How to promote KM in your organisation

If you mention Knowledge Management (KM) to people who don’t quite understand of the term KM, you will probably see blank stares. Try as you might to explain the meaning of KM to these people, you probably will get a one-phrase, “oh we are already sharing knowledge”, or a polite nod without an appreciation of what KM can bring to their organisation. As a result, many KM professionals tend to withdraw to their Ivory Tower, lamenting the ignorant people who don’t understand KM. This somehow reminds me of Harry Potter novels where the wizards live in their own magical world, separated from non-magic folks (muggers). Unfortunately, we as KM professionals, can’t just simply use our magic wand (as if we have one!) to implement KM and coerce everyone to share their knowledge.

Though many KM practitioners will agree that in order to flourish, KM needs to be understood, appreciated, and practiced by all members of an organisation, there seem to be lack of efforts to bring down KM from an exclusive knowledge, where only people who are trained in KM can practice it,  to a common knowledge, where every member of an organisation embraces and practices KM. In other words, we – the KM practitioners – ought to promote KM in a jargon-free language. According to Davenport and Prusak, one way to do so is by conducting knowledge fairs, or KM awareness activities where participants list down what they know and what they need to know, and trade their knowledge. Some KM experts even advocate not to mention the term KM and simply encourage knowledge sharing among staff.

To successfully conduct knowledge fairs or KM awareness activities, you will need to launch some publicity to inform and educate staff about knowledge sharing and KM. You will need to persuade your fellow colleagues that participating in KM-related activities will benefits them, i.e. answer your colleague’s “WIIFM” – What’s In It For Me. Simply telling your colleagues that they will be able to exchange knowledge or gain new knowledge is often not sufficient because the idea of knowledge sharing is so general that people usually will not think of what can they gain from it.

Some KM professionals tap on their informal network (relationships) to persuade their colleagues to engage in KM-related activites, or to practice KM. However, many of us, especially those who are new to the organisation that we work for, are not able to leverage on relationships to encourage participation in KM-related activities and to build common understanding of KM. Furthermore, depending on relationships alone to boost participation in KM-related activities may not necessarily help to promote KM practices in your organisation.

Indeed, promoting KM related activities and educating your colleagues on the concept of KM are by no means easy tasks. KM is not a discipline that can be grasped in one night. How then can we publicise KM? Although there is no hard and fast rule, we can learn two things from the discipline of marketing. First, you should familiarise your colleagues with KM through some advertisements that they can participate in, since such advertisements will stimulate conversation and create awareness. For example: the cadbury’s advertisement.

Notice that the advertisement above has nothing to do with chocolate, which is the commodity that cadbury is selling, but the purpose of such viral marketing is more to generate buzz and encourage participation, than to hard-sell chocolate.

Second, you should have evangelists that tell people that KM is good and it benefits whomever that practices it. Many marketing gurus advocate developing a group of evangelists to promote product, because the evangelists usually are people who have used the product and thus their testimonials carry more weight than those of the manufacturer. Similarly in KM, you should develop and nurture a group of KM evangelists – a group of people who practice and appreciate KM.

Using A.S.H.E.N to discover what you know (or lost)

Michael Jackson (MJ) is dead and the world wept for him. Some people claimed that there will never be another MJ. His talent in song writing and singing is exceptional and unique. As we lament the lost of a legend – a magnificently talented singer – we might also be affected by our reliable and talented colleagues or employees who hand-in their resignation letter.

Depending on the available budget and time, organisations often struggle to find a good replacement for their star employees. However beyond the constraint of limited organisation’s resource, more often than not, many employers are clueless in finding a good replacement for their leaving employee. Both the HR department and the immediate superior – the two groups of people who screen candidates – are often rely on job description, job requirement, and interview techniques.

While the above hiring mechanism may help in filtering out unsuitable and incompetent candidates, the tools are geared to discover the candidates’ skills, experience, and attitude – which do not add up to replace the lost knowledge assets. The knowledge that walks out the company door, due to staff attrition, needs to be replenished more effectively to prevent the deteriotation of corporate (or departmental) capability.

In this knowledge-age, organisations may led to believe that nobody is indispensable and talent is overrated. However, the impact of talent lost to the corporate competitive edge is real and can’t be underestimated. Unless the company has a robust succession planning in place, replacing a talent is always an opaque process. Even the mighty Apple, the producer of iPod and Mac, has problems to discover the value of Steve Jobs, their charismatic CEO. NASA lost its’ ability to send people to the moon because they unsuccessfully replace the old engineers with the new ones who have different types of knowledge assets.

A.S.H.E.N Framework

Dave Snowden, the Chief Scientist of Cognitive Edge, has proposed A.S.H.E.N – which stands for Artifacts, Skills, Heuristics, Experience, and Natural talent – framework to identify knowledge assets. Artifacts are things that produced by people, which include documents. Skills are expertness, practised ability. Heuristics are methods that people used to do work. Experience is an ability that is acquired through time. and Natural talent is an ability that is difficult to emulate.

With A.S.H.E.N model, organisations would be able to examine what their employees know, and to mitigate risks associated with the lost of knowledge assets. For example, an employer or a supervisor should find out from the employee who is leaving, the following items:

1. Artifacts. Where did he file his documents?, what types of documents did he create?
2. Skills. What are his skills?
3. Heuristics. How did he get things done?
4. Experience. What kind of prior experience he has that help him in his work? What sort of experience that he gained from the course of his employment?
5. Natural talent. What are the aspects of work that he excel in and noone can do a better job than him?

However, to minimise the impact of lost knowledge assets, the employer should attempt to transfer the knowledge in the leaving employee’s head. Transferring knowledge can be achieved through codification strategy – where the exiting employee documents what they know, personalisation strategy – where the leaving employee mentor / coach his successor, or both strategies.

Codification strategy is best used to transfer explicit knowledge – the artifacts, skills, and heuristics aspect of knowledge assets, while personalisation strategy used for transfering tacit knowledge – the experience aspect of knowledge assets.  Unfortunately, there is no way to transfer the natural talent aspect of knowledge assets.

Michael Jackson was not revered in City Harvest Church

City Harvest Church (CHC), who believes in engaging culture to bring Christ to the world, did not pray for Michael Jackson (MJ) – the king of pop – on its’ first english service on Saturday, 27 June, 3.30 – 5.30pm. The deputy senior pastor – Tan Ye Peng -  joked about Obama and advised the members of the church not to worry about the pettiness in life, but did not mention about MJ’s death. Perhaps he is not a fan.

I was surprised not because pastor Tan’s indifference, but due to CHC’s failure to sympathize with MJ’s death, given the connection that the church has with the music industry – the founder’s wife (Sun Ho) is a singer based in the U.S. Furthermore, if I recalled correctly, pastor Kong once mentioned that we should rejoice for people who do good things in life even though they are not Christians. For example, pastor Kong urged us to rejoice for Oprah Winfrey.

Rev. Al Sharpton, a friend of MJ, was quoted in CNN saying, “Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama.” In addition to MJ’s gift in music, he was also a fashion icon. Many of his trademark fashion style was imitated back in the 1980s.

Of course other than renowned for his contribution in culture and fashion – the two things that CHC thrives in – MJ has flaws such as his involvement in child molestations. Whether those allegations are true or not, it’s hard to deny that he has done many good things (charity works). For full listing of his good deeds, please refer here.  Regarding his faults, the bible (John 8:7) said,”Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Thus, we – the Christians – should not be the one who judges MJ’s wrongdoings.

As a follower of CHC, I would definitely heed pastor tan’s advise about not letting the pettiness of life to affect my devotion to God. I’m still and would always love the god’s church – the City Harvest Church.  However, I hope that the church don’t mind her followers like me prayed for MJ, may God blesses his soul in heaven. R.I.P. the king of pop – Michael Jackson, and thank you for creating wonderful songs such as thriller, black and white, smooth criminal, billie jean, and beat it.

The Side-Effect of Storytelling in a Complex Domain

Many Knowledge Management (KM) experts have been singing praises on the “forgotten” ancient technique, the storytelling. They argued that stories are able to capture the context of knowledge and thus they are effective medium for storing and transferring knowledge, especially tacit knowledge. They presented their case through evidence from the past when human have not developed writing, knowledge is preserved and distributed from one generation to the next via stories. Due to this reason, there is revival of interest in storytelling to persuade, influence, and inform.

While I agree that storytelling is a powerful KM tool, stories are not born equal and they need to be managed differently if we were to exploit the power of storytelling. There are two categories of stories. First is the story within a clearly defined domain. For example: the story of global warming by a former US vice president – Al Gore, the story of how Obama won the US presidency.

Second, the story within a complex domain. For example: the stories in the Christians’ Holy Bible. Every Christian knows that the Holy Bible is full of stories, from the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, to the story of the Dragon and the Woman in Revelation. We also know that there are implicit messages (knowledge) behind every story in the bible, and all of them are still applicable today. The stories in the Holy Bible are able to preserve the context of knowledge, which gives us cues to apply the knowledge in today’s situation.

Let’s examine the second point further. In a complex domain like religion, the property of stories that enables them to capture the richness of knowledge in its context, also results in multiple interpretations. While we would want diverse perspectives to encourage innovation and create new knowledge, multiple views could be divisive, creating knowledge silos that compete with one another. This is evident in the various and ever-growing Christians denominations – each with their own understanding of the Holy Bible.

Christianity depicts the side-effect of storytelling in a complex domain, the issue of ‘lost in translation’: as complex stories were told from one person to another, an additional context or interpretation may be added by the storyteller, which either make the story richer or dilute the message. In 325 AD, the first council of Nicaea was convened to attain consensus to create unity of beliefs among Christians, resulting in the Creed of Nicaea. It was basically an attempt to resolve taxonomy issues.

As complex stories were told from one person to another, an additional context or interpretation may be added by the storyteller, which either make the story richer or dilute the message

Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being “born” or “created” and being “begotten”. Arians saw these as the same; followers of Alexander did not. Indeed, the exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like “essence” (ousia), “substance” (hypostasis), “nature” (physis), “person” (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The word homoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and because it had been condemned at the 264–268 Synods of Antioch (Source: Wikipedia).

As we probe further into storytelling in Christendom, we find that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John – each of them can be seen as a storyteller – described Jesus Christ in different manner. It shows that they make sense of the story of Jesus Christ in their own context (understanding), and thus adding additional context into the original story, before they transfer their knowledge either through writings or tutelage.

Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being “born” or “created” and being “begotten”. Arians saw these as the same; followers of Alexander did not

There is a need to point out, however, that the majority of stories in the Holy Bible is opaque – full of symbols, metaphors, and meanings. The complex domain, Christianity, is exacerbated by lost meanings due to the process of language translation, i.e. from greek to other languages and the fact that no living authors to clarify the stories recorded in the Holy Bible. This breeds different, and potentially divisive, interpretations.

It is clear that storytelling in a complex domain needs to be managed through taxonomic interference – one that builds common ground and allows for group sense-making. Failure to do so, may results in knowledge silos – partial knowledge that could potentially misguided the knowledge seeker.

Interestingly, even though the Holy Bible did not offer explicit solution to this issue, we can learn from the existence of the first and second councils of Nicaea. Both councils of Nicaea – attended by the majority of the Bishops on each era – were essentially sense-making activities intended to build common ground, i.e. resolve the differences in the Christian belief understanding. Furthermore, it worth noted that although the Bishops defined a clear boundary on the principles of Christianity, they did not produce stifling guidelines.

The Creed of Nicaea offers a clear, but not too restrictive, taxonomic guidelines that provide sufficient common ground to allow knowledge transfer and act as boundary spanning object to cultivate new insights. It leaves enough space for multiple perspectives, i.e. the major Christians denominations like Presbyterian, Charismatics, 7th Day Adventist, and yet filters teachings that were considered heretics like gnostic teachings. Modern business storytellers could take cues – flexibility and clarity – from the creed of nicaea, and it should guide them when telling stories, especially the ones in a complex domain.

Taken From:

http://knol.google.com/k/roan-yong/the-side-effect-of-storytelling-in-a/nbu9ff6arnvc/1

Knowledge Sharing Lessons from a Technician

My department, Data and Knowledge Management Department (DKMD), has recently concluded a corporate-wide event: The Knowledge Management (KM) Awareness Week 2009. It was held from 29 May 2009 to 5 June 2009, featuring 3 KM experts: Dr. Alton Chua of NTU, Mr. Kan Siew Ning of Singapore Police Force, and Mr. Ng Kok Chuan, the current president of Information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS).

When I was busy preparing for the third talk, a complete stranger – a technician who was on duty to manage Auditorium and was not part of our company – shared his knowledge on improving lights and audio in our vodcast. Here is an account of what happened and the take-away from the incident.

On 3 June 2009, my colleague, Jaslyn, and I were rehearsing for the KM Awareness Week event the next day at the Auditorium. A technician from One Marina Pte Ltd was helping us to setup the projector and the speaker. When we tested the CEO vodcast on his thoughts about knowledge sharing, the technician suddenly pointed out that the image in the video was ‘soft’ – a term used to indicate that the image is too dark – and the sound was not clear.

Remembering that one should give constructive criticism instead of just criticism, I asked the technician on how to improve the video and the sound in that video. To my surprise, he told us that he used to work for a broadcasting company, and he shared that to improve the video, I could use a reflective material – such as paper or Aluminum foil – to direct the room’s light to highlight the speakers’ face, and to improve the audio, I should have placed the voice recorder closer to the speakers’ mouth. The technician shared his knowledge further by demonstrating the effect of light reflection, using a paper, on Jaslyn’s face.

I was delighted, not because he told me the image and sound quality weren’t good, but because he shared a constructive criticism – a practical knowledge on how to improve things. I had received similar feedbacks on the video’s image and audio before, but without knowledge on how to improve them.

I believe that people appreciates knowledge sharing in general, but some of us – like me – dislike negative feedbacks or comments without improvement suggestions. The issue is less on the ability to receive criticism, but rather on having the knowledge to improve our work. We, at the receiving end of criticism – or knowledge sharing for some of us, usually know that certain aspect of our work can be improved, but more often than not, we don’t know how to improve our work.

Another interesting aspect of the knowledge transfer that happened between the technician and me was the fact that we barely know each other and he shared his expertise for free. In today’s commercialized world, most of us tend to believe that we ought to know and reward the person, who has the knowledge that we wanted, before that person shares his or her knowledge. But, the story above tells us otherwise. Knowledge sharing can happens between strangers and without extrinsic rewards – such as money, performance ratings.

If you have it, flaunt it: why more women are dressing sexier than ever

As the saying goes, women are obsessed with beauty as men are with money and power. At a glance, it seems like the two gender are attracted to different things, but a closer look will reveals that women are trying to charm men with her beauty while men are trying to win women through his “ability” (a.k.a. money and power). Such behavior is embedded in our genes, and it is shared across animal kingdom, including snakes, birds, and others. For example: some male snakes will “dance” to show his vigor to the female ones.

Of course, we know that mankind is superior than animal. First, we have brain, we use our mind not only to make decision, but also to outwit and outlast our rivals. Second – this may seems silly – we wear clothes. Although the later point seems so obvious, in actual fact, it is a great mystery of mankind. Aside from religious explanation, i.e. when man falls into sin, we have no clue on when and why our ancestors start wearing clothes.

In this post-modern age, we believe in many types of freedom, such as free market, freedom of choices, freedom of speech or freedom of expression. We use our mind to judge that freedom is better than oppression. Those who live in first world countries condemn the treatment of women in Afghanistan, where women would be killed for stepping-out of her home without wearing burga. In addition, with our mind, we thought that competition will benefits the whole society, and monopoly – or even duopoly – is detrimental for the whole society.

Taking into consideration the two observations above, plus the fact that overwhelming majority of men are attracted to women’s body (especially cleavage and thigh), let’s analyse the motivation for women to dress sexily on the street, or to post racy pictures of themselves online (for illustration, you can refer to NUTS and ZOO community).

I will unravel this using Game Theory. To simplify things, I assume that all women have equally attractive body. Let’s begin our analysis with all girls in the world agreed not to use their body (i.e. not to dress sexily) to attract men of their dream. This would imply that only women who are born with natural beauty (born-pretty) will successfully attract “desirable” men, while  the not-so-beautiful women (born-odinary) will have to take the “left-over” men, i.e. men who are not desired by the beautiful women.

The born-ordinary women have no fair chance to compete with the born-pretty women. At this point, the born-ordinary women will be frustrated enough to break the all girls agreement: not to use their body to attract men of their dream. The not-so-beautiful women know that by showing some skin, they would be able to compete with the born-beautiful women on equal ground, or perhaps win some of the desirable men over. Please refer to below table for game theoretic perspective:

Competition between Born-Pretty and Born-Ordinary

The above table uses descending numbers to indicate the order of preference, with 1 as the most preferable outcome. We can infer the table as following:

• The born-pretty mainly prefers to compete using face only, because this would mean that the born-pretty girls only need to take care their faces to guarantee winning with minimum effort. The worst outcome for the born-pretty girls is that when they use their face, but the born-ordinary girls use all their assets, namely face and body. Out of the two remaining choices, following the born-ordinary girls’ strategy will ensure victory for the born-pretty ones.
• On the flip side, the born-ordinary girls mainly prefer to use both their assets (face and body), while their competitor (the born-pretty girls) uses only one of their assets (face) as this will increase their chance of winning. The worst outcome for the born-ordinary girls is when they use face only, while their competitor use both face and body to attract men. Out of the two remaining choices, using all their assets, namely face & body, is a better strategy than using face only strategy since all women’ body are equally attractive, which will increase the born-ordinary women’s chance of winning

It is clear that using both their face and body is a dominant strategy for the born-ordinary girls, and the born-pretty girls should anticipate the born-ordinary girls to use their dominant strategy. Therefore, the best move for the born-pretty girls is to use both their face and body as well. This completes my explanation on growing number of women, either pretty or not-so-pretty, who dress provocatively to attract men (or some say to boost their self-confidence, which essentially the same thing).

Using similar argument, competition among the born-beautiful women group, or among the born-ordinary women group will drive them to dress sexily as well.

In conclusion, freedom of expression and competition among women are the two “hidden” forces that drive women to dress sexily, or even to take-off their clothes under stifling competition.  Alas, other than coerce the women who flaunts their assets to “cover” themselves like Afghanistan women do, I have no viable solution to deter women from wearing bare minimum clothes, even if I have, we don’t have motivation to share the solution (sorry, the writer is a hot-blooded male).

Note: my analysis above is an over-simplified game-theoretic perspective on why women are dressing sexily. It should not be taken seriously.

Singapore Population’s Dilemma: A Game Theoretic view

MM Lee reflected on Singapore population challenge, which is how to coax Singaporeans to have more kids, during NUSS dialogue 20 March 2009.  I would like to offer a possible explanation, based on Game Theory, to Singapore population’s dilemma. Please refer to below diagram:

Game Theory on Singapore Population

The numbers indicate the descending order of desirability (1 is most desirable).

I use the following assumptions:

• Singapore government spend more to draft new policy to induce Singaporeans to get married and have at least 2 kids, while the government will spend less if they bring in foreigners and offer citizenship to quality foreigners.
• Singaporeans need to sacrifice more resources (time, money, and effort), i.e. spend more, to have family with at least 2 kids, while they can have more freedom, i.e. spend less,  if they stay single or just have 1 child. (Note: stay single in the above table include couple with 1 child).

Singapore government most desirable outcome is when they bring in foreigners for Singapore economic stability and Singaporeans have at least 2 kids. The least desirable would be when the government come up with new incentives to stimulate population growth, but Singaporeans stay single. Between the remaining two options, Singapore government prefers to spend more to ensure Singaporeans as the majority of the population (and therefore avoid situation that MM lee described: Singaporeans would become the last of Mohicans), than the other option which could reduce the ratio of Singaporeans to foreigners.

On the other hand, Singaporeans prefer to stay single and the government to offer them more incentives to get married because Singaporeans will have more flexibility and choices available (after all we are ‘kiasu’ singaporeans). So this is the most desirable from Singaporeans perspective. The least desirable option is when the government bring in foreigners and they have family with at least 2 kids, Singaporeans will feel insecure about their jobs and concern about the increased competition with foreigners. Between the remaining two options, Singaporeans prefer to bite government incentives and raise family with at least 2 kids, rather than stay single and compete with foreigners.

The game theoretic table above tells us that the dominant strategy for Singapore government is to spend less (and therefore bring in more foreigners), while the dominant strategy for Singaporeans is also to spend less (stay single). When we combine the two dominant strategy (in game theory, the intersection between the two dominant strategy will be the equilibrium of the game), we have Singapore government bring in more foreigners and Singaporeans stay single (3, 3). This explains the Singapore population’s dilemma: the government have no choice but to bring in more foreigners to boost up population, while Singaporeans embrace single-hood as a new lifestyle.

In Game Theory, this situation is called the prisoner’s dilemma, i.e. the combined dominant strategies lead to an outcome that is far from ideal. Only if Singapore government and Singaporeans each chooses non-dominant strategy, then both parties will be able to reach optimum (2,2).

My MindMap

I’m trying out mind map technique, using free software called Freemind. Mind map is invented by Tony Buzan, and it is a great tool to boost your memory. For more information about how to mind map, you can click here.

or, you can listen to Tony Buzan himself.

Here is my first attempt at mind map.

View this document on Scribd

The Curious Stress of NTU residents

I graduated from NTU with masters degree last year. When I was at NTU, I did not feel the pressure cooker environment highlighted in the media due to recent stabbing incident by an Indonesian-chinese student (David Hartanto Widjaja). However, when I looked back in the past two years, there are some shocking incidents:

1. NTU don found stealing women’s underwear. April 2008
2. NTU student stab prof, and then commit suicide. leave 2 dead. March 2009

Considering the above two cases, NTU needs to step-up their counseling effort to staff and student. It’s not just a matter of lonely foreign student who went berserk, it’s matter of mental wellness to the whole community in NTU.

I’m glad that the Singapore government has set aside budget to promote mental health. I would urge NTU to design some  bonding activities to increase trust not only between staff and student, but also among students. There is more to life than just studying. May God blesses NTU-sians all.

Why Most Significant Stories (MSC) is better tool to analyse culture than Archetypes

Dave Snowden needs to play mediator recently, due to argument between Graham durant-law and Patrick Lambe about the usefulness of archetypes. Graham proposed that archetypes don’t matter because they oversimplify complex matters such as corporate culture. While Patrick Lambe viewed archetypes as communication tools and nothing more.  (Note: this is based on my understanding after working with Patrick on KM Masterplan in a public organization).   The latter view seems to be shared by Mark Gould.

I would like to add several points on the usefulness of archetypes in analyzing corporate culture. One reason why we like to create and use archetypes could be our natural instinct to avoid curse of dimensionality (CoD). The curse of dimensionality refers to the phenomenon that many types of data analysis become significantly harder as the dimensionality of the data increases. In our quest to comprehend complex situation (multi-dimensional) such as human behavior or corporate culture, we often simplify (normalize) the data to suit our understanding.

While archetype has its merits in describing complex situation, the usefulness of archetypes in change management or knowledge management consultancy is limited because archetypes assume common stories that occurred from focus groups storytelling session are important.  Unfortunately, quantity does not always equal to quality.

In the process of collecting archetypes in organization, KM professionals or consultants often encounter various types of archetypes, some are of contradictory nature. To manage such wide variation of archetypes or stories, KM professionals often disqualify less frequent archetypes in their cultural analysis. However less frequent stories doesn’t necessarily means insignificant stories. The danger here is to miss out on less frequent archetypes with huge impact.

Concentrating on the positive side of archetype, do not make it a better tool to analyze culture. Given the flaws of archetype, ignorance would only lead to incomplete description of corporate culture, which results in ineffective change management effort. Rather than continuing to use flawed tool, we should find an alternative.

An alternative to overcome the pitfalls of archetypes would be using Most Significant Stories (MSC) to depict a corporate culture. Unlike in archetypes, stories in MSC have to be scrutinized several times by organization hierarchy to determine the one with most impact. Such multiple review would eliminate the less significant stories, no matter how common they are.