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Change in Directions
This month, the newsletter is coming to you in a new way. We've been publishing for almost a year, and
decided it was time to move to a better delivery technology.
Since last September, we've been working with an Outlook-based workstation solution. This issue is brought to you by eZine Director. After looking into it, we decided eZine's feature set was a good match for our needs, and we couldn't beat the price. It's free
for newsletters the size of Directions.
The new tool will give us better presentation in non-Microsoft clients, so some of you may feel we've improved the design. It will also give us a
double opt-in mechanism for new subscriptions, automated unsubscribe and bounce management, pre-scheduled delivery, CAN-SPAM and SPF compliance and a bunch of other things. We're particularly interested
in the new click-through metrics, which will tell us what people are reading (or not reading).
This isn't meant as a product endorsement, but it’s worth noting that an electronic newsletter is a
great way to keep in touch and build a sense of community. The technology is now powerful enough (and cheap enough) to put a newsletter within reach of anyone who wants one. If you want to know more,
just drop us a note.
KM & Counter-Terrorism
The report of the bipartisan commission on September 11th, with the no-nonsense title of The 9/11 Commission Report,
has generated enough interest to make it a best-seller. It's already into a third printing, and you can also download a PDF of all 567 pages at the Commission's website.
What's surprising to us is that very little has been written linking the failures described in the report to the discipline of Knowledge Management.
In fact, September 11th clearly represents a
knowledge problem to anyone who has a grounding in KM. It was compounded from a classic blend of incompatible technologies, convoluted processes and cultures based on competition instead of sharing. The
result was an environment where it was impossible to "know what you know." There's a good article on this at Canada's Defense Research & Development Agency, and a few opinion pieces here and there. But the idea that KM could be the foundation of a solution has not been embraced by
officialdom.
That's unfortunate, since KM practitioners know that single-threaded solutions in this space don't have much chance of success. Approaches that over-emphasize technology, without
considering process, or focus on organizational structures, without acknowledging cultural barriers, will certainly suck up time and money. But they aren't going to make us any smarter, or safer.
Beyond Bullets
In our ongoing exploration of the Internet, we've come across a site worth recommending to anyone who
feels beset by Microsoft PowerPoint.
We assume anyone who works in business has been the victim of PowerPoint presentations that seem to go nowhere, even though they take a looooong time doing
it. Management Consultant Cliff Atkinson founded Sociable Media to help cure the ills of "toxic PowerPoint," at both individual and organizational levels. He sells a simple template for improving PowerPoint structure, and has a very active blog called Beyond Bullets, which is impressive both for the quality of the writing and the creativity of the ideas.
Atkinson's position is that
PowerPoint is a very powerful tool -- "a strategic platform for communication" -- although it has unfortunately been put in the hands of millions of people who don't know how to communicate.
Whether you've been a victim of bad presentations, or have been guilty of inflicting them on others, his site is worth a look. For that matter, his blog is worth a subscription, and you can flip through
the archives at the link above.
Working in Chat Space
If you're reading this newsletter, you're probably someone whose reality has become a tad
"virtual" over the past 10 years. This is a word the ITAA defines as "a simulation of the real thing in such a way that it presents reality in essence or in effect though not in actual fact." You may think this is a wonderful development, or you may feel vaguely troubled about it. Just how far are we going down that long, lonesome virtual road?
As an anecdote on the plus side, Knowledge Street's Chris Riemer recently established a virtual connection with Jakarata-based columnist Jeremy
Wagstaff. Jeremy was writing a backgrounder on Knowledge Management for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and Chris responded to a query he'd posted
at PR Newswire. He and Jeremy exchanged some introductory email, and then had several extended conversations supported by Instant Messaging.
Given the 11-hour time difference, as well as the telecommunications costs, it's unlikely this relationship could exist in any other way.
So in some ways, the virtual world of webspace, chatspace
and blogspace enables connections and relationships that would be impossible in the real world. The irony is that in other ways, geography still rules. In Morristown, New Jersey, it's pretty hard
to find a newsdealer who carries the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Communication is the Only Thing
Something of a postscript to this month's issue, but earlier this week, National Public
Radio's Morning Edition ran a short piece on communications in the context of post -9/11 reorganizations of the US Federal Government. The point was that while reshaping any complex organization is hard, reshaping attitudes is both harder and more important.
If communications are good, any organization will work; if communications are bad, no reorg can fix them. Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security thinks the current focus on organizational charts may be misguided, and organizational psychologists agree it's more important to focus on outcomes than on structures.
It's worth a listen.
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