Sorry for absence of posts

I've been somewhat busy doing some research for a new position in knowledge management. Therefore I haven't been able to blog as much recently as I've been on business in London. However normal service will be resuming shortly.

Boiling frogs, Barons and the need for Knowledge Management

I was at an event last night and was asked following a comment by myself that there were now more knowledge management positions in a variety of firms - why firms have suddenly started to take knowledge management a little more seriously.

I thought that from my experience of law firms, that some of the more progressive ones had realised that they needed to do things and change ahead of the curve. I've compared it to paying a fire insurance premium. If you pay now then it is likely that the costs will be low rather than if you go back after you have had a fire.

I was thinking of some work by Charles Handy that influenced me - which was the boiling frogs syndrome. If as a company you wait to long to attempt transformations when the size of the trouble are obvious then it is highly likely that like the frog you are too late. Great companies know that the best time to change and embrace the hard work required by management to make knowledge management successful is from a position of strength.

However as Handy points out this can be quite dangerous for a chief Executive or a Managing Partner - as they may see a longer way ahead in the distance and know that the status quo is not the alternative and realises that the competitive environment is changing and the company needs to reinvent itself.

Sometimes though there managerial barons don't always recognise or want to recognise the change - as sometime do financial markets which take the short term view and the murmuring starts and sometimes the CEO/MP is forced to resign.

The failure of knowledge management strategies are quite often those that are stymied by a lack of senior managerial support who put obstacles in the way as they don't see why they need to share knowledge and don't let people attend knowledge transfer meetings or more subtly let it be known that the way to get ahead in an organisation is by doing X rather than by sharing knowledge.

The second reason why companies need to understand knowledge management is to help people deal with the infoluenza epidemic stalking organisations where people aren't always short of information - they are deluged with it.

A good knowledge manager working with IT and the Librarians can help people to make sense and identify patterns in information.

By doing this then wise managers can tap their staff for ideas and for identifying those early stirrings of trouble from say customers that can encourage the CEO to create a new vision for the company. By utilising knowledge management techniques, the company can identify without the need for expensive consultants can sharpen it's business acuity. So by encouraging knowledge management in your organisation you can lay the foundations for survival for your company - and more and more companies are realising that the sharing of knowledge means increased profits.

Work Wise week in the UK

I noticed in this morning's paper that it is Work Wise Week which is sponsored by the IT Forum foundation with the laudable 5 year aim of making the UK work place to develop smarter working practices such as allowing people flexi hours and allowing flexible working practices. This has been going for a year now and they have had a conference today setting the 2nd year objectives.

For more details - click on the link below

Work Wise

What I did note is that this Friday is National Work from Home day. No I have to say that I find working from home once a week a really good idea. As a knowledge professional it allows me to catch up on some reading and to reflect on the lessons learnt and also from my reading renew my dynamism for work by reading fresh ideas. I also know that I get more done in a day at home in terms of forward work - than I would at two days in the office.

I have said in earlier posts that we all need the time to reflect - but that in today's work place it is difficult as a manager to be seen to sit in a chair at your desk and read some articles - because invariably questions are asked as to what work you are undertaking. From some managers I have talked to over the last few months - they share that sense of guilt - but also can't find a quiet and comfortable place to read without being disturbed - even if they have the luxury of an office where they can close the door.

In a knowledge based economy - managers need to work on ideas to take their team/department forward and maybe it is time that managers at their next round of appraisals ask for one day say every two weeks to work at home without interruption. It also might be something that companies can do to help the environment - just imagine if more people didn't commute in one day a week not only on public transport but also in car levels. Maybe one day in the future people will have permits to work in the city 4 days a week as an aid to reduce traffic congestion.

Anyway do look at the web site and see if you can get your company to embrace a different way of working practices and not always the 9 to 5 system.

The stages of learning

As I have a bit of time on my hands at the moment, I thought that I would look back over some of my articles in my folders. I found one that I had cut out in 1999 from the Harvard Business Review. It tackled the stages of learning which of course relates to knowledge management. In 1992 I read a book by Charles Handy which changed my life called "The Age of Unreason" which drove me to realise that if I was to have a job that was sustainable for the rest of my working life, I would need to keep reading and learning and staying up to date with events in my field and beyond it.

Because of this the article argues that learning is to use my words sedimentary as it creates a foundation for tackling the next level. Learning is based on experience - but we need to be aware that we are learning a lesson and pay attention to find those lessons - but also have the time to reflect on them also.

Organisations like schools - think that there is only one way to learn. Does everyone like to sit in a room in say a law firm and listen to a support lawyer or an outside expert deliver a talk and chalk lecture. They have not learnt in many ways that there are other ways to learn that takes into account that people do have different learning styles. I enjoyed the way that I was taught on my MBA - in going away to read a case study and then discussion it with my colleagues in a syndicate and revelling in the interaction and new ideas that they came up with based on the different foundations. It made me feel that I was in control of my learning and not in the teachers control. It was a more adult way of learning.

Bust just remember this - no person can be forced up the ladders of learning - but then as WE Deming quipped - Learning is not compulsory - but then neither is survival.

Sorry for the delay

Sorry about the lack of posts the last few days - I've been away but also had some issues to deal with - normal service will be resumed soon.

The well led team, a stepdaughter and why employees are scared to talk out.

I have always found serendipity, in reading articles and then relating them to events in life.

On Monday night, I was talking to my (prospective) stepdaughter and she has read some of the posts and asked my advise on an issue that is affecting a friends team at work. They are worried about negative feedback that they have been receiving from current customers and a trend is becoming apparent. However the atmosphere in her company is such that they feel that if they speak up then their career might be stalled in it’s tracks.

I’m afraid that I didn’t have any sage advise for her except by asking her to weigh up the pros and cons of bringing it to her superiors attention and that if the pros outweighed the cons to speak up. But also to consider whether it was a firm that she wanted to work at long term. After all would you truly want to work for a company that had such poor values.

However, this form of self censorship is quite common and research has been carried out and a summary appears in this months edition of Harvard Business Review by Detert and Edmondson - see previous post

Research has shown that this form of censorship goes from the lowest up to quite senior management.

Companies can have grievance or ombudsman processes - but the main reason is that people don’t feel safe to speak up or sometimes even creative ideas. The main reason is that self preservation is the reason - or if in doubt keep your mouth zipped.

Looking back through some notes - it isn’t always the hostile manager - there is an inhibition where there is a perception and the belief in some chilling stories. We have all heard them - oh you don’t want to say that - remember X in Department S - he spoke up and was out the door 3 months later. In a confessional moment - it has happened to me in my career.

Funnily enough employees have a belief in the hierarchy in organisations where we believe that a boss would feel either betrayed or embarrassed by a junior member of their team offering constructive criticism or more creative ideas.

This is done normally without any real supporting evidence and so remains unchallenged by people in the organisation even though it might be a corporate myth and isn’t covered by the espoused values of your organisation.

It is interesting that this is similar to a recent talk that I attended last week by Gerard Fairtlough where he highlighted that cultures of companies are sedimentary. These stories if they take hold can become part of that sediment.

I talked about my late grandfather in an earlier post and he even in more hierarchical times felt comfortable with a junior coming up with constructive criticism.

Perhaps managers need to explicitly invite and acknowledge peoples ideas and thoughts no matter how low in the organisation it comes from - and to not view it as a personal attack and if they feel that there are myths and assumptions to challenge them.

The article highlights that ideas are best expressed in public rather than private so that issues can be openly discussed and I would add that the wisdom of crowds can help to lustre the jewel of innovation and knowledge sharing in the organisation.

We are off to Athens

Great team, good performance, cool under pressure and backed by good support - a law firm possibly but as a lifelong Liverpool FC supporter - a great night.

Knowledge Sharing and the well led team paradox

I was reading an article by Amy Edmondson over the weekend which had an interesting paradox, that I’d like to share with you.

We all know that without learning organisations, teams and managers can suddenly find themselves trapped like a mammoth in a tar pool in yesterdays world.

Edmondson has been looking at how organisations can better access and utilise the talents and the insights of their employees. She found that employees sometimes find it very difficult to make a difference at work and to help their organisations make the jump forward - sometimes out of a culture of fear or by receiving a comment from a senior manager that acts as a dissuader on them feeling safe to put forward other ideas.

Most people would logically think that organisations that have teams that report less errors are the efficient ones. Edmondson’s work shows that the more effective teams are the ones that report more mistakes.

Upon investigation, she discovered that well led teams with good relationships don’t actually make more mistakes just that they feel comfortable in owning up to them because they had managers who tended to have open discussion, accepted trail and error rather than teams with punitive leadership and poor relations

It was due to an understanding that learning comes from being messy. When we are learning there isn’t always a precedent to guide us and provide us with guaranteed results. I am a three fingered typist - and not a touch one - if I started to learn how to touch type - my productivity would drop in the short term - but in the medium to long term - I would learn to type a lot faster.

Learning processes by their very nature tend to involve facing failures. James Dyson is recently quoted as saying that it took 5127 attempts before he got his vacuum cleaner correct.

I’d like to say that I’m referring to the new mistake where we are in unfamiliar waters. This is where if errors are made then we can carry out a review, see where we could improve, what we did well and also if anyone else needs to know the lessons learnt. This is different to the mistake made when there is something that we have past records to go on. That may be just an error of understanding and some coaching and mentoring may be of use for that error.

The presence of problems doesn’t signal high performance to most people and therefore managers need to recognise this reality and factor it into the cost of learning. As Edmondson highlights, the here and now appearance of high performance will seem more valuable and preferable than learning with its messy and error ridden nature. Not learning is an option but not one that a knowledge based organisation would want to take if it wanted to survive in the long term.

It is important that organisations learn best through group learning so that the interaction of individuals based in small groups is harnessed.

Each element of an organisation might face a different challenge based on it’s market - ie one might work on technical abilities to attract clients - some may have a more business developed approach which harnesses several strands.

We have talked earlier in this blog as the manager as coach rather than just a supervisor and to encourage learning behaviours by remembering to tolerate initial failure. This article I believe bears this out and highlights an interesting paradox that we should consider whilst training

RSS in 3 minutes

Just come back after attending the KM in the Legal Profession conference in London. It was helpful and I’ll be posting some observations over the next few days once I’ve reflected on it some more.

I’ve come back to read my blogs and there is a great three minute guide to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) with pictures and video. At a part of the talk a few people did not fully understand what RSS - so hopefully this might be of use to us all.

Here is the link so enjoy and maybe if you are trying to explain it to your boss it might help.

Just come back after attending the KM in the Legal Profession conference in London. It was helpful and I’ll be posting some observations over the next few days once I’ve reflected on it some more.

I’ve come back to read my blogs and there is a great three minute guide to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) with pictures and video. At a part of the talk a few people did not fully understand what RSS - so hopefully this might be of use to us all.

Here is the link in the title to this blog so enjoy and maybe if you are trying to explain it to your boss it might help.

A teaser

Next week will be a quiet week for the blog as I am away on Monday, then at a conference in London on knowledge management, where I am delivering a talk on knowledge management and innovation.

So the next week (w/c 30th April) will be me sharing some of the points that I picked up on. This weekend I’m off to the dreaming spires of Oxford - so I hope that the weather is good

Theory X, Enterprise 2.0 and another reason why people don’t share knowledge.

I’ve just been reading an interesting article by Andrew McAfee on Monday and Tuesday, who cites that in his MBA class talking about Enterprise 2.0. His students cited the concern that people who posted to a blog, edit a wiki will be perceived by their organisation as slackers and not spending enough time on their ‘real‘ work. Some commentators have stated that the inverse might be true that a busy knowledge worker wouldn’t have time to utilise new technologies.

Upon further investigation, he discovered that these MBA students had experienced the reality of work. A lot had come from professional service firms which in the US do tend to be results oriented culture that tend to value hard work long hours and this is particularly prevalent in consultancies which focus on the billable hour.

These students had quickly learnt how to get on in a firm is to understand the sub culture - they saw those people who rose through the ranks and they also saw how their leaders talked about what contributions were important and those that were not. Interestingly, to me from my Organisational Development studies, they were experiencing another part of the famous work study carried out by Elton Mayo in the 1930’s at the Hawthorne works and especially the work practice known as binging.

These students went on to explain that people in organisations that value ‘busyness’ - people in firms who contribute to blogs and wikis and other elements may be seen as non workers, laggards or goof offs and don’t have enough real work to do or ‘aren’t spending enough time on their real jobs.’

This means that if your organisation falls into this category and you are a knowledge based firm is that you can benefit by providing collaborative software and having processes that encourage knowledge sharing and potential innovation pools. However, these may fall down at the people part not because the contributors are necessarily too busy - but as Mc Afee says that they don’t want to be seen as not busy enough. I have had personal experience of this in a previous job so probably this is why the article resonated with me.

The problem for leaders in the organisation is that cultures take time to change and it will take a lot of hard and consistent work to convince people that it is a smart career move rather than a poor one to contribute to a blog or a wiki.

Increasingly at forward-thinking companies, managers understand the connection between learning, innovation, and higher productivity — in fact, employees at these companies may even be encouraged to spend time learning and experimenting with new technologies.

There was another quote from another blogger who highlighted the following.

Ironically, instead of being a drag on productivity, engaging in the collaboration, knowledge creation, and mashup workarounds that Enterprise 2.0 offers may begin to increase productivity, and enable knowledge workers to get more done in shorter time. Maybe even the most old-fashioned crack-the-whip managers will see the sense in that — eventually, gradually, and once they see their companies losing market share to nimbler competitors who have embraced some of the newer ways and have looked at increasing knowledge sharing in their organisation.

A Personal Note

I very rarely go into a personal blog but I think that readers may indulge me on this occasion.

I had a phone call last night 16th April from my father who advised me that my grandfather Arthur passed away quietly in his sleep at the age of 100.

I reflected last night on his life and will probably reflect some more on it over the next few weeks and imagined what he had seen over 100 years of life from when he was born Edward the 7th was King and Herbert Asquith of a dominant Liberal party had just become the Prime Minister in the Liberal landslide of 1906.

He worked in one job throughout his life - working for Dunlop based in Liverpool and was their chief accountant.

He retired from Dunlop in 1968 and came out to South Africa on a holiday and stayed for 18 months working for my father. He had a pension that he drew from 1968 to 2007 longer than he had worked for the company.

He was a lifelong supporter of Liverpool FC even in their days in the old Second division and although he was in a care home in Manchester, my parents had the Liverpool Daily Post delivered to him and the nurses in the last year as his eye sight deteriorated read to him the articles relating to Liverpool win lose or draw.

He also taught me lessons in employment that belonged to his generation but they weren’t the worst outlook in life.

Accept the fact that the world changes and enjoy the ride.

He was a cautious man but recognised that human beings must progress and that our history was born of that desire. He understood that organisations had moved from being ones where machines ruled to ones where knowledge workers would drive the future organisation.

He was very proud of my thesis regarding knowledge management which he read at the age of 97 and I was very proud that he was able to comprehend how the world of work had changed.

He felt that our generation was fortunate as we had never had to know the full horror of a conventional war in Europe or had had to be conscripted.

He felt that it was your duty as an employee to give 100% to them but to go home at the end of the day and give that same level of intensity to your family.

He also felt that there was a social contract between employer and employee but recognised that the job for life could be a curse as well as a blessing.

He did not feel that managers had a monopoly of wisdom and that it was a wise manager who listened to his subordinates views and then make the decision.

He respected other peoples professionalism but expected them to respect his also once a managerial decision had been made.

The most important lessons in life he taught me were:-

‘Treat people the way you would want them to treat you’

‘Always look in the mirror when shaving and ask what you can do in your work today to make a difference. When you brush your teeth at night ask yourself whether you succeeded or where you needed to improve.

‘Continuously read and listen to things you don’t normally do - the brain is like a muscle and needs to be exercised in different ways to avoid a lopsided brain.’

Anyway, thank you for indulging me with this blog post - normal service will be resumed in a few days.

Innovation Insights

Over the weekend I was reading an article with Bill Campbell, who runs Intuit but prior to that was involved with Apple.

Two interviewers spoke to him recently for his thoughts on Innovation and as I’m on a bit of a roll here as I’m talking in a few weeks time on knowledge management and innovation in London so some additional quotes might be useful - but also it does chime in with what I’m talking about. Although the thrust of his discussion relates to Engineers some of his comments would cross boundaries. Quite a lot of his thoughts are already reflected in some of the work that I am looking to carry out in this firm.

With regard to innovation, he feels that it is important to provide people with time to work on things of their choosing that may be breakthrough thoughts that can replenish your business core. (I’ll be writing about core businesses another time.) These projects are then reviewed and evaluated and have the opportunity to become a mainstream product.

He acts iike a venture capitalist would act and wants people to come up with a basic business plan in terms of who is the product for, what do you think the market is likely to be. What will this do and how much of peoples behaviours will have to change. Effectively Campbell is operating what is known as a Schello screen with a Real/Win/Worth it bias - I have more details of this if people are interested.

He feels that it is important to give the’ crazy guys some stature and importance. He feels that if you start from that you have a better chance of maintaining a cutlture of innovation.

He also feels that it is important for a CEO to meet with people and have an open forum where people could highlight what was making life difficult for them with regasrd to their work or what they were struggling with and how projects that might be being balked could be bought forward. The important thing is that the innovation should be looking to solve the problems that consumers/clients want.

Campbell then goes out of his way to say that he is not an innovator - he sees his role as CEO to ensure that the right people are in the room and that the crazies have an opportunity to contribute. He sees empowered people having the opportunity to contribute is one of the single most important thing that you can have in a company.

He also expects that he needs to accept failure - if you demand perfection, then people are less likely to innovate because you cannot anticipate every nuance in a complex world.

As I learnt in my entrepreneurial studies most entrepreneurs deal with the imperfect idea and tweak it as they go along. Remember the great quote from Edison who spent ages trying to get the bulb to work and said to a friend who asked him why he had failed to develop the bulb.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

He also feels that it is important to give people time off - especially if they have been working on a long or hard project to go and have some time off outside of their normal holiday and when they come back they are refreshed and can do the hard work. Also he feels that they can reflect on their experiences and pass those lessons on and use the break as a means of looking at a project with new eyes which means that they will do better work.

Campbell then goes on to say that in addition to innovation that he also pushes hard on best practices. He wants his employees to have a hunger to discover best practice so that in the absence of innovation there is the small tweak that will make the team/organisation more effective He gives high grades to people who know what is going on in their industry and can adapt quickly to meet the problems that clients have.

Effectively he is saying that technical excellence is a base but that it needs to be aligned with commercial knowledge - not only of the client but the industry drivers also.

It is an interesting article and is definitely going into my folder of articles covering innovation as it is one of my passions and one which knowledge management can help to deliver in a firm.

The civilised workplace

I received from McKinsey recently an article by Robert Sutton whose blog I subscribe to and which had prompted me to revisit the article I wrote on the Likable fool and I mentioned the Competent jerk. If as a reader you want to read the report in full, then click on the title bar of this blog

Suttons article which I have posted in full highlights the danger and effects of employing people who are basically nasty to people around them and the damaging effect that it can have to the people but also to the future well being of the organisation.


Our organisation of course doesn’t condone people who would behave in this way but the article is useful as an aide memoire as to why we would not and should not tolerate people who would behave in such a disrespectful way to fellow employees and to the behaviours that we need to be aware of.

People who practice these behaviours do real and lasting damage not only to people but to the organisation:

Word of mouth or worse on a site like rollonfriday.com stating that your organisation is peopled by nasty people can potentially undo your own hard work on potential recruitment—but also on the retention of people especially among your best and brightest, who can walk out to work in a more congenial setting. New recruits especially those from Generation Y are especially savvy in working out what firms they want to work for and the working environment.
Damage your firm’s reputation among potential laterals and even clients
Nip collaboration and openness in the bud and;
Stifle innovation and creativity.
So as a knowledge manager, these issues strike a chord as they are restrictors on the sharing of knowledge and also bringing new knowledge into your organisation to refresh the knowledge pool.

However, Sutton goes on to highlight the cost of or as Sutton calls it the Total Cost of Jerks to your organisation.

Damage to victims and witnesses

• distraction from real work; time and energy devoted to coping or avoiding
• honesty becomes not the best policy; a climate of fear, psychological safety undermined
• motivation and energy levels reduced
• absenteeism, usually due to stress related illness
• and worst of all, a prolonged exposure to bullying can turn people into bullies as it becomes a part of the firms culture.

Black hole for management

• time spent appeasing, calming, counselling jerks
• time spent chilling out, reinforcing, nurturing victims
• time spent reorganising to get people out of the jerk’s line of fire

Litigation and HR costs

• I think that we can imagine these.

Overall impact of condoning jerks

• stifles creativity and innovation
• dysfunctional internal competition
• difficulty in attracting new people of the right calibre and having to pay over the odds to get them to come to work in your firm
• People don’t go and put those little unpaid extras in.

Sutton highlights the steps that can be taken but he also highlights in the article as to the 12 most common abuses (or as he calls them his dirty dozen) that make people/employees feel worse about themselves.

These are:

1. Personal Insults.
2. Invading co-workers personal territory
3. Uninvited physical contact
4. Threats and intimidation, verbal and non verbal
5. Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult delivery systems
6. Withering e-mails
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate victims
8. Public shaming or status degradation rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they were invisible.

So what steps does he recommend.

Make the rule public by what you say and, especially do

As the head of Barclays Capital puts it, “Hotshots who alienate colleagues are told to change or leave.” Only when people feel safe highlighting to someone on their bad behaviour will you know that your efforts have been successful.

Weave the rule into your recruitment and dismissal procedures.

Perkins Coie a law firm based in Seattle, a Fortune “100 Best Places to Work” in 2007, for the 4th year in a row, reject rainmakers for just this “no jerk” reason. As senior partners Bob Giles and Mike Reynvaan report, “We looked at each other and said, ‘What a jerk.’ Only we didn’t use that word.” As my grandfather instilled in to me from an early age - treat people the way you would like to be treated yourself.

Apply this to a client

Don’t let your people be abused from the outside or from the inside. Even consider this: Fire clients who are abusive. Joe Gold, founder of Gold’s Gym (550 locations in 43 countries) did this from the very start, in his first gym on Muscle Beach in Venice, California, where Arnold Schwarzenegger was an early customer.

Is being a jerk contagious

According to Sutton - Yes.

Which is why a jerk-free workplace begins with us as an individual. This is common sense in my view. If I’m attacked, my first, human but not very nice basic instinct is to counter-attack. Most people if they don’t have the status within the organisation to counter-attack directly, tend to do it through oblique means. This can manifest itself by the person becoming disillusioned, losing faith in the firm, giving less than their best effort (or certainly not going the extra mile on nights and weekends).

A quote that Sutton utilises is an Arab proverb that “A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot.” and this is borne out by a number of anthropological studies into human behaviour.

Don’t let this happen to you or the firm that you work for the effects can be devastating not only to people but also to the future of your organisation.