“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...

Great synthesis of KMers' current thinking

On 22nd Jan, I informed you of Colleen Carmean's PhD work on new practices in design and support of shared knowledge environments, and that I was proud and delighted to be in the shortlist of KM specialists asked to participate in her research. 

Well, Colleen has now completed the synthesis of all the participants inputs and has now posted it in a wiki for all to see. Read it! It's truly a great summary of the current thinking of KM specialists on the following 6 key concerns: 

 1. INHERENT CHARACTERISTICS of effective emergent learning environments 

2. Fostering INDEPENDENT, AS-NEEDED KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION 

3. Fostering SHARING, COLLABORATION and NETWORKING of organizational knowledge 

4. Fostering better expression and sharing of TACIT KNOWLEDGE 

5. Potential TOOLS or PRACTICES for finding, creating and encouraging organizational knowledge 

6. GREATEST PRIORITY in creating a more effective digital workplace I must agree with it all as I was given a chance to revise it before publication. 

 You can post comments here as Colleen reads my blog or here is her site.

The importance of culture when implementing new technology

Thanks to Bertrand Duperrin, I found out that only 6 days ago, Peter Evans-Greenwood (Cap Gemini CTO in Australia) posted on his company's very good "CTO blog" his thinking on the importance of organizational culture when implementing new technology and in particular Enterprise 2.0. Do read it. It is totally in line with my last post.

Finding the right person to help with a problem

Here is a basic but hugely rewarding problem to resolve: “Finding and contacting the right person (or group) within an organization to help with a problem”. The problem can be anything that can benefit from the input of someone with a relevant expertise. How do you do this in an Enterprise 1.0 environment (in other words, in most organizations today)? Well, all too often you simply don’t bother trying! Why? Because you know it’s likely to cost you more resources (usually time) than you are prepared to invest, and where there is no certainty to succeed (in finding a useful soul). Furthermore, even if you did take the trouble to search and eventually find someone, there is then no guarantee this person will have the time to help you quickly enough ) or even want to help you!). So it is often easier to instead choose one of the following 3 alternatives:

• Work out the solution to your problem yourself with the people you already know and work with. In other words, you probably will reinvent the wheel.
• Seek external help and usually have to pay for it. Might be faster and more effective than doing it yourself but will probably be more expensive.
• Leave the problem unresolved and maybe find a (less efficient/effective) way around it (trust me, this option is chosen more often than you would think).

Why is it typically so difficult and taking too long to find someone with specific knowledge within an organization? For at least these 5 reasons:

• Knowledge-sharing is not part of the corporate culture, so people are not expected and not expecting to help outside their “normal” job/responsibilities (see my list of traits of a culture not conducive to knowledge-sharing here and here)
• Lack of adapted collaboration tools (Web 2.0)
• Lack of “Who has done what” or “Who knows what” repositories (and not just “who’s who”).
• The larger the company, the more difficult it is.
• The more geographically dispersed the company, the more difficult it is.

Now, this should mean that if you deal with the first 3 points above, you’re on your way to solve the problem. Yes, this is the way forward and this is what Enterprise 2.0 initiatives are supposed to do. HOWEVER, the most important point is undoubltedly the first one. If people don’t want to share/help (for different reasons) it won’t matter what bleading-edge tools you will give them access to, they won’t use them at all or not for the reasons you would like them to (of they use them because they are told to do so, you won’t get the ROI intended).

So I am suggesting that Enterprise 2.0 = Web 2.0 + a cultural change.

Also, I now think this cultural change must be initiated from the grassroots, from the people on the front lines in the organization, and not directed by the top-management. My position on this has somewhat evolved since my first post on PKM . Instead of stating that traditional KM (management-lead) must come first and then allow PKM to support it, I now believe that the opposite has more chance of success. You should encourage PKM (user-lead initiatives) and then formalize at a company level the most popular solutions (my reading of “The Mashup Corporation” book on SOA has something to do with it). This is also Google’s successful business model to focus on satisfying the user, as opposed to Microsoft that focuses on satisfying the Management. In the long run, Google’s model will win it and Microsoft will need to adapt or die.

“Three dozen knowledge sharing/collaboration barriers” compared with my “cultures not conducive to knowledge sharing”

I have recently been made aware (on ActKm listserve) by Shawn Callahan of one of his blog post dated 03/09/06 and titled “Tree dozen knowledge sharing barriers”. Shawn was commenting on an article written by Andreas Riege (with the same name as the post).

I thought that it could be interesting to compare Andreas’ list of barriers with my list of 16 “not conducive to K sharing” cultural traits.

First, I excluded the technological barriers as these are not directly linked the organizational culture.
From the remaining 29 barriers, I manage to make 15 of them correspond to at least one of 12 of my traits. So they were mutually confirming each other.
One barrier can actually be linked to nearly all of my traits: “Existing corporate culture does not provide sufficient support for sharing practices”.

This left the following 4 cultural traits not addressed by Andreas’ list:

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

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

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

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

From the 14 barriers not linked to a cultural trait, I identified only 4 that each warranted a new cultural trait in my list. Here are the 4 new traits with the associated syndromes:

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

So that makes now 20 traits of organisational cultures not conducive to knowledge-sharing.

If you identify one missing, please let me know.