Who could claim as a collaboration strategist?

Due to lack of regulation in insurance industry, the insurance agents in Singapore used to be able to claim as financial consultants. There was a lot of confusion between people who offered insurance services and financial services. Though insurance services could include investment linked plans and early retirement plans, they are essentially offering insurance, which is a different breed from financial services, which covered investment in stocks, bonds, properties, and other wealth accumulation devices.

The main reason for the insurance agents to call themselves a financial consultant is that people, i.e. potential customers, shuns insurance agents but not welcomes financial consultants. There is a lingering perception that financial consultants are better educated and more knowledgeable than insurance agents. Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) noticed the issue and sorted it via regulation that says who are eligible to use the title ‘Financial Consultant’ as their job designation or on their name card.

I can see the same scenario happening in the Knowledge Management (KM) world. We know that people scowl at us whenever we mentioned the word ‘KM’. Too often we are demoralized by the rejections, cynicism, and sneers from the people whom we talked to. Despite our good intention, people resist the word KM. However the opposite happens for using the word ‘collaboration’. Suddenly, we become heroes of the organisation and are welcomed by our colleagues. People are eager to listen to what we have to say.

Despite the magic that the word ‘collaboration’ brings, I urge every KM professionals to use it conscientiously since exploiting it without careful consideration would dumb down the word ‘collaboration’. And as a result it may someday loses its charm. Here is a real-life example of how the word ‘collaboration’ should not be used.

On early Nov 09, I attended a masterclass on collaboration at Hyatt Hotel by an expert from New Zealand. The masterclass was advertised in a KM society newsletter in Singapore, and the expert, whom I shall not name, claimed to be a collaboration strategist. Since collaboration is an intimate term for every KM professional and sponsored by my company to attend the course, I signed for it. Unfortunately, the bulk of the talk is about how to use Microsoft Sharepoint to facilitate collaboration / information sharing, which in my opinion, undermine his self-claimed job designation -  a collaboration strategist.

In my previous post, I have explained that collaboration is beyond determining who does what and thus it requires more than collaborative technology. And much to my chagrin, this expert added the word ’strategist’ after the word ‘collaboration’. As impressive this title seems to be, it may mislead many people. Collaboration Strategy should include people, not only in getting their views on certain technological features in a collaborative platform, but also:

• creating collaboration-friendly climate in the workplace, for example: rewarding people for collaboration.
• identifying and encouraging most valuable collaborations in the organisation. The management should intervene when any of the most valuable collaborations does not happen.

A more suitable and fitting job designation for the expert would be collaborative technology architect or collaboration technologist, instead of collaboration strategist. I’m sure that the expert that I mentioned above was not the only person who abuse the word ‘collaboration’ to impress others. Thus given the condition, it is difficult KM field to mature further, unless there is a regulation on what these people – change management, KM, and IT consultants – could claim their expertise as, so that majority of KM professionals could have common understanding of the word ‘collaboration’ and who are eligible to claim themselves as a collaboration expert.

Will the real collaboration please stand up?

Collaboration is every managers and directors’ favorite word. It is often married with the word team work. Together these two words rule almost every best-selling management books and boardroom meetings in the world. Alas, few people are able to walk the talk – a fact that constantly being denied by majority of senior executives today. Thus, it is not strange when one claims that the modern management is addicted from collaboration lip service.

Though the above paragraph seems to indicate bitterness, I have moved beyond cynicism and been thinking about summoning real collaboration in the corporate world. As I learned more about collaboration through reading management books and articles, I surmise that there is a pressing need to understand two important aspects of collaboration:

1. Collaboration is neither cooperation nor coordination. Both cooperation and coordination are close cousins of collaboration, but they are different from collaboration in terms of level of shared vision and division of tasks. The differences among the three terms are depicted in the chart below:

    

   

   Collaboration vs Cooperation vs Coordination

2. Collaboration is costly. As you might aware, collaboration goes beyond determining who does what. It requires commitment and joint decision from all the parties involved – which are the reasons why collaboration is a resource intensive activity. Hence, you may not want to encourage collaboration for every business activity.

A closer look at the two aspects of collaboration reveals that there should be a driving factor that is large enough to make people overlook the cost of collaboration, and able to nudge people to commit to real collaboration. But what could the driving factor be? While there could potentially many answers to this question, I’m convinced that the possibility of summoning real collaboration will increase as people experienced greater survival anxiety, for example: fear of failure when taking big assignment, lack of knowledge to get the job done.

However, as Edgar Schein pointed out in his excellent book: ” The Corporate Culture Survival Guide“, the survival anxiety should not exceed the learning anxiety. People should be challenged enough to address common problems, so that they would collaborate, but the challenge should not be too great such that people back out, especially if they think that the problem couldn’t be solved even though they collaborate. This implies that although real collaboration could only be summoned by those who feel the need for it, KM professional / change agent could create collaboration-friendly climate by:

• Identifying the need for collaboration, for example: to develop innovative product, to deliver value added services to customers.
• Providing the necessary training and facilitating knowledge transfer across departments.

What I have Learned from Dr. Etienne Wenger

Dr Wenger and Me

I recently attended a Community of Practice (CoP) Masterclass by Dr. Etienne Wenger on 12 August 2009, at Grand Hyatt, Singapore. It was held just before the two-day KM Singapore 2009 themed “Knowledge Workforce – Knowledge Economy”, organised by information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS). I learned a great deal from Dr. Wenger, not just about CoP but also about Knowledge Management in general. Here are some key takeaways:

On Knowledge Management

Dr. Wenger highlighted two issues of Knowledge Management (KM):

1. There is a lack of strategic conversation. Strategic conversation, according to Dr. Wenger, is conversation that revolves around two key questions: (1) “What are the capabilities that we need to be good at?”; (2)”Who needs to have these capabilities?”

2. There is insufficient attention given to KM at strategic level. Dr. Wenger was in the opinion that organisations shouldn’t operationalise KM, because the value of KM is at strategic level.

He opined that uncooperative middle managers were part of KM issues that the senior management needed to resolve. It was absurd for the senior management to leave the entire KM work responsibilities to the junior management.

On CoP and its measurement

Dr. Wenger believes that although CoP has indirect relationship to organisational performance, organisations should always try to link CoP with performance management. While justifying CoP’s ROI is a struggle, organisations implementing CoP should have a reasonable estimate to justify CoP.

On Starting CoP

Dr. Wenger mentioned that he noticed an increasing trend of CoP that started from bottom-up and top-bottom at the same time. One of the reasons of CoP starting from bottom-up and top-bottom was to avoid issues that each approach brought. The problem with bottom-up approach is lack of management support, which translates into lack of resources such as time, manpower, fund. While the issue with top-bottom approach is the tendency to over-manage CoP using numbers (KPIs) that could stifle the CoP development.

On Keeping CoP Alive

Dr. Wenger opined that there was a need to maintain candidness when members of a CoP share knowledge. He noted that some CoPs have no manager-level participants, a condition which allowed candid knowledge exchange among the members. He mentioned that the practice of CoP was the one that drawn people together to form a community. The practice itself became the curriculum that set the CoP direction.

He further shared that CoP required Sponsors – someone who possessed sufficient authority (power) to advocate and drive the KM initiative across departments and divisions. Sponsors were usually more than one people at different levels of management, who had the right amount of influence to manage KM.

He cautioned the audience not to encourage participation in a CoP that was caused by geographic, gender, or other things that were external to their relationship with knowledge domain. He also urged the audience to give the CoP’s peripheral group a chance to hold CoP leadership.

Q & A with Dr. Etienne Wenger

Q: What if the subject matter expert is not willing or does not have time for CoP?

A: You may need to find a junior person, who is interested to do the actual work of community facilitation, but this person needs to be endorsed by the senior person, otherwise nobody wants to join the junior person.

Q: How to best launch a CoP?

A: First, talk and find out what worries the operational managers. Second, find a community leader. This community leaders need to have two characteristics: (a) this person has wide personal network; (b) this person has legitimacy. Third, Make strategic argument and connect it with the organisation’s strategy. For example: CoP is one of the way to develop the organisation’s strategic capabilities.

To ensure we didn’t leave out any details when we planned to initiate a CoP, Dr. Wenger recommended to use the community-design template:

Key issues	Why important	Key activities	Purpose / outcomes
.	.	.	.

For more information on CoP, you can check Dr. Wenger’s website or read his books. I personally enjoyed his second book, “Cultivating Communities of Practice“.

5 Free KM Tools to Boost Your Outdated Intranet

In time of economic recession, many companies will cut their KM-related expenses like building a collaborative platform, or upgrading your old intranet. On the other hand, we as KM professionals are well aware that Knowledge Management (KM) is the engine that maintain corporate capability and drive innovation, and therefore, we know that cutting a company’s expenses on KM is akin to witholding the company’s growth.

While you are probably more worry about your job security rather than think of KM-related spending, your job – nurturing and promoting KM –  depends on the quality of your company’s KM Infrastructure. In this Information / Knowledge Age and given the rising number of Gen-Yers entering the workforce, the inadequacy of KM infrastructure’s functionality will impede your KM efforts, i.e. your KM initiative will have less impact on eliminating redundant work, or preventing knowledge loss. Furthermore, your knowledge assets will remains in the deep pockets of organisation. For KM to be permeated in the whole organisation, you can’t afford to neglect the KM infrastructure maintenance and development. One of KM infrastructure tools that is part of every knowledge worker’s daily work is the corporate intranet.

With the advent of social computing and web 2.0 tools, you may find it necessary to upgrade your outdated intranet that is based on web 1.0, where updating information is part of IT staff’s job. The issue with web 1.0 is updating information is a cumbersome process that slow down information flow. Fortunately, with the proliferation of open source software and cloud computing (web based) application, upgrading your outdated intranet can be done with almost no budget (free). Here is the list of 5 free KM tools that you can consider:

1. Content Management System (CMS).

Unless you are working for a company living in a stone age, you will find many work-related information in your company’s intranet, which is essentially a Content Management System (CMS). CMS functions as a repository for KM-related applications, especially that of information management such as document management, workflow, news updates.  A popular CMS is Microsoft’s Sharepoint which has two versions: (1) Windows Sharepoint Server (WSS) – which is a free basic CMS application; (2) Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) – which is a full blown CMS plus Collaboration functions.

Please note that although WSS is free, it can only run on Windows application (except on Microsoft Windows XP/Vista Home Edition), which is NOT free. WSS should be good enough for a small and medium enterprises. However, as your business processes and operations become more complex, you might want to upgrade to MOSS (which cost a bomb). Thus, you might want to take note of the possible cost escalation in implementing WSS before you decide to use it as your CMS.

Other free alternatives to WSS are Drupal and Joomla. These are two open source softwares that require little technical knowledge – except for the installation process – to implement them. One of the positive features in both softwares is the availability of various widgets that can be installed to expand or enhance the softwares’ functions.

2. Wikis and Discussion Forums

KM Infrastructure development will not be complete without Wiki or Discussion Forum. Luckily WSS comes with these two functions. If you are using open source CMS like Drupal or Joomla, you can install the respective widgets.  You can also use web-based application such as Wetpaint.com, or Webs.com

3. Video Conferencing / IM

Unfortunately if you are using WSS – which doesn’t have any collaborative function – you will not be able to collaborate online. If you are using Drupal or Joomla, you might be able to find IM widgets, however, the widgets’ performance might dissappoint you. One free alternative is to use Skype.

4. Social Network

The above three tools might be sufficient to transform or replace your old intranet system with no cost,  however they are unable to provide a corporate directory function that open up access to knowledge sources in your organisation. One way to have a free corporate directory (or Yellow Pages) is by allowing staff to use their social network such as Facebook.com or MySpace.com.

The recent case of British Spy Chief’s personal details that were leaked on Facebook is unfortunate and it is an example of social network misuse. To prevent confidential personal information being leaked to the public, you can take some preventive measures, for example: creating a close group in Facebook, creating your own social network in Ning.com, or limiting work-related information that can be shared in a Social Network.

While there is no easy way to secure confidential information in public domain’s social network, there is no guarantee that confidential information in private domain’s one will remain secure. For example: A disgruntled staff may copy confidential information to his/her portable harddisk or thumbdrive, and share the information publicly.

5. Corporate Blogs

Though you can’t have a blog function in WSS, you can incorporate a blog widget in either Drupal or Joomla. Other alternative is to use either Blogger or WordPress. To ensure accountability, you can list the blog’s authors using their real name. If you have several blogs in your organisations, one blog for each department for example, you may want to link them using Google’s Friend Connect or Yahoo’s MyBloglog to preserve your corporate’s identity.

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.