A PDF version of the article is now available for download from this site.

This is planned to be the first in a three-part series at Business West. I have just submitted article number two, titled (for now) To tweet or not to tweet. You’ll see it first on Business West.

As I have been doing a fair bit of both work and writing on collaboration recently, I have been attempting to sharpen up my own ideas about these techniques and the differences. In practice, I tend to modify the techniques to match the context, rather than necessarily follow a strict format, but it is useful to understand the origins and strengths of the different approaches.

David has spelt out the differences quite thoroughly in his article, but I thought that it may be helpful to put together a bit of a summary here, also drawing on my own experience and observations.

As David is at some pains to point out, he is not saying that there is anything wrong with the World Café approach – it is just different. Each approach has its place and purpose.

David makes the point that World Café tends to have a fixed structure, whereas Knowledge Café can be more varied. However, there are also a number of other techniques used by some practitioners based on the World Café approach, such as Pro-action Café, which adds some features of Open Space Technology to a more focussed World Café to explore specific issues and produce action plans.

I see either format as potentially valuable in a range of contexts, alongside many other conversational techniques. These techniques can help both community groups and business organisations to share knowledge, build rapport and develop solutions to problems. As David has listed in his article, these can include:

• Peer Assist
• After-action Review
• Post-project Review
• Knowledge Café
• World Café
• Open Space Technology
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Unconference
• Barcamp

Here in Melbourne we also have our own very special format, Trampoline,  which is now being taken to the wider world.

Remember – it’s the conversation that matters!

I am presenting an updated version of the Knowledge Transfer Toolkit presentation - read more about the background on this site, including this recently published article. The outline of the presentation is as follows:

Building and managing a knowledge transfer program:

How do you encourage technical experts to share their knowledge with others in the organisation that need it to do their jobs? How do you maintain currency and accuracy? This case study presentation will explain how to build a successful knowledge transfer toolkit.

Topics include:

• Encouraging knowledge-sharing behaviours
• Building a program-managed multimedia toolkit, comprising content, communication, learning and social media
• Governance – keeping content up to date
• Engaging the target audience in improving content
• Using social media principles to build trust and engagement

View or download the slide pack on SlideShare here.

This article has documented in a little more detail the recent research that highlights how conversation can actually make us smarter and more innovative – this research is from:

• Anita Williams Woolley et al, who found that “small groups demonstrate distinctive ‘collective intelligence’ when facing difficult tasks”.
• Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From, on cultural progress and how innovation really works.
• Oscar Ybarra et al, showing that even brief, friendly conversations can improve individual mental function.

This research is summarised and drawn together in the article, along with other thoughts on conversation, change and social media.

Download a copy of the article here.

We came together to talk about – and experiment with – various tools and techniques of group facilitation.  The retreat was arranged by Viv McWaters (@vivmcw) and Johnnie Moore (@johnniemoore), who had also just flown in from a couple of weeks of facilitation in the Solomon Islands and other places.

As much as it was about learning and doing stuff, it was about relaxing and having fun. I was there as Matt Moore (@engin_eer) had invited me. (Thanks, Matt!) Although I did already know some of the other people there, it was also a great time of meeting new people. It was also the first time that I had picked up a guitar for over a year – Geoff Brown (@geoffbrown3231) very kindly didn’t protest when I borrowed his every time he put it down!

Wildwood was a bit run down, as it was actually on the market, and the owner was no longer resident on site. The catering was excellent, and the location marvellous, but the nights were getting cooler, and the wood fire heating was rather short of fuel. Some of us tracked down some wood, and Geoff kindly wielded the splitter. Given my experience with wood fires at Blackwood, I got the Coonara going on the first morning there, and kept it stoked up for the duration. (For which I was christened “fireguy” by Johnnie.)

One of the highlights was the evening that I was sitting around fiddling with the guitar (or guitaring, I guess), and Johnnie suggested we improvise a song. After a bit of work, we got a chorus going, and improvised as many verses as we could as the others came into the room – and then ran away to the other end of the room as quickly as they could!

The tune was Waltzing Matilda – the best-known tune – and the chorus was as follows:

Facilitation of deep conversation.
Our congregation at Wildwood Retreat.
If we all make our way to
Deep in the Otways
We’ll have a confabulation, won’t we?

I guess you had to be there.

So what did I learn? I did pick up some facilitation techniques. But I think that I learnt more from Johnnie’s style and approach to facilitation.

Johnnie’s approach to facilitation is one that could best be called informal. Shawn Callahan (@unorder), another friend and long-term colleague there, has blogged his thought on the retreat here, with a very thoughtful piece on Johnnie’s approach. Shawn quoted this as “notice more, do less”.

I personally found this approach incredibly refreshing. After learning a few techniques elsewhere recently that place great emphasis on planning and preparation, I was beginning to feel that my preference for putting the emphasis on “making it up as I go along” was perhaps somewhat frowned upon.

Not that I don’t plan – in fact, I often plan in great detail, but I am always prepared to modify the plans to meet the need of the audience and the context at the time of delivery. (There’s a military term for this: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy” – although the use of the term “enemy” is not really appropriate in this context!)

There was a strong improv theatre flavour to what we were doing – and not only in the song. As Shawn has written, the emphasis was on emergence. Emergence is what happens in complex adaptive systems – and a group of people together, involved in cognitive work and interacting, make a complex adaptive system.

One example of how complex patterns emerge is in the movement of a flock of birds.  It has been said that the birds only follow three very basic “rules”:

1. Fly towards the centre of the flock
2. Match speed with the birds on each side
3. Avoid collisions

Yet from this simple set of procedures, amazingly complex and intricate patterns of movement arise.

Improv theatre also follows a set of basic rules. Michelle James (@CreatvEmergence) once wrote about this in the blog article Improv Theatre and Complex Adaptive Systems. (I’m not an expert on improv myself – although I did take part in a rather fun improv exercise at trampoline last Saturday!) Michelle lists a set of seven “rules” of improv, and particularly notes that when the players break these rules, it makes for bad theatre. The emergence is lost:

So, what make it “look hard” when it is not working so well? Simple: any violation of the principles. If one of us tries to orchestrate, or worse impose, our own agenda or plot on the piece. If one of us tries to be the “star” and take too much focus. If even one of us is not present to what is unfolding, moment-by-moment. If one of us worries about the plot, and starts to figure out how to “save” it. If we expect that someone should respond in a certain way. In short, anything that gets us out of the moment and what is emerging – and into our controlling heads.

So I see this as support for Johnnie’s “notice more, do less” facilitation approach. You need the groundwork there first – you need to have an understanding of the group of people involved, and some sort of plan or general direction. You need to do the “Hosting”. But the rest is up to the people themselves.

Let the results emerge.

photo: thesquigglyline

This morning, I presented on the same topic as my last KMLF presentation – see this post for the details.  This time, I have tweaked the presentation a little, and had the luxury of enough time to get the audience engaged in the conversation. Since the KMLF presentation, I have also  written an article on this topic for Online Currents, which is being published this month. A copy of the article will be posted here a little while after the magazine is out.

The new slide pack is now up on SlideShare.  One thing that has emerged from this work that is added to this version of the presentation is my proposed Innovative Meeting Test:

• Have we all been introduced?
• Is everyone open and willing to change?
• Are we all taking equal turns?
• Is the talk friendly and constructive?
• Do we have sufficiently diverse viewpoints?

These events will be taking place at the Abbotsford Convent. Information Governance will run from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon; Followership from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Booking is required for these sessions – entry is only $20 for each.

Information Governance: How do we manage this flood of “stuff” that we have created as individuals and organisations? More information here; Book now.

Followership: We hear a lot about leaders, but what about followers? Some more background at the Followership Centre; Book now.

Matt Moore is Director of Innotecture. He has over a decade’s worth of experience working in knowledge management, learning and development, internal communications and community development with PricewaterhouseCoopers, IBM, Oracle and the Australian government. See more info at http://innotecture.co….

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone else that may be interested in attending.

This will be similar to earlier versions of this presentation, but will have a little more stress on the use of Social Media principles in this work.  The outline is as follows:

How do you encourage technical experts to share their knowledge with others in the organisation that need it to do their jobs? How do you maintain currency and accuracy? This case study presentation will explain how to build a successful knowledge transfer toolkit, covering aspects such as:

• Encouraging knowledge-sharing behaviours
• Building a program-managed multimedia toolkit, comprising content, communication, learning and social media
• Governance – keeping content up to date
• Engaging the target audience in improving content
• Using social media principles to build trust and engagement

See you there?

Many large organisations have subject matter experts with a deep knowledge and understanding of business-critical information. This knowledge needs to be conveyed to a target audience in another area of the organisation, mostly comprised of staff with a lower level of technical expertise. In traditional organisational structures, content management, intranet, communications and training are often located in separate silos. Yet all of these areas provide tools that assist in knowledge transfer – the desired end result is an informed audience.  

This splitting of functions can lead to inefficiency, duplication of effort, confused messages and errors. Other critical factors impacting effective knowledge transfer are maintenance of the currency and accuracy of content, as well as the problem of knowledge hoarding. 

In this article, a strategy for building a complete knowledge transfer toolkit will be described. This toolkit includes a range of individual elements, comprising content management, communications, learning and multimedia elements, coordinated as a managed program. Approaches to maintaining the currency and accuracy of content, dealing with knowledge hoarding and the relevance of social media principles will also be addressed.

I have written here many times about the “toolkit” approach we used in my work at Telstra (2000-2008).  This has been covered in a number of presentations that I have delivered, most recently at the 2010 CPA Congress. I wrote an article about it in 2009, and it was originally documented in a Case Study by Andrew Mitchell, also available on this site.

I have now published a more detailed article on the toolkit, chapter three in the book: TIMAF Information Management Best Practices – Volume 1, issued in November 2010. (An online edition is also available.) A copy of my article is now available for free download from this site here.  

This is the most complete description of the approach we used that has been published to date. (The team at Telstra is still using the same principles today.)

The TIMAF approach is to break the practice down into a number of steps. I have used – no, not ten, but eleven steps,as follows:

1. Establish a knowledge transfer team
2. Build a program management framework
3. Start small; think big
4. Deal with knowledge hoarding
5. Provide a central knowledge library
6. Develop content access methods and taxonomy
7. Provide other tools
8. Maintain content accuracy and currency
9. Engage the audience as part of the maintenance process
10. Use social media principles
11. Review and refresh

Have a read, and see if this approach would work in your organisation. I value your feedback!