Knowledge Matters™

I recently came across this blog-post by Marc Aafjes on what he calls the Shadow Organisation. Marc says:

"By connecting various participants across the company around the execution of our knowledge strategy we're cultivating a meta network - the shadow organisation - that enables the company to enhance the value we derive from the knowledge we have. Framing knowledge management in economic terms, the shadow organisation in effect is ‘making the market for knowledge' by connecting otherwise disparate parts of the company around knowledge needs. This shadow organisation consists of the change agents that help us execute the knowledge strategy and embed sustainable change in all parts of the company".

Now what Marc is doing is by no means new - he's weaving a network to build a community of practice! What he has done is come up with a clever name that markets his network weaving initiative. ...

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Coming up with good business performance indicators is not easy, and too often we get it wrong. I use a simple question to help me decide if the indictor is relevant - "Is the indicator a measure of how many children had a bath, or is it a measure of how many children had a bath and came out clean!?" I suggest you probably want a mix, but with a definite bias to "had a bath and came out clean"!

Coming up with business performance indicators for a knowledge management initiative is particularly difficult, but it is key to knowledge productivity™. Frankly it's too easy to report activity rates - how many children had a bath - because these are tangible and relatively easy to measure. Measuring and reporting the true impact of the initiative on the organisation - had a bath and came out clean - is much more difficult; if only because the impact will be variable, and not everyone will agree the strength of the outcome. ...

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Yesterday my theme was corporate amnesia - the loss of collective organisational memory resulting from physical and psychological organisational trauma associated with change. Today my theme is the antithesis of corporate amnesia - the inability to move forwards or backwards because of hyper-analysis, which leads to decision paralysis and ultimately learned helplessness .

Hyper-analysis is the propensity to seek detailed data on almost every aspect of something before making a decision. Some people call this analysis paralysis but I don't think this term is correct - it mixes cause with effect. The result of hyper-analysis is often, but not always, decision paralysis. Hyper-analysis has its roots in any or all of the following: ...

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Yesterday was my last day working on the TARDIS knowledge management system and for HolisTech® Pty Ltd . It was both a sad day and a relief. It's a relief because for the past fortnight I've been somewhat schizophrenic. I've been schizophrenic because despite my best efforts I've found myself thinking and working (albeit unpaid) for my new organisation, and at the same time working in TARDIS and for HolisTech®. The net effect has been very long hours where I've been burning the candle at both ends, and is my defence for failing to blog in recent days! But I digress. I thought today (to stay with the medical theme) we would look at corporate amnesia.

Amnesia is a devastating disorder, which results in short or long-term loss of memory, and sometimes an inability to imagine the future . Amnesia is sometimes the result of a disease, but more commonly occurs from physical or psychological trauma. Now it seems to me corporate amnesia - the loss of collective organisational memory - is endemic these days, and is the result of both physical and psychological organisational trauma. ...

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I've been head-hunted to be the principal change champion in a large health services organisation, and to work up the information/knowledge management requirements for what will be potentially a multi-million dollar initiative. Whilst I am very excited I am also quite sad because this means I will be leaving HolisTech® Pty Ltd and TARDIS .

TARDIS is a joint venture between HolisTech® and the Australian Department of Defence to build and maintain a knowledge management system. I believe it to be one of the most significant attempts at knowledge management within the Australian public sector: an attempt that truly has tried to integrate people, process, technology and content. I'm very proud to have been associated with TARDIS, so today I thought I would share with you some of the lessons I will take away.

Just over four years ago Pat Byrne and I began to put the TARDIS dream into reality. We began with an interesting set of high-level requirements and constraints, with the constraints largely setting the direction of TARDIS. The two most important constraints were:

• only existing software and hardware were to be used, and
• software coding was to be absolutely minimised and kept to the application level.

Now with the benefit of hindsight I think these two constraints were truly inspired. ...

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