September 2005 Archives

"Why making the decisions the right way is more important than making the right decisions" is an interesting piece from the Ivey Business Journal.

An entertaining video from Susan Crawford via David Weinberger

Frustrated by a term that doesn't seem to mean anything but that all the techies are using? Lee, over at Headshift, gives a decent description of "What is Web 2.0?"

Is it me, or are there a heck of a lot of blogging and/or KM surveys coming out of late?

David Buchan suggests that a group needs to come to an agreement to always respond when asked. People in the group need to have some understanding of everyone's expertise as well.

Government Computer News reports that "NARA: New archive system could change records management." NARA has commissioned a new ERA that is to cover all governmental records in all types across all platforms.

I came across Itensil 's Teamlines recently, and it appears to be a good process / project management tool. And I see it as having some components of CCPM as well.

"What stands between you and greatness today?"

I'll be in Cleveland this week (end of September). If anyone would like to get to meet for coffee, I'd be delighted.

'Vision without execution is hallucination.' - Thomas Edison. And an hour saved at a non-bottleneck is a mirage (Goldratt).

I used to regularly read the blog of "Ed Taekema - Road Warrior Collaboration," but it appears that the server on which his blog was based is dead. Ed are you out there somewhere?

Dave Chu has been writing Knowledge/Action for a while, but he seems to be hitting his stride lately. This article talks about his genesis on the path: "A Neo-Confucian Approach to Knowledge Management."

Pop quiz: Do you want a bottleneck in your business? Why or why not?

David Heinemeier Hansson at Signal vs. Noise has a piece that points to some interesting aspects of knowledge work: "Getting Real: Don't pick the tools ahead of the craftsman."

Dave Pollard has another in depth tome in yesterday's "The Psychology of Information, or Why We Don't Share Stuff." I like that he acknowledges the importance of the underlying human behaviors in this dilemma.

Multi-tasking links from Frank Patrick and Jeff Davidson

Interesting articles from Clay Shirky and David Weinberger on categorization and tagging. The articles have been out for a couple months, but it's useful to look at them in light of hearing the ideas bantered around.

The next AOK Star Series will run Monday, 19th September, through Friday, 30th September. The topic is "Toward Pragmatic Knowledge Management" with David Fearon and Steven Cavaleri.

Jeff Oxenford brings up an interesting topic based on a KM World editorial by Hugh Keller, "Invisible KM." Should KM remain invisible, or should it be driven home by the leaders of the organization?

Lilia Efimova is back to writing about knowledge management: "Unexpected knowledge sharing: on recording and discoverability of knowledge traces." She goes on to discusses two strategies relevant to KM for organizations: highlighting the demand for knowledge, and motivating the discovery of knowledge (really "knowledge traces").

Jason Marty spoke at KM Chicago on legal knowledge management and the KM efforts at Baker & McKenzie, one of the world's largest law firms. He didn't dive into the details of any one KM project, rather he spoke about how Baker & McKenzie has approached knowledge management in light of the legal environment and Baker's business drivers.

"Effective Online Forum Usage" by Steve Pavlina. Along with listing the benefits and negative effects of excessive forum usage, he provides a list of suggestions for overcoming the negative effects while still enjoying the benefits.

Denham Grey and Paul Hartzog and I thinking about conversation and extending the social network.

Business Process Trends has published a white paper by Russ Records on "The Fusion of Process and Knowledge Management." The article is focused primarily on installing IT systems that do process management and knowledge management, but it is nice to see this good overview of the combined disciplines.

In "Data chief climbs the executive title tower," Chicago Tribune staff reporter Jon Van discusses data mining the importance of data to companies. I see the importance of the strategic view.

In an email conversation with Joe Potts, inspired by a comment on my Freakonomics review, the idea that information assymetry and knowledge management might be on opposite sides of the fence came up. My thoughts on this follow.

A client sent an article about knowledge management in call centers from Call Center Magazine, "Find the Needle. Organize the Haystack."

Jeff Oxenford runs into the same trouble that anyone involved in knowledge management runs into: What is knowledge? (and what is knowledge management).

It looks like BlogWalk Seattle was a lot of fun. I would have loved to be around as the attached poster was created.

"Know how: Managing knowledge for competitive advantage" by Terry Ernest-Jones is an interesting survey and discussion of where knowledge management is headed from the perspective of senior leaders in western European businesses.

Cutting Through points to a great paper on "Making virtual teams work." Trust is a huge aspect of any teams, and as this paper discusses, our ability to create and maintain trust in virtual environments is somewhat limited.

Gordon Müller-Seitz contacted me and asked that I both take this survey and let you all know about it. The survey is focused on corporate blogging (within the company), but most questions are focused on blogging and what you gain from it.

More random fun for you - playing with the list of popular songs from your youth. If you aren't doing anything over Labor Day, that is.