Hi, Stan and Sandra

Stan's list is terrific.  Here's the presentation I did in 2017 for the SIKM leaders' community on collaboration and conversation, with summarizing research on collaboration. (Fundamentally, all collaboration takes shared purpose, structure, and psychological safety).  This summarizes a lot of the ideas from the course I teach at Columbia, Networks and Collaboration.

https://www.slideshare.net/Katepugh/pugh-collaboration-and-four-discussion-disciplines-for-sikm-171017  

Kate

Katrina Pugh

AlignConsulting | Collaboration AI and Strategy 

Columbia University | Info and Knowledge Strategy Master's Program Faculty

Mobile 617-967-3910

On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 9:40 AM stangarfield@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...> wrote:

 

Sandra, thanks for the clarification.  Here are a few articles that may be helpful.

I encourage other SIKM members to reply with their suggestions.

1. A Surefire Way to Build Widespread Collaboration Across Your Organization by Nancy Dixon
   
2. Now That’s Radical! Build a More Collaborative, Productive Team With More (Yes, More!) Meetings by Nancy Settle-Murphy
   
3. Coalescing a New Team – Creating Ties That Bind by Nancy Settle-Murphy
   
4. Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson
   
5. 5 steps to successful collaboration by Sally Uren
6. Creating Collaboration: A Process That Works! by Greg Giesen
7. A designer’s guide to collaboration by Essi Salonen
8. Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box by Ann Marie Thomson and James L. Perry
9. How to Set Productive Collaboration into Action by Lisa Bodell
10. Simple Exercise to Demonstrate Value of Collaboration by Jason Little
    

---In sikmleaders@..., <sandralopezm@...> wrote :

Hi, thanks Stan, I am currently working with a group of people from a bank in the knowledge management, among the issues to work is collaborative work, I would like a powerful practical activity that allows them to understand the issue, if you can help me I appreciate it

Sandra López

 

---

De: sikmleaders@... en nombre de stangarfield@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...>
Enviado: viernes, septiembre 13, 2019 11:36 p. m.
Para: sikmleaders@...
Asunto: [sikmleaders] Re: Collaborative work

 

 

Hi, Sandra.

Thanks for posting here.  Please reply with a few more details on what you are seeking.  This will make it easier for the members to respond helpfully.

Regards,

Stan

 

Sandra, thanks for the clarification.  Here are a few articles that may be helpful.

I encourage other SIKM members to reply with their suggestions.

1. A Surefire Way to Build Widespread Collaboration Across Your Organization by Nancy Dixon
   
2. Now That’s Radical! Build a More Collaborative, Productive Team With More (Yes, More!) Meetings by Nancy Settle-Murphy
   
3. Coalescing a New Team – Creating Ties That Bind by Nancy Settle-Murphy
   
4. Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson
   
5. 5 steps to successful collaboration by Sally Uren
6. Creating Collaboration: A Process That Works! by Greg Giesen
7. A designer’s guide to collaboration by Essi Salonen
8. Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box by Ann Marie Thomson and James L. Perry
9. How to Set Productive Collaboration into Action by Lisa Bodell
10. Simple Exercise to Demonstrate Value of Collaboration by Jason Little
    

---In sikmleaders@..., <sandralopezm@...> wrote :

Hi, thanks Stan, I am currently working with a group of people from a bank in the knowledge management, among the issues to work is collaborative work, I would like a powerful practical activity that allows them to understand the issue, if you can help me I appreciate it

Sandra López

 

---

De: sikmleaders@... en nombre de stangarfield@... [sikmleaders] <sikmleaders@...>
Enviado: viernes, septiembre 13, 2019 11:36 p. m.
Para: sikmleaders@...
Asunto: [sikmleaders] Re: Collaborative work

 

 

Hi, Sandra.

Thanks for posting here.  Please reply with a few more details on what you are seeking.  This will make it easier for the members to respond helpfully.

Regards,

Stan

 

Hi Robert,

Tom Short’s suggestion to capture context by linking knowledge artifacts to specific processes or tasks and features within existing processes is relevant and realistic. For Chevron, this turned out to be with a Q&A process.

A typical example was our refinery KM site. After a large merger, we needed to connect over 2000 refinery engineers and operators to our best practices to ensure high quality global operations. The best practice library was very comprehensive, but difficult for the new engineers to navigate due to their different backgrounds.

We designed a Q&A tool using refinery process and equipment terms (the metadata) which were familiar to all the new engineers. One of the pre-launch steps asked each engineer to complete a profile by selecting items from the two lists that they knew something about. If time was of the essence, the engineer facing a problem could find someone to call  for quick help.

When an engineer ran into a plant problem, he or she just posted a question and selected relevant metadata. Emails were sent to engineers whose profile had matching metadata. Often the engineer received multiple suggestions in a few days. We asked the engineer to “close the loop” by documenting the actual solution and estimating the value to their refinery in terms of cost and/or time savings.

We documented an average of $10-20 million/year in business value savings.

The new knowledge, which included the problem, relevant metadata, suggested solutions and the actual solution employed was easily and quickly tagged and available for future problems. Even answers that didn’t fit the original problem could easily apply to another problem in the future. Thus, you may not want to discard it.

Most of today’s KM technology tools don’t offer this capability. We did this with Lotus Notes back in the day. Fortunately, I have discovered that it is possible to build the same capabilities in SharePoint.

--Jeff

 

“My kingdom for a nail....”

Yes, context is everything when it comes to valuing knowledge assets and artifacts. Back in the early JIT days (Just In Time) a common shorthand for one its core concepts was “I want what I want when I want it.” KM thought-leader Larry Prusak quoted a modified version of this: “I know what I know when I know it.” Both are relevant here.

A knowledge worker may not even be aware of the value of a given artifact even when they are in the midst of doing something that ultimately requires or would benefit them in completing it. Only upon hitting the sticking point does the worker recognize the gap between the requirements of the task and their ability to execute it. “I want what I want when I want it.”

This points to an easy way of inventorying artifacts: figure out a way to map them to specific processes or tasks and activities within existing processes.

Example: Electrical utility workers are trained in the classroom and then in the field via a union guild model. Due to the evolution of electrical network equipment that naturally occurs over decades, it is impossible to train for a given procedure on every variation of the equipment that that procedure could be performed on. So the classroom training on changing an overload fuse on a 600KVA panel focuses on the current version of those panels. But in the field a worker may come across a decades old panel that appears roughly the same as the one they saw in the classroom, except for the fact that following the sequence of steps for working on a new panel will result in a catastrophic failure if that sequence is applied when working on an old panel.

One possible solution: your idea of smartphone video comes into play here. Simply have an experienced worker video the correct procedure and upload it to a repository that houses a collection of said field videos.

Of course this leads to two important challenges:
1. How to tag these mini-tutorials so they are easily surfaced when searched for (I want what I want when I want it).
2. How to alert the worker that a) a procedure modification is needed here; and b) there is an artifact available to help them.

I used the example of the electric utility field workers because about 12 years ago I was on a ride-along with one of them and witnessed this scenario first-hand. Fortunately the field worker I was with was a veteran lineman who knew all about the need for a different procedure on the old panel. As I watched over his shoulder while he was working on it he explained to me how it required a different set of steps and what would happen if someone tried to complete the task using the “normal” approach (it involved a big “boom”). Even thought smartphones were still just emerging, the notion of videoing the procedure for this odd-ball panel seemed like a no-brainer - if we could come up with solutions to the above two questions.

Based on the above story, I hope it gives you some ideas about how you might approach your challenge. Start by cherry-picking the easy-to-value artifacts and developing a way to address the above two questions as related to known, existing processes. Your challenge is to come up with a way of putting knowledge assets and artifacts “in the way of” the knowledge worker who is executing against a given known workflow or process. Solve this and you’ll be well on your way toward gaining insight and understanding as to the value of a given artifact or asset, as well as laying down the infrastructure that will be usable for artifacts that may not be so easily mapped to a given process or task.