Simon Dueckert shared his “best practices” on “one day in the life of a knowledge worker” as part of the latest BITKOM KM meeting (unfortunately only in German but I hope that he is going to translate his presentation…). I particularly appreciate his KM objective: “creating knowledge, sharing, and perpetuating it to achieve the preconditions for a sustainable living on Earth” and the way he connects this objective with his knowledge strategy (slides #14 and #15). Simon also explained the way he organizes all the information stuff crossing his desk, desktop, mobile, mind each and every day.
From his presentation I’m curious to test the following tools for my own personal knowledge management:
So, what’s on in the knowledge management scene for climate change? Who are the “thought leaders” regarding KM for climate change? A first round tour:
WorldChanging is always a good place to start and a top site for sustainable solutions. However, the search shows no hits for “knowledge management”.
Grist is the #1 green website according to the Guardian. Same picture here: no content for “knowledge management”.
RealClimate offers a forum for climate scientists. Also, no content on “knowledge management”.
KMAfrica seems to be an excellent knowledge sharing platform. Going to have a closer look at it during the upcoming weeks.
Climate-L.org is another interesting site from a “team of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Reporting Services (IISD RS) brings you news and information on the actions of international organizations in responding to the problem of global climate change.”
Eventually, I would like to combine two of my professional passions: “knowledge management” and “sustainability”. I studied environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and worked six years for an environmental management consulting company, mostly on international cooperation projects focussing on sustainable development issues.
I decided to pursue my growing second passion and started as a knowledge management consultant back in 2000. I’ve been with my current employer for nearly three years working as the knowledge manager for the 600-employee business transformation consulting group of SAP consulting.
I was lucky enough to free up two days in order to attend the leading German knowledge management conference KnowTech in Bad Homburg two weeks ago. So, what did you miss? Let’s begin with the keynotes:
Achim Berg’s presentation (CEO Microsoft) introduced nothing new to the audience. I assume that each attendee has followed conversations e.g. on the differences between “digital natives”, “baby boomers” and “generation X”. The focus of his presentation was on technology as an enabler for social networking. A typical sentence was “knowledge gets lost if it’s not supported with IT”. The only thing that stroke my attention was an Economist study of 2008 which has been quoted as “companies which invest in enterprise 2.0 are three times more profitable than the average”. Unfortunately, there is no source for this study in Achim Berg’s slides.
Dave Snowden (CEO CognitiveEdge) has given the audience a totally other experience. His keynote on “Why Does Social Computing Work?” was excellent “food for thought”, especially for those of us who still believe in KM processes, governance and infrastructure. His speech is available via the website of the institute CognitiveEdge.
Eventually, Utz Claassen – one of the few ‘enfant terrible’ of the German management scene – presented a very good overview on the value delivered by knowledge management. The interesting point was that he focussed on knowledge management as a value driver and that he used strictly business administration language to argue. Claassen did also a very good job in establishing a clear interrelationship between business strategy and KM. The only weak point of his presentation was the total number of slides and the amount of text on his slides.
The German CIO magazine has recently realized an “IT Excellence Benchmark” and has published the most interesting resultsin German in its October edition. More than 13,000 employees from 66 companies have been interviewed and i.e. asked whether they use the following tools for collaboration:
Wikis: 34% said “no, I don’t use them”, 22% said “don’t know”, 18% said “I’m opposed to the usage of this tool”, only 15% said “fully agree”
Blogs/RSS-feeds: 35% said “no, I don’t use them”, 28% opted for “don’t know”, 25% are opposed to the usage of this tool, and only 5% “fully agree”
Instant Messaging: 32% don’t use them, 25% don’t know whether their company uses IM, 23% are opponents, and just 13% “fully agree”
These findings have led the magazine to title the article with “Real communities exist only in real life”. Well. that’s certainly just half of the truth. Maybe the real reason for the low adoption of web 2.0 in companies in comparison to their large usage in a privat environment lie in the difference between the norms governing them.
I’m just reading the excellent book of Dan Ariely “Predictably Irrational” and in his chapter 4 he exactly outlines “why we are happy to do things, but not when we are paid to do them”. A study that should be realized is whether the employees of companies which think more in terms of social norms also more easily adopt the social network tools.
Katherine Fulton draws a clear picture on what each of us is able to achieve if she/he just acts. I’ve made my first good experience with one of the organizations mentioned by Katherine: kiva.org. I’ve lent 250 USD to eight small entrepreneurs in Benin, Cambodia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Tajikistan. My default rate is currently 0.0%. So, please give it a try. It’s easy to complain about the banking system and the liquidity crisis. You can make a difference.
Photo from Ricky Romero (Creative Commons License)
Yes, we are happy MacBook users! Me and my wife too: “Why didn’t you already buy this Mac some years ago?” She loves the dock with its program icons, the amazing fast boot time, and the intuitive handling of day-to-day tasks (e.g. including a foto into an e-mail).
The only thing which I’m not satisfied at all is the missing import function from Outlook to Mail. This is a basic feature that I would have expected to be implemented by Apple. Why do I have to buy a 3rd party tool to import properly emails and contacts?
Which are the other pieces of software that are very useful, not part of the Mac software package, and free of charge?
TED has again called my attention to an outstanding information design expert. Tom Wujec works on creative innovation (ok, do you know uncreative innovation?) and visual collaboration.
As a knowledge management consultant I perceive the visual framework for business effectiveness as a framework that doesn’t contain new elements. However, the methodology relies heavily on visualized communications and is presented in a very clear way. So, the “how to” part of it is really a “visual innovation”
The so-called “knowledge maps” are collections of sketches from presentations and events. This way of visualizing a presentation is of course different from usual meeting notes. Though, the methodology doesn’t scale. You have to rely on a skilled artist as Tom is to make full use of it. And you have to like his style of doing it.
As a citizen interested in sustainability I would of course love to see the “new previously unseen visualizations” of sustainability and the unveiling of the emerging technology of EcoViz tools.
The three keys I’ve appreciated most are:
#8. Keep your day job.
#28. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
#29. Power is never given. Power is taken.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand introduces his wonderful movie Home at TED. ERP vendors won’t change the world alone. However, they play an important role in the socio-political game aiming at achieving a sustainable way of life. This change will not happen tomorrow. It took nearly 15 years between the sustainability discussion in academia – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology where I studied was and is one of the leading institutions in the field – and the broad adoption by large companies. Hopefully we have reached a tipping point and the time has come to embrace sustainability.
I’m glad that my company SAP has embarked on this journey. The second Sustainability Report shows that SAP also works on the internal performance and expects a lot from business opportunities tied to sustainability. Another positive aspect of the new strategic direction on sustainability is the priority on “digital inclusion” and e.g. the collaboration with the microfinance organization PlanetFinance. Sustainability sells – in the software industry too.
I grew up in Switzerland, studied in Zurich, worked in Berlin, Bonn and Africa. I'm curious by nature. Therefore, I present and share parts of my learning journey as a knowledge manager in a large blue chip company.
