Far Wise in Knowledge Management

Still overloaded with information

Once in a while an article or research gets published about how people feel overloaded with information. Lately it was a Dutch study (article in Dutch) that got a lot of attention, while it actually told not much new. 28 % of employees felt overloaded with information in 2018, an increase of 3% compared to 2014. When we studied information overload (more than 10 years ago!), it was mainly email that caused the feeling - nowadays it's a combination of email, mobile phone and app messages. What made this study interesting is that the researchers dug a bit deeper than the usual "do you suffer from information overload" question. 60,000 Employees between 15 and 75 of age were questioned. The topic information overload was part of a bigger research question about working conditions in the Netherlands.

So from the study we learn that higher educated people suffer more than lower educated employees. There was no difference measured between men and women. Managers complain most about the number of information they get, people in the ICT-industry are the second in the list. For a large percentage of the people who suffer, it was reason to think about finding another job. The last finding indicates that it's a serious issue, but I wonder if it would really help to change jobs. Do people expect that there will be less information overload in another company? Managers will probably still get information from 'above' (their leaders) and from 'below' (the team members they manage).

Questions that come to my mind (I didn't read the details of the study): is it the quantity of information or the quality? Our own study indicated that especially the lack of quality was an issue (people were wondering why they got this message, what was expected from them and had to interpret the information to find out what was in it for them). Although nowadays I can imagine quantity of information has increased, so it will be a combination. Another question: is it a personal lack of skills, habits or it is a bigger, more generic issue? Has quality of information gone down (think fake news), which makes it harder to filter out what is useful (so then even good skills aren't sufficient). Maybe AI can help us in future to filter and select the information we need.

I'm afraid that information overload is an issue that will stay, for a long time at least. We can partly help ourselves by rigurously cutting off the flow (unsubscribe to channels, less apps, etcetera), ignore the feeling of missing out. Changing habits is incredibly hard, but it's a place to start where we are in control.

 

 

 

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. 

 

Resilient Service Organizations – Conference visit

When I saw the program (in Dutch) of Srvision & Trends in Tooling 2019, I had more than one reason to be enthusiastic. Resilience organizations is a topic that interests me, so the theme “Service Resilience” was one reason to attend. The other is that one of the presenters talks about swarming in combination with the Cynefin framework. Since I refer to his work in the upcoming Intelligent Swarming framework, I thought it would be nice to hear (and meet, if possible) Jon Hall talk. Here is my summary of the day. All presentations can be found in a Dropbox folder, as well as pictures drawn during the presentation. Also, read the blog post of the organization (“Bouncing back with ITIL4).

Can we read too many books?

[I had this post in draft version for a long time, but never finished it. The question "Can one read too many books?" is again relevent now I'm member of the jury for management book of the year 2019 and I had to read a large selection of management books for the first round]

A while ago I read a Dutch article, called "The 6 dangers of reading too many management books". I wanted to post a comment about it, but I'm so annoyed now to see that I didn't save the link! So, all I can reflect on is the title.

Can one read too many books, or management books in particular? I love books, so for me it's easy to say "No!". I don't see it as a waste of time and I believe books help me in providing a different point of view and to learn new things. Last year, as member of the jury for Management book of the year 2018, I read about 70 books. I didn't read all of them fully from front to back, still it was a lot of reading. What I can say is that there are not many "good" management books, whatever that qualification means. Of course, a book can still be usefull for a certain reader group. The jury uses a number of criteria for selecting the management book of the year, such as: originality, actuality, lasting and use of reference materials.

Actually, I think there is more danger in reading too few (management) books. I once had a VP who had one favourite book, his Bible, which he referred to all the time (of course, the whole department had to read that one book). Because he hadn't read other viewpoints on the same topic, I found that his viewpoint was too optimistic. That is one thing reading multiple books or articles does, give you several points of view on a topic. 

Maybe a danger of reading too many books, which applies to me, is that they don't stick. I don't use enough what's inside or don't reflect enough on my actions based on what I read in the book. Hence, I don't learn enough from the books that I read. I know it and I always intent to, but then there are new books appearing and I continue reading those books. I think I'm not alone here, otherwise there won't be so many books appearing each year. 

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.

Being a shy extrovert

I always thought that I'm an introvert and I've heard people saying it too. I didn't however recognize myself in the book Quiet by Susan Cain and when I did a test, it showed that I'm extrovert. First, I just didn't believe the outcome, but I started looking into the topic introvert / extrovert and think I'm probably a shy extrovert (not scientifically proven though). I love to be around people and love working in teams. I just need to get over the hurdle of the first conversation and please, don't put the spotlight on me. Reading more about it, I see why it's easy to confuse an introvert with a shy extrovert person. Most extrovert people I know are of the outgoing type (and maybe I'm making the same mistake too, by thinking someone is introvert, while being shy extrovert). Over the years I've gotten less shy, apart from the spotlight aspect.

Knowledge management standard (ISO 30401) continued

Although I'm very interested in the development of the ISO knowledge management standard, I completely missed the recent BSI webinar about the standard. Luckily Nick Milton blogged about the webinar, including links to the slides and the webinar recording. Browsing through the slides, I see that there are also answers to questions like, who can use it, is certification necessary etcetera. The process will be continued (see here for the timeline).

Factfulness (Hans Rösling)

Our knowledge of the world is outdated. That is why we think the world is much worse off, for example with girls' education, than it really is. Would we do a test about our knowledge of the world, we would most likely score worse than chimpanzees that give random answers. (Btw, this article refers to a test that seems similar to the test in the book). Hans Rösling wants to put this straight with the book Factfulness, which he wrote in his deathbed and which was finished by his son Ola and daughter in law Anna Rösling. I read this book in Dutch (titled: Feitenkennis).

 I first saw Hans Rösling presenting at Le Web 3 conference in Paris (2006) and was impressed (like all the other people in the room) by his animations (Gapminder). Later I saw many of his TED-presentations and enjoyed them very much. When I heard that he had written a book (which was published after he died), I bought it as soon as it was published in Dutch and put it on my reading list. The book review for Managementboek.nl appeared in Dutch. This post is the translation of this review. Most people know Rosling from his presentations with nice animations and jokes about serious stuff, trying to tell us how the world has changed. Apparently he didn't feel that his job was done, so this book is literally his last try against our ignorance.

 

Books I'm reading or want to read

Summer is the perfect time for reading books. I always have a book with me, either on my e-book reader or a "real" book. Fiction and non-fiction, I read them both and usually I have more than one book I'm reading. Here is a list of the books that I'm currently reading or about to start. I will refer to the English title, although some books I'm reading in Dutch. And let me know if you have books that you can recommend!

1. Factfulness by Hans Rosling. I bought this book when I heard about it, but I haven't finished. I really want to take the time to read this book, give it full attention but haven't had the chance to do that. I always liked Hans' TED talks, so I hope I will like the book just as much and I hope it will give food for thought. 

2. Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. I started this book as e-book from the online library, but I think it will be better to get the real book. It's full with pictures and sometimes I want to go back to a certain picture, which is not so easy in an e-book. I'm interested to learn more about Leonardo the genius, his work, his life.

3. The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers. I started this book a few weeks ago and I'm going slowly through this one, few pages at a time. I'm learning about coffee, it's history and culture. Also about Jemen, which I hardly know anything about. 

4. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. I haven't started this one. In general I like his book, so I put it on my reading list.

5. Donut economics by Kate Raworth. Someone gave me this book (in Dutch), but I haven't started it yet.

Next to these, I have some "light reading" on my bed side, such as the books by Katherine Pancol and Tatiana de Rosnay (both I tried to read in French, but then it's no longer "light" for me). Random books that I pick up from the library. My book case also has many books that I need to finish... Now I just need to sit down, with my cat Bolt on my lap and read!

 

 

Learnings from training for a mountain trail

I posted about my first mountain trail, which I ran in July. I don't often reflect on my running here, but I think this trail taught me some things, especially because it was all new to me. With new, I mean the mountain and elevation part, not (trail) running itself. However, it was enough of a challenge, so I didn't know for sure beforehand if I could do it. On the other hand it was within my possibilities (not if I had chosen to run the 101 kilometer), so when signing up I knew it wasn't impossible.

This is one of the learnings: having the ability to estimate what is possible, based on the level of fitness I had and what I did in the past, and the confidence that I could do it. This was a great drive for the training that lay ahead. Although my fitness level wasn't great when we signed up, I knew I had enough time to prepare. 

I then started to collect information, learn from others how to train for this race. In particular how to train for the elevation in our rather flat country. The (trail) running community is so willing to share information and to answer questions, it's such a useful source. Not only live advice, but on YouTube as well, there are many "how to.." videos. Learning from others helped me in my preparations.

Of course, it's hard to say beforehand if I had done enough. I wanted to do more, but there are always injuries, social events, work trips that are unforeseen, which made I had to change plans. Most important in this phase was to stay positive and keep the confidence that the race is doable. 

The days before I wasn't nervous, like some other runners. I didn't sleep well because of the high room temperature in the hostel. My worry was that I would have difficulty focusing when I would get tired in the end of the race, and trip. The fear of tripping was the only concern that I wasn't able to shake off, and it blocked me in the race. The trails in the mountains are very rocky and technical and I was very careful in running them. Too careful, as I was passed by many runners, which annoyed me a lot. I was able to stay focused and I didn't trip, but if there is one learning here, it would be that I apparently avoid taking risks. Trail running has more risks than normal road races but the good runners don't think (too much) about them. It did block me from running down and I felt frustrated. It's also a matter of practice, or non-practice in my case. I'm sure that it would be better had we more opportunities to train this type of surface. On the other hand, almost none of the other Dutch runners had the opportunity to train this and they did much better than I. For me, this trail was way out of my comfort zone. Yes, I finished it, but did it give me the good feeling (of finishing, the medal)? No, not yet. I still have the struggle in mind (the journey). I finished, but not the way I liked. What is more important? Apparently for me the journey called for improvements. Of practice, confidence, awareness of where I block (thinking & doing).

This trail was all about knowing myself, my capabilities, learning from others, practicing, getting out of my comfort zone and finding room for improving. Who says that running (and other sports or hobbies) is not related to work?

For a while I had enough of trails and took it easy on running. Yesterday I signed up for a new trail run. This time I choose a short distance. I want to enjoy this one especially, to give me back my good feeling for trails and running.