The comments to my earlier post, What Have You Learned, indicate that it would be worth pushing the conversation further to see if there is a middle path between the completely mandatory approach (i.e., blog ... OR ELSE!) and the completely voluntary approach (i.e., blog only if it makes you feel good). John Tropea suggests... Continue Reading →
What Have You Learned?
It is with great trepidation that I gingerly re-open a can of worms that I inadvertently opened a couple of weeks ago. The blog flurry around mandating use within an organization of social media, generally, and blogging, specifically, was one I didn't anticipate, but did find extremely educational and (after a while) a little exhausting.So... Continue Reading →
Do You Dare Do This?
Dave Pollard has posted on his blog, How to Save the World, a memorandum that every firm should consider sending.The question is, how would sending it change the practice of law in your firm?Take the challenge of this thought experiment. At a minimum, it will help you better understand which communication tools best suit particular... Continue Reading →
Knowledge Management’s Secret Sauce: Trust
Fortunes have been made in the food industry through the development and use of "secret" sauces. These are the seemingly-magic ingredients that chefs use to elevate a simple food item into a must have (or must eat).Knowledge management has a secret sauce -- it's trust. Trust is the magic ingredient that reliably increases user participation.... Continue Reading →
A Knowledge Management Feel Good Story
In case the summer doldrums have hit you and you aren't about to leave on vacation, here's a story that will give you a mental break and, hopefully, encouragement about knowledge management. Stan Garfield's Weekly Knowledge Management Blog featured a post by Chuck Hollis regarding KM at General Electric. In his blog, A Journey in... Continue Reading →
The Right Stuff
A sidebar e-mail conversation with some thoughtful readers of my earlier post, Is Your Knowledge Management Strategic, raised the following interesting question: How do you find out if you have the necessary content and processes without doing a full-blown knowledge audit, yet how do you avoid the dangers of the knowledge audit?Dangers, you ask? In... Continue Reading →
Honesty in Advertising
There's precious little honesty in advertising. And, if you think your small corner of the corporate world is immune from this truth, take a look at how people are described on your org chart. Title inflation is rampant. In my view, it is the bane of the corporate world. There was a time when we... Continue Reading →
In or Out or Both?
Following up on my post, Good Fences and Good Neighbors, I have a quick question for those of you better versed in Web 2.0 etiquette. What does it mean when someone allows you to be LinkedIn with them, but doesn't share their contacts with you. Is this an appropriate and sensible approach to maintaining a... Continue Reading →
Good Fences and Good Neighbors
Good fences make good neighbors. That's what Boomers were taught as children. But does that still hold true in a Web 2.0/Gen Y world where the public and the private seem to be constantly converging?For example, at a recent meeting of law firm knowledge managers in New York City I asked how people were handling... Continue Reading →
Unsociable Uses of Social Media
There's been lots of negative reaction here and elsewhere in the blogosphere to the notion of mandatory blogging. (See the comments from Patrick Lambe and Doug Cornelius to my earlier posts, Knowledge Management Made Easier and Knowledge Management Made Mandatory. Also see Doug's post, Making Blogging Mandatory for Knowledge Management.) And, I'm not without sympathy.... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 