Learn to Adapt

I wanted to post this video for two reasons: 1) They used the nearly the same headline as I did (and who knows how many others have ;o); and 2) while my post is a dry review of the ways to generate revenue on the Web, Charlene Li and Sarah Lacy have a brief but interesting discussion about why monetizing social networks is different from search and other general Web advertising (the favored monetization model on the Web).  I especially liked Charlene’s comment that Twitter may be amassing a more valuable data set than Facebook because they capture what “people are paying attention to” right now.  Take five minutes to check it out:

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In a stark example of ageist bigotry parading as insight, Venkatesh Rao is trying to instigate a war that does not, and need not, exist.  He believes that knowledge management (KM) advocates and social media (SM) advocates are at odds with each other.  His divisive post imagines a war between KM and SM.  Evidently, after encountering resistance to his polarized view of SM, he authored the dense tirade as a call to a war that does not exist.  His post brings to mind William Randolph Hearst’s quote, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” (Although that is history and Rao dismisses the importance of such institutional knowledge.  He’s doomed to repeat a great deal of history, I suppose.)

I see no reason why we should respond to Rao’s call to war.  His evidence in support of war are little more than petulant responses to people’s inevitable resistance to change.  He supports his opinions with fallacy in an attempt to create generational conflict.  My personal favorite: “…RSS and Mash-ups are culturally Gen X ideas…” I wonder how Dave Winer, the primary inventor/advocate of RSS, would feel about that statement since he falls solidly in the Boomer generation that Rao seems to disdain.  Statements like “The Boomers don’t really get or like engineering and organizational complexity,” beg a cultural flame-war.  But I will resist.  Instead, let me make a case for KM and SM peace.

A few bad apples don’t spoil the whole bunch. All change champions encounter resistance – sad fact of the human condition.  And many entrenched incumbents can be especially resistant to the status quo.  But we paint with too broad a brush if we let a handful of stubborn dinosaurs define an entire group of people.  I have been in KM for over a decade and have been active in SM since the term was coined.  And amongst the advocates of both, I see many more examples of integration than I do of segregation.

Social media actualizes the idealism of KM. In the workshops I deliver on Enterprise 2.0, I often refer to it as “KM 1.53”  This alludes to the fact that the goals of E2.0 are nearly identical to the goals of KM.  E2.0 (SM in the workplace) delivers the platforms and tools necessary to reach the KM ideals we have sought for years.  While the inherent ungoverned disorder of social media seems radical to some KM administrators, most KM advocates welcome these tools in their quest to free information and improve performance.

Most KM practitioners recognize the value of SM.  I have presented keynotes and workshops on SM at KM Australia and KM Asia.  At both, I have found many more eager adopters than resistant dinosaurs.  Based on my experience, most KM practitioners are excited about SM tools and platforms and are looking for ways to incorporate them into the current KM strategies as soon as possible.  As for the less structured aspect of SM, the response to my “Abandon Your Content Management System – KM in the age of GooTube” presentation at KM Australia was very positive.

Rao ended his post with his prediction of how the war will end.  Please read it yourself, but I would summarize it as: the old resistant people will die and the young righteous people will prevail.  I will close with my prediction of how the peace will continue:  Our technology and society will continue to evolve; people will continue to be resistant to (but finally adapt to) change; youth will continue to disdain their elders until they become tempered by wisdom; and the opportunities to learn and prosper will continue to grow for those wise enough to do so.

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This post is based on the keynote I delivered at Knowledge Management Australia this summer (I know – but better late than never).  I entitled the talk “Abandon Your Content Management: KM in the Age of GooTube”. When I developed it I was under the questionable influence of two books: Clay Sirky’s Here Comes Everybody and David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous.  But here I want to share the main premise of the talk: that we should focus less on managing our information and focus more on capturing it and then making it discoverable.

(A note before we begin.  I will be using the terms “information management” and “content management” in place of what many people would refer to as “knowledge management.”  I define knowledge as “information in action” – and that action can only take place in the human mind.  Since I’m not fond of the idea of mind management, I believe “information” is actually what we are managing, not knowledge.)

Most traditional information management or content management systems and programs follow a highly centralized model:

Think about those three verbs: Gather, Organize, Publish.  Those are the verbs of centralization and governance.  It implies one system (or group) is responsible for information management.  And often the majority of the resources within that system are devoted to “Organize” – organizing (and controlling) the information in the system.  In an age when search makes unorganized information easily discoverable, this is probably a waste of resources.

The focus on organizing grew out of natural human reaction to trying to understand an increasingly complex environment.  There was so much information available that we had to develop ways of organizing it in order to cope.  Over time, this resulted in what David Weinberger refers to as the “three orders of order”:

1. Organizing the objects themselves based on shared traits. This does have some basis in logic and is exemplified by placing flora and fauna into related Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc. or in organizing a department store into clothing items, kitchen items, electronic items, etc.  But even this has its limitations.  Does an under-kitchen-counter TV go in the kitchen department or the electronic department?  This order of order is based on organizing the physical objects themselves.
2. Organizing “pointers” that represent the actual objects based on some arbitrary system. This order of order evolved to address the sheer volume of objects that needed to be discoverable.  We could create new smaller objects that “point” to the real object and then organize those “meta-objects”.  The arbitrary way these meta-objects were organized (think alphabetization or the Dewey Decimal system) often removed any “natural relations” they might have.  And again, their use and discoverability were limited by the fact that they were still physical objects.
3. Digitizing the objects (or meta-objects) allows us to return to the “natural state of chaos”. This new order of order reconsiders the reason we organized objects in light of our new digital world. The core driver of our past organization was to make objects easily (and hopefully logically) discoverable.  But in the digitized world, we can discover without the need for organization.  Search is the key that unlocks the chaos of information.  So, Weinberger’s (arguable) proposal is this: In a digital world power by full search, we no longer need to order (organize) our information to be able to find and use it.

If Weinberger is correct and we can return to chaos comfortably, it brings us to a more natural state of knowledge capture and discovery.  To illustrate this, let’s first consider a (grossly simplified) picture of an ecosystem:

Within ecosystems, resources (food, energy) are circulated within the environment from producers to consumers and then (again, grossly simplified) back around to producers again.  If we apply this ecosystems model to our old information management model, we will see “Organize” drop out entirely, “Gather” become “Capture” and “Publish” become “Discover.”

Think about these new verbs, Capture and Discover.  These are not centrally controlled and they abhor governance.  Given an open system, anyone can capture information as they create it (or discover it) and then everyone can discover all that has been captured (via search – as well as links, recommendations, etc.).  And if the ecosystem (i.e., information management system) is designed properly, every act of discovery is automatically an act of capture that returns value to the ecosystem.  Let’s consider the ideal application of the two verbs in more detail:

Capture. All the content (information) in our knowledge ecosystem is generated by people (people who need people – sorry…).  We should design our work applications and procedures to capture everything that people produce as they work.  There should be no separation between the tools of production and the tools of information capture.  And, of course, those tools should have discovery built into them.  Imagine if every time information of value to the ecosystem was generated – whether in a spreadsheet, database, e-mail, conference call, IM or Tweet – it was immediately captured, indexed and discoverable through search, cross-linking, and extensions.  People working in that that ecosystem would thrive.

Discover. First and foremost, our information ecosystem must have comprehensive search.  In addition, it should incorporate every tool or process for improving discoverability such as tagging, syndication, linking, the “database of intentions“, and recommendations.  Moreover the system must recognize that the information is being captured and discovered by people (people who need people – damn! sorry…).  As we move from the information age into the connected age and the importance of social networks increases, the system must support the socialization of information.  Our ideas and information are satellites orbiting us just as the people in our social graph do.  The ecosystem must recognize that information and the people who created or discovered it should be inseparable.  We gain far greater value from social information than orphan information.

So how does one go about building a knowledge ecosystem? What are the basic requirements of a system to support the continuous cycle of capture and discover? That’s what the buzzword d’jour, “Enterprise 2.0″ (aka “Knowledge Management 1.53″) is all about.  By applying the social ideals and platforms sweeping the Web to the enterprise, we can approach (carefully) a knowledge ecosystem.  One of the best (though techno-centric) models to capture the elements needed within a knowledge ecosystem is the FLATNESSES checklist created by Dion Hinchcliffe (based on the original SLATES checklist created by Andrew McAfee):

I encourage you to review it and the other “Enterprise 2.0″ information out there.  Applying those ideas can help you begin to shift from knowledge management to knowledge ecosystem.

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In today’s hyper-dynamic world, the ability to solve problems quicker and bring innovations to market is essential to success.  Diversity is the foundation of better problem solving, innovation, and market prediction.  While there has long been anecdotal proof of diversity’s value, a sound mathematical proof was not available until Scott E. Page published The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies in January of 2007.

Last Wednesday I was fortunate to be spend a few hours with Scott.  Tiane Mitchell Gordon invited Scott to speak at AOL and asked me to join them since we are working together on a new, results-focused diversity and inclusion curricula.  After his presentation, Scott discussed at length how organizations can better leverage the power of diversity to improve performance and compete better in the 21st century marketplace.

Scott’s book is a revelation to any of us who have had to answer the “prove it” question regarding the competitive power of diversity.  Because the book presents a mathematical proof, it is not the easiest read you will pick up on the topic.  Scott is, after all, a professor of complex systems, political science, and economics.  He recognized the power of diversity from an economic perspective – instead of the typical sociology or human resources perspective.  Fortunately, Scott’s eclectic examples and great sense of humor soften his scientific treatise.

Our discussion was wide ranging, but can be boiled down to the title of this post: The Science of Diversity and the Art of Inclusion.  Scott recognized the mathematical power of diversity, but most of the (very good) books on the topic were anecdotal and qualitative (see Frans Johansson’s Medici Effect, Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics, and James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds).  Scott wrote his book to provide a mathematical equation that equates the power of diversity.  The hope being that quantitative proof would encourage leaders to diversify their teams.  Of course, building a diverse team is just the beginning.  For diversity to deliver competitive advantage, the art of inclusion must be applied to unleash it.  I’ll get to the art of inclusion in a bit, but let’s first finish pondering the science of diversity.

For too long, diversity has been viewed from a “representation” perspective.  Affirmative action, EEOC lawsuits, and representation quotas put organizations into a reactionary mindset of preventative precaution.  Only now are we seeing organizations emerging from this reactionary morass to recognize the strategic value of diversity.  Organizations are proactively courting diversity as a competitive advantage.  And we can see this dichotomy of reactive vs. proactive reflected in the current discussion of “identity diversity” vs. “skills diversity”.

Identity diversity is “old school” – the representation view of diversity using variables such as gender, race, ethnicity, etc.   And it is a two sided coin – both how you view yourself and how others view you.  While this type of diversity continues to be very important to building diverse teams, it may not be as important as skills diversity.  Skills diversity (you can substitute “cognitive”, “experience”, or “perspective” for “skills”) refers to the tools each individual brings to their team.  While the identity variables still apply to skills diversity, it is driven by the multitude of experiences that make us who we are.  A person’s primary language, type of education, level of education, social customs, political beliefs, value system, problem solving methods, work experience, geographic origins, and a host of other variables all contribute to her skills diversity.

With that understanding of diversity, Scott equates the value of diversity.  He mathematically demonstrates how diversity improves problem solving, innovation, and prediction accuracy.  I encourage you to get Scott’s book for the detailed mathematics.  But let’s bring this back to practical application.  If a leader recognizes the importance of both identity and skills diversity, how does she build a diverse team?  Many great minds are working to answer that question and it is what Scott and I spent the most of our time discussing.  We discussed the possibility for new evaluation tools, skills assessments, psychological profiles, etc. These tools could help leaders peer into the diversity of their current team and potential new hires.  But until those tools are readily available and easy to use, leaders will simply need to be diligent in gauging diversity.

No matter how a leader goes about building a diverse team, the team’s potential will never be realized unless the leader also masters the art of inclusion.  A deceptively simple definition of inclusion is “managing a group so that all diverse members are given the opportunity to participate equally.”  But it is more complex than that.  Depending on the team and the goals, the leader will need to artfully use a number of tools to unlock the team’s potential.

And what are the tools of the art of inclusion?  Because this post is already too long and my ADD is begging me to find something else to do, I will leave the art of inclusion for a future post.  A weaselly way to end the post, I know.  But here’s the (probably obvious) teaser: the tools are nothing that most effective leaders don’t already have in their toolbox.

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Ever since the first networked copier/scanner was installed in my office, I wondered how long it would be before the fax machine became obsolete. The copier/scanner makes it easy to scan any document to PDF and attach it to an e-mail – providing greater efficiency, privacy, and accountability than the old faxing process.

Today I received my fist “standardized corporate” business card that did not have a fax number. This was not from a techno-evangelist eschewing vestigial technology – it was from a salt-of-the-earth program manager. When I asked her about she said she wasn’t concerned that the number wasn’t there since she never uses the fax. Think about it. A program manager that coordinates scores of vendors, clients, events, contracts, etc. – and never uses a fax.

I take this as a sign that the fax machine has entered its golden years and will soon go the way of the telegram. My prediction is that we have about five more years before the need to scan paper-based transactions into digital form will become a relic as well.

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