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My role as knowledge manager in 2020 is to share everything I know without expecting anything in return… and you’ll see, eventually it comes back to me.

As part of the evolving role of the knowledge manager research Sparknow has been conducting I've invited audiences at the venues I've spoken at this year to reflect on the role of the knowledge manager (worker) at the end of the decade. The above quote (from a participant at Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning 5 in Bogota) was illuminating for a few reasons:

infers a significant change occurred in personal behaviour (in 2020 knowledge sharing has become the accepted way of behaving);

means there was a dramatic improvement in the levels of trust between employees and employers (organizations have become more meritoric based on knowledge and networks not merely on revenues generated); and

suggests organizational models have shifted to support the concept of personal knowledge development (internal capacity building recognises a life after the organization).  

I've been trying to make sense of what I see as being renewed interest in knowledge management among UK government circles. I thought I saw signs of the green shoots of km recovery at KMUK last month, and in rereading the Cabinet Office's launch of the Civil Service Reform Plan last month I was drawn to this:

...the Civil Service of the future will look, feel and operate differently. It will have a more innovative and less hierarchical culture, with a much sharper focus on outcomes rather than processes, and will be more flexible and corporate. The plan will also help to deliver clearer accountability, more digital services, better management information, and will ensure that policy and implementation are seamlessly linked...

To support this the plan stipulates among other things:

at least five days a year investment in targeted learning and development; and

creating a decent working environment for all staff, with modern workplaces enabling flexible working, substantially improving IT tools and streamlining security requirements to be less burdensome for staff.

At the risk of stretching the linkage it occurs to me that the role of the knowledge worker in government is about to evolve. I see this creating a need for: 

improved awareness and restatement of the value of information and knowledge;

creative retention strategies based on the various stages of an employee lifecyle;

understanding that an outgoing employee takes more than just their knowledge when they leave or transfer; they also take a whole set of knowledge networks that may have been hidden; and  

capacity building to equip employees and the organization to become better at identifying, noting, sharing and using knowledge: in effect good personal knowledge management across a more horizontally structured organization.

taking the plunge at KMUK12

How do you set the tone for a two day event (KMUK) with a large gathering of skilled km practitioners many of whom can do such sessions in their sleep? Over a cup of tea at the National Gallery, Victoria Ward and I recalled an exercise Philip Gibson had run a few years back for an EDRM event I’d chaired. 

‘Taking the plunge’ is intended to

Get people involved

Get them to interact with colleagues outside their immediate teams

Generate energy at the start of an event    

Here’s how (with Philip’s help) I ran it:

I had six large signs, placed conspicuously around the room, reading:

pool side changing room diving board shallow end deep end bar

I introduced the exercise with a picture of a swimming pool (actually Pells Pool in Lewes where I live which is the oldest outdoor pool in the country)

I then said:

I’d like you all to imagine that you’re at the KMUK swimming pool. Where would you be?

at the pool side – for those still observing rather than being involved

in the changing room – for people who are preparing but not yet ready to take on their km role

on the diving board – for those who are about to ‘take the plunge’

at the shallow end – for those who are ‘testing the waters’ and not too sure if they want to get deeper

at the deep end – for those who are already well and truly ‘immersed in’ their km role

at the bar – for those who are celebrating achievements.

Now please would each of you go to the sign which you feel best represents where you personally have got to with your km role. You have two minutes to do this. Go to the stations which best represents where you think you are now in your role and NOT where your colleagues are going to!

At this point there was a lot of tooing and froing as the delegates decided where they should assemble. Once order was restored I invited them to:

Please take a minute to reflect in silence about why you’re where you are.

And then

I’d like each of you to pair up with someone near you, preferably someone whom you don’t already know well and take a minute or two each to share with them your reasons for being where you are. Let the first person in the pair begin while the second listens.

Some of the delegates (including Arthur Shelley and David Gurteen) at ‘the Bar’

After a couple of minutes I asked them to switch and repeat the process. At the end of the first round (which took 6 minutes) I invited them to:

Now pair up with someone else near you whom you don’t already know well and repeat the exercise.

The session concluded after 15 minutes with this

I hope that’s got you thinking about your km role as well as helping you to get to know a few of your colleagues a bit better. I also hope that all of us will get further along through the day ahead. Now please take your seats.

One technique Sparknow uses when trying to understand how information and knowledge flows in and around an organization is to ask a set of short simple ‘vox pop’ questions. They are short questions, the answers to which are usually very insightful.

While I am in Bogota, Colombia this week speaking at the 5th Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning Summit I am going to be continuing our ongoing enquiry into the evolving role of the ‘knowledge manager’ by asking the delegates to think about these simple questions:

How do you describe what you do to others?

Is there an image, an object or a sound that sums up your experience of working in this field?

What tool or technique do you find you use more than any other?

What is the biggest issue you have had to face in getting people to support what you are doing?

What aspect of your work are you most proud of?

Knowing what you now know what advice would you pass onto someone looking to follow in your footsteps?

Knowledge retention is a big issue for many organisations. This blog first published in 2011 talks about how Sparknow planned for and marked the retirement (his second) of its Financial Controller Roger Doughty.

Roger was there in 1997 when Spark began. Through 14 years he has guided us through a maze of fiscal legislation, keeping a watchful eye on our finances and helping us become a limited liability partnership. That Sparknow has been able to develop the stellar list of client names bears testimony to the strength of our backroom support nearly all of which has been done on a virtual basis by Roger.

Our challenge is similar to that we’ve seen with clients when experienced people depart.

How to pass on the knowledge he’s gained much of which has been tacit.

How to ensure the same level of service is provided. And finally

How to recognise his contribution in a manner befitting of our style and values.

Tacit knowledge transfer has been/is being covered by a period of parallel running with his successor Mark Barrett who is also a Welshman with an accounting background. Mark has been shadowing Roger for the last couple of months and now that is reversed and Roger is shadowing Mark. I then hold monthly review sessions with the pair of them to see what issues have arisen and fine tune our processes. Our intention is ensure a smooth seamless transition which thus far it has been.

To recognise his contribution we asked a number of associates, friends, collaboration partners and clients to think of an image that best described Roger and then to write a brief anecdote.

The material was assembled; should we print off a set of postcards, produce a virtual card or make a set of recordings? Webster’s Pictorial provided the inspiration and with the help of Curtis James, a Brighton based ‘letter presser/purveyor of collections…’, Roger’s ‘book of memories’ was born.

    A very suprised and delighted Roger was presented with his gift at a garden party held in Lewes.

A quote in conversation with one of my fellow speakers at KM Mid East Abu Dhabi 2011.  We were talking about why people like working in her organisation; she herself has been there many years and now has a Knowledge Management (KM) brief.

That sense of pride was evident among many of the delegates I spoke to. It was borne out in the results of the Knowledge Survey conducted by Sparknow in advance of the event wherein the majority of people said they’d contribute for a sense of wider acheivement suggesting that monetary rewards are not motivators for knowledge sharing.

If I’m honest I was surprised by the number of people in the audience who put their hands up when I asked at the start of my address ‘how many of you are in a KM role?’ Over half of an audience of 120 plus drawn from across the region said they were.

The event was a delightful mixture of formal and informal in a way the the Arab world excels at. Held in the splendour of the Intercontinental Hotel Abu Dhabi it brought together a mix of KM practitioners and wannabees.  The organisors will be posting speeches, videos and photos here; these are my observations on the people and customs and what might or might not work in KM.

There is great respect for the views and opinions of others and people are listened to attentively; delegates were happy to contribute personal experiences for this is very much an oral culture.  And we were reminded by one of the presenters that

the Koran pushes us for more knowledge

which would suggest KM is pushing against a door that is at least adjar.

The event was a reminder to me of how there is no one size fits all for a KM initative (KM ‘Project’ was fiercely debated and dismissed by the delegates). It was vividly illustrated a day later in a conversation I had in the offices of a government agency when it emerged that it is not uncommon for an employee to be called half a dozen times a day by his or her boss.  Contrast that to Western cultures where interactions usually take place via email or instant messaging. And the option of spending a day working at home to focus uninterrupted on a challenging issue is not one that seems to have permeated practices in the Gulf.

These were my takeaways for those running KM initiatives in the region:

An organisation’s culture is the sum of the culture of its individuals 

Introducing financial incentives for sharing is counterproductive

The process of transferring knowledge between expatriate workers who still make up a large part of the workforce and nationall staff works best when additional time is built in at the end of a contract for that process to occur

More information does not make for better decisions; a case of paralysis by analysis?

Pictures stimulate conversation and brevity in written communication is preferred

Formal peer to peer dialogue usually requires approval of superiors which means informal ‘water cooler’ coversations often yield most benefit

Stories amplify KM and are readily understood as a way of exchanging lessons.

Here are some of the distinquished speakers (John Girard, David Gurteen, Dr Allam Ahmed, Luke Naismith plus yours truly)

It was October 2004 and I’d just left the world of publishing for corporate life at a global insurance broker. Enjoying a few drinks at a party in Clapham I was chatting to a uni friend I’d not seen for years.

“How’s the magazine going?” she asked.

With a big grin on my face, I told her that I’d recently handed it over to a new editor as I’d accepted a role at Aon in its knowledge management team. She looked at me blankly.

I’ve had the two questions that followed posed to me many times since then. The first is pretty straightforward to deal with.

“No,” I replied. “Not the energy company. It’s a broking and risk management firm.”

The second has never been simple to answer and I still find myself taking a deep breath as I throw myself into it.

“What’s knowledge management?”

It’s taken me some time to refine my response. I don’t want to cause fellow party goers to fall into a jargon-induced coma nor do I want to be labelled ‘the one not to sit next to at the dinner table’.

The only approach I know that works is to volley a question back: “What do you do?” Then it’s easy. Business development, architect, pharmaceutical research, IT project management, journalist, jet engineer, teacher, fireman. Once you have a context you can explain what we do.

People’s reactions are great. I’d say 90% of the time their eyes widen and they tell you exactly how much they need someone to do the same in their organisations. Occasionally, you get the eye rollers who give a soft snort and dismiss you as another corporate five-minute wonder.

But it hasn’t been a fad, not unless fads can last well over a decade. You could debate when knowledge management started for the next ten years, but in my mind it was the mid-1990s when companies began to take it seriously with a major groundswell at the turn of the millennium.

And that’s what I’m here to map. Fifteen years in the making, how has knowledge management evolved? What does a typical knowledge manager look like? Are there specific attributes we all share? From where do we draw inspiration? And how on earth do we make it work?

With Sparknow, I’ll be plotting this journey through the stories of the people who have shaped it. And while I do so, I’ll be learning how to use the many narrative research techniques that have given Sparknow the reputation it rightly deserves.

By the end of it, we’ll have a collection of stories, using all manner of media, that we hope will not only be useful as a resource but also show the value our approaches bring. And if you’re interested in my reflections and musings along the way, I’ll be sharing them here.

Find out more about our project.