Back To Basics: KM and Adult Education

OR, "I Am A KM Snob"

Ohhhhhhh, so many things going on this week...apartment hunting in DC (major pain in the ass), trying to figure out Rita Ora's ethnicity....I mean, she could be Albanian like it says on her Wiki page but she looks at least half Black AND she dated a Kardashian and, except for Kourtney, we know how they roll.

What else...I am officially over these "idealist peddlers" harassing folks on the streets of DC to listen to their spiel about whatever organization they're repping.  They could take a few cues from their homeless competitors, namely, say your piece and keep it moving!  'Cause, let me tell you, you are taking your LIFE into your hands steppin' in front me to block my path to the Metro at 6pm to ask me if you can ask me a question - you just did!

Ain't nobody got time for that!

Recently, I attended the Global KM Health Share Fair hosted by  the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative (GHKC).  Since the field of public health is new ground for me in my KM career, I hoped to get some insight into the ways in which KM is is being used in the space to help me be more creative.  Unfortunately, my takeaways weren't quite what I set out to acquire.

For starters, I made the realization that I am indeed a KM snob.  What is that you ask? In a nutshell, if I don't feel that a person adds to my understanding of KM then I'm not interested.  If I don't feel like a networking relationship will help me to grow as a professional or individual then I'm not interested. And, if I don't feel that someones understanding of KM is consistent or in line with mine, then I'm especially not interested.  This might seem ironic - possibly, even moronic, considering that my entire profession is about promoting communication and knowledge sharing, but honestly, that's just where I'm at these days.  Over the course of my nearly 10 year career I have certainly put in my time meditating on KM and sharing my insights on the subject with anyone remotely interested (and several folks who weren't) but too often those conversations seem painfully one-sided (and not just because we likes to talk, which we do). At this stage of my career I need professional relationships that are equally give and take, not ones where I'm giving solely to help them grow.  Yes, it's nice to give but sometimes we wanna be Johnny at Christmas instead of being Santa all the time - milk and cookies ain't the same thing as a Samsung Galaxy 4S, I'm just sayin'.

My second, unexpected realization, was that folks in this space don't seem to do as much sharing as you'd think or expect. There was whining about competition for donors/funding dollars and the need to differentiate themselves from their "competitors" in terms of publishing research and program activity and maybe I'm just being an unsympathetic jackass but it seemed that too many of these folks were operating in a spirit of fear - yeah, I'm getting spiritual - that flies in the face of the work that they are doing. At the end of the day, we are working to save lives and, in some cases, eliminate illnesses in poorer, underserved populations that don't exist within Western nations. There may be competition for the limited resources to achieve these goals but collaboration is free y'all!

Interesting side bar: Considering how fearful some of these organizations are about sharing knowledge and information, sharing fearlessly is a great way to give visibility to those organizations willing to try something different.

Anywho, while I sat there feeling like a fish out of water because everyone else has their history and experience within the space in which they (and now "'I") work to bond over and I'm being a "judgey" KM snob looking down on them for not knowing as much about KM as (I like to think) I do and not trying harder to know more about KM or to develop innovative ways to approach KM I started getting critical of everything: the layout of the room, anything anybody said, what the girl next to me was eating at breakfast (and how).

To be fair, I did make an effort to share my thoughts in small group work sessions but, honestly, no one seemed very interested in what I had to say.  And while I'm willing (in the space of time it takes to write this post) to consider that it's because what I said wasn't particularly interesting, it's common knowledge that everything I have to say is, at a minimum, interesting, so I don't think that was the case.  I think it's because the reflections and contributions of other people, doing exactly the type of work that they do, frustrated by exactly the same challenges they are confronting, and saying exactly the same things they believe (not to mention all of those people who don't like to be aggressive about the truth preferring to sugar coat every bitter pill until they rob it of it's effectiveness), were more compelling than some dude who was, essentially, asking them to reflect upon how their attitudes and perspectives (read: bias) influence how they do their work and the results they see.

Yeah, real-talk, I was that deep.

But I couldn't help it!  Listening to some of the comments just had me on an Adult Ed rager.  I know that I'm probably the only (or one of a few) KM professional who went the route of an Adult Ed course of study, but I truly believe that getting anywhere from the intersection of KM Avenue and Public Health Street demands an understanding of these Adult Ed principles courtesy of Malcolm Knowles (with a little help from the Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative (QOTFC):

• Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
• Develop rapport with your audience and encourage a Socratic method of learning to encourage critical thinking and elicit participation
• Show interest in peoples thoughts, opinions, and feedback
• Provide regular constructive and specific feedback (both positive and negative)
• Encourage use of the range of KM tools and resources available within your organization
• Encourage individual KM activity that reflects folks' needs and helps them to achieve their own goals and objectives 
• Acknowledge folks preferred learning style of each member of your audience/team/staff
• Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
• Understand the needs and skills of your audience before attempting to secure their buy-in or commitment to something
• Facilitate reflective learning opportunities
• Adults are goal oriented
• Provide meaningful learning experiences that are clearly linked to your audiences goals
• Provide relate-able, real-life examples 
• Ask questions that motivate reflection, inquiry and further research.
• Adults are relevancy oriented
• Provide some choice in KM activities and tools so that participation - and learning - reflect the interests and habits of your audience
• Adults are practical
• When making choices about assessments, interventions, and availability of resources and tools, take the time to clearly explain and discuss your rationale
• Be open, honest, and explicit about the impact and usefulness of tasks and activities in which folks are engaged
• Adult learners like to be respected
• Take an interest in your audience
• Acknowledge the wealth of experiences that folks bring to the process
• Regarding folks as colleagues equal (and maybe even superior) in life experience
• Encourage the expression of ideas, reasoning and feedback 
• Secure buy-in at every opportunity

Your organization may have this massive need (directive and/or mandate) to improve how knowledge and information resources are shared but folks' level of participation reflects their individual need, not your wants.  People may put documents in the knowledgebase because they have to (and manage it when told to do so) but active engagement happens when they see relevance to their own work.  If you're not getting this type of engagement stop bitchin' about folks not beating a path to the wonderful system you've gifted them with (clearly, in a vacuum) and start asking them what it will take to make that system and the processes you've established into a tool that meets their needs.

Critical Issues of KM in 2007-08

I've been working on a paper exploring five critical issues of KM from a practitioners perspective and since I haven't had time to blog I figured I might as well pop these out here and see what kinda feedback/responses I get. The paper (and research) is in process so these are just the issues I've decided to focus on - thus far - with comments from my notes (so please don't anyone try to break me down).

My overall goal with this paper is to examine ways in which to shift the field away from being too heavily driven and influenced by the demands of a market that neither fully grasps the concept of knowledge management, nor is completely cognizant of its own KM needs in order to further establish and legitimize KM.

1. A governing body to market and endorse a universal definition of KM and guiding principles for the field.
Because all organizations and their knowledge management challenges are not the same, “rules” for developing and implementing KM strategies are superfluous. However, “guiding principles” establish a set of standards for the field; illustrate the values of KM to which practitioners should aspire; and, provide organizations with an introduction to the scope and scale of KM.

2. Eschew KM as “business as usual” in favor of “business by design”
Efforts to sell KM as a quantifiable, measurable and replicable practice, producing proven, predictable results are misspent and wasted often resulting in a failure to launch any (worthwhile) strategy at all. Rather, the focus should first be placed on “producing a spectacular solution” that addresses the organizations need and then determining ways of measuring impact and fiscal value.

3. Minimize the continued emphasis on IT
Though IT may offer to provide the quantifiable, measurable and replicable solutions that speak to business “traditionalists”, in the knowledge economy innovation, not technology, is the means by which market advantage and increased profits are achieved. While KM strategies can be made more efficient and effective with an investment in the right technological tools, they are made successful with an investment in the right people development tools.

4. Expand the concept of knowledge workers
Organizations that aspire to become true thought leaders need to redefine internal business roles and relationships to see all employees as knowledge workers and organizational talent, removing the talent “class” ceiling. All employees have knowledge that is valuable to the organization. Certainly, higher value is associated to employees who require less development and management, but the question to be asked by organizations needs to be, ‘How how are we developing all of our talent resources?’ Particularly, since employees with a greater awareness of their higher value and its marketability are typically the first to leave in search of greener pastures. Conversely, talent requiring more development and management are more likely to aspire to greater things when the ceiling is removed.

5. Branding KM
There are many reasons KM initiatives fail to have the desired impact or simply fail altogether – even those bolstered by considerable executive, financial, and technological support. One of the most common reasons is that most, if not all, KM strategies are developed purely from the perspective of the organization’s self-interest and rarely, if ever, take into consideration the employee’s perspective, despite the fact that the initiative’s success hinges upon their collective buy-in and participation. Such strategies fail because they attempt only to answer the question, “what’s in it for me” and not, “what’s in it for them”.

Branding knowledge management is an attempt to redress this disparity through the strategic application of marketing techniques and learning tools that enable organizations to promote the relevance of KM to an individual’s role while firmly establishing the value and criticality of KM to the organization.

Laborious Thoughts: Sleep, pee, eat, watch 24, repeat

Over the Labor Day holiday I was anything but laborious, enjoying a lazy weekend of sleeping, snacking, napping, and playing solitaire on my laptop while binging on Seasons 1, 2, and 3 of 24. I didn't get into the show when it first aired, but having the opportunity to watch it straight through from the beginning, I have to say I'm hooked. I'm only on Season 3, disc 5 so I don't know what happens from this point on, but I have to say that Sherri Palmer has become my favorite love-to-hate character.

Anyway, I've finally broken free of my "sleep-pee-eat-watch 24" cycle to write this blog on reruitment and retention (R&R), hallelujah!

For the last few weeks, I've been fascinated with the impact of KM on R&R and exploring the influence of the KM function in how organizations acquire and develop knowledge - not just in knowledge capture and delivery.

It occurs to me that for most organizations, KM is utilized primarily as a loss prevention mechanism, with the intention of preventing as little information from escaping the organization as possible. I've read articles, online discussions and threads that focus on the need to capture critical knowledge and information in an employee's exit interview (and in the days/weeks/months leading up to the exit) and the role of KM in those efforts (unfortunately, I didn't think to grab links to those sites), but I've yet to read any literature that describes the potential benefits of KM as a recruitment tool.

In today's increasingly tech-savvy economy too many companies have become tech-lazy. HR recruitment functions have been relegated to automated systems that identify candidates through stringent keyword filters based on narrowly defined job descriptions that, often, HR representatives themselves don't understand. Recruitment and selection for most companies is a joke - I say this as someone who, just four or five years ago participated in campus and city job fairs as an exiting college student only to hear from each and every recruiter "check our website for jobs and submit your resume online". Sometimes they took a hard copy of your resume, gave you a card, and discussed your career goals, but always they sent you online, even though I'm pretty sure every student at those fairs had already been online and was standing in line to get a job - not the run around. Unfortunately, talking to recent graduates and experienced job seekers as a recruiter I hear the same stories today.

How do organizations improve their recruitment strategies? Trust me, it ain't with Monster! You need a clear grasp of the organization's long-term strategic direction and a firm understanding of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that will get you there, that's KM baby! It's not just about what you know, but what you need to know to get where you're trying to go.

As to retention, once you've captured the knowledge and information you're after, and let's say, for arguments sake, that you even got a lock on some of that difficult to acquire tacit knowledge - what then is the incentive to retain the individual(s) who provided the knowledge? I mean, I know what the theoretical textbook response might be ("knowledge development is a continual process, and 'high producers' have value beyond what they may share or contribute at any one point in time"), but let's be honest - do we really believe that the leadership in most companies today has achieved that level of awareness? Do we accept that organizational leaders are progressive and/or focused enough to see any individual employees value beyond either the job description or their (the organizational leaders') perception of an employee's (potential) skills, ability and knowledge?

Knowledge management needs to inform the Training & Development function, just as much as it does recruiting; taking the lead in influencing the cycle of knowledge dissemination and innovation. All too often, KM professionals ask, "How do you get people to participate in the knowledge sharing process?" You do it by integrating KM into an organization's overall development strategy.

When I sketched out my very first graphical representation of KM as a college Junior, I envisioned it existing at the intersection of IT, HRD (Training, Education, and Development), and HRM (Selection and Recruitment, Placement, Benefits and Compensation Administration). Over time, within the context of an all-out guerilla KM strategy, I've pondered the subsumption of these functions by knowledge management. Perhaps this concept is a bit premature given that so many organization have such limited awareness (if any at all) of KM, but I think that with increased awareness and adoption, the merger of these functional areas will create a powerful vehicle for creating fundamental changes in how organizations acquire, capture, manage, and leverage knowledge and human resources.