Tag Archives: Peer Assist

The future cannot be known, it can only be imagined.

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Little did I know when I wrote this title how accurate it would prove.

Having “put pen to paper” on my final client report and recommendation mid January, I was hit by the devastating event of my mother passing.

The following weeks have proved traumatic to say the least and taken me time to recover!

Drop everything, we need you!

It’s mid October and I get a message from a former client requesting my help to lead the Lessons Learned component of the inaugural UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF) conference:

… I would like to ask if you might still have availability and interest. The event is Nov 20 to 24!

UK Caribbean Infrastructure Fund (UKCIF), which provided funding for the Conference, is a £350 million grant-funded programme from the UK Government to build climate-resilient, inclusive infrastructure and boost economic growth in the Caribbean.

Having stepped back from consulting to focus on an expanding business interest I wasn’t initially enthused. The timetable was absurdly tight. I had less than a month to develop an agenda to cover the first couple of days for a disparate group of stakeholders. And, I would have to get the 60+ representatives from 13 countries to prepare the story of their project in advance then to create an environment that promulgated the sharing and adoption of lessons from major infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. Here’s the initial brief:

“The Lessons Learned Workshops are designed to provide a platform for participants from diverse sectors and countries to share and extract valuable insights from the implementation of their projects. The primary objective is to facilitate effective knowledge exchange at sector, country, project, and cross-cutting thematic levels.
Additionally, the workshops aim to equip participants with the skills to independently conduct lessons learned sessions within their respective teams upon returning to the execution of the project.”

Additionally, I would have to do all of this under the watchful eye of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the sponsors.

BUT!

I love the Caribbean, I’d never been to St Vincent (host country), I liked and trusted the person I’d be working most closely with, and it felt like the ultimate challenge; an opportunity to leave a legacy footprint drawing on 50 years of international assignments.

So, I said yes and sent off a provisional outline agenda / proposal in response to their terms of reference.

Agreeing the agenda

This was never going to be easy; getting everyone on the same page in 3 weeks while creating materials for the event, developing pre event ‘homework’ tasks and producing a short “welcome to the event” video for the delegates.

Ahead of the video production we gathered virtually for a stakeholder briefing. I began by asking each to identify what a successful event might look like. I find it important (assuming everyone is willing to work colllaboratively) to get an understanding of the motivations of those who have most to gain/lose from an intervention. And if there are widely differing opinions then that too is informative.

Flights booked, hotel reserved and taxi sorted for journey to LHR I set about the task of creating an agenda and the pre event ‘homework’. Here’s what I asked the delegates to do:

Getting started

My challenge: to strike an effective balance between experiential learning and data collection. I wanted delegates to take away a set of tools “Knowledge Products” that they might use to improve the way they undertake major infrastructure projects while concurrently identifying a set of tangible lessons that could be applied from day one.

Our Day One objective:

Today is about surfacing learnings already identified, arriving at a shared understanding of the term lessons learned, the importance of conducting Lessons Learned processes and developing a general understanding of what critical knowledge looks like for each project.

Day One takeaways

Having encouraged the delegates to reflect on what struck them during the day this stood out:

And these keywords emerged:

Dress: Elegantly Casual

At events such as these it’s often the post activitiy discussions that lay the foundations for future collaboration. St Vincent proved to be an excellent host with the Prime Minister / UK High Commissioner’s reception a particular highlight.

On previous visits to the Caribbean I’ve always admired how people dress for formal gatherings and this was no exception aided no doubt by the suggested dress code on the invitation.

And an impromptu evening at a local fish bar spawned new friendships; what’s not to like about these offerings?

Keeping the momentum going

After a short recap, I set out our aims for Day Two:

As Day One surfaced several lessons while providing a good theoretical underpinning, so Day Two will focus on practical application, capacity
building and the use of different tools for capturing and incorporating lessons, based on Active UKCIF projects.

We used a variety of techniques to identify and make use of the lessons that emerged during the day.

The Peer Assist session was enthusiastically adopted and a raft of excellent suggestions surfaced.

Here’s what the various projects said about the discussions:

“The support was overwhelming, one point, verify the condition of the equipment being provided by the contractor before engaging with them”

“Issues were around implementation. The conversation was amazing; it came up with a number of things we needed to focus on including the establishment of a technical committee the project team might reach out to for advice”

“We had a very productive discussion. Three areas; Develop a negotiation strategy and team ahead of the award; negotiate on big tickets items and consider scope reduction to deliver cost savings; look at methods that are more familiar to contractors to ensure bids are lower.”

“Issue was around set up and procurement of resources. One suggestion, to look at what can be done by the client to mitigate the lack of resources”

And finally

The event underpinned the power of story. Here’s a powerful example from the Day One project presentations:

Port Project: Anticipating the unexpected!

It was anticipated that local aggregates would be used for the project, but local materials did not meet the requirements when tested. So, the decision was taken to import aggregates, but the source country was known to have these African Giant snails. The decision-making around this issue took many months and resulted in a delay, but it was necessary to have the Biosecurity plans to prevent, eradicate or contain any invasive species.

I could not have chosen a better location or group for a swansong event. There is a warmth and generosity of spirit among the people of the Caribbean (the climate and environment help) and humour plays an important role in establishing the right environment for people to share.

We surfaced a number of themes to work on when undertaking major infrastructure projects.

Thank you St Vincent and CDB.

Stand up KM: reflections on Asian conferences, masterclasses & Chinese Bullfrogs

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It’s been a while!  But as those who look at my postings elsewhere will know I’ve been fully occupied with the launch of The KM Cookbook which ‘hit the stands’ last Friday.

A few month’s back I was in Asia (KL and HK – before events took a turn for the worse) and asked to write my reflections for Information Professional.  What follows is the full version of the truncated article that appears in the July / August edition.

Flying, food and fun!

Bottom: the author at dinner with Rupert Lescott (Dubai), John Hovell (Washington) and Janice Record (Hong Kong); top left, Patrick Lambe in action; and top right, Stand Up KM.

Q) What do these photos have in common? A) They were all taken at places I’ve been in the last few months sharing stories from the KM Cookbook.

From London to Lisbon, Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, people and organisations are actively engaged in knowledge management related activities.

And at each of the events there were a few stand out moments / presentations. Here’s a focus on Asia.

Asian adventures

In Kuala Lumpur for a Masterclass (my 4th) at the International Islamic University of Malaysia I was looking forward to teaming up with Straits Knowledge and Patrick Lambe. As organisers of the KM Exchange in KL they had assembled a large crowd from across South East Asia for a share and learn day which I had the pleasure of kicking off.

This Peer Assist technique stood out:

  • A session with a panel (I was a member) judging the most innovative solution to a set of “KM Challenges’ posed by pre-selected members of the audience (one was a regulatory organisation).

Some of the delegates working through the “before, during and after” of a KM Audit

The following day’s Masterclass on the KM Cookbook and ISO 30401 was a delight once I’d shifted location and rearranged the furniture to create the collaborative workspace environment an interactive event needs.

The “Are you audit ready?” session was lively with those delegates from a regulatory / quality background particularly prominent and willing to help the group come up with a set of ground rules to prepare for a potential future KM Standards audit.

So, to Hong Kong (officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) for another Masterclass (run jointly with Eric Hunter and hosted by Janice Record Director of Knowledge at DLA Piper) and two sessions at the KM Asia event.

KM Asia was less well attended than KM Exchange. At one point, I was wondering if there were going to be more speakers than delegates, reflecting an apparent disinterest in the term KM. There were few local presentations and limited audience interaction.

Its Day Two, I am leading a mid-morning session on ISO KM Standards 30401 following presentations by Patrick Lambe, Hank Malik and I. I invite the audience to stand up and then find someone they’ve not met. We all continue to stand up for the rest of the 30-minute session hence Patrick’s description of it as “Stand Up KM.”

I penned this tweet as I left Hong Kong for London:

“Great way to end what has been a fascinating couple of weeks in Asia: Breakfast with Larry Campbell. While Knowledge Management as a title is not de rigueur in HK it was nice to note the activity is still very much alive in the way organisations use data, precedent and knowledge of their people.”

The working out Loud dilemma

It was notable that though presenters talked about “Working out Loud”, very few shared their reflections publicly and even fewer used Twitter. I’ve written much on this in the past. It’s a challenge working cross borders and culture to find a mechanism that works for all.

In the flippant “Stand Up KM” paragraph I noted how it’s Day Two before the delegates are encouraged to fully participate.   And that only worked when I encouraged people to change seats and wandered around the audience with a microphone inviting them to pass it onto others.

And finally – moments of laughter (eventually)

For many years when travelling east I like to get away from it all. Often it’s at Silvermine Bay on Lantau Island Hong Kong. 30-minutes from the airport it’s a world away from the bustle of Central but 40 minutes by fast ferry.

I arrived from KL early Saturday evening, took an early snack to get a peaceful night ahead of a busy week. As darkness fell I switched of the AC and opened the windows to let the sea breeze in. A mistake!

Picture by https://www.flickr.com/people/63048706@N06

There was a deafening sound rather like whales calling each other outside the window.

My curiosity stirred, I dressed and went in search of the source. I traced the noise to the drains and water courses that run into the sea.

The culprit, Giant Chinese Bullfrogs seeking a mate! Note to self: don’t go to a beach hotel in Silvermine in April!

 

 

AI driven expertise & profiling: hype, hope or déjà vu?

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May was a busy month. Apart from helping establish then launch a real estate and mortgage business (Bees Homes) I was in Lisboa for Social Now and London for KM Legal UK.

I attended both in the expectation of learning more about the onrush of Artificial Intelligence and its implications for the Knowledge Management profession.

Specifically, I wanted to see how the encouragingly styled Talent and Knowledge Matching / Profiling systems might tackle the challenges of knowledge loss when people depart, of onboarding when people arrive and identifying / ranking expertise that might otherwise be opaque when pulling together teams.

It’s not a new topic: back in the late 90’s I was Business & Strategy Advisor to Sopheon PLC when we acquired Organik (a technology for identifying expertise) and built systems for US Insurers looking to establish the best teams for clients based upon expertise. We never cracked it even though we knew what the issues were (usually motivation)!

Seeking answers at SocialNow Lisboa while Keynote speaker Ellen Trude watches.

Armed with a list of ‘use cases’ I’d worked on with Martin White I set off in search of answers to these questions from both vendors and KM practitioners?

  • Onboarding: A new employee with many years of highly relevant experience joins the firm. How long will it be before their experience is ranked at the same level as their predecessors?
  • Legal: Is the profiling process compatible with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation? The thoughts of the Information Commissioner on this are worth a look. Profiling & Automated Decision Making
  • Functionality: Do they offer the ability to present a list of people ranked by expertise?
  • Language: In multinational companies where it is especially difficult to know all the experts, how does the vendor coppe with the fact that documents, meetings and social media traffic will be in local languages?
  • Chinese Walls: How does the application cope with expertise gained on projects that are secure, a common issue in law, finance and R&D where walls need to be erected to prevent commercial information being divulged>
  • Testing: What User Testing is undertaken with a client before signing a contract to verify that the profiling system works?

So, what did I discover? Thierry de Bailllon in his closing Keynote put it very succinctly but with a caveat:

Embrace or die? 88% of technologies already include AI.

Self reinforcing bias?

it’s not Enterprise Social Networks (ESN)!

This Twitter exchange between Ana Neves and Luis Suarez prompted by a question I posed of the Workplace (Facebook at Work) team following their presentation is revealing:

May 12 there’s been a few questions about expertise location 2017 I don’t remember that being the case in previous years #SocialNow

May 12 Well, I think people are starting to understand how critical it is to know who is who within the org beyond just content, right?

Replying to totally! It surprises me it took so long. It’s amazing the role #ESN can have in unveiling that expertise #SocialNow

On the surface the case for ESN is compelling. Yet the majority of vendors at SocialNow focus on information exchange and conversation rather than the capturing and cataloguing of it. One,@mangoappsinc, had a neat tool (they won the “coolest app” prize) with the ability to upgrade comments from threaded discussions and posts to create ranked knowledge resources from the mass of information and conversation.

So, ESN can show who has answered what question, conduct searches across conversations and in many cases act as a project management tool, the new Facebook at Work (Workplace) now allows the creation of documents for example.

Provided the application is linked to HR systems it is possible to retrieve profiles and see what expertise an individual might have. As one vendor (@OrangeTrail showcasing Facebook at Work)) who uses bots to generate responses put it:

‘Questions’ is the key to find experts as people don’t keep profiles updated.

I concur and they are great facilitation platforms though with advanced features that will suffice for many. Yet I left Lisboa though feeling organisations will need to rely on assisted search for some time if they want to take a deep dive into expertise

know what you don’t know

Peer Assist “Problems” for discussion

So onto London and KM Legal UK. An interesting Day One ended with a psuedo Peer Assist in which AI was raised a lot.

One observation (facilitation tip): the session failed to commit the ‘owner’ of the problem to action so as a result the feedback loop to plenary became a series of “we said this.”

Again, as in previous years I felt the focus was on operational tools and techniques which means that KIM Professionals in Legal are more at risk from the onrush of technology.

It reminded me of the issue Librarians faced with the arrival of end user search in the mid 90’s which finished their monopoly of being the people who found stuff in organisations.

Day Two took a deeper dive into technology and its potential impact.

AI in Legal today

This slide sets out where AI is making a difference in Legal.

I tweeted having heard Cliff Fluet’s excellent presentation:

Paralegals beware. AI is coming. Adapt or die?

And I questioned:

How wide is scope of AI? More than Doc Analysis / Creation. Opportunity to broaden knowledge base

As yet no one had focused on expertise and profiling so when one presenter cited the case where a newly arrived CEO asked the Head of HR / Talent Management to let him have profiles / competencies of the staff using their system it got my attention.

I asked whether the results the HR head gave the CEO inferred a level of expertise. It didn’t which got thinking that if the data set is incomplete and the issue of self reinforcing bias is not addressed then over reliance on one source for identifying ‘experts’ is dangerous. Imagine your career prospects if for whatever reason your name wasn’t on the ‘expert’ list given to the CEO?

and finally

So where do I see the state of expertise and profiling systems? Patchy!

Yes there are certainly companies who ‘get it’ but can they do it?

I am indebted here to Martin White who in an excellent report “People and expertise seeking – an overview” summarises the predicament thus:

The most important lesson learned is the need for an expertise location strategy that is linked into HR processes, knowledge management, training, job appraisals and social media development. Finding people with expertise is not a ‘search problem’.  Good search tools can certainly help but without attention being paid to profile quality (even if other types of content are being searched) and a commitment by employees to share their knowledge expertise discovery will not be as successful as anticipated or required.

My takeaways:

  • KIM professionals need a clear strategy (working in partnership with other stakeholders such as HR and IT) and be clear on the questions being solved by any system;
  • They need to be clear what they are getting, what’s missing and how it mitigates the potential for self reinforcing bias when they enter discussions with vendors around automating expertise seeking and profiling;
  • They need to recognise the importance of their role in facilitating the adoption of such systems and accept this is just a part of a portfolio of approaches of identifying, capturing and retaining expertise;
  • They need to be clear what critical knowledge actually is in their organisation and who is likely to have it in order to assess the veracity of the results of any pilot;
  • It doesn’t matter what solution you adopt, if your environment is not conducive to the sharing of expertise and people don’t see the value in it then save the money; and
  • In any event you cannot capture everything people know; we learn and share through stories (failures rather than successes) and those often remain hidden.

In a world of High Value Work the case for informed and empowered Knowledge Workers is becoming stronger

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Whether Lisboa, London or Tehran the pace of change is gathering apace with increased pressure for improved performance, greater efficiency and reduced risk.

Over the last couple of months I have been working in all three of the above capitals. It has been a priviledge and an eye opener: Iran is eagerly awaiting ratification of the Geneva deal and Tehran is awash with foreign companies looking to position themselves post sanctions; in Lisboa they are feeling the effects of a ‘drawn’ election and in unchartered territory over the formation of a new government and whether to continue with a programme of austerity and; in London there is considerable angst about the impact of cheap Chinese steel on an already depressed commodity market and on local communities.

In each of these capitals the role and standing of the ‘Knowledge Worker‘ is different:

  • In Lisboa, many young innovative Knowledge Workers have felt the full force of the austerity programme and fled the country rather than face an uncertain future while the cadre of secure middle managers hang onto their jobs.
  • In London, consolidation (especially in the legal sector) is growing and the push to outsource a core part of the UK Government’s drive to reduce the role of the state. Further afield UK Manufacturing continues to be battered by cheaper cost centre imports with inevitable plant closures.
  • In Tehran, as they face an openiing up of their market place and an influx of of overseas competition, local knowledge is becoming much in demand and creating a sense of eager anticipation in a workforce that has traditionally sought overseas postings as a way of enhancing their knowledge and careers.

What are the implications? 

The role of the informed knowledge worker is going to become more critical and they will need to move up the value chain in order to do so!

If you have not already done so I’d encourage you to look at a recent blog post by Andrew Curry of the Futures Company. The Futures Company has been collaborating with the Association of Finnish Work for more than eighteen months on the idea of “High Value Work”. They define this as work that is productive (it creates new value); that is durable (it creates value over time); and work that is inclusive (it spreads value beyond the business — or the C-suite. This combination, based on the emerging post-crisis literature, also creates work that is meaningful, for employees and customers. They identify four routes to acheiving it:

These are service innovation, based on a full understanding of the customer and their needs; value in authenticity, based on on a full understanding of cultural context; resource innovation, based on a full understanding of material flows; and rich knowledge, based on a full understanding of the technical knowledge held inside the organisation and a method to capture and codify it.

High value businesses combine these; for example, mastery of resource innovation often creates new technical capabilities that lead to new forms of rich knowledge.

Finland is a great example of a country that is highly technological, expensive with a great education system. That it commissioned the work is unsurprising and the findings underpin the growing realisation across many organisations that people matter, are transient in nature and that processes need to be in place to recognise that.

The future role of the Knowledge Worker?

Much of my recent work has been about helping organisations to recognise that if Knowledge Management is to have value above its traditional tactical operational bias there has to be a way of measuring the output (the Intellectual Property ‘IP’ or Knowledge Assets) that is created as a result of the activity.  And generating Knowledge Assets is reliant on empowered and stimulated people. As Andrew’s findings suggest ‘Increasingly business research is finding that people drive value.’

Last Friday I hosted a Peer Assist with a group of senior HR thought leaders on People Stimulation an idea being promulgated by Dr Abdelaziz Mustafa of the Islamic Development Bank Group. A very experienced HR Director and core member of the Association of Development Agencies HR Forum he argues the need of a work enviornment that recognises and stimulates:

  • Human Imagination
  • Individual Discretionary Behavior
  • Deeply Embedded Interests
  • Self-Knowledge, Self-Accountability and Self-Development
  • The One Person Difference
  • T.E.A.M Culture
  • Happiness at Work

While to many this may seem axiomatic it is indicative of the shifting thinking around the way organisations manage and nurture today’s and tomorrow’s Knowledge Workers.

And finally

On Monday I was at Chiswick for the first meeting of the reconstituted BSI KM Standards Committee established to provide inter alia the UK’s input into the global ISO debate on the need for standards for Knowledge Management. While hugely encouraging that KM is now being more formally recognised it was instructive to see how slowly the wheel of change turns.

Finally if I needed validation of the value of embedding effective Knowledge Management techniques I got it last night in an exchange with a Chinese mentee. In discussion over the knowledge capture interviews I’d helped him to conduct for the charity I am involved with. He said:

‘It is interesting how much good ‘after taste’ after the previous interview techniques and knowlege managemnet tools…conducted a few interviews for my research using the time line map, very effective tool!’

I have asked him to write a guest blog to reflect on some of the knowledge capture techniques we used. Watch this space!

‘…there’s zero collaboration or institutional knowledge’: learning lessons from winning teams

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So says Paul Azinger, the last US Captain to win the Ryder Cup, in the aftermath of the 2014 event and the accompanying soul searching. He implicitly acknowledges the importance of building on what ‘you’ know as an institution if you are to be successful.  This is what he said:

A big difference between us and them is that Europe always has a succession plan. McGinley was surrounded by past captains and future captains, and they all reap the benefits. We’re lone rangers as far as captains go. Nobody knows what we’ve done in the past. There’s zero collaboration or institutional knowledge.

 

why Team Europe’s victory is relevant to business

Why is the outcome of a biennial golf match of interest to lawyers and others who work in highly rewarded and individualistic roles? Because the players are all ‘Rock Stars’ in their own right who come together sporadically to play (and win) against their peer group.

What stands out about the European approach? Meticulous planning, attention to detail, clarity over roles before, during and after each Ryder Cup match and a willingness to acknowledge that no one player is bigger than the team.  Business is no different relying on a collaborative team approach and a set of shared values.

In October 2012 Apple CEO Tim Cook reshuffled his team, this is how it was reported in a Bloomberg Business Week interview:

“The key in the change that you’re referencing is my deep belief that collaboration in essential for innovation – and I didn’t just start believing that. I’ve always believed that,” said Cook. “It’s always been a core belief at Apple. Steve very deeply believed in this.”

Cook said that he wanted to ensure that Apple takes its already “enormous” level of collaboration even higher. “There are many things. But the one thing we do, which I think no one else does, is integrate hardware, software, and services in such a way that most consumers begin to not differentiate anymore.”

“You have to be an A-plus at collaboration,” Cook continued. “And so the changes that we made get us to a whole new level of collaboration.”

Here’s how commentator Kristine Kern (@kristinekern) of the Table Group saw this move:

Let’s be clear: Ousting a rock star from your team — or asking them to change their ways — is not always something you can do. But it’s something you should consider. “Like most things, it’s not black and white,” Kern concludes. “Organizational health requires rock stars do both stellar and healthy work. Which shouldn’t be a problem: Most true rock stars rise to a challenge. Just don’t be afraid to demand it.”

why shared values matter

Some time ago I was the Business & Strategy Advisor to an Anglo-Dutch company in the professional services / software business. It was around the dotcom boom period when investors were falling over themselves to back the next hot opportunity. Company valuations were bizarre: at one point on revenues of $20m we had a market cap that was 40 times bigger. Our AIM share price went from £1.25 to £16+. It was easy to be profligate, we weren’t and I take personal pride in having taken the lead on travel budgets and integrating the acquisitions we made.

As we grew (acquiring first a US firm, then a German one) and shifted our centre of operations (and development) from Europe to the USA the Executive Management team all recognized the importance of having a set of values and a structure that could transcend global operations while recognizing cultural nuances peculiar to the location of each office.

What might go down well as a motivational incentive in Denver would need tweaking to be embraced in Maastricht let alone in Guildford. We needed a framing device that everyone in the business could buy into and in the management’s case the cojones to ‘get with the programme’. So we organised a cross company group of all levels to work through what they wanted out of the business – how they wanted to be treated as employees and in most cases, shareholders.

To this day I can remember the constituent parts:

  • a clear vision understood by all
  • a meritocracy that rewarded success and took action on poor performance
  • inspiring and visible leadership
  • a place that was fun to work where you could pick up the phone to anyone.

We had 6 locations and office sizes ranged from 12-50.  We had a central sales/CRM system everyone used and we had quarterly conference calls with the management team where people could ask what they wanted. Board meetings rotated around the various offices, one was virtual the next in situ. When tough decisions were required we were clear about why they were being taken and communicated that.

Of course technology and process played a role, the corporate intranet was a good information source. We conducted Peer Assists, After Action Reviews; we fed our learnings back into the development process and we used what we learned to reengineer the business around the Stage-Gate New Product Development Process.

The going got tough, people got let go, yet Sopheon survived and today has an award winning software, Accolade, with embedded Knowledge deployed in the innovation and new product departments across hundreds of organisations globally.

so what

Whether business or sport, people respond to good leaders who provide guidance and clarity, hold people to account for poor performance and recognize/reward exceptional performance. They are also good at making the right decision and leading teams through implementation by inspiration, perspiration and collaboration. I’m sure those will feature prominently when Captain McGinley releases the inevitable ‘Building a winning Ryder Cup Team’, book.

Good decisions are informed by good knowledge: of clients, of markets and of resources. Knowledge Management when performed well becomes ingrained behaviour and Knowledge Sharing is a core element.

and finally

I am indebted to Euan Semple (who talks and writes common sense) for my summary. Taken from his excellent tome ‘Organisations Don’t Tweet, People Do‘ Euan argues that in today’s interconnected world it is increasingly important to be seen to add value and to be seen to be knowledgeable and willing to share that knowledge. He goes further:

In the old days ‘knowledge is power’ used to mean holding on to it and only giving it out judiciously to certain people. In an Internet world there is no point in having knowledge if people don’t know you have it, and if you are not prepared to share it. Web tools enable more knowledge to flow more readily around your organisation. Taking part in this process is going to be more obviously a part of being more productive than ever before. Being able and willing to share your knowledge will become a key business skill.

Collaboration is the mechanism by which Knowledge is often shared. It is something Apple and the US Ryder Cup designate (a forecast from me – Azinger to be the US Captain in 2016) recognise as being a core ingredient for a successful venture. So should you!