Social Media: Exploiting Knowledge In Networks No comments yet

There are still some places available on the “Exploiting Knowledge in Networks” training event next week, Tuesday 4th October.

The training focuses on use of Social Media tools to support Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and self development. The following is brief synopsis of the training and what will be covered:

Introduction:

There is a desire to develop more effective knowledge sharing and a culture of collaboration in most organisations, but little recognition of what this means in terms of staff development and overcoming barriers to change. The enormous growth of social media tools and social/professional networks over the past few years has created new opportunities and new challenges for people and organisations who want to embrace this dynamic world of social interaction and fluid knowledge flows. However, It is not widely recognised that collaboration and knowledge sharing are skills and practices that rarely get taught. It’s something we may learn on the job in a hit or miss fashion. Some people are natural at it. Others struggle to understand it. 

This one day course provides a practical and detailed introduction to social media and social/professional networks that will enable delegates to have a greater understanding of their context for use and deployment within their organisation and for personal and professional development.

Outcomes:

• An understanding of social media tools and social networks, and their context for engagement and knowledge sharing
• An understanding of on-line privacy, reputational risk, and the dichotomy of personal and professional identities
• An understanding of the barriers to knowledge sharing and collaboration and how these can be overcome
• An understanding of the principles for creating a personalised social media toolkit to support on-going learning and collaboration

Programme:

• Overview of the social web
• Risks and rewards in the use of social media
• Creating and maintaining your personal profile
• Social media tools and their context for knowledge sharing
• Listening and observing; an introduction to aggregation, sentiment and tracking tools
• Developing your social network and making connections (includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+)
• Communities of Interest/Practice for personal and professional development
• Practical exercises and examples of Social Media in action

If you’d like to book a place on this training course, go to the TFPL website and click on the “book” link. If you’d like more information about the course then please contact me (e.g. use the comments facility in this blog).

If you can’t make the 4th October event, the course will be repeated on 6th March 2012 and 2nd October 2012.

The Role of the Facilitator in Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice 1 comment

I have the honour of being invited to present at the XIII Seminari Compartim L’e-moderador i altres nous agents de coneixement a les organitzacions on 21^st September 2011. The event is sponsored by Generaliti de Cataluña, centre d’Estudis Juridics, I Formacio Especialitzada.

This post is a brief preamble to my presentation.

Background

My experience of knowledge sharing in organizations stems mainly from my involvement in setting up Communities of Practice (CoPs) for UK local government. This was part of a broader Knowledge Management strategy that I was commissioned to deliver for the Improvement and Development Agency (now part of Local Government Group -LGG). An online collaboration platform was launched in 2006 to support self-organizing, virtual communities of local government and other public sector staff. The purpose was to improve public sector services by sharing knowledge and good practice.

Over the past 5 years, the community platform has grown to support over 1.500 CoPs, with more than 100,000 registered users.  This has lead to many service improvement initiatives, from more efficient procurement and project planning to more effective inter-agency collaboration in delivering front-line services, such as health and social care. It has also provided some useful information on the dynamics of social collaboration and community management, e.g. the factors that influence the success of a community.

What does a successful CoP look like?

Success will of course depend on the purpose of the community. Some CoPs have been set up as networks for learning and sharing; others have a defined output, e.g. developing new practice for adult social care.  It is clearly more difficult to establish success criteria for a CoP dedicated to knowledge sharing than it is for – say – a CoP that has a tangible output. Success for the former will rely on more subjective analysis than for the latter, where there will probably be more tangible evidence of an output, e.g. a policy document or case study.

However, rather than argue and debate the criteria for assessing the “success” of a CoP (or other organizational learning system), I’d prefer to consider how we monitor and assess the “health” of a CoP. For this approach I think we have to consider the analogy of a CoP to a living and breathing organism.

A healthy CoP will show clear signs of life; this can be assessed using various quantitative indicators, such as:

• Number of members
• Rate of growth of the community
• Number and frequency of documents uploaded.
• Number and frequency of documents read or downloaded.
• Number and frequency of new blog posts
• Number and frequency of forum posts
• Number and frequency of comments
• Number of page views per session
• Time spent on the CoP per browser session

…etc.

Not that any one of these indicators in isolation will indicate the good health of a CoP, but taken together they can give a general perspective of how vibrant and active the community is.

Continuing with the analogy of a living, breathing organism, different CoPs will have different metabolisms, some may be highly active; others may be fairly sedate. Understanding the community ‘rhythm’ is a key aspect of knowing when any intervention is required in order to maintain this rhythm.  Not all CoPs are going to be vibrant and active all of the time; there may be periods of relative inactivity as a natural part of the CoP lifecycle. But it’s important to know the difference between a CoP that is going through a regular period of inactivity and a CoP that is moribund.

A point to note: inactive CoPs may not necessarily be a cause for concern. One reason for inactivity could be that the CoP has served its purpose and its members have moved on. In which case the knowledge assets of the CoP need to be published and celebrated and the CoP either closed, or (with the agreement of the members) re-purposed to a new topic or outcome.

So, understanding the vital life-signs and metabolism of a CoP is a fundamental part of ensuring the continued good health of the CoP, and therefore more likely to achieve its goals.  And the key to the continued good health of a CoP is knowing how and when to intervene when one or more of the life-signs begins to falter.  Without wishing to labour my analogy of the living, breathing organism too much, it’s the equivalent of knowing when someone is not feeling too well and administering the appropriate medicine. [See concluding section for symptoms and potential cures for an ailing CoP.]

The Online Facilitator/e-Moderator

Where does the CoP facilitator or e-moderator come into all of this? Well, I mentioned earlier that over the 5 years since its inception, the Local Government CoP strategy has provided some useful information on the dynamics of social collaboration and community management. For example, there is clear evidence that the CoPs that have full or part-time facilitation/e-moderation are much more likely to succeed than those that rely entirely on self-organization, and/or where there are no clearly defined roles or responsibilities.

The most successful CoPs (and I should clarify here that I’m using “success’ to mean “in good health”) are those where there is more than one facilitator/e-moderator and where interventions by the facilitator/e-moderator are frequent and predictable.  This may take various forms, such as regular polls of the CoP members; regular e-bulletins or newsletters; a schedule of events (face to face or virtual); regular input to Forum posts and threads, seeding new conversations; back-channeling to make connections between members of the CoP; etc.

In other words, show me a good and effective CoP facilitator/e-moderator and I can show you – in all probability – a healthy and successful CoP (or similar organizational knowledge sharing community).

The Role and Responsibilities

I’ve often been asked “what makes a good community facilitator/e-moderator?” This is a difficult one, and I’m of the opinion that it is more of an art than a science. The technical administration functions of the role can be taught, but the good facilitators/e-moderators that I have met bring another dimension to the role, i.e. empathy with, and understanding of, human behaviours and personalities. Something that I suspect comes with experience rather than a pedagogical approach. What I do think is important is having some knowledge (not necessarily ‘expert’ status) and enthusiasm for the topic or theme of the CoP (also referred to as the ‘domain of knowledge’).  This will help where interventions are necessary, and the community members are more likely to appreciate the facilitator/e-moderator as one of their own.

There have been various papers and blogs published about the role and responsibilities of an online CoP facilitator or e-Moderator, but maybe the following diagram captures the essence of the role.

Facilitator Role

(click to enlarge)

(Diagram re-worked from an original by Dion Hinchcliffe)

Conclusion

In conclusion, and continuing with my theme of ‘health’ in relation to organizational knowledge systems, such as CoPs, the following is a summary of the symptoms and suggested interventions for an ailing CoP . This has been adapted from some original work by Patti Anklam, and informed by Michael Norton at Local Government Group (see Acknowledgements).

Community Health Checks

As mentioned earlier, the life cycle of a community will be subject to a particular rhythm, which can vary from CoP to CoP. Understanding this rhythm will help inform if and when specific interventions are necessary.

Participation can wane; the number of posts slow down; fewer people show up; only a few people are generating plans for the next activity. But not all lapses in content and contribution mean a community’s life is over. In many cases, some specific diagnosis and actions can reinvigorate a community.

Identifying the Symptoms

The “actions” in the table below are suggested primarily for community facilitators/e-moderators but in fact any CoP member can take the initiative to rejuvenate the community.

Reinvigoration

Community facilitation/e-moderation is about creating and sustaining relationships, not just the facilitators’/e-moderator’s relationships with the individual members, but the members’ relationships among themselves. Reinvigorating the community involves restoring “social capital” to the community in a way that motivates and encourages people to re-engage and commit. The table below lists some practical interventions – things you can do to alter the current dynamics – that can have a positive impact on the community.

Reinvigoration of Communities

Acknowledgements

• Patti Anklam:  http://www.pattianklam.com
• Michael Norton: http://mik0ton.wordpress.com/
• Dion Hinchcliffe: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe

Steve Dale
Director
Collabor8now Ltd

Exploiting Knowledge in Networks (training event) No comments yet

I’ll be running the above mentioned training course next week in Edinburgh for delegates from Scottish Government and the (Scottish) Improvement Service. The training has been commissioned through TFPL, and details of the event are on the TFPL training pages.

It is perhaps worth noting that – as far as I am aware – this is one of the few training events that focus on social media and social networks for ‘Personal Knowledge Management‘ as opposed to the many and varied events on social media for communications and marketing.  Yes, we’ll cover the elements of communications and marketing, but from the perspective of personal engagement strategies and managing relationships, rather than from a corporate perspective.

A definition of Personal knowledge management (PKM)

Refers to a collection of processes that an individual carries out to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve, and share knowledge in his/her daily activities and how these processes support work activities. It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers increasingly need to be responsible for their own growth and learning and represents a bottom-up approach to knowledge management, as opposed to more traditional, top-down KM . Source: Wikipedia

To quote myself from the course synopsis:

“…..It is not widely recognised that collaboration and knowledge sharing are skills and practices that rarely get taught. It’s something we may learn on the job in a hit or miss fashion. Some people are natural at it. Others struggle to understand it. This one day course provides a practical and detailed introduction to social media and social/professional networks that will enable delegates to have a greater understanding of their context for use and deployment within their organisation and for personal and professional development”

Specific topics covered in the training include:

• Overview of the social web
• Risks and rewards in the use of social media
• Creating and maintaining your personal profile
• Social media tools and their context for knowledge sharing
• Listening and observing; an introduction to aggregation, sentiment and tracking tools
• Developing your social network and managing relationships (includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+)
• Communities of Interest/Practice for personal and professional development
• Practical exercises and examples of Social Media in action
• Building a personalised collaboration toolkit

I have created a general web resource for material used on the training – which is a moving feast, given the rapidly changing environment – and maintain a Diigo social bookmarking group for collecting useful links to social media, social business and social networking resources (feel free to join and contribute !).

The course notes are proprietary, and hence not available from the social media toolkit link, but to give a visual flavour of the content I’ve run the notes through Wordle – which is the image shown at the start of this blog. Click to enlarge.

Please contact me if you are interested in the training or just need more information.