. A tribe? Yup! My anthropology teacher already told me that the steps in western man's history do not form an evolutionary path in the sense that all other peoples will follow the same pattern in their development. And then proceeded to give examples of people who took the same steps in a totally different order but still were growing strong. I probably proved him in point by joining this tribe.  I am talking about the Bloggers-Tribe over at Ryze, a networking community somewhat like Ecademy, but upon first experience with a more relaxed take. Andrea Janssen strengthened this impression by telling me that to her it was another layer to her social network, and not in as much a place to pick up business contacts. I think that's actually a good thing. From stronger social ties, business ties will follow where trust is already established. Ryze organises people around common interests and calls these groups Tribes. Go have a look if you want, and join in. It already introduced me to bloggers as yet unknown to me, but with interesting things on their minds. permalink | Knowledge Roles RollingThe Knowledge Roles are rolling around the blogosphere, notes Andrea. Thought?Horizon warns us not to take these roles as who we are, but as actions, what we do. I agree totally. Like with Belbin's Teamroles I see several roles I feel very comfortable with, several that I don't feel comfortable with at all, and others I'm pretty neutral to. However, as Thought?Horizon points out, as a lone Knowledge Manager I might have to take on all 12 roles. I am not really sure I agree to that, but if it is true my job turns out to be a daunting task. ;)  My gutfeeling says it might be a way to give some structured view to my activities, as I am constantly switching between more strategic knowledge issues, and down to earth details of every day practitioning. This makes the question "What is it that you do" often hard to answer in one sentence. I do everything, and yet do nothing, is what it mostly boils down to. These roles might make my activities more recognizable, more tangible of sorts, to me and others. permalink | The Seeds of SuccessDianne Ford of the Queen's School of Business in Kingstown, Canada, has written a very useful paper on Trust in KM. She addresses different aspects of trust, and directly links them to different knowledge processes in organisations. This paper might be very useful in translating what I have said earlier on the role of trust in organisations and km into practical approaches. It is also very worthwhile to check out the rest of the website of Queen's Business School's Centre for Knowledge-Based Enterprises. permalink | Knowledge RolesIn Fliegen von ferne, Andrea Janssen's weblog, David Skyrme is cited on the roles in KM he distinguishes. The different roles build on different strengths ands personality traits. Andrea posts it as a means for determining your career 'anchors'. It reminds me however of the Team Roles by Belbin. Thus David's roles in KM become not only a means of determining your personal position in the big picture, but also a way of determining what roles you need to get a certain KM task done. Sort of building your KM project team. In my organisation I am the only KM officer. Being able to recognize suitable knowledge roles of my colleagues might be a way to build stronger and more succesfull KM-initiatives. permalink | Trust, Organisations, and Philosophic JargonWhile preparing for an exam Tuesday afternoon, I started correlating the material under study, dealing with the task description and fields of operation for a 'philosopher of technology', with what I have said here earlier on trustflows in organisations. First of all it seems not clear to everyone that organisational structures are able to convey messages, e.g. concerning trust. This is perhaps easier to understand from this perspective: Every man made item, whether it be an artefact, or something uncorporeal like organisational structures, have been designed by human beings. This design process specifically embeds instructions and meanings into the artefact/structure. This is called scripting. You have to follow the script for the artefact to fulfull its function. However a well established fact is that humans think of uses for artefacts other than have been designed into them. Also humans recognize other scripts than have been embedded, they start following scripts that were not intended by design. Thus artefacts are no longer the extension of the designer, but become actors themselves. Lots of technology implementations fail because of not recognizing this effect. This means that structures in organisations cannot be seen as neutral contexts of operation for people, but should also be considered active participants within that system of meaning. This is what I mean when I say you have to search for the hidden messages organisational structures convey concerning trust. Also you have to be aware that there are probably a number of different systems of meaning, or partial rationalities in place in your organisation. It would be a mistake to focus only on one of these partial rationalities and then define generic solutions. Also it will probably prove impossible to find one partial rationality that covers all the others that exist within your organisation. Yet this is precisely what general management often tries to do. It is from this starting point that I have worded the need for looking at boundaries between different parts of the organisation, the comparison of both formal and informal structures within the organisation, and social network analysis. It not only provides insight in all the different partial rationalities at play, but also narrows down the area where your proposed solution will have the effect you designed into it. This leads us to a management lesson often learned already: there are no absolute answers or generic solutions, there are no quick fixes, but there will be a whole mix of solutions that you have to apply to the precise spot it is designed to address. permalink | How to Measure Trust in Your Organisation?In recent months I have spend time regularly on trust and its implications for knowledge management. This has all been sparked by a article of John Moore on the value of trust. Only last week a whole new Trust Special Interest Group on KnowledgeBoard.com has been started, which John moderates, since the topic had become too large to be just a part of the Emotional Intelligence SIG. A must-go-see for all who are interested in trust. Also I wrote an article on the role of trust in knowledge management myself, and among the people reacting to it, was Frank Kouwe, who is knowledge manager with Waterschap De Dommel, a semi-governmental institute for regional watermanagement. Last Friday we met and discussed how to go about getting a picture of trustflows in his organisation. A sort of temperature reading of trust. As I work for a company that deals with developing questionnaires, e.g. for employee satisfaction measurement, it seemed likely to start from there. Normally these types of research address communicational and leadership issues in a company, topics which can also be viewed from a Trust point of view. Both leadership and communication probably have large trust components build into them. We strongly suspected that trust is not something you can ask about directly. Either you won't get useable answers because the questions get too abstract, or people will give answers that seem desireable. So how to ask about trust in questionaires? We came up with the following points:  Apart from asking questions, you can also try to conduct a survey to do social network analysis, one making an inventory of contacts people have, another doing the same for the people they trust the most. This would give you a picture of where personal relationships in your company are sparse, or where trusted people also form important nodes in the social network. These people could be important trust 'hubs' in your organisation. ("I trust John, because Peter trusts him, and I already trust Peter", where Peter is the trust 'hub') A third approach to mapping trust could be looking at incongruency between formal and informal structures in your organisation, and also looking at what happens at boundaries between different parts of your organisation. What messages are organisational structures giving your people. For instance if you've put your support desk in the basement behind the boiler room, what are you telling your people about the amount of support they can trust on getting from you(r organisation)? Other structures to be examined in this sense are measurements and reward systems. Are they having side effects as trust-creating or trust-destroying messages to your people? Using an idea from Chris Macrae, you could also try and map opposing interests and blockades between parts of the organisation. By charting what obligations and promises part of an organisations has to meet and keep, and then looking at where keeping one promise leads to breaking another promise, you'll probably find trust undermining structures in your organisation. The above is the result of talking for an hour or so, and certainly needs more work to be useful. I'll keep you informed of how we will move forward from here. permalink | What is the Mark of a Master?Gareth published this list of tips on how to write texts properly, or at least increase the chance of it being written properly. An article that was referenced to a lot in the last days. Last weekend in a Waterstone's in Salisbury I picked up a book on how to write philosophical texts, which is of interest as I am currently studying philosophy. What is the use of these sort of guides, since well established writers often say they actually do not know how they write so well, or that it is because of their inspiration. Yesterday I talked to a colleague of mine about this, who is also composer. He brought the same question up, albeit in somewhat other words. "If anyone can read these guides and use the tools mentioned in them, how come not everyone is a writer or composer?" This to me translates into "What is the mark of a master?".  Two things came to mind trying to answer this question. First a spark of originality. You need this in order to have a starting point for whatever it is you'll create. Many people don't get this far, maybe because they do not recognize it when it comes to them. How often have you had a thought that you tossed aside because noone else seemed to think about the same thing? Only to find out months later that your thought has become mainstream, and in fact was an original thought the first time. Are the creative people better at recognizing their original thoughts, or passionate enough to keep them, or don't they care that their thought does not seem to register with others at first? Second is the invisibility of the tools in the final product. In well made artefacts, of whatever sort or form, there is usually no trace left by the tools that made them (unless by intention of the maker). Beautiful statues don't show the chipmarks made by hammer and chisel, finely crafted tapestries don't show the individual knots they're made of, well composed music does not make apparent the deliberate tricks to guide your ears in the right direction, or its underlying mathematical patterns. So even if I have read a guide on writing, this might mean I still can't write well, because of the all too apparent use of tools in the texts I produce. It's the stuff where people don't plainly see or know how you did it, that they find clever. And for those who say they don't know how they create, it might just be that the tools have become invisible to them as well! Tools so completely incorporated into your own skills, that you don't recognize them as such any more. Thus the craftmanship becomes invisible in the master. Would you agree to these two ingredients that mark the master? Or are there others you can come up with? This is a very relevant question as it touches on the tacit/explicit divide in knowledge. The cleft between codified knowledge (~information) and the ability to put it to use well. permalink | Corporate BloggingRick Klau published an evaluation of his klog-experiment in his company, which makes a very interesting read. Valuable lessons can be learned from this posting. He ran a pilot with 12 people from the 125 in the company for a month. Interesting are the comments on how blogs were used by these 12 people: Also Rick addresses the apprehension of the pilot-participants:  He concludes with the lessons drawn from this pilot, lessons that have a familiar ring as they seem to coincide with lessons learned from many different general management situations, e.g. motivating your knowledge workers: Reading Rick's evaluation makes me think about the feasability of such an experiment in my own company. I have been keeping this blog for three weeks now, and I have found it to be a somewhat addictive and most certainly worthwile activity. This is probably due to the fact that I had no inhibitions regarding "what to post", as I am used to jotting down comments and notes for private purposes. The blog puts that in the public domain. And that to me is where the reward is: My personal notetaking has surprisingly become a way of establishing new relationships with people. Readers comments, referral linking etc, create a whole new network of people around me, and this I find hugely stimulating. An effect which Andrea Janssen also commented on when she said that [meeting other k-bloggers ...] "creates something of an European network". Other descriptions of rewards were given in the discussion on KnowledgeBoard.com that made me start my blogging experiment in the first place. This leaves the question as to what rewards others in my company might want from blogging wide open. Something clearly to put some thoughts into, before expanding the blog-thing into our company. A first step probably is bringing my blog to the attention of my colleagues, and let them see what it is I do with it. Or better yet, I might set up an internal blog, where I give insight into my activities as knowledge manager. This because to too many colleagues this often still is somewhat obscure, and an issue I need to address anyway. permalink | Alma Mater up in flamesThis morning around 8 I logged on to work from home. While discussing (by phone) and jointly editing a file with a colleague, suddenly my connection to the office was lost. In the office, 30 minutes later (yes I live only 5 mins from work!), an internal e-mail made clear why: one of the buildings of Twente University stood ablaze. This building accidently not only houses my own faculty, philosophy of science, my girlfriends faculty, applied communicational sciences, but also the university's computercentre. Our offices are connected to the internet's backbone, you've guessed it, there. Fortunately there are no casualties. 
(pictures taken from the make shift webpage of Twente University) From a KM point of view this is also a disaster. Notes from PhD-students, primary sources of their research, all the paper-based material of the courses currently under development to fit the new Bachelor-Master structure of the faculty, all lost. All the digital stuff is still there, back-up procedures have certainly proven their worth today. But most of us deposit the real clues to our work and knowledge, especially of the work currently in progress, in the stacks of paper on our desks. So to most people who work and study in these buildings this must be a huge setback, and in some cases might even mean startig all over again on whatever research project was at hand. It might take some time to get back on-line again from work. To those of you whom I have promised to send material on last weeks conference, I ask for patience, because it is all stored on my computer at the office.....and no connection to the outside world. permalink | Three days very well spentYesterday saw me getting up as early as 06:00 to reach the Ally Pally in time at 09:10, for Karl Erik Sveiby's keynote speach. An journey that should not take more than little over an hour, can get quite challenging when there's a strike on. It wasn't too bad however, and I actually arrived too early. Sveiby's speech really was worth getting up early, no doubt about that. Not that he told me many things that were totally new, but it is interesting to hear on which things he places emphasis in all the material he wrote. It triggered a lot of thoughts while I was listening. The people next to me must have thought that I was writing everything down verbatim, as I was scribbling away frantically, trying to get down as much of the associative thoughts and ideas that were going through my mind as possible. It was a pleasure to hear this "founding father" of KM speak. I met up with Dominic Kelleher, to see how I could get involved in the work of the CEN Workshop that looks to describe enough of the field of KM for sme's new to KM to quickly find their way, and start applying km-initiatives. David Gurteen introduced me to both Andrea Janssen, who writes the Fliegen von ferne-blog, and to Sam Marshall who writes Intellectual Capital Punishment. Meeting all these people, who's writings and contributions you saw passing your screen, putting faces to the names, really feels like discovering a map of a community that I suddenly happen to be part of. Quit nice really. While I was just about to leave the convention, Angele Nobre (she leads the Quarere-sig on KnowledgdeBoard.com) came up to me and engaged me in what turned out to be a very interesting conversation, as she is already doing what I hope to do in my mastersthesis: building bridges between philosophy and managing businesses. Where for me until now this was just a sort of daydream based on the intuitive connections I saw between my work as a knowledge manager and my studies in philosophy of science, she has now put me firmly on the track of really thinking about this. Turning the no-strings-attached dreamy thinking into the real thing. So all in all it would seem that have a lot of work cut out for me. The Knowledgeboard sigs, the CEN workshop, philosophy in relation to KM, all the nuggets of ideas to evaluate, the new contacts to follow up on, etc. But this certainly does not seem a daunting task. I am extremely satisfied with the results of my visit to London. Not only have I addressed all the things I set out to do, but I got much more than that too. Do they know yet where KM Europe 2003 will be? permalink | An art-convention selling brushes and paintToday was a motivating day. After struggling through the tube-system, with the Picadilly line out of service due to the fire-fighter strike, and taking the bus from Finsbury Park up to the venue, I met up again with the same lady I already talked to shortly yesterday. Then, as today, we just happened to walk from the busstop to the main entrance at the same pace, and started talking. It turned out we both knew Chris Macrae. As we entered the convention floor we both commented on the fact that most of the exhibitors were promoting software. Already yesterday I had felt some unease at this, and today I put that unease into words. I feel like going to an art convention, and finding nothing but people trying to sell me brushes and paint. I am certainly not saying that these tools are useless, but they are not the key issue, and presenting them as a goal in themselves makes me feel uneasy. Sally wasn't the only one I had pleasant conversations with. I also met up with Chris Macrae, who turns out to be what I would describe as a classic thinker. Closing his eyes when talking to you. I could see him struggling to get some sort of order in all the associations that are racing through his mind, and from which he has to choose and tell me about it. It's actually wonderful to see him in action. John Moore I also met, over tea, and meeting him too added a lot of perspective that was created from the discussion we had via Knowledgeboard and e-mail. It was for these sort of conversations that I came to London, and I am grateful to those that were willing to engage in conversations. I spent the afternoon at the KnowledgeBoard meeting where all the special interest groups presented themselves. Apart from kmei sig, I guess there are a few others I feel the need to get into. And all for different reasons. SME's for one, as I work for an SME myself. The ngo and the public services SIG, because this bears relevance to the majority of our clients. The upcoming trust SIG naturally, because that's what I'm passionate about. And then there's the Quarere sig, that aims at bringing together students and KM-practitioners, which appeals to me as I'm both a KM-professional as well as a student. Building bridges between academia and business is precisely the kind of thing I can get excited about. For the Quarere-sig I linked up with Angele Nobre from the Lisbon business school. It seems that Lilia already pointed me out to her last week, but the interest in this project is certainly coming from both sides. All in all an exciting day, and plenty of stuff to think about. Lucky for me the return journey to Reading tonight took me more than 3 hours, which provided me with ample time to do just that. permalink | My first impressions of KM in Europe 2002Some quotes that sparked my attention (I’ll expand on it after my return) Dr. Panagiotis Damaskopoulos of Insead talked about the causal links between knowledge and innovation. His proposition is that the basic unity of the economy is no longer the company, but the network it resides in. Organisational capital then is the (quality of) relationships within the company and the relationships with the outside world. Another question he put forward is, what are we moving towards, a knowledge driven economy (already happening) or a knowledge based society. If the latter is the case, would a company then not be an unlikely place to be the focal point of knowledge processes? Mr. Huub Rutten, who gave an online presentation on Monday on Knowledgeboard, also spoke during the workshop of Cezanne Software concerning the question how to motivate and retain knowledge workers. From his background in linguistics he came up with the notion that listening is a form of speaking to yourself. As you hear the other speak you are actually attaching strings of what you hear to what you already know. This he uses for instance in developing comparative document searches to provide knowledge workers with ‘intelligent’ newsfeeds. If I apply this picture to my notetaking, and I think it’s a correct picture as I always write down not only what I hear but also my associations, then it’s no wonder that my first impressions here, are what they are: They all connect to my earlier statements on the organisation as a cluster of relationships, whose quality is determined by the existence and extent of mutual trust. Oh yeah, by the way: David Gurteen thought that I looked actually younger in reality than in the picture on the left hand side. Even though the picture was taken 4 years ago. Might be weightloss, might be because I feel happier now than then, or it might be just because I had a haircut last week. ;) permalink | Managers don't realise they're rolemodelsIn the latest issue of Management Team, a Dutch magazine, I found a short interview with Muel Kaptein, professor of management studies at the Erasmus University, and also consultant with KPMG. He recently wrote a book called "the sincere manager" in Dutch (The Balanced Company: A Theory of Corporate Integrity in English), in which he explores the importance of managers that lead by example. He points out that most employees tend to copy the behaviour of their bosses, where ethics in the workplace is concerned. Therefore organisational change should target the managers first, as the employees will follow their lead. This in stead of handing out a set of new rules to your employees and simply expecting to follow them. He also stresses the importance of explicitly formulated corporate ethics and values. His research shows 27% of employees does not honor agreements, because the boss doesn't either. The same goes for abuse of corporate facilities (25%), bullying (25%), damaging private activities (25%), internal fraud (23%), and leaking confidential information (21%). The problem? Businesses see ethics as something instrumental, and not related to leadership, vision and commitment. However, if a company wants to steer behaviour they will have to acknowledge the enormous influence of the personal dimension. Well, that leads us right back on track on what I've put forward regarding trust, and what Chris Macrae hammers on with transparancy at valuetrue.com permalink | A course on Blogging?Xi:blue offers a course on Essential Web Journaling, which seems to entail not much more than learning to install and use Userland's Radio. And that for about 500 euro's.  I don't know, I think I've learned more this last week by reading the Blogger FAQ, and looking how other blogs were made, than I could learn in these two days Xi:blue is offering. But hey, maybe it would make blogging look like a respectable activity to my boss? permalink | KM Europe 2002, part IIHere's my rough schedule for the KM Europe 2002 convention, at "Ally Pally", or Alexandra Palace, London from Nov. 13th-15th: Wednesday, November 13th Thursday, November 14th Friday, November 15th Feel free to e-mail me if you would like to meet up, or give me a call at 0031-629018150. I will be blogging my impressions daily from London, so if you're not attending in person, read my subjective account here. permalink | Business' Prime Directive: Awareness and explicit choice?Sometimes different observations lead to the same conclusion. Or maybe it's just that these observations are made because they fit an intuitive conclusion that was already brewing somewhere in the recesses of my mind, where there always seems to be a lot of brewing going on.
permalink | KM in Europe 2002Starting a week from now on Wednesday Nov. 13th, the Knowledge Management in Europe 2002 Congress will take place in Alexandra Palace in London. I will be attending for the full three days. To me it is primarily an opportunity to meet with the people I have been discussing KM with at KnowledgeBoard since last May. I like the way the European KM forum, through KnowledgeBoard and face to face meetings in e.g. workshops, creates a mix of both online and face to face platforms of interaction. All the ingredients of this mix work to enhance eachother. For those of you who might be interested in meeting me in London next week, don't hesitate to drop a line to the e-mail address on the left. On Nov. 13th, 14th and 15th I'll be there.
 permalink | Just moved in, and moving out again?I started this blog only a day ago, and already I am thinking about moving. Not to quit blogging. As yet, the responses of others have been positive, and it is way too early to draw any conclusions on this experiment my blog is. No, it's the service of blogger that's the point. Not that I think I have much ground to complain, as this is of course a free service I'm using. But what I really miss already is the possibility of readers giving comments. Today I found myself pasting an e-mail exchange into Blogger. E-mails that would have been comments if they could have been. So that's a drawback. Second I think servertimes are too high. So now I'm on the lookout for a new place to host my blog. Thursday I'll have lunch with someone who has more experience with blogging, than me. Not that it is very difficult to match my experience :) But I trust her to be a good source of information. I could host my blog myself, as serverspace would not be an issue, but that still leaves me with the choice of tools. As this is an experiment I'm not eager to spend money. But probably dishing out 40 euro's or something might buy me something halfway decent to give this experiment an actual chance of being a succes. permalink | On the role of trust in knowledge management
permalink | My first Blog-entryHi there, In recent weeks I have come across several blogs with professional aims. Now I'm trying my hand at blogging myself. This even though I don't really know if this is added value for me or not. During the last couple of days I discussed blogs with David Gurteen, Lilia Efimova and Sebastien Paquet, who all have their own blogs. I asked them why they blog, and what it brings them. It turns out I have been blogging for years myself. Just not on the web! In a post to knowledgeboard.com I describe how I've kept a diary for most of my life, have been taking notes during conversations and meetings for 14 years, and have been jotting down notes, phrases and singular thoughts. Now I will try and do the same on-line My blog will focus mainly on Knowledge Management (KM), but don't feel surprised if other stuff comes up as well. I have named my blog inTERdependent thoughts. Untill now my notetaking was purely a personal endeavour, to which others were not privy. These were independent thoughts. By publishing them here I entwine them with thoughts of others, and they thus become interdependent. The "ter" in italic marks the transition. The first interdependent thought in action is this blog. Thanks to the exchange with David and Lilia it has come into existence. Who am I? Well, for starters have a look at my profile over on KnowledgeBoard.com. Or simply take a look a the picture below, and wait for whatever will be published here in the future to form your own opinion.
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Currently reading:
 The Tipping Point
Just read:  Small Pieces Loosely Joined
Plan to read: 
The Human Condition Why show you these books? |
