How important is culture for a Digital Transformation?

 

When an organisation initiates a digital transformation to innovate faster, be more agile, more adaptable to change, it should not underestimate the importance of having an internal culture conducive to this transformation.

A culture transformation might be needed to support a digital transformation, and if it is, it must be considered strategically for the long term. The new culture will have to continue to strengthen and flourish long after achieving the digital transformation. The new culture must have strong foundations not strictly associated with the transformational phase, but instead rooted in the organisation’s long-term purpose.

The most adapted cultures to associate with a digital transformation is widely accepted to be of a collaborative nature.

A collaborative culture is about establishing a working environment that makes all employees work truly as one team very much like a Football team, with everyone seeking to learn from one another, know and use one another’s strengths, compensate for one another’s weaknesses.

Collaboration does not mean consensus. If a collaborative culture implies collective responsibility, it first and foremost imposes individual accountability. The new culture will not be solely about internal collaboration but as importantly about external collaboration too.  

Why is culture important when embarking on a digital transformation?

Let’s start with Gartner’s broad definition of a Digital Transformation (DT): <<Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models>> (Gartner glossary) 

So clearly a lot of different types of changes can be “packaged” as a DT.  

<<To make any transformation stick, you must define the culture before you implement new digital tools or ways of working. That’s because doing so addresses the one thing standing in your way: the mindsets and behaviors of people.>> (Enterprisersproject.com, 2020)

Crucially, what is important to realise is that DT is not only about data, tools and systems, it is in fact first about people. The main reason is that the success of a digital transformation depends on everyone in the organisation. Management cannot just command employees to transform the organisation into a digital one. Leaders must focus on changing the mindset of everyone in the organisation, as well as the organizational culture and processes, before deciding on the digital tools to use and how to use them. This is the only way to get everyone engaged and motivated to truly transform the way the organisation operates and the way it relates to its customers. 

<< [..] Customer wants are rapidly evolving, requiring dramatically new levels of organizational flexibility, agility and adaptability.

And that responsiveness is about technology, yes. But it’s very much about humans. Data can tell us what people have done in the past and what they need, but it can’t create new products and services. Digital technology can’t see trends, nor help you decide how to shift a business as markets evolve. It can’t drive culture, those values and beliefs that make people want to come to work for you every day.>> (Prophet, The Body Mind and Soul of digitally evolved organizations, 2018).

What mindset is expected for a Digital Transformation?

<<Shortcomings in organizational culture are one of the main barriers to company success in the digital age. That is a central finding from McKinsey’s 2017 survey of global executives which highlighted three digital-culture deficiencies: functional and departmental silos, a fear of taking risks, and difficulty forming and acting on a single view of the customer.>> (McKinsey, 2017)

DT is usually associated with the Agile methodology, with Devops teams, with adaptability, with empowerment, with management openness and with taking risks. So what “digital mindset” or behaviours is sought from employee in such a working environment?

The following is not an exhaustive list of behavioural traits but is a good aggregation of published digital mindset definitions:

    ·        Fully on board with the shared vision and goals

    ·        Comfortable to take decisions

    ·        Customer focused

    ·        Seeking ideas from other teams

    ·        Always willing to share experiences and ideas 

    ·        Data driven but trusting intuition/judgment

    ·        Willing to take calculated risks, to experiment

    ·        Always learning 

    ·        Adaptable to continuous change.

An organisation embarking on a DT must therefore define and then establish an internal culture conducive to the desired digital mindset described above. 

It should be about Collaboration

Fundamentally, the role of a culture supporting a DT (ref. Greg Watson, COO at Napier AI) is to:   

<<

.        Share the vision: You can’t simply sanction digital transformation. You must share your vision of what must be achieved, and why, in order for everyone in the organization to understand how crucial digital transformation is. [..]

·        Empower the employees: Digital transformation requires rapid change. Embracing rapid change requires the consent of those who will bear the brunt of new policies, procedures and processes. [..]

·        Break down barriers: Silos across teams and technology can stop even the most dedicated customer advocate from going the extra mile [..].

>>

Once the vision and goals are clearly communicated and understood by everyone, the empowered employees collaborate freely across teams, functions, businesses and geographies, to delight the customers.

<<Ideally led by the CEO, in partnership with CIOs, CHROs and other senior leaders, digital transformation requires cross-departmental collaboration in pairing business-focused philosophies with rapid application development models.>> (CIO.com, Sept. 2020)

Establishing collaborative behaviours as the norm throughout the organisation is therefore the single most important cultural trait to successfully achieve a digital transformation. A collaborative culture has other benefits too:

·        It establishes a working environment inherently diverse and inclusive

·        It facilitates for each employee the use of many of his/her skills/competences untapped by his/her current role job description

·        Collaborative behaviours are recognised and rewarded

·        It is a culture conducive to self-actualisation for all employees

·        It fosters empowerment and openness. 

What should the needed culture transformation look like?

The following answer to this question is structured using Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model ™: DNA, Body, Mind and Soul. Prophet – a global consultancy firm – see Culture being synonymous to Experience.

BODY: Reinventing the Operating Model.

Organisation

A collaborative culture has these characteristics:

·        A flatter hierarchical structure

·        Communities of practice (or disciplines) not department

·        Multi-disciplinary teams (squads) collaborating to satisfy customers’ needs and wants.

A collaborative culture is also a flatter culture with people empowered to make decision and voice opinions. 

Governance

<<Lack of hierarchy, though, does not mean lack of leadership. Paradoxically, flat organizations require stronger leadership than hierarchical ones. Flat organizations often devolve into chaos when leadership fails to set clear strategic priorities and directions.>> (HBR.com, Jan 2019)

Leaders are there to provide the teams with what they need to perform, rather than telling them what to do. They are guides rather than commanders. 

Process

It is key for everyone to feel empowered to adapt, replace or create the processes needed to deliver on the digital transformation.

Roles

The right roles for a digital transformation to be defined and assigned. 

For instance, one senior leader must be appointed to lead the Culture Transformation in a “Chief Culture Officer” capacity, and lead a team to manage the various aspects I mention on this article. Changing the culture touches the entire organisation and every functions, disciplines and businesses will play a part. This needs direction and coordination.

Incentives

To foster a collaborative culture it is essential to incentivise collaborative behaviours. This means systematic recognition and reward of the most collaborative teams and individuals. Individuals making significant efforts in this area should also be recognised. 

Fundamentally, collaborative behaviours must be part of everyone’s job description and must be part of everyone’s performance appraisal.

During appraisal, questions such as these should become common practice:

“Have you offer your knowledge/expertise recently? Give an example”

“Where you specifically asked for help by anyone? Describe what happened”

“Did you call for help or advice or opinion outside your team recently? Give an example”

“Did you engage in any internal or external online debates? Any interesting insights?”

Systems & Tools

Culture is about people yes but within an organisation, especially in large ones, the right collaboration systems and tools configured and used in the right way, can enable a much faster uptake of the desired behaviours and facilitate the breakdown of knowledge silos.  

From a technological point of view, a digital and a cultural transformation join up through the “democratisation of technology”. Gartner defines this as <<[..] providing people with easy access to technical or business expertise without extensive (and costly) training. It focuses on four key areas — application development, data and analytics, design and knowledge — and is often referred to as “citizen access,” which has led to the rise of citizen data scientists, citizen programmers and more.>> 

Many communication/collaboration tools such as Intranets, ADO, Jira, Salesforce, Microsoft Yammer, innovation portals, Teams or Whiteboard, are often already widely available in organisations but not necessarily used correctly or to their full collaborative potential. Some improvement suggestions:

·        Intranets could be used to promote collaboration as much as digital initiatives. It could regularly recognise the most collaborative among us for instance

·        Ms Yammer and Teams must be clearly differentiated so that everyone which one to use for what. Essentially, if the audience is specifically known, use Teams, if not use Yammer. I am also confident that in a collaborative culture, a tool like Yammer would not only be used more often and by more people, it would also be “better” used: Some features and under-utilised such as the possibility to “Follow” someone or a topic of interest

·        Ms Teams has seen its use grow, in most organisations using Microsoft tools, as an online conferencing tool, especially since Covid-19. However, its initial and core purpose to be a team’s knowledge/collaboration portal is often overlooked. Ms Outlook and emails remains the main communication tool for a team and that needs changing for a more collaborative environment. Microsoft is about to introduce more integration between Outlook and Teams so that will blur the lines in favour of Teams hopefully

·        In the case of ADO or Jira (or any other Agile continuous delivery tool), it is key for an organisation to have a unique DevOps platform to break down knowledge silos further

·        Salesforce as a single record of the customer to have a single view of the customer and drive collaboration instead of competition between commercial teams

·        Ms Whiteboard is a great online design/brainstorming tool – especially for geographically dispersed teams. Tools such as this one should be promoted and used more widely

·        Ideation/innovation portals: A key objective of a digital transformation is to foster innovation and doing so in the most collaborative way implies selecting and imposing a standard ideation platform. One of the first thing anyone with an idea wants to check before sharing it is whether someone else already had the same or similar idea. If yes, an option is to join forces with that person. The only way to enable this is to have a single place where ideas are posted and assessed.

MIND: Energize the Talent

A new culture with associated talent management and learning is required to sustain and leverage this new potential.   

Talent

<<Too often work is benchmarked against a norm: a row on a spreadsheet. What’s valued is your economic productivity – your ability to work faster, cheaper, and in high volume – and ethics aren’t valued because they’re so difficult to measure from a productivity standpoint. It’s one of many intangibles – how innovative you are, your empathy, or why you’re doing what you’re doing. Purpose, Self-improvement, and connection, especially, are not conducive to measurement. As a result, very little time or effort is devoted to ensuring that employees are learning and growing, are committed to organizational goals, or are enjoying a sense of affiliation and inclusion.>> (Rishad Tobaccowala, Restoring the Soul of Business, 2020, chap.3 pg 37).

The intangibles that Rishad refers to must be given as much importance as the tangible ones. Propensity for collaboration in particular, will become an increasingly important competency. Others such as the ones listed by Rishad will need to be nurtured, assessed, recognised and rewarded: Purpose, self-improvement, self-actualisation, willingness and capacity to learn, creativity, capacity to innovate, etc… 

If harder to measure, some indicative measurements are possible for some of these intangibles. For instance, a tool like Yammer can provide some useful evidence of someone’s collaborative behaviours. A 360 behavioural performance review is another useful measurement method, with colleagues feeding back on how much assistance they received from you and/or how open and respectful you were for their contributions and/or how much you sought diversity of opinion, etc…

Performance and behavioural assessment should no longer be for the next 6 or 12 months but become a more continuous process. In a digital, agile, fast moving, fast innovating organisation, it makes no sense to ask everyone to plan specific activities and objectives for a full year in advance. One can set annual guiding principles and a wish list but delivery objectives should be set on a quarterly basis at the most.     

Capabilities & Skills

In a digital/collaborative organisation, what an individual is capable and willing of learning and doing should be more important that what he/she has done in the past. Space and time will need to be given for everyone to learn. Crucially in a collaborative culture, learning is expected to be more often from colleagues than from formal online or classroom style course.  Sharing one’s knowledge/expertise should therefore be incentivised.   

SOUL: Create more Meaning.

Mindsets and behaviours

A culture transformation must be first and foremost about changing the mindset and behaviours, or more precisely about promoting, encouraging and rewarding a desired mindset and a set of associated behaviours. And this must be done for the long term and therefore must be rooted in the organisation’s vision, purpose, goals and core values. Such a change should not be rushed but instead done gradually, starting with quick wins and making to get everyone on board with the target culture.  One recommended way to achieve this is to have all employees involved in the definition of the collaborative mindset and behaviours.

<<[..] while certain behaviors required for innovative cultures are relatively easy to embrace, others will be less palatable for some in the organization. Those who think of innovation as a free-for-all will see discipline as an unnecessary constraint on their creativity; those who take comfort in the anonymity of consensus won’t welcome a shift toward personal accountability. Some people will adapt readily to the new rules—a few may even surprise you—but others will not thrive.>> (HBR.com, Jan 2019).

Motivations

Every organisations will have ambitious strategic goals (such as achieving a Net Zero Carbon emission by 2050 for instance). To achieve them, the workforce will need to be kept motivated.   A collaborative culture has the potential to provide a motivating working environment through:

·        Empowerment
·        Inclusiveness
·        Continuous learning
·        Increased variety of work
·        Appraisal giving equal importance to who you are and your collaborative behaviours (versus what you achieve).

Stories

A digital organisation must be data driven but data needs to be interpreted and contextualised to extract meaning and generate true value.

<<Great bosses impact the spreadsheet through stories:

·        Stories that inspire;
·        Stories that teach;
·        Stories that reasonate; and
·        stories that motivate.

They share their stories of failure as well as successes. These bosses encourages their people to talk about their own experiences and offer their perspectives. They believe in on-going dialogue [..]. As long as they get their people engaged and thinking widely and deeply, the’ve done their jobs.>> (Rishad Tobaccowala, Restoring the Soul of Business, 2020, chap.12 pg 180).

Leaders need to understand that stories have the power to multiply the value of Data. A collaborative culture is not only more conducive to storytelling, it fosters it, making it become common practice for sharing experiences and for learning.

Symbols and Rituals

A new culture will in time undoubtedly also permeates through symbols and rituals but this is not a priority concern when initiating a cultural transformation.

DNA: What the Organisation stands for.

Purpose

This is not only about being a purposeful organisation but also about acknowledging that each employee will be more productive when given the space and opportunities to define and fulfil his/her own personal purpose.

Values

An organisation embarking on a digital transformation journey does not necessarily need to change its corporate values. What it must do as a minimum however is align them to what being a digital organisation will mean.

Brand

If an organisation embraces a collaborative culture, it would make sense for its external brand image to convey this mindset too. For instance, a collaborative culture will facilitate the adoption of co-innovation with the customer.

Employee value proposition

The Employee Value Proposition (EVP) will need a clear focus on the benefits of a collaborative working environment.

Other concepts to be considered for the EVP are:

·        The strong sense of collective Purpose
·        Continuous performance and behavioural assessment (as mentioned in the ‘Talent’ section above)
·        Encouragement and opportunities given for everyone to leverage skills and competencies outside their current role. No one should be exclusively contained in a ‘box’ framed by a job description.

Strategy

<<The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch. You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement that strategy, the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy >> ( Dick Clark, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck).

The culture transformation to support a digital transformation must be considered strategically for the long term. The new culture will have to continue to strengthen and flourish long after achieving the digital transformation. The new culture must have strong foundations not strictly associated with the transformational phase, but instead rooted in the organisation’s long-term purpose. 

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.