I'm back!

It has been a long, long time since I wrote my last message here. But the good things about blogging is that we do not have any commitment regarding periodicy and/or content. At least, I do not... And in these past times, although I did not contribute here, I did receive some comments of eventual readers who found usefulness in the pages I had already left. This, among other things, made me realize how much I like this topic and how much I believe I have something to say about it. The fact is that many other good people have been talking about this in an impressively competent and fun way.

For example, do not miss this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vqWSnRwqQ&feature=player_embedded
about how we innovate much more when we collaborate. It is just perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Greetings to all that might see this post,

Renata 

After a long and dreadfull silence...

Dear Collabloggers,

After a long and dreadfull silence, many of you might be wondering if I gave up for good the idea of collablogging. But please don't ever consider that possibility again, as collabloggation (here and in other contexts) is a very important trait of my personality. The fact is that I was trying to cope with the cold and dark dutch winter, that really makes me quite depressed, taking all my energy and will to do lots of things I like. However, I now managed to gather some important insight that I'd like to discuss with you guys. In fact, I'd like to talk about two ethical problems that I believe to be in the heart of developing KM Systems with greater or lesser acceptance.

The first problem derives from the fact that humans have a tendency of believing in the existence of one universal truth. Although we (scientists) have the habit of proudly say that we base our conclusions on investigations and scientific proof, it is extremely common to find dozens of dogma (i.e. generally accepted assumptions, purely based on faith) in all fields of science. Who has not heard, for instance, a general statement such as “I do not believe in agents.”? This as many other affirmations of this kind are absurdities, since it is a fact that there is a big and very active research community working on the field of agents, besides companies and organizations that adopt them in practice. So, what is there to believe (or not)? And besides, please note that the term believe refers to faith, and not to scientific proof. This is a problem with KM especially because, in our view, there is no best practice for all situations. Each targeted setting and situation have specific characteristics, goals and constraints that should be analyzed before a KM System may be actually proposed and adopted. For example, while for one specific organization, an ontology-based content management system may be required, for another one, this may be useless and demand extreme overhead for workers without bringing the expected benefits. Hence, managers, researchers and knowledge managers should be both sensible individuals and critical thinkers, to avoid being caught by “hypes” and “buzzwords”, often phenomena in our field.

Following this big challenge, there is another, perhaps bigger one. People tend to be over excited about their own proposals and points of view. This happens with managers, knowledge managers, and especially with researchers. Researchers as ourselves have this weird tendency to place too much value in their own work. On one hand, this is nature, since they are constantly busy with that topic, so it generally influences the way they see the world, the choices of words they make in social communication, and even the way they relate to others and perform their day-to-day activities. On the other hand, a direct consequence of this is the fact that by getting too much accustomed with a specific topic, method, product, or point of view, they miss the opportunity to look at other possibilities around them. This unfortunate phenomenon, which goes in the opposite way regarding the creation of new knowledge and innovation, is more common than we can imagine. For instance, a research group may be so used to a software engineering method that one of their members has previously created that they think all processes and systems may be modeled using that method, so they do not bother to learn another one. And besides, they usually get into fierce arguments with researchers from elsewhere about the greatness of their method, in comparison with the others around, without actually spending enough time to learn or evaluate these other methodologies. This represents a great risk in our field for many reasons, but especially because: a) knowledge is dynamic by nature, and a solution that is good in one time is not good in another; b) knowledge is context dependent, so different people and organizations organize it, relate to it, and use it in a completely different way; and c) not only creating new knowledge, but unlearning old ones is an important part of KM, in order to guarantee knowledge communities to evolve.

So, do you have any comments about this? I am very, very interested in discussing these points, as I believe they are important ethical topics related to the KM field, and they may be able to trigger some kind of Nonaka & Takeuchi suggested creative chaos within our community.

Best regards,
Renata

Expectations and wishes for 2005...

Dear all,

This is a quick note only to tell you all, collabloggers, that I wish you a very, very nice beginning in 2005!!!!!!!!!

I don't really know what to expect for the next year. I know it's going to be a year of change, for me for sure and, I think also for the world. Really don't know where this planet is going... I am very much sad about the latest happenings in Asia, with this big earthquake and tsunami... and I'm not sure if it has stopped there. Don't know why I am having sort of a apocalyptical feeling about 2005... Hope this is only a wrong presage, motivated by the latest news.

But since I am an incurable optimistic, I still expect lots of good things to happen in the next year. I trully hope we can all share great moments with our friends and family, and I wish lots of success in everyone's personal and professional lives. To sum up, have lots of joy, great fun and huge amounts of collablogation in 2005!!!

Cheers,
Renata

The problem of disbelieving...

I’ve read today a nice blog post entitled “The Barrier of Disbelief”, which I definitely recommend. It reminds us that we should not disregard any idea before we give ourselves some time to analyse it and find justifications to accept it or not.

In fact, we (Knowledge Managers) should be worried about avoiding unjustified disbelief. Otherwise, we run the risk of dismissing some opportunities and practices without evaluating (and letting others involve evaluate) their pros and cons. This kind of mistake is so very common! Think about it: who from us hasn’t taken part in a brainstorming session in which people start to discuss the first or second suggestion written in the blackboard? And everyone knows (at least in theory) that brainstorming means spelling out all possible suggestions before start criticizing or committing to one.

And there are those that do not want to hear anything that is a bit distant from the ideas they so passionately defend. That, my friends, is everything but KM! Yes… because KM is about collaboration, knowledge sharing, and openness to change. Because ideas are dynamic, practices should change to accommodate cultural changes, and no knowledge is static and immutable.
A static and immutable piece of information is useless… and is not knowledge. Do you agree? Disagree? I am definitely opened to your comments… ; )

Is information technology a solution or a new problem?

Dear all,

Reading the IEEE Spectrum report entitled “The view from the top” allows a quick assessment of how much a breakthrough is the Internet. This report presents the result of a survey made with 40 technology experts (among business top executive, academic institution’s managers and researchers, and others) regarding technological advances of the past, present and future. When questioned about the most important technology of the last 40 years, 9 interviewers directly mentioned the Internet, and 4 others made indirect reference to it, providing answers such as “information technology” and “global communication networks”. Moreover, these experts predict even more impact coming from telecommunication and information technology in the near future, since these are considered by 16 of the interviewers as the most important technology for the coming decade.

Assessing the results of these technological impacts makes it difficult to ignore the ‘gains vs. losses’ dichotomy that emerged from the latest advances. On the one hand, technology has presented society with new and more efficient ways to address important problems in people’s daily life. But on the other hand, it has also brought about some serious challenges. Most of these challenges have to do with coping with an incredible amount of information that people are expected to process in their work and life in general. For example, one may say that electronic mail technology has changed the way people communicate for the best. Email is often considered as a very effective way to communicate, since it is fast (i.e. the message arrives at its destiny very soon after being sent), asynchronous (i.e. the contacted person does not need to be there at the time the message comes, such as in a phone call) and relatively reliable (i.e. messages rarely get lost, and quick replies are generally issued if there is a problem with the receiver’s address). However, email has also caused some time and effort overhead on one’s routine, since one is expected to read his/her email box at least once everyday, and replies are generally expected to be soon (at most one or two days after the message arrived). If one of the above does not happen, the message receiver might become socially known as inconsiderate, lazy and/or unreliable. So the big question is: has the emergence of email resulted in a solution or in a problem? And the attempted answer here is: it has resulted in a little bit of both.

In human history, while trying to solve a problem, human kind has always caused others as collateral effects. This is the case with industrialization leading to deforestation and pollution, with long use of antibiotics for acute skin infections causing stomach pain, and why not, with technology making peoples’ living more comfortable in one side, and more tiring and difficult on the other. It seems that this is inevitable simply because humans are not able to predict all problems a solution might bring, and it seems people usually learn more by making mistakes than by doing the right thing at the first try. Thus, the best approach is to build over existing technology, generally improving the support. Still taking email as an example, the systems of today are much more flexible than those of 10 years ago, enabling people to provide automatic answers if they are not available, ranking messages by importance while filtering spam, and even attempting to provide answers to incoming messages.

In any way, this is a reminder that we shouldn't take for granted that technology is always good... collateral effects may be dangerous in various situations.

Kind regards,
Renata

Knowledge is precious!

Hey all!

I missed collablogging! I was in the University of Geneva for the past 5 days so I could not write... I loved the city and I had the best time there with my PhD supervisor (Dimitri), his wife (Murielle) and my friend Kate! I mainly went there to talk to Dimitri and to do a seminar, but what I really enjoy (I must confess) was wandering around the beautiful streets of the city (all decorated for X-mas) and eating a delicious cheese fondue followed by a buffet of desserts, all in great company. Uau!!!

Anyway, I am actually here tonight to report an almost disastrous experience... Today, I understood a bit how organization managers must feel when they loose an important piece of knowledge (because an expert employee no longer works there, or due to a malfunction in a knowledge repository). I was coming back from my trip and when I got home, I thought I had forgotten all my annotated papers (only copies!) and my handmade PhD plan in the train... panic!!! Fortunatelly, this feeling did not last for long because I finally found my documents in the bottom of my computer bag... relief...

So, this was just a quick note to remind (even myself in future occasions): always have electronic versions of your plans (possibly with backups), make sure you copy your annotations also in your computer summaries and, of course, when you leave a plane or a train, "please remember to take all your personal belongings." : )

Cheers and good night!

Renata

What about Knowledge Management?

Although I said that the previous post would be my last argument about integration… well, I couldn’t resist! : )) In fact, I think it is still missing a link from all this discussion and the main focused topic in this blog: Knowledge Management.

Is integration important for KM? No doubt about that!!! In this sense, we can think of:

• knowledge integration, as in different pieces of knowledge merging together in one big whole that is useful for someone;
• the integration of processes and enabling technology to serve the purposes of KM inside an organization;
• the integration of people in communities of practice to allow purposeful collaboration within or across organizations.

All these three examples are very relevant for KM to be effective. In this way, you can also imagine that all the discussions we made so far (starting here) are of course also applicable in this scenario. Let us see how:

1) When should a KM system be integrated in the processes underlying an organization?
A new KM system should be integrated when the members of the organization feel a need for support to achieve certain goals (both in terms of organizational strategic goals, and its members’ individual objectives). If the system in this case is already available (e.g. Lottus Notes, KEEx -- click in 'Soluzione'), an analysis should be made in order to find out ‘how’ this system may be configured, in a way that it is not intrusive and, instead, naturally adjust to people’s practices. A similar analysis is needed even if the system is not yet available. In this case, the system should preferably be built on top of existing technology already in use in the organization so that the members are already familiar with the interfaces and/or methods applied. This can make a big difference in achieving acceptance.

2) How should this system be integrated into the current processes?
The integration of this new system should result in advantages to the organizational members. So, based on my previous argument on how integration should occur, the system should maximize the positive points of the process while minimizing its flaws. On the other hand, in accommodating the system, the process should cover the important needs that are not covered in the system functionalities, besides allowing organizational members to make use of the system in its full potential. We can thus conclude that, besides the initial analysis of requirements, mentioned in 1), this also requires a careful design on how system and processes should be ajusted.

Ok, after this small example in the KM field, I am now completely satisfied! Wait… no… actually, not completely… I still need your comments! : )) So, I’m waiting, guys…

Kind regards,
Renata

Integration Nature and Requirements (part 2) – How?

Dear friends,

After reasoning about some conditions that make integration desirable, we should now target the question of ‘how’ this process should be conducted.

Integration processes between two or more parties should be carried out in a way that it results on maximizing the positive features of all involved parties, while minimizing their flaws.

Taking again the example of companies A and B of our previous post, we remember that the advantage of A is being a bigger company, thus being economically stronger; while B’s strength is having a new promising product in the market. Let us then suppose that, for being economically stronger, A wants to impose certain restrictions on B’s production chain, leading the given product to have great quality losses. Consequently, this could lead the product to become less acceptable from the market. In this case, despite the fact that the situation involving A and B suggests that their merge could be profitable, this could result in general losses for both A and B.

In the case above, company A has acted as ‘oppressor’ because of its economical advantage. This is very common in integration processes because there is usually one party that is stronger than the others. For example, when immigrants are integrating in their living countries, this country’s society may sometimes oppress them, by not giving them the chance to express who they really are. Consequently, this society is loosing a great opportunity to profit from the integration in its full potential. Immigrants are often attracted because of their work force, or some other advantage to the country that receives them. However, they may provide much more than new workers. They may bring new ways of thinking and experimenting life to that society. On the other hand, immigrants must definitely make firm steps towards adjusting to their new land, learning what people there know or do best. Embracing culture diversity has many advantages, such as:

• Allowing people to rethink their points of view, taking other cultural perspectives;
• Diminishing prejudice;
• Profiting from different solutions applied in different cultures, so that innovative ways to resolve conflicts and problems may be found.

These are only a few examples of good things that might emerge from true integration. There is a last important observation I’d like to make before I rest my case on our discussion, and this is: being open does not mean that the society mentioned above should allow all types of behavior and attitudes. It is important that some cultural values are preserved, being them those that guarantee the well-being of citizens, such as not accepting violent behavior, giving equal rights to all human beings despite gender and race, and not imposing religious beliefs and cults. I guess this statement is more debate-motivating than a closure… So, although I here declare our integration discussing week over, please do not be shy as new ideas and thoughts on this issue are always of interest in this blog.

Cheers to all,
Renata