Happy
Flag Day from the birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner
Session
1: Competencies: Knowledge Sharing, presented by Arthur J. Murray, D. Sc., Applied
Knowledge Sciences, Inc. and moderated by Craig Wingrove, KPMG LLP, for the Leadership
and Management Division.
At
least 90 people—an overflow crowd even after we got more chairs—attended this
session at 7:30a.m., even though there was no food provided. Impressive.
He
first talked about the knowledge life cycle: capture, share, apply. You can’t
just do one; you must do them all.
The
objective is to get the right knowledge to the right people and apply it in the
right way. The speed at which this cycle occurs is increasing.
Knowledge
life cycle check:
1. What
is the result you’re trying to produce? Most knowledge sharing efforts fail
because they tried to capture all
the knowledge in the organization. Apply the Pareto principle—be selective—get
the 20% that delivers 80% of the result. What are the key decisions involved in
that result? This is the most important part of knowledge sharing!
2. Has
the right knowledge been identified and captured?
3. Has
it been made available to those who need it?
4. Has
it been applied consistently to achieve the desired result?
Knowledge
is applying the right information. “We’re drowning in information and starved
for knowledge.” We want to capture knowledge to help make informed decisions.
The
decision cycle: acquire information, assess or interpret it, make a decision
based on it, communicate the decision, and act on that decision. We’re over
invested in acquiring and acting, under invested in the others. The result?
Poor or inconsistent decisions, repeated mistakes, wasted time and effort,
erroneous effort, wrong interpretations. What is the cost?
Can
one decision do you in? No, but a bunch of little ones can do it. If everyone
makes one little one on the way to filling the CEO on background for a
decision, what is the probability that he/she will make the right decision?
What
is the one biggest obstacle to your organization being a true sharing knowledge
enterprise? Unsupportive key management, cultural differences, knowledge
hoarding, no effective mechanism for sharing, communication, and lack of
clarity at lower levels as to what the organization’s goals are.
The
largest portion of the presentation was his knowledge sharing competencies quiz.
Murray showed us pictures and asked what competencies they portrayed.
used
car salesman: ability to sell your ideas; credibility
train
conductor: make people feel welcome in the system, make it fun, make them want to share knowledge
ballroom
dancers: ability to lead and follow;
partnership; patience—you cannot force the system to work
quilters:
coordinate and “connect the dots”
gardener:
nurturing; weeding
faith
healer: get rid of demons
magic:
look into the future
jazz
musician: toot your own horn, improvise
Native
American storyteller: storytelling—both your own and draw out others’ stories,
share stories
mountain
climber: scaling the heights, find extra strength to finish the job, fortitude
and stamina and endurance, be in it for the long haul, “the view at the top is
spectacular,” be willing to take the risk (but with the right equipment and
support)
Jefferson,
Adams, Washington: leadership, vision
athletic
coaches: coaching, mentoring, motivation
high
stakes poker players: risk taker, strategy
currency
traders on the stock exchange: getting people to see the value and articulate
it to others
ship’s
captain: chart the course
bridge
builder: break down information silos
fly
fisherman: making the lure, enticing others into the system and hooking them
gymnast:
balance
stand
up comedian: lighten up, entertain
cheerleader:
lead, regular communication
archaeologist:
find the hidden knowledge nuggets, may have to unearth them and lead people to
them
chess
player: strategy, looking several moves ahead
white
house press secretary: communicator
cowgirl:
corral people, often is like herding cats
demolition
team: demolish existing barriers to knowledge sharing, tear down old
hierarchical structures
chiropractor:
“organizational chiropractor,” getting things into alignment
window
washer: sometimes you have to do the scut work
He
also had a bowl of water on the head table and three drinking bird toys. This
was an illustration of how to get your customers to drink from the font of
knowledge. They won’t do it by themselves; sometimes you just have to plunge
them in; someone has to take the first plunge. Does adding more knowledge
(water) help? No. With patience, he finally got all of them drinking.
The
four stages® of contribution (from Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson, The Four Stages® of Careers in
Organizations, Novations Group, Inc., 1993)
1. contributing
dependently (under supervision)
2. contributing
independently—many people stop here
3. contributing
through others. You can no longer be the only “go to” person; you have to give
them the tools to become “go to” people too.
4. contributing
strategically. Everything you contribute works to achieve strategic goals
In contrast to the old,
document-centric approach, the new, knowledge-centric approach involves:
1. everything
in the old model, plus
2. cataloging
people (and the knowledge in their
heads)—not just the where but the who
3. then
connecting people who need to be connected
4. motivating
them to collaborate and share knowledge (carrot and stick, give back/coach
others in order to survive and compete as an organization)
Start
with one small project, succeed, then word will spread of your success and
others will join in.
You
must implement organizational alignment. Imagine a pyramid with the following
eight layers. You design the knowledge sharing process from the top down and implement
it from the bottom up.
1. vision
2. mission
3. strategic
objectives (#1 from above)
4. strategy
for carrying them out, execution
5. performance
drivers, that will make or break the mission (e.g., new products, value chain, low cost)
6. core
capabilities
7. key
process areas
8. key
enablers (people and technology)
Get over the technology; don’t start
from the bottom. Align human and social capital with organizational and
structural capital.
The four pillars of knowledge
management (from Michael Stankosky, Creating
the Discipline of Knowledge Management; The Latest in University Research,
Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005)
1. leadership
2. organization
(understanding the organization, its process, what is there now)
3. technology,
only as an enabler
4. learning,
must learn rapidly (as an organization and as individuals)
Finally, tips to remember:
1. always
“eat your own cooking,” walk the walk—you must share your knowledge
2. get
others to link what they do directly to a strategic result
3. jump
start if necessary, but let them quickly
take over the reins, get them started (with the right tools) then get out of
the way—check in now and then and coach if necessary
Questions from the audience:
How do you teach people what is
important? Remind them of the 80/20 rule. Everything is important, but what is critical? Make list of all, then,
choose the most important; then the most important of the ones left, etc.
“We need to learn at the speed of
the rate of change or we’ll fall further behind and not be able to meet the
challenges of the twenty-first century. You create the future by what you do
today.”
A fantastic presentation and a great
speaker! His presentation will be posted on his website, http://aksciences.com,as
SLA2006 presentation
The
Closing General Session.
Karen Reczek, Conference Chair,
introduced SLA Past-President Pam Rollo who
thanked all the volunteers who made the conference possible, the SLA staff, and
the President’s Circle sponsors (LexisNexis, Factiva, , Thomson, and Springer).
She then turned the podium over to new SLA President Rebecca Vargha who announced the 2006 SLA scholarship winners She
then presented the student chapter merit awards: for outstanding leadership,
Pratt University Student Group, for innovative programming: Rutgers University
Student Group, for creative use of e-resources: University of Maryland Student
Group. The award for outstanding support of students went to the Wisconsin and
Minnesota SLA Chapters.
Ty Webb and Brent Mai, co-chairs, showed a video about Denver and the upcoming
conference, 3-6 June 2007. Keynote speakers will include Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip.
Claude Greene of Factiva introduced Walt
Mossberg, author of the Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday since
1991. He also produces his own conference, D: All Things Digital, 27-29 May
2007, San Diego, $4K each, Bill Gates is a speaker, no slides allowed
Casually
dressed in beautiful purple shirt. Great sense of humor which can’t be
translated to these notes.
What’s
going on in the Internet, PC and cell phone worlds and how they connect.
New
and different way we should be thinking about the Internet. We now think of it
as a discreet entity and way of working. Saying “I’m going on the Internet”
will look archaic in 10 years. We need to think about it like we think about
the electrical grid. You can plug “everything” into it—it’s in the background.
The Internet is a “grid of information, entertainment, commerce and other
resources into which a very large number of devices will be plugged and each
will take from the net just what they need to perform the function for which
they were designed.” “Things in your kitchen will be connected to the
Internet.” (Your microwave could download new cooking instructions, triggered
by the package bar codes.) The Internet itself will recede into the background;
talk more about the things enabled by it. “Your kids will watch tv almost
entirely over the Internet.”
“The
most interesting device in the world of personal technology today is… the
device formerly known as the cell phone.” [or PDA] “The PC (and Apple) has
peaked as the dominant digital device—we’re in the post-PC era.” “The PDA is a little computer;” can replace the
laptop for light business use. He can sit in his favorite cigar store and edit
his PT column and talk with his editor.
There
is a problem, however. The carriers and networks “sit athwart the free market”
and decide what services we will be able to access. You must go through them. “It isn’t a phone until Lou [the
certification manager] says it’s a phone.” The same is true with the cable TV
market. This is due to an abrogation of responsibility by the Federal Government.
Networks should be able to make a profit, but not to decide what you can
access. He compared this to the telephone company before deregulation.
Search
and Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and others. “Search has been a tremendously
democratizing thing.” But it has stalled; there has been no real
innovation/improvement in accuracy or that would enable the average user to be
more successful. Things look nicer, a few additional tools. He wants search to
“focus more on actual answers, not just a list of links.” The biggest problem
today is that “the emphasis has gone from sharpening the search for the
consumer to selling ads.” Microsoft is
trying to catch up; spending a lot of money with little result so far.
Other
problems:
Our
copyright system, against the way it’s set up and the way the companies have
chosen to exercise their copy rights.
We need a law stating what the consumer’s rights are. The law is written as
there are no rights except as stated. We should be able to copy except for
resale. Against software licenses that are for one copy for one computer; this
isn’t the way the world works. The laws need to recognize the realities of the
digital world without allowing real piracy. He is not against DRM—it’s just a
tool, but against the way it is used, especially by the music industry.
Anonymity
and that individuals are considered as smart as experts in their fields. We’re
going to evolve into 2 internets: a fantasy one where people can say whatever
they want anonymously and a real one. He is still dubious about Wikipedia. (the
anonymity can protect people who slander or promulgate bad information). Yahoo!
Answers: You can ask a question about anything and you get answers from anyone
who wants to answer you. He said, “This is ethically irresponsible. Somebody’s
going to die based on your answers. And you’re going to have blood on your
hands.”
“I
do have great hope and faith in the future of the Internet, accessed by cell
phone and other devices.”
Questions
from the audience:
What
is the future of the information professional? The
term is too vague, “it can be used to refer to data entry people in Bangalore.”[Way
to go!] There is a need for someone who understands the context, can look for
adjacencies, can seek out the information, executives don’t have the time and
expertise to search. “Having a skilled researcher or librarian could pay huge
dividends.”
What
about the digital divide? Do you see a two-tiered Internet where you pay to put
your URLs on a faster service? “I’m
against it. Consumers will pay for it in the end.”
What
is you opinion of citizen journalists and the media? “In
principle I favor citizen journalism and blogging—more voices are a good thing,
but the problem is that standards and ethics are abysmal or missing entirely.
It is probably a historical thing—it will take time; it will evolve.”
Is
Open Source a new model for the future? Does it pose a threat to Microsoft,
etc.? “Open Source is not a religion that will save us. Open source today is
mostly a bunch of geeks making things for other geeks. They don’t have a
usability lab; they don’t care about usability. They are 80 percenters—they do
only 80 percent of the work. No one’s responsible; someone has to be
responsible. Microsoft puts out a piece of software and they are responsible.
It’s overwhelming success has been on servers, not on the desktops of normal
consumers.”
I
am adding Mosberg to my very short list of keynote speakers who provided
content, along with being entertaining and interesting. The others are Rosabeth
Moss Kantor—years ago in Boston—and Larry Prusak of IBM. There may have been
others, but I haven’t been to every conference.
For
me, this was the end of the conference (for reasons I won’t go into here—at
least not now.)
My Overall Conference Evaluation and comments:
The
convention center is an excellent facility. Yes, it is long, but there are lots
of places to sit and talk, and two hotels are connected to it. It is also right
next to the Inner Harbor, well placed for sightseeing, museuming, dinner out,
and just looking at nature. The food was reasonably good, service was adequate.
Why
was no sound recording?
Attendance
was up 11 percent from last year, but eight CE sessions were canceled.
Attendance: 5844. The breakdown: members, 2519 (43%); non-members, 1406 (24%);
exhibitors, 1919 (33%).
The
Solo Librarians Division was very disorganized this year.
We
really need free wifi in convention
center, especially if the Association recruits volunteer bloggers. It would
also benefit everyone and cut down the number of terminals needed in the
Internet area.
I
loved having the exhibits open on Sunday. That’s a great time to really connect
with vendors; there is adequate time to talk to them.
It
was nice that almost all other sessions were in one hotel.
Overall,
a pretty good conference. Now, on to Denver.
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