Where’s the KM Function in Apple Google & IDEO

Earlier this month the North American MAKE  (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise ) award winners were announced and the list is as below:

• Apple
• APQC
• ConocoPhillips
• Fluor
• Google
• Hewlett-Packard
• IBM
• IDEO
• Microsoft
• MITRE

Some of the parameters on which MAKE awards are given are:

• Creating a knowledge-driven enterprise culture
• Developing knowledge leaders and workers
• Innovation (R&D, creativity and new product/solution/service design and delivery)
• Maximizing enterprise intellectual capital
• Enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Creating a learning organization

The question I have is:

How many of the above organizations have a dedicated KM Function responsible for implementing KM within these organizations and full time CKO’s leading the KM Function? To the best of my knowledge, Apple, Google, IDEO do not have any KM function and yet they are considered.

Some time back I had written this post about “Does KM needs a Dedicated KM Function to be successful” where I had raised some questions about organizations like Apple, Google and others being truly representative of today’s knowledge led enterprises in every sense and do not need a KM function to practice KM. It’s just a way of being for them…

So, do we really need a dedicated KM function for achieving the above? Well, Apple, Google, IDEO and others don’t think so…

Surely, somewhere something is just not right in the KM world…

Social Computing behind the firewall | Pay attention to the ’social’ behind the ‘computing’ for success

With the advent of web2.0 and the perceived success of these technologies, tools, applications & platforms on the internet, making these tools & applications available behind the firewall seems to be the flavor of the season. It seems that any organization worth it’s salt ‘has to have‘ a enterprise 2.0 or web2.0 or a social strategy.  Most of the time, the people leading these initiatives don’t understand the essence of ‘web2.0/social’ applications and these initiatives then get reduced to rolling out blogs, wiki’s, social networking tools behind the firewall and asking people to use them.

This strategy of just rolling out social networking tools, without understanding why social computing works on the internet, is a recipe for disaster and any enterprise2.0 or social computing initiative based on a focus of just the ‘technology’ part will be short lived and not go anywhere. Anyone leading a social computing initiative behind the firewall needs to understand the ’social science’ behind the ‘computing’ to appreciate why it has worked in the internet world and what all ’social’ factors need to be considered and appropriate changes that need to be made in order for it to work in the more restricted ecology of a modern organisation.

Some of the underlying ’social’ concepts that one needs to understand are:

• User Participation: What factors drive user behavior and participation in social computing platforms on the internet? What are the key drivers and how is the organizational playground different from the internet w.r.t these key factors & drivers?
• Emergence & Evolution: Do the managers & leaders of the organization understand the role of emergence in social computing or are they impatient and need all answers upfront and a ‘predictable‘ outcome with all intermediate steps outlined?
• Managing vs Nurturing: Does the environment of the organization  create space for nurturing of people, ideas, thoughts, aspirations of employees or is the organization all about managing numbers, KRA’s etc.
• The Arena Itself: What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander here. The dynamics, the participation levels, the numbers of people participating in the social applications on internet would be vastly different from that behind the firewall.
• Value Networks: Do organizations that want to extend the social computing platforms to their customers/partners etc understand that this is not just as simple as offering these platforms to customers? What are the additional things that need to be done?
• Cultural Alignment: The ’secret sauce’ according to me in the whole recipe of social computing behind the firewall. One could have an organization that understands all this but still does not have the right cultural alignment to make social computing work. What are the critical factors w.r.t culture here?

Social computing has the potential to transform how business operates, how the flow of business knowledge, insights, intelligence and collaboration happens across the organization. Social computing can create alternative & more effective ways of communicating and collaborating across the organization, but the  key to that promise lies in how well the leaders of the social computing initiative understand the above ’social’ concepts & realities.

I will try and outline the key aspects of  each of the above points in more detail in my subsequent posts.

Ideas for the next big social application

The dot com era in the late 90’s and early part of this decade had all kinds of businesses vying to be on the internet and become ‘online‘. You had online shopping, dating, banking, grocery, friends, home pages etc etc.

In the past 3-4 years, the same can be said about the ’social’ or web2.0 phenomenon. everyone ants to build some kind of a social network application and ride the wave. So, this had me thinking that if in today’s world, one wants to build a truly successful social application, where are the opportunities for this? Which areas should one look at for building the next big social application.

I analyzed the current successful (a relative term) social applications and the ‘areas‘ that they are in. These are by no means the definitive social applications but are listed as representative samples of applications in various areas.

The first level nodes in the mindmap below represent the areas. For example, YouTube is about making videos social & open, twitter is about making SMS/messaging social & open and so on…

Click Here for a bigger image

 

 

I believe that if one wants to build the next successful social application, then one could always try and build a better and game changing social application OR find out areas that are not yet ’socially enabled’ and create social applications in that space.

I can bet that the next twitter/facebook would not be in the areas mentioned above but in adjacent areas or areas not mentioned above.  Now, I need to go and find out those areas and..!!!

Getting ideas

Will Crew or Military Models(for team formation) work in Software Development Projects?

Dave Snowden in his address on Social Computing & KM during the KM India summit brought about a point on how current organizational structures are not suited for creating social networks and hinder performance. Dave explained this with the Matrix Organizational Structure where people have multiple reporting relationships and no one is sure which way their loyalties should be.

Dave talked about the “Crew or Military Model” of team formation which he termed as more adaptive in nature based on the concepts of  “Role” & “Expectation of role”. He explained this with an example of how teams are formed in airlines or ships. People who may or may not have worked before come together to form a team and work as a team based on an understanding of what each persons role is and what to expect from that role.

In the IT industry this model, in intent, is a model that most software development organizations ‘aspire’ to implement while creating teams for developing software. I believe that in theory this is a good concept but there are several questions that need to answered and various soft aspects thought.

• “Crew” model would work for teams where the tasks are repeatable, tasks which have little room for variation and have to be done “the same as before way” on time. Tasks which have the procedures defined and the job of the person doing is to just follow the procedures and do it.   For example;  airline crew. pilot, co-pilot, air hostess, stewards, checkin counter assistants. The kind of tasks involved are routine, repeatable, well documented, and need to be performed with precision every time.

• In the software industry, for example each development project is unique and the development life-cycle is ‘not predictable‘ to say the least.  To compound matters, skills required may not be available and training may have to done while on the job. This is not the case in crew model where almost all the times things are predictable and follow a predictable sequence.  For example, in an airplane you can predict what would happen from the time you take a boarding pass and go to your seat to the time you get down from the flight. It is all very very predictable, linear & sequential. There is no room for variation — unless it is a private chartered russian flight

• Though one may say that even in software development we have roles like PM, Technical Leads, DBA’s etc etc and we know what is expected of that role. However, the reality is that software development is an iterative, some what chaotic, emergent process. There is a complex interplay between all stake holders to create the ‘intangible’ software that people want. Now by very nature of their business, airlines/ships can’t have an iterative, some what chaotic, emergent process to the nature of work that teams do there. Imagine a team of  air hostess emulating an iterative, some what chaotic, emergent process to serve the passengers.!!!

• Another important element is the “customer engagement” in the whole development life-cycle itself where requirements are fluid and can keep changing. Now one could argue that even in a ship or a airplane there is engagement required with the customers, but that engagement and the choices available and hence the options that the crew can exercise are from a limited set that is almost well known in advance.  It would be only in an adverse situation of a ship capsizing or a plane mishap (e.g. hi-jack) that the engagement model between all the participants becomes fluid and relatively unknown.

• The most important aspect I feel is the “nature of work” itself.  By very nature, software engineering calls for continuous learning & updation of skills while on the job. This is not necessarily true for airline or ship teams. Not to say that they don’t need to learn or improve their skills but that is within a very narrow band and at a slow pace than in software engineering. This aspect leads to totally different  behavioral, motivational, aspirational & emotional factors within individuals that then influence people, teams & how they work.

• I also think that teams in crew models the teams need to “coordinate” with each other to perform the task whereas in software development teams need to “collaborate” with each other to perform the task. These two things may look similar but call for totally different actions, engagement models within teams.

The above are just some of the many questions out there. What do you think?

Would ‘Crew or Military’ models of team formation work effectively in software developments? What could be other challenges and opportunities?