KM Europe (2)

A bit later (about a week later) more on KM Europe. I saw several summaries already (like Andy on the presentation of John Seely Brown), so no duplication of that. Most of the times I don't hear much new at those key note presentations because I've read already a lot of those people's work. Well, it's nice to actually see the gurus.

In the afternoon I went to a workshop in Dutch from Kenniscrikel about Stakeholder KM (the English word Stakeholder shows that we don't have a good Dutch translation of it, at least I can't think of a good word). The workshop was given by Proven Partners (where Ton now works).

Roy Herweijer of Proven Partners presented their Stakeholder KM methods. The idea behind it is the changing needs of stakeholders (stakeholder in a broad sense). The steps of the method are:

1. stakeholder analysis (not only the customer)

2. qualitative research (get insights in the needs of the stakeholders

3. quantitative research (make needs measureable)

4. improvement matrix *

5. improvement plans *

6. improvement activities *

(* I left early for the John Seely Brown keynote presentation, so I don't have notes with all the steps)

What we did was vote on all kinds of KM-related issues (a) how important does your organisation perceive this issue; (b) how well is this issue organised in your organisation. Votes from 0-10, where 0 means "not important at all" and 10 means "extremely important" (or organised). Examples of the KM issues were ICT, competence management, innovation.

Some of the scores were striking, so I'll describe them here. Not so surprising is the high score on perceived importance for available and necessary knowledge (2 issues). Low scores were for innovative tenders, and support for mobility. We often hear here in The Netherlands that companies are not innovative enough, so that might explain the low score. It is the importance that is perceived low, that is what surpises me. If it were the organisation (of innovation), ok, I could understand that.

What is best organised in the participants' organisations, is: the (physical) library, and (surprise, surprise) ICT! What are we complaining about ICT? Working in projects was scored as lowest.

The outcomes of the voting give me something to think. Which was more than some other presenters could give.

Anyway, as I said I had to leave earlier. So I wasn't able to ask where the stakeholders come in these voting issues, since they were on the own organisation. Maybe I'll ask Ton when I see him (in the train, for example).

Comments

[Ton]

Well, most, if not all, of the people in the room were stakeholders of Proven Partners. So the voting yielded info on how PP's stakeholders look at things. This was part of the step to quantify the results we got from talking to our stakeholders, which we already did in the previous weeks. The issues voted on were the issues mentioned in those earlier conversations with our stakeholders.

best,

Ton

[Roy Herweijer]

To complete the remarks of Carla.
Step 4:
visualises the input of step 3, the quantitive research. This to make the input of the stakeholders able to communicate in a way that is easily accessable. And relativly easily to set priorities for the management to improve.

Step 5:
Is the translation of the priorities of step 4 in workable plan where everybody knows what to do and when. (A PMW working method).

Step 6:
Is the implementation of the plan of step 5.

It is ment to be a method to incorporate in the organisations processes. It should not be a one time action.