Manage Knowledge Socially

My colleague, Allan, pointed me to this blog by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald, Social Media versus Knowledge Management. It's generating some discussion in the office. The point of the authors is:

• Knowledge management is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.
• Social media is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself.

This is useful model, and it may apply very well to most organizations. The frustrated librarian/researcher/information explorer in me rebels because

• Social media doesn't guarantee information will be shared outside of a social network. Information sharing is a largely social activity. Most of what you know came from someone else. There is no benefit for a group of peers keeping information in a closely held tribe. We have a name for this in the corporate world - it's called a silo.
• Social media is often about the conversation instead of the information. I've been monitoring/moderating an online community. There is a constant call from the corporate knowledge management community to pull knowledge for reuse from the community. The problem is the majority of the value in the community is from the conversation not from an answer the community comes up with. The task of finding "reusable content" in a community like trying to write Wikipedia articles from the debates on what should be in each article.
• Social media only exposes the existing knowledge social network - i.e. who do people ask.
• Social media doesn't protect you from hierarchy, it just creates a different one base on reputation. Each user still has a responsibility to use due diligence assessing information. It is not enough that the author is a Vice President, or has a high on-line reputation.

I believe there is a role for making the shared information available to a wider knowledge. Knowledge should be managed socially - i.e. organizations should be engaged in encourage transparent information sharing, hierarchies be damned.  Systematic sharing is not necessarily anathema to peer review. Academic publishing has been very successful for decades with peer review. Similarly organizations can establish communities of practice and allow users to create and edit documents. Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) is one way organizations can manage information socially. One of the base principles of KCS is "Reward learning, collaboration, sharing, and improving" What is more social than that?

Quality Without Control Charts

(Place soapbox down, hop up, start babbling like an idiot...)

You may not have noticed there was an article in the Smithsonian magazine this month that suggests Finland is better at educating students than (shock, horror) the United States.¹ Without control charts, or standardized test, or competition.Clearly something is seriously wrong.

So what are the Finns doing? I think they are

1. Focusing on long term outcomes - the Finns are focused on a very specific well defined goal. If it were written out it would look something like: Prepare our children to be contributing members of Society.
2. Investing in preparation - Finnish teachers spend more time preparing and less time teaching
3. Completing long term tasks - Finnish teachers move with a class often teaching the same students for years.
4. Letting the people doing the work design the work - Finnish teachers have guidelines not mandated curricula. This means they can tailor the class room experience to their own strengths and the needs of their children.

Can you run a business without control charts? Can it be a high performing quality business? Why don't we?

(Step off soapbox, pick up, quietly leave...)

Sources:

1. Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? LynNell Hancock, Smithsonian magazine, September 2011

Doctor, Doctor, give me the news

I'm shopping for a new doctor. Not because, I don't think my current doctor is not doing what he thinks is best, but because I want to make an informed risk assessment. Also, I think Doctors spend too much time telling people what they can't do instead of giving the positive message about what they can do.

Statistics are hard. 

I am not a very good statistician, but I am an adult and I believe I know how to weigh statistical evidence. So I understand when someone says smoking increases your risk of hyperventilating by 200%, I know the follow up question is "What is the base risk of hyperventilating?" I'm believe this puts me out in the fringes of the standard population, but it does give me a way to make an informed decision.

I have border line high cholesterol. My doctor magnanimously put me on an expensive popular wonder drug that reduces cholesterol. In very rare instances the side effects of the drug can be life threatening. So here's the deal. I'm experiencing side effects from the drug. I may have side effects from all the related drugs. What I want to know is:

1. What is the risk of dieing for someone my age?
2. How is that risk impacted by my lifestyle? (I'm actually an outlier here)
3. What is the expected benefit from taking the drug? 
4. What is the risk of having a life threatening reaction for people who react to the drug?

The last question is really the kicker - there may only be a one in a million chance for anyone who takes the drug to have a life threatening reaction, but since only one in one ten thousand people have a reaction, the risk of having a life threatening reaction goes up to one percent. Now I'm actually making my risk of death higher by taking the drug. And the drug works well, for most people. My problem is I can't find the studies that have the numbers, I need. Yet.

You can't have...

My Doctor also put me on a very restrictive diet without explanation. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Just a list of dietary rules:

• Don't eat...
• Don't drink...
• You can't have...
• Read product labels, you need to avoid... 

I'm trying to back track the reasoning. The drug, I'm taking seems to induce symptoms similar to type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure - more side effects, I'm sure I'd rather not have without a good risk assessment. So now I have two more potential problems I didn't have before.

Curiously, there was a study just released that indicates what you choose to eat may be more important than what you don't eat. What makes the study really interesting is the conclusion drawn by the researchers. The couldn't tell if it is the diet, or patients' willingness to follow the diet that was positive.

Taking this back to work

So what have I learned?

1. Give as much information as you can when your asking someone to do something
2. Tell people what they can and should do instead of what they can't

Just a thought. I could be wrong, but I believe that's right.

Ready, Aim Fire! Part 2

It's been a rough week. My younger son and wife have been expelled from the local Cub Scout Pack. My older son is still in the Pack, but it was made very clear he is only tentatively welcome. In response my wife and I are transitioning him to the pack affiliated with the Boy Scout Troop sponsored by our church.

In the general scheme of things, this is a minor bump on the road for my family. We have a place to go. We have anther community to turn to. I don't things are going well for the community we are leaving.

Being on the Other Side

People make mistakes. Several years ago I was a young Scouter. I got in a battle of wills with a Scout. I blew my stack. I pulled rank. I was wrong. Fortunately, the sponsoring organization quietly moved me out of the position. I didn't lose face and the Scout stayed with Scouting and earned his Eagle. In an ideal situation, something like this scenario would play out with the Cub Pack we are being asked to leave.

When Leaders Fail

In a corporate environment it is very difficult to change levels. In my experience there is a perception the only motion is up. Leaders move through progressively challenging responsibilities until they retire or get caught by the Peter principle. This means failure is not an option. There is no possibility to learn. There is no graceful face saving way to move to a different assignment. There is little possibility to come back with knowledge and use past failures as the basis of maturity and success. In such and environment, leaders who fail to execute plans are in turn executed. This may be why Vice Presidents seem to have an 18 month half life. In any 18 month period half of the VP's will either move to a higher status assignment, or be fired for failing to successful complete a financial goal.

Solutions?

Here is a modest proposal for transforming our organizations:

1. Lose the hierarchy - I'm a big fan of the "inverted triangle" concept. Instead of looking at organizations as a pyramid with the most important person on the top, think of it as an inverted triangle with the leader serving the greater community. 
2. Think in terms of assignments and projects instead of positions and jobs. People like to be the boss. When they are the boss they feel privileged and the power can go to their heads. One way to combat this attitude is to make assignments. Unlike positions, assignments are temporary. There is an implication there will be change. There is the idea that you might be asked to take an assignment where you are needed, not necessarily in the position that looks the best on the resume. 
3. Reward people for what they accomplish not the impressiveness of their title. This may result in some professionals being paid more than their boss. It may result in rewards that don't appear as part of an employees compensation package.

Finnish Education Part 2 - Play

It hit me this week end, the Finns have another advantage in their educational system - they encourage play. In stead of expecting students to sit in class all day, they send students out side to play. Year round. In the far North. It helps the students get more out of the classes. It lets them see the sun every day.

I also realize I'm using the same techniques at home. I've been helping my son learn to play violin. We play violin games together. Notice we don't practice. Practice is a bad word for what we are doing. We aren't doing drills. We are playing games - we're throwing dice, picking cards, and drawing pictures. There is candy and rewards. We make up insane competitions that remind me of Calvinball. I always lose. Some days we do a lot. Some days we do very little. All in the service of working through a difficult complex task. Of course, I am trying to teach him that often something that takes effort is worth doing and can be fun and rewarding.

Using play to teach something or to learn something is not new. I believe there is no reason to keep it out of the workplace. Foldit is a game that helps scientist understand protein folding, by turning the problem into a game. The game players have help scientists find likely solutions faster than they could find them with out the help of the game players. There are computer simulations for everything from flight training to stock market trading. Some companies have "white space" time for software developers and engineers. Can we give white space to front line workers?

Why don't we turn some of our challenges into games and engage employees to play and solve them? Why don't we let our factory workers and call center employees take a crack at rebuilding our processes or finances by letting them play a simulation? Front line workers might just find a solution the specialists and mangers can't. What would be wrong with that?