Above and Beyond KM

An eminent Mary (Mary Meeker that is, not Mary Abraham!) has just presented her views on Internet Trends 2009 at the Web 2.0 Summit. Her key trend for 2009 was “Mobile Internet – Is and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think.” She goes on to list 8 key mobile internet themes, but here’s the one that caught my eye:

Next Generation Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Driving Unprecedented Change in Communications + Commerce.

I know we lawyers love our BlackBerries, but is this where the action is?  Maybe not so much.  According to one report, iPhone users account for 65% of the mobile data usage even though they constitute only 11% of the market share in the US.  What does this mean for the future of BlackBerries in the enterprise?  Meeker suggests that RIM’s installed base will give it a 1-2 year advantage, but after that all bets are off given the sky-high rate of iPhone purchases.

So if we don’t have passing grades when it comes to mobile, how are we doing with social networking?  Meeker’s data show that huge numbers of users are flocking to powerful new publishing/distribution platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Demand Media.  Yet every day we hear more and more alarming statistics about the number of companies that are blocking access to social networking platforms.  If this is true, does Mary Meeker’s prediction apply only to folks outside the corporate/legal world?  Or are we about to see a shift in acceptance and participation behind the corporate firewall?

And what about your law firm?  Is it ready for mobile + social?  Or are you hoping to try to sit this one out?

[Photo Credit: mattjb]

Cynics sneer at what they characterize as the Kumbaya tone of some social media advocates. As far as these cynics (or as they prefer to say, realists)  are concerned, only Pollyanna would make such rosy projections of network effects and community building.  Exhortations to share and share alike, or to just give your personal intellectual property away without charge or expectation of reciprocity are met with disbelief.  This is so far outside the reality of life within many businesses that it’s not surprising that management occasionally finds the social media talk high on new age bromides and low on concrete facts.

One of the problems facing those of us who try to explain the value of Enterprise 2.0 tools is that most companies have not measured the cost to the enterprise of their failure to nurture internal social networks and a spirit of collaboration. Does management know how many deals weren’t closed because expertise was hidden rather than shared? Has management measured the hits to efficiency and effectiveness that result when critical information is buried in a silo rather than easily accessible via the community?  Does management understand the impact that dysfunctional communities have on employee morale and productivity?

Until you’ve counted the cost of a dysfunctional community, how can you properly value the potential benefits of social media tools that could help build and strengthen a healthy community?

[Photo Credit:  Niall Kennedy]

He and I have never met.  And yet, he sent me the following message on Twitter a few days ago:

You are very quiet at the moment. Is all well? (Or maybe you are away.) See you soon (virtually speaking), I hope.

This message was prompted by the fact that I hadn’t published a blog post or tweeted on Twitter since March 13.  His was the first of several messages I received recently from folks I’ve only ever “met” via this blog or on Twitter.  They suspected something was up, and took the time to check.  As those messages accumulated,  I began to wonder if all of us were underestimating the strength of the human connections that are created and then flourish virtually via social media tools.

If you listen to the social media skeptics, you’d find it hard to believe that people who haven’t met physically (but interact only virtually) could possibly have a “real” relationship.  Even social media proponents have on occasion suggested that the true value of social media tools is that the virtual interactions they enable pave the way for old-fashioned, face to face interactions.   Given my recent experience, however, I’m beginning to question if that’s right.  Granted, I’m working primarily from my own experience and some anecdotal evidence from friends, yet this (admittedly unscientific) sample suggests that many of us are finding that some of our more meaningful social relationships are virtual.  And, that’s not necessarily something to be pitied.

No matter where you stand on the subject of social media, it would be wise to think objectively about the nature of the relationships you have. How do you determine if any relationship is “real”?  For me, it’s more than a matter of physical proximity.  Instead, I’d suggest evaluating the “reality” of your relationships on the basis of some or all of the following questions:  Like the inhabitants of the Cheers Bar, do these folks  “know your name“? Are they in regular conversation with you?  Do they offer information or questions that help you learn and grow? Are they supportive? Do they notice when you’re not participating?  And, when you are not around, do they check on your well-being?   If you can answer yes to these questions, does it truly matter if they live in your town or on the other side of the world?

Ray Oldenburg suggested 20 years ago that most of us need three places in our lives:  the first place is our home; the second place is our workplace; and the Third Place is where we engage with the wider community.  For some, this Third Place is their place of worship, their social club, the barber shop or their equivalent of the Cheers Bar.  For increasing numbers of us, that Third Place in an online community that interacts via social media tools.

When I received the various messages inquiring about my well-being during the last few weeks, I had to re-evaluate my own perceptions of online relationships.   What I’ve discovered is that my social media Third Place is increasingly important to me and the relationships I’ve formed online are just as “real” as some of the relationships I’ve formed the old-fashioned, face to face way.  So this blog post is my note of thanks to those of you who have checked in with me lately.   You are much appreciated.

[Photo Credit:  Rob Dunfey]

People talk about the velocity of current flows of information and inputs and say it’s like drinking from a fire hose.  That’s wishful thinking.  On far too many days, it feels more like living in the Lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina.  For Clay Shirky, that sense of drowning in information is a sure sign not of overload but, rather, of inadequate filters.  If he’s right (and I think he is), we have to find a better way of coping.

A great deal of daily life now consists of filtering and managing the inputs so that we can be productive.  For me, this is a matter of personal knowledge management:  the art of gathering, organizing, storing, searching and retrieving the information we need to live well.   I’m an avid  student of the subject and have discovered that one never quite masters it.  There is always a new challenge and always something to learn.  So I thought I would collect some resources in this post for myself and any others who are seeking a slightly saner way of managing the fire hose.

Gathering Information:

• People First – If you’re looking for reliable information, you need not look any further than your friends and trusted colleagues.  Building your social network and ensuring you have accurate contact information will go a long way to helping you find what you need when you need it.  Once you know who is in your trusted network, how do you tap it?  Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed help you stay in touch and share information you consider interesting or important.  The beautiful thing is that when you use your social networks to gather information, your friends do the filtering for you.
  • See the quick tutorial in the Common Craft video:  Social Networking in Plain English
  • Twitter does much more than simply provide updates on your friends.  It can also be a great research tool.  However, it all starts with connecting online and here is a Common Craft video to explain how:  Twitter in Plain English
• Let the Information Come to You – Through the magic of electronic subscriptions and web feeds (e.g., Really Simple Syndication (RSS)), you no longer have to go hunting for current information.  It will come to you.  All you have to do is place your order — and that just takes a couple of clicks of your mouse — and then sit back and wait for the content to be sent to your e-mail inbox or your RSS reader (e.g., Google Reader).
  • See the quick tutorial on how RSS readers work and how to subscribe in the Common Craft video:  RSS in Plain English.

Organizing Information:

• Create a Personal Archive – When I first started practicing law, each lawyer would create an elaborate set of folders (aka the “form file”) that housed every piece of paper that seemed interesting.  That’s where you stored precedent documents, research results, notes, etc.  The idea was that you created a private archive of useful information designed to help you work more efficiently.  We still need personal archives, but today they consist primarily of electronic content.  And, given how cheap electronic storage has become, there really are not many physical limits on how large your personal archive can be.
  • For information regarding Doug Cornelius‘ impressive new personal electronic archive that he created to help himself learn a new area of law, see Mark Gould’s blog post on Personal KM.
  • For an introduction to blogs and blogging, see this Common Craft video:  Blogs in Plain English.
• Organize Your Electronic Materials Electronically – A few years ago hand held label makers were all the rage.  They allowed you to create the illusion of order despite the underlying chaos of your system.  An electronic storage system can be every bit as chaotic and electronic labels every bit as illusory.  However, employed properly (according to a scheme that makes sense to you and that you diligently apply in a consistent fashion), these electronic labels can help you organize enormous amounts of information.  You can apply these labels via a variety of Google applications (e.g., Bookmarks, Mail, Reader, etc.) or through social bookmarking, as discussed in the next section.
• Let Others Help You Organize Information – through social bookmarking tools (e.g., Delicious), you can enjoy the benefits of the organizational efforts of others.  When they identify interesting content and label that content electronically, that creates an organizational scheme that is available to anyone else who is interested in that content.
  • For a good introduction to social bookmarking, see this Common Craft video:  Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Storing Information:

• People Information – In the olden days, all you needed was a simple address book (hard copy or electronic).  Now, just sign up to that giant rolodex in the sky known as LinkedIn and let others take care of keeping contact information up to date for you.
  • For information on how LinkedIn works, see this Common Craft video:  What is LinkedIn?
• Electronic Storage Only – Don’t store information in hard copy unless it is something you really need at hand in a physical format.  Otherwise, store it all online.  If you don’t have concerns about information security, store it remotely in an externally-hosted blog or wiki, or via Google or any other comparable service provider.
• Minimize the Number of Storage Sites – Remember that old paper form file?  The great thing was that it was the only place you had to check for information you had saved.  Now, you have to check your e-mail folders, the favorites on your web browser, your social bookmarks, your hard drive, etc.  Stop the Madness! Try to consolidate as much as you can in just one or two places online so that you don’t have to search over and over again for the information you have saved.
• Make Your Personal Archive Portable – If you work exclusively at the office,  relying on a hard copy form file is still feasible (barely).  But if you have lots of electronic information you need to keep, then putting it in a paper file is neither convenient nor considerate of the environment.  Further, if you’re ever working at a client’s office, at home or in a hotel, you won’t have access to those paper files and then you’ll understand why so many of us believe in the value of a portable electronic archive that is accessible anywhere you have an internet connection.  And, given today’s economic realities, I should mention that having a portable personal archive means that if you should ever part company with your current employer, you can keep the archive you’ve built up so carefully, provided it is outside your employer’s firewall.  (Obviously, client confidential information should not be stored outside the firewall, but information you obtain publicly via the internet is yours to store and organize outside the firewall.)

There you are — an introduction to some personal knowledge management information and techniques.  Try them out and see what works for you.  And if you have other suggestions for effective personal KM, please leave a comment below and let us all know.

[Photo Credit:  Anxious223, Creative Commons license]

If you’re a control freak, you might want to think twice about a career in social media.  After all,  some of the most successful social networks have flourished precisely because the control freaks got out of the way and, in their own words, let the lunatics run the asylum.

Ceding control to the participants is so counter-intuitive for many managers, yet time and time again we see the impressive results of this approach.  Take Craigslist, for example.  It’s  a revolutionary online community that has changed the way regular folks think about matching supply and demand.  In a recent report by ReadWriteWeb of the keynote address by Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist) at the User Generated Content Conference, we find the following statements that are guaranteed to send a control freak through the roof:

• “Getting out of the way is really important…”
• “We didn’t care that the site wasn’t being used how we had imagined…”

Now, imagine a member of a law firm knowledge management department uttering either of those statements.

Exactly.

In the words of Jeff Jarvis:

As Google built the most powerful tool imaginable–the entire world of digital knowledge revealed behind a simple search box–so did Craig build a simple tool that changed society (and newspapers and real estate and more) without prescribing how we should use it. They create platforms to enable us to do what we want to do and then, instead of giving us rules about their use, then they stand back and put us in charge. [emphasis added]

The clear message in all of this is that if you try to control or constrain a social network too tightly, you will choke it.  Far better to set in place the minimum precautions necessary to ensure nothing blows up or melts down, and then let the participants work their magic.  If you start obsessing too much about policies governing access to or use of social media tools, chances are you’ve missed the whole point of social media and may well end up being a hurdle on the path to success for your Enterprise 2.0 initiative.

[Photo Credit:  H4cks, Creative Commons license]

Knowledge managers around the world can learn a great deal from the example of the Hon. Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge of the State of New York, whose tenure ends on December 31st. Besides being the first woman to hold the state’s highest judiciary office and author of some landmark decisions, she will be remembered for her reform of the judicial system in New York. Chief among these reforms was expansion of the jury pool by eliminating the automatic exemptions that excused far too many from serving on a jury. Prior to the repeal of these exemptions, you could be excused from jury service if you were, for example, a doctor, a lawyer, an embalmer, a maker of prosthetic limbs, a wearer of prosthetic limbs, etc.

Chief Judge Kaye tells an amusing story about why expanding the jury pool was necessary: her daughter discovered that it was “a great place to meet guys.” As any loving mother knows, you increase your daughter’s chances of making a good match by increasing the number of potential mates in the pool (regardless of the real purpose of the pool).

What works in matchmaking works in knowledge sharing as well. The bigger the pool, the greater the available knowledge on which you can draw. Users of social media are discovering that by interacting more regularly and transparently with their social networks they are able to learn and share more than ever before. In the process, the pool grows and the participants themselves grow. Despite this reality, finding a way to bring the power of the bigger pool inside enterprises via social media tools continues to be a challenge for knowledge management.

In 2009, look for more ways to take an expansive view — not only in how you work, but in the tools you provide that help make the pool bigger for everyone. If social computing has taught us anything, it is that this generosity is returned time and time again.

A recent New York Times article touted the benefits of collaborating to innovate. Debunking the myth of the lone genius who creates in solitude, the article suggests that the best innovation comes about through collaboration — where many people and perspectives intersect to create and refine ideas. However, it isn’t enough just to put a group of people in a room and ask them to brainstorm. In fact, according to the article, brainstorming is not nearly as productive as we’d like to believe. Instead of asking folks to “solve a problem” or “devise a new strategy” (favorite brainstorming topics), the better path is “systematic inventive thinking” in which the participants are asked to identify products and processes that work, break those down into their components, and then think about how those components can be put to other productive uses.

When I read this description of systematic inventive thinking, I realized that it appeared to share some of the principles of appreciative inquiry, which encourages us to build on our strengths. What a difference from the traditional approach of focusing on what does not work! (In a prior post I talked about the benefits of asking What Went Right rather than What Went Wrong?) Further, when you ask a group to focus on what’s good, you stand a better chance of avoiding some of the negative dynamics that emerge in problem-solving sessions such as refusing to speak up out of fear of failure or a desire to hoard ideas.

Whether you attempt innovation in solitary confinement or through a group process, research has shown that innovation isn’t a flash in the pan. According to Keith Sawyer, a professor of psychology and education and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration:

Innovation today isn’t a sudden break with the past, a brilliant insight that one lone outsider pushes through to save the company …. Just the opposite: innovation today is a continuous process of small and constant change, and it’s built into the culture of successful companies.

So what would it take to build innovation into the culture of your company? Sawyer believes that even the lone genius is part of a wider web of ideas and people — the people the genius talks to, the people who write the things the genius reads, etc. This suggests that a company that wants a robust innovation culture has to build robust social networks that facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas.

How can knowledge management help? KM knows all about social networks and social media tools. KM knows how to reduce information silos and enable information sharing. KM knows how to foster collaboration. We’ve often said that the whole point of knowledge management is innovation. With this focus on group genius, it’s becoming clearer how the things that knowledge management does well can be deployed to build a vibrant culture of innovation within every company.

[Thanks to Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog for pointing out this article.]

Help! Woman drowning!

That’s increasingly my reaction as I consider the Herculean task that social networking presents to time-strapped people. It started with this blog. Then LinkedIn and a little Twitter action. Now I’m told I’ve got to invest in both Facebook and FriendFeed, not to mention several social bookmarking sites.

In a recent post, Chris Brogan laid out a personal social media strategy. It’s filled with great tips, however, I need something more: clear guidance on how to engage with social media while still holding down a job, spending face-to-face time with family and friends, and taking care of the mundane chores of life.

If you’ve got some useful advice, I’d love to hear it. Just toss that life preserver in my direction soon, please.

A large number of professionals in knowledge management appear to have drunk the kool-aid regarding the value of collaboration. And now, collaboration is the latest buzzword tripping off the tongues of academics, activists, reformers, consultants and web 2.0 vendors. That many people can’t be wrong, can they?

Perhaps it’s time each collaboration advocate put their money where their mouth is. Now is the time to collaborate on a project worth doing. And what is currently the most critical BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) we could address? How about finding a viable way to achieve a sensible bailout of the US economy? (Is that big enough for you?)

There has been a complete failure of leadership in Washington. Given where we are in the US political calendar, it will take a great deal of leadership and goodwill for politicians of both parties to abandon any perceived election year advantages to help each other (and the world) to a sensible solution. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be optimistic about this after the empty theatrics of the last week.

So how could the rest of us model good collaborative behavior to address the economic crisis? We could, for example, create an “open source” solution for a Better Bailout. How about a wiki to collect and refine the best proposals for reforming and restoring the US economy? What if anyone with a positive contribution to make were able to participate? Could we harness the energies and intellect of a world-wide community to solve this problem?

Clearly, not all of us have the training to conceive effective solutions to the complicated problems presented by the current economic crisis. However, I’ve got to believe that somewhere in our respective social networks, we have friends or acquaintances who could add value to such an effort. Perhaps those of us who did not get past Economics 101 could make our contribution to the solution by recruiting to the effort capable people with the requisite integrity, training and freedom from partisan rancor to make a meaningful contribution.

If you’re happy with the job your representatives are doing in Washington, feel free to sit this out. If, however, you’d like to see a solution that deals honestly and fairly with the US taxpayer who has to foot the bill, now is the time to get involved. And, if you really believe in the power of collaboration, now is the time to prove its value.

[If you'd like to participate in A Better Bailout, e-mail BetterBailout@gmail.com.]

It’s a sad commentary on life in a web 2.0 world when a successful social networker discovers that there’s an inverse relationship between the size of her network and the quality of her network. Corvida, guest blogging on Chris Brogan’s blog, recently disclosed that she’s decreasing her connections while increasing her network. And it’s not a good thing. Here’s how it works: when she had no more than 400 (!) followers on Twitter, she claims she was able to make real connections with them. As she put it,

I knew who the majority of my followers were, thereby enabling me to utilize Twitter to its maximum potential. I was able to connect, refer, analyze, and reflect on what I was getting from my followers.

Unfortunately, Corvida has been a victim of her own cybersuccess. Here’s her description of her current sorry state:

Now, I couldn’t tell you who half of my followers are. I really don’t know who I’m following and who I’m not following. I don’t even know why certain people are following me. In turn, my conversation on Twitter has deteriorated along with the amount of time I used to spend on Twitter.

Corvida has hit the Twitter Wall. She can grow her network of followers infinitely, but she can’t sustain a human connection with all of them. When this happens, it leads to some perfectly predictable results: a loss of energy, a loss of interest, a loss of enjoyment.

There’s a limit to the number of meaningful relationships any human being can nurture on a regular basis. While web 2.0 tools provide an easy way to make contact, that ease can also get in the way of focusing on the relationships that matter. We’ve been swept up in the allure of easy connections and they are cluttering our lives.

That’s when we hit the Twitter Wall or the Facebook Wall or the LinkedIn Wall. At that point, what exactly do you do with the 500+ or 1000+ people who think they have a claim on you? As Corvida points out, now we’ve got a problem:

We don’t have a clue on where to begin to make deeper connections as our networks continue to grow. In turn, things may just get out of hand. You start adding people just because they added you with no desire to establish a real relationship with anyone that you haven’t already befriended beforehand.

Corvida wonders if we just need better electronic tools? I don’t think so. What we need is a bit more focus and discipline. (These are key to any successful personal knowledge management effort.) While size matters with respect to certain issues, quality matters much more than size if you want a meaningful social network. Perhaps someday someone will come up with a great (open source) social media tool that ensures quality relationships within a network, but until then we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: identify the folks that matter in our lives and then focus on developing a meaningful relationship with them.

It’s either that or face an extended period hitting our heads against the Twitter Wall.