Wednesday, May 16, 2018

A note for my future self on “where is Knowledge Management going”

In the past 20 years, I have been helping large multinational companies to create (human + digital) ecosystems which promote the flow of ideas/information/knowledge across boundaries. It is both an art and science to make it happen. It is never straight forward. This requires me/my team to exercise a combination of skills relating to agile strategic planning, user-centric design thinking, change management, communication & facilitation, networking, learning design, information management, analytics, and increasingly digital skill sets and mindset to make it happen. 

Some organisations name what I do “knowledge management”, others call it “collaboration”, “business transformation” or “digital transformation”. To me, it does not matter as long as it is creating value to the company, the employees, the customers and stakeholders. 

Today, I reflected on my journey and asked myself, what are the top 5 questions/muddles/puzzles I have about the field I love, and I wonder where KM is going next. 

I noted down 5 questions and I like to share with my future self (and with my blog readers):

1. Has KM changed? Dead and then rejuvenated? Is it the same old same old as we were doing 20 years ago? Have we innovated enough to stay relevant?

2. The ISO KM standard is coming soon, what does that mean? Should we be happy or should we be worried? Is that an opportunity or a threat? 

3. There has been a lot of buzz about design thinking, agile methodology, putting users at the centre, creating personae and journey maps, participatory approach to engage with target audience and listening to users’ needs to design solutions. KM professionals have been putting users in the centre to design our services at least in the past 20 years, can we be more visible and share our expertise in this space? 

4. Technology changes so fast, companies are facing constant disruption. Blockchain, AI, machine learning, advanced analytics are coming into the picture. Have we given enough thoughts on which part of KM services can be automated versus which part require human curation, emphathy, insights and judgement to create value to our users? Have we used analytics to inform the next best steps to add value to our users?

5. With the craziness of the speed of change, what skills and competencies are required for KM professionals? Should we focus on upgrading (technical and soft) skills or upgrading our capability to adapt, change and learn? And even more, should we be upgrading our capability to help our organisation to upgrade its capability to adapt, change and learn? 

I wonder what my answers would be when I look back in a couple of years time. 

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Knowledge Management in disguise: What do I do?

My best friend came to London for a study tour and she stayed with me in my London home. 

On the first night of the reunion, she asked me “Bonnie, what do you do at work? Are you still working in Knowledge Management? I am not sure what I tell my study tour mates when they ask me what you are doing?”

Such a great question. A lot of things come to my mind, as I reflect on my career. 

What do I do? 

1. I find ways to promote knowledge flow across boundaries for multinational companies. 

Typically this means creating information and comms systems, defining processes, nurturing communities/networks, putting in roles to allow employees (or customers) to easily access experts/knowledge to get their work done. 

As knowledge resides in people’s heads, in the relationship between people/team, and in documents usually sitting in some systems, I am seen as “a learning facilitator, communication facilitator, story-teller and story-collector” to “a digital person who knows about social media, build intranets, knowledge base, enterprise social collaboration platforms”.

Some colleagues think my work relates to IT. 

Other colleagues think my work relates to communication. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to new style informal and social learning. 

2. I find ways to take people on a journey to embrace a culture of knowledge sharing. 

Every time I kick off a Knowledge Management programme (or whatever name the company use), one of the key mandate is “our company need to build a knowledge sharing culture, and break down the silos”. 

Do I have magic to mandate people to change? Of course no! I do have experience designing user-centric participatory workshop to engage with people of all levels, listen to their stories, play back their stories for them to self-reflect and see the point for themselves to take small steps to change. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to culture change. 

Other colleagues think my work relates to employee engagement. 

3. I study people’s needs, pains and dreams in order to design systems that are relevant. 

Influenced by Dr Brenda Dervin who has been my mentor since my doctorate research days (1996-2000), I have been applying Sense-Making Methodology to research people’s info/knowledge needs in real-life context. 

After gathering the user stories, I create personas, user journey map, analyse the gaps and strengths, and use the insights to co-create the “to be” KM systems with the users. I work out loud, I seek frequent input on unpolished design/ideas, I invite criticism, I make quick changes, and I rapidly fine-tune the solution.  And I am impatient, I would like to turn ideas into a working product quickly, and failed fast if needed. 

Some colleagues think my work relates to agile and design thinking. 

I am wary they are buzz words. To me, these concepts are not new. 

4. I practise strategic knowledge management. I work with senior executives to create knowledge-driven business strategy. 

Simply speaking, the senior executives and the Board have to recognise that improve knowledge flow can increase performance and is a key enabler to deliver the business strategy. 

This is not always the case or possible. Reflecting on my career, it is usually a visionary CEO/CXO who believes in it, and open the door to make it happen at the right time. 

Practising strategic KM means staying business-focus and speaking the business language. It starts with asking: “Knowledge is everywhere, with limited time/resources, for this company to achieve its business vision, what are the truly “critical knowledge” that has to flow, to be managed and protected? What should we do now?”

The answer is guaranteed to be different for different companies and sectors operating in different contexts. That is why strategic KM can never be boring. 

Because of this aspect of my work, some colleagues think my work is in strategic consulting and business transformation. 

So... what do I do? 

My work is multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary and involve working with multiple business stakeholders. I don’t think KM sit in a box. 

Sunday, March 11, 2018

What assumptions do you make when designing human-centric practices or systems?

In this article published in KOSMOS Journal for Global Transformation (Winter 2017) titled “Luminal Leadership”. 
The author Nora Bateson wrote “the illusions of our system crumble, each grouping of ideologies is ossifying in their own particular frequency and becoming less able to hear the others. The sense-making apparatus of our culture is losing its grip. (...) But short of a fundamental reorganizing of embedded assumptions of life and being alive, humanity may not make it. So, are we ready?”
I believe it is going to be hard work and requires a lot of discipline. It is not impossible, and it will be a journey. 
As a start, I/we make a lot of assumptions when designing human-centric practices/systems (in organisation or in society). We have to be clear what assumptions do we draw on about human beings, about the gappiness of realities, about existing power structure, and how human beings make sense and mov-ING in between the cracks. There are many theories out there. One that has been developed in the past 40+ years by Dr Brenda Dervin called Sense-Making Methodology (SMM) is one that I found most useful. SMM makes explicit these assumptions, and Dervin’s research systematically apply a set of theoretically-informed methods to “listen to one another” whilst recognising that human beings tend to be habitually locked into their own world of nouns (eg ideology, role, function, gender, culture,...). 
For those who are interested, it is impossible to elaborate her 40+ years of work in a few paragraphs. Here is an older article which I co-write with Dervin:
With Dervin’s permission, I am happy to share some more articles to see if that helps to develop your thinking further. Feel free to get in touch.