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Et grand merci au toujours stimulant forum de l’Oulipo, qui m’a fait découvrir ce bijou…

Among existing yottabytes of data, we will use, during our life, billions of information (data becomes information when it correspond to some conscious or unconscious project or objective I have…), but how much tacit or explicit knowledge (information embodied after really using it, “learning by doing”…)?

I always was reluctant to the next word, wisdom, the word appearing a bit too spiritual to me. But competency is a good one. In my opinion, competency emerges when knowledge can, in real life, be applied to some specific and useful process…

In front of a problem, everybody try to find the perfect expertise.
This is not so easy, our mind is always balanced between confidence and doubts. We are tempted to trust some nice sources, gambling unconsciously between pleasure of finding fast and cold and unpleasant hard work…
People are therefore statistically more tempted by “lovable fools” than by “competent jerks”

So, KM topic still open !
- How can we separate Wheat & Chaff?
- Back to basics, KM jargon
- KM frontiers always moving, from time to time, need of refocus, its relation with HPT (Human Performance Technology)
- Companies have still to define their strategy on that…
- Some quick wins are possible…

What is real value of KM? It is highly of the type of work model we have in an organization, and alignment of decisions with it…

- Profit/employee becomes a new key indicator, even for Wall Street !
- But can we measure KM?
- Is knowledge sharing so easy?
- Must we collect information or can we get it from other sources? The old connection/collection debate…

And this dream of learning?
Can learning be made, with a good KM system, without human intermediation? I don’t think so.
Some steps of learning are:
- Illumination (human based, sort of psychoanalytical transfer mode)
- Deepening (Can be Information based, personal work)
- Project, transforming information into knowledge (Vertical or horizontal human interaction necessary)
And, just for pleasure, why not some contest on KM…?
- Is KM dead?
- Let’s kill KMS (KM Systems)
- Let’s kill Knowledge Management

Not impressed by high tech evolution? Just read 2007 ten emerging technologies.

And what’s new just now?

about Computing
- Super lenses and chips, to see nanometers…
- Intel going on…

about Communication
- Optical fibers … and the web
- IBM going on…
- and all the mobile stuff, changing potentially your life…

about Storage
- Nanotubes again…
- and flash memory on your desktop

about Man/Machine interfaces
- what about ultramobiles
- some virtual earphones
- Internet names length
- and emoticons…- and last but not least, if you don’t succeed to retrieve information (all those blogs !!!), why not organize your disorder?

Governing IT (look at this PWC perfect report) is (and that is not new!) key for company performance:
Strategic alignment is key, but clearly a subtle adaptive one, not too mechanistic…
What are CEO feelings on that?

Some new innovative ideas on this old alignment topic, like this definition of IT organizations as fitting into one of three categories, which called Solid Utility, Trusted Supplier, and Partner Player.
McKinsey emphasizes on some conditions of success…

All that relies usually on CIO. He is responsible of all dimensions of IT Governance (Strategic Alignment, Operational Efficiency, Risk Management, Security, Business Continuity, Change Management, System Integrity, Cost Management, Regulatory Compliance, Value Delivery):
Don’t forget that sometimes IT can put you out of business!

CIO priorities on theses subjects evolve, and more…

Recently published, on those topics:
On Security : Web2 increases security risks and is a new challenge, and globalization is another key issue…
On Compliance: Compliance environment in US and more…
On Business continuity…
With such responsibilities, why CIO careers are not more dynamic, does CIO still means “Career Is Over“?

SOA story is a nice one! It was at the top of CIO challenges for 2007, and reemphasised in recent CeBit, …

To consider the best way to develop, maintain application is to design them as independant LEGO buiding blocks, exchanging services is a nice creative dream.
But…
picture, in large companies, of application portfolio shows the real mess:
heterogeneous applications, different programming language, weight of history, big amount of usable application, only a small part being used and a smaller part really useful (using Renault CIO typology)

In that kind of case, SOA is more a modern (desperate?) programming way to try to make these old (and new) applications communicate, creating a layer of web services (communication layer using web xml protocols…).

OK, let’s imagine it will work (in some years…)

Will that solve the “data base” problem, that created this heterogeneity? Every silo in the company has his own view (about what is client, what is a map, what is a piece of material) and therefore about the meaning, the way it must be coded, the information that must be inside….

Sure, a way to avoid all that is to move progressively to an ERP, insuring communication between silos but nobody can suddenly stop the past and move to a new way. And ERPs have got their own “philosophy of life”…

On that:

- is SOA DOA ? (Dead on arrival!)
- Good SOA synthesis by IBM (clear enough)
- SOA governance is a must, teams are key…

This Web2 emphasis is a bit enervating for some people (like me). Any rational?

This big Web2 bag contains a lot of concepts and techniques, sometimes rather new (Ajax, long tail, ..), sometimes rather old (social networks, blogging, forums, …).
Some of those concepts where historically peripheral, borderline, even sometimes freakish, and are now becoming, just because technology is more mature, full mainstream.

- a first immediate consequence is irruption of merchants, vendors, consultants around the concepts
- another consequence is a lack of balance in ideas and marketing.
One exemple: it is not because we have now tools that allow people to participate, to contribute that they will do it!
Some people prefer to be passive, to be softly manipulated by some ideas coming from the others (marketers, politicians,…)

Some recent contributions around these subjects

—- Is Web2 another bubble?
—- Good rebound on web2 & new marketing. B2BC (Business to Business Consumer) concept seems interesting to develop.
—- That implies to move progressively to Entreprise 2.0. Is that so easy?
—- At last, companies are interessed in social networks (“the chart behind the chart”)
—- … and a nice survey on that…
—- so, are we that way entering KM2?
—- Is enterprise 2.0 term equivalent to KM 2.0? Surely not! KM really wider!
—- Short stimulating ideas about social networks replacing KM (but you have to pay for it) !
—- COP’s (community of practices) basic rules
—- but… social networks not so simple. Will we have to manage them?
—- The fundamental question is still alive: Will “semantic web”, SOA, …, all those web2 tricks will facilitate impressive new services ? Integrating is sometimes the key. Mashups are in the center. Not so easy !
—- Is web2 replacing, by direct access, consultants? No consultants for Web2?
—- Some happy with blogs …, some not happy…
—- May be a better way to understand sociology, but big brother can be there….

but social networks are so nice, so easy to build….

About Moore’s law, Intel still invest strongly in 45 nanometers technology in competition with AMD, IBM, …
For the future, why not quantum computers? May be not ready !
..and atom thin graphite to build transistors…

And this fantastic technology, RFID, with all its opportunities and risks, now at 50 micrometer size !

Man/machines interface:
Suppressing the mouse, eye movement driven computer? It’s an old dream. I already tried that in an IBM research lab years ago. A bit disorienting, with a funny feeling not to be allowed to look anywhere, and a sort of sea-sick impression. I hope they improved !
… and why not connect your brain directly to games?

…and how much data world wide? and what for? If we cannot absorb more than 1 info/s (short term memory size limitation), compute how many information you will be able to absorb during your all life (3 Billions ?). Multiply by the population (6 Billion?)… It give something at the level of zettabytes, considered by IDC as the level of amount of data stored around 2010…
So we will zap more and more !

About the advances about programming bots (intelligent agents), look at these social bots !

And the other face, risks are always there, hackers and co .

- So many management concepts!
Smoking or non smoking management concepts? I really like this one !
Remind me an old chart about management concepts life cycle…

- A good manager has surely to be stress tolerant, have to feed his curiosity, …
In daily life, some nice vizualization tools can help him (look at the demos…)
Ignorance is his basic state. Can Artificial intelligence, this prothesis to natural ignorance help him?
(“Before we work on artificial intelligence why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?” Steve Polyak)

And so much tasks, contradictory, so many mails, sometimes useful, sometimes just “umbrella” mails (“I copy you, so I am clean”), sometimes just business intelligence information. Microsoft showed that over 70% of information workers spend a fifth of their time or more on e-mail related tasks.
How do people deal with these queues of “things to do”, are their trade-off, to decide to do or not, based on their own personal priority system or on organization priority system ?
Recent studies by IDC, the Working Council of CIOs, the Ford Motor Company, and Reuters found that:
* Knowledge workers spend from 15% to 35% of their time searching for information.
* Searchers are successful in finding what they seek 50% of the time or less.
* 40% of corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.
* Some studies suggest that 90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports is spent recreating information that already exists.
* An IDC report suggests that rework costs an enterprise about $5,000 per person per year for an estimated annual total of $12 million dollars across the U.S. Furthermore, not locating and retrieving information has an opportunity cost of $15 million dollars per year.

People are still interested in “learning” how to deal with email better. Maybe Web2 can offer some solutions – for a recent analysis of the situation, see Michael Sampson’s series of posts on the topic that starts here..
…but is there a danger that Web2 opportunities amplify the problem?

- Just found a good new book about KM and performance manager. It examines the partnership between decision-makers and the people who provide them with information to drive better decisions and suggestions for 42 decisions areas, taking into account the need to understand your data, but also plan and monitor performance.

- One way to start KM in an organization is to consider it as a service

- KM often needs technology, what do you do in front of that kind of people (good funny story about relation with technology ! I know so many people like that…)
More seriously, I like Martin Koser blog, with this relevant post on Management tools and Bain article

- The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT. Is that true?

- Management of K is not enough, you have too to do things !
- …and always this relation between Innovation and KM techniques

- Librarians are the historically first “knowledge managers” in organizations. Now, all managers are supposed to be ! Are librarians out? Or any manager is the librarian?
- But classification not so easy: look at this good literature synthesis of some connected concepts

- Teaching (I’m a teacher) and KM tools: a relevant list of techniques

- PKM, a new buzzword or individual productivity still a key challenge?
and Davenport’s thoughts about it

- Against dominant thoughts, creating knowledge, tagging changes and improves KM…

- I like this idea about KM strategy to capitalize on know-how can be counterproductive, in the case the know-how you store is average, too low level. It can inhibit employee’s will to experiment.

- KM, organizational learning gurus still alive, studying how KM can be a link between NGO and companies, in case they want to cooperate.
-…and a good way to use knowledge at the bottom of the pyramid…

- Are incentives on KM good enough to stimulate K improvement?

Is BI so far from KM? Where is the real frontier?
Does BI concerns more “weak noises”, unknown things, intelligence of outside and KM more known things, inside existing knowledge?
BI tools can be applied inside, e.g. to discover new concept through BI analysis of internal stream of messages! So, what new on BI?

- Good strategy and BI: there is a clear convergence between strategy and BI
- Data mining is the central tool of any BI mechanism…

BPM: Processus, toujours un thème central. Ce séminaire a lieu en Europe pendant tout 2007.

Some very nice useful charts, from Gartner, about best of BPM, and a lot of additional charts.
Among these, this one about BPM and SOA relation, or another one…

but… what about HOP (Human and Organizational Performance)?
Must human problems be treated before technological and organizational problems? Old debate.

Is corporate performance depending from good management of management processes?
Sure it is a key necessary condition, but not sufficient!

Projects and processes are closely related:

- What is a process ? many good definitions, but one way is to see it as a never ending project.
So you can apply some of project methodologies to processes.
Why not, for example, prototype a process as we, in agile companies, prototype projects?

- Alignment of projects with strategies is key. To do that, we have to recognize that 90% of projects are created to optimize way of doing, processes. So, project prioritization needs first processes prioritization!

…so what’s new about IT projects ?

New world of IT projects, towards globalized agile companies…
and some still alive good laws about conditions of IT projects success (systems integration, databases, IT governance, cost reduction, and delegating work to IT)