Strategy.manage.ent

Windley is right, again -- more from Utah's CIO on how the weblog can get knowledge out in the open. I, too, worry about the confidential being exposed, but there really is far less to protect than we often think.

In the current new.architect article Five Mistakes Your Company Won't Make Now That You're Reading This, mistake number four is overvaluing intellectual property.

I've seen this in my own employers, where secrecy and an overzealous confidentiality ethic strangled both workers and customers while in reality there was nothing to protect.

Digging Ideas Out of People's Heads.
Dave McNamee is doing a good job on his weblog of narrating his work and keeping his co-workers updated about where his head is at on any given day. Good work Dave!

I worry sometimes about the public expression of information that should be kept confidential, but I worry more about the exponentially worse problem of keeping confidential that which should be publicly expressed. I can think of ways to solve the first problem, but I can't dig ideas out of people's heads. They must be expressed to be used.
[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Principles for Information Flow

8:32:13 AM

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My personal experiment on information flow has yielded mixed results.

Of Tom Gilbert and K-logs.
A while back, I had offered a challenge for McGee to pass along to his students. He did so, but none of them stepped forward. I was disappointed, but am willing to accept this as an indicator of their intelligence. :-)

So I guess I'll have to do the heavy lifting, and that means all this will dribble out over some time. Bad for my readers who might want to get this in one chunk; Good for me to have more time for reflecting about this.

I'll start off with a direct quote from Tom Gilbert's Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, p178-9. BTW, if you are interesting in management, Human Performance Technolgy, KM/KS, behavior analysis, or performance improvement, you should get two copies of this book (one to keep clutched tightly in your hands, and one for loaning to others).

Principles of Information Flow

The requirements of an information system sensibly designed to give maximum support to performance are absurdly simple, and they can be summarized in eight steps:

Identify the expected accomplishments, mission, responsibilities, and duties.
State the requirements of each accomplishment. If there is any doubt that people understand the reason why an accomplishment and its requirements are important, explain this.
Describe how performance will be measured and why.
Set exemplary standards, preferably in measurement terms.
Identify exemplary performers and any available resources that people can use to become exemplary performers. [Gilbert defined (p40) "exemplary performance as the most sustained worthy performance we can reasonably expect to attain." So an outlier achievement (e.g., an NFL running back having back-to-back 1,000+ rushing yards seasons) should not be held up as a standard, since it is unlikely to be sustainable.]
Provide frequent and unequivocable feedback about how well each person is performing. This confirmation should be expressed as a comparison with an exemplary standard. Consequences of good and poor performance should also be made clear.
Supply as much backup information as needed to help people troubleshoot their own performance and that of the people for whom they are responsible.
Relate various aspects of poor performance to specific remedial actions.

These steps are far too simple to be called a "technology," but it may be that their very simplicity helps explain why they are so rarely followed. I suppose that people tend to look for more complex reasons for seemingly complex problems, and therefore more complex solutions.

I believe the following about these principles:

It is indeed a "technology", just as the socratic method might be considered a technology of learning.
A k-log could certainly be used to help accomplish some of these steps.
These are precisely the things a good manager should be doing (and more importantly, has direct control over!), to promote an efficient and effective work environment, whether they use a k-log or not.
[gRadio] [Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio Weblog] [Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]

I have assembled a small group with a common interest, and attempted to engender a collaborative/shared knowledge environment around that interest. We have some common goals, but they have not been clearly articulated -- they're a bit fuzzy, amorphous, and subject to interpretation.

So Rule 1 is important -- I need to be more specific about what I want the collab/KS effort to accomplish.

The members of the group are widely dispersed and so must communicate electronically -- primarily telephone and e-mail. I have introduced several related collaboration technologies -- a weblog, a discussion forum, QuickTopic document review.

These rules are targeted at a controlled environment, where their use may be reinforced via superimposed management structures. My small group is volunteer, so enforcement must come through suggestion and example