It\u2019s nice being a consultant.\u00a0 People like consultants because we have a specific approach to a problem.\u00a0 We talk to lots of people, look at lots of documents, conduct workshops.\u00a0 Then we synthesize what we have learned and create judgments and opinions, and then we document everything to the nth degree.\u00a0 Some people would argue we talk to too many people \u2013 but the value we bring is in developing a comprehensive and external point of view that is broad.\u00a0 Some people would argue that too much (hopefully) documentation comes out of projects.\u00a0 While most of my projects are boiled down to a 12 page powerpoint, there is usually a couple hundred pages of backup material and some really complex spreadsheets that prove my point.\u00a0 At the end of the day, I can talk to as many people as I want, form whatever judgment I feel is right, and it\u2019s all for naught if I don\u2019t document it all.\u00a0 2 years down the road, it\u2019s just a piece of paper nobody looks at because nobody understands how the conclusions were made.\u00a0 So I tend to document.<\/p>\n
I say all of this because the process is important.\u00a0 There is a flow between collaboration and exploration, to knowledge creation, to information creation.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been talking about knowledge management for ages.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it \u2013 knowledge management has not necessarily worked out.\u00a0 It\u2019s an old topic that many people are sick of hearing about, but the truth of it is that we still don\u2019t manage the knowledge in our organizations well.\u00a0 Many of our organizations still have thousands upon thousands of documents stored in Sharepoint databases, but they are poorly versioned, not well cataloged, and hard to find.\u00a0 If knowledge management practices of 10 years ago had panned out, we would have it all figured out by now.\u00a0 Part of the problem is that we\u2019ve changed technologies and user requirements rather rapidly, but at the core of the problem, we really didn\u2019t understand what it was that we were actually cataloging.\u00a0 Turns out, it was not all about knowledge management at all.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take a sample process.\u00a0 If we are creating a business case, we create a task force or project team to investigate the problem, any risks, possible interactions, costs, etc.\u00a0 Through this process, a significant amount of collaboration happens in the course of the investigation and discovery, after which some sort of decisions are made.\u00a0 It is through the collaboration that knowledge is often created.\u00a0 However, we can\u2019t manage that knowledge that is created until the information is created in the form of the business case.\u00a0 A good business case will document not only why we want to do something, but how, what were the risks and costs, and all the other components.\u00a0 The business case, or the information we can catalog, is the output of the knowledge gained, that which we cannot catalog.<\/p>\n
So we talk about knowledge management, all the while realizing that we can\u2019t catalog what is in people\u2019s heads.\u00a0 We can only capture what they record \u2013 and this has gotten more interesting as we have gone from documents to blogs and wikis.\u00a0 But the quality of that content is still in flux.\u00a0 Do people actually record everything that went into their decisions?\u00a0 Do they only blog about what is interesting to them?\u00a0 If a high performer leaves the organization and they were a good documenter and quality blogger, how do you know that you still have all the knowledge they produced with they worked for you?<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s world, we talk a lot about how to create productivity gains from collaboration networks \u2013 and this is clearly important \u2013 it\u2019s the starting point of knowledge creation.\u00a0 We\u2019ve spent years talking about knowledge management and how to catalog \u2013 and this is also important.\u00a0 We\u2019ve created knowledge bases that are not always optimized, but it\u2019s a starting point.\u00a0 What we have not done is effectively have a conversation about information and the quality of that information in the organization.\u00a0 How do we actually make sure that all of our data is good data and that it\u2019s complete?\u00a0 Collaboration and knowledge is the starting point, but I think we need to start having a discussion about what is next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s nice being a consultant.\u00a0 People like consultants because we have a specific approach to a problem.\u00a0 We talk to lots of people, look at lots of documents, conduct workshops.\u00a0 Then we synthesize what we have learned and create judgments…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,28,10,47,8,2,46],"tags":[267,455,326,321],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collaboration","category-communications","category-engagement","category-governance","category-strategies","category-hr-technology","category-web-20","tag-case-management","tag-collaboration","tag-information-management","tag-knowledge-management-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}