What is Knowledge Management?

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  Not since before Labour Day.  Sorry for my silence.  I’ve been working with a software start up to help them stop being a start up and be a going concern. This work has required start up hours. It is worth it though.  They are well and truly trying to be a real business.

Earlier in the fall, I had been talking with a colleague of mine, Laura from Micaura Consulting, and we were looking to better define what my practice area is and how that could help Micaura’s clients.  What follows is the guest blog Laura asked for near the end of that conversation.

So here is a philosophical and, more importantly, practical answer to the question in the title.  I do have to acknowledge some help in creating this answer: my thanks to Stephanie Barnes whose new book on Knowledge Management Strategy was launched this past week at KM World and Sarah Stephens who lives this stuff every day as KM Director at McMillan LLP.  They are both friends, colleagues and mentors of mine.

So without further ado, the philosophical:

KM is getting vital business knowledge into the brains and hands of people so they can make better decisions.

KM is what you know and how you know it, what your organization knows and how they know it and finding solutions to leverage that for business success.

From which follows the practical:

KM is people.

KM is engagement.

KM is people having conversations.

KM is getting people to talk to each other and tell stories about how things get done.

KM is getting people to talk to each other to make new things.

KM is getting the information you need fast and easy.

KM is discovering that the mail room clerk has a story of an experience that the CEO would find useful in making a pressing decision.

KM is better decisions.

KM is making sure your boomers and millennials are productive together. 

KM is making sure you can still operate when your boomers retire.

KM is making sure you still deliver on time when your project manager leaves for a new job.

KM is the first part of the innovation process.

A better mousetrap is not KM. KM is how that better mousetrap happened and capturing that so it can happen again.

KM is when you do something again, you do it better than the last time.

KM is confidence in processes and policies.

KM is not the database. KM is the movement of information in and out of that database.

KM is teaching.

KM is modeling.

KM is learning.

KM is master and apprentice working together.

KM is how that apprentice becomes a master.

KM is asking questions and finding answers.

KM is reading and writing and talking about what you've read and written.

KM is how your organization gets out in front.

KM is helping people find out that they have knowledge they didn't know they had.

KM is holding onto the knowledge that walks out the door every night.

Are any of these statements familiar or do any of them strike a chord? Cool! Let’s talk!

See you next week!

What Do We Mean When We Say Productivity?

I’ve been doing some reading lately and scanning the business press as I do to see if there is anything that piques my interest and I’ve noticed that the word productivity is making a bit of a comeback.  I wonder if that has anything to do with it being time for children to go back to school and for the universities to start classes again?  I have to admit that the word and how it gets used when we talk about business and employee engagement causes me some concern.

The problem that I have with the word is that there doesn’t seem to be a clear handle on what we mean when we say productivity, or its verb being productive.  I suppose the good news is that we can somehow measure productivity, by assigning a dollar value to tasks and then multiplying, but that’s also the bad news.  It means that time that isn’t assigned a value is all of a sudden give the label ‘unproductive' and we are admonished to throw that unproductive task or thing onto the trash heap. This is a particular problem if you’re in an industry using a billable hours model.

I think that the way the word productivity is used in the press and in our workplaces doesn’t allow for an understanding of how people work and get stuff done.  We all know that social media is where productivity goes to die, but is it really? Yes two hours spent down the 'angry cat' rabbit hole is most likely a problem, but is it possible that a five minute check of Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter could actually reset and recharge someone who’s been looking at the same word processing screen for four hours?  Or what about the artists who swear by mid afternoon walks?  In the corporate sense of productivity, that half hour to two hour time away from a desk or an easel is ‘unproductive', but I know from fantastic personal experience that the idea that shifts a stuck project or thought into new spaces and greater effectiveness more often than not pops into mind after I've gotten up, stepped away from my desk and gotten outside to breathe different air, see different things and hear different sounds.    

So with this information in mind, I think the conversation around productivity needs to shift.  I think that what’s at the core of the conversation about what we mean by productivity these days is actually about focus and attention. I have noticed that people are actually producing something all the time. Even when it appears like they aren’t, something is being ‘produced’. That something might be frustration or it could be a really successful attempt at emptying a mind of any thought, but people are never actually doing 'nothing'. People are most ‘productive’ in the way business would like them to be when their whole self, mind and body, is engaged and focussed on something in a relaxed way. Where and on what is just a matter of what a person's mind and body is pointed towards.

So the next time you see someone you work with or works for you stalk away from their desk in frustration and come racing back twenty minutes later, maybe with latte in hand, with more energy to throw at the task they were just made angry by because they had a new thought in the line at Starbucks, think about what small or larger breaks might do for how you focus on getting the important things done.

See you next week!

Navigating the Writing Path: Start to Finish – I C Publishing Summer Blog Tour

Welcome to the I C Publishing Summer Blog Tour on navigating our writing paths from start to finish. I was delighted when my friend and Senior Partner at NLP Canada Training Linda Ferguson invited me to be part of this Summer Blog Tour. Linda’s passion and skills help people open up fresh perceptions so that they can recognize new strengths in themselves and become better at supporting strength and collaboration in others.

If you’ve arrived here from LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, Linda’s blog is here and you can read Sheri Andrunyk’s post that launched the tour here.

And now, without further ado: here is my contribution to the tour.

How do you start your (writing) projects?

I start by reading.  I read a lot anyway, but when a particular project is front of mind, I allow most of my reading to be directed toward what might be useful for that project.  History, social sciences, fiction: it doesn’t really matter, I just fill my brain.  Once I start to feel like I’m getting filled up,  I then start to let it all spill out.  Framed by the project, thoughts and ideas start to form, and those thoughts begin to make it onto paper. They land on the page in the shape of what could be called word clouds, as I write things down wherever there is space on the page or card.  

 

And I start analog. I always begin with pen and paper.  Yes, I am one of those who still uses a fountain pen.

 

How do you continue your writing projects?

I let my projects take their own time.  When it is time to write, I get to work and write, but I let things move at their own pace.  I obey Micheal Ondaatje in this: he wrote in In the Skin of A Lion “Meander if you want to get to town."   My projects begin with a central kernel and move out towards the edges, and I write and assemble the pieces of writing like pieces of a puzzle, allowing what I know to be the through line of the plot or idea to govern sequence, what stays and what goes and what gets added to ensure clarity and cohesion.  

 

How do you finish your project?

To begin with endings, I go do something else. The something else can be as simple as making lunch. I give myself some time and space in order to freshen my own eyes and clear my head a bit so that I can better see into what I’ve written.  Then I try to be as merciless as I can be with my words: trimming, rewriting, adding and finally crafting what’s on the page or in the machine into the what my imagination saw when the reading started to encourage the first kernel to grow.

 

Include one challenge or additional tip that our collective communities could help with or benefit from.

I think of all the tips I could give after twenty plus years of making art this one is the one that has served me the best and the most consistently: go for a walk.  If you find yourself stuck, staring at a cursor: walk to the coffee shop or grocery store.  If you need to sort out a plot point or make sense of facts that are connected but don’t seem to hang together: walk to and through the neighborhood park.  Allow the movement and change of scenery give your head and body a break and a distraction.  I have found that things sort themselves out when I am moving through a different mental and physical space.

 

Passing the Pen

And now, I am delighted to introduce you to the next contributor who will be sharing her experiences, challenges, and tips, on navigating the writing path from start to finish. Check out her link, and watch for her blog post on Wed, July 9th. 

Adrianna Prosser is one third of The Smashing Trio, a promotional trio who love to host unique events with unavoidably good times. She is also a playwright of historical adaptations of Canadian history and of "Everything But the Cat..." a bereavement piece on tour right now: www.everythingbutthecat.net - her mental health blog invites guest bloggers to share their struggles and triumphs in hopes of creating a community online and off where stigma is a thing of the past. Find out more about this fiery redhead at www.adrianna-prosser.com and follow her at @adriannap. Her blog is here.

Check out the links and watch for her post next week.

And I’ll see you all back here next week after a week full of National Holidays and ever more important football ( soccer ) matches (for those us who care about these things).