But the crash raises the disturbing possibility that aviation may well long be plagued by a subtler menace, one that ironically springs from the never-ending quest to make flying safer. Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important information from the attention of the flight crew. While the airplane's avionics track crucial parameters such as location, speed, and heading, the human beings can pay attention to something else. But when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer decides that it can no longer copeon a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from landthe humans might find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what's going on. They'll wonder: What instruments are reliable, and which can't be trusted? What's the most pressing threat? What's going on? Unfortunately, the vast majority of pilots will have little experience in finding the answers.

Without detracting from the seriousness of the Air France crash, this final paragraph highlights something that has bugged me for a while.

In many contexts, including flying aeroplanes, we try hard to automate, to simplify and to turn things into processes. Ultimately, though, people still need to pay attention. I think one of the critical purposes of knowledge management is to ensure that people are still able to pay attention to the right things. (Even when it cannot be predicted what the right things might be.)

EXTRA (Experts Telling Relevant Advice) is a knowledge management system that stores and retrieves digitally recorded stories. EXTRA has one intention -- and that is to get a story to a user that will help him or her make a decision just at the time that they are about to make a decision. We use storytelling as the vehicle to impart knowledge.

EXTRA could exist in any domain of knowledge, and in fact, all possible domains of knowledge might come into play, depending on the needs of the user. The system can capture corporate stories, historical stories, or any recorded material. The idea is simple and is based on observations about everyday human interaction. People talk about their problems and those with whom they are speaking offer solutions. Typically, people tell each other information through storytelling. These stories are derived from their own experiences. When someone tells a friend about an issue, they are often regaled with a story that starts with “something like that happened to me” or “you know what I did when I was faced with that situation?”

As I was catching up with Language Log, I read a fascinating post on AI, semantics and linguistics. Too much to take in at one sitting, but full of appended insights, including a link to this novel 'KM system'. I think it appears to be hypothetical, but I need to explore further.

If you are mainly using collaboration tools to support virtual conversations then travel reduction is likely the big benefit. To get the really big benefits in other areas you have to explicitly go there. You usually get what you ask for, at best.

This was the case with knowledge management. The only really successful KM efforts that I saw were ones that were aligned with business processes such as product development or customer service. In these aligned cases, I saw documented benefits such as reduced time to market, increase in successful cross selling and reductions in repeat calls on the same service issue.

Bill Ives, reporting on a recent Forrester report, puts his finger on the reasons businesses are seeing only limited benefits from their investment in collaboration tools. The mistake they have made (as many also made with KM) has been to see collaboration (or KM) as self-evidently and intrinsically good. In fact, they only have limited intrinisic value.

The real value (as John Hagel made clear in his talk at last month's Social Business Summit in London) comes from deployments of the right tools in the places they will make most impact. That requires those responsible (whether IT or KM professionals) to work closely with senior people in the business to identify the metrics that matter (cost, performance, etc.), where there is underperformance against those metrics, and what can be done to change turn that underperformance around.

That kind of strategic approach means we stop using a hammer on screws. It also means we might be able to buy a smaller hammer, because that is all the nails need.

To encourage worker productivity offices prohibit Internet use. Consequently, many employees delay Internet activity to the end of the workday. Recent work in social psychology, however, suggests that using willpower to delay gratification can negatively impact performance. We report data from an experiment where subjects in a Willpower Treatment are asked to resist the temptation to join others in watching a humorous video for 10 minutes. In relation to a baseline treatment that does not require will power, we show that resisting this temptation detrimentally impacts economic productivity on a subsequent task.

I can't decide what is the worst thing about this study. As far as I can tell from skimming through the full working paper, the researchers gave some people boring tasks to do and measured how difficult it was for them to control their willpower under specific conditions.

Is the work people do really so boring that it can be said to be equivalent to 'counting tasks'? If so, they probably deserve to have access to the internet in order to stretch their mental muscles.

Despite the lofty conclusions drawn from the study, no consideration is given to the fact that work is not a controlled environment. People bring in their own distractions (from stress balls to smartphones), and their colleagues provide more opportunities for distraction. The command and control assumptions in the study hark back to an older (and less wise) era.

Surely the real answer is to worry less about the distractions and concentrate on the reasons why someone would rather surf the net than do the work. Make the work more interesting, valuable, motivating, and people won't be distracted -- the work will win over the lure of Facebook and Twitter. If you can't do that, why is a human being doing that work? Maybe the managers and leaders are really the people who need to work harder.

The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

That’s why propositions are supposed to be single-minded.

Because, that way, you get 100% of your media spend concentrated on the main message.

Whereas with a complicated proposition you dilute and fragment your message.

Less important points don’t add to the communication.

They detract from the most important point.

That’s what the single-minded proposition is all about.

That’s why we need people to make the effort to decide what is absolutely essential.

Not just people who think of what else they can include.

Welding a JCB to a Ferrari doesn’t make a machine that can dig roads at 200mph.

It makes something that can’t do either job properly.

Dave Trott has a unique style. I don't always agree with what he writes, but this post is worth noting. By using a short anecdote about feeding one of his sons (on request) strawberry ice cream and Twiglets, he shows how important it is to find, define and stick to a single point of focus.

Work out what you want to achieve, the best way to do that thing, and stick to it.

One of the comments on Dave's post suggests that the Swiss Army knife is a good counter-example. It isn't. In fact, the Swiss Army knife is an excellent example of why multi-purpose tools are worse at any given task than a tool designed for that task alone.

I have a beautiful, Sheffield-made, single-blade folding knife. It is the kind of thing that my grandfather would have used when working with his sheep. The blade is designed for a purpose, and it is perfectly balanced with the handle when opened.

I also have a simple Swiss Army knife, which has a couple of blades, bottle opener, reamer, screwdrivers, etc. The blades are shorter than my single-blade knife, and they are completely unbalanced with the handle.

That is only to say that the Swiss Army knife is a poor perfomer at all the tasks it can do. But its real purpose -- the thing that it is good at -- is convenience. If you have limited space available, and there may be times when you need a basic screwdriver or to cut some string, then a Swiss Army knife is exactly what you need. If you know you will have to trim sheeps' feet regularly and often, or you are cutting cloth for dress-making, you will need a tool designed for that task alone.

There are many business tools sold as Swiss Army knives. The question for those considering their purchase is whether they just want a convenient solution or whether they want a particular job done properly. If the latter is true, then there is almost certainly something that will do it better. Choose that instead.

The fact that people have multiple technologies, doesn't mean they use them the same way (cf. everyone is different). Years ago, I was shocked when I answered my office phone to discover that the caller was in an office no more than thirty feet away. But I thought nothing of sending email to the person in the cube next to me.

More recently, I was bemused the first time I received an instant message from a fellow worker two cubes down. (They didn't want to disturb the others by talking, since we work in such close proximity.)

How and when individuals use different technologies seems like an almost limitless set of permutations. Of the 11 people I currently work with:

• At least one answers email before IM
• One seems to respond to both equally (and instantaneously)
  
• Several answer either IMs or email, but with no clear pattern or preference
  
• One will respond to IMs more often than email, but will answer the IM via email.
• One never responds to IMs.

Is this good or bad use of the technology? It is neither. It is how individuals work. Part of "knowledge management" is managing your sources of knowledge, your technology, and your contacts. It is not enough to know how to use the technology; you must also know how it is used by your community.

I know this concept — the preeminence of personal choice — is an anathema to many KM practitioners. It is like trying to establish order without disturbing the chaos. How can you promote a company-wide program if each individual gets to choose for themselves?

Well, it is not quite that bad. It is not that each individual gets to decide for themselves. You can dictate, require, or recommend specific technologies and approaches. But you need to recognize that your audience will perform those actions in the way they think is best.

I agree that it is often be wiser to allow diversity (of systems use, in this case) to flourish, rather than trying to force people into one way of working.

I think KM has spent many years trying to predict what people will do, and force them into particular patterns of action, with only some success. It is worth reflecting on whether we would be better off giving people broad guidance, demonstrating good behaviours, and directing our real efforts to helping people make sense of what is already around them.

• The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
  The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

• O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
  O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
  O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
  The endless cycle of idea and action,
  Endless invention, endless experiment,
  Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
  Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
  Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
  All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
  All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
  But nearness to death no nearer to God.
  Where is the Life we have lost in living?
  Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
  The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
  Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

One of the constant challenges for those who have to balance time and knowledge is that time is more demanding. Or at least it appears to be. Our clients are actually buying not our time, but the insight that comes from the kind of stillness, silence and reflection that Eliot promotes in this quote from the Choruses from the Rock.

Organising personal knowledge management processes around external output

Sometimes it can be difficult to keep up a particular routine due to time pressure. A good way to ensure you keep going is to organise your own PKM process around some external output; so for example, I know I need to do some CPD activity each month which involves reading a number of news items on the web in my given field. It's easy to let that slip.

It becomes much easier when I'm sending a monthly email to a colleague with a summary of my comments about recent developments. Not only do I keep on top of my own CPD, but I'm also developing my own thoughts and managing relationships with my colleagues.

This is one reason why I blog -- it gives my reading a purpose. However, it is also a useful insight for non-personal KM. A practice group or team could operate its knowledge programme in a similar way: give each person a knowledge responsibility, and require them to produce something of value as part of that responsibility. ("Something of value" is not a boring presentation, or a note that nobody will read. It has to be something that will improve the work of the rest of the group -- meeting a need they have now.)

The best law firm knowledge managers build relationships with their lawyer and non-lawyer colleagues that develop over time into something rich and productive, yielding mutual benefits and, often, benefits for their firm.  This means relationships that involve good communication, cooperation and collaboration.  And, it all begins with good conversation.  However, a law firm isn’t always the easiest place in which to hold a conversation. In an environment conditioned by hourly billing, we all tend to be extraordinarily time sensitive.  As a result, our electronic and in person exchanges are often rather transactional – designed to achieve a limited (usually urgent) business purpose.  This can make it difficult to initiate and sustain conversations that don’t necessarily have a direct bearing on immediate client needs.  Yet, it is precisely the conversations with a perspective that reaches beyond the urgent and immediate that can have the greatest beneficial impact on client and firm.  Equally, sometimes a quick conversation held as you pass each other in the hall can surface key facts that shed new light on an old problem or help move a project forward.  Not every conversation needs to be heavy, but knowledge managers should work hard to ensure that every conversation is meaningful.  In other words, they should focus on conversations that count.

As usual, Mary Abraham nails it. However, there is a bit missing from her advice. In order to get to the point at which people can have conversations that count (smarter conversations, with two-way exchange, developing understanding and strategically focused), the participants need to have developed a social as well as a working relationship that allows such conversations to happen. That means that they need to spend some time on small talk -- the stuff that isn't obviously smart or strategic, that looks unfocused and timewasting.

Just as small talk (including gossip, so long as it doesn't descend into malice) lubricates the wheels of social intercourse, it is also important for working relationships. People feel more comfortable having adult conversations about work when they aren't just being milked for information: when the person asking the questions has invested time in the personal as well as the working relationship.

"There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world."
— Audrey Niffenegger (Her Fearful Symmetry)

Part of this week has been spent exploring how people and organisations go through change programmes without making any effective change (just falling back on the "same old same old") because they panic at the thought of being lost. Real transformation comes from abandonment -- making a decision not to hold on to the familiar, but to embrace the unknown.

For those who have seen Mad Men in the US (or have yet to see it in the UK), Don Draper does this in episode 12 of the fourth series. No spoilers here, but this post by Luke de Smet describes the scenario neatly (don't follow the link if you really don't want to find out what happened).

Serious software developers have adopted a number of practices as they’ve struggled with the challenge of designing, developing, and evolving products that are pure thought stuff. To the extent that knowledge work is also a process of developing outputs that are themselves largely thought stuff, these practices ought to have analogues. Here’s a preliminary list, in no particular order.

• Version control/source code control. Final outputs and products grow through a process of successive refinement.  "Track changes" in MS Word seems inadequate to the task as do informal conventions on controlling successive iterations of final output documents.
• Issue Tracking/Bug Tracking. With multiple cooks and multiple tasters, the review processes of getting from a possible finished product to a definitive finished product revolves around identifying and systematically addressing both feedback and proposed responses from a multitude of sources. Software developers have invested in tools and processes to support that inevitable process; why not translate that process to the equivalent process of vetting a final report?
• Agile Development Practices. The software world has long struggled with managing the process of getting from germ of an idea to finished product in a finite amount of time. They’ve tried and generally abandoned a variety of approaches (like the waterfall model) that pretend to turn a fundamentally iterative and evolutionary process into a faux-linear process. Their processes now accept this iterative reality at the same time that other knowledge work fields like the law are discovering old ideas of project management that have been abandoned because they don’t and can’t work on knowledge process outputs. Can’t we shorten the learning curve given that we know how it played out before?
• D.R.Y. – Don’t Repeat Yourself is a heuristic that software designers and developers have employed to excellent effect in multiple settings. It rarely applies directly to final delivered systems; rather it’s a process of seeking and finding common subsystems and repetitive activity sequences that can be carved out and solved in a general way that can be applied across future efforts. What pieces of our knowledge work efforts are we repeating to no useful purpose?
• Modules not Monoliths. You eat elephants one bite at a time and you solve big, complicated, problems by breaking them into more manageable pieces. The software development world has followed this logic to a fare-thee-well. A typical webpage is built by assembling pieces from multiple sources on the fly. Meanwhile, the typical consulting report is still a single giant Word or PowerPoint file that overwhelms the typical email system when mailed to a client.

I can see ways in which these practices could be re-used by lawyers to improve their work and also to minimise risk.

Simply, Kotex (Kimberly Clark) have seen through the viral fun aspect of social media – though they have pulled this aspect off very well – and got to the core. They have set up a space where it is safe to have a conversation on a topic where the silence has been deafening.  They have levelled the power by telling the truth about even themselves and laughed at how they used to talk about the issue and the product. All the video that they mock was their own old ads.

Central is no pounding message about the product! But a focus on the people who have concerns about their periods. The Old Spice ad is really about Old Spice. The U By Kotex campaign is about you and people like you who share a common problem.

Rob Paterson has got to the heart of the social media frenzy stirred up by Old Spice. As he points out, Old Spice is still sending a message -- "buy me!" -- whereas the Kotex campaign he describes is entirely focused on the needs and concerns of young women (whether or not they use Kotex). This is a lesson that many businesses have failed to understand, but it is at the heart of any good conversation.

Who hasn't sat next to a dinner party bore (or boor) who can only talk about themselves? Doesn't most advice about social interaction boil down to "talk about what interests your companion or client"? What works for humans works for humans, whether it is a one-to-one conversation or a business development opportunity. Everything social is personal.