The Fallacy of KM

While on holiday, I have been researching and writing this week for my forthcoming book on collaboration.  As I was searching for papers on discovering and mapping the knowledge relationships in an organization, I had the serendipity of finding Noshir Contractor, a professor at Northwestern University in the US.  

One of the things I learned from Professor Contractor's work is that knowledge management (KM) is not about the content; it's about the relationship[1].  We thought by putting Jane's content on a web site, we would leverage her knowledge, making a place where we can read the info rather than contact her (something Jane may also value). But the opposite happens. We contact Jane more. Why?

By virtue of the expert's web content, Prof. Contractor tells us we learn three things. First, we find out Jane is knowledgeable. Second, that she knows others who are knowledgeable. Third, we find out she is willing to share. So we contact her and she tells us or refers us to someone who can.

"I am actually using the web site to find out about someone's expertise,"[2] Prof. Contractor notes.  The web site becomes a knowledge directory rather than a repository, our efforts at the latter notwithstanding.

What happens if Jane leaves the organization? Traditional KM plays on the fear that her knowledge leaves with her, and her replacement must start anew.  If we are lucky, Jane introduces us to her contacts before she leaves.  So we ask Jane to put her documents in a library so we can access her knowledge rather than her.  But that almost always fails.  The shelf life of such "snapshot" knowledge is limited and quickly goes stale without a regular updates. The library without avid librarians dies.

For the same reasons, even if Jane stays with the organization, the content dies. What we really want is Jane (and her connections) not a print out of her brain.

 

So what to do about it? Prof. Contractor demonstrates a compelling example of a knowledge map that shows the relationships in Communities of Practice[3].  This is a visual representation of how people and ideas are connected.

Each organization has a network of connections.  Over time we learn who to contact about what subject. For example, I know if I have a Disaster Management (DM) question, I will ask Gisli. He may confer with Pieter and Dorothy in DM.  Gisli is my DM connector. What he does not know he knows who knows. So the content of disaster info is connected through a web of relationships.  There are things I can look up for myself, but when I have a decision to make, I confer with the expert network. 

And that's the point: The decision support system is the network, not the application.  When we design our KM applications, we should keep this in mind.

The network is more a matter of discovery than creation.  Where are the hidden knowledge relationships in our organization that I can tap into when I need to know something?  How do I find this connection, especially when I am new or the situation is crisis-new as in a disaster? 

A case I came across when researching social network analysis (SNA) is interesting.  A large pharmaceutical organization invited its top 200 scientists from around the world to a conference at headquarters.  Each attendee's name tag had a computer chip that transmitted who else they spent time with during the breaks and meetings and posted it to a large scoreboard.  Six scientists were evidently the focal points; three were unexpected in the hierarchy of relationships[4].  These were the hidden connectors.  If I want to grow my knowledge in an organization, I would do well to seek out and cultivate a relationship with all the connectors[5]. 

So when we think about KM, the common wisdom is wrong; it’s not about collecting information, it’s about finding the right person.

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[1] See Noshir Contractor, “Co-Evolution of Knowledge Networks”, IT Conversations, May 2, 2005 (http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail235.html#), and the recording at http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/ITC.MF2005-NoshirContractor-2005.05.02.mp3.  Especially note the segment at about 37:00 minutes into this talk.

[2] Noshir Contractor, IBID.

[3] See Dr. Contractor’s Walt Fisher Annenberg Lecture, “From Disasters to WoW” and his discussion of knowledge networks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3hKhW6vzak&feature=youtube_gdata_player. See the slide deck at www.paniit2008.org/downloads/noshir_presentation.ppt (warning 8.8MB!), note slides 42-49.

[4] For background on digital name tags, see Richard Borovoy, Fred Martin, Sunil Vemuri, Mitchel Resnick, Brian Silverman, and Chris Hancock, “Meme Tags and Community Mirrors: Moving from Conferences to Collaboration,” MIT Media Laboratory, 1998.  http://web.media.mit.edu/~vemuri/research-pub/community-mirrors.pdf

[5] See Malcolm Gladwell’s discussion about connectors and the “Law of the Few” in Tipping Point, NY: 2002, pp. 30ff

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Youth as Innovators

I had the pleasure of working with Michael Joseph at the Global Youth Conference in Vienna. He is a member of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Youth Commission, from the Antigua and Barbuda RC. A number of points he made in his theme paper, "Youth as Innovators," caught my attention. We had a chance to sit down and talk about his paper at the conference.

He saw the problem of differentiating creativity and innovation. Innovation, he notes, has a very pragmatic side; it brings "ideas to life"; it moves them forward. Innovation gives ideas arms and legs. Conversely, "ideas without motion are nothing but fairy tales." That may be a bit strong, especially if creative thinking is a prerequisite to innovative action. But nevertheless action is needed to have impact. I'd like to think of creative thoughts as actions in waiting.

I found the Wikipedia entry on Innovation interesting. The authors write:

“Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: "to change") rather than doing the same thing better.”

The "use of a... novel idea" is exactly what Michael was driving at.

I asked him what he felt was the most important idea in his paper. He said, "to try it". I love one of his closing remarks: "try a bad idea for the right reasons". It reminded me of the famous Thomas Edison quote on failure: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Michael liked that.

For some additional thoughts, see my "Six Views on Innovation"

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Innovation and the Global Youth Conference

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." ~Albert Einstein

"Act as if it is impossible to fail" --Joy Jamal Eddine, Special Olympics


I am at the Red Cross and Red Crescent Global Youth Conference hosted by the Austrian Red Cross in Vienna this week. As in the Imagine Cup student competition where I volunteer each year, I am continually impressed with the energy and passion that students and graduates bring to world and local problems.

One of the sessions was about Youth as Innovators. Here are some thoughts I prepared for this session.

I would like to tell a story I told at a meeting with the Saudi Red Crescent earlier this year.

I recall a young student in a mixed age classroom. It was the time to make oral presentations. Everyone was nervous.

The teacher asked who wanted to go next. A small hand wheMn up in the back corner of the room. "I'll try" the young voice said. Some laughed as he shuffled to the front of the class. He was smaller than the rest and spoke with a very soft voice. The rest of the class had difficulty hearing him.

One of the older and taller students stood up, walked to the front of the class and standing by his side, (here is the technology part...) gave him an old fashioned megaphone so he could be heard by all.

It was a good presentation. When he finished everyone applauded and agreed he had some of the best ideas they had heard yet.


Now what did you hear about innovation in this story?

I hear three things. First the younger student had the courage to try it. He took the risk of failing and made it a success. For the past six years, I have been a judge for the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition. It's the largest software competition in the world for students from most countries. I see more innovation in one week than all year. Why is that? Imagine Cup students have...

1) No business experience
2) No marketing experience
3) No time
4) No money
5) No sense of limitation

and it's this last one that makes all the difference. These students just try it and refine it. Notice the order: Try it and refine it.

Second, what the taller student did was give voice to the whispering. When we stand up for those who are weaker in our organizations and communities, that's what we are doing. We are becoming Chief Amplifiers. And it is this role that is so important to leadership and innovation.

Third, The new ideas came from the back of the room. Often the ideas from the far corners of our organizations that have the possibility of becoming the really big ideas for the future. Innovation can come from where we least expect it. Be open to surprise.

Here are some discussion questions:

1. What if your organization were to give greater voice to the small ideas?
2. What are you doing to become a "Chief Amplifier"?
3. What can you do to discover the good ideas in the far reaches of your organization and harvest for the good of all?


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Location:Linzer Straße,Vienna,Austria

Big Data, Small Data

"Big Data" has become the new darling of the IT world. Since May, 2011 Google references to it have jumped by a factor of five. "Data Mining" on the other hand has fallen by a factor of three since its peak in 2004.





The IT industry has a way of reinventing itself, and changing the language to suit. One could argue that these two topics are the same; the difference may be one of scale.

The challenge for non-profits with respect to modern views of data are on two ends of a long spectrum. On the one hand, is the opportunity to gain insights and take actions based on mining big data trends (Google.org Flu Trends data comes to mind). On the other hand, is what I'd call the challenge of small data, namely the lack of good data (input and impact measures come to mind) and the relatively small, siloed data that is not being shared. 

There are two sets of motivation problems at each end of this spectrum. On the big data side is how to motivate non-profits to look at the possibilities in mining what are external data, and as Gisli Olafsson recognizes, is often at the wrong "zoom level" to be actionable. On the small data side, what is the incentive to share data and develop common standards? For corporations, it's the expectation of accessing larger consumer markets. I doubt altruism alone will drive NGOs to share. There has to be a hunger and scarcity on the one hand (what drove the NetHope members to collaborate) or a large economic benefit (also a NetHope driver, through its member deals and discounts). Otherwise, I don't see non-profits sharing data in a meaningful, aggregated way.

For further thoughts about Big Data, see the Wikipedia entry on Big Data and the Gartner definition: "Big Data are high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization." That's a mouthful definition.

On the small data side, look at the case of Blackbaud's donor data products and how they have motivated many NGOs to share their most private data: about donors and their giving transactions. Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud's Chief Scientist solved the problem of "what's in it for me" by creating a huge economic benefit to sharing data: learning how my fundraising prowess stacks up against an aggregate of my peers and what I can therefore do differently.

Whether big or small data, motivation to share and use is the key. I suspect the small data issues need to be solved for NGO's before we will see the benefits of big data extending to our sector.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Vision and Values

For my annual NetHope keynote address this week, my focus was on the vision and values of NetHope. My thesis for this brief talk was that the guideposts for the future of technology for our nonprofit members is our founding values. In the midst of massive change, we can point to some major themes, but we cannot know the future; we can however apply our values to guide our decisions as we go forward.

At our Summit in 2007, one of my colleagues and friends, Jean-Louis, showed the 2006 "Did You Know?" video. It was an amazing show of technology impact facts and figures created by a high school teacher and his students in Colorado. The conclusion was that "shift happens." I thought it would be interesting to watch the update six years later. Look for the factoids in this video that impact you the most.

The astounding thing about this video is that most of the information is about the current state of the world and how it's changing now. If we connect some of the dots, I see three themes: the explosion of data, explosion of connections and explosion of applications. Let's look at each (for a copy of the presentation slide deck, click here.)

For the explosion of information, the slide in the video that jumped out for me is that 40 exabytes of information are being created this year (that's 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 characters, about the same as the number of stars in the universe). And it's doubling every two years.

A recent Cisco paper forecast that the number of connected mobile devices will exceed the population of 7 billion this year and will reach 10 billion by 2016. Mary Meeker, a leading technology analyst at Morgan Stanley, forecast that the number of mobile internet users will exceed desktop internet users in the next year. Mobile connections are exploding.

If we look at the app's store growth, we see that iPhone/iPad apps are approaching a million in just four years. And most of these cost a dollar.

In 2010 the IFRC and Accenture completed a survey of 120 National Societies. We calculated an ICT index of 18 factors versus the Human Development Index (HDI). The result was a direct relationship that mirrored the digital divide between the north and west, and the south. While the good news is that digital divide programs such as the one at IFRC are bridging the divide, the strong countries are gaining ICT capacity strength faster than the weaker counties. How will they keep pace?

If all this doesn't scare you, check your pulse! The good news is that where there is great change, I believe there is great opportunity. The key question is how will we make sense of all this for our organizations and what decisions do we need to make?

For us as NetHope members, to face the explosion it is important to return to our basic values. Why? Strategies and tactics may change, but values endure. Our fundamental principles are the anchors in the storm and provide a framework for thinking about the future. Let's look at each of our six values and some potential insights.

1) We believe technology matters; it has impact on our missions and work as non-profit organizations. We continue to be the organization at the intersection of technology and non-profit work. We are the glue, the translators, the advocates and provocateurs. We interpret the ICT benefits for the sector.

2) We believe that benefitting all benefits one. This is fundamental to our collaboration; the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. Our brand of partnering means shifting from a "do then share" to a "share than do" mentality. That means approaching needs and projects with the question of how we can do this together rather than solo. That may seem like an extra step, but we believe it reduces the massive reinventing of the wheel that goes on within our own far-flung organizations let alone among us.

A further thought: Large organizations, such as my own, need to take a leadership position in collaborating as part of our give-back; where we may have the resources to go it alone, we must begin with sharing and working together. Why? To lead is to serve, and only the humble learn.

3) We believe in learning through collaboration. This is a variation on the ready-fire-aim approach that Peters and Waters identified as a key theme of excellence 30 years ago. Henry Mintzberg noted that this is fine as long as you get to fire again in a fire-aim-fire-aim sequence. The point here is that we gain a huge opportunity by learning from each other's pilots, successes and failures in parallel instead of a longer sequential process.

4) We believe in building for the Field. This means two important things: cultivating a greater sense of humility in our headquarters, and expect to learn from the far reaches of your organization and those you serve. The greatest opportunity for us may be a flipping of the pyramid where we learn more about technology that works from beneficiaries and consumers than from the traditional IT department. This is part and parcel to the Discover and Harvest approach I've advocated elsewhere.

5) We have a bias for action. We have always been a group of doers, with an impatience for the results that we know technology can deliver. Jim Collins reminds us of a fundamental law from biology is that when times are uncertain, smart organizations "vary like mad". Varying means running more pilot programs to increase the chances of a winner that can be taken to scale (and we must scale-up to have impact.) I believe Michael Schrage made a compelling case for prototyping as core competency. I would add to that and say agility--the ability to change quickly--is as important in a rapidly changing world.

6) We believe in trust above all else". Trust takes time and is based on the experience of working together. We should be proud of the faith and integrity we have developed with each other. We can depend on each other to face and overcome any obstacle the future throws at us.

I closed by recounting the scene of the Battle of Zama in Gladiator. Russell Crowe admonishes his fellow fighters to remember their training. "Whatever comes out of these gates," he says, "we got a better chance of survival if we work together."[1] By circling the group behind their shields, the larger force of archers and charioteers is fended off in a surprising reversal of history; the Carthaginians defeat the Romans, and Crowe wins the favor of the Coliseum crowd. The point of the story is that by banding together a small group can overcome larger obstacles. That is the power of collaboration.

Here are some questions to ponder:

1) How are you amplifying the voice of technology from beneficiaries?
2) How are you increasing ICT agility to adjust faster, better, cheaper?
3) How do we enable the beneficiary portfolio of applications?

I've talked about our values and I've made some comments about the future. One of the questions I was asked was based on the Wayne Gretsky question about "where the puck is going to be." The short answer I gave is that the puck is on the citizen side of the court and the hockey stick is the mobile phone. I believe that, but I also believe Mark Twain when he said, "I've seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass". If we do things together we will succeed.

[1] For the video scene, see 6:07 - 7:11 in this trailer.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Collaborate or Perish

The following article was published in the Berlin Civil Society Center publication "Global Futures – How international civil society organisations can make a real difference," which was launched at the BCSC Global Perspectives meeting in October, 2012. It is published here for the NetHope Summit with BCSC permission.

Collaborate or Perish –
How working together with technology can change the non-profit sector
Edward G. Happ
Global CIO, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
 
In the next ten years, smart organisations will get amazing work done, with new ways of delivering services, working with leaner processes, and more efficient tools; they will be agile enough to turn on a dime – all in the face of a more difficult economic climate. This will happen not as a result of some new flash of technology, but by banding together and pooling resources and talent in strong cross-sector collaborations based on a foundation of trust. How is this possible?

On the bright side, communities of people want to work together, especially if it’s for a common cause – it’s built into our DNA. On the dark side, collaboration is an unnatural act; it requires us to trust people we know little about and have no control over, especially if we believe we can do things faster and better on our own. This is the paradox of collaboration: it is something we want to do, and act to avoid.

As a result, we have not done a good enough job of collaborating, especially in the use of technology. As it is increasingly used to run all the services in our organisations, technology may be the microcosm for an organisation’s operations and execution savvy. Yet we continue to pursue the corporation path of the past two decades, moving to larger and more complex systems to run our businesses. We do this despite the 5:1 per person investment in technology that our corporate colleagues continue to make. I know of no board or senior management team who would approve a doubling of the Information Technology (IT) budget, let alone a five-fold increase.

This should drive us to partner and share technology more, especially for functions that really do not differentiate us. But for a variety of reasons, we haven’t done this. The barriers to collaboration include ‘Not-Invented-Here’ (NIH), abundance, and proximity. More funding is not the answer; in fact a large budget may be an obstacle to innovation and partnering. The recent history in the US housing boom provides the case of the ‘starter castle’ mindset and the need to protect and heat what is too large. For some of our organisations the ‘lights-on’ infrastructure has become the tail that wags the dog.

The lack of services collaboration, including IT, in our organisations is a call-to-arms. If we connect the dots among the evidence, there is a looming train wreck on the horizon for IT and NGOs. Large NGOs are pursuing a corporate IT path that they cannot afford or sustain. And as change gets harder and more expensive, it will ossify these organisations and become the likely targets for cuts as a post-recession downturn takes hold.

There are a number of cases to illustrate this. The donor management upgrade project at a leading NGO is a case in point: 50 per cent behind in time, with almost as much in cost overruns. What happens if this NGO is hit with a 30 per cent cost reduction in headquarters like one of its sister NGOs? The time and the cost of the change, plus the operating and maintenance costs are too high to begin with; now they become a prime target for cutting losses. It will take another three years to change to something smaller in scale and more sustainable or, worse, to restart and complete the project at a later date.

Collaboration is often driven by a scarcity of resources, a shared need, and the desire to band together as a social group. These were certainly factors that have pushed 35 of the largest international non-profit Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to join NetHope and work together on initiatives. We’ve built a model of trust and collaboration over the past decade. But we’ve only just begun.

What do we need to do to succeed? First and foremost, we need what I call ‘headquarters humility’, the openness to solutions coming from the far reaches of our organisation and others. The best answers may in fact come from the poorest countries, from people we least expect. We need to discover and harvest the best of what is happening in the field. Second, we need to shift from a ‘do then share’ to a ‘share then do’ mentality. We need to look first to how we can partner to meet a need, instead of developing me-too solutions and sharing the war stories later. Sharing stories may be essential to starting a collaboration, but there must be a shift to doing things together from the outset. Finally, the larger organisations among us, who have the resources to go it alone, need to take a leadership position on collaboration. This is part of our give-back to the non-profit community. Like a good manager who learns to accomplish goals through others, we need to get the business of non-profit services done through and with each other.

Abstract from the forthcoming book – Collaborate or Perish: How working together with technology can change the non-profit sector, © 2011, 2012 Edward G. Happ.  Advance copies of select chapters are available on Blogspot.  
 

Futures

Today was departure day. All the students packing up, checking out, heading to the buses for the airport.



Many of the students included a "future" slide in their presentations. They spoke about their plans for their product, next steps for their business aspirations, and where they wanted to take their ideas. All were full of hope and optimism.

The question is how many teams will be around next year? We heard from a number of former contestants who had turned their project into a viable business over the past ten years. No doubt there are more. And many could benefit humanitarian work and help change the world. Yet it was clear that great ideas take incredible persistence to become great businesses.

We learned through Steve Jobs that insanely great products are all important. It was something our business schools overlooked. But the adage that great products without marketing and sales are great shelf-ware is also true, as is under-funding will kill the product. The smart teams had a marketing person on their team, and the best ones were high-energy sales people. And they had done their homework on the financials.

One of the signs about Imagine Cup posted in the conference center said "No DREAM too BIG".



One of the hallmarks of Microsoft is to think big. Passing this on to students is a natural. I heard a quip once that set "all things come to he who waits... as long as you work like hell in the meantime." As others have said, the competition is the beginning of a journey, not the end. I look forward to seeing what next year brings. See you in St. Petersburg!




"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."