Beyond knowledge management to better management
Some law firm knowledge managers gathered recently to consider the ways in which knowledge management actually makes a difference for law firms. We undertook this exercise as a means of identifying what our KM priorities were and what they should be. To help focus our discussion, we considered the following question: What single thing does... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
The Harvard Business School recently held an executive education session on the global economic crisis. Amid all the depressing news and analysis came the advice of Professor Robert Steven Kaplan regarding three practical steps business leaders can take now to move things forward in a positive direction: Overcommunicate - Be visible, be vocal. Remind all... Continue Reading →
Andrew McAfee's Twitter list of "10 Things I've Learned from Teaching" is instructive for those of us who don't teach for a living: Don't be afraid of silence in the classroom. Ask clear questions. Trust your students. Be the person who most wants to be in the room. Start on time, end on time. Check... Continue Reading →
When I was a child we occasionally were allowed to watch a TV game show called "What's My Line?" The object of the game was for the panelists to guess the occupation of the contestant by asking a series of Yes/No questions. Wikipedia's summary of the game includes the following observations: The panel usually adopted... Continue Reading →
In Tom Davenport's terrific post, Microdecisions for Macro Impact, he reminds us that fortunes can be won and lost in the little decisions we make every day. As he astutely notes, What many companies don't realize is that microdecisions — small decisions made many times by many workers at the customer interface — can have... Continue Reading →
The historic battles between Athens and Sparta or between the Hatfields and the McCoys are nothing compared to the battle royal fought daily by parents determined to make their children eat their vegetables. After years of alternating between cajoling and threatening our children, we now learn that the right thing to do is to try... Continue Reading →
At the recent LegalTech 2009 conference, nearly every session I attended started with some variant of the words: "Doing more with less." To be honest, even the session I spoke at spent some time on why a downturn is a good time to invest in social media tools. (Hint: Social media tools help you do... Continue Reading →
Our local public radio station has just finished its first pledge drive of the year. During pledge week, they ask all their listeners to provide financial support to the radio station. Since the radio station does not receive government support, they rely on their listeners to cover a significant part of the operating budget. It's... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 