All in knowledge management
We all make mistakes - big and small. But what do we do with them? How do we react? How do the people around us react? Mark Graban’s latest book, The Mistakes that Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation is an interesting combination of anecdotes from his My Favorite Mistake podcast along with guidance on developing the environment where making mistakes is an opportunity to learn and grow.
A lot of people struggle to identify the “real” problem they have. Some thoughts about the typical challenges with problem statements and ways around them.
Gary Klein’s 2013 book “Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights” is a good read, as I’ve found with his his other books. He likes to explore a topic from stories and search for corroborating links to draw together new conclusions. And as this book is about insight, the overall story of this book describes his journey of discovery as he delved into the topic. I particularly liked his discussion of the challenges that organizations face in gaining and using insights.
“When Your Team’s Path Forward Isn’t Clear, Carve It” by Adam Kahane takes the idea of “carving” a solution through its paces. I like this way of framing the approach, even if the blog post doesn’t provide specifics (leave that for his book).
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking, who died 14 March 2018.
Best practices often get a bad name. But if they ossify into "the way we do things around here" then it becomes very difficult to install new ways of thinking operating and working. Even with all the cool tehcnology we have at our fingertips, the way we work can block many things.
Trust has always come up for me in knowledge management conversations, but as this blog from Social in silico post discusses, it is really the center of being able to work together successfully.
So, on top of all the other challenges with developing cool technologies and getting people interested, we must consider whether people believe that they have problem you think you are solving.
Another tool to help knowledge workers get to what they need quickly. I've been trying Atlas Recall over the last month. The general idea is that it sits on your computer (Mac currently, Windows soon) and keeps track of everything you see. And then if you are trying to recall "where did I see X", you can ask Atlas Recall for help. It does exactly that: will show you what you have seen, whether it was on the web or in a chat session or in documents you've been writing / reading.
Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine section had a feature on "best places to work" and many smaller articles on the modern workplace. I thought a few of these had bearing on knowledge workers.
I've been involved in knowledge management for nearly 20 years. And over most of that time, one of the most familiar ideas is that we spend 20% of their time searching for stuff. I wonder. Is this 20% of time truly wasted?
If you find yourself dragging, and the coffee is merely a delicious distraction, maybe the problem is a little more interesting: lack of clarity!
An interesting talk from AI researcher Kenneth Stanley on his counter-intuitive discovery/realization that formal goals/objectives can block creativity.
Mike Gilronan, a Boston local knowledge management friend, has a nice piece on collaboration in the Boston Business Journal, "Five ways to improve collaboration among remote teams."
In 7 Wastes That Impact Business Growth Jon Terry, one of the founders of LeanKit, presents a nice way of thinking through the Lean / Toyota Production System idea of waste and how one my think about it in the context of business growth in any type of organization.
The interesting comment that just because you know something, it doesn't mean you understand it.
Arthur Shelley posted his 12 Principles of Knowledge Leadership to a KM mailing list - turns out he wrote this a year and a half ago. Good reference material! He even channels Gandhi.
There is an InnoCentive challenge to describe a KM approach to "Capturing Institutional Memory and Knowledge." Open through 14 October 2014.
Freek Vermeulen's "Business Exposed" is a great read that debunk a lot of common practice and common beliefs within business. He brings in a variety of business research to back up his sometimes surprising observations.