Living by Design

Perhaps because we were raised on encyclopedias and textbooks, we tend to think of knowledge in two primary forms: Steam - The thoughts, ideas and concepts that rattle around in our heads. Ice - Books and polished documents that we reference from time to time. In the context of knowledge work, this oversimplification fosters miscommunication and information management bureaucracy . A far better metaphor is to see knowledge as a dynamic, continuously flowing stream, with resulting artifacts passing through various stages of a knowledge lifecycle . How Knowledge Grows You don't require too much imagination to visualize how knowledge transitions from simple ideas through further crystallization, eventually forming reusable artifacts and polished publications. All knowledge workers have participated in this process. Many of the steps occur informally or are managed in isolated environments on personal computers. Content Management Systems (CMS) or Document Management Systems hav...

Photo Credit: Dominion Coal and Wood Silos - from University of Western Ontario Libraries One of the fastest ways to build trust and foster collaboration is to make everything visible. Complex organizations quickly become specialized and fragmented, creating isolated knowledge silos. Significant human effort and heroics are often required to bridge these gaps and maintain ongoing productivity. How Dangerous Is Open? In most organizations the tendency is to emphasize protection instead of knowledge sharing. Many systems start with out-of-the-box permissions that restrict everyone, allowing for manual overrides to allow individuals and groups to share content. Not only is this a sure recipe for clogging the knowledge arteries in an organization, it also tends to generate complex and unmanageable access matrices that introduce new risks and security holes themselves. The reality for most information is: Most people can't find it anyway, even when they have full access. Generally, ...

Photo Credit: 3D Wiki in Second Life - 3pointD.com Almost five years ago, I introduced one of the first wikis into the corporate environment of a large healthcare company. We needed to solve a very simple, pervasive problem. The common challenge for a global team of analysts was twofold: I found something interesting, but there is no obvious place to store it in the project infrastructure or corporate taxonomy. I need to quickly find this stored information when it becomes relevant, even if I forgot about it in the interim. The best solution at the time: a reused server under my desk loaded with SWIKI, a dead-easy Wiki server, all under the radar of corporate IT. Apart from solving the above-mentioned problems, we quickly experienced some of the exciting knowledge flow and work team dynamics that are inherently encouraged by Wiki technology . Five years later, Wikis are the talk of the town. This same company has now purchased an enterprise Wiki that is accelerating interaction and...

Learning Cycle: University of Tasmania Buried deep in the psyche of quality management systems is the discipline of training. It goes something like this: Define what needs to be done Train people how to do the work Test to ensure compliance Repeat activity in a predictable manner Optimize as needed The Danger Zone Much of this emphasis finds its roots in Taylorism. Also known as Scientific Management, this discipline focussed on studying current work processes and optimizing quality and performance in mass production environments. Unfortunately, the context has shifted dramatically to what is needed in today's knowledge-based organizations. "In political and sociological terms, Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical extreme, with a consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace." from Wikipedia: Scientific Management Learning in the Brave New World The truth is that in our current information-age work contexts, ...