5 real life examples to make the case for KM in a sales environment

Consider the following five simple scenarios based on real situations I have witnessed during my time in the Richemont Group. I must stress that I expect these to be relevant today to a majority of retail Organizations, and not only in the luxury sector:

tags: knowledge, knowledgemanagement, value, valuecreation, sales

• ”[..] an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value” (Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., former CEO of IBM)
• By reinventing the wheel we might improve it, but is it worth the costs when all that is needed is a regular wheel?
• Knowledge is power and even more now than ever. However, if organizational knowledge is retained and not shared, is the organization as a whole really gaining any lasting power from it?
• Everybody is replaceable, yes but at what costs?
• It is reasonable to assume that each department builds on past successes and is expert in his field. However, wouldn’t each project of a particular department benefit from the proactive input of all other stakeholders?
• Learning and innovation depends on a culture encouraging risk-taking and therefore making “mistakes”. However, shouldn’t this imply that we all collectively learn from these “mistakes” and avoid making them twice?

Why corporate org charts are bad

An employee has a great idea, but needs clearance from his manager and a manager in another department to get the idea over departmental boundaries. That person can directly engage that manager and solve the problem. This contradicts the present model of hierarchies and organization charts in that traditionally the employee would be forced to navigate the branches in an org chart. This obviously depletes time and resources so we’ll consider this waste.
Perhaps the second best use of bottom up communication is that it allows companies to innovate using informal networks. BUP spurs informal networks inside and outside of companies. These informals can consist of employees, suppliers, customers, or other constituents. Typically an employee solves problems within the department or team and requests a manager’s assistance when needed. An informal network may involve a supplier a customer and a VP. A recent IBM podcast references innovation as accidental. It never happens on purpose and it usually doesn’t happen in a formal setting. Furthermore, for the informal setting to work, the right tools and stimuli must be present. This is where we really see how web 2.0 streamlines innovation.

tags: organizationalcharts, problemsolving, informalnetworks, innovation, collaboration, management, organization

How Disconnected Are They?

tags: enterprise2.0, socialmedia, silos, measurement, businessunit, remuneration, assessment

Do Enterprises Have the Patience to Develop Communities?

There are certainly ways to encourage faster community maturity. Creating aggressive content strategies and adoption campaigns certainly helps. Having a constituency that is already familiar with social media tools is also helpful. Regardless of adoption and tool use robust communities require community leaders (not just sponsors), rich interactions between members, and a collective sense of the community as a whole. Those subtle characteristics cannot be manufactured in any other way but to have the community develop those traits organically over time.

Communities are one of the hardest types of organizations to launch, develop, and sustain. Two years is a reasonable ramp period and growth comes in fits and starts – metrics have to change over time too. I suggest the following:

tags: communities, metrics, launch, time, benefits, roi, maturity

sense-making & path-finding

tags: information, datas, knowledge, sensemaking

Knowledge as Interpreter

[...]knowledge as an interpreter in the abililty to turn data into information. And then using a sensemaking process (making sense of this information/understanding it) which can create new knowledge to you.

tags: knowledge, sensemaking, sense, information, interpretation, interpreter, datas

Is Your Workplace Results Oriented or Time Oriented?

But a new type of workplace is emerging, one that is more results oriented and focuses on what you accomplish rather than how many hours you log in.

tags: timemanagement, time, results, organization

Being Free within Organizational Structures

- while the need for coordination of big tasks doesn’t disappear (and organizations will continue to thrive) a more 21C-way of working may appear alongside – flexible ad-hoc value networks, business ecosystems, companyconglomerates, etc.

- to leverage the full potential of your knowledge workers you better design for emergence and adaptivity, ie. allow for heterarchic configurations

tags: flexiblity, knowedgeworkers, coordination, hierarchy, socialnetworks, adhocracy, organization

Can Social Media Solve Problems? | socialutions

The quest of any business is to solve problems faster and more effectively. There are many problem solving models to follow but the critical ingredient for all the models is perspectives from different people within and outside the organization.

tags: problemsolving, socialmedia, collaboration

Japanese Business Culture & Social Computing

Japanese corporations have historically placed a much higher value on the informal networks amongst their employees than their Western counterparts. Within the “shushin koyo” model of life-long relationships between employer and employee, many aspects of the individual’s social life were organised and supported by the corporation

tags: socialnetworks, socialcomputing, culture, management, japan

An Old Trick (Waiting) for A New Problem (Email)

What do you think? Is turning off some of the communications channels the only way to solve the information overload? Or can you manage the “flood” of email while not reducing your ability to get things done? How do you manage your things to do?

tags: information, informationoverload, infobesity, email

Mutual Mentoring is Essential to Enterprise 2.0 ROI

Fields said that many of corporate America’s young workers’ engagement levels “fall off the table” after about a year on the job because “we give them no means of input.”

To change that, Wachovia is giving its Gen Y workers a role in helping its Enterprise 2.0 makeover succeed. Younger employees are assigned to teach senior staffers about the benefits of using collaborative networks.

tags: enterprise2.0, generationy, wachovia, digitalnatives, mentoring, adoption

Management 2.0 : vers l’entreprise collaborative (2)

Nous devons partir du principe que ce sont les outils qui viennent étayer un mode de management et non l’inverse.

Ces nouveaux outils et le succès des entreprises qui les utilisent illustrent une rupture fondamentale entre les économies du XXème et du XXIème siècle. Afin de comprendre en quoi cette révolution challenge les modes de management, il nous faut définir cette rupture.

tags: knowledgeeconomy, organization, management, management2.0, humanressources

CIPD: Web 2.0 And Human Resources

tags: web2.0, humanressources2.0, humanressources, hr, hr2.0, enterprise2.0, talents, retention, engagement, communities, socialmedia, employerbrand

Web 2.0 and human resources – who should drive Web 2.0 initiatives in the organization? – Trends in the Living Networks

Certainly Enterprise 2.0 is fundamentally about people, with in the short to medium-term one of the most obvious and powerful benefits being the ability to better attract, retain, and develop talented people. In addition, successful Web 2.0 initiatives in organizations are fundamentally about shifting attitudes and behaviors. Collaboration increasingly drives value creation in organizations, but for that technology is only an enabler. As such, HR will ideally play a central role in Web 2.0 initiatives.

tags: enterprise2.0, humanressources, hr2.0, humanressources2.0, web2.0

The Internet Is a Brain – Jeff Stibel

So, yes it may sound off-the-wall at first blush, but it’s an insight that has helped me develop companies that are collectively worth over a billion dollars. It’s an insight that will lead to the development of future businesses worth far more than that. More importantly, it is going to change the world as we know it, revolutionizing the way we think about thought and the way we think about ourselves.

tags: internet, brain, networks, neuronalnetwork

• In practice, the Internet is clunkier, slower, and smaller than the average brain but the fundamental structure is roughly the same. When I look at Google and the other search engines, I see more similarity to how memories are stored and retrieved in the mind than I do to the underlying computer architecture. When I look at websites, I think memes and memories, not hypertext. When I look at Classmates.com, MySpace, and Facebook, I see social networks that are developing the way neural networks develop, a way that is different than Metcalfe’s Law of networks.

Power and influence without authority in matrix management #2

tags: power, influence, management, relationship, reward, position, expertise

• If I was trying to build a power base to get things done as a matrix manager I would focus on expertise and relationships as a great place to start – if you have traditional authority that is a bonus in the matrix structure.

Changement: La malédiction du moyen

tags: organization, hierarchy, means, decisionmaking

• L’acheteur n’a pas de vision globale des intérêts de l’entreprise (la « fin », le « résultat »). Pour faire son travail il doit les approximer par le « moyen » : le coût du consultant. Il aboutit donc à une solution peu efficace.
  L’acheteur est un représentant attardé de l’organisation ancienne de l’entreprise, le modèle hiérarchique (ou bureaucratique).
• Ce type d’organisation a une raison d’être : il permet de construire rapidement une entreprise avec des personnels peu qualifiés. Mais dès qu’il entre en concurrence, il doit se complexifier. L’individu doit prendre en compte dans ses décisions les intérêts du groupe.