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Autumn Means Work

Nov 4th, 2009 by Kacie

autumn_leavesWell, I missed my goal of blogging every week. I set out this goal when I started my blog back in June. I inadvertently took the last 3 weeks off because my schedule became overrun with professional work, outside presentations I have been working on and a full personal calendar.

Why is October so crazy? When you have a significant other’s birthday, Halloween, college football parties, raking leaves and companies ramping up projects to get done before the end of the year, October tends to be a pivotal month.

Apparently, we’ve played all summer and now it’s time to get down to business. The weather is crummy, darkness sets in at 4:30 pm so there is nothing to do but work. And, we need to be productive before the holiday time takes over our personal lives and forces us to take vacation to accommodate those plans.

Even nature gets busy. While I’m toiling away on my computer at home on Saturdays, I see the squirrels going nuts (literally!). They are in a hurry. Gathering as much as they can as fast as they can and heaven help the other squirrel that gets in the way. With puffed tails, the squirrels chase the other off and yell at them that if they ever see them in their territory again, they’ll get it.

Are humans this way? With October and most of November being crunch time, do we snap at others more easily? Do we expect more from our families and employees? To a degree, I think the answer is yes. So, focusing on health, sleep and sanity is most important during these crazy times.

October and November have to be the most productive time of the year! I know…what about spring? Spring is perfect for spring cleaning, listing a home, planting flowers, engaging in outdoor activities that we couldn’t do in the wintertime, and don’t forget planning for the projects that will commence in the Fall. We also lose an hour so we have to compensate for that lost time by doing more in less time.

Let’s face it…we are busy all year round regardless of the weather. The race to November 26 is on. Good luck to everyone!

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Flexing Your Style

Oct 9th, 2009 by Kacie

flexibilityIn a knowledge management role, it is important to understand a company’s culture, technology infrastructure and processes. But, everything starts with people. How a culture influences people management styles is critical if you are trying to change behavior, increase adoption new things and inspire collaboration.

A person’s management style is unique to them. I have managed people for years and certainly have a “style” about the way I do that. I believe in collaborating across the team, adequately defining roles and responsibilities to prevent toe crunching, setting goals and allowing employees the freedom to work on their own and propose recommendations and solutions to me. Then, I get out of the way. I manage this way because that’s how I like to be managed.

I have always known that sometimes you have to flex your style a little bit to engage your employees in the manner that suits them. Some employees want to be left alone and others need frequent touchpoints and more direction. I pride myself on being fair. It’s taken me years in people management to realize that fair does not necessarily mean equal. That flexing is necessary for continued employee engagement.

However, recently, I have found that sometimes you not only have to flex your style to meet an employee’s needs but also to fit within a culture especially if it’s new to you. A long-standing culture generally has dictated a management style – command and control, hands-off, hands-on, touchy feely, etc. So, how do you balance your style, your employees’ needs and the culture’s paradigm?

I’m not sure I have all the answers. I think this is why managing people is so difficult, why it is truly a discipline and why it’s not for everyone. Finding simple and small ways to flex for all of these reasons without compromising you and your abilities is the secret. 

For example, if a culture is command and control, perhaps you should try to be a change agent here. I actually have never found command and control to be effective. Touchy feely – Check in more than you’d like to with your employees if it’s expected; spend time talking about the weekend. Hands-on – offer to review things more than you’re used to. Hands-off - delegate and let a few things go!

I think finding these small items to flex on makes a world of difference. Stretching ourselves as a people manager can only help us succeed.

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Measuring Trust

Sep 30th, 2009 by Kacie

I attended a Social Media Roundtable yesterday morning and the question of trust came right to the forefront of the cultural debate of why companies should use (or don’t use) social media. A lawyer can poke holes into any argument for or against social media but leaders need to instill a culture of trust in order to see success with social tools and collaborative processes. They need to understand the risk attorneys point out but, ultimately, it is a business decision as to how and when these tools can be used.

A fascinating study was presented at this Roundtable: Edelman’s Barometer of Trust. I never thought trust could be measured but this study shows that people are tending to trust “People Like Me” more than their leaders. I find this shift of placed trust very interesting. Is this phenomenon a result of social media or have people always trusted their peers and social media enabled that to happen?

I would argue with the dawn of social media, people suddenly feel like they have a voice…maybe for the first time at least in consumer circles if not at work. This feeling of desired empowerment is trying to make its way into the business world and so a great struggle ensues in some companies. People want more say and responsibility and some leadership teams are hesitant to trust their employees with decision-making and expertise sharing.

Presenting this barometer of trust idea to leadership may help fuel the business case for why we should integrate social tools into our work processes and communication flows. The command-an-control, top-down method of operating is fading. In the years to come, “People Like Me” will be influencing our decisions and shaping the way we work and share. What an exciting time to be in the middle of knowledge management and collaboration!

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Is Working Together Harmful to Your Organization?

Sep 22nd, 2009 by Kacie

sandbox1I was behind on my reading when I stumbled upon an article in April’s Harvard Business Review, titled: “When Internal Collaboration is Bad for Your Company.” My immediate reaction was to buy up every copy and hide it from my leadership team. As I read the article, I understood the point Morten T. Hansen was making…essentially that sometimes collaboration takes up too much time and in fact eats into your opportunity cost of doing a project.

One of his main arguments is that forcing people to work across silos will only lead to turf wars and the time to tear down those silos will kill a project. That could be true but if you never attempt to tear down walls, those walls will grow higher and higher and stronger and stronger until one day, they will never come down.  Is that really a good operational strategy? 

I am really anti-silo. I believe that roles and responsibilities and domains should be clearly established within an organization to prevent turf wars in the first place. Oftentimes, to make a project or initiative successful, multiple domains need to work together. This is why allowing kids to play in the sandbox together is so important. Adults have to do the same thing in real life, and we are not great at it.  (Maybe we only fought over whose bucket the blue one was in our sandboxes.)

Hansen states that asking how can we get people to collaborate more is the wrong question. That instead, we should ask: Will collaboration create or destroy value? Value is exactly right. I agree that more collaboration does not necessarily equate to more value but I have yet to see a time where one person in his cubicle had all the answers.

Maybe not everything needs a cross-functional team assigned to move it forward but, at a minimum, sharing ideas and allowing others to have input will help manage change! That is something Hansen does not talk about in his article. Sometimes, collaboration isn’t all about the bottom line, although you can certainly set up measures to try and determine that. Collaboration is getting people to play in the sandbox, building off of one person’s idea and thinking through all the possible implications to a decision.  To me, that is invaluable.

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Posted in Knowledge Management, Management | No Comments »

Debate Over Learning Lessons and Capturing “Best”

Sep 16th, 2009 by Kacie

KM imageAt our MW KM Symposium on Friday, a few of us had a lively debate over two cornerstones of knowledge management: capturing lessons learned and vetting “best” practices. While I don’t think we came to consensus on either topic, it was nice to actually discuss and challenge one another.

The debate over capturing lessons learned was centered around that focusing on only what went wrong never leads to what is right. That we should only focus on the positive, identify that and replicate it. I agree and disagree. I think there is still value in discussing what went wrong and then brainstorm on how to prevent what went wrong. And, that’s the key. Only capturing the “wrong” doesn’t do anyone any good but taking it the next step and realizing how to prevent what went wrong is a key part of sharing knowledge and not committing the same mistake over and over again.

I found it interesting that most of our debates centered around semantics and that semantics seem to play an awfully big part in pitching and clarifying knowledge management activities. “Lessons Learned” meant only focusing on the negative for one speaker; while myself and others felt that implied in “lessons learned” is learning. So, in a sense, we agreed that only focusing on the negative is not productive but talking about prevention and sharing how to prevent is learning and vital to any organization.

I presented the premise that we should enable people to simply share stories and not worry about setting up committees to review and vet “best” practices. If something is “good enough” it will meet the need of the person seeking the information to help them not start from a blank slate. That no longer do we have the time or resources to vet best practices. And, while there may be industries where there is truly one best way to do something, I contend those are really standard operating procedures and should be integrated into training manuals and process documentation. For other organizations, however, there may be lots of good ways to accomplish something. We should capture, serve up and let people decide and customize these practices for themselves and re-share to keep the sharing cycle constantly flowing.

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