Tuesday, June 04, 2002

Notes and commentary on Active Words presentation  Guest speaker:  Burton (Buzz) Bruggeman  buzz@activewords.com §         Active Words – enables you to create macros on your computer so that it understands your shortcut commands.  Ex: ‘xl’ will open excel.  BOR inserts bill of rights into text.  §         Created eight main functions for most PC users.  §         Active Words is a “front end knowledge management tool.”  §         Sounds like a lot of customized short-cuts.  Is it new knowledge?  Or is it just a time saving device?  Return on investment calculated by multiplying time saved by cost of user’s time.  Potential for significant time (and $) savings.  My opinion:  I think it depends on what specific activities you do daily.  More applicable for some types of jobs than others.  Attorneys, maybe, since it requires significant document creation.  I think this is a cool technology that I wouldn’t be willing to pay that much for.  It might take me longer to memorize all the shortcuts than to just go through the keystrokes.  §         McGee students can get active words software for free. §         Tough to catch on b/c: o       People who have it want to keep the competitive advantage o       Users don’t want to be “tech support” for new users who “don’t get it” o       Many execs don’t get the importance of the savings.  They see implementation problems. §         Outlook agent – allows user to sync with all outlook users.  (All users? Or just users you have put in there?  I think just your own contacts.)  Calls up useful information about these people.  Address, phone, title, kids names, etc.  Saves the number of key strokes it requires to open outlook and search for the person on your own.  My opinion:  This doesn’t seem like a huge time savings to me.  A matter of seconds.  Most people have their outlook open all the time anyway.  §         It’s hard for me to buy into this as a knowledge management tool.  Maybe a ‘personal knowledge management’ tool if you stretch the definition to mean easy access to stuff you created before and use all the time.  Like a good filing system.  §         What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)  If managing knowledge makes you more productive, better team member, etc. – that’s what is in it for you.  §         Example:  BOR = 3,000+ characters.  My opinion:  Buzz calculates his time savings based on this.  But can’t you just use copy and paste (ctrl c, ctrl v)?  That’s 2 key strokes.  Or at most 5-7 if you need to open a file.  Sorry to sound so skeptical.  I guess I would have to use it for a while to be convinced.  §         You can build all the shortcuts you want.  “have it your way”  Highly customizable.  Some prescripted shortcuts for common functions.  Many for Outlook.  “Tool for smart people to unleash their imagination.” §         Scripting – allows you to create shortcuts that will create an e-mail with template text.  It will open a new message, tab down, and insert the appropriate text.  §         Clichés – abound because they are true.  “Hitting head against the wall…” Kind of like navigating the MS maze.  Active Words lets you avoid the maze.  §         Three most important advances in technology today: o       Weblogs o       WiFi o       Webservers All 3 are about managing knowledge.  §         KM vs. km:  o       KM – institutional knowledge management o       km – the individual knowledge worker   9:03:51 PM     My notes and thoughts from 6/4 class: Prof. McGee Lecture: §         Evolution of knowledge management in organizations: §         KM in craft organizations is tacit §         Industrial orgs thrive on explicit knowledge o       Perceive, frame, design, then build, operate, improve cycle o       A few brains and lots of hands §         Knowledge orgs must design for knowledge explicitly o       Perceive, frame, then design, build, operate, and improve cycle o       All brains required o       The business problems have changed §         Aside:  Orgs need to hire smarter and smarter people.  Managers get tripped up b/c they are afraid to hire people who will challenge them.  §         Generic process for knowledge management o       Iterative and cyclical o       Impossible to map a specific process b/c knowledge work changes o       Quality before quantity o       Improve at the periphery and outside the process.  What does this mean?  Help people learn to frame the problems.  Develop guidelines for estimations.  Create sources of reliable information.  Etc. o       This makes a lot of sense to me.  This is what went wrong at Towers Perrin.  They tried to get KM down to a science and then forgot that they are knowledge workers who need to take the template and use it as a tool to do their job.  Finding the right template is not the job.  o       This is exactly what people at D&T feared and resisted about the ROKnet (return of knowledge network).  Many of the managers feared that KM would give people and excuse to get lazy about solving client problems.  People would joke about the day in the future where we could push the magic button and solve the client problems.  There was such a buzz around KM that most people did not understand that it is used as a tool to help knowledge workers to their jobs better, not a tool that does their jobs for them.    8:59:16 PM

© Copyright 2002 Courtney Mohr. Last update: 6/4/02; 9:04:03 PM.