Carl Frappaulo of Information Architected is an experienced practitioner and wise observer of all things KM. In this Enterprise 2.0 Conference session, he tackles head-on the underground battle between some knowledge management personnel and emerging E2.0 enthusiasts.
Background:
[These are my quick notes, complete with (what I hope is no more than) the occasional typo and grammatical error. Please excuse those. Thanks!
From time to time, I’ll insert my own editorial comments – exercising the prerogatives of the blogger. I’ll show those in brackets. ]
Notes:
- One key determinant of E2.0 success is organizational and culture and the way people in the organization interact with each other and with information
- Island of Me – I live in and love my silo – just give me search so I can find my stuff
- One Way me – I want the info, but don’t really want to share. I like RSS and mash-ups.
- Team Me – I understand that I’m a part of a team, but if I have to share, it will be primarily with my team. They like wikis and blogs –but for a limited audience. Social tagging and bookmarking for the benefit of the team is fine.
- Proactive Me – I consider that a major part of my job is to be a good team player. If I erect walls to sharing, they are transparent. I like Portals and executive dashboards that help me push info to my team.
- Two-Way Me – I’m both a team player and pro-active about building communities. I participate in communities of practice and work in a highly social organization. (The employees describe the organization as a “family” whose members cooperate as a matter of routine.)
- Islands of We – This is cutting edge. Senior management buys into “socialness” and believe that being social gives their organization a competitive edge. They promote actual and virtual teams. Trying strategic uses of E2.0 tools.
- Extended Me/Enterprise 2.0 – this is E2.0 nirvana and currently extremely rare today. The culture promotes and supports full transparency and collaboration, participation/engagement, agile, constantly challenging current assumptions and practices, this organization is perfect for E2.0. This isn’t just about senior engagement – the entire organziation is oriented towards emergence and transparency.
- Enterprise 2.0 technology or any other technology can’t change culture all by itself. You need additional change management efforts to move an organization towards a culture that is ready for transparency, emergence and collaboration.
- How E2.0 makes a difference:
- It’s easier to implement – it requires little or no training
- Widely accessible – early adopters have esperience on the Web before they bring it behind the firewall
- Emergence
- Lean
- Low-cost
- It represents evolution not revolution
- Resistance is Real – a survey of adopters disclosed
- 49% found IT resistance
- 64% management resistance
- 72% user resistance — this is the hardest form of resistance to overcome
- User resistance is the hardest part
- internal enthusiasts learn that users need more training than expected
- E2.0 tools aren’t automatically viral once introduced, you must support users
- You need to incentive participation – but this is NOT about offering number
- You need to help potential knowledge sharers understand what to share and how to share
- You need to help knowledge seekers find information
- Consider your strategy carefully
- Do you need culture change first?
- To what extent could your chosen E2.0 tool affect culture?
- Assessing your aptitude for KM & E2.0 on each of these attributes
- Structure
- Culture
- Process
- Current KM Practices
- Team Structure
- Innovation
- Technology
- Dos …
- Create a vision – strategy and goals are key
- Sell, promote & market
- Leverage needs & culture
- Nurture & promote Champions
- Learn from History/iterate
- … and Don’ts
- Ignore resistance
- Focus on IT
- Be rigid
- Pilots = solutions (a successful pilot requires marketing afterward)
- Boil the ocean
Above and Beyond KM 