Tag Archives: Jane McKenzie

KMUK 12: Olympics, KM and the Mexican Wave

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Ahead of the KMUK conference in London that Professor Jane Mckenzie and I chaired we thought we’d approach some of the speakers for their observations on knowledge management by posing a set of ‘vox pop’ questions.

It being 2012 and with the London Olympics on the horizon we decided to ask:

Using an Olympic analogy how would you describe what you do to others?

Their replies were illuminating. Here is a sample:

I help people prepare for the journey and then support them. Middle distance runners because change is about sustainability. Becoming part of the crowd clapping and applauding. I’d really love to be the Mexican wave.

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My Olympian role is to facilitate, lead and mentor others to perform better in whatever game they enter for.

I am an Ambassador, generating excitement and enthusiasm for the event. I am a connector bringing people together.

I see myself as the Coxswain in a community of oarsmen. They have to get things moving, but my job is to keep the enthusiasm and the momentum for sharing knowledge going.

I would say the `on-boarding team coordinator` role. Helping team members come on board, ensuring they all the right information they need to adjust well to the Olympic park, including who to talk to if they have problems, offering the right agendas and maps that could be useful, the lessons learnt from past Olympic Games that could help them and of course organising the social events and the best places to eat!

A field hockey player. It’s a fast team sport where you have to pay attention all the time, everyone gets to play in it, and you respect each others roles and capabilities and work together to achieve success from different angles.

Sebastian Coe – My job is winning the business over to KM Going out and getting engagement and then when they are committed handing over to the team to deliver it. We have a team of torch bearers who keep the energy going and raise awareness of what is happening and the central team are there to coach. We also have people in the K and IS team who keep the olympic equipment in tip top condition

One of the respondents also told us that as Olympic Learning Legacy Partners they are responsible for sharing key lessons in transport, technology and the built environment. In the light of the recent issues on London’s tube system, I am looking forward to that presentation.

What strikes me from these responses (drawn from practitioners across three continents) is how accurately they reflect the variety of skills required by someone fulfilling a knowledge management role which is perhaps why so few people today seem to have KM in their job title.

I will be posting more in due course in the run up to the event and responses to questions such as:

What technique have you found most effective for bringing about change in the way people work/respond?

‘…it can be quite lonely at times’ I reflections from Henley KM’ers

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‘Dear John, I never imagined 10 years ago the true impact of knowledge. The bureaucracies of the paper world are gone and communities are what deliver value at a local and a global level.  All my knowledge of technology was of only passing value. The networking skills are what are helping me thrive.’

Just one of the many postcards sent back from the future (2020) to today by the delegates at Henley Business School’s 12th meeting of their KM Forum. Putting learning at the heart of the organisation was the theme of the annual two day retreat and I was there running a Sparknow timeline exhibit that featured highlights of the evolving role of the ‘knowledge manager’ research we’ve carried out.  More of that in a future post.

This post is about the exhibit and how postcards were used as a technique to develop a delegate view on the changing environment and role of a ‘knowledge manager’.

why a postcard?

In many ways the postcard serves a powerful metaphoric role for key dimensions of knowledge management and of time:

  • It is personal/private but at the same time both shareable and publishable via a noticeboard.
  • It maintains its quality of having been individually authored, so the link to the originator stays explicit.
  • It is light, compact, and highly portable.
  • It is asynchronous, but interactive and annotatable
  • It is an ideal vehicle for messaging
  • It is time saving for the author.
  • It is an early form of multimedia, allowing an almost infinite range of attached images

Sparknow’s research into the use of postcards goes back over a decade. Victoria Ward and Professor Clive Holtham of Cass Business School and others from Sparknow wrote about the uses of the postcard in re-forming organisational time, place and meaning” for the ‘In search of time’ conference, held in Palermo in 2003. A copy of that paper and one presented in 2010 on slow knowledge can be found here.

why a timeline?

Our experience suggests people respond best when they are asked to situate comments against a time and place (and often an object or event) as a backdrop.

postcards and time lines as a combination.

The visual impact of a series of postcards on a timeline is visually compelling.

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materials for the timeline

By putting up background material for the three focus points on the timeline (2002 > 2012 > 2020) we were able to provide context for the postcards people were writing; to get them thinking back from 2020 to today and then from today to 2002. We were particularly grateful to Andrew Curry and The Futures Company for letting us reference their work. Andrew wrote an interesting and thought provoking blog to accompany The World in 2020 publication we drew on to design the exhibit.

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looking back from 2020

the questions posed were:

Imagine you are writing back to someone in 2012 from 2020 (or to 2002 from 2012). Tell them:

  • about your daily life
  • what’s changed about your job as a ‘knowledge manager’ and the environment in which you work
  • what kit and tools are different now from then.

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looking back to 2002

and the outcomes

More than 25% of the delegates completed a postcard.  Each revealed something about the writer and their vision of the world.

A couple of revealing postcards from today back to 2002

You’re still in KM.  And for a while it’s even in your job title.  You do a lot of technology.  You spend a lot of time in “programmes” and service development, development in general, is project-based rather than continuous.  The KIM profession is government recognised, but frequently struggles to find direction and leadership.

Hello, we’ve almost forgotten how to pick up the phone or walk over to speak to people.  We spend a lot of time sending “texts” from our phones and reading about our friends’ activities from their “electronic” Facebook page.  It can be quite lonely at times.

Many felt strongly that being networked will be one of the key differentiators in 2020; that technological advances will continue to enhance our ability to work wherever and whenever we want to but that time savings (to enjoy more leisure) is a forlorn aspiration.

Few saw the ‘knowledge manager’ title as being around in 2020, it being best illustrated by this:

The Knowledge Manager is extinct. Culture and behaviors of the knowledge manager are embedded into all employees as the modus operandi.

though another said in 2020:

I am working as an advisor, consultant, advocate, counselor, co-creator. I work to Board level leadership but I roam The Organization, working to improve colleagues’ personal and group knowledge management.

Technology has simply become the channel, its just the ‘thing’.

a great piece of advice:

Try to write letters as much as possible because otherwise your handwriting will get even worse.

what would I do differently next time?

Actually not too much though I’d probably have more people versed in the material, able to explain the significance of the dates to ‘visitors’ to the exhibit. And I’d make sure I had enough people around to help put up an 18 foot poster when I arrived at the venue.