KM Asia

A Knovember to Remember….. Conversations and Knowledge Cafe

A Knovember to Remember….. Conversations and Knowledge Cafe

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With Nancy Dixon, David Gurteen at KM Asia 13.

In this blog let me focus on Conversations and Knowledge Cafe’s.

Some background: I am not a huge fan of conversations as a KM Tool! This is perhaps because of my conditioning in Sales and Business Development for most of my career.  The ‘Lets Get on with the job’ attitude and ‘Let’s keep correcting things as we move along’ makes it difficult to accept that there is another way. Also, I guess I had a lot of misconceptions about the tools. KM Asia 2013 was the place where I interacted closely with Nancy Dixon and David Gurteen. So, I have just started to understand the role of these tools in Knowledge Sharing. My take-aways:

  • Nancy Dixon: As the co-chair, Nancy introduced an interesting twist at the end of every Presentation. Instead of the standard Q&A, she triggered a 4-5 minute conversation at the tables, on the presentation. Thereafter each table had to summarize their key insights or confusions. This was novel! The feedback from participants was that this conversation them realize that sometimes they were not alone in their conflicts- others too had similar confusions; different viewpoints enriched their action points, since it came from the secure environment of fellow practitioners, who were seekers like themselves.
    I saw firsthand how conversations in a relatively secure environment enriched the experience of the participants.
    What I realized was that these conversations helped people to ‘personalize’ their learnings according to their contexts, which might not have happened so consistently had it been the usual Q&A after each presentation. In essence a critical part of any learning event is taking the time to reflect on the insights we have developed with others. We learn the most when we first think through our own insights and then gain new perspectives on that learning from others
  • David Gurteen is a ‘household’ name in the field of KM. He is synonymous with ‘Knowledge Cafe’s’ that he has created and perfected.
    I first ran into David at KM Asia many years ago and attended his ‘Speed Dating’ Knowledge Cafe in Bangalore at the KM India Summit a couple of years back. It was an innovation he had to come up with given the paucity of time. The India MAKE winners were given different corners of the room. The audience was split into an equal number of groups as MAKE winners. Each group had 5 minutes with a MAKE Winner. Thereafter they rotated to the next. In the 5 Minutes, the MAKE Winner had to do a 2 Minute ‘Elevator Pitch’ to the audience. This was followed by 3 minutes of Q&A. At the end everyone agreed that they gained more from this exercise than had it been the normal MAKE Presentations and Q&A.At KM Asia 2013, David Gurteen innovated once more. He presented a short video clip and then conducted a Knowledge Cafe in the traditional manner- smaller groups initially, followed by single group sharing! It helped that he chose a controversial topic ‘Rewards destroy Motivation’ which created instant polarization. At the end of the Knowledge Cafe I saw participants taking on board others viewpoints and while consensus was not reached (that was never the objective), each one was enriched by the variety of viewpoints.

So through the experience with Nancy and David I realize that quite often ‘Conversation Matters’ especially if it is a ‘Knowledge Cafe’’

KM Asia 14 Rudolf and Dave Snowden

KM Asia 14 Rudolf and Dave Snowden

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With Dave Snowden at KM Asia 2013

A (K)November to Remember…..interactions with Dave Snowden.

Continuing from the earlier blog, this time I would like to write about some of the Heavyweights from the KM World whom I had the good fortune of meeting at KM Asia 2103…… Again, there is no particular order in which I write about them. Here I focus on a person I admire a lot- Dave Snowden.

  • Dave Snowden: I first ran into Dave Snowden at KM Asia way back in 2005. I was a fledgling in the KM field. I had been sent to the conference by the organization I was working for, as a reward for the success of the ‘Knowledge Olympics’. On learning about the program, Dave on the fly, used it as a case study to explain how the program tapped into the organization ‘Social Networks’; how ‘Boundary Conditions’ rather than strict rules helped improve the engagement; how the timing with the real Olympic Games created a ‘resonance’ that amplified the impact. By the way, I was not conscious of any of the techniques he spoke off, and the design of the Knowledge Olympics was purely coincidence. With Dave giving me so much attention is no wonder that I began came Dave’s ardent follower. I met Dave a couple of times thereafter at subsequent conferences including the India KM Summit a couple of years back

I must confess that when Dave speaks, it goes directly to my intellect. There is no other way for me to describe what happens. I find it difficult to take notes, and can only relate what he speaks to what has been experienced. At KM Asia 2013,  as the co-chair for the conference, I was forced by my role to prepare a summary of his Keynotes. So here goes- I share the summary of the first Keynote – ‘Beyond Big Data or The Limits of Silicon over Carbon’:

(DISCLAIMER- there is a context to his speech, and so the summary given below, without the context, can be misconstrued; Dave has put up his keynote at KM Asia here: Dave Snowden KM Asia Keynote

  • Unless KM addresses Business Issues/ Propositions- it will not be succeed in the long run and be accepted in an organization.
  • KM needs to be for Decision Support and Innovation
  • Big Data cannot be used for Pre-emptive work…can only analyse what has occurred- not WHY!
  • Create a Human Sensor network using employees and customers, SUPPORTED by Technology- will create the required DENSITY!
  • Does not believe that people will share knowledge across silos on a consistent basis
    • Need to create Process, structure and architecture for this to happen; motivation and attitude alone will not help
  • Technology augments Human Intelligence and cannot replace it; what the brains is good at, technology is not and vice versa
    • Human beings are pattern based intelligences; Technology scans ALL the data
    • Pattern based thinking leads to rapid decisions- good in an emergency;
    • But it has its downside- people revert to patterns they have learnt (pattern entrainment)- which may not be relevant in some contexts; thus successful companies cannot think differently and nimble competitors race ahead (autonomic response)
    • Corollary: your brain is not necessarily your friend
  • KM programs on the other hand stimulate the Novelty Receptive Response
    • Difficult to get people to think differently- people go with the flow
    •  You need to make people uncomfortable before they begin to think differently
  • Extrinsic rewards destroy intrinsic motivation
  • Cognitive Diversity is required not alignment- else strategic surprise will get you.
  • The problem is that most KM initiatives focus on making all knowledge EXPLICIT; some forms of knowledge cannot be transferred EXPLICITLY- like Medical, Legal etc- hence APPRENTICESHIPs are still key in certain fields.
  • So KM needs to address ALL FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
  • Myths and Story(telling) embody and define organization culture- important to share stories
  • Human brains learn to create abstractions rather than focussing on all the data; hence metaphors and stories work; across multiple languages and cultures
    • ‘Commanding communications’ in organizations; collect positive and negative stories
    • Challenge how ‘Negative Stories’ can be reduced and more ‘Positive stories’ grow
    • Can be initiated at all levels of hierarchy and ability
    • Cannot be manipulated as these are reality
  • People learn more from Failures rather than success- learn to scan more information; simulations with successive rounds of failures show that people learn more
    • Negative Stories provide more learning; do not suppress them
    • In ‘learning’ failure is key
  • Human Pheromones’ are key to ‘Trust’; hence getting people to work physically together are important
  • Focus on the process on how people interact with each other- rather on INDIVIDUAL capability building. Good for knowledge transfer
  • Tools are important to cognitive development; similarly in KM- shift focus from Application to ‘co-evolutionary Architecture’. KM should be like ‘scaffolding’- to be removed once the structure can sustain on its own.
  • When you bring in tools from the outside world keep in mind why it works rather than just blindly implementing; example- ‘Wiki’s need scale of editors; organizations do not have large number of editors; so to gather scale run something like a blog storm’….
A Knovember to Remember

A Knovember to Remember

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The Singapore MRT Route Map truly represents how information can be converted into knowledge. Colour coded lines and well marked interchanges helps one to navigate easily.

A (K)November to Remember! Part 1
After a break of a few years I attended KM Asia, Singapore , from 12th-14th Nov 2013. It helped that I was the Co-Chair of the Conference along with Nancy Dixon. There was so much to learn and so many people from whom I gained insights! In a series of articles I would like to share about some of the key Take-aways and about some of the interesting people whom I had the good fortune to make contact with. This is in no particular order.

  • The Singapore Air Force Training Command represented by the Head- Sr Lt Col Vincent Yap, use Wiki’s to upgrade their learning content. For an armed force I found it very interesting, given that we are brought up in the understanding that the Military is very hierarchical; and that Command and Knowledge flows from the top.
    What amazed me however was the fact that the team from the Airforce Training Command had created an online page on TodaysMeet.com for their session to engage with the audience in real time and receive feedback. They even had a QR to the page code for those who found it difficult to type in the URL.
  • ‘From the unexpected comes laughter’: Mariette Peters Goh, Partner, of Zul Rafique Partners, a legal firm from Kuala Lampur, stole everyone hearts with a presentation filled with understated humour. It succinctly brought out the key challenges faced in getting legal professionals to share ‘tacit’ knowledge, as well as some of the innovative ways they have taken to address them. The ‘Never-Been-Kissed’ campaign brought the house down.
  • Brigette Ireland, APAC KM Head, EY brilliantly brought out the need for the KM team to treat the users as customers; and therefore adopt a sales process approach to the uncovering needs and fulfilling them. She herself spends an hour with the APAC Business Head once a fortnight understanding the concerns and requirements from KM.
  • Dr. Madanmohan Rao, did not make a presentation; but he sure made an impression. He edits ‘The KM Chronicles’ and to me he embodies the true essence of a ‘scribe’. He makes it a point to attend all the KM Conference across the world, blogs about the event through succinct summaries and Tweets in Real time. In between he finds time to write books (at least one per year) and reviews books (one per week). He is the busy bee, cross pollinating people and ideas.
  • Vadim Shiryeav, President SOMAR and a key motivator behind KM-Alliance, Russia, was another interesting person. He has a restlessness that seems to be come from an inner calling- a desire to do something great in the shortest possible time. Within hours of being introduced, he was chairing meetings with the delegates and speakers seeking from them their definition and ideas on ‘Co-Creation’.  For him there was not a minute to lose. He was having meetings during the coffee breaks, lunch breaks and at the end of the day. I predict that soon one will be hearing of him on a massive scale.

There’s so many more people to write about and stories to share. I do so over the next few uploads. You could see some of the photographs on Facebook Album on  Facebook Page. If you have come across interesting people from the KM world, do share your stories. I will be happy to share them with the community.