Swimming in a lake or rowing down the river

We seem to be addicted to busy. Does the busyness help? Does it hurt? Do we swim around in a lake, getting nowhere? Or do we row down the river, ensuring we don't get stuck?

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Democratic renewal or else...

Democratic culture is at a low ebb and in decline – unless something changes we could pay a high price, argues Matthew Taylor.

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Focus on the processes, not the tools

I see a lot of projects within business support organizations that look like "implement this tool." And then the organization is surprised when the project takes much longer than expected and the tool doesn't get used to the extent expected.

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Curiosity

When I was growing up my parents were forever taking us for "trips" whether locally or further afield. They still set off, in their eighties, in my Dad's sports car, to explore Dorset where they now live. My wife Penny shares this inclination to go places and discover new ones we've not been, so we have visited and got to know much of the wonderfully varied countryside of Britain and beyond. Needless to say the girls are growing up with the same willingness to follow their natural curiosity and see more of the world than is brought to them via their TV screens. In contrast many of their friends it seems never go anywhere except for school, shopping, and the annual foreign holiday.

And it's not just going places, it's exploring ideas. The girls will often comment that their fellow pupils seem incredibly blinkered in their ideas as well as suffering from a lack of travel itch. Even basic questions about why things are the way they are, why people behave the way they do, and inquiry into different philosophies and world views appear to be virgin territory. They wonder what sort of conversations take place over their schoolmates' breakfast tables and contrast this with our willingness to pick up an idea, throw it around, and leave it gasping for breath on the floor as we tussle with everything from politics to religion and everything in between.

This lack of curiosity seems to me to be at the root of so many of our problems. Yes it may be easier to pass through life asleep, and yes they may be happier not being riddled with self doubt and existential angst as we can sometimes be, but we all only get one shot at this. The willingness to wonder why, to explore beneath the surface, to break away from the norm out of a desire to explore the world and to address its problems seems so important and the more of us who do it the more likely we are to cope with our unpredictable futures.

To miss so much of what life has to offer seems a shame individually, and a willingness to sleep through the sort of challenges facing civilisation at the moment, seems a waste at the very least and an avoidance of responsibility at worst.

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World Bank - Take-aways from the 3rd High Level Meeting on Country-led Knowledge Sharing

This week I had the privilege of participating in the World Bank's 3rd High-Level Meeting on Country-led Knowledge Sharing in Washington DC. An amazing event attended to around 1000 people from 73 different countries. With thanks to the organizers, here are a few of my take-aways...

1. What can the public sector learn from the private sector?

Jean-Claude Monney's keynote talk on Microsoft’s knowledge management initiatives prompted one of the most stimulating questions asked of HLM3 panellists. ‘What can the public sector learn about knowledge sharing from the private sector?’. It is true that the private sector has pioneered many knowledge sharing techniques.Howeve having worked in both sectors, I would observe that public sector organizations also have much to offer the commercial world. 

Public, and especially third sector organizations, have a unique advantage that those with a predominantly commercial imperative may not; intrinsic motivation. Having worked with many dedicated people at the World Bank and with charities, I am struck by their personal sense of wanting to ‘make a difference’. In behavioural economics terms, this is a huge advantage. A request for help, clearly articulated and effectively disseminated to those with know-how, will usually elicit a positive response. However capability is often limited (time, communication tools, more important delivery and performance targets). 

My take-away? Provide effective channels, facilitate connections and foster the right intrinsic motivation through leadership.

2. Supply and demand.

The first day of HML3 seemed to focus predominantly on the demand side of knowledge sharing. The identification of lessons and knowledge ‘capture’ were extensively discussed. However ‘sharing’ requires both supply and demand for reciprocity. It was therefore refreshing that day 2 touched on the supply side too. I don't mean producing shelf-ware or supply where there is no evident demand, but thinking about how codified knowledge might be effectively found and consumed. Co-creation of knowledge, facilitation of peer-to-peer connections and evidence-based decision making came up time and again in the breakout sessions as critical techniques for making sure knowledge supply and demand are connected.

Examples provided were the altruistic sharing of blindness prevention program results in Tunisia and UNICEF helping four East African countries make real-time health clinic data widely available. Sergio Escobar explained of how Medellin, Columbia has made their experience of turning around a crime-ridden city, available to other cities. He stressed the need to make their results adaptable to different contexts. These examples showed real understanding of the importance of expressing lessons through the lens of those who need the knowledge, rather than simply writing a case-study. That's smart supply.

3. Measurement and leadership

Session moderator Karen Mokate asked the important question ‘how do you measure success and impact’. Ian Thorpe from UNICEF stressed that experiential knowledge cannot always be codified; indeed simply connecting practitioners has real and immediate value*. He observed that ‘Knowledge sharing is a catalytic process; in itself, it does not have a defined rate of return’. Perhaps a measure of knowledge sharing success is that demand for know-how and expertise is matched by supply. In other words, there is an observable virtuous cycle of creation, adoption and adaption of knowledge.

Another common refrain, particularly in the breakout groups, was the importance of real leadership in effective knowledge sharing. That’s not just ‘buy-in’, but for example, asking questions about how learning from success have been disseminated and change effected. True knowledge leadership publically acknowledges the learning opportunities from failure.

4. What would I like to have heard about?

Innovations that I thought might be examined in the context of country-led knowledge sharing are the amazing innovations in Artificial Intelligence and the Blockchain. These could be considered as technologies designed to simply make automate transactions and drive down costs (in themselves not unimportant for knowledge sharing). Their real potential is that, in a world of increasing complexity and the data firehose, they free up cognitive capacity to make smarter sustainable development decisions, better anticipate outcomes and reduce risk.

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"I don't care"

It's the easiest thing to say, the most reliable "get out of jail free" card, the ultimate side-stepping of life.

When faced with mind numbing routine, or overwhelming challenges, not caring seems attractive. It's shields us from the vicisitudes of life, against the grazing and scraping as we are buffeted by our challenges, a balm for our jangled nerves.

But it is corrosive and addictive. It becomes a way if life, a shell in which we can hide, an excuse we can all too frequently give ourselves.

And then one day it's too late. We've lost the ability to care, we don't care that we don't care. Our lives are out of control, freewheeling aimlessly, a recollection of unease our only memory of a time when we cared.

We should take more care...

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How the Mighty Fall: Part II

At the most straightforward (superficial?) level, the “undisciplined pursuit of more”—Collins’s stage 2 in his framework of decline—would seem to follow logically and almost inevitably from stage 1, “hubris born of success.” The logic is nearly syllogistic: “If we’re successful, and we’re great, who wouldn’t want more of this? Let’s go for it.” Collins, I’m […]

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How a Knowledge Supermarket helps the knowledge customer to find what they need

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Reinvent Australia: how can we shape a positive future for nations?

A few days ago I attended the launch event of Reinvent Australia, organized by Annalie Killian of Amplify Festival at PwC’s Sydney offices. It was a very interesting event, digging into the issues of how we can bring together many people’s ideas to create better futures for nations. Graham Kenny, President of Reinvent Australia, described

Continue reading Reinvent Australia: how can we shape a positive future for nations?

The post Reinvent Australia: how can we shape a positive future for nations? appeared first on Trends in the Living Networks.

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Shoot your own videos - beyond the talking head

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Social media doesn't cause problems, it exposes them.

Time wasting, narcissism, gossip, abusive behaviour, the list of negative things that the social media is accused of is endless.

But it is us who indulge in those behaviours, who cause trouble, who act without concern for our impact on others. Seeing this as the fault of technology is an excuse. It lets us off the hook and allows us to expect someone else to take the blame.

The same is true at work. Organisations fret about the impact of staff using enterprise social networks, claiming that the tools cause time wasting and indiscretion. But those systems simply surface issues, or risks, that were always present. They were just unseen and not dealt with.

Whether at work or at home we should be more willing to feel our discomfort, take it personally, squirm a bit, think about it, learn from it.

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Learning to switch off

Thanks to our ubiquitous devices we are more vulnerable to other people's expectations than ever before. Whether it is our boss, colleagues, or even family, the number of people who can cause our phones to ping, shake, and flash has never been greater.

At work there has been an assumption for years that everyone is sitting at their work stations playing ping pong with emails and any response slower than instant is cause for rising frustration and paranoia. Now that we carry our connections with us all the time this assumption has escaped the confines of the office.

Instead of enjoying our lunchtime walk to the sandwich bar we constantly fret "Did they see my great idea in that email I sent them?", "What if they didn't think it was so great?", "What if they are laughing at it with the folks they are drinking with in the bar?", "I wish I'd been invited to the bar". And on it goes...

We have to learn to walk away from all of this. To choose to turn it off, in our heads as well as in our phones. Turning off those visual and audible alerts; leaving the phone behind sometimes; only replying to emails in batches at either end of the day and putting in a note in your email signature that this is your new way or working.

We only have ourselves to blame. If we aren't in control of our time and attention - who is?

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Teaming with Young Guns

To attract and retain the young employees who are coming to dominate the workforce, companies should turn to a fresh take on a mature concept: teaming.

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it’s about the network

“Network thinking lets us scientifically understand the world around us as one of connections that shape observed phenomena, rather than as one where the intrinsic properties of people, genes, or particles determine outcomes. Like previous scientific revolutions, the network revolution also has the promise of reshaping our basic commonsense expectations of the world around us,... Read more »

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Five Steps to Formalizing Forward Thinking in Your Organization

Forward thinking is more than a generic phrase. Here are specific tactics to help companies capitalize on future trends.

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Top 10 blog posts of 2015

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Thanks for a great 2015

Every year bring opportunities and challenges. And, if we are willing, along with those opportunities and challenges comes learning. So what have I learned in 2015? Reflection is critical for improvement. As I wrote earlier this year, studies show that regular, intentional reflection leads to improvements in productivity. So in 2015 I set about to […]

The post Thanks for a great 2015 appeared first on Above and Beyond KM.

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Social Computing Guidelines and Why You Would Still Need Them

A few weeks back I wrote about the first of the 5 pillars I keep using with clients, time and time again, whenever they are embarking on the so-called Digital Transformation journey. Back in that blog entry I mentioned how having the right purpose is the main trigger to get things going.[...]

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Top tools for understanding economics

There are vital thinking tools that people well-informed in economics have that most other people do not. These tools are roughly translatable as being the following 8 things. These things are ones that need to be understood, but frequently are not. 1) Almost every action has tangible and intangible benefits, and tangible and intangible costs, […]

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Digital Limbo

In his influential book Crossing The Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore wrote of the challenges of moving from our old ways of doing things to new, technologically enabled ones. Sadly many don't quite make it to the other side and get stuck in some sort of digital limbo, not having let go of previous ways of doing things, but not fully embracing the new either.

Just because you have some new social platform, or aspire to "virtual working", doesn't mean that you don't need to manage situations or invest time in people and relationships. You may need to have less face to face contact but you need to invest more in building online trust and understanding.

Especially in the early days when everyone is finding their feet you need to be obsessive about staying in touch, being as transparent as possible, and stating the obvious at every opportunity. We have all seen comments threads spiraling downwards due to an off the cuff contribution, or people shooting off in the wrong direction due to a less than clear post. Worse still is the inclination to discuss online misdemeanors offline with the risk of that particular back-channel tipping into gossip and character assassination.

There is so much to be gained from using our tools appropriately and exercising our new found skills but it doesn't just happen. It takes thoughtfulness, focus, tolerance and consideration. Real work.

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