Knowledge Matters™

Some months ago I engaged in a somewhat vitriolic discussion with David Snowden on the worth of surveys . My position was, and remains, that surveys have their place in research. David's position at the time was - "I do think that in the vast majority of cases randomly completing surveys has equal validity to attempting honesty ...". Now I do try to be honest when completing a survey and I diligently respond to almost every survey I receive. However last Friday I adopted the David Snowden random completion method! Why? ...

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In my opinion one of the best blogs on the web is Better Projects by Craig Brown; closely followed by Impacted Nurses by Ian Miller. The content on both sites is quite different, but always entertaining and informative. I think Craig is about to be challenged by Pat Byrne's Knowing Projects . Pat has been threatening to enter the blogosphere for some time, so I am really pleased to see he has finally found the time.

His second entry is called "A Melody not a Hip=Hop (01) ". Now I suspect my son or daughter, who like rap and hip hop may not like his metaphor, but it resonates with me. Pat says hip hop is "blocky" - that is to say each musical phrase it is not connected in a smooth way. He says the same about two project methodologies - PRINCE2 and PMBOK. To quote Pat: ...

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I've not blogged for almost a month for several reasons. First my current employer has some restrictions concerning blog topics, and I've been working out just what this means. Second I'm so connected that I'm paralysed!

My employer has provided me with a laptop and token that allows secure access to two corporate intranets. I have a Blackberry so if I'm not on, or monitoring, the Intranets then I receive the e-mails any way. And of course I'm still contactable by telephone of which I have four numbers - my office number, a secure mobile, my personal mobile, and my home number. I have two work e-mails and one semi-private address, as well as the address on this site. If people still can't find me my wife has an office number and mobile. In short I am so connected that I can find few ways of escaping, short of turning everything off and answering nothing. Why would I want Twitter, Doppler or any other social connectivity tool?

I've written before about connectivity enabling Pavlovian work-practices . By this I mean one stops doing what they are doing and responds to the electronic stimuli immediately and often uncritically. If we assume an eight hour day, ...

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I don't idly web-surf very often, but today I am and it has proven fruitful. I like numbers and I like visualisations even more, so naturally I like the web site of Chris Jordon which is called Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait . Chris has come up with the novel idea of depicting statistics using multiple images of the statistic in question.

For example he shows the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law by creating a montage of Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs. The montage consists of 83,000 photographs, which allegedly is the statistic! ...

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The United States Air Force lost a B2 Stealth Bomber valued at $US 1.4 billion because of a failure to transfer knowledge between pilots and maintenance technicians. The bomber crashed earlier this year at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. Apparently water distorted pre-flight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, making the aircraft's control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash.

The official accident investigation found that the crash probably could have been avoided if knowledge of a technique to evaporate the moisture had been disseminated throughout the B-2 command. This technique was: ...

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actKM 08 will be held on the 14th and 15th of October 2008 at University House, the Australian National University, Canberra. The theme is 'Managing Knowledge for Competitive Advantage', which is hardly original, but the organising committee promise it will be highly participative and interactive. They are seeking submissions at the moment with a preference for interactive or experiential activities that engage conference participants in a learning or competitive environment.

I haven't made up my mind if I will attend actKM 08 because I've been asked to present a paper on network analysis to the Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) annual conference . This conference is at the Holiday Inn, Adelaide from the 14th to 16th of October 2008 inclusive, and the theme is ‘Improving Tradecraft'. At the moment I think I'll write a paper that compares the various network analysis tools on the market, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and assesses their suitability for intelligence work. Even if I don't attend AIPIO 2008 the paper can be published in their peer-reviewed journal.

Assuming I attend the AIPIO conference I will head off to Hobart to attend the Australian Military Medicine Association's annual conference . ...

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The organisation I am working for at the moment is under considerable pressure to restructure. Now I've been through lots of restructures in the past, and few if any restructures have achieved what they were supposed to. One of the reasons for this, in my opinion, is the failure to recognise the realities of how people work.

Structure provides the skeleton an organisation requires to meet its goals and support its people, or least that is what it is supposed to do. Formal structures are planned, deliberate attempts to establish ordered relationships between the component parts of the organisation. They are supposed to:

• define tasks and job roles, thus determining the division of labour;
• establish management patterns, thereby controlling how work is planned, organised and directed; and
• determine the relationship and communication patterns between component parts of the organisation, thus limiting individual variation. ...

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Just over a month ago, and before the current debate on wisdom management began in earnest on actKM, I had a brief exchange with Professor Bruce Lloyd on the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Bruce kindly pointed me to a number of his papers. I've reproduced them below, some with hyperlinks. ...

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The Prime Minister of Australia wanted to,
seize the future with both hands.
To build a new Australia -
to build a better land!

He called for "Australia's Best and Brightest",
though he wouldn't pay them a pound.
He just wanted them to assemble,
in old Canberra town.

To engage in a talk fest,
the likes you've never seen.
Where each delegate speaks for just four minutes,
and never again is seen. ...

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A colleague has completed an analysis, using my RAAKERS™ framework, of two organisations which are located on different continents from the parent organisation. The results are very interesting. Just to refresh your memory RAAKERS™ is an acronym for responsibility, authority, accountability, knowledge, experience, resources and systems. RAAKERS™ is a risk and knowledge management framework to assess where an organisation’s weaknesses might be. Consider the graph below.

The dark green bars are the possible scores for RAAKERS™ components in this order – responsibility, authority, accountability, knowledge, experience, resources and systems. The coloured bars indicate the strength of the component. Red bars are a score of less than four. Orange bars are a score between four and nine. Light green bars are a score greater than nine. ...

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