Einfach-Schnell-Klar » Methods (KM)

Learn from the Positive Deviants and Design Thinkers

Felix — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:13:56 +0000

“Best Practices” are often “Past Practices”. Moreover, they are also typically difficult to re-use due to the different context in which they have been created.

Thanks to David Gurteen’s newsletter I’ve come across the “Positive Deviance” method which is in use especially in development projects. This approach focusses on those people in a community who as individuals or as a group achieve a better outcome even if they face similar challenges and use the same resources. The book review by Kevin Bishop of Anecdote clearly shows the paradigm shift in consulting which the usage of this approach leads to: rely on local expertise.

The very strong article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review establishes the bridge between Positive Deviance and Design Thinking. Design Thinking addresses the needs of the people who will consume a service or a service. Design Thinking – and this is like closing the loop for me – is also taught by the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam. No wonder that the HPI will be part of the next Vision Summit in Berlin (April 2011). I’m looking forward to participating in this event.

Business is a Conversation

Felix — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:11:53 +0000

Knowledge Cafe Workshop

View more presentations from David Gurteen.

I just met some friends and colleagues from my former employer Comma Soft in Bonn last Friday evening. We talked a lot and enjoyed some rounds of Kölsch beer: it was your shout, Sascha, thank you!

It was also a kind of “knowledge pub” around the question: “What will be the future of the company?”. It happened last week, too, that I participated in the “Knowledge Cafe Masterclass” led by the (I know that you don’t like this) KM guru David Gurteen. It was set as a pre-conference tutorial of the KnowTech 2010. I particularly enjoyed getting to know some new interesting KM peers of other German companies.

So, what is this “Knowledge Cafe” all about? It’s a good method to initiate a dialogue or to support change in an organization. David has explained the method extensively on his website. The Knowledge Cafe is pretty similar to the WorldCafe approach. However, it’s easier to “sell” to managers in a company. David has built the method based on works of Jay Cross, Theodore Zeldin, David Weinberger, and David Bohm.

I would use it e.g. instead of a long-winded presentation or as an alternative to coffee corner sessions. The challenge is to create the readiness for dialogue, to have a non-intrusive facilitator, and to be comfortable with the outcome “what people take away in their heads”. It’s by no mean the right method for a virtual meeting. Thank you David, it was a pleasure to meet you!

Knowledge Zoo

Felix — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:24:15 +0000

Arthur Shelley, the Global Knowledge Director of Cadbury Schweppes, has presented a bunch of slides on using animal metaphor for understanding behavior and building relationships during the most recent SIKM call.
The good thing is that he has clearly stated that each of us is typically a mix of some of the identified characters (see also the following presentation). I’m always averse to pigeonhole somebody based on a few characteristics. Arthur’s point is that it’s in many ways easier to discuss on the impact of the behaviour of a specific “animal” than to discuss about a specific person. The metaphor helps to separate between the person and his behaviour. Thus, avoiding unnecessary confrontation. According to his experience the usage of the organizational zoo method

“creates an environment where trust can develop and stress reduced, leading to improved knowledge sharing and more interactive people.”

LeadershipStylesOrgZoo_SHELLEY

View more presentations from Arthur.Shelley. (tags: leadership metaphor)

Another good point in his presentation (slide 11) has been the multidimensional definition of performance. I’m looking forward to Artur’s next developments; e.g. he will soon start an organizational zoo character profile (beta version).

What can knowledge managers learn from lean management?

Felix — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:27:35 +0000

SAP is going to introduce lean management methods and tools this year (see news in the German business magazine Manager Magazin).
So, what may I as a knowledge manager learn from companies that have applied lean management for years, e.g. Toyota? The good thing is that I came across one brief and very good introduction on strategy deployment on the SAP website. Pascal Dennis from the Lean Enterprise Institute introduces this lean management tool in a webcast with examples from Toyota.
Based on this introduction I see the following learnings from a knowledge management point of view:
1. Plan
Tell a short concise story on what you plan to do and visualize the strategy
Avoid “power point chunks” to convey your message
Go see for yourself, i.e. talk to the people in the processes
2. Do
We can’t tell people how to do. Involve them in each improvement step.
Better arrange “catch ball meetings” than “happy talk meetings”
Create simple standards and visualize them. Less is more.
Don’t ship “junks”, i.e. don’t accept poor quality contributions
3. Check
Make problems visible. “Problems are gold”.
4. Adjust
Everybody solves problem. Enable a simple, shared problem solving approach.
Create opportunities for reflection and learning points
Develop the “Book of knowledge” (i.e. best practices and lessons learned)
In one of the next posts I’ll take a closer look at KM at Toyota.

How do you persuade your senior management?

Felix — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:24:31 +0000

Matt Moore offers a very good white paper on “Justifying Your Knowledge Management Programme“. The power of persuasion lies in the combination of personal credibility, logical arguments, and story telling. Matt focuses his paper on developing the logical arguments. While the chapters 1 and 3 are rather generic persuasive presentation tips, the six sources of information to construct the argument (presented in chapter 2) are the good ones for KM.
One point that has surprised me is “[...] at some point, you will have to justify [...]“. Well, I can’t imagine that senior management would have started a knowledge management initiative without a solid business case since the days of the Internet bubble.
Additionally, Mary Abraham had also referenced to European Guidelines for Measuring KM, and Kelly Butler from APQC briefly outlined some effective KM measurement methods and examples.
But Matt’s paper makes the difference between measuring and persuading. Do you know any other convincing contributions?

Managing Organizational Change

Felix — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:37:32 +0000

Luc Galoppin and Siegfried Caems offer an excellent book on managing organizational change. The book focusses on SAP® Implementations, but the good thing is that the overall and detailed methodology, the templates, the structure along organization/communication/learning/performance-management streams also applies for the implementation of other large scale business process initiatives. A must-read for each knowledge or program manager.
It’s great that Luc also writes a blog on Organizational Change Management with the right mix of insights and visualizations.

Have you learned your lessons?

Felix — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:03:02 +0000

Steven Wieneke, Technical Fellow in GM’s Global Engineering group, presented an interesting approach to lessons learned in the monthly call of the SIKM community.
Steven has rolled out a “visible learning process” at GM Global Engineering that not only includes lessons (“things gone wrong and corrected”) but even more important learnings (“things gone right and valued for reuse”). “Subject Matter Responsible Persons” drive the development of know-how and references assets in more than 60 communities and nurture the exchange of experience (complete presentation). Unfortunately the time was too short to have a look at the implementation side of the concept, e.g. how the users retrieve assets for a specific context and how they assess the value of the assets. Jack Vinson has also commented the SIKM call in his blog.
An article in InsideKnowledge describes the main knowledge management activities at GM and focusses especially on the “closed-loop learning” promoted by Steven and his group.
Another interesting article on GM and knowledge sharing is the “Wikinomics Report Card” by Ben Letalik.

Wiki matters

Felix — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:32:19 +0000

The debates � la “Wiki vs. KM” or “Taxonomies vs. Folksonomies” are interesting to track for a while. Nevertheless, in an enterprise knowledge management context the question is less “wiki vs. KM” but more “How do we make the best use of the available systems, processes, and approaches to support and drive our business?”. Therefore, wiki as a tool and approach contributes to an even better knowledge management practice in the company. It’s a given.
The Atlassian wiki evangelist Stewart Marder has written wikipatterns, a book that was very well received by the enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management community. Those who don’t want to buy the book (or don’t have an online access to the book e.g. thanks to the SAP SkillSoft partnership) may have a look at the Wikipatterns website or at Stewart’s blog: he is currently publishing a “21 days of wiki adoption” video serial.

Success Factors for Enterprise 2.0

Felix — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:48:01 +0000

Andrew McAfee enjoys the debates (A, B) with knowledge management expert Tom Davenport. Tom who last week after another meeting with Andrew at the FAST08 conference conceded that Enterprise 2.0 brings good points to knowledge management.
Andrew compiled a list of success factors that I would like to comment briefly from my experience (comments in brackets):
Enterprise 2.0 is more likely if…
Technologies

Tools are intuitive and easy to use (obvious)
Tools are egalitarian and freeform (challenge within a large company)
Borders seem appropriate to users (it’s not clear what is meant with ‘borders’)
At least some of the tools are explicitly social (agree)
The toolset is quickly standardized (agree totally)

Support for the Initiative

Incentives exist, and are soft (what is a soft incentive?)
Excellent gardeners exist (agree totally)
Patient and dedicated evangelists exist (agree totally)
Energy and activity are primarily bottom-up (agree)
Effort has official and unofficial support from the top (agree)
Goals are clear and well-explained (challenge within a large company and for a primarily bottom-up initiative)

Culture

People are trusted (agree)
Slack exists in the workweek (embed it in your daily work)
Helpfulness has been the norm (agree)
Top management supports lateralization (lateral management support is a key)
There are lots of young people (obvious)
There is pent-up demand for better information sharing (do you know a company where this wouldn’t be the case?)

Geschichten erzählen hat Zukunft!

Felix — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:56:12 +0000

Steve Denning gibt im ersten Kapitel seines Buches “The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling” eine Einführung in acht Muster für Geschichten, die im Business-Umfeld Wirkung zeigen. Seine Ansichten zu Knowledge Management sind aber im Gegensatz dazu schon sechs Jahre alt. Er hat sich seit seinem Wechsel vom Knowledge Manager der Weltbank in die Selbständigkeit ausschlie&szig;lich auf die Kunst des Storytellings konzentriert.