Keith February 5th, 2013
“Recent research has shown that conversation is important for improving innovation. It has also been found that conversation improves group and individual performance and knowledge sharing. This article will address some of the principles of innovation and how conversational techniques can be harnessed to improve business outcomes.”
My previous article on The Art of Conversation has now been updated and published as a chapter in the Ark Group report Innovation and Transformation Through Knowledge Management, edited by Evie Serventi. This version is repitched as The innovation conversation. This came along just after I presented on the topic at KM-UK in London in June last year.
The report can be ordered from Ark Group here. You can also see the contents listing and a summary here.
Other chapter authors in this report include Dave Snowden, Stephanie Barnes, Debra Amidon and Nick Milton.
Keith April 30th, 2012
I am talking about Twitter at the First Tuesday Blog Club tomorrow night. This may be an odd format for a blog post, but here are some of the ideas I may or may not talk about, depending on how the session goes, with links to the places some of the ideas are derived from:
Intro
- Why do you use Twitter?
- Do you want to use Twitter for business or pleasure?
- What to you want to achieve with Twitter?
- Does it matter?
I won’t be telling you how to get 300,000 followers; but I can tell you how I have got to 1,400!
Why I use Twitter
- Working on joint project – questions and answers.
- Offering tech help – stuck volume control on iPad.
- Retweeting observations: “If only they enforced bank regulations like they do park rules, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
- Reading thoughts: “Closed networks are ignorance amplifiers”.
- News: The world’s lightest material has been created – a nanotechnology metal grid 100 times lighter than polystyrene foam.
- Sharing domestic activities: Making Christmas pudding.
http://delarue.net/blog/2012/04/a-series-on-social-media/
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Keith April 3rd, 2012
I recently wrote a series of three articles for Star News Group’s Business West magazine on Social Media. One of these is mentioned in the previous post here – now I can upload all of them here in a set. They are:
Let’s talk Social Media (Nov 2011)
Social media is not only something you can no longer ignore, it’s part of a bigger shift that is changing everything…
To tweet or not to tweet (Dec 2011)
Let’s first dispel the myth that it’s all about telling people what you had for breakfast…
Time to face facts (Feb 2012)
The real power of social media is in opening the shop or factory walls, and letting the customers in – making them part of the business…
Do these reflect your experience of social media? I would love to hear your thoughts…
Keith November 20th, 2011
Well, that was my working title for an article published in the November issue of Business West. The title for the published article ended up as the more prosaic – but probably more appropriate – Let’s talk social media.
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.
Keith May 13th, 2011
Later today I’m speaking at Knowledge transfer in a digital age - a free Information Awareness Month event in Melbourne, jointly promoted by a number of organisations in the “records, archives, library and information management community”.
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.
Keith April 16th, 2011
So today I presented this topic at trampoline. Trampoline is a “self-organising event for those who find the world interesting, have something to offer and share, and have an inquisitive mind”. I’ve been at some of the earlier trampoline days, and it’s great to get back and get energised again!
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?
Keith February 28th, 2011
On Tue 15 Mar, I’ll be speaking at the Queensland Joint Information Management Conference for Records and Information Management Professionals Australasia. The topic is a familiar one – Building and managing a knowledge transfer program.
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?
Keith January 20th, 2011
Some recent research has highlighted the transformative power of conversation. I presented on this topic at the Melbourne KMLF last night. This was one of three “Ignite” format presentations done on the night. This format requires twenty slides, timed at 15 seconds each. Total time per presentation – 5 minutes, plus discussion.
The slide pack, including speaker notes, is available at SlideShare. A list of references is also included on the Notes page of the last slide.
The main ideas drawn on for this presentation are as follows:
We also discussed the pros and cons of the format, with mixed results. I think that it is a great format, provided that it can lead into further discussion as required. We have just started using MeetUp for managing Melbourne KMLF events, so expect further discussion on the MeetUp post.
Keith October 6th, 2010
I will be presenting two sessions at the CPA Congress in Melbourne next Monday.
The Slide Packs are now available on SlideShare – they are:
Knowledge Transfer Toolkit Program
This case study outlines how to capture knowledge from a team of experts and make it available to a non-expert target audience.
A managed program approach is used to bring together all of the (traditionally separate) threads of content management, communications and learning to form a coherent, flexible knowledge transfer toolkit. A key element in putting this program into place is to encourage the required behaviours of all participants, including promoting knowledge sharing.
Using social media as a business tool
Topics covered are:
- Trust and openness –the new paradigm for engagement
- The importance of people and personality
- Evaluating the benefits, risks and challenges
- Existing channels and new strategies
- Practical examples of social media
Keith May 7th, 2010
As part of some training material I have been writing for a client, I have revisited some related work I was engaged in some years ago. One of the other authors I was working with then wrote a chapter on culture. This work quoted a piece called Cultural variations in the cross-border transfer of organisational knowledge: an integrative framework, by R S Bhagat and others, from a 2002 edition of the Academy of Management Review.
This work describes national cultural patterns, and how they affect knowledge sharing. Here is a simple summary diagram I have put together of the four basic types they described:
Both types of culture in the left column are independent and individualist, and predominantly Western.
The top left quadrant is the domain of the rugged individualists. They are mostly found in France, Germany, the UK and USA. These people see each other as unique, and accept inequalities. Thus they can naturally accept a social class structure. They tend to hoard knowledge, and see this knowledge hoarding as power. They like theoretical analysis.
The horizontal individualists in the bottom left domain see themselves as equal in status with each other. Bhagat et al state that they also have “a relatively high tolerance for ambiguity and complexity”. They are mostly found in Denmark, Sweden and Australia. This is of particular interest, and will be discussed further.
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