Tag Archives: martin white

a reluctance to tweet: 10 success factors for virtual teams

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It was like throwing a dart into a vacuum

Is how I responded on Twitter to Mark Gould an offsite observer of #KMLegal2015 who bemoaned the lack of online activity by the 100 or so Knowledge & Information Management (KIM) professionals who were attending this year’s Ark Group gathering of the UK KM legal community.

Its baffling: vendors, consultants and indeed KIM practitioners promote the value of social collaboration tools such as Yammer and Jive. Indeed KIM professionals are often at the forefront of efforts to get adoption in their organisation in order to improve collaboration and knowledge sharing. Yet they seem reluctant to ‘walk the talk’ in a public forum.

Perhaps Joanna Goodman got it right when she said:

sessions were quite interactive, so hard to be fully engaged and tweeting

It made me think more about why I tweet at a conference, this is what I posted during a virtual conversation with Luis Suarez a prodigious tweeter (58k to nearly 12k followers):

Why tweet a conference? Expand reach, collaborate, collect and share thoughts ‘on the fly’. Make notes for future blogs.

What really struck me though was the contrast with the Janders Dean Legal Knowledge & Innovation Conference, London #JDKMConf held the week before. That audience made sufficient ‘noise’ that even those who didn’t attend were able to draw conclusions. Here’s what Stephen Sander (The Vue Post) wrote in a witty piece about being a non attendee:

I curated below what I consider to be the best tweets from the Conference. These tweets offer an interesting insight into current themes and issues in legal knowledge, innovation and technology.

Perhaps this is the difference? The Janders Dean event was invitation only – a thought leaders event – whereas KM Legal is an open conference, if you pay up you can go!

Whatever the merits of both, facilitation should be at the core of the KIM professionals competency set and ‘putting stuff out there’ ia good part of that. Too many broadcast rather than engage. Knowledge Management in a comfort zone is not going to change the way a firm works and responds to the significant challenges facing the legal profession which brings me onto why I was there:

Managing Virtual Teams

In December, Martin White and I ran a breakfast breakout event at the RSA entitled The Future for Legal KIM: an outside in perspective’. One of the challenges firms identified as significant but for which they were ill prepared was the management of virtual teams. As a couple of long in the tooth practitioners who have worked across many continents we’d seen a wide range of organisations fail to match their virtual team technology investment with training in how to go about facilitating virtual encounters.

Virtual Teams Presentation StructureOur brief for KM Legal 2015 was therefore entertain the audience, bring the issues to life. Our approach: tell stories and show images.

We divided the presentation into these areas each drawing on events from our knowledge base.

In tackling the culture piece I noted the following:

Let me say right up front: you can’t manage culture just the same as you can’t manage knowledge. In both cases you can create environments in which people are willing to collaborate, share and work towards a shared set of goals.

Many organisations have a set of values and a social contract that underpins the relationship between the firm and employees.

Ultimately a firm is a collection of individuals each with their own reasons for being there. In a virtual team people’s fears, prejudices and behaviours are magnified.

In thinking and rehearsing for the session Martin and I had worked virtually. We learned a lot about clarity of messages and intent behind words and phrase (and we are both English). We (re) discovered the need for a collaboration space with a framework that suited us both.

We discovered a lot more besides, here’s what we shared with the delegates:

Ten virtual team success factors

  1. Virtual teams are the way work gets done: Recognise that virtual teams are going to be increasingly important to any organisation, and ensure that current and potential participants have access to training and mentoring on virtual team management and virtual team meetings.
  2. Set very clear and achievable objectives: Virtual teams should have very clear objectives so that it is possible to set the investment in the team against the outcome and also that team members bring appropriate skills, expertise and authority to take action.
  3. Chose virtual team leaders carefully: Leadership skills that work for physical teams may not be as valuable in a virtual team environment. Other skills are needed and have to be acquired through practice, not just through reading or teaching.
  4. Develop protocols for virtual meetings; Without good team meetings a virtual team is very unlikely to achieve its objectives and so particular care should be taken in developing guidelines for virtual meetings and for facilitating feedback.
  5. Provide team member profiles: Develop good profiles of each team member, taking into account local availability of technology and offices which can be used to take part in virtual meetings (especially in the case of open-plan offices) and language expertise.
  6. Build virtual relationships before putting them to the test: Each team should have an opportunity to meet with other members of the team through an initial virtual meeting where members can introduce themselves and gain experience with the technology being used before the first formal meeting of the team.
  7. Team dynamics can be difficult to manage: Team dynamics of virtual teams can be quite fragile, often depending on a very high level of trust in people they may not have met before. Introducing a new team member into an existing team may mean starting the process of building trust all over again.
  8. Gain consensus on what needs to happen between meetings?: Team members may have different reporting lines, which may impede the overall achievement of objectives. The measure of a virtual team is what it accomplishes between meetings, not how enjoyable the meetings are
  9. “English is our corporate language”: Issues of language and culture need careful consideration but should never be an excuse not to bring specific individuals into a team. There may be a mix of abilities in reading, speaking, understanding and writing in English
  10. Evaluate team and individual performance: The performance of the team and of each member should be carefully evaluated and training and support given where needed.

Fired up but not yet ready to go: Legal KIM response to 2015 challenges

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A month back Martin White and I ran a breakfast breakout event for professionals in Legal Knowledge & Information Management. Those who follow mine and Martin’s musings might recall the event ‘The Future for Legal KIM: an outside in perspective’. Our aim was to present our thoughts to a group of Legal KIM’ers and seek their views.

These were the topics we foresaw as being important in 2015:

  • Lawyers come and go – capturing knowledge at speed
  • Collaboration and KM beyond the firewall
  • Getting the best from virtual teams
  • Bringing it all together – legal project management

ALegal KIMs it turned out we were not far off the mark as the feedback from the postcards we invited the delegates to write on indicated.

Once we consolidated all the replies on the day an interesting picture emerged.Scores on the doors (Click on the picture below to make it more visible)

In law firms of more than 250 partners the biggest issues were around virtual teams and project management. Yet all acknowledged they were not yet in a state of readiness to tackle them. Among the smaller players the biggest worry was around loss of knowledge.

other priorities

Not unsurprisingly the comments provided a valuable insight into their thinking.  Smaller firms (at the start of their KIM journey) were looking for basic KM:

  • Basic entry level km – completely new to it / evolving information research service & integrating with K activities
  • Provision of rapid and easy access to previously captured knowledge / Technology to simplify the process of intergration

Larger firms wanted something different (note the reptition of collaboration):

  • Collaboration inside the firewall / Expertise locating
  • Combining & improving KM systems / Organising our know how in a better way across the whole organisation
  • Support dept personalities working together (Marketing collaborating with IS, KM)  / Improve collaboration generally
  • Content clutter and records management / Risk & Security / Knowledge & UT goals & Strategy

So much to ponder on – watch this space for answers!

and finally

Grateful thanks to the four people who made contributions to Plan Zheroes (the event’s nominated charity).  For those who forgot and anyone else who feels moved to contribute, they can do so here.

PZ Virtual PresenceThis Thursday the Plan Zheores team are at London’s GLA for the launch of their new virtual presence which has the potential to make PZ the ‘Uber of surplus food’. Here’s a snapshot of what it will look like and why the team is so excited.

 

Future of Legal KIM: ‘Death of Difference’ and the need for effective legal project management

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A really timely thought piece ‘Becoming the law firm clients really want’ landed on my desk this week. The future of LawBy Peppermint Technology Research, it characterised the future of law firms as being ‘the death of difference’ noting that legal will become much like other sectors. This scenario has profound implications for lawyers, professional support lawyers and legal knowledge & information management (KIM) professionals.

On December 9th Martin White and I will be hosting a breakfast breakout event at the RSA The future for Legal KIM: An Outside-In perspective.  In it we will look at some of the issues facing KIM professionals. Martin and I have worked in many industries across many countries; we’ve seen and been involved in seismic shifts in the KIM roles in engineering, energy, the 3rd sector, publishing, software and finance. Our thinking in putting this event together was to share some of our experiences in a relaxed setting with like minded legal KM’ers.

So over the past few weeks in the run up to the event we have been looking at the four big issues research had told us were near the top of the legal professions ‘must do’ list.

  • Lawyers come and go – capturing knowledge at speed
  • Getting the best from virtual teams
  • Collaboration and KM beyond the firewall
  • Bringing it all together – legal project management

I began with Going but not forgotten: knowledge capture in a hurry, Martin then wrote  The opportunities for digital workplace adoption by law firms and  Certifying virtual teams – a key skill in digital workplace implementation.

bringing it all together – legal project management

Today I am going to focus (from a KIM perspective) on the challenges of setting up a project management infrastructure that allows an organisation to learn from previous experiences and feed back learnings from the project back into the business.

There are many project management disciplines being used in industry. The Stage-Gate new product development (NPD) methodology is one example in which the veracity of new products are assessed and resources allocated according to a set of criteria for each stage of the process. Knowledge capture is built into the process.

Irrespective of the system you adopt below are a few of the questions you will need to be asking (I’ve omitted the obvious budget ones):

set up (learning before)

  • What do we know about this subject and what has been done before?
  • Who is an expert (internal and external) and can we get their input before starting the project?
  • Who should we invite to the Kick Off meeting and how do we want to structure that?
  • What structures are we going to use for management, monitoring and decision making?
  • Who is going to be on the Project Steering Group and how do we manage those stakeholders and others? How often should they meet and in what format?
  • How are we going to capture the outcomes of meetings, store the material we generate and make people aware of what’s happening?
  • How do we collaborate across teams and boundaries to ensure the best possible decisions are made based on the best?

conduct (learning during)

  • Who do we go to for answers to tricky questions that arise and how do we do that?
  • How often are we feeding learnings back into our project?
  • Who is providing updates and in what format?
  • Where are we storing progress reports?

conclusions (learning after)

  • What format will the debrief take and who will be invited?
  • When and where will you hold it?
  • Who will be tasked to action the outcomes?

I remember a conversation once with Professor Victor Newman on his Baton Passing Technique which arose in part to ensure project knowledge is passed on.  He said:

The big problem in managing learning to have an impact is to know what knowledge is useful, to whom, the form it should take, where and when it is best applied and when best to share it

Baton PassingAlongside is an extract from the slides Victor and the British Council made available.  It works, I’ve tried it!

I have used in addition: After Action Reviews, Pause & Reflects, Retrospects to name but three.

 

 

Earlier this year APQC published an interview with me in which I described the concept of DEBRIEF as a technique for capturing learnings at the end of various stages of projects. I will talk more about that on the 9th.  It’s not too late to sign up here!

and finally

Too often the KIM team are excluded from the project management processes in favour of an accredited (Prince 2 trained) Project Manager. In my view that’s a grave mistake, there are KM techniques for each step of the process and the good KIM’er will be well versed in facilitating such interventions.

If you fail to learn from what you’ve done then you will not improve as a business and will be uncompetitive with those who do.

 

 

 

Going but not forgotten: how to conduct knowledge capture in a hurry

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It’s August in the Middle East where the temperature rarely dips below 30c at night and reaches 50c+ during the day.  Contrast that with winter where snow is on mountains that trap carbon emissions severely impacting air quality.

I’ve been there 7 times in the past 12 months and seen all the seasons and how they impact people’s demeanours.  How festivals such as Ramadan affects productivity (while enriching the soul of those who follow its strictures), how the New Year which occurs in the spring makes people look longingly towards the future and how April seems to be everyone’s favorite month: clear blue skies, snow capped mountains, a purity about the air and a profusion of flowers.

July and August are the hot months when recruitment people at universities globally are most busy and when many organisations in the Middle East and Asia see their talent take sabbaticals to go back to school to further career prospects.

I am with a client where 3 of the most talented minds who have been the core team on a project have been offered the chance to further their academic careers overseas.  This is not unusual in a part of the world (east from Istanbul) where educational attainment is prized and the title of Dr. elevates one’s social standing.  It’s their last week, in fact they’ve really already left but at my prompting our sponsor agrees that I should have a discussion with them with the aim of:

  • Identifying the networks of people within… who the leavers connected with
  • Getting recommendations as to how existing business processes might be enhanced based on experience gained in flagship projects
  • Maintaining an ongoing connection with a view to developing an Alumni network of skilled ex …people

Importance of set up

The set up is important. In an environment where conformity and learning by rote the norm everything must be done to maKnowledge Capture to doske the participants feel at ease and willing to share. So the room had to be quiet yet not too formal and the desks set up in a way that encourages conversation not question and answer. This is what I say to people who attend my masterclasses.

For an interview such as this to really succeed the interviewee needs reflection time. Always send a briefing note, a technique I learned many years ago with Sparknow LLP while conducting an Oral History assignment with Islamic Development Bank.

The purpose of this note is to give an interviewee time to reflect on their career (highs and lows) ahead of their departure, feeling they have said what they want to, been heard and passed on enough that someone following can build on their legacy. Here’s the note:

Briefing paper sent to the participants a few days before the interview

Going but not forgotten

We would like you in advance to be thinking about your time at … from the day you joined to the day of your departure and specifically:

  • Draw a timeline to cover that period with a line in the middle. Above that line (in the highlights section) think of three moments (events, projects or incidents) that you would look back on as favourably reflecting the time you have spent at …. They might be personal, team or even organizational. Having identified them see if you can think of an image or an object that reflected that moment. Then place (draw/write) or bring along those images. If you can’t then see if you can think of a title for each. We will be asking you questions about each event or project.
  • Below that line (the lowlights section) repeat the exercise again over the spread of your time at …. These lowlights might include a time when you felt dispirited, confused, when something didn’t happen or there was a blockage in a project. Again the purpose is to understand what happened and how (if you did) you overcome the situation.

On the day of the interview you will be asked to reflect on your career from the day you arrived to now. With your permission we will record the interview so that we capture the real highlights and will make any transcript available to you thereafter for your own personal use.

Why should you participate? Often when people leave an organization having made a significant impact there are gaps in the knowledge of those who are left behind, what we describe as ‘organizational memory’ is not as strong as it could be. It is important to recognize your contribution and to try and capture that in a small way.

Thank you for agreeing to participate.

Notes for interviewer (based on a 90 minute window of time)

Questions to be posed during the interviews

Arriving:

  1. Tell me about your first day, what were you expecting, did it meet those expectations?
  2. How did it differ from your previous job?

Working:

  1. Looking back over your time, if there is one thing you wish you could have had, what would it have been?
  2. What surprised you about working at ….?
  3. Who has helped you the most at ….?

Leaving:

  1. What will you miss about …?
  2. What will you tell someone who is about to join your ?
  3. What advice would you give to someone about to do your job?

a few of the nuggets that surfaced

 what would You tell someone…

  • Don’t underestimate the challenge of changing mindsets
  • Project governance needs to be clear
  • Be serious about what is crucial
  • Don’t just rely on consultants, go find the people who know in our organisation
  • Makes sure the contract specifically covers who holds the IP rights at the end
  • Helping is more important that reporting and always recognise contributions

Each had an anecdote to illustrate it and prompt a meaningful discussion.

an example from closer to home

In an ideal world the sudden departure of employees with key knowledge should not be a cause for concern. Organisations that have adopted a 9 step process throughout an employee’s life cycle and fed learnings back into the processes of the business will take situations like this in their stride.  I remember a quote from Barney Smith the former Head of KM & Information Services at Natural England who’d overseen the establishment of a knowledge retention (transfer) programme without realising he would be one of the main contributors. This is from an interview with him conducted by Sandra Higgison (ex Editor KM Magazine) as part of research into the ‘evolving role of the knowledge manager’ I worked on while at Sparknow:

…I love Natural England in so many ways, and partly because as soon as the general election was announced, the chief executive said, we’re going to have to make a third of our staff redundant.

So I’m part of the redundancies group – I put my name forward. And the first thing, I get this letter, and it goes to me, copied to my line manager in Natural England. Says you’ve applied for redundancy, you’ve filled out the forms, you’ve made your own calculation, we’ve considered it, we’re happy to proceed on that basis. And the next stage is two-fold: Firstly, we will be approaching the pension provider for a formal evaluation of your redundancy assuming you depart on such and such date. Secondly here’s the knowledge transfer toolkit.

I did a full knowledge transfer pack using this toolkit about a year ago.  And had workshops for about 5-6 people, unpacking what it is I know about how to use it. And it actually came out as a package.  I’m grateful for doing it. Didn’t quite get it back correctly, because I like mind maps. I’ve used a software package called Mind Manager...and one of my management team sat with me for a whole afternoon trying to get stuff out of my brain.  And I had a knowledge management expert come in and then spent two months on the phone, do you have any questions? Do you have any documents? Do you have this all unpacked. And they’re now rolling this out again.

This time, it was absolutely brilliant that publicly and within the organization it was like, we’ve already got the plan and the tools ready, as soon as someone leaves, here’s the knowledge transfer toolkit.

a few do’s and don’ts

Sudden departures are inevitable in all organisations, those that have processes in place to mitigate such departures will undoubtedly be better off that those who have to react in a hurry.  Here’s a few do’s and don’ts:

  • Organisations are usually adept at capturing, don’t capture on a just in case basis otherwise you will have created a ‘bucket’ of information and anecdotes that are never accessed
  • Be clear about what it is you are trying to capture and why – it should be the Critical Knowledge that makes the organisation work and it would struggle without
  • Recognise that when departures do occur you offer the departee an opportunity to leave a legacy and to create an enlarged alumni network.
  • Make Knowledge capture and retention part of the way we do things around here, adopting a process that includes learning before, during and after any piece of work and at all stages of the employment cycle

Employee Knowledge Cycle

 

 

 

 

and finally

If this has been of interest and you’d like to know more I am going to be running a Masterclass on effective Knowledge Capture and Retention in a week’s time and with Martin White of Intranet Focus hosting a Breakfast Breakout at the RSA on the Future of Legal KIM (this topic is a big issue for them) on December 9th.

The future for Legal KIM: An Outside/In perspective

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I’ve long admired the work of Martin White on Information Governance, Intranets and Search and as Chairman of the Online Conference that used to be a must attend event at Olympia in December.  I fondly recall a Hilton Hotel, Heathrow T4 meeting at the end of the 90’s between the two of us and Gerry McGovern in which we hammered out the components of an Intranet checklist. And the horror at finding the parking bill was nearly as expensive as a tank of petrol.

We go back a long way, have worked on a number of assignments together and I once gave the Keynote Speech for Intranet Focus at the inaugural Russian Intranet Forum in Moscow where David Gurteen ran his first Russian Knowledge Cafe.

Martin and I meet regularly.  It’s one of the nicer aspects of working in alliance that you get to share ideas (within the bounds of confidentiality) with people you choose rather than those an organisation chooses for you.  In the Summer we met a couple of times to review experiences in Legal Knowledge & Information Management. I’d just given the Keynote speech at KM Legal and written a blog post while Martin was in the midst of a new assignment writing a digital workplace strategy for a prominent law firm.

Legal is changing, is KIM ready?

Martin too had noticed changes in the way law firms were working. As we compared notes we became aware that some of the knowledge management, information management and project management approaches that we had been using for many years might be unfamiliar to law firms. We decided to validate our conclusions by talking to some of our contacts in law firms and among the comments we noted were:

  • “We are great at capturing, not so great at sharing, especially when it comes to knowledge about clients”
  • “Too many people think that writing a project plan is all that is needed to make a success of Legal Project Management”

A couple of hours on 4 key topics

We have decided to set up a meeting at which we could share some of our experience with senior knowledge and information managers working in law firms. Our Breakfast Breakout will take place in the Benjamin Franklin room at the Royal Society of Arts on 9 December. Starting at 9.00am (but with breakfast at 8.30am) we will be covering (amongst other topics)

  • Knowledge Loss & Knowledge Gain,
  • Legal Project Management,
  • Getting the best from firm/client virtual teams
  • Stakeholder Engagement and Management

We will be talking about Knowledge Chameleons, the “Balloon on a Phone” and WTGTGQ – When They Go They Go Quickly. There will also be a chance to benchmark your own situation, though the Chatham House Rule will apply throughout the meeting. With just ten working days to Christmas we’ll provide a relaxed setting, no PowerPoint presentations, a good breakfast and an opportunity to support the PlanZheros charity instead of paying for a ticket. You will be able to be back at your desks by 11.00. The room will be set out cabaret-style and we’ll be moving everyone around after the mid-way break to foster networking.

How to register

Registration details will be posted here, on Twitter @pauljcorney and @intranetfocus in the next few weeks.

Donations to a charity

It being Christmas we decided instead of asking attendees to contribute to the cost of the event we’d invite them to make a donation to the Plan Zheroes charity I am a founding Trustee of. So much is happening on that front and the next three months are critical, we need all the help we can get to launch our new web/mobile presence.