Establishing a culture conducive to the state of ‘Flow’ and self-actualisation

In my previous article, I suggested that organisations should aim to establish a working environment conducive to their employees reaching their Ikigai.  Well others have made similar suggestions and maybe the first one to do so in a constructive way was MihalyCsikszentmihalyi  who in 1975 introduced the concept of “Flow” or the “state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation”.   At work, this state is attained when an individual gets the right balance between challenge and skills.   I will conjecture that someone who has reached his/her Ikigai at work – a sense of purpose and constant motivation – is much more likely to be in a state of flow on a regular basis.  And equally, the more someone is in a state of flow at work, the more likely he/she is to reach Ikigai.

The diagram below shows the 8 mental states in terms of challenge and skills levels according to Mihaly’s flow model:

I intend to read Mihaly’s seminal work “Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience” but based on his Wikipedia page, it would seem that he has provided clues for leaders on what kind of working environment would maximize the chances for employees reach the state of flow.  In addition to the challenge-skill balance, Mihaly suggested another eight component states needed:

. Merging of action and awareness: To be completely absorbed in the task at hand.

. Clarity of goals: A clear purpose and good understanding of what to do next.

. Immediate and unambiguous feedback: Continuous feedback to adjust our actions and to always know how well we are doing.

. Concentration on the task at hand: Avoiding distractions to focus on the task at hand.

. Paradox of control: An absolute sense of personal control exists, as if there is no limit to what we can do.

. Transformation of time: Time is distorted and either slows down or flies by.

. Loss of self-consciousness: Being so involved in the activity that do not care to protect our ego.

. Autotelic experience: Being in Flow is an intrinsically rewarding activity so the activity becomes an end in itself, done for its own sake.

So in what kind of working environment or culture would such self-actualisation flourish?

For Rishad Tobaccowala Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, the first condition is for employees to be “allowed, encouraged, and helped to align their passions and skills.  They are then motivated to learn, take chances, grow, and communicate in ways that benefit not only their careers but their organizations” (Restoring the Soul of Business, 2020, p.46).

Rishad then provides a couple of required cultural characteristics:

•       Encouraging authenticity to help people work in their own minds so that their passion for work ends up motivating them to become experts

•        Awareness of the intersection between passion and comparative advantage between colleagues in order to funnel people into jobs and tasks that place them in this intersection.  

Another key factor for being in a state of ‘Flow’ or self-actualising is a strong sense of purpose or meaning for the activity(ies) at hand.  As Rishad explains (p.44) meaning is best conveyed through stories and they should aim to:

•        Increase skills and competence through continuous learning

•        Offer more chances to innovate through new connections

•        Make better “emotional” communicators to motivate and empathise.

For leaders aiming to initiate a working environment conducive to the state of flow and self-actualisation, it starts with adapting the recruitment and internal career management strategy.
Do you hire people for what they know or what they can know?

As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explained in his Flow model, if an individual’s activities does not challenge his/her skills enough, he/she will be in a state of apathy, boredom or relaxation at best.  Clearly not in a motivational state. 

In his book “The Wealth of Knowledge” (2002, chap. 11, ‘A new culture: Developing a knowledge perspective’) Thomas Stewart refers to the talent development process of ‘Stretch’.  The attributes leaders should look for are: Ability to learn, self-initiation, propensity to collaborate, humility, confidence – the ability to connect thinking to action and vice versa - and “intellectual linking” - the ability to connect an idea or experience to an opportunity or problem.  <<All are fostered by making sure leaders [..] have “stretch” assignments to build learning into the job.  P&L responsibility and autonomy are the most important elements of stretch>>.

An organisational culture conducive to self-actualisation must be also a culture conducive to collaboration: A less hierarchical, flatter and relationship-rich environment where knowledge siloes are things of the past, and ‘interpersonal trust’ replaces rigid and overpowering organisational structures.  Such a culture is the antithesis to the obsolete culture defined by my 20 cultural traits not conducive to knowledge sharing.

A purposeful workforce

I was introduced recently to the Japanese concept known as Ikigai, in the context of how each of us can identify his/her own professional “true purpose” or career sweet spot as illustrated at the centre of the diagram below.

 

Ikigai can describe having a sense of purpose in life, as well as being motivated. From an organisational point of view, the ideal should be an entire Ikigai workforce.
Is this an utopia or is it achievable?

I will argue that organisations should at least aim to establish a working environment conducive to each employee attaining his/her Ikigai.

Back in 2005, I had published a Human Capital Formation diagram adapted from Nick Bontis and Tom Stewart.  I quickly realised the correlation between both concepts if I updated this 15yrs old diagram:

IKIGAI	Human Capital Formation
What we love	Employee satisfaction
What we are good at	Value generation
What the world needs	Employee motivation
What you can be paid for	Skills/competencies

 

An organisation should therefore aim to increase employees' satisfaction, motivation and commitment, as well as facilitating for them to acquire new skills and leverage their competencies.  The diagram above gives at the top a (non-exhaustive) list of levers an organisation can pull to achieve this.  

How Bruno Kahne's "12 Deaf-Tips" relate to online communication

I recently attended the PMI UK chapter's annual Synergy event in London.  
One of the guest speakers was Bruno Kahne, responsible for Leadership Development and Culture Change at Airbus Group Leadership Academy.
Bruno presented his recent book titled "Deaf-Tips - Powerful Communication": Twelve lessons from the Deaf world to improve your communication in your personal, social, and professional life.

Bruno is a great speaker and got the whole audience engaged rapidly.  His 12 tips concern face-to-face communication as this is the context he did extensive research comparing teams of deaf people and teams of hearing people.  The deaf teams always beating the hearing ones at the same tasks requiring good collaboration.

While I was listening to Bruno, I started thinking if his 12 tips would apply to online communication as well.  I decided to buy his book and challenge myself at adapting his tips to the online context. You will find below how I succeeded in this challenge.  I should point out that I have contacted Bruno to ask for his feedback before publishing this post.  He sent it to some of his deaf collaborators and they confirmed that these adaptations do relate to the way they communicate online.

The online communication I am referring to are the social media platform – like Facebook and LinkedIn on the web or Yammer  and Jive in the organisation.  This type of communication is typically:

·         Asynchronous (not real time with a time lag between a question and a response)

·         Many to many (the same comment can be shared by many – ie. use of the ‘Like’ function)

·         Involving a combination of relations and strangers (people not knowing one another personally)

I have re-sorted Bruno's tips from the most relevant to online communication to the one that required more adaptation, but kept the numbering used in the book:

Deaf Tip No 05: Be simple and precise.     

      

<<When Deaf people communicate, they are both simple and precise at the same time.  [..] When Hearing people try to be simple, they are automatically vague.  And when they try to be precise, they suddenly become complex.>>  

In today’s increasingly connected world, it is essential to remain simple while not losing valuable information.  We can do this by keeping our online messages (sms, emails, social media posts) simple, to the point, avoiding unnecessary words.

Being precise in your descriptions or explanations is nearly as important to avoid unnecessary lengthy exchanges for you to give successively more information.  Worse still if by not being precise, you lead the readers on the “wrong path” without being asked to clarify.  This will affect your online reputation and make others being more wary of your contributions.

Deaf Tip No 03: Put yourself in the other’s shoes.

This tip applies fully in an online context.  In fact, with regards to the choice of words it applies even more as you don’t have the luxury of the others’ body language to warn you that they do not understand your point.  Furthermore, online social communication is typically to be read by numerous people, many of whom you don’t know personally, so you cannot adapt your language to all of them.  Therefore, it is useful to think about how others will read and understand what you write online, before you press ! 

Avoiding technical language and acronyms, placing words in the right order, and avoiding unnecessary lengthy posts are all very good advice for online communication.

Finally, Postponing judgment of course fully applies when reading other’s initial comments/replies.

Deaf Tip No 07: Dare to ask questions.

Many will argue (including myself) that asking questions is one of the raison d’être of any online collaboration tool. Most online discussions either start with a question or start with an assertion which calls for others to ask questions.

About the three conditions – Precision, Honesty and Space - for asking the right question, this is how they more specifically apply to online communication:

Precision: It is even more important in an asynchronous communication where hours or even days can laps between a question and its first answer!

Honesty: Again, posting questions and responses on a medium that will retain them for a very long time after you wrote them (probably longer than the time it will take you to forget writing them) it is a very good advice to be honest with yourself and with the others you are collaborating with.  Don’t take the risk of an old lie to come back and bite you!

Space: Online this means to not systematically provide an answer to your own question.  Don’t show off.  Instead give others a chance to respond first and build on their answers.

Deaf Tip No 09: Do you see what I say?

The use of visual supports such as infographics and “visual words” fully applies online.  An online collaboration environment is also very well suited for using the story telling technique.

Deaf Tip No 06: Don’t say don’t.

Our brain is wired to remembering positive images/messages.  Using negative phrases will tend to let others remember the opposite to the point we are trying to make.  So in any discussions, including online ones, we should use positive sentences.  For instance, in online discussions, avoid the use of the negative word ‘but’ and use ‘and’ instead which will encourage more responses from the other participants.

Deaf Tip No 01: Prepare to be prepared

Preparing to be prepared for online communication consist of doing the following before engaging: 

• “Looking around”/assessing everything you can gather from the context of the discussion you are about to engage with
•   Reading what others have written, assess who the participants are (or tend to be if there are many of them).  
• Being clear on the purpose of the group/Community of Practice/Space in which you are intending to engage with (you could read some of the previous discussions involving the same people to get a better feel for the topics that are expected here, how people are “behaving” and the dominant style of writing).

We must keep an open mind and not being too quick at judging/interpreting others’ point of views.

We need to read on a regular basis what others are writing online which will give us the ability to anticipate what others would respond to our own contributions

Deaf Tip No 04: Be sequential.

In the asynchronous context of an online social media discussion, you do not run the risk of participants talking at the same time or someone starting to respond while someone is still talking.   However, it is frequent for multiple threads – sub-threads - to occur within one discussion.  This often causes confusion among participants, especially with the new entrants who have not taken part from the start:

•  It gets increasingly difficult to follow the various threads simultaneously and always understand who responds to whom
•  When you reply to a “sub-thread”, you have this annoying feeling that you are no longer addressing all the participants but only the ones who will care to follow this thread
•  Sub-threads often diverge so much from the discussion’s original topic that you end up with very different topics being addressed within the same discussion.

Some tools do allow to visually differentiate the “sub-threads” (such as indentations) in order to see who is responding to whom.  But this workaround only partially address the first issue above and potentially exacerbates the other two.

Being sequential online means avoiding sub-threads.  You can do this by adopting these two simple behaviours:

• If a discussion inspires you to ask a related but clearly different question than the one that started this discussion, start a new discussion with your question.  If you want to relate to the first discussion, you can explicitly refer to it by using a hotlink.  You can also tag the specific participants whom you would like to see contributing to your new discussion.
• If you notice a sub-thread within a discussion, you should post a reply suggesting to the contributors that this topic would seem to warrant a new dedicated discussion.   You might be surprise to see how often this triggers the right behaviour from the person who really want to put across his/her point of view on this divergent topic.

Being sequential online also means making sure to fully understand others point of views before contributing ourselves.  We can do this by asking “clarifying/confirming” questions.  Each question should be preceded by a relevant quote from the other person you are questioning – so literally copy/pasting the sentence(s) that you are asking to clarify/confirm. 

Deaf Tip No 08: Focus on the right thing.

In an online context, focusing on the meaning fully applies. 

Focusing on the others means being conscious of our filters and put them aside while trying to understand other’s contributions. 

Focusing on here and now applies also: it means avoiding other distractions when writing a question or a response, and rereading what we wrote before sending.

Deaf Tip No 12: Say what you think.

Saying what you think online in a shared “public” environment is fine when it is not about someone in particular.  When you are not face-to-face with the person and in addition communicating asynchronously, the risk of being misunderstood is greater.  Furthermore, the arguments given for being honest in Tip No 7 are relevant here too.

However, how saying what you think applies online is by being as factual as possible, as descriptive as possible (but again not personal).  If you express an opinion, belief, then make that clear, and then make your point completely, don’t stop half-way as it will likely backfire: It would confuse/mislead others, leading the discussion on a wrong path, requiring from you a lot of effort to recover and clarify.  

An important relevant point about online communication: Some readers and contributors of an online discussion might not come back to read your late clarification, and will keep this wrong interpretation of your points.

Deaf Tip No 11: Get in Touch.

This was at first the hardest tip to translate to an online communication context. 

“Being touched” by someone has two meanings: The physical one and the social one when someone does/says something really nice about you.

So “touching” online can be about not missing an occasion to please someone, to help out and ask nothing in return, to congratulate, to praise, recognizing someone’s efforts/successes/performance.

Deaf Tip No 02: Read Body Language.

“Body language” reading has literal relevance in a video conference.    

In the context of mostly text-based online asynchronous communication, body language translates as being always conscious that what people write is not necessarily what they truly mean or even believe.  In doubt, reach out to the other person directly (via email, or better Instant Messaging, or even better via telephone or better still face-to-face) to get clarification.

Reading words like we can read muscle contractions: color, high capitals, fonts, short/long sentences, quickly or carefully written sentences, order of words, repeated words etc…

Deaf Tip No 10: Listen in Technicolor.

Active listening translates online into active reading.  

Active reading in a social media context is about not limiting yourself in reading a given discussion thread (especially if you intend to contribute) but to refer to other relevant “parallel” discussions, on the same forum or others.  Relevant means “on the same topic” and/or “similar topic” and/or “involving most or all of the same participants.

I addition, active reading requires the following behaviours:

• Focus on the others’ posts by avoiding distracting “noise” around you and on your device’s screen, and by focusing on getting the true meaning
•  Postponing judgment (ask questions first)
•  Avoiding parallel mental activities
• Truly connect with others (use humour, praises, references to previous relevant discussions) and collaborate (it is not about scoring points but about “adding a piece to a puzzle”).

Traditional KM has lost the plot

For the past two decades or so, KM has grown into an established practice, especially in large organisations where the need for capturing, re-using and sharing valuable knowledge is a challenge proportional to the size. Some organisations even appointed a Chief Knowledge Officer. The KM community has had numerous successes and agreed on best practices and standard tools and techniques. The goal of KM could be defined as leveraging value-adding knowledge produced and/or utilised throughout the organisation, in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage.

But where does this valuable knowledge resides/originates from? It resides/originates with/from the minds of an organisation’s extended workforce (employees, contractors, strategic partners) (*). What organisations therefore need is for this extended workforce to share this knowledge as easily as possible, in order for any valuable knowledge to be used at the right time by anyone anywhere anytime. In other words, what is needed is an organisational culture conducive to such pervasive knowledge sharing: A collaborative culture. This is particularly important for organisations thriving on continuous innovation.

So, considering the above, one would think that the KM community should have been not only welcoming but indeed driving social collaboration. Social collaboration is about facilitating (to the point of commoditising it) and encouraging (rewarding/recognising) the sharing of valuable expertise, knowledge, insight, ideas, across the organisational natural and artificial borders (geographical, functional, hierarchical, operational, etc…) or in other words, breaking down the “knowledge silos”.

Strangely though, a large number (I think the majority although I do not have any verified data to support this) of KM professionals did not directly contribute to the introduction of social collaboration within their organisation (even less took the lead for it) and once implemented, refused to accept it as a part of KM. It is as if they are collectively stuck in a worldview where KM requires well defined and rigorous structures and processes in order to deliver any value.

The value of a given piece of knowledge is context-dependent. In other words, its value is realised when an individual - or a group of individuals – applies it the right way in the right place at the right time. The larger the Organisation, the more difficult it is to expand and replicate throughout the Organisation the value generated by traditional KM within specific business units or activities. The only way to unlock and leverage the dormant valuable knowledge throughout the organisation is to provide integrated collaboration tools for everyone and establish a collaborative culture. The former consumerizes knowledge sharing internally, and the latter normalises it through adapted behaviours and recognition and reward mechanisms.

An Organisation’s KM community must be fully aligned with social collaboration initiatives because they are the best equipped professionals – in terms of experience and expertise - to make these initiatives realise their full potential soon enough to gain significant competitive advantage.

(*) A relatively popular school of thought considers that knowledge can in fact only reside in our minds. Once we attempt to extract it and code it for sharing and re-use, it becomes information. If philosophically this view is worth debating, in a business context, it does not help anyone understand better the challenges faced by KM. On the contrary it tends to confuse the issue so I personally prefer assuming that valuable knowledge can indeed be passed on in a coded (written) form.

There should be no box to begin with!

I was recently reading the profiles of the Association of MBAs regional committee and this phrase attracted my attention:
"[Derek Chesire believes] that 'out of the box' thinking does not exist: there simply should be no box to begin with".

Yes absolutely! I like this simple way to put it.  I suppose what he really meant is that out of the box in fact does exist but is mostly ineffective at generating innovation and competitive advantage.

An organisation with a culture not conducive to creativity where knowledge sharing and spontaneous collaboration is not encouraged and rewarded, will eventually feel the need to ask from its employees to "think outside the box" in the hope that some good ideas will come out of the exercise.  Out of the few good ideas that might come out, only very few of them (if any) will lead to an innovative implementation.  This is because this process (idea through to implementation) requires an environment where mistakes are not only permitted but encouraged, where work outside initial job description and spontaneous collaboration is natural and rewarded.

When an organisation with an organisational culture not conducive to knowledge-sharing and creativity ask its employees to be creative, it is a bit like asking a group of junior mechanics to build a racing car from a pile of spare-parts, without the authorisation to collaborate with one another! You might obtain a car eventually but very unlikely competitive.
It's much more effective to let the group of mechanics organise themselves as a team and let them work out what they can build together.  That way, they could come up with the next F1 concept car!

Corporate cultures not conducive to knowledge sharing and collaboration

I thought of reposting my list of cultural traits that identify an organization where the corporate culture is not conducive to knowledge sharing and therefore creativity and innovation. This list combines the 16 from this post and 4 from this one.

And here is a challenge to anyone reading this: Do you know one medium or large company with an internal culture not bearing a single of these 20 traits? If yes, please post a comment with its name.

1. A strictly hierarchical top-down structure: The “you should not share knowledge outside your department without your manager’s approval” syndrome.

2. Focus on short-term objectives: the “no need to share knowledge since once objectives are met, it wont be needed anymore” syndrome.

3. Reward achievements of each individual based solely on personal objectives: the “you are judged on what you achieved, not on what others have achieved with your help” syndrome.

4. Organizational silos that do not (or poorly) communicate/collaborate: the “we cannot possibly need help from anyone outside our very experienced and specialized group” syndrome.

5. Lack of trust: the “why should I take the risk to help whom I compete with, I wouldn’t get the recognition for it anyway” syndrome.

6. Internal politics: “Knowledge is Power so I retain it” syndrome.

7. Lack of Awareness of internal knowledge: The “I do not expect anyone in the company to have the experience/skills I need” syndrome.

8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge: The “others probably could benefit from my experience but I’m too busy to check, let alone actually help” syndrome.

9. Too much Pride: The now too famous "not invented here" syndrome.

10. The confidentiality issue: The “we fear that some vital competitive knowledge can get into the wrong hands, so the least we share it, the smaller the risk” syndrome.

11. Job Description framing: The "No-one's paying us to have a wider vision" syndrome.

12. Groupthink effect: The "We'll define our stakeholders as the people we already know" syndrome.

13. Only money talks: The "those so-called stakeholders aren't actually funding anything directly, so they're not real customers" syndrome.

14. Perfectionism resulting from fear of being wrong: the "I won't share until I'm certain it's perfect" syndrome.

15. Modesty resulting from lack of encouragement: the "who am I to teach others, of course they know" syndrome.

16. Top-executives misunderstanding KM challenges: The "this knowledge sharing sounds great! Can you order everyone to do it tomorrow please?" syndrome.

17. Dominance of explicit over tacit knowledge sharing: The "we only truly value what is written down and validated" syndrome.

18. Lack of social networks: The "only the networks which are supporting business processes are important and encouraged" syndrome.

19. Lack of knowledge management strategy and sharing initiatives into the company’s goals and strategic approach: The "Intellectual Property is the only Intellectual Capital that is worth managing strategically" syndrome.

20. Intense internal competitiveness within business units, functional areas, and subsidiaries:
The "we only share knowledge within our team since everyone else is potential competition" syndrome.

You can test your organization against these 20 cultural traits. The more of them fits your workplace, the more of a challenge you will have to promote knowledge sharing. Some are more difficult to deal with such as internal politics, but I would conjecture that you will need to address all the relevant traits at some point in the process. They all have their importance and only one of them - deep rooted in the organizational culture - can jeopardize leveraging knowledge efforts.

The latest trends for Intranet development

This IBF blog post from Paul Miller about the coming of “Intranet 3.0” gives 3 very good examples of large corporate intranets pushing the boundaries of internal communication and collaboration.

Although I am not a fan of these meaningless numeric names such as Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 (I’ve even seen Web 1.5 being used!) the eight Intranet 3.0 trends listed can - when combined - represent no less than a workplace revolution.

The 3 organizations given as examples are Sun, IBM and Nissan. The common theme I picked up between these cases is the strategic importance given to embedding the Intranet in business operations. This quote from Ethan McCarty (IBM) is spot on:

“The intranet is so deeply woven into daily life at IBM, it's part of every employee's day to use it,[..] You take a very mundane task and turn it into a social activity. Collaboration isn't separate from work. “

I particularly like this quote because the same thing should be said of Knowledge Management as a whole. KM initiatives are successful in the long term if they enable knowledge sharing processes that cannot be dissociated from operational activities. So, in other words, in such context, if you don’t share knowledge and collaborate intensively, you’re simply not doing your job. However, this requires a corporate culture not only conducive to knowledge sharing, but encouraging it.

Leverage the knowledge in your company by first transforming it into a "service" based organisation

[I recently realised that when I wrote this short post 11yrs ago, by "process" I actually really meant "service" based organisation.  I now replaced 'process' with 'service'] 

I am increasingly a supporter of the principle that it is more efficient and increases the chances of success to leverage organisational knowledge with a stealth approach, meaning not in a direct open way, but indirectly and without advertising it as THE objective. The less a company’s culture is conducive to knowledge sharing (see my list of corporate culture traits not conducive to knowledge sharing) the more this principle should apply.

In the majority of organisations today, performance is measured and rewarded functionally usually at department levels. This generates departmental silos where knowledge is at best hoarded for internal consumption.

But when performance is measured only through formally defined intra-departmental services, managers and staff will naturally focus on supporting the services as efficiently and effectively as possible. For each cross-company service, this will mean sharing all the relevant knowledge between all the individuals/teams/departments directly involved in the service and therefore responsible for part(s) of it. A service-based organisation naturally breaks down departmental silos: if a service fails, all participants fail.

So, in other words, re-ingeneering an Organisation’s operations and structure around clearly defined cross-company business services is an effective indirect way to foster value adding knowledge sharing.

Is sharing knowledge really desirable (question asked on Linkedin)

I recently asked on Linkedin my question comparing two extreme organisations in terms of knowledge sharing processes posted here on 26/04/09 (see all the 14 responses here). More respondents chose company B model (with knowledge sharing). A significant number went for the “it depends” option and a still significant number chose company A model (no knowledge sharing). I do not of course consider this as a quantitative survey but I would like to think that the respondents are a meaningful qualitative representation of managers thanks to the very nature of the medium used: the Linkedin professional networking site. In any case, I was not attempting to obtain a “true” representation of manager’s opinion but more an idea of the proportion choosing model A and what their arguments would be. For all intent and purposes, I view the company A and “it depends” answers in the same larger group of managers that do not consider company B as the best choice all the time. Arguments given for company A by the ones who chose this model are:

1. It is more organized for achieving the company’s goals by having people more focused on their department’s/team’s objectives. 2. Sharing of information between teams/departments strictly limited to what is needed for the operational work flow/supply chain, or in other words, “share [the information] needed to do the job – no more no less”. 3. It prevents information overload.

Arguments given for company A by the ones who opted for a split decision are:

4. Does well in a “best cost approach” (as opposed to “best product/solution approach”). 5. Suppose their offering is functional—it satisfies basic, unchanging needs and has a long life cycle, low margins, and stable demand. (Think paper towels or light bulbs.) In this case, you need an efficient supply chain—which minimizes production, transportation, and storage costs. So model A is better suited for “labour (Production and Manufacturing)” Industries, where employees are not expected to rely much on their thinking abilities. 6. It is a question of size and this model does well in large companies.

Let me now analyse each of these arguments: 1. Why would a model B company be necessarily better organised for achieving the company’s goals? Why is it that the vision of letting people freely share knowledge is often assumed to generate mess?With adapted formal processes in place, you can very effectively and efficiently enable knowledge sharing flows in an organised way, all in line with the strategic goals. Google is a perfect example of this as it has a second to none knowledge sharing culture and is definitely not a “chaotic organisation”. 2. This argument is from another age I believe. It describes the organisational models of the industrial age. We have moved on to a knowledge economy when intangible assets must increasingly be considered to accurately value a company. Managers can no longer dictate over time what information – and even less knowledge – is strictly needed for each operational role to be competitively efficient and effective. In a model A company, by the time managers adjust the information flows in reaction to the market, it is often too late and damage is done with the competition already ahead. To be ahead of the competition, you need to be proactive and therefore enable – at the level of the individual - fluid and adaptive knowledge flows internally as well as with with external stakeholders. 3. When I speak of knowledge in model B, I mean "knowledge", not information. Therefore, the argument of information overload does not hold water. Employees will only seek/share the knowledge they ask for/consider valuable. This is not about having full access to an encyclopedia of (mostly irrelevant) information. Even employees in a model A company can have access to it via the internet for instance! 4. A company with a “best cost” strategy such as Easyjet, the successful low-cost airline, does not imply a top-down structure with isolated teams and departments asked to only do their predefined job. Easyjet incidentally promotes a knowledge-sharing and learning culture where it is assumed that every tasks can always be improved by each individual for the benefit of all his/her colleagues (and ultimately the benefit of the company) therefore improving efficiency and reducing costs further. See below what Easyjet expects of its employees (from Easyjet recruitment website ):

• Pushing yourself to constantly develop and learn from every opportunity
• Sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues
• Seeking feedback
• Displaying a positive attitude that contributes to an enjoyable working environment
• Communicating your intentions clearly and positively

5. I can agree in principle that in a labour intensive industry (as opposed to a knowledge-based industry) employees are less expected to think and hold valuable knowledge for the company. But this does not mean they never do! If a factory worker works out a better way to use a machine for his/her repetitive tasks, wouldn’t it be valuable to the company that this knowledge be shared with all the employees using the same machine, even if their factory is on the other side of the World? 6. My example of Google earlier already negates the argument that a large company operates better in model A. And there are many more successful large companies with a knowledge sharing culture such as Toyota, BHP Billiton and 3M. In fact, I would argue that the bigger the company (in number of employees) the more valuable knowledge it potentially holds so the more benefits it can obtain by leveraging it. Having said all that, we are still left with the disconcerting fact that the majority of companies today still gravitate closer to model A than model B. If leveraging organisational knowledge makes so much business sense, then why isn’t it already widespread and becoming the norm? I think the answer to this question lies more with organisational culture stagnation than with operational or strategic considerations. For most companies senior management, enabling knowledge sharing or not is not about success but more about losing management control and power. In my 2 blog posts on “organizational cultures not conducive to effective leveraging of knowledge” (first here then here ) I listed 20 common cultural traits inhibiting knowledge sharing. You should find a lot of these traits fitting well with any companies closer to model A you are familiar with. Conversely, anyone familiar with companies more in line with model B should not recognise these traits as typical of their culture. So now, are these “model A” organisational cultures to last? For a while yes but some factors will (hopefully) slowly do away with them such as:

• Generation Y taking over the board room. This is about the necessary top-down leadership to instigate a knowledge-sharing culture, probably lead by the generation of managers who grew up with the Internet.
• Information Systems increasingly integrated and pervasive that facilitate (and reduce transaction costs of) information access and expertise localization.
• An increasingly mainstream acknowledgement of the direct relationships between success and knowledge-focused organisational cultures.
• Social media spreading inside the company. This is the bottom-up pressure for enabling a similar level of knowledge sharing at the workplace that people have at home.
• Or more simply, going out of business as a result of being out of touch with the Knowledge Economy.

The knowledge challenge (for outsourcing companies)

[Below is an article I wrote in Nov 07 for a now defunct Indian website. I stand by it even more today].

For Indian outsourcing providers, their business is evolving towards securing partnerships for innovation with their customers. It is therefore no longer only about cost-savings and taking on non-core activities. Now here is a challenge for them: How to go about obtaining enough specific internal knowledge from their customers in order to produce relevant value-adding innovation? 

The reason why this is a challenge is that most organizations today still fail - or don’t even attempt - to build a knowledge based culture where knowledge sharing between all their employees is the norm. If a customer’s key representatives only share knowledge and experience with their colleagues when they have to, why would they share more freely with external consultants? 

In my experience, consultants usually obtain more information on a specific issue than internal managers, but that is usually due to their – justified or not - “impartial” and “more objective” status. It is also because employees are told to assist the consultant in any way they can because… hem… they are not cheap. But this actually only reinforce my point: For a true value-adding cooperation between an outsourcing firm and a customer organization, you cannot rely on people sharing knowledge only because they are told to do so, you need much more willing and systematic involvements. 

To truly understand the issue, one must realise that the type of partnership that we are talking about here is of a new breed. It is not the classic consulting time-bound project with consultants walking in, gathering information, analysing it, developing then submitting a solution, and finally walking out. What is suggested here is a long-term relationship requiring systematic access to relevant information and sharing of knowledge and experience between the customer and the service provider. 

Innovation does not happen in a vacuum but is very context-dependant. Furthermore, innovation is nearly always the product of collaboration between individuals/teams/companies. Ok, so what is my point then? I do not claim to know all the consequences of this problem (I count on you all reading this to help out). I would only suggest this: Outsourcing firms should steam ahead offering new collaborative services to their most “knowledge focused” customers. With them, there should be no problem in co-generating innovation and value. However, with the other customers still stuck in, pre-Knowledge economy, pre-Web 2.0 era with Industrial Age management methods, my advice is either stay clear of making too many promises, or alternatively first offer to assist them in transforming their organizational culture and foster knowledge-sharing. 

To support the second option, I will quote a report on the recent KM India 2007 Summit : 

<< Comparing the current Knowledge Management (KM) movement with the Quality movement of [the] 80s, noted IT entrepreneur and Chairman & Managing Director of Mindtree Consulting Mr Ashok Soota said, "Knowledge movement is the next important movement. It is like the Quality movement of past. CII and industry will promote this like we did with quality movement." The Summit is being held in New Delhi from Nov 14-16. Highlighting the importance of KM in today's corporate world, quoting management guru Peter Drucker, Mr Soota said, "Today there are no poor countries, only ignorant countries! The same is true of companies." >>

Innovation is a priority, so why not KM?

A recent Boston Consulting Group report shows that 64% of companies consider innovation as one of their top 3 priorities. This is less than the 72% in 2006 but still high in the current difficult economy. That is good and understandable but then why is Knowledge Management not a priority as well as a result? You cannot foster innovation throughout a company wihout effective and efficient knowledge sharing processes. Apple, Google and Toyota took the top 3 spots of the most innovative companies. Unsurprisingly, these 3 are regularly at the top of the global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE). In the 2008 ranking, they were in the 7th, 2nd and 4th place respectively. In fact, 9 of the 20 global MAKE companies last year are among the BCG top 50 innovative companies including 5 of the top 6 ! These organisations have understood that innovation does not only sit in the R&D labs, it is to be fostered everywhere. Innovation implies effective collaboration between individuals, teams, deparments and companies, and effective collaboration implies in turn effective knowledge sharing between all these actors. All these companies above invest heavily in knowledge management and would typically have managers with formal KM responsibilities. But then why is it that the companies with such formal and significant KM are still such a minority? What will it take for leaders to realise en masse the importance of KM?

Is sharing knowledge really desirable in a business?

A. Imagine a company where no knowledge is shared. Only information is passed on between employees within pre-defined operational processes. Each employee exchange information only to their immediate colleagues, either within their team/department or with the colleagues in the next/precedent levels in the operational chain. B. Imagine a company where all knowledge (tacit or explicit) is shared. All employees share their individual and collective (team/department) knowledge with every one else within the company. Each employee is free to share his/her knowledge with anyone else and to ask anyone for his/her knowledge on any subject (of a professional and non-confidential nature). My question is simple: which of these two extremes is likely to generate the most successful business, assuming they would be both in the same market(s) and every other parameters equal (eg. number of employees, age) ? I will expand on this question later on but for now, let me just say that for anyone answering B, please give me strong arguments because the majority of businesses today are still closer to extreme A.

About The Wisdom of Crowds

In his book “The Wisdom of Crowds – Why the many are smarter than the few”, James Surowiecki makes - indirectly but nonetheless powerfully - a very good case for Knowledge Management or the leverage of individual and collective knowledge. Simply put this way, that the many are smarter than the few is hardly a contentious statement. After all, a croud of say 1000 individuals should be smarter than only 500 of this same croud most of the times. You have more minds available to solve a problem/find an answer. However, what Surowiecki means is that a croud of 1000 can be – with the right conditions – much smarter than the sum of its parts even when it acts/decides in a completely uncoordinated way (meaning each individual acts/decides in isolation from the others). In fact, such a group can be (and Surowiecki gives plenty of examples) smarter than the even best experts in a particular field! The three conditions for this group wisdom to materialise according to Surowiecki, are that it must be diverse, independent and decentralized. On diversity, Surowiecki writes (chapter 2, part III): <<The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert’s. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you’re better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.>>This can be hard to believe but Surowiecki then makes the case for this point very well and I cannot find any reason to disagree with him. On independence, he writes (chapter 3, part I): << First, [independence] keeps the mistakes that people make from becoming correlated.[..] One of the quickest way to make people’s judgments systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information. Second independent individuals are more likely to have new information rather than the same old data everyone is already familiar with. The smartest groups , then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. >> I would think that this condition is in theory much less contentious than the first one on diversity. However, the problem with true independence is that in practice, it is rather difficult to obtain. Often, decisions in a croud are made sequentially with each individual influenced by his/her predecessors.Therefore, Surowiecki advises that <<If you want to improve an organization’s or an economy’s decision making, one of the best things you can do is make sure, as much as possible, that decisions are made simultaneously (or close to it) rather than one after the other.>> On decentraization, he writes (chapter 4, part II): << [..] if you set a croud of self-interested, independent people to work in a decentralized way on the same problem, instead of trying to direct their efforts from the top down, their collective solution is likely to be better than any other solution you can come up with. [..] Decentralization’s great strength is that it encourages independence and specialization on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other.>> However, Surowiecki then cautions that : << decentralization’s great weakness is that there’s no guarantee that valuable information which is uncovered in one part of the system will find its way through the rest of the system.>> He then asserts that for a crowd of any kinds to allow << individuals to specialize and to acquire local knowledge [..] while also being able to aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole, [..] [it] needs to find the right balance between the two imperatives: making individual knowledge globally and collectively useful (as we know it can be), while still allowing it to remain resolutely specific and local. >> Well, well, isn’t this where/when Knowledge Management should come in? In fact, for all intent and purposes, this is a definition of KM I am satisfied to work with in an organizational setting: any intentional and managed changes or activities with a conscious objective to facilitate/enable what is highlighted in blue above. But it then highlights a fundamental reason for organizational KM to have so often failed to deliver: the lack of management recognition that collective knowledge in practice is indeed always valuable, with the potential to be very often correct and effective. Leveraging knowledge is then not just about realizing (and doing something about it) that each employee’s knowledge is valuable (and that’s already hard enough for most senior managements) but that the collective knowledge of the whole or groups of employees is even more valuable. I think that a cultural shift is needed here for this realisation to become the norm rather than the exception. This shift has already started with the ubiquitous nature and global reach of the World Wide Web enabling huge crowds to influence decisions directly or indirectly (eg. Obama’s election). This shift now needs to enter the board rooms en masse. According to Malcolm Gladwell, “the tipping point” (see his book with this title) should be reached when between 10 and 15% of board rooms will have formally acknowledged the value and power of individual and collective knowledge. I can safely predict this will happen even if I cannot say when.

On having a “fostering innovation” culture

As I have repeatedly written on this blog, continuous innovation requires access to knowledge. So an organizational culture conducive to knowledge sharing will foster innovation as a direct result. James Todhunter (CIO of Invention Machine Corp.) wrote an article just published in CIO.com titled: “Fostering innovation culture in an unpredictable economy”.

I am not sure what he meant by “unpredictable economy” as no economy has ever been predictable. “Knowledge economy” would be more relevant (and maybe what James had in mind) to relate to the current economy where knowledge (intellectual capital) is increasingly the most valuable asset for businesses, so the intangible taking over the tangible. 

 However, James Todhunter’s view that an innovative culture must be initiated and supported from the top of the organization is spot on: <<[..] It starts at the top. The most common reason cited for why innovation workers feel their organizations fail to have an innovation culture is a perceived lack of management commitment. Organizational culture is created from the top down. In order to create a culture that supports repeatable innovation success, management has to make its commitment to innovation clear and unambiguous. [..] It starts at the top. It really is that simple. Management has the power to set the tone and drive the culture. Managers who avoid taking responsibility for driving the innovation culture by using the “adoption must be a grass-roots thing” crutch, will always be met with failure and left wondering why they can’t achieve their repeatable innovation goals. Culture begins and ends at the top. To create a value-driving, sustainable innovation culture, you need only make it so.>> 

I have constantly in this blog supported the idea that a sustainable fostering innovation culture (or knowledge sharing culture) can only be built with a honest top-down approach. In other words, it needs to be a strategic initiative. I know that many supporters of the social Enterprise 2.0 gaining momentum see it as an alternative to the top-down approach. They believe that if a large part of the people at the base of the organization start collaborating and sharing knowledge and adopting new (cheap or free) tools to do so, and if they increase productivity as a result; it will force the whole organization and its management to embrace these methods of working, this in turn forcing a culture change. 

Of course, people at the fringe of organizations will find benefits in adopting new collaborative technologies at a personal level first then within their team or department, as long as these technologies are answers to needs identified by them to do their work more efficiently and/or effectively. However, for these adoptions to force a company-wide culture change by themselves is not at all a given outcome. This might happen in some contexts but probably only in organizations where the current culture only needed a spark to turn into a knowledge sharing culture. In the majority of organizations where the culture is predominantly of a command and control type, matching my list of 20 syndromes I challenge the bottom-up approach to succeed on its own! Anyone aware of such a successful cultural change, please speak up. 

What has happened in numerous occasions and will continue to happen, is for organizational cultures to be transformed with the impulse and leadership from the top (Buckman Labs, IBM and BP are only 3 of the most famous ex. of such cultural transformation). If we consider Google, surely one of the most innovative companies these past few years, its ground-breaking open culture was initiated by its founders, so therefore a top-down leadership. 

Enterprise 2.0 will not drastically change the balance of power and responsibility: Especially since the Enron scandal! The boss remains the boss and if he/she wants employees to stick to their job descriptions and wants remuneration and recognition processes to reflect this fact, no clever technology will fundamentally change this and Enterprise 2.0 initiatives will remain localized and accessory to standard business processes. Now, is wanting to change the culture sufficient for a leader to succeed in this endeavour? Probably not. No matter how good a leader you are, you cannot simply tell people to start sharing knowledge and be innovative for everyone to do so overnight!

James Todhunter gives a list of 6 methods for effectively fostering an innovation culture: 

 · Invest in your people. 

· Reward the behaviour you want. 

· Invest in infrastructure to support sustainable innovation. 

· An important part of the innovation infrastructure is the framework to leverage knowledge – both the knowledge within your organization and that which is external to the enterprise. 

· Promote the value of innovation. 

· Practice innovation in everything. 

This is a good list and with a very good chance of success if followed. I would however like to add one method that should actually be the one to start with: Lead by example! Don’t count on people to do what you say, even if you reward them for it. It will surely be more effective if you start by doing it yourself: be open, share you knowledge, show off your own creative or innovative ideas (and you might then realize that special rewards are not as necessary as expected).

"The Google Enigma"

I found a very good article with the same title as this post by Nicholas G. Carr on Strategy-business.com (thanks to a post by Bertand Duperrin). Nicholas warns of the hype around Google’s model to foster innovation and the belief that it is the direct reason of its amazing success. But it could very well be more the product of its success instead of the cause as Nicholas writes. Nicholas message is not to ignore Google’s example but to be careful not to assume that the Google way is necessarily the one to follow for all businesses and in all contexts. I would like here to highlight the following two passages, both found in Nicholas’ conclusion. The first one gives the two key examples of Google strategic initiatives that businesses should reflect on seriously and use as benchmarks: “Google’s use of powerful computers to collect and make sense of the operational and customer data flowing through the Internet and other networks provides a window into the future of many industries. And, on a related note, the company has created simple but useful systems for sharing information within and between teams, a challenge that has frustrated many firms.” So, in other words, this is about knowing better your customers to serve them better and about effective and efficient internal knowledge sharing to leverage your human capital (what I’ve been writing about since my first post on this blog!). The second passage is what, according to Nicholas Carr, Google does teach us: “Above all, Google teaches us, through both its successes and its failures, that smart companies — the ones that are not only consistently innovative but consistently profitable — exhibit three qualities. They hire talented people and give them room to excel. They measure progress and results rigorously and make course adjustments quickly. And they remain disciplined in their work and their spending, curbing the instinct to do too much at once.” I don’t think that this is this is the only lesson on strategy we can retain from Google’ success, but I agree with Carr that it all relies first on hiring talented people and then making sure to continuously leverage this human capital.

A great little KM story

Found on CIO.com this great little knowledge sharing story in a context where it was least expected (among retail sales staff used to compete with one another): "Around the holidays in 2000, a Giant Eagle deli manager hit on a way to display the seafood delicacy that proved irresistible to harried shoppers, accounting for an extra $200 in one-week sales. But uncertain of his strategy, he first posted the idea on the KnowAsis portal. Other deli managers ribbed him a bit, but one tried the idea in his store and saw a similar boost in sales. The total payoff to the company, for this one tiny chunk of information, was about $20,000 in increased sales in the two stores. The company estimates that if it had implemented the display idea across all its stores during this period, the payoff might have been $350,000. Previously, "there was no tradition of sharing ideas in the store environment," says Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of Giant Eagle business systems. Seeing the bottom-line benefits of sharing knowledge propelled the employees over their initial misgivings, spurring them to try and out-hustle each other on having the best suggestions, rather than the usual metrics. "Now they're competing in the marketplace of ideas," says Russ Ross, senior vice president of IS and CIO at Giant Eagle. "It became a 'Look What I Did' showcase. Everyone wanted to put something in there," says Brian Ferrier, store director of Giant Eagle's South Euclid, Ohio, supermarket. " This is a typical example of a user-initiated quick win that made a whole KM solution become effective. It does seem so simple and common-sense, doesn't it? But why such simple and common-sense concept be so hard at implementing? "

“Forming an ‘inside-out’ company is the secret to innovation in business”

On the PA Consulting website, I found this very interesting news article dated April 2007. It is about a research by Dr Carsten Sørensen of the London School of Economics (LSE) and PA Consulting Group (PA). This is the part I must highlight: “[..] The research found that IT is the enabler for innovation across the whole business. What we are starting to see is the forming of the ‘inside-out’ company, where interactions and relationships with stakeholders actually shape strategy rather than are subject to it. The research concludes that we are approaching a tipping point, where technology will be cheap enough and intuitive enough to make collaboration as valuable a source of innovation to the business as computation has been a source of efficiency. Technology is changing the way we interact and customers (business and consumer) are demanding a richness of dialogue. [..]” First, I am pleased to see that this confirms what I wrote on the knowledge-driven organization back in 2005, and more recently in Jan 2007. Then this article does correctly make the link between the need for a change in the organizational culture and the introduction of new technologies facilitating collaboration. It is implied that you need both in order to foster value-generating innovation throughout the organization. I spotted the following culture-related change in the article: * Organisations that see their customers and their staff as sources of untapped potential and ideas * unlocking this pool of innovative talent will require collaborative management and not traditional command-and-control-style management * interactions and relationships with stakeholders actually shape strategy rather than are subject to it * senior executives are taking a more facilitative than directorial role, acting as a catalyst or ‘lightning conductor’ for innovation wherever it may evolve * this new outlook on innovation and technology has changed traditional management models towards a new ‘collaborate and control’ model * You do not have direct command-and-control anymore. You are working far more across virtual teams. Teams that are brought together just for specific projects. * The trend towards networks and away from hierarchies and the user empowerment that this entails is changing the way we interact. Executives are seeing a similar phenomenon in business, with users across the organisation demanding that businesses are more reactive to their needs and being willing to take responsibility for improving their working environment. * In order to identify the strategic value of IT it is necessary to employ the technology in developing relationships, listening to customers, and engaging them actively in the production of innovative services Good stuff! The culture change described here is the kind that would do away with the cultural barriers to knowledge sharing I have been repeatedly writing about (mainly here, here, here and here). A few more high-profile articles like this one and I might be able to rest my case...

I suppose I must thank you all...

Sorry for a bit of self gratification but I had to tell you about this.

I have been approached recently by Colleen Carmean, a PhD candidate at Capella University, researching new tools and practices in informal, just-in-time, self-regulated learning that contributes to organizational knowledge and effective business practices.

Colleen asked if I was interested in contributing to her research. I accepted with pleasure but what I really had to mention here on my blog is the fact that her research started with a selective analysis of Knowledge & Learning related sites (http://cmcarmean.googlepages.com/tappingknowledgeintheblogosphere ).

Colleen explains on her site:

“The study tapped into the Blogosphere's version of both popularity and peer review to determine trusted "experts" who are writing about:

• organizational knowledge
• organizational learning
• just in time learning
• informal learning
• emergent learning. “

Starting with 885 sites, Colleen ended up with a list of the 24 most trusted sites and guess what? This site you are reading now is among them!

So I must thank you all, regular readers of my blog, for your encouraging support.

Colleen then writes to define her objective:

“it is the intention of this study to gather knowledge on effective design and support of environments for shared knowledge via collective inquiry by community-identified and connected experts. How we can best design and support emergent learning in the creation of organizational and shared knowledge?”

I wish Colleen success for her PhD and no doubt I will write again about it.

Peter-Anthony Glick