IFKAD 2010

Back from Italy and reflecting on what was a terrific IFKAD Conference, which seems to get better year on year. Seeing old friends and meeting new ones, fantastic conversations and presentations, all set in the beautiful town of Matera – what more could you ask for? Well the beautiful full moon over the Sassi at the reception at Baccanti was a bonus, the thought provoking key notes (who could believe accounting could be so enthralling), and that sensational pecorino cheese also helped. Staying in a cave as a hotel room adds a little something, and the fascinating creative contributions of the MAP consortium cascading through the events all combine to make it a memorable trip. Tampere has a challenge on its hands to top that next year.

On a more specific note I had a series of particularly interesting conversation with Rob McLean about the similarities of the challenge with CSR reporting and IA reporting and the possibility of using his Value Stream concepts as an alternative to Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line. We also considered the application of Social Media tools to introduce a concept of what we described as “emergent reporting”, a method not only of satisfying reporting demands through genuine transparency but also a method of generating fantastically deep insight to stakeholder issues. More on all of this in some later bloggs.

It was interesting to hear talk in one of the plenary sessions around the progressively constrained publishing of academics and it strikes me as an interesting bifurcation with the potential opportunities for mavericks in business made possible by what are increasingly described as “portfolio” careers. The tension in this it seems to me is that if academics are not supplying some innovation to transfer into business will they be progressively compelled to take a passive reporting stance as opposed to a proactive or initiating stance on business innovation?

As always JC Spender was one of the most thought provoking speakers and conversationalists. As someone who very early on saw the limitations of the generally applied information bound KM paradigm you can always rely on JC to push the debate forward. I was particularly pleased to find that we have a shared interest in the historical perspective of business and particularly in the origins of trading companies, and what can be learned from their experience, which have many contemporary parallels. Again some more bloggs to come on this over the next week or so.

The Stream of papers I co chaired with my colleague Daniela Castrataro of the IA Centre on the implications of Social Media on IA/IC and KM had some fascinating papers and, as we expected, proved to be a very fertile field for study.

So thanks to Giovanni and the team from University Basilicata for hosting us so well, and we look forward to next year.

Barcamp Glasgow June 2010

On Friday my colleague Daniela Castrataro, of the IA Centre, and I made a brief presentation of the preliminary findings of our Social Media Usage in the Workplace survey. The slide pack for that is available here.

We will be presenting more detailed findings at both the IFKAD 2010 Conference in Matera, Italy 24-25 June and at ECKM in Famalicão, Portugal 2-3 September 2010

Stewardship in Investments

With all the chat about the break up of the FSA you might have missed that The Financial Reporting Council will be launching its Stewardship Code for Institutional Investors soon, a document that is traced back to Sir David Walkers November 09 report on governance at banks and financial institutions. The aim is to provide greater transparency and accountability for investors particularly in relation to pension schemes. Its an interesting one because I have been somewhat queezy about some of the recent comment around BP that amounts to the suggestion we should turn a blind eye to poor corporate behaviour for the sake of “all our pension”. Well not mine mate.

The imminent launch prompted a short but nevertheless interesting debate on “You and Yours” yesterday between Richard Northedge and Penny Shepherd of the UK Sustainable Investment Association

I have fairly firm views on ethical investment and shareholder activism, but it is always interesting to hear what others feel. As you may know I also have firm views on the phrase “Best Practice” so I was a bit disappointed to see it as part of the aims of the code but hey you cant get everything in life. Didn't hear any mention of “going forward” though so have to be thankful for that.

Don't blame the software

Now I usually maintain that the only technology that KM relies on is a kettle. But lots of people still make the mistake of making direct links between KM and IT, and this is very common at conferences. With that in mind and as I have to put up with it for the foreseeable future I thought I would share an eye rolling moment I came across the other day

I will spare them the embarrassment by not naming them but I was reading comments by a conference speaker who was deriding Microsoft Sharepoint as being responsible for increasing the number of “silos” in his organisation after it had specifically been deployed to counter that.

Now I don't want to get into a debate about the relative merits of particular software packages, and I certainly don't want to be seen as recommending any particular product. But lets face it Sharepoint is a common whipping boy. Now anyone that knows me will know I am an advocate of open source options and so I have no particular fondness for proprietary products but Sharepoint cant be without some merit.

However... I think this habit of blaming the product is a little unfair. It is common but it is a cop out and those doing the blaming should perhaps have a look at themselves - after all the software itself is relatively benign.

Its is how it is chosen, specified, deployed, configured and used that causes the problem, and the cultural pressures that influence those processes.

Some of the common traps for products in the business collaboration arena is that there is often an expectation that one product will do pretty much everything. It wont. Of course the vendors will tell you it does and every generic function you are looking for you will be told it will do – but it will do them in its own way. This is not a good thing and will hamper adoption and use. It is also an easy path to losing site of what you want to achieve because the focus is drawn to the product rather than the objective. Better to find a core application that majors on a core function and then add other familiar specialist tools for the more esoteric needs. Don't be taken in by the promise of “better integration of products all coming from the same house” – its rarely true or preferable.

The other common fault in these large scale deployments is that they are built to reflect the published version of the organisation model and structure. This will rarely reflect the real nature of the structure of the organisation and will also have the effect of hampering attempts to flex and change will will almost certainly be necessary if the organisation is to prosper.

The other common issue is that typically the deployment of “collaboration tools” frighten many as it promises a level of open access that is not what they are used to and typically viewed as a threat to the power held by gatekeepers. This means the promise of openness will often have a inverse effect and the resulting model, after much blood has been shed, is more highly constrained access than existed before – hence more silos.

But all of these things are avoidable problems and it doesn't have to be like that. Much more iterative and emergent approaches will yield better results and hopefully no one will need to blame the software.

Too Big to Succeed?

Governments continue to ponder the introduction of measures aimed at avoiding a repeat of the “too big to fail” scenario of insolvent financial institutions and It will be challenging to bring any such measure in. Lots of compelling argument will be introduced to oppose it and many vested intersts will lobby to stymie such changes.

The arguments for and against are relatively well rehearsed with the exception of one. What about the idea that in actual fact they are too big to succeed?

Now this might seem rather an odd suggestion given that some of the “too big too fail” banks were on the face of it “big” and big tends to be regarded as successful in a business context. But I have long argued that, in knowledge based industries – and I believe banking and finance is a knowledge based industry - big is not necessarily better. I have also argued on a number of occasions that the financial crisis was a failure of those industries in understanding the nature of knowledge management and knowledge based business generally.

I remember working with a professional services firm that had extremely strong social and trust networks in it. It worked very hard on these bonds with rigorous recruitment practices, unusual reward schemes and extensive reinforcement and encouragement programs to maintain them.

But they had a problem. As they competed in an increasingly global market they had expanded in both headcount and geographical spread and these bonds, this community, was becoming strained and threatened. As a KM engagement we were looking at ways to try to retain that key cultural plank as the company grew. It was a challenge, but it was inspiring to encounter a firm that recognised how important this human relationship model was and is to their success, and believe me this was a successful firm. Scale was a problem.

The advantage that “small” can bring to knowledge based firms by embedding trust and enhancing pooled human cognition is, in my view, enormous. And I am not alone in saying this. Gor-Tex for example apparently try to limit office sizes to 150.

Much of this ties into the so called Dunbar numbers and to try to ignore it would be to fly in the face of many thousands of years of evolution. Of course there are many things that can be done to allow companies to grow, but I do think there is a limit.

Bujt it seems to me that too often as companies in knowledge based industries choose to scale up there is a tendency to try to commoditise what they do and to try to systematise complex decision making away from what is required – i.e. the application of the human brain. They seem to be applying management models of simply analysing and reducing transaction costs that were useful in a previous industrial but are less relevant in a knowledge based value adding environment.

So I say lets chop the banks into bits not only to avoid the “too big to fail” dilemma, but because they will probably perform better.

No Way BA

The right to withdraw labour, or call a strike in its more pejorative description, is, I believe, a right. The current dispute between the UNITE union and BA has drawn attention to this with commentators weighing in on the rights and wrongs of the actual dispute and the stance of the judiciary in ruling on the legality or otherwise of the ballot. I have views on all of these things but I feel that to focus on these issues about the dispute itself is to actually miss the main point.

Now I don’t want to sound like a class warrior here but what I find most interesting is the fact that BA has sought to simply deny the right of the union to call a strike by combing the procedural aspects of the ballot process for any perceived technical breach. So this is not challenging the subject of the dispute and defending their position what it is is simply wrecking tactics to deny, what I see as, a right.

Of course there will be those that say the rules are there to protect union members (they would say that wouldn’t they) but let us be honest here. Gone are the days of open meetings and “shows of hands” and the extent of coercion and deceit that could occur in those circumstances. No this is another ballot which has shown pretty overwhelming support for a call to withdraw labour. If we were to apply such rigorous standards to our parliamentary elections then I think Gordon Brown would still be in power and we would be looking at a re run off of a flawed and unlawful general election.

No this is, IMHO, a CSR issue. Airlines are often taken to task on their green credentials and too often CSR is reduced to an ecological impact issue. As I have often argued CSR is much much broader than that and organisations need to consider their role, responsibilities and impact as part of society in both the short and longer term.

So, in my book, BA you failed the test. You cannot seek to deny people a fundamental right and claim any Social Responsibility.

Are you really doing it right?

I was in a meeting the other day with and the subject of looking at learning from experience in a business context came up. We talked about some of the approaches that are commonly used and someone mentioned After Action Reviews came up. “Oh yes we do all that.” was the response, but I couldn't help feeling that in the way it was said that what he really meant was “Yes we do that but really its a waste of time.” It seemed to me that maybe it just wasn't being done right for that organisation.

One of the most important lessons I have learned is that attempts to cookie cut solutions and jemmy them into every instance where a similar issue appears to be present are almost always doomed to failure. That's not to say it is not a popular approach with some professional service firms that seek to commoditise “knowledge” and churn out templates of work client to client. Its little more than snake oil sales IMHO.

But that is not to say you can't reuse techniques it just means that doing so is usually much harder to do than you imagine, and that every single instance is unique and needs to respond appropriately to each particular circumstance if you are going to get value from it. By taking the harder route the approach evolves and develops richness.

AAR, Learning Review, Lessons Learned, call it what you will, (and you may well have to change the name to make it palatable) is one such technique and it does have a place in the KM canon but it is by no means easy. David Gurteen made me aware of this article by Nancy Dixon that summarises some of the challenges and has some interesting thoughts on how to approach it.