How to help others become digitally literate?

In my previous post I asked my readers how they help other’s understand the potential of new ways of working? How can we teach and show others what digital literacy is?

I wanted to share one idea I use to teach others to work out loud. What I always try to do is relate to the primary processes of the organization or, even better, to the primary work processes of the person I’m helping. He/she is working in a certain way and used to that. For instance, he uses email to send around documents and get feedback on them. Or he sends out an email to a group of people to get ideas about a certain topic. Starting there I ask that person what he/she likes about working that way. And what he/she dislikes about it. Then I ask how he/she thinks the dislikes could be solved. My experience is: most people don’t think they can be solved. They just cope with the issues and carry on. If this is the case, I show them how I do the same job with a certain tool. I tell them why I work in that way and why I like to work that way. And I stop there. In most cases they say: I didn’t know there were tools like that, could you help me get/use them as well? In some cases they continue to work they way the way. And that’s OK. I can’t force them to work in another way. I just hope they remember there is another way and try it some other time.

Digital Illiteracy

Some time ago my friend Ana Silva wrote an interesting post about a very important topic: digital literacy. Please read her post (and the comments). The main point of her post is that we should not assume people get the internet or get social media and will start working out in the open by themselves. Some do, but many need to be helped. We have to teach them, step-by-step, to be digitally literate. This is hard work.

I’ve written about this topic quite a bit as well using a different term: ‘personal knowledge management’. How do we become more productive working out in the open and using the new (and old) social concepts and tools?

As I wrote in a comment on Ana’s post, this is not a small issue. Recently the Dutch newspaper I read (nrc.nl) ran an extra section of the newspaper about ‘searching in a smarter way on the internet’ (Dutch: Slimmer zoeken op internet’). Very interesting stuff with all kinds of tips & tricks to improve the way you use the internet. But what struck me is the economic implication of digital illiteracy. The University of Twente published a study “Ctrl Alt Delete” and they found that 5.3% of our work time is lost due to digital illiteracy. That’s 10 billion euro’s per year in The Netherlands alone! That’s a lot of money. And there’s a lot of work to do.

Innovatie in de 4de dimensie, de 4 ruimtes van KM door @pauliske #4ruimtes

Volgende spreker is Paul Iske over 'Innovatie in de 4de dimensie, de 4 ruimtes van kennismanagement'.
Net als de vorige spreker Pierre benadrukt Paul dat de wereld wordt steeds complexer. Hoe blijf je bestaan in de wereld? Hoe pak je een rol in deze wereld?
Het vraagt om Agility. Paul laat een leuk voorbeeld van agility zien aan de hand van dit filmpje.
Veel organisaties komen snel terecht in routines. Routines zijn een deel van leren; je kunt zo dingen sneller leren doen. Maar het kan ook beperken. Je mist dingen als je niet de moeite neemt om even buiten je routines te kijken.
In deze tijd wordt er van ons gevraagd om de snelheid van ons leren te verhogen. Want we leven in een tijd waarin de snelheid van het leren, sneller gaat dan de verandering.
Innovatie is dan het proces om (bestaande) kennis toe te passen in een markt/omgeving.
Een omgeving bestaat uit 4 ruimtes:

• social space
• virtual space
• physical space
• process space

Het klimaat is ook belangrijk voor innovatie. Leadbeater heeft 9 condities benoemd voor creativiteit, leiderschap en innovatie:

• diversiteit
• selectie
• imbedding
• co-evolutie
• ontleren
• verstoring
• eenvoud
• verspilling
• timing

Er is geen schaarste aan kennis. Het gaat erom wat je met die kennis doet. Als je aan mensen vraagt welk deel van hun kennis ze gebruiken (op het werk) dan blijkt dat het bijzonder klein is. Het hoeft geen 100% te zijn, maar wat meer zou veel opleveren.

Belangrijk bij innovatie is samenwerken vanuit verschillende perspectieven. Samen kijken naar een probleem op verschillende manieren. Uit onderzoek blijkt dat op deze manieren doorbraken worden gerealiseerd. (Heet ook wel 'open innovatie' of 'collaboratieve innovatie'.)

Maar je kunt nog een stap daarvoor innoveren. Dan weet je eigenlijk helemaal niet wat je wilt, maar door partijen bij elkaar te zeggen kun je 'combinatorisch innoveren'. Op basis van serendipity komen mensen/organisaties tot combinaties die vermarkt kunnen worden. De basis vraag is dan: Wat zouden wij samen kunnen doen?

We zijn hier ook mee aan de slag gegaan aan het einde van de keynote: gewoon met je buurman kijken of er raakvlakken zijn om samen te werken.

Ontwerpen van organisaties door Pierre van Amelsvoort #4ruimtes

Vandaag ben ik bij het lustrum congres van de DutchOpen KM. Het DutchOpen KM en een netwerk van kennismanagement ervaringsdeskundigen die regelmatig bij elkaar komen. Het netwerk bestaat 10 jaar en het leek ons goed om dit te vieren met een congres over de ‘4 ruimtes van kennis management’. Ik zal mijn notes van de dag delen in een aantal blogposts. Ik schrijf live, dus let graag niet teveel op de zinsbouw en typo’s.

Eerste keynote spreker is Pierre van Amelsvoort. Zijn keynote gaat over ‘Ontwerpen van organisaties’.

Pierre neemt ons mee in de veranderende wereld van organisaties. We bewegen van de focus op efficiency naar kwaliteit, flexibiliteit, innovativiteit en nu service/duurzaamheid. Dit is niet en-en-en. Dit wil niet zeggen dat jouw organisatie alle deze stappen moet zetten.
Belangrijk om naar organisaties te kijken vanuit het begrip 'regimes'.
Een grote ziekte in organisaties is het opknippen van organisaties in functies/fragmenten. En dat groot perse beter zou zijn.
Volgorde van organiseren is P > B > S: proces, besturen en systemen. 

Betrokkenheid van medewerker bepaalt kwaliteit van het werk, weten we al lang. Maar wat doen we daarmee?
Pierre’s antwoord is: organiseren met mate en zorg voor ruimte voor diversiteit en coleur local. Zoekt naar de menselijke maat van samenwerking. Dat heeft volgens Pierre ook met de grote van organisaties en groepen binnen organisaties te maken: 

• 8-12 mensen is een goed team, kleiner dan dat heb je onvoldoende diversiteit 
• 40-50 mensen in je hoofd hebben voor een community. 

Hierarchie is goed, om richting te geven aan mensen. Maar hierarchie moet altijd wat toevoegen, vooral het tijdsperspectief. De functie van hierarchie is het nemen van beslissen, niet administreren.

Het is belangrijk om meer te organiseren op basis van vertrouwen.

Bij veranderingen in organisaties moet je sturen op mensen, cultuur, structuur en systemen. Vooral bij vaste, bureaucratische regimes naar een flexible regime, moet het ‘disruptive’ gebeuren.

Why do we share?

Maybe a better question is: why do I share? I was wondering about this while reading +Oscar Berg’s post ‘Why do people share?’.
Oscar makes several interesting statements about sharing in his post. Like this one:

The act of sharing something tells our colleagues something about us and that we think and care about what they might be interested in. If what we share is relevant and valuable to them, they will understand that we have really tried to understand what their needs and interests are. Their trust in us grows.

And, citing from an MIT Sloan article about reputation and knowledge sharing:

Reputation also plays a role where rules or systems are unable to spur sharing. Because critical information is often held privately by individuals, workers often can choose to share or withhold such information in their interactions with colleagues without fear of sanction. That leaves reputation as a key motivator in any decision to share or withhold information.

Oscar also relates to the influence of culture on sharing. Furthermore, referring to another article, the content of what you share also depends on whether you’ll share it. People share content that will bring them ‘emotional communion’ and not all content is fit for that.

And at the end of his post he points to a post by Nancy Dixon in which see distinguishes two types of knowledge sharing. One is, in my own words, work-related, the other relation-related. Examples of the first are reports. Experiences are examples of the second. More interestingly, both types of sharing have different motivations. Only the second kind of sharing was done for personal benefit.

Interesting stuff, I think. I’ve been collecting articles about knowledge sharing and blogging about his topic for some time as well. It’s not an easy topic. And the above provide interesting insights, but only scratch the surface of this topic.

At the end of Oscar’s post I was wondering what motivates Oscar to share. I can’t talk for Oscar, of course, but I will share why I share. To me there is one big reason to share information and knowledge (as far as I know them now):
Share to learn: I share what I know and see with others because I want to learn. By wording my knowledge in text or speech in itself, helps me to learn. But I also hope to learn from the response I get from the person I’m addressing or that has asked me the question. I hardly withhold information from people. I will if I think that person does not respect me or will use the information in a wrong way.

I think I can unpack this general reason and distill underlying reasons from it. These are:

1. Share to show-off: to me there is definitely a show-off element to knowledge sharing. It’s not the most important one, but I do share to show what I know, read, bump into, etc. 
2. Share to listen: an important part of learning to me is listening. So I enjoy what others are sharing, because it helps me learn. It also triggers me to share by posting things I find interesting and asking questions. 
3. Share to remember: sharing information is also a way for me to capture things I find interesting. So I bookmark a link, tweet a link or statement, etc. In this way I’ve stored it for later use. 
4. Share to be more effective: I share to learn and this helps me become more productive. Asking a question in my (digital) network, helps me find (partial) answers more quickly. Once I’ve written about something on my blog, I can refer to it later on. This makes more productive in the long run.

So, these are the reason for me to share. Do they make sense? What are your reasons to share?

Social Media in Practice Event #socmedprak

A conference about social media, organized using social media and presented by experienced social media enthusiast, can that be done? Yes, it can. I was part of such a conference a couple of weeks ago. It was called 'The Social Media in Practice Event' (Dutch: Social media in de praktijk).

Ronald van den Hoff of Society 3.0 kicked off the event. He gave an interesting talk about the influence of the internet and social media on society, and its implications for businesses. I liked how he stressed businesses should be built around passion and learning from mistakes. They should be ever more open to what's happening around them or else they will be eclipsed. Interestingly he also said large companies will get smaller and smaller and independent contractors/free agents will be the 'companies' of the future.

I also went to Roos van Vugt's breakout about leading into social media. She works for Deloitte and explained how see introduced and is cultivating social media inside the company. She stressed to make sure higher management is on board and agrees with internal social media deployment.

I also was asked to give two breakouts about social media and knowledge management. My slides (in Dutch...) can be found here:

Kennismanagement en social media, een perfecte matchijk 27 10-11

View more presentations from Samuel Driessen

During both breakouts the discussion was lively. Discussion topics were about the difference between business processes and networks, the security of hosted social media like Yammer, how people can be encouraged to share their knowledge and should companies introduce a central, all-encompassing social media platform or separate tools?

Mijn workshop voor Social Media in de Praktijk #socmedprak

Binnenkort, 27 oktober a.s., wordt het event Social Media in de Praktijk gehouden. Het belooft een bijzonder congres te worden. In de eerste plaats, is het congres op een bijzondere manier bedacht en opzet. In de tweede plaats, de lijst met sprekers hebben allemaal diepgaande ervaring met social media.

Mijn workshop gaat over het raakvlak tussen social media en kennismanagement. Volgens mij is kennismanagement en social media een perfecte match. Kennismanagement was een hype en is als top-down strategie mislukt. De opkomst van social media biedt geweldige mogelijkheden voor kennismanagement 2.0. Tijdens de workshop ga je uitleggen waarom ik dat vindt. En we gaan er ook mee aan de slag. Aan het einde van de workshop kun je persoonlijk aan de slag en/of in (een deel van) de organisatie/instelling waar je voor werkt.

Wat verwacht je van mijn workshop? Ik hoor het graag van je. Ik neem jouw input dan mee in mijn verhaal.

Kom je ook naar Social Media in de Praktijk? Geef je hier op. Ik hoop je er te zien!

The IT Flower Revisited

A long time ago I blogged about the IT Flower. I thought is was a very interesting diagram and I still use it regularly. I find it helps people understand the different types of work, how things get done and how they are(n't) support by tools in companies.

Recently I read Harold Jarche's post about "Informal Learning is a Business Imperative". I find his work on social learning and personal knowledge management highly interesting. Most of his posts contain lots of food for thought and have interesting diagrams to chew on.

This post did as well. The diagram in this post clearly shows the different types of work and how they relate to different types of learning. This fits perfectly on my two above-mentioned posts about the IT Flower. This diagram is an extra layer focused on types of work and learning. (Or the other way around, whatever you like!) I’m also happy to see that the diagram shows that even in very structured work there are still non-routine tasks. Just like in typical knowledge work, routine stuff like filling in hourly reports has to be done...

I love these connections via the blogosphere. Information learning in practice!

(Diagram is link to actual picture by Harold Jarche.)

Social Media Silo's

Social Media should support networks within companies and over its boundaries. It should break down silo's in companies. The same goes for the silo's in people's lives, work and private life. But does it really?

I've been wondering about this topic for some time. I've been rereading The Cluetrain Manifesto and found it's been mentioned there as well. And now with the arrival of Google+ people are wondering if this will be the social backbone (must-read piece BTW!).

What am I talking about? Well, we have all these social tools that support parts of our lives. Some only work on the intranet, some only on the internet. Some are more for personal, private sharing, others are more work-related. Many have approximately the same functionality. So, you always get the question: Where should I share my information (without pushing the same information to all these services at once)? And where do I get an overview of all my social interactions?
I was hoping something like Friendfeed would solve this issue. It did, but then everybody left. I even tried to read tweets in Google Reader for some time. That didn't work well. So my silo's are still in place.
These silo's don't only affect creating of social content, but also consuming. A good step in the right direction is what Disqus is doing for blogs: collecting as much of the social interactions around a blogpost as possible. But what I can't do there is reply to a tweet directly from a blog comment.
And then Google+ popped up. Will Google+ solve this problem? I agree with this piece Google has a good chance. It's at least what they are headed for.

In my experience the overlap in functionality and social silo's are a huge barrier in the adoption of social tools. It's one of the reasons people stick with traditional tools, like email and even Facebook (compared to G+...). Everybody's in the email space, so why move to a space where only part of my social graph is?

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this topic. How do you solve this issue in your daily life?

LinkedIn Skills

Looked at LinkedIn Skills. Interesting extension to Linkedin. Although it isn't really new functionality. All users could already fill in the expertise they (think they) have based on their work experience. To me this is one of the limitations of LinkedIn. Isn't it much more interesting to hear what others think of you? What expertise do they think you have? Who is the go-to person when you need someone with skill x? LinkedIn Skills basically only says: I think I'm the person you're looking for.

Repetitive Interaction Leads to Trust

Some time ago I told you I have a student, Arzu, who's researching enterprise social bookmarking. We'll she's almost finished with her thesis. And I can tell you, I'm really impressed with her work. She's delivered a very fundamental and also practical piece of work. I hope to share more with you from her work in the coming weeks. I'll share a nice quote with you right now. In her final chapters she refers to research done on 'trust' which I find very interesting.

Hsu et al. (2007) explored the effect of trust on knowledge sharing in virtual communities in different stages. They suggest that trust is developed in virtual communities by repetitive interaction of members over time and appears in three stages: economy-based, information-based and identification-based trust. As the relationship develops, the economy-based trust will move to knowledge-based trust, eventually identification-based trust. In the initial stage of participation to virtual communities, new members who have little knowledge about other members and their activities would develop economic-based trust that rests on behavior in general in the community. Economic-based trust (also called generalized-trust by Kankanhalli et al. (2005), competence-based trust by Abrams et al. (2003) ) is related to the economic gains such as increased knowledge, decreased time etc. Once the economic-based trust is set, individuals may feel a moral obligation and urged to reciprocate the contributions offered by the system. In online communities, reciprocity follows a generalized pattern; individuals decide to contribute when they benefit from the use of any publicly available information. The last formed trust is identification-based trust (benelovance by Abrams et al. (2003)) is based on emotional bonds between individuals.

This is really interesting, don't you think? These steps can be used when we build and cultivate communities in general and in the social space specifically. It also helps us do the right thing at every stage. For instance, don't expect employees that have no emotional bond with each other to share voluntarily. When a community is created/started people will decide to join or not. The decision will mostly be made on 'what's in it for me?' criteria. So, you have to be able to answer that question, or else they'll move to the next community and share there.


What do you think? Are these stages helpful? And do they relate to your experience?

Re: Expertise Location by @mikegotta

Michael Gotta of Cisco wrote an interesting post some time ago about "Expertise Location: Don't Forget Process & Cultural Factors". He relates to the fact that Enterprise 2.0 is often sold by saying that social tools help find experts in the organization more easily. However what's the assumption underlying this?

The general assumption includes two primary ways of identifying "experts". The first method assumes that employee use of social tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, communities) and social applications (e.g., ideation), enables their talent and business insight to be more visible and therefore more discoverable by co-workers. The second method revolves around the employee profile created as part of an enterprise social network site. It is assumed that employees will readily create and maintain rich profiles where they willingly share information about their job history, interests, hobbies, education, and areas of expertise. Rich employee profiles create another means for colleagues in need of assistance to search and connect to the right person - or access customized expertise location applications that leverag profile data to find the right resource anywhere in the organization. In both cases, the notion of "transparency" makes it easier for people in need of assistance to connect with the relevant expert.

I agree with these assumptions. I also agree with the fact that if employees use social tools they could be more easily found in the organization and/or seen as expert on a certain topic.
Gotta goes on to say expertise location has been around for some time and also points to Cisco's own solution for expertise location, Cisco Pulse. As far as I understand this tool automatically goes through company data and it's creators and builds an expertise map, giving users the opportunity to use the results to find experts in the organization.
Gotta closes his post with his main point by stressing expertise location is more than rolling out a tool in an organization. We have to pay attention to process and cultural factors as well. For instance, scarcity of information and resources. Or: accessibility of certain information due to security reasons. Privacy is also an issue. Is an employee's email box open for the whole company? And, to mention one more, culture. Is there an open culture in which employees want to share and post about their work?

Good points! But I want to go back to the assumption. It is assumed that employees use social tools. But do they? Yep, some, maybe lots will. But what happens if they don't? Are they then not an expert on one or more topic? The answer is simple: this can't be true. Of course, it does say a lot about employees who post about their work. Apparently they are open about what they know or need to know. And they're probably (more) willing to share.
Furthermore, is it possible to share all our knowledge. For instance, a programmer builds a new tool. In most companies he would have to write a report on the new tools. He'll probably also say in which language he wrote the code. But he'll never say: Hey, I'm an expert on that language. That's for others to decide.

So, we need to take a look how experts are really grown and found in organizations. How do you find the person you need in your organization? I've been writing quite a bit about this, so I'll keep it short here. Finding experts has to do with who you know. People refer to each other based on their experience with each other. Based on knowing each other you can say: this guy or girl is really good at ... This also has to do with how open or closed someone is. Someone can formally be an expert on a topic, but if he/she never has time to talk with you then he/she are not the one to go to. If you look at how people refer to each other in real-life you can also see they relate to expertise that can hardly be written down and captured by (social) tools. This all relates perfectly to Dave Snowden's KM principles, by the way.

Can this be supported by technology? I think so. At least for a larger part than the automated solutions I've seen so far. And Guruscan is the only company I know of that does this well.
To be clear: I'm not saying we shouldn't go for social tools or automated knowledge mapping in organizations. They are very helpful and can support more knowledge and communication process than ever before. But don't think you've solved the expertise location problem by using them...
I hope this helps. All feedback is welcome!

An implicit expertise network / IBM´s Expert Network on Slideshare

Luis Suarez recently pointed me to this. IBM set up an Expert Network on Slideshare, giving us a way to see all the slides produced by IBM-ers. Adam Christensen has a post explaining why this was done.

This got me thinking. I think this is a smart move.  Isn’t this a great way to implicitly show the expertise of IBM-ers? Of course LinkedIn tries to do the same, the other way around. You set up your profile. And you can connect Slideshare to your profile. Problem is, nobody says that profile is correct. And clicking through to the proof (e.g. your presentations) is not that easy. Furthermore you can´t see if that person is the only expert in that organization or the organization as a whole has expertise in a certain area.

I think if you’re looking for someone from IBM to help you out, the Expert Network on Slideshare will get you to the right man/woman much more quickly. What do you think of this move? And do you think such a network in Slideshare is a better expertise locator than LinkedIn? I´d love to hear your thoughts!

Knowledge Sharing and Incentives Revisited

The Internet is such a great place to share and learn. I find it a fantastic place to connect with all kinds of people you hardly know, but are willing to share and help you learn anyway.

I recently had such an experience I'd like to share with you. Remember my post on knowledge sharing and incentives? I could have kept this thought to myself, researched it and come up with the answer myself. But I didn't. I blogged about it, commented on a related post (which popped right when I was thinking about the topic...) and shared it in the LinkedIn Group 'Gurteen Knowledge Community'.

What did I get back? Did my readers or experts in the field criticize or laugh at me for wondering about this topic or asking 'dumb' questions? Did they leave me in the cold, completely not responding to me at all? Of course, this can all happen, but none of this (has ever) happened to me. I'll tell you what I got back in this case.

For one, Nick Milton wrote a separate post about my question. Secondly from the Gurteen Knowledge Community I got several replies. I'll share some here:

Pink and others have also done some TED presentations on this.
As Dave said, tasks with simple action-objective structures do well with exogenous rewards like money/tokens/etc., but anything where reflective thought, innovation, creativity, etc. are involved or where the action-objective link is complex, exogenous rewards tend to have the opposite effects.
My guess is that it is a Stroop-effect thing going on or one of those mutually inhibiting effects like when you wake up the nucleus accumbens with a reward like cash and the generosity of a person takes a dive.
In a practical sense, I have seen how money rewards or even individual rewards tend to simply lead to gaming behavior and a big pile of worthless junk instead of usable or novel material.
Bottom line is that you are trying to increase use of social values, not inhibit them.
- Posted by Matthew Loxton

Samuel, read Dan Pink's book "Drive". In the book he says that the research shows that for simple tasks that require no cognitive processing - rewards work - but for more sophisticated tasks that require even a modicum of cognitive engagement - they have an adverse effect. Asking someone to call in to report that they saw something in connection with a crime seems to me to fall in the first category.
Dan Pink and Alfie Kohn also state that when you offer a reward for something - the reward becomes the motivation and replaces the intrinsic motivation to do good. So I would not be surprised if research found that people who are rewarded to report a crime would be less inclined to do so at a future date when no reward was offered.
So yes it seems to be more subtle and at times counter-intuitive.
- David Gurteen

Agree...that's why for KM I think it's about "engagement" that's why I think this slidedeck is spot on http://www.slideshare.net/TSystemsMMS/the-wikipedia-myth-enterprise-20-knowledge-management
Dan Pink also has a video for RSA http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/drive-the-surprising-truth-about-what-motivates-us
Also and animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
To mix it up, here's some research on children
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/685512595/rewards-reduce-intrinsic-motivation-the-children
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/391619553/being-cautious-about-rewards
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/391616299/intrinsic-reinforcements

- John Tropea

Isn't this wonderful? Direct answers to my questions, pointers to information answering my questions, implicit links to people knowledgeable about the subject, etc.

Thanks all for your help! This has been my repeated experience as a blogger. And I hope this post will encourage many more to start or continue blogging. The blogosphere is alive and kicking!

Relating structured and unstructured knowledge processes - KMers chat #kmers

Just a small post to invite you all to join the next KMers Chat on this Tuesday, October 5 from 17:00 - 18:00 UTC. I'll be moderating this chat. Participating is easy. All you need is a Twitter account. Just wait for the chat to begin and make sure to append your tweets with #kmers. Lots of interesting and smart people join in.

This chat will be about: Relating structured and unstructured knowledge processes.

Here's a short overview of this topic and some questions:

Knowledge Management is currently often related to the unstructured information and knowledge processes in organizations. In the past the focus of KM was on the structured side. But how can/are these combined in organizations? More specifically: how does enterprise 2.0 relate to BPM? (As you may know this is being heavily debated now on the web.)

Questions:

1. Intro: Is the summary clear? Is the distinction clear? What do you call unstructured information/knowledge processes and structured processes?
2. Do you agree KM currently mostly focuses on unstructured processes? Why is this?
3. Are both types of processes supported holistically/in context in your company or companies you know?
4. What does this mean for tools? Should tools support both processes? Or should we piece together a tool landscape?

Hope to meet you there!

Knowledge Sharing and Incentives

It struck me when I was watching TV. In Holland we have a program called 'Opsporing Verzocht' (English: We're looking for something/someone'). It's a program to solve unsolved crimes. Basically it's crowdsourcing. The TV hosts and the police tell the people watching the 'show' about a crime and hope someone will have the golden tip to solve the crime. I'm sure you know the concept.

Every now and then, when a case is hard to solve the police offer a smaller or larger reward. Hoping this reward will encourage a reluctant (or scared) watcher to share tips about this case possibly  leading to its solution.

That struck me. They are offering financial rewards to share information. To my knowledge offering financial incentives to encourage knowledge sharing is advised against by the knowledge management experts. It basically leads to worse sharing and its the wrong way to encourage sharing. Relate to Nick Milton's post on this topic for instance.

But is this true? Am I missing something here? Was the conviction about incentives more subtle. For instance, financial incentives work only in specific cases, like crimes? And if so, what type of cases in organization compare to them?

Researching Enterprise Social Bookmarking

A couple of months ago my student, Arzu Yucekaya Bat, started working on her Master's thesis about social bookmarking and improving our internal bookmarking tool. Her research goal is:

To establish an overview for Océ Technologies B.V on motivations and barriers of the employees to adopt and contribute to the social bookmarking tool and determine possible interventions that will augment information sharing and discovery within this tool and assist to take proper incentives to increase the adoption rate.

Some excerpts from the original assignment are:

• Within R&D an opensource social bookmarking application is being used to collect and share bookmarks.
• Currently the implementation of our social bookmarking application is basic. We are working wider adoption of this tool and have generated several ideas to achieve this goal.
• conduct a short analysis of the literature on how to increase adoption of social bookmarking
• design an appealing application of social bookmarking to increase adoption (based on the current application).

Arzu's literature research has given some interesting insights. I hope to share some next week. Arzu's research will be published in a couple of months (when she finishes). You can follow her progress and engage with her via her tweets.

If you know of research that has been or is being done on this topic, please leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you!

Focus on Social Media Philosophy

Luis Suarez, one of IBM's well-known social media evangelists and email killer, has a really nice post titled "Forget social strategy, think social philosophy: Hippie 2.0". I hope you go ahead and read it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about his post (by leaving your comments on Luis' blog). I'll insert my thoughts here (that don't only apply to social media, by the way):

Nice post, Luis! I agree talking about the underlying philosophy and/or concepts of social media is insightful and helpful. I find talking in this way to employees and managers helps. As an IT manager in the company I work for said: "When deciding to do an IT investment let's not talk about money/ROI first, but first make a decision based on the story." In your terms: The philosophy should make sense and be understood first.

Enough Information

When do you have enough information to make a next step or a decision? As you may know I love to process lots of information. Depending on the type of information I'll dive into it deeply or just dip my toe in it. After processing lots of information deciding when enough is enough has become easier for me. But it's hard for me to describe when I stop taking in information. Dave Snowden's Cynefin model has helped me in this sense. (By the way Snowden is currently summarizing the Cynefin model/approach/concept in several posts.

The Cynefin model basically says: look at cause and effect. Is the cause and/or effect clear? Is the relationship between both clear? Depending on your answer different 'next steps' should be taken. For instance if the relationship between cause and effect is completely unclear. This is the complex domain. Probing is the thing to do. Don't go a read volumes of books and articles. Probe and see what happens, then act, etc.

Even though I love to read lots of information I don't believe in perfection. That's one of the great things I learned from social media. Don't think you will be able to write a perfect report, blog post or book. Don't think you'll be able to process all the relevant content before you start communicating your opinion about the topic. Release as early as possible to get early feedback, to learn more quickly. Listen, think, share and learn.

How do you decide you have enough information? Do you have a problem to 'release early'? If so, why?

A Slack Day

Some time ago prof. Andrew McAfee had an interesting post about what's most important for the success with Enterprise 2.0. One of the things he mentioned was:

Slack exists in the workweek

Slack... This term has been buzzing in my head for some time. For one because of the fact that there hasn't been much slack in my agenda the last couple of weeks... But also because many people say they are "really busy" and "don't have time for social media".
I organize slack. I work from home regularly if I really want to concentrate on something, like reading and writing (a blog post). Even though I work hard from home I experience it as slack. And when I'm at work I almost always make sure I have one or two hours to read feeds and reflect on them (possibly leading to a blog post, tweet, etc.).
A couple of weeks ago we had a cleaning day at the office. We organized slack for a specific reason. I love these days. Everyone is in a different mode, we're all working on the same thing and there are clear results at the end of the day.
I was wondering: do we need 'a slack day' every week (excluding Saturday and Sunday...)? One day a week for us to sit back, reflect on your job, read inspiring and thoughtful information and share your insights. Or am I wrongly tackling a deeper cultural issue with an organizational solution? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

UPDATE 14-10-2011: Good quote and post about slack.