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

Why Best Practices Don’t Work for Knowledge Work

I don’t recall having put together a blog post over here on the specific topic of capturing "Best Practices"; so after reading last Friday’s blog post by my good friend Oscar Berg on this very same topic (Under the title "Forget about copying best practices") I thought it would be a good opportunity to share a few insights, specially since I’m one of those folks with a traditional KM background that never believed in them, even back then! Years have now gone by and I suppose you may be wondering whether I have changed my opinion on them, or not, right? Well, no, I haven’t. Quite the opposite! And here is why …

"Best Practices" are the worst thing you can apply to any kind of knowledge work. Any kind. Social Computing is no different! More than anything else because best practices will always suggest concepts like static, fixed, inalterable, unmodified, unbeatable, perfect. And, as you can imagine, those are the kind of characteristics that would be rather the opposite to what knowledge is all about and the capturing of some of it; knowledge is supposed to be dynamic, flexible, malleable, modifiable, flowing, a continuous learning experience, imperfect. Always leaving room to improve the already existing knowledge by acquiring plenty more!

So can you capture those "Best Practices" on knowledge work? No. You just can’t! That’s exactly what Oscar talks about in his blog post, where he claims how you can’t copy best practices from one company to another because eventually it would turn itself, over time, into what he calls a "common" practice. They would devalue themselves over time with their continued reuse to the point where at some stage they would no longer add any additional value to that business. On the contrary. And I just couldn’t help agreeing with him 100% on this one, but I would go even one step further: even within your own business and across organisations best practices would follow that same dead end!

That’s why whenever someone asks me whether I have got documented somewhere some "Best Practices" on Social Software and Social Computing, so that they would have a good starting point for them to start experimenting with these social tools, based on what other knowledge workers may have been using themselves successfully in the past, my answer keeps coming up with the same sentence: "No, sorry, I don’t have any; there aren’t any!" This surely surprises them quite a bit, since most of them are very well versed, and very much used to, as well!, to the concept of best practices, since that’s what they have been accustomed to from last century’s labour based economies, where, to some extent, they could make sense. To a certain extent…

But not in today’s knowledge economy. Not in today’s working environment where information and knowledge flows faster than ever before improving itself more and more by the minute without an opportunity to become static, so you can capture it. However, that’s typically not my answer to their amazement when confronted with the fact there aren’t any best practices for social software, and for knowledge work, in general. My typical answer is that in most cases best practices would probably work for those folks who put them together for themselves in the first place. And that’s about it.

Why? Well, to me it’s all about a key concept we keep neglecting back and forth and with no remedy: context. Indeed, when trying to capture those best practices, you may be doing a very good job at it, but still they are being put together in a specific context, that, of course, will not correlate to other areas of the business, nor other companies, and as such that’s when we would be entering that "common" practice. And I always make use of an example very close to people: blogging. I have been blogging for about 7 years now and plenty of folks have suggested I put together some of those best practices on blogging. Kind of like a Blogging 101 for newcomers.

And time and time again I keep telling those folks that, yes, I could do that, I could document them, but I also mention that they would only probably work for me, and my context. No one else’s. I mean, all of the stuff I have learned about blogging over the years pretty much applies to me. To my own blogging style and voice. And not anyone else. Just because they don’t have the same context I do, just because they don’t have the same goals for their blogging as my own. Simple, but it gets the message across.

Another interesting read on the topic of capturing best practices, and its various flaws, is one blog post (In Portuguese, originally [Link here]) put together by the always insightful Ana Neves under Capture Best Practices. Or No [Translated link into English]. In that article Ana just nails it, in my opinion, when she states what they usually convey:

• "Cannot be improved
• Must be followed to the letter
• Applies in all circumstances"

That’s exactly why I, too, would prefer to use the term "good practice" versus "best practice" and more than anything else, because of something I learned a long while ago as well: there is always room for improvement. Always! And that’s exactly where Best Practices fail to deliver time and time again.

A long while ago I was actually attending a live event where KM extraordinaire Dave Snowden was the main KM keynote speaker, talking as well about the main fundamental flaw(s) behind best practices that I thought was worth while mentioning over here as well, which I think has also been rather underestimated all along: the fact that, as a human being, there is very little you will learn from a best practice. We just can’t learn from something that is perfect, that works all the time, that doesn’t challenge us over and over again.

Our brains, contrary to what most people think, have been designed to learn much more from lessons learned instead; from what didn’t work; from conflicts; from situations that were everything, but successful; from what would force us to (re)think what we have just done and do it better, trying harder next time around…

So, if anything, businesses should encourage knowledge workers to capture those lessons learned, to document them as good as they possibly could (Perhaps with the use of narrative / storytelling to make it much more compelling), but always leaving plenty of room for improvement. Because that way we would be capable of guaranteeing something even better will come along the way. And, eventually, re-word best practices as good practices to perhaps then allow them to transform themselves into "common practices" and, finally, die off completely. Somehow I just feel we would all be so much better off altogether. Without them, of course!

Tags: Best Practices, Good Practices, Common Practices, Practices, Oscar Berg, Knowledge, Knowledge Flow, Perfection, Imperfection, Learning, Knowledge Work, Knowledge Workers, Context, Blogging, Blogging 101, Ana Neves, Dave Snowden, Lessons Learned, Narrative, Storytelling, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Productivity

Collaboration Is More Important Than Ever – 3 Barriers To Adoption

Last Friday, my good friend Jack Vinson put together a rather good blog post where he was reminding us all how crucial collaboration has become for all businesses and knowledge workers out there. He actually references a couple of rather interesting blog entries that reflect some more on the paramount role of collaboration in today’s interconnected and networked world. All of them very good reads. All of them very accurate, too! So why is it that we are not that good at collaborating then, in the first place? Well, probably we have never been taught how to. And, maybe, we should.

Needless to say that in today’s corporate world, collaboration is, indeed, now more important than ever. In the era of the Knowledge Economy, it can’t be otherwise. It’s no longer even a choice. For the business, nor for knowledge workers. It’s an imperative. Actually, I would go even further: a matter of pure survival.

I am sure you may be thinking I am over-exaggerating a bit, but am I really? I mean, when was the last time you were working with your colleagues in your same building and on the very same project (Just that ONE project!)? Or even in the same country? I bet that was a long while ago! In my own case, the last time I had all of my colleagues in the same building and working on the same project was in 2000. Yes, that far back! From there onwards, people have become a whole lot more distributed, and virtual, to the point where my current team expands globally nowadays across various geographies. And we are all working on a bunch of various different projects / initiatives as well. To us all, like I said, collaboration is not a nice thing to have, but a critical success factor of not only what we do, but who we are as knowledge workers doing Web work day in day out.

And I know I’m not alone on this one. In various conference events where I have spoken on the topic of Social Computing I always ask this very same question of how many people are co-located on the same building and working on the same project and time and time again the response is pretty much the same: rather dispersed and virtual as well as involved in multiple projects. Thus when Jack comments further on how important collaboration is I just couldn’t help but agreeing 100% with him. It surely is. *Always* has been!! Even way before the time when social software tools kicked in within the corporate world!

That’s the point I also wanted to bring up into this blog entry; the fact that collaboration just didn’t happen when social software tools started to become more and more widely used inside / outside of the corporate firewall(s); quite the opposite! We have been using traditional collaborative tools for a long while now (Email?, Instant Messaging, Team Rooms, Discussion Databases, Team Spaces, etc. etc. ) and social tools are there now to provide us with an opportunity to help enhance and augment our already existing collaborative efforts across multiple teams, communities, organisations, etc. etc.

So why don’t we collaborate more then? Specially, using this next generation of collaboration and knowledge sharing tools (You can see how right here, using such terms, you have a great opportunity to escape the Enterprise 2.0 hyped term, too! heh). What is it that is stopping us all from collaborating and sharing our knowledge with other knowledge workers? I am sure if I would go ahead and ask you that question, you would probably venture into sharing along a whole bunch of different reasons as to why people don’t collaborate. Feel free to chime in through the comments adding those various reasons. For now, though, I will share with you briefly what I think are the top 3 most damaging reasons that prevent people from collaborating effectively:

1. Recognising Individual Performance vs. Team / Community Performance:

   Yes, I know, and do fully realise as well, that this statement may be a bit harsh, but unless we stop recognising individual performance and, instead, treasure, nurture and award team / community related performances (Based on group results versus personal ones) knowledge workers won’t just collaborate. As simple as that! They haven’t done so in the past and they won’t start now, even with the emergence of these social software tools we are all familiar with. It’s just not going to happen. And if you don’t believe me, go and shadow your Sales workforce for a while and you will see what I mean …

   (Dan Pink‘s The Surprising Science of Motivation is a great resource to help transform successfully some of that thinking on rewarding individual / team performance. Worth while a look for sure)
   

2. Lack of long term vision (We are all on the same boat after all, aren’t we?):

   What I mean with that sentence is something very simple: knowledge workers do collaborate and share their knowledge across with no problem in most cases, but only amongst closed, siloed, team related groups, which means open, public, unrestricted knowledge flow does not exist; which means collaborating across networks and communities just doesn’t happen; which means, eventually, organisations / business units are fighting against each other, inside the corporate firewall, competing with one another to see which one is the one generating more business revenue.

   When, in reality, they should be doing something completely different; instead of fighting against each other eating each other’s pie, they should be helping one another behave more like a larger network, so that they would be able to eat a much larger piece of pie.

   This particular scenario is very difficult to overcome, because, in most cases, it’s so tightly embedded into the already existing business processes, as well as the core nature of the organisation(s) themselves, i.e. their culture (Fight against each and every other organisation before they eat your lunch!!) that it’s almost impossible to break it in its current form.

   That’s why, however, I have got such high hopes for Social Networking in the enterprise; once work organises itself around networks and communities we are going to see a much more dynamic flow of knowledge and information, as well as knowledge workers themselves; the rigid / strict traditional and hierarchical structures are going to leave their way to those interconnected, open, public networks where everyone can contribute and where therefore everyone has got a sense of being in the same boat. Thus it will no longer be a "fight each other to see who is the fittest", but more "help each other to survive and become a much stronger and powerful organisation altogether"; that one that relies on group work; that one that has a long term vision: that one of communities getting the job done!

3. And, finally, lack of education: Certainly, one of my pet peeves in the area of collaboration. Coming from a traditional KM role this is something that I have witnessed first hand time and time again; and it’s not pleasant. It hasn’t been all along, but, hopefully, this time around things would be different.

   My main take on this one is that if you would want to inspire your knowledge workers, within any organisation, to contribute, collaborate and share your knowledge, you have got to show them how to. There is no excuse. There are people out there who are very keen on collaborating and sharing what they know, because they have done it for years; yet the vast majority doesn’t. And the main reason why is because they have never been taught about it. I mean, do you think we would be having *so* many issues with email today if people would have been educated and trained how to use it properly? I doubt it! (And the same thing happens with most traditional collaboration tools).

   Time and time again, plenty of businesses take for granted such important task of educating their workforce not only on the tools available to them out there, but also on how to use them effectively and efficiently to carry out, successfully, their day to day tasks. They would give their workforce a laptop, a mobile phone, an email address, a few links to explore and off you go and find out everything else by yourself. Oh, and in your own time, since during work hours you have got to do what you were hired for in the first place: work!

   That’s not how collaboration works, I am afraid. Knowledge workers need to be educated on a rather regular basis on how to make use of these tools; how to use them properly and embed them into their day to day workload / business processes. It’s an on-going effort of showing and demonstrating not only the capabilities of the tools in place, but also the many various business benefits. It’s all about having an education roadmap on collaboration tools so that different tasks and activities have got an opportunity to be executed using some of these tools. In a way, it’s an education roadmap on demonstrating how your knowledge workforce can work smarter, not necessarily harder.

   In short, it’s about a very much needed opportunity to help enhance their own individual productivity, so it would then become part of a group effort eventually; a group effort where everyone contributes, because everyone knows how, when, what and with whom to share their knowledge and collaborate. As simple as that. That’s why I’m also having high hopes on this one for social tools, because for the first time in decades most businesses out there, diving into the world of Enterprise 2.0, are providing education roadmaps for their workers so they have a first hand experience of how all of this social software stuff really works. And that’s a good thing! That’s what every single business out there needs to do, if they haven’t started just yet…

Like I said, I am certain there are plenty of barriers of entry into the Collaboration (& Knowledge Sharing) world(s); I just shared my top 3; the top 3 I have been exposed to for quite a while now, way way before even social software tools entered the corporate world! [Want to share across what are your top three barriers to collaboration...?]

The top 3 I hope one of these years we would be capable of moving away from, thanks to the increasing adoption of social computing tools within the enterprise. Thanks to each and everyone of us making continued use of these social tools to help transform not only our business processes, our customer interactions, our knowledge flows, but also our core matter: the culture in our very own organisations. Making them more dynamic, agile, capable and knowledgeable, networked and interconnected, engaged, involved and committed;  and less over-structured, over-processed, archaic, slow to respond, inoperative, and a long etcetera…

In short, making those organisations more human, more personal, more interconnected than ever before and less bureaucratic, which is what we seem to have done a pretty good job over the last few centuries. Perhaps it’s now a good time to put a stop to that. Don’t you think?

Tags: Jack Vinson, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Imperatives, Survival, Success Factors, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Workforce, Workforce, Organisations, Networks, Teams, Communities, Groups, Team Spaces, Individual Performance, Team Performance, Community Performance, Dan Pink, Motivation, Long Term Vision, Education, Education Roadmaps, Barriers, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Learning, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Social Business, Social Business Design

The Leader Who Had No Title

We are almost at the end of another rather interesting and action packed week in the Social Computing space with lots of interesting things happening all over the place and here I am, about to wrap up with another intense week at work, putting together a few lines in this blog post to share one of those wonderful golden nuggets that one bumps into, every so often, on the Internet, in this case, YouTube, once again. Have you watched "The Leader Who Had No Title"? … You should, if you haven’t.

It’s a two minute short video clip that helps introduce Robin Sharma‘s latest book with the same title: "The Leader Who Had No Title" and, as you may have been able to guess, it deals with the subject of Leadership. But not the kind of leadership we have been accustomed to over the course of the last few decades, but a new kind of leadership. The one from the 21st century. The one where you don’t need any kind of title, nor diploma, nor certification to justify you *are* a leader. Quite the opposite!

Now, I haven’t read the book just yet, but after watching that YouTube video, I surely will. It’s already on my growing reading list (For when I get my hands on an 3G iPad – Yeah, I will blog about that one at some point, too! Yes, indeed, I’ll be getting one as soon as they are available over here!) and I can tell you I just can’t wait to get my hands on it. Why? Mainly because if the video is truthful to the book content I bet it’s going to be a superb reading.

From what I have been seeing in multiple places, I’m certain it would be that kind of book that would be helpful, and inspirational, for those folks, like myself, who have been claiming that Social Computing is helping shape not only the way we do business, but also change who we are, the societies we belong to, and the interconnected networks we are part of. In short, for those folks who keep claiming that social computing is changing the way we behave with each other, the way we live, the way we would want to leave a mark in this world in a completely different way that whatever we may have done in the recent past. Yes, that powerful!

Ha! And all of that without having read the book just yet! But, I mean, with quotes like these that I have taken out of the video clip, I guess we won’t have much of a choice, right? If not, judge for yourself:

"Business is transforming; Society is being reinvented; And people are taking back their power"

Or this other one:

"[...] And today, every single one of us has got the opportunity to make a difference; [...] You need no title to show real leadership"

What do you think? Wouldn’t those quotes entice you enough to get your hands on a copy of the book and read through it back and forth and get the most out of it? No? Really? Well, have a look into the video clip, watch through the absolutely wonderful and rather inspiring references throughout and then let me know what you think…

Obviously, once I get a copy of the book in my hands I will be reading through it and perhaps follow up with a blog post over here, where I will share my thoughts about it, but so far, just the title clearly describes how I have always felt about today’s Leadership, and, most importantly, that of tomorrow. The one from the generations to come; the one we are already starting to experience in the business world and elsewhere. The one that will help us lead the way as responsible human beings, once again, into the 21st century and beyond… Goodness, I do hope the book delivers… Has anyone out there already read it? Will it match, and keep up with, the expectations I have just shared above? I would love to know …

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: Leaders, Managers, Leadership, Management, Leadership 2.0, Management 2.0, Learning, Life, Work, Robin Sharma, Certification, Diplomas, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Books, Recommended Books, Business Transformation, Society, Knowledge Economy, 21st Century