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The key term that was mentioned throughout the conference was “exponential.”
This was the theme of Curt Carlson’s keynote the first day, and it was
brought up repeatedly during the next 2 days. Carlson’s premise was that
exponential growth means that jobs change significantly every 6–12 months.
An exponential economy requires exponential improvement processes and an
active partnership between organizations and their employees. Interpersonal
relationships, respect, and trust are critical, and become magnified in
the communities of this type of economy. “It’s funny to talk about people
in a technology speech,” Carlson joked, but he’s seen repeatedly that respect
and trust are the keys to change and growth.
KM: It’s the People
As so many presenters pointed out, KM is all about change, growth,
and people. The track focusing on KM Strategies was packed, and by the
afternoon it was being broadcast into a second room. Speaker after speaker
emphasized the critical people issues. One of the most popular presenters
was Susan Mohrman, of the Center for Effective Organization (CEO) at the
University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business (http://www.marshall.usc.edu/ceo/index.html),
who addressed “Organization Design for KM.” A survey conducted last year
by CEO, with support from executive search agency Korn/Ferry (http://www.kornferry.com),
identified a number of factors—including time, turnover, and distance—that
inhibit KM’s progress within organizations. Mohrman began by asking the
audience members, “What’s the number-one thing lacking in your organizations?”
Their answer: time. Mohrman concurred, and said that when people have too
much to do, KM activities won’t get done. What’s more, many employees are
unsure of their organization’s business direction or the competencies required
of them in the future. Uncertainty leads to turnover, with employees taking
their knowledge with them.
Compounding the time and turnover dilemmas is the trend in organizations
to replace physical work teams with virtual teams. As soon as people are
dispersed, Mohrman said, they focus more on their own work than on sharing
what they learn or know. Yes, they’ll use technology networks, but only
when these are within their interpersonal networks. People must be allowed
to know each other, in person, before they can effectively work with technology
and share their learning and knowledge.
Taxonomies Rule!
Another area that was packed to overflowing and had to be simulcast
to extra rooms was the content-management and taxonomy track. Who would
have predicted that cataloging, organizing, and indexing internal Web sites
and intranets would be the hot topic this year? Nazhin Zarghamee, vice
president of marketing and alliances at Documentum, gave an excellent overview
of the content-management process and focused on the issues that ensure
quality and timeliness in an e-business environment. Her talk dovetailed
very nicely with that of Ovum, Ltd.’s Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who discussed some
of the main content-management solutions and noted which ones most closely
approximate an end-to-end solution for organizations. He mentioned such
providers as Documentum, Open Text, Vignette, Broadvision, and Interwoven.
Pelz-Sharpe’s insights into the whole process were particularly timely
given several recent mergers, like Broadvision’s acquisition of Interleaf
this year.
The second afternoon was spent focusing on the specifics of taxonomy creation, maintenance, and design. Speakers such as Wendi Pohs of Lotus Development Corp. and Mike Crandall of Microsoft discussed their large intranets and Web sites and the hybrid development of handcrafted, organizational, and content-specific taxonomies while using the automation tools as required. Claude Vogel, founder and chief technology officer at Semio Corp., spoke about automated taxonomies and the various methods to ensure quality while still dealing with the growing morass of information in a timely manner. Each speaker talked about the role of uncovering hidden insights in content as a key result of a well-managed taxonomy. Many agreed that the market is now ready for international taxonomic standards, perhaps developed and maintained in vertical industry groups.
Overall, the entire track paid close attention to the role of work flow
and the information supply chain in creating, moving, and decommissioning
content in the electronic environment. Allen Clark, of NCompass Labs, presented
a session on user-centric KM in content design. He also offered a cogent
argument that the relationship of content to end-users is taking a broader
form. The same content that an organization collects and makes available
to its employees, partners, prospects, and customers can also be made available
from a central repository using similar processes, such as knowledge management,
customer-relationship management, e-commerce, and channel management.
Storytelling for Grown-Ups
As children, we first learn from stories. Knowledge has been traditionally
passed from generation to generation this way. It was no surprise, then,
that one of the hot methods of knowledge sharing is storytelling. A brilliant
storyteller himself, David Snowden, European director of IBM’s Institute
for Knowledge Management in the U.K. (http://www-5.ibm.com/services/uk/news/whitepapers/ibmcbi1.html),
entertained the second day’s keynote audience with his explanation of how
storytelling is an “old skill for a new age.” He said, “[Storytelling]
is a technique to convey complicated meaning in a simplified format to
handle complex situations.” It is, however, a highly detailed technique
that must be learned and practiced to be successful.
Live and E-Learn
On the last day, early developers of e-learning were featured in another
packed-to-the-rafters, overflowing session. Experts from click2learn.com,
ThoughtSpace, Knowledge360, Danish Probe, and SmartForce spent the day
describing the growth of learning management systems (LMS). This is clearly
an up-and-coming topic driven by the need for organizations to deliver
just-in-time learning to a rapidly changing workforce—one that’s largely
motivated by demographic changes and Baby Boomer retirements. This, combined
with the session on creating collaborative, virtual work environments,
gave hints about what our work and learning spaces will look like in the
coming years. Stay tuned—we’re in for more big changes!
Nick Bontis, the wrap-up keynote speaker, was another successful storyteller. One of the challenges for any conference is keeping attendees engaged through that last afternoon. Bontis was a compelling reason to stay, giving the audience facts, insights, and laughs. As assistant professor of strategic management at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, director of the Institute for Intellectual Capital Research, associate editor of the Journal of Intellectual Capital, and chief knowledge officer of Knexa.com (a knowledge exchange and auction), Bontis is immersed in all aspects of KM.
In his wrap-up, Bontis echoed Mohrman’s message regarding turnover and
time. “KM must listen to [employees],” he said. Bontis believes the number-one
reason for turnover is that people don’t feel their current organization
is leveraging their talent, so they’ll seek better opportunities elsewhere.
Until organizations leverage this talent and turn learning into action,
they will remain smart, yet stupid companies. As for time constraints,
he called for organizations to institutionalize “slack time,” allowing
people time to talk with others and build back into the system what they’ve
learned that day. He ended by encouraging the audience to visit the following
KM-related business Web sites: http://www.saratoga-institute.com,
http://www.tacit.com, http://www.brassringsystems.com
(formerly http://www.hiresystems.com),
http://www.knowledgedomain.com,
http://www.smartshadow.com,
and http://www.celemi.se (particularly
the Tango simulation).
On the Floor
The exhibit hall was a smorgasbord of appetizers to sample what we
were hearing about in the sessions. One popular booth was that of Brainshark.com,
which let you instantly set up voice-enabled PowerPoint presentations that
could be viewed and heard worldwide by your team, staff, or customers.
This with no plug-ins—and no need for a microphone, either. Pretty cool.
Visual interfaces, such as those from Inxight and Think-map, were popular
as people looked for ways to navigate huge volumes of information, sans
text. Tools for intranet knowledge exchange, such as those from Clerity,
or for knowledge exchange out in the world, like those from Knexa, showed
the change in the balance of KM tools from technology-centered to technology/people
hybrids.
And in Conclusion …
For those who predict the end of KM as a buzzword of the early 21st
century, think again. The treasure-trove of case studies showing the exponentially
high impact of even small-scale KM projects cannot be ignored. The promise
of even higher payoffs from e-learning, collaboratories, and taxonomies
will hold people’s attention for years to come.
Rebecca Jones is a principal of Dysart & Jones Associates. Her
e-mail address is rebecca@dysartjones.com.
Stephen Abram is vice president of corporate development at IHS Canada,
IHS Solutions, and Micromedia Limited. His e-mail address is sabram@micromedia.on.ca.
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