E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management by Dave Snowden and Jon Husband – Part III

Continued from The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management by Dave Snowden and Jon Husband – Part II

Right after Dave moves onto one of the sections of the podcast interview that I have really enjoyed the most and which I am sure plenty of folks out there would have difficulties in trying to understand it, more than anything else because all along we have been doing quite the opposite, and funny enough without success.

Yes, there it is when he mentions how Web 2.0 "moves knowledge outside of the corporate control". For quite some time now, Dave has always been arguing rather strongly the fact that (Paraphrasing here now) in knowledge work you should never provide any incentives, because "reward people for contributing to a KM database fails to understand the basic trust implications of the knowledge interaction". Like, if you ask for something that you need in the context of genuine need no-one is going to refuse that knowledge exchange. However, if you ask to share your knowledge in anticipation for a potential need by someone you may not know in the future, there is a great chance that will never happen. It’s "that immediacy, that context that matters".

Dave comes to conclude that there would be a couple of consequences around the subject of incentivising knowledge workers for sharing their knowledge: if you give people incentives or money for posting knowledge to a KM system then the people who are very good at achieving their targets, they will always find materials to submit to the system to get the rewards. So in a way the focus would be more on the incentives themselves more than in the knowledge sharing activity in the first place, with the consequence that abuse of trust may result in the end on not providing the knowledge and information any longer, even if it were really needed.

I am sure that by now, if you have been reading this blog for a while, you may identify how this very same topic goes along the very same lines of what I have been saying for some time now and which also comes pretty close to Dave’s words of wisdom on some Knowledge Management rules:

"1. Knowledge will only ever be volunteered it can not be conscripted.
2. We only know what we know when we need to know it.
3. We always know more than we can tell and we will always tell more than we can write down."

And the nice thing as well is that these very same thoughts fit in quite nicely with the recent conversations I have been having over here around the subject of ROI for Social Software. This is exactly the main reason why trying to figure out the traditional ROI for Social Software is not going to work really nice and Dave comes to put it quite nicely when he comments further on how can you create a knowledge sharing culture. You can’t, he asserts.

What you can do is "increase the interaction between people, increase their interdependency and increase the immediacy of that Knowledge Management request". Pretty much like e-mail back in the days versus what is happening today where we seem to have developed an addiction to it. I really enjoyed his comments on having to break the current mail system(s), because that is exactly what Web 2.0 is currently doing, and succeeding, in my opinion. And a few seconds later Dave comes up with what I think is one of the best social computing definitions (And KM, for that matter) I have heard to date:

"Knowledge work becomes the way we do things around here"

To be continued …

Tags: Jon Husband, Wirearchy, Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Podcast, Podcasting,  Connections, People, Conversations, Control, Incentives, Rewards, Immediacy, Context, ROI, Return On Investment, Trust, Knowledge Interactions, , Volunteering Knowledge, Learning, Knowledge Management 1.0, KM 1.0, KM 101, Knowledge Management 2.0, KM 2.0, Collaboration 2.0

The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management by Dave Snowden and Jon Husband – Part II

Continued from The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management by Dave Snowden and Jon Husband – Part I

From there onwards it gets even much more interesting on the interview, because Dave comes to share his own experiences about blogging and how blogging is impacting the way he has access to knowledge and information by having to learn to trust a bunch of the folks that he reads on a regular basis and who already filtered somewhat the information that comes through to him. Yes, indeed, the basics of syndicating the content of those folks you learn to trust from their regular contributions as blog comments and connections they make in the various social networks. It is all about voluntarily (How important that concept is!) making connections, therefore no censorship, no control, no structure. The whole thing is self-organising as mentioned above in a previous blog post.

Right after that, Jon comes to ask the question on where all that leaves the enterprise, existing organisational structure and where Enterprise 2.0 may well fit. And while I was listening in I just couldn’t help smiling towards Dave’s words: over the last decade the most neglected word in Knowledge Management has been … context. And from there onwards he makes the connection on how Web 2.0 "makes the context in which you receive and filter information and knowledge more critical, partly because you can control that context by exchanging with people you already know or trust".

To be continued …

Tags: Jon Husband, Wirearchy, Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Podcast, Podcasting,  Connections, People, Conversations, Context, Control, Trust, Censorship, Structure, Volunteering Knowledge, Learning, Knowledge Management 1.0, KM 1.0, KM 101, Knowledge Management 2.0, KM 2.0, Collaboration 2.0

The Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Work and Knowledge Management by Dave Snowden and Jon Husband – Part I

I know that I am coming to this a little bit too late, specially after seeing all over the place the good bunch of folks who have already been talking about this particular topic I am going to talk about today. There has been an incredible amount of conversations already and to tap into each of them would take plenty of time, so I am going to skip through all of that and perhaps come back over the course of time and for now just spend a few minutes commenting on the original resource that originated all the buzz.

I have been drafting the blog post for this subject already and got so excited that I feel I am going to split it up in several parts with a link to each of them into this particular blog post. Too long, indeed, for a single post. So as you go along, come back to this one and find the links to the following blog posts so that you don’t miss out on any of them. Getting exposed to stuff like this podcast I am about to comment on is just priceless.

Yes, indeed, I am talking about the superb podcast put together by Jon Husband interviewing Dave Snowden on the Impact of Web 2.0 on Knowledge Management and knowledge workers. I realise that there is very little that I would need to add to describe the stunning piece of work that both Jon and Dave have done over the course of the years around the subject of Knowledge Management, but when Jon advised me the podcast was live I just couldn’t help bouncing up and down as I knew I was off to a wonderful trip down the memory lane on where KM was and where it is today with regards to social computing.

The podcast itself lasts for a bit over 30 minutes and it surely was really nice done. Very professional touch at the beginning and throughout the whole show. Notice though that at the time of putting together this blog post, the link to the Odeo episode does not seem to be working, so you will need to download the .mp3 temporarily from Dave’s Cognitive-Edge’s pages here. Hopefully, Jon would be able to fix the issue shortly. (Update 24-11-07): I just got pinged by Jon and he advised that the working link with the professional intro and the cleaned up interface can be downloaded from here. Thanks much, Jon, for the quick update and for sharing with us the corrected link! Greatly appreciated!

So far I have listened to it about three times and every time I listen to it again I learn something new. On top of that, and over the course of the last couple of weeks. I have been recommending it to plenty of folks to listen to it, if they would want to find out some more as to how social software is changing the knowledge sharing and collaboration landscapes and where we may be heading with things. And for now I am going to take this opportunity to share with you why I have enjoyed it quite a bit and why I keep recommending it to various different folks wanting to find out some more on the topic of KM and Web 2.0.

The podcast starts with a short introduction of who Dave is and what he does (His Cognitive-Edge blog would tell you that as well ) and right away it gets into the heart of the matter with Jon asking Dave what his thoughts are about Web 2.0, his definition of it and how it is shaping up the knowledge work taking place at the moment.

Dave comes to share how the main key differentiation from Web 2.0 versus traditional Knowledge Management from 10 years ago is how Social Computing tools "effectively self-assemble, self-organise and deal with informal connectivity learning", focusing more on the unstructured sharing of knowledge than on the structured one, which is what we have been exposed to so far for a good number of years . So in a way he mentions how if there is anything that works with social software is its immense power to connect people.

Now if you have been reading this blog for some time now you can probably imagine how glad I was to hear that. They say that content and tools are key, they say that processes are what rule our interactions and from what I can see, and Dave seems to confirm that as well, it is actually the people, and how they connect, what makes it all work together nicely and therefore the success from Web 2.0. So whoever was thinking that the focus should be on the tools and on the processes, probably should think about things again, because it is actually the nurturing of making those connections and empowering people to do so what actually matters in the Social Computing and Knowledge Management 2.0 space.

I actually agree with Dave 100% that if social software would have been available 10 years ago when KM was getting started, we would be talking now about a completely different story on knowledge sharing. It would certainly not have the negative reputation that we seem to still be suffering from at the moment. At the same time the focus would have been where it should have been all along and I suspect that if that would have been the case we probably even wouldn’t talk about Knowledge Management nowadays, but something else. Perhaps KM would not have survived till today in the way it was envisioned in the first place.

To be continued …

Tags: Jon Husband, Wirearchy, Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Podcast, Podcasting,  Connections, People, Conversations, Self-Organisation, Learning, Knowledge Management 1.0, KM 1.0, KM 101, Knowledge Management 2.0, KM 2.0, Collaboration 2.0