Archive for category Knowledge management
How do you know?
Posted by David C. Buchan in Personal knowledge management, Self improvement on March 3rd, 2010
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
My wife and I have just attended a prep grade information session which explained how reading, writing and maths are being taught to our youngest daughter. The teachers suggested we help by pointing out shapes in the home and asking what they are then follow up with, “How do you know?”. For a triangle we should be told 3 sides and 3 points and so on.
It struck me how useful it would be to have this question in the workplace. I see too many decisions and actions taken on the basis of what someone believes to be true very often without any substantial basis other than it’s what they believe.
People who speak in generalities but can’t provide or offer to provide real evidence need to have this question asked of them directly. It will be confronting, even if asked sincerely. Yet it should not be something you have to apologise for. Some people will have the guts to say, “You know what? I don’t really know”. Then you have a basis to move forward.
How to conduct performance reviews simply
Posted by David C. Buchan in Coaching others, Community knowledge management, Self improvement on February 19th, 2010
Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes
Michael Carter and I were chatting this morning about conversations in the workplace and we came around to the topic of performance review as a series of conversations. This is how I prefer to conduct performance reviews.
For managers and supervisors
Pre-interview questionnaires? Bin them.
Competency models? Bin them too.
Forms to fill out during the interview? You guessed it. Right to the bin.
Complicated meeting arrangements? Just pick a time.
Now you have the space for the following questions.
- Where is the business/department/team now? As a manager or team leader this is where you describe where you think the company is going. It sets the context for the remaining questions.
- What are your priorities? Your employee now knows where you’re going and you can openly discuss where they want to go within that plan. Heaven forbid you might find there is a mis-match of priorities here but in all my experience I’ve always been able to find something that aligns the two.
- What do you think you’ve done well? Allow the employee to discuss what they’ve done well since the last review (which, by the way was no more than three months ago was it?). You will be able to confirm and add more observations.
- What would you like to improve upon? Gather ideas for further education and find out, then agree, on how you can support your charge.
- How can I be a better manager for you? Now listen. DO NOT ARGUE. Any remaining dissatisfaction will surface. Come to agreement on how you can be a better manager. It may require the employee changing their behaviour as well.
For employees
If you are an employee, the process is even easier.
- What am I doing that you want me to keep doing?
- What am I doing that you want me to stop doing?
- What am I not doing that you need me to do?
Timing?
Whenever needed. Nothing in a performance review should ever be a surprise to the employee. At Arthur Andersen I was guaranteed an appraisal of some sort every three months or sooner if I had completed a project within that time frame. I find three months is a good timeframe. It gives time for behaviours to change but not so much that you need days to cover it all and so end up covering nothing.
World Class Moderator and mentor
Posted by David C. Buchan in Coaching others, Inspiration and motivation, Networking, Self improvement on June 24th, 2009
Reading time: < 1 minute
Mentors play such an important part in our lives. Today I was blessed to hear that someone who I’ve been working alongside for several years now has been describing me to her friends as her mentor. I trust it is no coincidence I just heard from one of my mentors — Roy Sheppard, World Class Moderator — the very person who showed me there was such a thing as personal development and to whom I ultimately owe the identification of my calling to guide people to the path of self improvement and walk beside them on their journey.
Roy has just launced the World Class Moderator site to showcase his speaking work. Take a moment to have a look. You never know what may come from it.
Using Dropbox with PersonalBrain
Posted by David C. Buchan in Personal knowledge management, Using technology on June 20th, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes
I’ve been using Dropbox to sync my PersonalBrain between multiple computers for a few weeks now. Dropbox copies files via the internet. As long as you follow the rule of ensuring you’re not running two copies of PB simultaneously — in other words, let the sync finish before firing up PersonalBrain— it’s robust. Keep up the practice of regular brainzips just in case.
For your initial load I suggest you try:
- Leaving a comment below requesting that I refer you to Dropbox. The company provides an inital 2GB of space plus and additional 250mb for each referral for each party (up to an addition 3.0gb). So if I refer you then you will have 2.25gb to start with and I’ll gain as well. Enter your email address in the appropriate field. It’s not publically displayed and you’ll receive an invitation from my personal address.
- Register and install Dropbox on Computer A and Computer B.
- Practice with some non-brain files until you’re happy and understand the mechanics.
- Turn off Dropbox on Computer B.
- Copy (not move) your brain to the My Dropbox folder on Computer A.
- Let the sync finish — could be hours depending on bandwidth and size.
- Copy the same files to Computer B — or in other words, pre-load the files. This saves bandwidth and time.
- Start Dropbox on Computer B.
- Wait for the sync to finish before starting PB — it will be quicker because many of the files are already there.
Usual disclaimers about you being responsible for your data and adequate backups apply. Keep original copies until you’re sure and then keep them anyway. I’d hate for you to lose your brain. Yesterday I setup a new PC and thought it was right using the above method. Somehow I’d missed something but was able to recover by reloading a brainzip over the Computer B files.
You can have Dropbox running while you are using PersonalBrain. It will be able to update most files but not all. These will update as soon as you close out of PB (usually within a minute or two). If you shut down your PC before checking at the end of the day you risk getting out of sync so be diligent. It will take only a moment.
How being in love with Google led to a long-term relationship
Posted by David C. Buchan in Personal knowledge management, Using technology on June 20th, 2009
Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
Google, you can have the lot. And I give it willingly.
First you helped me with a simple and fast search engine. This was followed up by the wonder of Google Earth and then Google Maps. Some other bits and pieces with Feedburner and Webmaster tools, then Google Reader last week took over from Feeddemon. Google Sketchup is in there as well. Now I’m giving to your care 5 years of emails and my calendar data as well. I trust you to do the right thing. For now Flickr can keep my photos.
I still don’t understand why Microsoft has such a thing about Internet Explorer. It’s the browser —it’s the data. An Google provides a standard, no-frills, simple and fast way to access it from anywhere.
Four days ago I started a new role with a different employer. By far the biggest hindrance to my productivity this first week has been the inability to access my existing knowledge, be that emails, calendar, contacts, newsfeeds or my PersonalBrain (the latter needing permission to install the software first). I have a Blackberry to carry some of that around but if you’ve ever been the victim of split-syncing (multiple data sources) then you’ll know it’s not so easy to fix.
Truthfully I don’t know what pointed me towards Gmail. I’ve had a Google Account for sometime and it may have simply been a byproduct of tidying things up. As I dug deeper and began to bring my existing email into Gmail I found instructions on how to Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007. With this I can access all of my mail from anywhere and still retain local copies. That works for me. No longer do I have to say, “I’ll dig that out and send you a copy when I get home/elsewhere”. The Blackberry client is great as well.
Calendar data has been a problem this past week. My new firm uses Outlook appointments extensively as they should. All my existing appointments were in my old system and synced to my Blackberry. Two diaries! Manually copying data from one to another works to a point and that point is when something changes. Again Google had the answer with Google Calendar. This one however took a while to work out.
I thought the flow of information was Work PC <-> Google Calendar <-> Blackberry <->Home PC. That lead to some nasty sync software (nasty defined as “I still had to think about it”), including Google’s Blackberry sync which fails horribly because it doesn’t sync all data. All I can say here is read before you decide. There is a risk of deleting calendar data from Outlook. On the other hand Google’s Outlook Calendar sync is fantastic. The order of Work PC <-> Google Calendar <-> Home PC <-> Blackberry works a dream. It transfers all data fast and keeps things in sync.
Google Reader for RSS feeds. Again, every computer has a browser.
And so on. Love with a search engine and mapping (one of the world’s great contributions) has led to a long term relationship.
Do I dare look at Picasa and Chrome?
Go for No!
Posted by David C. Buchan in Networking, Self improvement on May 26th, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
It turns out that you can judge a book by its cover. In this case, Go for No! in which the premise of the book is summarised in the title. If you want success, don’t chase the yes — chase the no. It’s only from chasing no that you will get sufficient learning to enable the yes’s to occur.
We can often fall into the trap of failing to ask for something because we’re afraid of a negative response. This bold assessment that we know what the other person will say (how often do you know what you’ll say) stops us from creating the opportunity for them to say either ‘no’ or ‘yes’. How dangerous is it to hold back on a question because we can’t afford to hear no, yet by doing so we don’t allow the very yes we so desperately need.
This book describes why setting a target to achieve a certain number of no responses will automatically generate the required number of yes responses.
Storytelling for Community Engagement
Posted by David C. Buchan in Community knowledge management on May 20th, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
This morning I listened to an engaging talk on storytelling by Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. I’ve known of Shawn’s work for a while and this is a great opportunity to see and hear his ideas on how stories are a powerful, yet often misunderstood element of our workplaces.
The Fine Art of Small Talk
Posted by David C. Buchan in Inspiration and motivation, Networking, Self improvement on May 19th, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes
Initiating a conversation with other people can be difficult as most of us are so worried about what the other person will think of us that we decide it’s better to say nothing than to expose our flaws. This topic is just one covered in The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine. For me this book differs from the many other ‘How to speak to people’ books out there because it entwines real stories with some ideas that go beyond have courage, smile and be pleasant.
Take for example Debra’s ideas on how to approach acquaintances about their work or family life. Instead of asking “How’s work?” and walking into a minefield because they were made redundant last week and didn’t know it, ask “How has your year been?” or “What’s been going on with work since I last saw you?”. This provides both parties a graceful way to explore or avoid the situation. Similarly don’t use “How’s your wife/husband/partner” but instead use “Bring me up to date on your family”.
One of my personal pet-hate questions, though not listed in the book, is “Are you having children?”. This question causes extreme pain to all those couples who are striving to have children but can’t for whatever reason. I know; I’ve been there. It presumes so much.
Another suggestion I’ve picked up on the way is to ask people, “So, do you work locally?” instead of “Where do you work?”. Similar to the suggestions above it allows the other party to gracefully handle the loss of a job, working from home, etc.
Yet I digress. The Fine Art of Small Talk is an easy read on what should be an easy subject. It carries with it useful information and a shot of confidence.
The Brain Blog shows the benefits of mapping relationships
Posted by David C. Buchan in Networking, Using technology on May 6th, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes
When you start mapping out the people you know and their relationships to you, and one another, interesting things happen. The Brain Blog’s article Everyone Is Connected. It’s Time to See the Links. which describes adding people and mind mapping social networks has several examples of the ways in which you can use PersonalBrain as a tool for mapping. As the article intro says,
If you don’t have your family or colleagues in your Brain you are missing out. Adding people in your Brain whether it’s their name connected to a project or their contact info will help you get the big picture on your relationships. Creating a people centric Brain will improve the quality of your interactions so you can remember key details that might otherwise be forgotten.
I expand the original article with a description of my own practices below.
Further ideas on mapping relationships
Family relationships
In my brain I map family relationships as follows:
- Husband and wife are linked with a join link
- Children are linked as child links from each parent, and with join links to each other as siblings.
I don’t use labels as my real brain can keep track of the relationships when it sees them. I may in the future but so far have found no need to.
In the example below we have Donald Duck, his girlfriend Daisy Duck and sister Della Duck (see the full Duck Family for more info on Donald’s relatives).
And if we show Della Duck you’ll see her three sons, Huey, Dewey and Louie. Each is linked to Della as parent and to each other as a sibling.
Finally we have Huey as son on Della Duck and brother to Louie and Dewey.
Events
In addition to linking people by workplace or family relationship, I also link them to the events (seminars, training sessions, conferences) where I either met them or attended with them. This helps me connect to our history.
Your connectors
An earlier article describes how I used MindManager to identify the connectors in my network. Unfortunately the graphic has gone to Internet heaven and I’ll have to find the original file.
Finding your organisation’s experts
Posted by David C. Buchan in Community knowledge management on May 4th, 2009
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
Jack Vinson has a good article on finding your experts using expert locator systems as part of your knowledge management strategy.
The Question. If you are going down the path of expertise locators, be sure to check with yourself about why you need such a thing in your organization. Are people having trouble finding people that must be working in the company? Are the local experts unwilling or unable to provide the right level of assistance? Are people spending too much time recreating solutions or answers that already exist? These are all symptoms: have you established an underlying reason for these observations or behaviors.
This is a good question and of the type so often never asked in an organisation. Why are we doing this must be asked before we begin on the how otherwise we can miss alternative options which may be better suited. It is even possible to find, as Jack’s piece suggests, the problem has already been solved. How often do you take a moment to ask why?
-
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Knowledge management category.
Charter for Compassion
