find a meeting place

web design website development

collaborative software

Your job, km, and other people

jim wilde — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:38:18 +0000

Knowledge management on the job.

One of the most thoughtful bloggers, Dave Pollard, on knowledge managemt (km) and adaptive learning has an interesting post. Here's an abbreviated version but do check out his full post. FWIW Dave's blog is loaded with great stuff on KM, so don't stop with he latest post.

"Embracing Complexity in Your Job".

"But even if I were to ask the internal and external 'customers' of my client what their information and networking and related technology needs were, they wouldn't know. It's the nature of complex environments that understanding of the 'problem' and potential solutions co-emerge from the exploration, discovery and learning process."

As a services provider, we almost always assume the problems customers face are well understood. As Dave sez, "...they wouldn't know." However, as we identify one problem and demostrate a solution, other problems/solutions "co-emerge."

Dave...

"Here's the methodology I'm trying out on the new [km] project:

Identify the Customer:
Determine who the internal and external 'customers' are -- how they can
reasonably be segmented.
Research & Observe: Study the status quo to understand what is really happening, what the real
processes and workarounds are...
Converse:Have lots of iterative discussions with different customer segments to clarify your understanding of what is happening and why.
Define and Articulate the Needs & 'Problems':Some of the emergent needs and problems will be personal, and you may be able to solve many of these just by observing, conversing, and providing the individual with your ideas and the benefit of your experience.
Imagine Ways of Addressing These Needs and Problems: Now you have reached the real
starting point: Not preconceptions and solutions looking for problems, but qualified, articulated needs and problems with no obvious solutions (if the solutions were obvious, someone would have done them already).
Create a Future State Vision If Your Imagined Solutions Were Implemented:Tell a compelling story of how things could/would happen if the solutions you imagined in step 5 were implemented.
Experiment and Prototype:Start small -- your imagined solutions will never be perfect, and small-scale experiments and prototypes will allow you to refine the solution before spending all the resources on an imperfect solution.
Scale Up: Expand the pilot to all users who share the need or share and appreciate the problem."

This becomes a real problem for some of our clients, "...suppose you follow this methodology and discover (a) there are a lot of fledgling, disorganized, self-identified communities of practice and
communities of interest in (and extending beyond) the organization that need some enabling knowledge-sharing, context-building, sense-making and connectivity technology and processes to self-organize and function."

The question becomes how much access to "enabling knowledge" to give these communities, especially if they are outside of the organization?

Tags:

km2

sharing

rich internet applications

gated social networks

Social Media:

Government Blogging and Citizen Influence

jim wilde — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:59:26 +0000

"Government Blogging" by Shel Israel on red couch.

"The simple answer is to be closer with their constituents.

In government, it may be starting from the top down, but it is starting. I think it will be most valuable, when the middle of government services& mdash;people like Nadia—start to blog, but some like Miliband are demonstrating that a blog is like an old fashioned town meeting, where impassioned community members get to stand up and speak and be heard in front of the elected officials who are entrusted to serve them.

Finally, there is another reason why government will be joining the conversation. Citizen groups are blogging and in some cases starting to gain the same influence as local lobbying groups."

Shel's last point is a good one. We've been working with an engineering/architectural firm that provides services to governments on a local/state/federal level as well an on an international one. The firm is seeing more and more citizen groups blogging. What's intersting is that the firm has traditionally ignored citizen groups. However, the firm now gets it that these groups have real influence and need to be part of the process for winning and sustaining contracts.

Tags:

Social Media:

enterprise blogging systems

community software management

web design website development

Twelve Steps Of Business Change

jim wilde — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:48:58 +0000

These twelve steps are based on AA. Most of them are counter intuitive and apply on a personal level. I know there are thousands of books on change but none of them are as effective or as open source like as AA. Besides, the idea of spirituality - having an open mind and getting over your ego - has a direct correlation with web 2.0 and social software applications. Strange stuff, huh? But for any person willing to change it is a good course of action. Besides, it is free. I changed some of the wording to make it more applicable for business. Of course, these steps are only half of the solution. I'll get to the other stuff soon. Please add your thoughts on how to apply them.

We admitted we were powerless over people, markets, and events -- that our lives had become unmanageable trying to control them all.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Came to? It means you woke up to the facts of reality.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Means that your approcah to things is not working anymore and that all of the calulating, measuring, pettiness, and scheming are over.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other people, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

There are many references to God and a higher power. For those that have issues with that, go back to step 3 and 11, and re-read, "as we understood him". The steps are about getting honest with yourself, doing the right thing, and putting your ego to rest.

No, you don't have to become a religious nut. Spirituality means that you can share and experience joy, compassion, passion, awe, and that you can think with an open mind. It's about connecting, and creating and thinking in terms of abundance. How would you apply this stuff to a community?

Tags:

Social Media:

Business Development Ideas

Broken Business Models

jim wilde — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:13:28 +0000

Forbes has several articles on the many changes that are disrupting business models. I posted on this subject last year, Why Do Good Companies Fail?

We all know the thinking (ego), it goes like this, it won't happen to us, we're not like that. Denial. Is there a twelve step program, like AA, for people in businesses, organizations, goverenments to help them change? Anyway, people in businesses are all about control, whcih is the kiss of death today. I'm talking about trying to control other people and events. Something so primal that it drives us crazy. Judging from my latest indicators: sales of alcohol and mind drugs (antidepressants, antianxiety, illicit ones) are up so I'd say the transition is not going well.

In Learn, Change or Die the perscription to change is about connecting with people on a personal level. Yep, feelings matter. Cringe! Huh! What can I learn from AA Traditions? A lot! Think open source. We've adopted several great ideas from AA that we use.

I find all this talk about change fascinating since what we aim for with our services and tools brings people together on a more personal level. I wrote a post, Purpose Driven Social Network Software, where I mentioned the biggest obstacle - FEAR - facing social networks and collaborative tools in organizations.

Follow me here. MALCOLM GLADWELL, author of "The Tipping Point and "Blink" has a book review of, "Why?". The author of "Why?", Charles Tilly, sets out to make sense of our reasons for giving reasons. Go read it, I'll wait.

Tilly writes, "Effective reason-giving, then, involves matching the kind of reason we
give to the particular role that we happen to be playing at the time a reason is necessary."

My point is that in most organization we write and speak in technical terms and codes. We don't write stories, because, "... they circumscribe time and space, limit the number of actors and actions, situate all causes “in the consciousness of the actors,” and elevate the personal over the institutional." In a business context, this would be seen as a lack of due diligence and as being disrespectful of the organization.

Ok, breath.

From Forbes:

"Managing in chaos

The great challenge of our era? Get companies to change quickly enough to survive a world that's crazier and riskier than ever.

Managing amid the chaos has become the central problem for companies of every kind. It is a predicament that arises from the very nature of today's economy. And the solution requires a retraining not of skills but of mindset and assumptions. The biggest challenge has less to do with corporate strategy or management structures than with the nature of human beings and our instinctive reactions to change.

Firms that have found ways to survive and thrive in the chaos hold valuable lessons. Paradoxically, many are meeting chaos with chaos, loosening controls, sometimes radically, while guiding the company in innovative ways."

Rethink Your Business

Business models live shorter lives these days, but there are ways to get
comfortable with chaos. A sampler:

Tough talk

Force a conversation on how the company will have to operate differently
to be successful two years from now. Otherwise everyone dwells on today's
successful products.

Yellow flags

Pay close attention to what your sharpest, most mobile customers are doing.
They're your early warning of business-model problems.

Remodel early

Start changing your business model when you're most successful. When you're
in trouble, it's too late.

Abandon yesterday

Maintaining what no longer works draws your most valuable resources away
from your No. 1 job, creating tomorrow.

A new, improved story line

Explain the company's changes within a larger context. Employees, investors,
customers, and suppliers are more comfortable with change when it's presented
as part of a story line.

With chaos there is always tension and too many of us are looking for comfort zones. I seriously doubt that many businesses will survive the anges.

Here are a couple of bonus links: "Thriving on the edge of chaos", "Motivating others: why "it's good for you" doesn't work", and "Age Before Beauty". The last one is from Malcolm Gladwell. He gave a talk about the phenomenon of prodigies and late bloomers in art. The event was part of the New Yorker Nights, a series hosted by the Columbia University Arts Initiative and The New Yorker.

Tags:

connecting with people

Social Media:

RETAIL REVOLUTION - PUTTING YOUR CUSTOMERS TO WORK WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS

jim wilde — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 16:21:27 +0000

With web 2.0 tools and social software applications, retailers and marketers are using customer feedback to improver products and services.

Retail Revolution - Fortune by Oliver Ryan.

"EVER SINCE the first book review was written on Amazon.com in 1995, online shoppers have relied on one another for product intelligence. Whether it's a flat-screen TV or a Crock-Pot, someone somewhere has reviewed it, often in frightening detail. But despite Amazon's success, few other retailers have embraced reviews on their sites."

"Every year it came up, and every year we nixed it," says PETCO's vice president of e-commerce, John Lazarchic. The problem? "We had no knowledge of what the return on investment would be." Retailers of all stripes have been scared off by the cost of managing an online review community, not to mention the prospect of negative reviews and unforeseen legal liabilities.

"Harnessing the seemingly inexhaustible spirit of volunteerism that has powered MySpace and Wikipedia, the budding industry has the promise to affect inventory management, marketing, and consumer service."

Last year, I wrote about Amazon and their social network system here.

"One of the startups charges as much as $8,000 a month to handle everything from designing the review area on a retail's site to moderating discussions and analyzing user comments.

CompUSA, reports that reviews which show up on search engine result pages drew 20,000 additional visitors to its site in December. What's more, those visitors were 50% more likely to buy. PETCO has found another benefit: using customer product reviews in its advertising copy. Increased traffic is nice, but the big opportunity for retailers is to mine this new customer feedback."

A focus group can cost $5,000 to $10,000 for 20 people, but a social network system to support thousands of customers can cost under 10k in many cases.

Tags:

Social Media:

community software management

Ideascaping the Long Tail for Mind-boggling Ideas

jim wilde — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 21:02:27 +0000

Passion lives with diversity on the long tail. Yep, it's an adventure going there. I discover awesome things - from niche markets - that blow me away and really cool people - bloggers - who have mind-boggling ideas about everything.Everything is different. "Do they know each other?" I told her these people are smarter than you and me. There are so many of them. "How did you find this place?" One day I realized how ashamed of myself I was for not listening to the voice in my heart. I had become commoditized. I was not putting forth my real self. Day after day, week after week, I did the same dumb crap over and over again. Everywhere I looked, business, education, government, my community, they all looked the same.No-thing mattered. The same people doing the same thing over and over and over... "kkk ...but how did you find this place, this world?" I don't know, but this feeling inside me created this overwhelming desire to stand up straight with my shoulders back and act like I had some damn sense in my head. Things started clicking, getting clear for me. I don't remember how I got here, but it feels right, the people care. They talk to me in my own voice.From Baron Miguel Secluna's blog, "Your Intelligence, My Intelligence, Our Intelligence" by Mike Frascie. "For those of us in education and training, it is necessary to find ways to exploit the inexhaustible knowledge that exists at every level of every organization. It means that we can no longer look at learning in terms of a single person’s competencies. Diversity [the long tail] is the new mantra, particularly for higher education: diversity of products (the courses on the shelf), people, tools, offerings, bulletin board coverings, you name it. Diversity through shared knowledge recognizes that multiple intelligences can and do exist in organizations" [and outside them.]You know, when I had ideas at work, I used to have to call my boss just to find out who to talk to about them - not any more.Design and The Long Tail posted by Dominic Muren from IDFuel ..."for designers, the Long Tail may give new freedom where we were missing out before. ...The Tail is about creating pockets of absolutely devoted users in a sea of others who don't get it.""That's what the Long Tail is really about: Freedom. Freedom from re-using tried and tired designs re-branded... Freedom from lowering your ideal to the lowest bidder's values. Freedom to design the things that you believe really matter. Because if they really matter to someone, the Tail connects them with it. Since you're free to do it, why not make some users passionate with your designs?"From new and different ideas to exciting and unusual offerings, reaching the long tail is accessible to everyone that is tired of the same ol' same ol'. Pinch me, is this real?

Tags:

Social Media:

Business Development Ideas

Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed?

jim wilde — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:35:08 +0000

In a recent artical (reg req) from Wharton Business School, "Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed?" "The big question is whether blogs, short for weblogs, have the staying power to become more than just online diaries. Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model? While no definitive answers exist just yet, experts at Wharton advise questioners to be patient. Blogging, they note, will be around for a long time."Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information." "At its most basic level, it's a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing" and turning out to be "the next extension of the web," says Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach. "Blogging is still in its early days. It's analogous to where the web was in 1995 and 1996. It's not clear how it will turn out."What is clear is that opportunities for blogging abound. Companies can use bloggers to put a more human face on interactions with employees and customers; marketers can create buzz through blogs; and bloggers can act as fact checkers for the mainstream media. There are dozens of applications for blogs, Werbach notes, and many that haven't even been conceived yet. "Blogging is really driven by interest and desires, not commercial activity," says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader. "It's rare to see something take off like this when commercial prospects are so minimal. People just want to share ideas."Overall, Hunter adds, media angst over blogs is misplaced. "The idea that blogging will kill media is as overblown as when they said that e-commerce would kill the retailing business."Is There a Business Model?While corporations can chalk up blogging as a marketing expense, the story is a little different for individuals. Can blogging pay the bills? If you are lucky, you can pay the hosting fees, but that's about it, say Wharton experts. Nevertheless, Werbach predicts that multiple business models will emerge. Individuals ages 18-25 are spending more of their time online, and marketers need to reach them. That means blogging could become a way to target the most coveted audience for media. What happens when bloggers try to make money off their sites? "It's not a matter of when bloggers want to be paid, but when do readers want to pay for content," says Fader. "The mainstream media hasn't had the guts or savvy to start charging. It will be difficult for bloggers." While most agree that blogging will continue to be popular, its next steps are uncertain. Demopoulos suggests that blogging overexposure is on the horizon. "Right now, blogging is trendy," he says. "I see that lasting a few years, but it will slow down." Hunter contends that blogging is here to stay, as many sites start to incorporate blogging features, and some news sites become more blog-like. The blogosphere will also become known for topics other than technology and politics. Two things are certain: Blogging will remain disruptive to the traditional media, and new uses will surface. "You are going to see blogging move to video and instant messaging," says Werbach. "It's just the beginning."

Social Media:

The Creative Class

jim wilde — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:26:12 +0000

Dwelve 2005: A Participatory, Online Journey by Evelyn Rodriguez at Crossroads Dispatches offers an invitation to participate in an online experiment being conducted over the next month. She is starting a journey of the creative process and wants you to join her. "To astound the world, you must sink into creativity as a heroic act."...to come up with your own breakthrough ideas. "The success of your next product or service (that includes the product You) doesn’t hinge on simply working harder and longer hours." "If you are merely following lock-step with your competitors and peers..."; or if you are finding it increasingly difficult to simply stay in the game, Ms. Rodriguez is offering one solution. I'm jumping in, too; I only wish she was using our tools instead of Typepad for her journey. You know, something more robust. From a different angle, The Boston Consulting Group article"Leadership in a Time of Creative Destruction" by Carl Stern,. registration is required, offers three ideas on dealing with competitive threats. "Competitive advantage has become frustratingly elusive: harder to establish than it used to be and harder still to sustain. Strategy has always been about winners and losers. But because competitive advantage has become so elusive, today's winners are in a tougher position than ever before. Carl Stern speculates on why organizations find it so hard to adapt to the pace of change and offers three ways in which leaders can motivate the organization to confront those challenges." Reasons why change is so hard...

A surprising number of companies simply misperceive the threat.
Threats exceed the organizations adaptive capabilities.
Organizations see the threat, but do not have the stomach to deal with it.

Confronting the challenges -- The creative class."The norms that were valued in an earlier generation had to do with concepts like hierarchy and seniority-or, at least, experience and job security. Today's employees aren't as concerned with those issues. They care more about meritocracy, autonomy, self-expression, self-improvement, and mobility. In the past, leaders could rely on a variety of extrinsic motivators; today it's intrinsic motivators-the nature of the job and respect from peers."What does the new class of employee have to do with meeting adaptive change?

Your natural leaders are the truth tellers, the outlaws. These are the ones that will help you duck the bullet heading your way.
Calibrate your radar to separate the noise from the signal.
You need to enlist the whole organization.

You know, I think Ms. Rodriguez's offer is incredible. Sadly though, the people that need it the most are the ones most likely to blow it off.

Social Media:

Fun, Work, Innovate

jim wilde — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:15:36 +0000

One of the best ways to energize people is to engage them in fun. Laughing helps arteries and boosts blood flow "Laughing appears to be almost as beneficial as a workout in boosting the health of blood vessels, a new study suggests." So go visit Bernie DeKoven's FunLog, Dr. Fun and learn something new about having fun. Afterwards, check out the Joy at Work by Dennis W. Bakke. Written by co-founder Dennis W. Bakke, Joy at Work tells the story of AES, a global electricity giant organized on principles of social responsibility and fun. AES is structured around small teams with almost no functional departments, while those at headquarters act as advisers, accountability officers, and guardians of the principles. Joy at Work offers a model for other companies to successfully adopt such a system. Bakke's Top Ten:

When given the opportunity to use our ability to reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for our actions, we experience joy at work.
The purpose of business is not to maximize profits for shareholders but to steward our resources to serve the world in an economically sustainable way.
Attempt to create the most fun workplace in the history of the world.
Eliminate management, organization charts, job descriptions, and hourly wages.
Fairness means treating everybody differently.
Principles and values must guide all decisions.
Put other stakeholders (shareholders, customers, suppliers, etc) equal to or above yourself.
Everyone must get advice before making a decision. If you don’t seek advice, “you’re fired.”
A “good” decision should make all the stakeholders unhappy because no individual or group got all they wanted.
Lead with passion, humility, and love.

Put all this together and creativity, learning, and innovation flourish.

Tags:

communities

orchestrating resources

social responsibility

Social Media:

The reach around corporate blog.

jim wilde — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:37:11 +0000

On Jeremy Wrights Ensight Blog he has a list of "How Many Fortune 500’s are Blogging." Interesting. I would have thought that there would be more blogging considering all the hype about blogs the last six months. I can't remember where I read it, but i think Doc Searls or Dave Winer said corporate blogs is an oxymoron. Well, I guess you can say some companys are getting the idea of a reach-around instead of the same old corporate speak and marketing bs. Businesses need to do more. They need to invite their customers, employees, and partners to the party and give them access to tools to collaborate on ideas and co-create offerings to help everyone move forward.

Social Media:

social networking software

what's next

jim wilde — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:39:33 +0000

Until now, there was no way to find ideas and stories from multiple sources, to have a candid dialogue about ideas, to quickly share them across the organization, or to provide realtime feedback on activities.

A rich learning and development environment - built around web 2.0 and social software application - is in constant motion, nothing stands still. It is ok to continuously challenge assumptions and improve your reasoning. If you think you know everything there is to know about people, your job, your life, humanity - we cannot work together.

Coordinating activities and cultivating people is part of your learning and development environment.

Coordinating focuses on the activities that need to be done and the relationships among them. With blogging, tagging, calenders, events and tracking inherent in the system, people know where they are spending their time, and thus, know how to coordinate activities.

Cultivating focuses on the people doing the activities to get a job done. Learn what employees are sensing about the organization's agenda -- what they want, what they are good at, how they can help one another. To cultivate is to bring out the best in people.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tags:

social media tools

social web applications

xml

candid conversions

coordinating activities

Social Media:

Endless possibilities

jim wilde — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 06:06:28 +0000

To get ideas - engage the wisdom of crowds, in ways you've never imagined possible. You can see this idea in action on del.icio.us and technorati.com.

The problem used to be that information was a scarce resource. On the flip side, most employees did not need to know much about the organization to do their job.

On a counter intuitive note, everybody needs a good heap of CLUTTERED INFORMATION to tinker with in order to invent new ideas.

Serendipity anyone?

With employees using socail networking software and virtual communities, they have a better opportunity for chance encounter and better cooperation across departments.

Tags:

Getting ideas

jim wilde — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

On the fly tagging is important because with many new ideas (half-bakeded ones), it is difficult to explain them. Simple tagging is not categorizing but a way to informally describe something in our own words. Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The tipping point " and "blinks" offers some anecdotes on why we can’t trust people’s opinions — because we don’t have the language to express our feelings (audio file from IT conversations with Mr. Gladwell). I believe that using simple words and metaphors - tags, we can describe new meaning to our feelings about new ideas. READY...dig in to your company's subculture and harvest raw ideas... People want to participate! To find out how your people are dealing with daily challenges, start with internal blogs. The simple tagging system in Ideascape pushes the most active tags, those getting the most attention, to the top of a list. In addition, employees from other parts of the company are seeing action on a problem or challenge and may have something to contribute. On every blog entry, every word in the text that has an external tag (those from the net) have a clickable icon next to them to indicate that their are discussions on the net. The user can choose to follow these leads and join a relevent discussion to find ideas, solutions or gain greater insights. Ideascape improves the management, flow, and quality of ideas, both small and big ones across the organization. Use it to classify, cultivate, spread, and apply ideas that target specific circumstances, aggregate themes or future possibilities. In other words, to get fast, meaningful results, put your goals and the realities of the business in sync with the daily work activities of your people and customers and what they value. Listen! AIM... Challenges, Opportunities.Get qualitative ideas from multiple sources – even unconventional ones that offer diversity and independence - blended and synthesized with your own. Ideascape instantly establishes relationships with internal and external tags (those from the net) which leads to more and better ideas. Imagine having an immediate feedback to capture the company’s informal social network – the daily problems, challenges, and opportunities that your employees and customers face. From resource allocation and processes to priorities and values - your people can create innovative solutions to complex problems.FIRE! ... Execute ideas to increase efficiency, reduce waste, improve the bottom line and most of all - make people happy.What can I learn from this?

Social Media: