I saw this Youtube video called "The Power of Words" through Elsua's Thinking outside the inbox blog. I loved it so much that I'm posting it here. It's touching, like Elsua says, and it's a great example of doing small things with big impact. Only two minutes short, but very impressive.
I read somewhere that Generation Y wants to do meaningful work and then I wondered: Who doesn’t? Don’t we all want to contribute to something bigger, know why we do the work we do? Dan Ariely confirms my feelings in his book “The Upside of Irrationality”. It is his second book about our irrational behavior - his first book was titled “Predictably Irrational”, which I highly recommend to read. Ariely is a behavioral economist who carries out a lot of experiments, usually among MIT students. In this book many experiments are related to work, which is a topic I’m interested in (in case you haven’t noticed). He carries out a few experiments about being motivated to do meaningful work or the opposite, losing motivation when the work is not meaningful. If the work of the students is destroyed in the experiment, they work less hard and are less motivated. This sounds obvious because it is so clear, but there are in the workplace less obvious examples that still can be very demotivating.
I had to think about a “Jurisdictional scan” that I had to write in my former job at one of the Ontario Ministries. It’s one of those documents that take a lot of time and I was very sure that it was useless and would only end up in a drawer (or as file in the document management system). Senior staff refuses to write jurisdictional scans and that’s why a contractor, like me, had to do it. I asked questions, but nobody knew the answer. The goal was not clear, the topic too broad, the target group unknown, the reason for the selected jurisdictions arbitrary. Besides, all content would be timely, so a year later someone (not me!) would have to do it all over again. So from the beginning on it was clear this was a waste of time, or better: meaningless work. Because I was sure that nobody would read it, I added a comment in the document that “who reads this, can claim a chocolate bar”. Not one chocolate bar was claimed. I don’t need to add how motivated I was to work on this document.
Sometimes the work becomes meaningless because of circumstances. In another job (not at the government), I worked as consultant/researcher and I knew that sometimes a recommendation would never lead to a change. It didn’t discourage me, maybe because I had already started a new challenging project. One time we were investigating how to solve the (future) loss of knowledge for a company with many people close to the age of retirement. Halfway the project however, the company had to “let go” many people, which was another type of knowledge loss. It didn’t help us, people were hesitant to collaborate – if we’re assessing their knowledge, they could be next. The initial question became less urgent for the company management. To say that the project became meaningless is a big statement, but there were clearly other priorities and I wonder how much of what we developed is implemented.
Contributing to the bigger picture is not always so obvious. I don’t build a Blackberry or design the newest applications. Still I have the feeling that I contribute, that my work is a small piece in the big puzzle. Ariely agrees that people are motivated if they have the feeling that what they do is useful, has a meaning. “If you’re a manager who really wants to demotivate your employees, destroy their work in front of their eyes. Or, if you want to be a little subtler about it, just ignore them and their efforts. On the other hand, if you want to motivate people working with you and for you, it would be useful to pay attention to them, their effort, and the fruits of their labor.” Show or say that you value the work. You may earn a chocolate bar if you do.
I love infographics. They often make a complex topic insightful and simple to understand. My colleagues in the statistical analysis team deal with lots of data, making it insightful for decision makers. Graphics play a key role. If they could make the nice pictures that one sometimes finds on the web, like this collection of 15 language and culture infographics (thanks Robert!), I wonder if decisions would be better. I don't think so, but wouldn't it make work life more fun?
It is time to tell (potential) business owners how work can be organised differently, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson must have thought. Their company 37signals is very successful, but not because they followed “the” rules of entrepreneurship. Fried and Hansson have their own, simple philosophy and they share that in the book Rework. This book has been written from practical experience with the authors’ company for over 10 years. Rework is not a typical business book with abstract theories, but an a-typical book with no-nonsense advice about all kinds of topics. It’s time to make work of rework!
Continue reading "Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson" »
During the KM World conference, this TED video "How to make a movement" was shown. It's only three minutes and I thought it very powerful. From now on you'll look differently at a weird individual who stands out and his or her followers. You can start a movement!
Yesterday the day was filled with presentations. It's hard to summarise here, or I need more time, so I'll quickly give a first impression. My experience is that I need time to let it all sink. Presentations that don't seem interesting at first sight, may suddenly sound far more relavant later.
The day started with two keynote presentations. The first by Tom Stewart, who talked about knowledge-driven enterprises, what has changed and where are we going. I had high expectations of this presentation and I wasn't disappointed. Tom was engaging, sometimes funny and had an interesting start of the day. The second presentation was by NASA Langley Information Manager Majula Ambur. She explained the situation at Langley where engineers couldn't find what they were looking for and about the internal Google search tool that made the searching much easier. Interesting but I don't know why this is a keynote presentation.
Then a series of presentations started, some interesting and some less than expected. The final two session made up for the rest of the day, first from people from Shell and finally a session by Richard McDermott about how to think like an expert.
This conference is a mix of knowledge management, taxonomy and Sharepoint sessions (not like KM Europe that was purely focused on KM). I only attend the KM sessions but find that many of the people I talk to are interested in Sharepoint (we use something else).
I realise I listen with the idea that I want to bring back home something, ideas or "how to" practices. Sometimes it's hard to translate something that is said to a big organization. "Talk to the C.. and tell ... " doesn't sound like an option for me, or "Involve your customers" (all the millions of users?). Anyway, I need time to 'translate' this to my situation. But now I have to go, a new day starts at the conference!
I signed up for two workshops, part of the pre-conference program of KM World 2010. The first one was titled "Experience Maps: KM & Visual Thinking". Although it was an interesting presentation, it wasn't what I expected, nor from the title nor from the description. Actually, the workshop (by Peter Morville) should have had the word "Information Architecture" somewhere, preferably in the title. Because that's what it was about: information architecture (IA) and the use of visualisation or visual maps. I think we were too much triggered by the word "visual" when we selected the workshop (it was a democratic process). There were some interesting examples though and for example the video "A Dinosaur Family explains Information Architecture" was very funny. I could have left after the break but I wanted to give the presenter the chance to talk about KM and experience maps, because that's what the title said. The second part, however, was a bit too quick to completely follow the presentation and when each group had to talk about a few questions, my group was mainly confused. Maybe I see the usefulness later, of what I can do with this in my work (sometimes it takes a while to see the links), but right now at best it was a collection of visual examples.
The second workshop was more directed at the work and situation I'm in: it dealt with developing a KM strategy and implementation plan. Presenter was Art Murray, and not, as the program said Judi Sandrock. We didn't get the promised book, which was a disappointment but that was the only disappointment (and I can't blame the presenter for this). This session was highly interactive, so if I didn't know what strategic objectives of my company are (as an example), there was someone else in the group who could tell about it and we could learn from this example. Basically, we went down from company vision, mission to key process areas and key enablers. Not easy to write down for me, so I think this could be a nice exercise to do in a group session. Next, identify the gaps and find the root cause (by asking as many why questions as possible). Usually the root cause is related to one step in the knolwedge life cycle: capture, share and apply knowledge. Then, create a KM strategy (people, process, technology) and a plan to implement. This sounds all very simple and it's a short summary of course, but I can already see that it won't be easy to carry out. Not on my own at least (in my little group), or without the necessary support from higher up.
Tonight (or, in a few minutes) the opening reception and networking event starts, so I'll head back to the conference hotel!
Quick update from my hotel in Washington. Yesterday was my travel day, flying from Toronto to Washington. I was supposed to arrive in the capital city at 10PM, but the flight from NYC to Washington had a delay of almost 3 hours. Everytime I checked the board, the departure time seemed to move (stop checking the board!), but I was happy when I heard the announcement the plane was coming. I talked with a Dutch lady (I recognised her accent) who was traveling to Houston but her flight got canceled. If that had happened to our flight, I would have missed at least the first workshop of this morning.
1 AM I arrived at the hotel and was so tired (and pumped up, I guess) that I could hardly sleep. I'll have to stay awake, I certainly don't want to miss today! What's on the menu for today? The pre-workshops. I selected two workshops, in collaboration with my colleagues. In the morning that will be "Experience Maps: KM & Visual Thinking" by Peter Morville. In the afternoon it will be the "Developing a KM Strategy & Implementation Plan" workshop by Judi Sandrock.
To be continued!
It's unbelievable how many webinars there are these days. I get invitations almost daily. The one on Open Innovation by Gartner sounded interesting, so I listened to that one, which I will summarise here. Open Innovation was/is a topic that suddenly became so popular that I felt it was hyped up. This webinar showed that OI is more than just a hype.
Innovation no longer happens internally; more and more ideas come from outside the company wall. According to IBM, customers should be integrated into the core processes. Apple’s Steve Jobs disagrees; he thinks you can’t ask customers what they want. By the time you have developed it, they want something else.
Gartner’s definition of open innovation is: "The practice of seeking ideas, concepts or talents with external people or organizations". Most innovations (or ideas) don’t come from the R&D department, as one would think. Research (Economist survey, June 2010) shows that the customers are number 1 source when it comes to innovation, followed by the business unit heads and employees in general (outside R&D I think). R&D comes on a low fourth place. Why business unit heads score high, could be explained by the fact that they often talk with customers and many other groups; they hear more and make the connections. Gartner’s advice is to engage these heads more in the business process.
Far from Wise at all!
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