Week 3 - Discussion
What did we cover in this week’s lecture? Let’s start out with the question of the week, what is the difference between collaboration and Knowledge Management? First off all I believe that you need collaboration for a Knowledge Management system but the same does not hold true the other way around. Having a worked with Portal in the past for example I have seen that most if not all Knowledge Management software solutions come with some sort of collaboration toolset. There are real-time and non-real-time collaboration tools. An example of these would be forums/blogs where users can create discussion forums or comment on them or Instant Messaging where users can literally communicate with each other instantly via text messaging. Of course there is the all too popular email which I guess falls somewhere in between real-time and non-real-time collaboration.
So what exactly is collaboration? Merriam-Webster has collaboration defined as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. It is basically two or more people working towards the same goal. Knowledge Management is more or less a set of procedures and best practices used by a company/organization to gather, create and distribute knowledge. Collaboration would definitely be one of the tools used within Knowledge Management to gather, create and distribute knowledge.
Another interesting question asked during the lecture was do we need technology for collaboration. In my opinion, I don’t think we need technology for collaboration. Where is the technology in two people having a conversation in the lobby? If the question was “do you need technology for affective collaboration?” then I might think twice. Technology is there to help the collaboration process, key word being HELP.
Guest Speaker – Ed Brill
There are two points that Ed Brill brought up that really touched home for me. One of them being the whole idea of the virtual workplace. It is amazing how it is more common place in today day and age to not only be able to work outside of the office but not have to meet with your management team on a regular basis. With so many companies being global and with today’s technology making this possible, why not. From my experience I find that I actually get more done when I work from home then I do when I am in the office. This is partly because of less distractions and of course not having to factor in the daily three hour commute to and from the office.
Two years ago my company started the work from home pilot and being such a big success we have expanded the benefit to other departments within the organization. My company is global so I meet with people all around the world from the comfort of my office, at home or at the Wrigley Facility. What makes this possible is technology. We have an Enterprise Portal that we use for Knowledge Management and collaboration. We built the portal using a taxonomy that fit the organization making navigation straight forward. The Document repository is indexed so it is easy to search for information. If we needed to hold a meeting we can easily use WebEx conferencing. And we are always reachable thanks to like Ed Brill calls them the all famous “CRACKBERRY”.
The other quick point that Ed brought up in his presentation was how a company’s assets walk out the door every day at 5 PM. That was such a great line when you think about it. We all agree that Knowledge is an asset. A lot of organizations knowledge is stuck within its employees because it is tacit knowledge that cannot be easily dispersed. I suppose this is where Knowledge Management is supposed to help. How do we collect this unstructured information? Do we really need to collect the information or are we fine with using a hybrid network model for Knowledge Management?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Week 2 - Blog away
Looks like I’m still afloat, just barely. As of this morning, I have successfully made it through another project go live at work. I am pretty much caught up in my other two courses here at DePaul and it is time to invest a little more time into this course. Funny thing is, the more I read and listen to the lectures the more questions open up. I suppose this is a good thing, gets the old gears in my head turning.
A very good question was asked during the second lecture, “which would I rather have, truth or knowledge?” At first thought my answer was truth hands down. What is the point of having knowledge if the knowledge you have is not correct. What good is knowing something if what you know is a lie? Having incorrect knowledge can lead to wrong decisions in life. The definition of truth is “that which accords with reality, truth tends to foster success”.
Then somebody might argue that knowing the truth is not necessarily always good. Example you ask? Let’s say that your wife asks you if you like the new pink dress shirt with purple polka dots she bought you for your birthday. Do you think she wants the truth or a truth that might sound a bit more pleasing to the ear?
Now we are going to shift gears a bit and discuss some of the articles.
CFO - It’s who you know
This was a very short easy reading article. What I got from it was quick talk about a repository model versus a network model. It’s true, you always hear about companies trying to take inventory of their employees and what their competencies are. This knowledge is invaluable to an organization for multiple reasons. Quick one that comes to mind is project management, it is essential that you assign the right person to the task/role.
One quote that did stick out was from Michael Idinopulos and Lee Kempler from McKinsey & Co. “Don’t try to bottle the expertise, just be content to find it when you need it.” This goes back to knowing the right person versus trying to extract all the knowledge from everybody in your organization and attempt to store the information. Sometimes it is easier and faster just to know who to ask.
CFO - That’s why we use lots of acronyms
Another very short read. This is an interesting article simply stating the increase of information in our world. So it would take 2,108 years to watch every film and video ever produced. The article does a nice job of making you take a step back and realizing that there is way more information out there then you or I will ever be able to consume in our lifetime. I guess this is where knowledge management would come in, weed out all the relevant and useful information and not bother with the garbage.
Bohn - Measuring and Managing Technological knowledge
Bohn’s article on technological knowledge had some very interesting and very valid points. Of course he throws in a few definitions describing the difference between raw data, information and knowledge but what this article is mainly about is how he puts a process in place describing the different levels of knowledge within any organization. Bohn believes that technological knowledge can be defined by understanding the effects of the input variables on the end state or output. That being said, knowledge towards something can be either at stage one which is complete ignorance which we know is not unlikely for many cases or stage eight which is Complete Knowledge which is almost impossible to get to this stage.
I can appreciate how he breaks his information into simplistic, very common scenarios such as the process in baking cookies. Using this example he is able to better explain the eight stages of knowledge and the correlation between the different stages of knowledge and procedure changes when baking cookies. Once you have a better understanding “knowledge” of all of the variables that can and will affect your procedure you can plan accordingly. By doing so you will have improved your process therefore saved time and money.
One paragraph towards the beginning of the article that did stick out was “although an organization’s knowledge base may be its single most important asset, its very intangibility makes it difficult to manage systematically.” To me, this is the whole issue with knowledge management. You will hear time and time again how a company’s most important asset is its knowledge. How do we capture all the tacit, unstructured knowledge? Stay tuned, we will find answers.
A very good question was asked during the second lecture, “which would I rather have, truth or knowledge?” At first thought my answer was truth hands down. What is the point of having knowledge if the knowledge you have is not correct. What good is knowing something if what you know is a lie? Having incorrect knowledge can lead to wrong decisions in life. The definition of truth is “that which accords with reality, truth tends to foster success”.
Then somebody might argue that knowing the truth is not necessarily always good. Example you ask? Let’s say that your wife asks you if you like the new pink dress shirt with purple polka dots she bought you for your birthday. Do you think she wants the truth or a truth that might sound a bit more pleasing to the ear?
Now we are going to shift gears a bit and discuss some of the articles.
CFO - It’s who you know
This was a very short easy reading article. What I got from it was quick talk about a repository model versus a network model. It’s true, you always hear about companies trying to take inventory of their employees and what their competencies are. This knowledge is invaluable to an organization for multiple reasons. Quick one that comes to mind is project management, it is essential that you assign the right person to the task/role.
One quote that did stick out was from Michael Idinopulos and Lee Kempler from McKinsey & Co. “Don’t try to bottle the expertise, just be content to find it when you need it.” This goes back to knowing the right person versus trying to extract all the knowledge from everybody in your organization and attempt to store the information. Sometimes it is easier and faster just to know who to ask.
CFO - That’s why we use lots of acronyms
Another very short read. This is an interesting article simply stating the increase of information in our world. So it would take 2,108 years to watch every film and video ever produced. The article does a nice job of making you take a step back and realizing that there is way more information out there then you or I will ever be able to consume in our lifetime. I guess this is where knowledge management would come in, weed out all the relevant and useful information and not bother with the garbage.
Bohn - Measuring and Managing Technological knowledge
Bohn’s article on technological knowledge had some very interesting and very valid points. Of course he throws in a few definitions describing the difference between raw data, information and knowledge but what this article is mainly about is how he puts a process in place describing the different levels of knowledge within any organization. Bohn believes that technological knowledge can be defined by understanding the effects of the input variables on the end state or output. That being said, knowledge towards something can be either at stage one which is complete ignorance which we know is not unlikely for many cases or stage eight which is Complete Knowledge which is almost impossible to get to this stage.
I can appreciate how he breaks his information into simplistic, very common scenarios such as the process in baking cookies. Using this example he is able to better explain the eight stages of knowledge and the correlation between the different stages of knowledge and procedure changes when baking cookies. Once you have a better understanding “knowledge” of all of the variables that can and will affect your procedure you can plan accordingly. By doing so you will have improved your process therefore saved time and money.
One paragraph towards the beginning of the article that did stick out was “although an organization’s knowledge base may be its single most important asset, its very intangibility makes it difficult to manage systematically.” To me, this is the whole issue with knowledge management. You will hear time and time again how a company’s most important asset is its knowledge. How do we capture all the tacit, unstructured knowledge? Stay tuned, we will find answers.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Week 1 discussion
Let’s begin with my take of knowledge versus information. Information is nothing more than data or facts about something. That being said about information, knowledge is how you would use this information to accomplish a certain goal. Knowledge is something you pick up as you move through life, an experience maybe. This may sound fairly simple and straight forward but there is definitely a lot more to it the more you think about it.
Let’s take Steve Jobs Stay Hungry Commencement Address for example. The speech itself is one of the most inspirational speeches you will find out there. His goal is very evident in his speech, live your life with passion and meaning. He shares with us what he has discovered throughout his life. He shares with us his knowledge on life.
Knowledge management is not the simplest of subjects in my book. It is however very intriguing. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve worked with Knowledge Management Systems. The most current is SAP’s Enterprise Portal. It has many of the tools sets used in KMS such as a document repository, search and retrieval software, and collaboration functionality. We have spent a great deal of time coming up with a good taxonomy to make the Portal as intuitive as possible so the information and be found easily, structured or unstructured. Even though I still work quite a bit with the Portal, lately I’ve been working more with the Business Intelligence software. Working in a global company, it is extremely important to have an effective communication process in place. Being able to supply everybody within the company with information such as standards, templates, strategy, business model, and key learning’s among other information is of high importance. If I can walk away from this class with at least one way to improve the dispersion of information throughout my company, I will be happy.
Let’s take Steve Jobs Stay Hungry Commencement Address for example. The speech itself is one of the most inspirational speeches you will find out there. His goal is very evident in his speech, live your life with passion and meaning. He shares with us what he has discovered throughout his life. He shares with us his knowledge on life.
Knowledge management is not the simplest of subjects in my book. It is however very intriguing. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve worked with Knowledge Management Systems. The most current is SAP’s Enterprise Portal. It has many of the tools sets used in KMS such as a document repository, search and retrieval software, and collaboration functionality. We have spent a great deal of time coming up with a good taxonomy to make the Portal as intuitive as possible so the information and be found easily, structured or unstructured. Even though I still work quite a bit with the Portal, lately I’ve been working more with the Business Intelligence software. Working in a global company, it is extremely important to have an effective communication process in place. Being able to supply everybody within the company with information such as standards, templates, strategy, business model, and key learning’s among other information is of high importance. If I can walk away from this class with at least one way to improve the dispersion of information throughout my company, I will be happy.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
My First Blog
I have to be honest; I have never blogged in my life so this promises to get interesting. Here is a little bit about me. I am an ECT major with this being my final quarter here at DePaul. It’s been a great run but I have to say that I’m ecstatic to be graduating in June. Feeling a bit brave this quarter I have signed up for three classes. On top of the excessive school load I also have a very demanding job and am a father of two (a two year old son and a four year old daughter).
Currently I work for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company within its IT department. I started out as a web developer and was introduced to SAP via its Enterprise Portal. Being the Portal administrator/Developer I went onto SAP Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, and Strategic Enterprise Management (what a mouthful). Anyway, going back to the portal. We initially used the portal mainly for its Knowledge management and collaboration capabilities. I guess this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this class. I have some knowledge of the terms used and I would like to believe that I somewhat have a grasp of what knowledge management is but I guess we will see as this quarter progresses.
That was my quick intro and this will conclude my first entry.
Currently I work for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company within its IT department. I started out as a web developer and was introduced to SAP via its Enterprise Portal. Being the Portal administrator/Developer I went onto SAP Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, and Strategic Enterprise Management (what a mouthful). Anyway, going back to the portal. We initially used the portal mainly for its Knowledge management and collaboration capabilities. I guess this is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this class. I have some knowledge of the terms used and I would like to believe that I somewhat have a grasp of what knowledge management is but I guess we will see as this quarter progresses.
That was my quick intro and this will conclude my first entry.
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