Chris Macrae, 28-Aug-04 @ 12:36PM

conference talks on how to do social networks

I notice the irony of the ad appearing on the left hand of the screen featuring a conference on exploiting social networking in organisations. The irony is that Kboard isnt organised in such a way that conference organsiers ask for Kboard to send a speaker from the sig or other content most editing perspective on the conference subject.

Well what we can do in this thread is mention some types of talks people are giving on social networks now that this area seems to be redefining many aspects of human KM.

I note that in Boston, these are some of the topics about to be debated:

Activity-Based Performance Measurement and Social Networks -- Robert
> Laubacher, MIT Sloan School of Management
> The ABPM initiative is developing a method to measure performance at the activity level and to connect the resulting activity-based
> metrics with business unit and enterprise level measures of performance. This effort has the potential to assess the impact of
IT investments and other management interventions, which typically must be made at the activity and process level, on a firms bottom line.

Using Relationship Currencies to Drive Financial Outcomes -- Jeffrey Shuman and Jan Twombly, Co-Principals, The Rhythm of Business
>
> Relationship currencies, such as insight and access, proliferate in networks and often have greater value than cash currencies. Too
> often, these currencies aren't properly utilized because it has been difficult to measure and thus communicate their value. Learn how to define relationship value relative to strategic objectives and measure relationship performance relative to all the potential currencies available in a network of relationships

Deriving Value from Learning Networks: Proving Direction,Structure, and Facilitation -- Kathleen Gilroy, The Otter Group and Bill Ives, Helix Commerce

There have been many attempts to turn training on its head and provide peer-to-peer learning. However, this revolution runs the risk of substituting chaos for authority. Our session is about deriving value from learning networks within a structure than simulates and/or makes use of the work environment, provides a learning director to
> orchestrate the events, and promotes knowledge sharing that carries back to the job.

Chris Macrae, 20-Aug-04 @ 16:33PM

thanks Paul

I wonder how organisational theory lost so much diverse and humanly caring wisdom. You might want to contact Peter at www.idnetwork.nl - his project collates native wisdom across many cultures (by first teaching them esepranto -so that they can all commune)

On something completely different I came across this stunning quote from the paper referenced
“It’s all about relationships these days. You would think technology would change that,
but if anything it seems to be making it more profound. What I have come to realize is
that we craft our strategies and elaborate organizational frameworks in thinking and
language that is overly distant…shifting abstract boxes and lines on an organization
chart to try and achieve some strategic objective. The fundamental problem with that
today is that so much work gets done not by virtue of how a few executives prescribe it
but in informal networks that form locally and are constantly shifting. We need better
means of working with and supporting these networks if we want our plans to have the
intended effect.”Managing networked world (.pdf)

Paul Spence, 17-Aug-04 @ 11:04AM

Rolling Stones and the Maori Concept of Knowledge

Interesting how the European fable of the rolling stone has turned about. I love the anology of a 'knowledge store' which relies on investment in social capital to facilitate knowledge distribution. The New Zealand Maori express this through the concept of a "knowledge basket" or Kete.

According to Maori tradition Tane (the guardian of forests and birds) was given the privilege of travelling through the heavens in search of the three baskets of knowledge.

The three baskets are

Te Kete Uruuru Tau Aronui
Containing wisdom, building, arts and agriculture.

Te Kete Uruuru Matua Tuauri
Containing karakia (chants), tohi (ancient rites) and pure (ceremony)

Te Kete Uruuru Rangi Tuatea
Containing the knowledge of incantations, war, magic, and the tradition which includes the history of the people.

Source: http://www.maoritreasures.com/

Paul Spence
Project Manager
Innovators Online Network
New Zealand.
www.ion.net.nz

Chris Macrae, 17-Aug-04 @ 07:18AM

are organisations waking up to human km ? part 2

David Hawthrone: In the world of digital effects design, for instance, people often work on a project not just for the money, but to the opportunity to learn from a particular animator, artist, or designer with a reputation in some specific area ("splashes," "reflections," a"life-like motion," and so on).

The reasons are many: not only does the agile effects artist learn from the best, but if they work well together, there's an excellent chance that the "mentor's" next gig will also have an opportunity for the "apprentice." If the "agile animator" knows the "expert" well enough, it lifts his/her own value or stock in the community (shortcuts or code learned from another master, can save the next producer tens of thousands of dollars and days of
trial-and-error.) These are benefits the savvy media executive reaps from an open market in knowledge and talent. The same talent or knowledge held captive soon goes stale and depreciates. "I often hire the same people over and over again," a Warner Bros. exec told me. "I not only didn't have to pay them during down time, but when they came back, they brought with them a whole new supply of know-how." Still, in many organizations, the idea of "loose" talent or knowledge cause apoplexy. Attempts to pen up these assets mostly don't work. In the new economy, agility and mobility are assets, perhaps even skills. Attitudes change. I remember reading somewhere that the adage, "A rolling stone gathers no moss," was for many generations taken as mother's warning to maturing male children to slow up, develop good habits, and put down deep roots. Sometime, shortly after the industrial revolution came into full-sway, the general connotation shifted 180-degrees to where young men were being told to, "stay loose, and keep moving or risk getting bogged down." If our goal is to create knowledge and distribute it quickly to where it can do the most good, markets seem to me to offer a fairly good model.

Chris Macrae, 17-Aug-04 @ 07:17AM

are organisations waking up to human km -part 1

At http://www.kwork.org, a remarkable conversation pro people's socila networks and against portals/intranets is going on. Here are a few extracts:

John Maloney: I found a reference in Rob Cross's book, "The Hidden Power of Social
Networks." People are FIVE TIMES more likely to turn to a colleague for knowledge than any portal, Intranet, system or Website.

Valdis Krebs: I even have a client who makes the final hiring decision based on social networks of the candidate. They ask something like this, "If you have a very difficult technical problem, where do you turn?" If the candidate describes visiting portals and web sites, written materials they have just lost the job. If the candidate describes their knowledge network... If X then I turn to Bill, if Y then Sally, etc. they continue to be in the running. These folks only hire people who have good networks AND know how to use them! This includes ALL jobs from geeks to execs

Chris Macrae, 05-Aug-04 @ 08:03AM

Blogging collaboration knowledge cities

I am starting a blog for Touring Collaboration Knowledge Cities

Currently its got some entries to London, Boston, DC. Look forward to collaborative tour guides linking in their city.

I wonder what would happen if knowledgeboard convened a real meeting for people who wanted to sig edit what's going in a city whose people they love seeing improve their knowledge and networking both for world trade and greater sustainability of societies. There is so much learning that could be multipled if we made the real networks that are cities intimately connected to the virtual network of a space like this one. Dont you think?

Chris Macrae, 05-Aug-04 @ 07:31AM

package tour of where in Europe is KM or Networking having best productivity or societal impacts

MAN IS BUT A NETWORK OF RELATIONS

Clearly if this view was agreable to all who design Knowledge Management methods, the EU would fund different types of KM projects, and vision 2010 mightmake our 25 countries places that the world came to benchmark with in terms of best productivity and societal practices.

What best productivity or societal practices would you write up in a travel brochure around the EU designed for the rest of the world to come and visit?

I invite YOU to stand up for their city. What would you put for Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Budapest, Athens, Lisbon, Barcelona...?

I have interviewed about 100 people on some of the contributions London can be known for in a European package tour of KM and networking. Here are some examples.

1 One of the 3 greatest cities in terms of creative diversity of people who belong to 2 nations -living in London but having birthroots in another or vice versa. Because of the historical accident of being hub of British Empire and English language, well over 100 countries share such deep relations at London's people's intersections.

1a Home to the world's largest publically owned media (BBC) and potential world services it could offer to diversity understanding.

2 The origin of some world leading networks including http://www.ecademy.com, http://www.simpol.org.uk

3 Has institutes eg http://www.workfoundation.org and parts Of Imperial College London with word leading models of what actually causes a nation or region to sustain above average productivity and sustainabity

4 Unless another city wants to register its joint interest,: pioneering the deepest mentoring/benchmarking learning circles for leaders of big organisations in a networking age KB article 129210

5 Founder of a specific type of cafe format where global vistors who are alumni centres for a deeply practical method brief up to 10 people on how to become a local best practice application cell.

6 One of most actively linked in regions to Open Space's 50000 innovation cases.

7 Has a world class centre http://www.antidote.org for collecting databanks on emotions and emotional intelligence.

8 A leading hub of how intangibles valuation and non-zero sume economics demand systemically opposite measurements to traditional financial analysis.

If any of 1-8 match your action learning goals, I'd happily guide you round. Similarly will you in another city relate us to a package tour of what great networking or human KM is being discovered and is worth touring?

chris macrae wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Chris Macrae, 04-Aug-04 @ 08:30AM

Man is but a network of relations

I have heard rumors that some of the deepest research on poverty for half a century has concluded that a person's support network is the number 1 critical variable

I was wondering whether there are any other application areas (new or old) where this saying - MAN IS BUT A NETWORK OF RELATIONS - is known to deep experts in the field.

Paul Spence, 03-Aug-04 @ 12:06PM

Post-Modernist Knowledge Construct

I don't have an html link at this point but the particular reading reference was:
Kvale, S. (1996). Interviews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (pp.38-58).

In which he discusses the "social construction of reality" and the perspectival/contextual nature of knowledge. He asserts that knowledge "exists in the relationship between person and world" and quotes from my favourite author, aviator and philosopher Antoine de Saint Exupery:

"Man is but a network of relations".

Chris Macrae, 31-Jul-04 @ 09:20AM

virtual communities thrive on transparency imo

Paul, do you have any links to your readings?

I know some youth groups who are concerned with the sustainability of communities they design and expect to participate in for decades- and so in their case they develop very detailed protocls of trust

But the simplest systemic key seems to be: begin with transparency. All communally true relationships compound from this value. You dont become the most influential person in a community because a high power appoints you randomly. You are seen to be transparently sustaining the context of the community of for as diverse a number of people genuinely connected with the community as posible, and if you have vested interests - best is to make these clearly declared and to encourage everyone to help openly appraise any resource decision you make that is supposed to be for the community's whole good.

Intangibles mappers like myself can see why some traditional politicians may hate every truth about how virtual community dynamics trust-flow. To the extent of even rejoicing in cases of big virtual communities that fail.

Paul Spence, 31-Jul-04 @ 00:19AM

Reputations and the Post-Modernist View of Knowledge

Chris Macrae's reflection upon the importance of reputation reminds me of what I have been reading recently about the Post-Modern view of knowledge. If knowledge is purely interrelational in nature then it has no value within a relationship that is founded on anything other than a basis of deep trust. It seems like reputation is the first stepping stone along the path of trust.

The challenging question, for those of us who manage virtual communities, is how do we foster trust and verify reputation when our participants are geographically dispersed and almost anonymous.

Paul Spence
Project Manager
Innovators Online Network
www.ion.net.nz

Chris Macrae, 22-Jul-04 @ 09:09AM

leadership wisdom - part 2

IF you believe like I do, that the fundamental innovation factor of our life and times is about activating networking then at every level of productivity: individual, CoP/team, organisational , network of organsiations, THEN relationship permissions determine what future you will actually have. And quality of relationship permissions matched against context is today a far bigger maturity gap than total physical quality in the 80s. Let the mother of all benchmarking movements begin so that systemic practice of relationship integrity and transparent contexts around which relationship permissions compound is how 21st C leadership is done, and respects people.

We welcome all those who wish to open source the minimal maths needed to transparently test relationship integrity in systemic ways. This maths has been invented independently by more than one party. Its story is being written up by a business journalist as the thrid part in his own relationship trinity:
Right Side Up which argued how to let customer valuation of an organsiation be seen as a key indicator of a company's relationship permission strategy; the new bottom line which profiled 7 ways in which there are currently huge gaps between global organsiations and waht local customers want.
(Sample chapters of the relationship permissions system book avialable on request from me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk)

In my case seminal work that influenced my discovery of the masueremnt system of relationships:

was the whole series of books by Don Tapscott researching the net generation, and what they would want from the work place which have lead up to his current boook on Transparency and The Naked Corporation http://www.dontapscott.com - nakedness means that corporation's system has no more value than its relationship integrity and gravity of matching context.

Verna Allee's perspective on how value exchange theory of the firm provides a wholly different systemic view of organsiational design where exchnages are the interactive molecules of whether human value is being systemically knowledge managed and networked, and every exchange is an analysis in relationship integrity http://www.vernaallee.com

chris
http://www.valuetrue.com

PS It is fascinating to inquire in how many ways would a management team behave oppositely from "need to know " culture if it accepted that transparency of relationship permissions determines whether any communal dynamic sustains growth or withers away to nothing.

Chris Macrae, 22-Jul-04 @ 09:00AM

wisdom on leadership -part 1

Rene- short answer- a network's permission isnt just you as a manager, its all its members and their interface with other networks. And in between levels, such as sig groups!

OTHER LOOPS

We teach our kids and remind ourselves that our name - our reputation - is our most vital asset. Trust in us determines what others will permit us to do, and these days in more specific contexts which communities engage with us and how our social networks develop.

I suggest it should not be beyond the imagination of knowledge management to demand this increasingly applies to organisations in a transparent age. Why would a leadership team come up with a vision if people and other organsiations do not trust it, do not permit the organisation to have authority to develop that way ahead.

National productivity is plumetting wherever organisations lost this interactive understanding at individual levels of leadership and at strategic levels. One harvard professor currently sells speeches with the slogan : research shows that up to 95% of the workforce no longer know how to implement strategy. Meanwhile a wise CEO in London advises those who wish to save for a retirement - before you invest in a company, look at the boradroom members. Do they have reputations to lose? If the boardroom members have a long history of hi-trust and standing authentically for something, that may be the best protection you can get as an investor in an age where this most fundamental dynamic isnt yet made systemically accountable. My father was the main econmics editorial writer for The Economist. His model for trusting in the market to measure corporate performance was forward relationship integrity, not what analysts PR'd as their view of the alst quarter.

We could also discuss gaps in systemic accounatabilityy. Two examples best known to me. The mathematics of global accounting and performance is actually perfect for eroding relationship permissions. A company's goodwill connects the integrity of its relationship permissions and is therefore already spinning (growth or decay) as a consequence of past behaviours. But even though it is now possible, given the will for a boardroom to measure whether its future relationships are spinning growth or discussion, few do. Meanwhile before human KM got hijacked by suppliers of technology, the brand was commonly argued to be the intangible most connected with leadership. Since goodwill was a black hole in the accountant's books, global accountants essentially sold off brand valuation algorithms to ad agencies who were happy if the brand was measured as all imagery and no reality. So brands are valued in exactly the opposite way of the title of this thread. The power of the communications industry is concerned with getting maximum budgets to shout promises, not whether there is any measurement system in place to see whether brand can compound trust by keeping their promises.

René Stach, 21-Jul-04 @ 15:49PM

What are relationship permissions?

What permissions are talking about? I mean, either I have a relationship to someone or I do not have. What permission do I need? Please explain.

René