One of my peers in the badly-named discipline of Knowledge Management is IBM's complexity guru, Dave Snowden. Last year Dave wrote a paper entitled Managing for Serendipity,
which I really enjoyed. Dave appears to share my disdain for the
context-free capture and 'codification' of people's business knowledge
in massive 'knowledge bases' just in case someone else might be able to
benefit from that knowledge sometime in the future (assuming they can
find it).
Dave's paper explains how senseless this expensive exercise is. I have outlined in my Personal Knowledge Management articles why I think Knowledge Management energies would be much more effectively spent (1) developing social networking applications and competencies, and (2) developing personal content management
applications and competencies, focused on the specific, individual
needs of the organization's front-line knowledge workers (illustrated
above).
In the above-mentioned article, Dave asks the question: If
capturing 'best practices' and similar context-deficient knowledge in
central repositories is, except in limited cases*, ill-advised, what if
anything should organizations
be collecting in centralized 'knowledge bases' and what
centrally-coordinated programs should be used to encourage learning and
knowledge transfer? He suggests three possibilities:
Narrative Databases:
Unfiltered repositories in which people can record stories about events
that they learned from personally. Dave warns against imposing
interpretations and rigid taxonomy on such stories, stressing the
importance of serendipitous reading of them. He also sees these as a
significant opportunity for recently retired employees to contribute to
others' learning. Dave offers a highly-regarded course in the craft of story-telling.
Social Network Stimulation:
Databases, tools and programs that encourage and enable employees to
improve the breadth, depth and effectiveness of their personal
networks. In a recent article in Sloan Management Review, Rob Cross,
Tom Davenport and Susan Cantrell entitled The Social Side of High Performance
(available only by subscription) the authors show that effective
development and use of social networks correlates more than anything
else with high performance rating of knowledge workers.
Disruptive Pattern Breaking:
Providing fresh thinking, ideas from unusual sources, and challenges to
accepted ideas and procedures are healthy in any organization. By
broadening employees' exposure to such material, organizations can
stimulate innovation and provide new perspectives that can sharpen
critical skills and hence improve work effectiveness and
decision-making.
Although many people find Dave's writing dense, even intimidating, I
find his arguments to be well-supported, pragmatic and eminently
practicable. These three initiatives, in tandem with programs to
develop social networking and personal content management applications
and competencies, offer the promise of finally realizing the 'Knowledge
Advantage' that those of us in KM have been striving for, for a decade.
* Dave acknowledges the value of 'best practices' in
internet payment systems and safety procedures in a nuclear power
plant, for example.
The new trampolines for kids
come with a high safety net that completely surrounds the sides of the
trampoline, so that you don't need a 'spotter' to safeguard against
falling off. When you photograph through the net, you get a slight
softening, a grainy filtering of your subject's image. Combined with
the sense of motion, the effect to me was reminiscent of my happiest
days of childhood: non-stop, gentle, carefree, uninhibited joy.
As promised, here are the
results of the Great Canadian Song contest. At the end of the first
round, our four judges, Chris Corrigan, Darren Barefoot, Robert
Cooke and I, whittled the 76
nominees down to 20 finalists. We then re-listened to all 20 songs
and ranked them in order. Just as a reminder, to qualify, songs had to
be written and performed by Canadians and had to refer at least
peripherally to Canada or something identifiably Canadian. The idea was
to select possible contents for a compilation CD that would introduce
people from other countries to Canada through its music. The judges'
rankings are based strictly on personal preference -- how proud we
would be to play each song to someone who knew nothing about Canada or
its culture and heritage.
Many of our favourite Canadian musicians (Bruce Cockburn, Sarah
McLachlan, Marc Jordan, Ian Thomas, Blue Rodeo, Jesse Cook, Guess Who,
Amanda Marshall, Alanis Morrisette, and Jann Arden just to name a few)
didn't make the list because
their best (in our opinion, anyway) songs don't refer to Canada.
Of the 20 songs that made the final list, 15 were ranked significantly
higher than the remaining 5, so we're cutting the list off at that
point. That's just the right number for a CD. Here's the list, in
combined rank order, with links to the lyrics where available.
We really tried hard to come up with a representative number of
Francophone songs, First Nations songs, traditional Canadian folk songs
and songs by women composers. But as you can see, the list is dominated
by relatively modern (20th century) English Canadian songs penned by
men. Please blame me, not my fellow judges, for this failing. My guess
is that the best identifiably Canadian songs by Francophones, Native
Canadians, and Canadian women, and the best traditional Canadian songs,
have yet to be discovered by most Canadians, and we need to educate
ourselves better on these important contributors to Canadian music and
culture. We'll work on it, and recruit some experts in such music to
guide us and help with the judging, when we repeat the contest next
year.
Meanwhile we will be submitting this list to the CBC, as they
requested, and if they aren't enthused about our idea for a compilation
CD, we'll use our entrepreneurial resources to try to find another
publisher. If we're successful, we'll promote it on our blogs, the
various Canadian blog directories and webrings and through BlogsCanada.
These are all wonderful songs -- songs of courage, love, loss, tragedy,
loneliness and connection with our rugged geography, the land, and, of
course, the weather.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
