A few weeks ago,
as the stock market bounced along on the bottom, I leavened the gloom by
speaking with Chris Meyer, a keynote speaker at APQC's upcoming 2009 knowledge management
conference. With a background in economics and innovation, Chris's
job as chief executive of Monitor Networks is to suggest new ways to sense and think
about complex--and sometimes alarming--situations. (That's why we asked him to
keynote, of course, and why I called him.)
We talked
about what Chris is going to share at our conference. Connectivity, for
instance: We think of it as good, right? Yet falling economic dominos attest to
the dark side of our interconnectedness.
We also
talked about how the technologies of the Web are making their way into our
organizations, both literally and metaphorically. Chris is studying firms that
are creating powerful multi-user rating and feedback systems that mimic Web
experiences such as Amazon.com
user ratings, the Netflix recommendation
system, and Angie's List.
As an example, Chris described a pharmaceutical company that is managing its
drug development projects as a set of investments and has set up a real-time
information structure to reevaluate each project every time a new test result,
FDA ruling, or other piece of data comes in.
One of the
metaphors that Chris discussed comes from Microsoft's photosynth.com,
an application that stitches together hundreds or thousands of images of
something--for example, a landmark--into a composite 3-D composite image. What
if your KM system could stitch together hundreds of knowledge "snapshots" into
one meaningful picture? Think you could outstrip the competition then?
At our conference this May, Chris is going to share paradigms and examples from the frontier:
- What is the new economic paradigm emerging from our connectedness?
- How will it affect how we create and share knowledge?
- How can we think about paradoxes--such as the call for transparency and openness vs. lawyers telling you not to share--in a way that helps us live with them?
Come ready to discuss other examples--or post them in the comments section here. By the time May 11 roles around, we'll have even more to talk about.
Anecdotal data about web 2.0 ranking/voting systems - many users are reluctant to express themselves because they fear they will be seen as representing the opinion of their part of the organization. This is true especially in IT-centric environments where employees think there is no such thing as "e-anonymity".
Case in point - my organization recently implemented a web-based ranking/voting capability (a-la Digg). Anticipating the opinions discussed above, we first exposed the capability in a "neutral" environment - a list of lunch menus for local restaurants. Once we felt the workforce was comfortable with the capability, we then employed it in a business-related environment. Guess what? I can still hear the echos - "Bueller? Bueller?"
I think this points to a paradigm related to the current fiscal environment. Two lines of thinking about knowledge sharing are emerging in our pay-for-performance environment:
[1] I have specific job objectives that do NOT include collaborating (i.e., sharing knowledge) with others. Hence getting involved via social networking is a threat, because I may "inherit" additional responsibilities.
[2] I am working on a break-through idea and do not want to lose accolades/bonus potential. Engaging in social network activity presents a risk that someone else will get the credit for my ideas.
What does it all mean? Once again we see that technology is just an ENABLER - to get meaningful feedback and to promote knowledge sharing in support of innovation, leadership and management within the organization must be committed to the costs and risks involved with the necessary social interactions - and not just hype a bunch of twitter.
Bill,
What a great example. Either the risks seem larger than they really are, or the threat of such openness to the established order truly is greater than we realize. Yet, I believe that greater progress is made with openness than without it.
Should be an interesting debate at the conference.
Carla
Here's some interesting info (source: eMarketer.com [http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006953]):
"According to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than e-mail.
While search and destination sites remain the most popular online activities, social network and blog use exceeded that of e-mail, increasing their reach by 5.4 percentage points.
In addition, time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at over three times the rate of overall Internet growth."
Could it be that people are finally coming around to the realization that asynchronous e-mail is detrimental to knowledge transfer? Or is this just a sign of the changing generational landscape?
Either way I'm glad to be part of the "in-crowd", as evidenced by the fact I'm typing into a blog vice sending an e-mail.
See you in Houston!
-WMP