Knowledge Worker 2.0 Power to
the people by Stephen Collins acidlabs

Who am I?

What are we talking about?
‣ Knowledge Worker? ‣ KM realities ‣ Knowledge Worker and Knowledge Management 1.0 ‣ The alternative ‣ Culture shift ‣ Knowledge Management 2.0 ‣ Knowledge Worker 2.0

Knowledge Worker?

“... works primarily with information
or... develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.” Peter Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow, 1959

So what’s the problem? ‣
idealised ‣ true in theory ‣ true in reality (but only from the self- labelled KWs POV) ‣ unrealistic in reality (organisations don’t recognise KWs and their work in every instance)

So what is the reality?

Knowledge Management (and therefore Knowledge
Work) is largely stuck in the past, with a focus on...

process...

... and tools.

Old skool kills innovation ‣
management layers ‣ risk aversion (hierarchies) ‣ skewing to high-level ‣ paperwork, reports thinking & reviews ‣ valuing deadlines ‣ overplanning over doing it right ‣ competition ‣ demanding consensus ‣ favoring the go- getters adapted (a little) from Un-Managing: Unleashing the Creative Beast in your Team Tara Hunt, GOVIS 2007

widgets

understanding of what constitutes knowledge
work is narrow http://flickr.com/photos/pinkmoose/314519606/

What does this mean for
Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Management?

KM and KWs are often
limited to...

here...
http://flickr.com/photos/laracee/59170361/

... and here

BigCorp Pty Ltd But not
here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Where they should be.

This creates an environment where
good KM is impossible http://flickr.com/photos/zoomzoom/304135268/

a closed culture

information is owned and held
selfishly

trapped within feifdoms holding that
information

Knowledge workers are forced to
look like this limited in scope and location custodian of information knowledge as process use rigid ways of organising information

So?

KWs are demotivated and restricted

Zzzzzzz...

Say goodbye to all your
tacit knowledge

There is an alternative

“...the focus is pretty much
around the subject of people... And, like we all know, a successful KM strategy is one that combines into a perfect balance a focus on the people, on the tools and on the processes.” Luis Suarez, KM Consultant, IBM defines “Knowledge Management 2.0” http://www.elsua.net/2007/05/07/apqc-km-innovation-1007-the-disconnect-between-km-10-and-km-20/

the long tail of people

Day of the Long Tail
Peter Hirshberg, Chairman, Technorati http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xAA71Ssids

The three forces of the
long tail ‣ Democratise the tools of production ‣ Democratise the tools of distribution ‣ Connect supply and demand Chris Anderson The Long Tail - How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand

better tools

The Machine is Us/ing Us
Dr Michael Wesch Digital Ethnography Working Group, KSU http://mediatedcultures.net/, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

introduce social software inside the
wall to engage with your organisation and through the wall to engage with your clients, peers and communities

easy to use web-based bottom
up, not top down less feature bloat more GTD from Meet Charlie: What is Enterprise 2.0? Scott Gavin

blogs wikis podcasts social networking
online collaboration tagging social bookmarking from Meet Charlie: What is Enterprise 2.0? Scott Gavin

Four quick take aways 70%
of Folksonomy tag terms not in Taxonomy Jennifer Trant on Steve.museum project

Four quick take aways 86%
of workers use an unsupported tool at work to boost productivity Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management, Yankee Group, July 2007

Four quick take aways 65%
of workers in big (>1000 employees) companies rely on each other, not management, to solve problems… 37% ignore company rules because they have a better way to get things done The Informal Organisation, Katzenbach Partners, July 2007

Four quick take aways SAP
has nearly 900000 people involved in its community helping each other develop solutions and solve problems around SAP products In any month, over 10 per cent actively participate by posting Mike Prosceno, Vice President, Global Communications, SAP Social Media Today Podcast, 18 April 2007

Social computing can be a
powerful force for collaboration

good process
focussed on people

David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buEMIYNIYVY

This isn’t your father’s KM
bring people together let them share encourage collaboration break down barriers

Three basic rules of KM
‣ Knowledge will only ever be volunteered it can not be conscripted ‣ We only know what we know when we need to know it ‣ We always know more than we can tell and we will always tell more than we can write down David Snowden Complex Acts of Knowing - Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness http://www.cognitive-edge.com/articledetails.php?articleid=13%3Cbr%20/%3E

Case Study: US Intel Community
Intellipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:CIA_New_HQ_Entrance.jpg

What’s needed is a...

Culture shift

“You can’t manage knowledge –
nobody can. What you can do is to manage the environment in which knowledge can be created, discovered, captured, shared, distilled, validated, transferred, adopted, adapted and applied.” Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations

the gates to information are
open

knowledge is
shared freely

“...where people continually expand their
capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline

Case Study: IBM Innovative communities
http://www.wirednewyork.com/images/ibm_building_sculpture_3feb02.jpg

Knowledge
Management 2.0

Conditions for KM and KW
creativity ‣ anyone can say anything ‣ celebrate risk-taking - fail - there are no “lesser” gloriously (and often) voices ‣ transparent and open - ‣ move from owned to everyone contributes communal - information ‣ change of environment - openly available knowledge work is ‣ multiple perspectives everywhere ‣ experiment with new ‣ fun, laughter and tools - wikis, blogs, enjoyment of activity tagging, RSS ‣ lots of encouragement adapted (a little) from Un-Managing: Unleashing the Creative Beast in your Team Tara Hunt, GOVIS 2007

Knowledge Worker 2.0

Now, knowledge workers look like
this ‣ all over the organisation ‣ understands “the way we do things around here” ‣ shares and distributes information freely ‣ uses information systems focussed on people ‣ centralised control is an option ‣ uses taxonomies, folk taxonomies and folksonomies

Get the shirt!
http://cafepress.com/kwtwo

Imagine
http://www.flickr.com/photos/midnight_trucker/376653652/

Licensing
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
http://www.slideshare.net/trib

Like the cool pictures? Mostly
from iStockphoto.com and Flickr. Others as noted on slides.

Extra credit ‣ ‣ Un-Managing:
Unleashing the Creative Meet Charlie: What is Enterprise 2.0? Beast in your Team by Scott Gavin @ Enterprise 2.0 Tara Hunt @ GOVIS 2007 Evangelist http://www.govis.org.nz/ http://scottgavin.info/?page_id=11 conference2007/, http://www.blip.tv/ ‣ file/244008/, steve: the art museum social tagging http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/ project unmanaging-unleashing-the-creative- http://steve.museum/ beast/ ‣ The Informal Organization ‣ Government 2.0: Architecting for Katzenbach Partners Collaboration http://www.katzenbach.com/Work/ Tara Hunt @ GOVIS 2007 (Day 2 Publications/PublicationInstance/ Keynote) tabid/73/Default.aspx?Entity_ID=550 http://www.blip.tv/file/242668/, ‣ http://www.horsepigcow.com/ Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee 2007/05/25/government-20-butterfly- Management wing-storm/ Yankee Group http://www.yankeegroup.com/ ‣ The Long Tail: Why the Future of ResearchDocument.do?id=16465 Business is Selling Less of More Chris Anderson http://longtail.com/

Stephen Collins trib@acidlabs.org skype: trib22
twitter: trib +61 410 680722 www.acidlabs.org strategies, tools and processes to empower knowledge workers