At
last week's conference, one of my presentations was on PKM. Since I
haven't written about this in awhile I thought I'd bring you up to date
on what's happening in this space, and some of the discussions I have
had with others on the subject.
 I first got interested in the
idea of bottom-up knowledge management, focused on the unique needs of
each front-line employee, in 2003, my last year as Global Director of
Knowledge Innovation for a major professional services firm. I'd been
asked to investigate a leveling-off of use of the firm's award-winning
centralized knowledge resources, and decided to do the research through
personal interviews with non-users,
rather than the usual user surveys. We did about 100 interviews, and
tried to get at the root causes of the problems and concerns they
cited. So for example while many interviewees said they 'couldn't find'
what they were looking for, we tried to discover why this was: Was the
tool too complex? Was the training inadequate? Was there too much
content to wade through? Did they just not know where to look? Was the
content badly indexed? Was it in the wrong format for convenient
(re-)use? Or perhaps what they sought didn't exist at all. Or worse,
they weren't motivated to make the effort to look for it.
In describing this work I've used three of the interviews that were
especially illuminating. One of these was a corporate finance
practitioner who confessed he'd completely stopped reading newspapers
because 'general' knowledge was unnecessary for his work, and used his
PC only for e-mail and business valuation spreadsheets. A second was an
audit manager who said she couldn't 'afford' the intrafirm charge for
research work and simply had no time to do such research herself, so
she did without; she also confessed that she'd never been taught how to
find stuff on her own PC and could never find what she needed on her
own hard drive. A third was a tax partner who delegated all 'knowledge
work' to subordinates or assistants, even printing out and routing his
e-mails. When I asked him about Instant Messaging, he said he 'handled
it the same way'. Ouch!
My conclusion from the interviews was that most of the firm's
front-line people didn't use the knowledge resources because they
didn't know how. I had been reading about a KM process that entailed
one-on-one coaching of front-line people to use knowledge and
technology effectively, and named this (for internal selling purposes,
and with a tip of the hat to the late Peter Drucker) Personal
Productivity Improvement (PPI), since its goal was to address the
knowledge-worker productivity problem that Drucker called the greatest
challenge of our century. When I proposed PPI as the solution to
ineffective knowledge use, however, my boss said he was doubtful that,
if they weren't willing to take the time to attend the firm's courses
or computer-based training on the use of knowledge resources, they were
just as unlikely to make time for PPI. He sent me back to find out why practitioners
didn't know how to use the resources effectively.
When I went to conduct the second round of interviews, it became clear
that some of the interviewees had given me the answers they thought I
wanted to hear because they didn't
know the real answers. They were also blunter and more
forthcoming when I went back to suggest that perhaps their ignorance of
use of the firm's knowledge resources was partly their fault. This
time, the corporate finance practitioner told me he was paid for his
specific technical knowledge, not for his understanding of business
issues. He described the powerful, integrated newsfeeds and
personalizable news profiles, the paintakingly populated databases, and
the collaborative spaces we provided as "nice to have, not need to
have". He was, he said, "unmotivated" to learn more about what we had
made available.
The audit manager pulled out an independent consultant's report that
listed in the criteria clients used to select a professional services
firm. In order they were (1) strong pre-existing relationship with
someone on the team, (2) fit and likability of the pursuit team, (3)
senior face time spent with client key decision makers during the
pursuit process, (4) technical competency and experience of the pursuit
team, (5) understanding of the client's processes and organization, and
(6) understanding of the client's business and industry. There is just
no time, she told me, for stuff that clients don't think very
important. If she had more time, she said, she would be spending it out
at clients building relationships, not at her PC looking for knowledge.
And the tax partner grabbed me as I passed near his office, whisked me
inside, and told me how delighted he was that, after I'd mentioned it,
he's got his assistant to show him how to use Instant Messaging. "If a
client calls me on the phone with a question, sometimes I can IM a
staff member and get confirmation of the answer while the client is
still online, so I save research time and the client is very
impressed", he told me. "It's stuff like this IM that really makes you
guys valuable, not those giant repositories you build." If that weren't
distressing enough, he confided that he was concerned that some of
those 'giant repositories' were accessible to everyone in the firm, and
could we pleased restrict access to these to tax practitioners only? He
patted me on the back. I sighed.
So my conclusion this time around was that the centralized stuff we
spent so much time and money maintaining was simply not very useful to
most practitioners. The practitioners I talked to about PPI said they
would love to participate in PPI coaching, provided it was focused on
the content on their own desktops and hard drives, and not the stuff in
the central repositories.
From these interviews and subsequent discussions with leading KM gurus,
notably the UK's David Gurteen, emerged the concept of Personal
Knowledge Management (PKM). While we did not coin the term,
what we use the term to mean has received considerable uptake in the KM
community, and is starting to be used, at least in part and in pilots,
in quite a few organization. And some of us have become evangelists for
PKM, out of concern that the old model of KM has fallen out of favour,
and the term KM has lost its sheen, and a new model is needed if KM is
to realize its potential to make all of us more effective in the use of
knowledge, technology and learning resources.
The drawing above shows the old KM model and the new PKM model. The old
model, which we pursued from 1994-2004, is focused on content and collection
-- the acquisition, organization & aggregation, storage and
dissemination of content under organization-wide taxonomies using
customized tools and containers, just-in-case it might be reusable. The
new PKM model, which we believe will replace it, is focused on context and connection
-- connecting to the right people just-in-time, canvassing them to gain
their knowledge and advice in the context of a particular business
problem or pursuit, synthesizing that knowledge and applying it to the
issue at hand. This new model entails three significant shifts in
approach:
- From contributing know-what ('best practices' etc.)
to harvesting know-how (stories, conversations and other context-rich
knowledge)
- From central content management (centrally
administered Intranets and repositories) to personal content management
(individuals administering their own knowledge and sharing
peer-to-peer), and
- From enterprise application training (classroom, CBT
and newsletters distributed top-down) to personal productivity
improvement (observation and one-on-one coaching on effective use of
desktop resources)
PKM, therefore, has four components, which can be represented in this
equation:
Know-Who Canvassing & Connection +
Know-How Harvesting +
Personal Content Management +
Personal Productivity Improvement =
Personal
Knowledge Management |
These four components enable the connect,
canvass, synthesize, apply, model of PKM. They also
reflect the way knowledge has always been shared by most people in most
organizations: You walk down the hall or pick up the phone and call the
people you think have the knowledge you need, you have a conversation
with them to canvass what they know, you pull it all together with the
knowledge you already have, and you apply it to the challenge, task or
decision at hand. All PKM does is make these steps easier and more
effective by facilitating them with some surprisingly simple, low-tech
(but high-touch) programs.
Here's how each of these four components is being implemented by some
organizations today, and how they could be implemented in your
organization.
Know-Who Canvassing & Connection:
- Use social network analysis (mapping or interviewing) to identify the de facto networks of expertise and trust in the organization.
- Use these to identify network coordinators, the 'people to go to first' on key subject matter areas for your organization.
- Have
these coordinators create, maintain and publish Canvassing Lists
(e-mail groups) with e-mail, IM, phone and other contact information
for the people in these subject matter networks, so that anyone in the
firm who wants to canvass people in a network can do so with one click.
These lists should include experts outside as well as inside the
organization.
- Create Canvassing Templates, forms that people
can fill in quickly and simply to describe what expertise they're
looking for, and then send them to one or more Canvassing Lists.
- Devise
a simple one-page instruction sheet/FAQ on how to effectively use the
Canvassing Lists and Templates, which communication media to use in
different circumstances to contact them, and how to deal with telephone
tag, non-responses and other situations when canvassing response is
inadequate. It should also deal with appropriate etiquette and
protocols to ensure the canvassing process isn't abused.
- If you
also have a Know-How Harvesting program (see below), consider putting
experts' weblogs and other context-rich resources in the Canvassing
List to use as a surrogate for people who are unable or unwilling to
respond to canvassing requests personally.
Know-How Harvesting:
- Create separate Public and Private 'My Documents' and e-mail folders on each employee's hard drive.
- Whenever
users 'save' or store a document or message, prompt them to decide
whether the document should be stored in the Public (shareable) or
Private folder.
- Establish an automated mechanism like RSS to
regularly 'harvest' the Public folder information, to a central mirror
site that other users can browse, and/or in response to just-in-time
canvassing searches (see above), peer-to-peer.
- Encourage people
in the organization who maintain the most valuable context-rich content
(e.g. subject matter experts, network coordinators and newsletter
editors) to use a weblog-type tool to post and archive their content as
part of their Public folder.
Personal Content Management:
- Work
with each individual employee to help them organize and index their 'My
Documents' and e-mail folders in a way that makes sense for them. A
standard firm-wide taxonomy is rarely appropriate and with current
technology it is no longer necessary. Each person's files should be set
up the way they would set up their personal filing cabinet if the
documents were all hard-copy. Rather than by subject-matter, the most
effective organization scheme is often by how or when it will be
(re-)used.
- Deploy Google Desktop or some other fast, simple, powerful desktop search tool.
- Use
RSS feeds to simplify 'publishing' and 'subscribing' to others'
content, and show employees how to use them and how to integrate this
content into their personal taxonomy.
- If you have canvassing
and/or harvesting programs (see above) show employees how to use them
and how to integrate this content into their personal taxonomy.
- Develop
and disseminate (with simple one-page instructions or FAQs) routines
and practices for effectively capturing, filing and finding relevant
knowledge in the context of what it is to be used for.
Personal Productivity Improvement:
- Pre-interview
each employee in the organization to understand their job, what
knowledge and technology they use and how they use it.
- Pre-assemble
a file of possible 'leave-behinds' -- 'cheat sheets', step-by-step
instructions, FAQs, bookmark lists etc. that the employee is likely to
find useful, based on your previous PPI sessions with others with
similar jobs or learning styles.
- If you don't already have a personal content management program (see above) get this set up for the employee first.
- Schedule
about an hour face-to-face with the employee. The first half-hour
should be spent observing and asking questions of the employee to
identify significant productivity problems. The second half-hour should
be spent showing the employee
more effective ways of doing their work, stepping them through the
leave-behinds, answering questions and getting feedback from the
employee on the value they feel they have received from the session.
- Compile
a list of observations and systemic problems that PPI cannot resolve,
and present them to senior management for them to address.
While
PPI in particular may seem too high-touch to be affordable, just
remember that the breakeven point for an investment of two hours of
personal coaching for each employee is a mere 0.1% improvement in that
employee's work effectiveness.
Many organizations that have
designated network coordinators have instituted some form of simple,
streamlined canvassing program, because it eliminates the need for the
scourge of 'blanket' e-mails sent to everyone. Although they are
largely ad hoc, new e-mail
technology that accommodates dynamic, subscribable e-mail lists, and
e-mail forms and templates, are enabling more robust canvassing
programs to be developed. Lend Lease corporation, for example, is using
a canvassing tool called ikonnect to do this.
The organization
that I know of that is leading the way in knowledge harvesting is Hill
& Knowlton. Perhaps surprisingly given their controversial
business, they have a culture of openness that encourages all employees
to share information about themselves and their projects far beyond
what I have seen in most other organizations, and they are using some
interesting tools to do so.
Personal content management has
received a huge boost from Google Desktop and similar products that
have been released in the last few months. But I am not yet aware of
any 'leading practices' in helping employees of an organization to
organize their desktop content and subscriptions in such a way that
they don't have to use broad-brush search tools to find documents and
messages on their own PCs.
The professional services firms, such
as Ernst & Young and KPMG, are piloting PPI programs. If you know
of others, I'd like to hear about them.
PKM is not for every
organization. Some companies coming late to KM, or overly enamoured of
their legacy KM systems, may not be ready to think of KM
as a means of improving productivity, capitalizing on the best
available knowledge and experience, tapping the collective wisdom of
employees and customers, facilitating more robust collaboration,
improving the quality of decisions and enhancing agility and innovation.
This takes a relatively enlightened management attitude on KM. Many
companies still see KM as a means to reduce cost and headcount,
're-use' intellectual capital and 'accelerate employee learning'. But
as awareness of these new value propositions for KM grows, I think
you're going to hear a lot more about PKM.
And although technology companies, by coopting the term Knowledge
Management and making it synonymous with centralized content
management, have played a role in tarnishing KM's image, some
technology companies are now developing simple, intuitive tools that
will make each of the four components of PKM easier to implement. I'll
talk about some of these tools in a future post.
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