Far Wise in Knowledge Management

What are you working on? WOL

A virtual knowledge café that I attended recently, started with a presentation on Working Out Loud (WOL). It was not a new topic to me, I heard about it before at the Social Now Event in 2015. In the blogpost about that event, I only mention WOL as an interesting concept, probably with the idea to blog more later, which I apparently did and had forgotten about. So this presentation was a good reminder!

Now that most of us are working from home, WOL is a good way to inform your colleagues what you’re working on. Working Out Loud is what is says: tell what you’re going. Don’t show (only) the final product, but for example the research you are doing, the questions or doubts you have. It’s a way of sharing and an invitation to collaborate. When I know what you’re doing, I’m able to help you.

After the first presentation in 2015, I tried out WOL myself by updating my profile status on the intranet every day. I noticed people would read it by the reactions I sometimes got. The experiment wasn’t long enough to really benefit (as in, someone would give me something that I didn’t think of), but I was motivated to update my status because I knew it was read by a broader circle than my ‘usual coffee group’. That was a motivation in itself. After I left that company, I forgot about it. We now use Microsoft Teams, which also has a status update option. I never use it because we’re such a small team and start everyday with a quick online ‘stand up’ meeting. It’s something to keep in mind.

I’m probably not doing justice to this method, as there is much more to be found on the WOL-website and the book (which I haven't read). Developed by John Stepper, who implemented this method in many companies. On the website, you can find a 12-week ‘getting into it’. Here is another good source, by Stan Garfield, which is more a collection of pieces about Working Out Loud with many links.

Now is the time to share, collaborate, connect!

(Note: Wol means yarn in Dutch, which explains the picture. I also thought of WOL as a thread of communication)

Intelligent Swarming Framework published

Something I worked on for the last few months, the framework for Intelligent Swarming, has been published by the Consortium for Service Innovation. Before you think I did this on my own, let me add that I was one of three authors. There were bits and pieces of information about Intelligent Swarming in slides, workshop notes, case descriptions present, but it was time to structure it and write it down. I was picking Greg Oxton's brain, who knows more about Intelligent Swarming than anyone else. He's called "Father of KCS", but I think it applies to IS as well. I'm glad the job is done and I'm proud of the result. I know it's a first version and I'm sure more versions and updates will follow as companies gain more experience with this way of working. As Greg put is: this framework is more a "what" and "why" for Intelligent Swarming than a "how", as the way IS is filled in depends so much on the company, like we did at Tricentis.

In short, when swarming in the service organization, we no longer use the tiered model of escalation, but a network of expertise. The model depends on collaboration to solve issues and the "intelligent" refers to getting the issue to the person who can best solve it and finding the right experts who can help. Collaboration means asking for help or offering help and we use technology to support this (think: how do people know you need help, how do you ask for help, how can others offer help?). The framework explains that this model is efficient, but not in all cases. Whether Intelligent Swarming is right for your organization depends, amongst other things, on the complexity of the issues that you're trying to solve. 

 

Intelligent Swarming - Tricentis case

A bit more than a year ago (December 2017) I started working with Tricentis (an Austrian software testing company) on our first Intelligent Swarming adoption. I don't think I ever wrote about swarming in this blog, so I have some catching up to do! In short, in an Intelligent Swarm there are no levels 1, 2 or 3, but support engineers collaborate to solve complex issues. To find the right people to make a "swarm", profiles are needed based on skills, experience and interests (hence the "intelligent", for intelligent matching). 

For Tricentis, the change from a tiered support organization to a swarming organization worked out quite well. They soon saw metrics go up and although there were still some hurdles to take, it seemed like the right way of working for Tricentis. I was asked by the Consortium for Service Innovation (that created the Intelligent Swarming principles that we used) to write a case description about Tricentis. You can find it on the website of the Consortium. Even better, I'm currently working on a manual about Intelligent Swarming with the Consortium. This manual is going to be presented at the Member summit in April, so I'll update when it's ready.

Are you working out loud?

The first time I heard about "Working out loud" (WOL) was at the Social Now event in 2015. I found it interesting, as I felt that I was doing some WOL already, but for the rest I didn't promote it in the organization. At that time, I thought there were more urgent issues, but if I continue using social tools and write about what I was doing, maybe I would stimulate others to do the same. It was an indirect "promotion"; had I been manager, I would have called it "lead by example". I'm not sure if I stimulated anybody this way, but I found it worked for me. I had an internal blog that got reactions and I wrote on the status line what I was working on ("micro blogging"). Sometimes I would get a reaction, someone from my network offering help. However, I noticed that WOL takes time, even just a small status update. The more busy the work, the less I worked out loud. I'm sure WOL advocates will tell me I am wrong (that it saves time instead) and that I was applying it in the wrong way, or not at all.

Lately I've seen more interest in WOL, so I decided to find more information, to see how I could better benefit from it. Because I do believe it is useful, in the same way as I think knowledge sharing is useful. Working out loud is not a new method, it was first coined in 2010 by Bryce Williams. John Stepper made it into a movement, by writing this book and giving this TED talk. A lot of information on WOL can be found on this site. From a description (in Dutch), I see that my understanding of working out loud was not far off. It is telling what you work on, to your co-workers in the organization. Call it a method or a mindset (I prefer the latter). Social tools support WOL, but it can be done face-to-face as well. Some of the advantages are amongst others: more transparent collaboration, workplace awareness, knowledge sharing and generation of ideas.

Bosch is a company that applies working out loud. It uses WOL Circles, which is a new concept to me. A circle is a peer support group of 4-5 people. Here is a guide to start with your own WOL circle. WOL is all about observable work and narrating your work (see fundamentals) and can help for examples projects on the progress - where it replaces email updates.

Start with these three questions:

1. What am I trying to accomplish?
2. Who can help me?
3. How can I contribute to people to deepen our relationship?

 It's interesting to read about a relatively simple habit that can have such impact. It's an essential skill, I read (in Dutch). There are many sources online, I tried to link to a few. Last year there was an international WOL week,  I don't know if it will be repeated this year. No need however to wait till the next WOL week, start working out loud now!

About silos and breaking them down (or not)

Years ago, I attended a workshop "How to present yourself in an elevator pitch" (or so, not the exact title). As I wanted to introduce myself in a knowledge management context and not everybody is familiar with knowledge management, I used an example with organizational silos. Most people recognize the presence of silos in their organizations and know that (usually) communication or exchange between the silos is not ideal. So I used this example in my elevator pitch to explain what knowledge management can do. I don't recall if I used "down organizational silos" (I probably did), but I shouldn't do so, apparently, according to this article, breaking down silos is a myth.

It's an interesting article as it goes against the general thought to eliminate organizational silos. On the contrary, the author argues that silos have important benefits, but we need to connect them effectively.  Silos as functional groups are effective, but the issue is that in most organizations silos are disconnected. As a result, information travels too slowly. Instead of a hierarchical organization, we need to think in networks or clusters. Not a matrix but informal links.

The platforms of connections described in the article, are like (small) communities. In the knowledge management area, communities are known to be successful in sharing of information and knowledge, answering questions and helping newcomers up to speed (to mention a few functions). Whatever it is called, network, cluster, community, those informal groups of employees that find each other on a certain topic or issue, help spreading information faster. If they don't form in a natural way, they need to be organized. In the past at BlackBerry, I helped to set up some of these groups. An example was a group ("Tiger team") around one of the most important telecom providers (for example, AT&T, Verizon, Bell) and share information after a large software update, to find out what issues there are and who can help to solve them. I remember at the start, people said they didn't need this, but soon were surprised about what they heard from others. The people who needed to know or had to act were on the call, so it turned out to be an efficient way of sharing information.

 

 

Webinar APQC about Bombardier's collaboration tool

Years ago, I heard a Bombardier presentation about their engineering Communities of Practice, which the company had started in 2012. It was interesting, especially at that time I lived in Canada and Bombardier is a Canadian company (headquartered in Montreal). That was years ago, so I was cursious to hear about their progress in another presentation, an APQC webinar (link to recording and slides).

 The presentation, titled "How to deploy a smooth takeoff when launching a collaborative tool", didn't discuss the communities, but the technology that was implemented at Bombardier - a collaboration platform. This (SharePoint) platform has many functionalities, the most important: expertise locator and enterprise search, which were discussed here. To introduce the tool, there were classroom sessions, online, one-on-one executive demonstrations, FAQ. Much attention was paid to the change management side of the introduction (i.e., the people side).

Some of Bombardier's key learnings were:

• Explain how it (the collaboration tool) relates to people's reality: What is in it for me?
• Strong document management strategy at business level needed
• Invest time in change management strategy and communication

Some success factors:

• Full engagement of sponsors and management teams
• Dedicated time for users to participate in training and integrate tool in day-t0-day activities
• High quality data available for users
• Lead by Business, supported by IT.

Although the presenters started with "People-Process-Technology", they emphasize "It's all about the people, the end users".

 The platform and the way it was introduced reminded me of the collaboration tool that was implemented at BlackBerry, which I helped to roll out in the Quality department. It was not the same tool (we used IBM's Lotus Connections), but I see similarities and recognize some of the issues the Bombardier team encountered. Although BlackBerry is also an engineering environment, I think the issues are quite generic, related to change in general. The presenters said this article about convincing skeptical people in HBR was very helpful to them, as well as Carla O'Dell's presentation "KM in the Age of Digital Transformation" and the report "The Executive's Role in Knowledge Management" (both from APQC).

Webinar with Tom Malone on Collective Intelligence

The VP from our group sent me the announcement of a webinar organised by The Conference Board of Canada with Tom Malone as speaker on October 27^th with the question if I was interested. Absolutely! So that’s what I did last week: I listened to the webinar (although I missed the first 12 minutes due to technical issues). I read Malone’s “The Future of Work” long time ago, but this presentation was based on a new study about Collective Intelligence.

Malone studied the building blocks of Collective Intelligence. He calls them “genes”, which sounded awkward because I missed the introduction of the presentation and thus the explanation of the use of “gene”. I needed the slides, sent afterwards, to fill in the gaps from the introduction.

Overview of CSCW conferences

Very useful: Robert gives an overview of coming CSCW conferences.