032 This month’s tip:

Walk the walk.

Good intentions, they say, form the pavement on the path to a particularly unsavory destination. It's probably better to have good intentions than not, though. Probably.

That’s why walking the walk is much more important than talking the talk. It can be soothing to consider and plan and explain the great things you'll be doing in the second or third quarter, but it's more important to be sure you're doing something that will actually get you there. That's true for CEOs, but it's also true for all of us as individuals. Planning is good. Talking is OK. Doing is what's most important.

 

April 2006 - Volume 4, Issue 4

Spring Cleaning!

We try to strike a seasonal note when we can, what with New Year's resolutions and back to school memories and such. At this time of year, you might be thinking about getting rid of some of that old junk in the basement, to make room for some of the new junk that's caught your fancy. Or maybe it's time to upgrade your computer!

Unless you limit yourself to very, very basic tasks, home computers just don't last as long as we’d like them to. Your machine may be in perfect shape, technically speaking, but it may not be able to handle the software you crave.

If you're like us, one of the things that inhibits the upgrade impulse is the need to find a new home for the old computer. It's hard to throw something away when it's still operational, especially if you know it's on its way to a landfill. But in fact, you can donate old computers to a variety of good causes. You can also pass them on to refurbishers, who'll be sure that what can be recycled, will be, and what can't be recycled will be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

If you like the idea that your computer may live on, take a look at Hearts & Minds, or just Google "computer donations." If you'd like a list of refurbishers, you can find one at Tech Soup.

Wikis & Knowledge Management

We've already mentioned wikis in this newsletter, in connection with the Wikipedia. If you're coming late to the conversation, a wiki is essentially a website that can be edited by the people who visit it. Underneath, it's much like any other web site, but wiki technology allows for a kind of distributed authorship that can either be reasonably controlled or completely open. The word wiki means “fast” in Hawaiian, and it's a term that is applied both to the software that supports a wiki and to websites that are created in this fashion.

Wikis can be public or private, and in either form they can be excellent tools for managing knowledge and encouraging collaboration. They're better than email, since they persist on a server and can be consulted by many users. They're also better than simple discussion forums, since they can evolve and grow more organized over time, rather than just accumulate.

There are a number of wiki tools out there, some of which come with free hosting. Schtuff is a wiki farm that's a good place to experiment, since it's both free and gives you lots of room to play. There are many others, though, and we're not endorsing any particular product. Setting up a wiki for the first time will take some effort, but the potential for KM is very interesting.

And if you want more information, what better place to go than the Wikipedia itself?

The OODA Loop

In a recent on-line discussion at the Association of Knowledge Work, we learned about the OODA model of decision making. It’s based on a four-stage process through which one must Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It's derived from the thinking of the late Col. John Boyd, a fighter pilot and military strategist. The idea is that any good decision has to proceed through those four stages, and the contention is that Knowledge Management is something which could shorten the cycle time. Theoretically, any entity that can make good decisions more quickly will have a competitive advantage.

At the root of this discussion is the fact that KM is still not really part of mainstream business thinking, and so it still needs to be sold in creative ways. Perhaps too much of the focus in the KM literature is about how to do things, and too little is about why. Being able to execute faster on a given strategy is a good answer to that question. For more information, take a look at this white paper by Prof Bill Brantley.

CEOs & Collaboration

Last month, Information Week reported on an IBM survey that looked into the role of collaboration in business. Simply put, it found that while a lot of CEOs say they believe collaboration is a good thing, relatively few of them think it's happening in their own companies. It's a "do as we say, not as we do" phenomena. More than 70% said they thought collaboration was "critical" but barely half thought they were really doing it.

Other findings include the fact that 65% of the survey group saw global competition as a factor in driving them to consider "radical" changes within the next two years, with those changes envisioned in products, operations and business models. However, only 15% thought their past efforts at change had been very successful, with half feeling that change efforts have had just some or no success.

The good news may be that most CEOs still look to their employees as the source of innovation, although partners and customers rank almost as high. And if globalization is driving collaboration, a lot of established companies may be out of step. The study showed that 47% of companies in mature markets are actively engaged in collaboration programs, compared to 75% of companies in emerging markets.
 

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