The impact of the freelancer on the organisational knowledge use & development

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
A recent article in MIT’s SLOAN review indicates that three quarters of respondents to their 2020 global survey of 5,118 managers now view their workforces in terms of both employees and non-employees (https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-future-of-work-is-through-workforce-ecosystems/?og=featured).  The workforce eco-system has become more complex than the long term employee who builds on a linear career in line with company expectations.
For example, some organisations offer development opportunities not only to their own employees but also to those in their greater ecosystem community.
Freelancing is not for outliers anymore. Some countries, like the Netherlands, have a specific legal framework defined for them (ZZP – Zelfstandig Zonder Personeel). This has an impact on organisations, the way they work, engage and value knowledge acquired or generated over time when working and interacting. Fending off the opportunities made available by these itinerant workers is not an option.
According to Eurostat, that is collecting data from the European member states, people who were self-employed in 2018 amounted up to 14% on average. Professionals make up nearly a quarter of the self-employed in Europe. According to  Statista.com a large 55% of freelancers in Europe work in IT and marketing and communication.  IT makes up for a quarter of the freelancers in Europe ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/946967/freelancers-in-europe-by-sector/ ). For the period between 2000 and 2011 their number nearly doubled according to the https://freelancersmovement.org/ .
Although there is no clear definition of what a freelancer is, Stephanie Rapelli defines freelancers as ‘self-employed workers, without employees, who are engaged in an activity which does not belong to the farming, craft or retail sectors. They engage in activities of an intellectual nature and/or which come under service sectors’.
In an outlook on what next freelancers look, Forbes predicts the diversification of the freelance population and integration in a mixed corporate knowledge network: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonyounger/2019/05/04/what-the-next-generation-of-freelancers-will-look-like/#39b7994353ad. They will cover more domains, choose to freelance earlier in their career than current freelancers.
The need to realise more complex projects or business goals for which organisation will contract them, it introduces links and relations that are rather based on coopetition rather than that they are pure competitors. When posting for a job, freelancers are each others competition. Once the contract obtained and the job started they are imbedded in teams with other freelancers or company employees. They may have similar, overlapping or complementary knowledge and expertise. They become colleagues.
These continuously shifting relations demands flexibility but also opens options for networking and sharing. Freelance networks with like minded professionals even competing for the same assignments are not contradictory as their offering is not scalable (one can only take one mission at the same time, an hour can only be sold once). Once on a mission referring a new request to a co-freelancer in the network will help all parties involved in the staffing process.
See also Stowe Boyd in his keynote speech for the Social Now Europe 2015 when he talks about Deep Culture where more stress is put on loser connections with a need for more creativity – combined with agile (self steering teams).
As also recalled by Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey in their book Extreme Teaming, the cross-pollination that happens at the interstices of knowledge domains, experience sets and frames of reference are most inspiring and a source of radical innovation. Newly formed, temporary teams assembled from members form various backgrounds often set the stage for knowledge recombination and innovation. Social network theory suggests that highly diverse teams can obtain valuable knowledge from interpersonal relations outside the team.
This mixing of people from different back-ground and experience will stress the need to pay attention to the interactive skills and openness to share ideas in a continuous search for adding value, growing a process or service provided, in a context of continuous innovation.
According to https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/freelance-stats/ about 60% are looking for a stronger community and more chances to collaborate.
Is this shifting knowledge ownership to professions or corporations? In reality this is already the case as a knowledge corpus is often owned by a group of professionals, acquired through education and reinforced through experience. It is based on common understanding, experience and general information and communication shared and studied. Product communities and certainly Open Source Software initiatives can be considered as communities sharing a common interest and related knowledge and know-how. The latter have also a common goal and purpose. Product communities however are vendor led and facilitate the sharing of product and specific technical knowledge, leading to different sub-communities with their own specific interests in mind. Broader communities addressing more or less specific roles exist as well. They may limit themselves as content sharing platforms requiring subscription as www.techrepublic.com/ , addressing a technical public or more interactive virtual groupings like www.mindtools.com or www.12manage.com . These highly curated platforms thrive, more peer oriented networks are harder to find and when they exist they have a hard time persisting.
Still, the majority of companies consider freelancers as temporary workers and are not considered as a member of core staff. Once the contract is terminated the freelancer is revoked access to the systems of the company they were working for. They are not part of the internal social network with whom they shared information and knowledge during the period in which the contract was active. From a legal and competition point of view this is completely understandable. There is a risk that by accessing internal information they can divulge this knowledge with the client they are currently working on. On the other hand isn’t  the reason why you engage freelancers to introduce experience, insight and knowledge so it can cross pollinate and enrich the already existing company insights.
All newcomers, be it employee or freelancer, come with sector or technical experience during other assignments with your competitors. Also, mobility of employees has increased.  Both trends lead to a more volatile strategic advantage for companies. Unless you want to limit their input to execute what is told, you would better open up. Encouraging knowledge sharing platforms covering both technical topics in the style of mindtools or 12manage and why not generic sector oriented communities can certainly speed up evolution and innovation in a guild like manner like https://www.businessarchitectureguild.org/ focusing on informed, creative and connected membership. The common frame of reference is also to be considered as a a point of reference for quality.
As an organisation or company you can profit from setting up alumni communities. It offers opportunities to have regular contacts with them, curate the information shared, tap ideas. More permeating borders allow current employees and freelancers to interact on this platform increasing the interaction and flow of ideas. Of course some of these will pass over to other alumni communities of competing organisations, however this goes both sides. At moments you will be on the sending side at others you will be on the receiving side.
Working with knowledge from freelancers is used in an opportunistic task oriented manner. A lot of knowledge is available for those who want, dare and can access it. It may not be without risks or bring undivided advantages, but it will guarantee a fresh influx of ideas and experience.

The one trick pony syndrome and shorter shelf-life of knowledge

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Attracting talent with efficiency in mind may back fire on the long term in a context of higher flux and need for differentiation based on innovation, evaluating the need for specialisation.
When looking at the majority of recruitment advertisements for both in-house and freelance jobs a lot of attention is given to experience. Focus is on acquired experience and tasks well performed in the past by the job candidate, on efficiency and specialisation, confirming the key of modern organisations operating as a well oiled machine. Once on the job, focus goes to a particular job.
This is stressed by the tendency for specialisation and the related engagement of specialised freelance or independent workers, staying only a short period until the job is done, acting in multi-disciplinary teams. This agile or ‘lean’ talent is pushed for specialisation and specific jobs where the experience obtained is repeated at every engagement. This however may lead to narrow mindedness and lack of oversight or even sense of overall purpose. As is illustrated by the banking experience. Now that the need for innovation and customer orientation is increasingly central to the success of a product or service, specialisation will hamper the definition of a broader answer to a customer’s need.
In an economic environment with the instability we know and a growing life expectancy this model may not be sustainable in the future.
The average life expectancy in the Western world hovers around 75-80 years and is expected to continue to increase. Higher education levels make that we spend more time at school. Depending on the education culture more people are coming on the labor market at 23-25 with at maximum student working experience. Under pressure of previous economic downturns and the need and/or will to mobilise youth, retirement age in Western Europe came earlier, in the late 50s on even 50 or 55. This leaves us with 25 to 30 years of economic activity and about 55 years of economic inactive life, of which some 30 years living of state pension or retirement fund. In light of the increasing percentage of elderly, this places an increasing burden on a decreasing group of economic active of which a part will be involved in the care for the elderly. They will have to provide for the funds needed to support retirement pensions.
Added to that, figures of Forbes, McKinsey and Oxford university indicate that the top jobs in demand of 2010 did not exist in 2004 and that nearly half of current jobs are under pressure of automation. This would stress the shorter period of economic activity.Screenshot 2020-09-14 at 15.33.29
Looking at skill deployment and the structure of job groups it is remarkable that most of jobs are generational. A job is learned in school or shortly after graduation. New disciplines or new jobs get introduced together with new groups of graduates. It is commonly held that you will continue this job until retirement or when it goes out of demand. Given evolution of economy, technology and the job market the latter is increasingly the case.
In the context of an increasing shift to freelance employment participating in specialist tasks as they are engaged by companies on project basis, seems to lead to a dichotomy in the work force. The company manages direct employment contracts with management and coordination profiles. Technical specialists are engaged from an increasing pool of freelancers, consultant and temporary working via agencies. This may result in increased agility on company level and the products or services provided, but it risks to be at cost of organisational sustainability. This trend is in line with increasing specialisation, due to technical complexity or driven by efficiency.
The one trick pony syndrome or at least the expectation of people hiring somebody for a specific task or skill and being convinced that this is and will be the only trick the hired person has on his sleeve is untenable for the future society. Can we permit people having ever shorter careers. In light of the economic and technological evolutions and the concept of stable specialisation (as described above), it is to be estimated that the active period of an employee, freelancer or independent professional is to end far before they come to the age of 50, leading to an active life of less than 20 years. Even when society manages to have enough income for its citizens not to work and provide us all with a basic income, the psychological need of being busy and useful will result in a need for successive re-skilling and learning.
Shouldn’t we be looking at more agile talent as advocated in the HBR interview with John Younger leading to more sustainable organisational, company or team agility. Engage the people that work for an organisation and focus on skills and competences will lead to longer relationships regardless the contractual relationship. People are involved in tasks that evolve with the needs of the organisation and its customers. They need to adapt and learn through time responding to contextual needs.
In their article ‘How Work Will Change When Most of Us Live to 100’ Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott  paint a picture of life where we go through as a succession of working and learning periods. After a few years of career we re-enrol to school, college or university to learn new things. The structure of a linear life of growing up and getting through school by the age of 25, working and then retiring will cease to exist. It certainly will have an impact on the definition of wage  and career policies and perceptions but also on recruitment and the way we organise and fund education.
Structured education as presented by schools and institutions will and already are not the only sources of gathering knowledge. Already, new skills and trends are not exclusively taught at school. Continuous learning through interacting and observing the environment where we live in, is a corner stone we should look for when staffing organisations and jobs. Experience still matters but will be much less defined by ‘having done the job for a number of years’ and more by being able to englobe experiences and bringing them in the job at hand. A focus on underlying skills and competencies to adapt to new situations and the capability of incremental learning will (have to) end up weighing more. The availability of different learning experiences and possibilities provided by the employer will be included in the evaluation when choosing whom to work for in a still tight and maybe even tighter pool of knowledge workers and professionals.

The meaning of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as part of the product release cycle

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
The notion of building a MVP or minimum viable product often pops up when planning software implementation or development projects. Although it not an inherent part of agile approaches to software development, it is often cited as a means to come to a quick delivery.
In my opinion the idea is rarely fully embraced or followed, maybe related to connotations related to the word ‘minimal’ and it’s echo of insufficient, crappy or a poor excuse for not wanting to invest sufficient time and means to come to a full featured product. Majority of project owners rather want to consider it as a first release of the product they had originally in mind, being fairly full featured and complete.
Is it possible to apply a MVP approach in all circumstances or should we reconsider the positioning of a MVP as part of a project approach?
A MVP can be produced for any type of product, being it a physical product or a service provided to a customer base. The MVP is that version of the product that enables a full turn of the Build-Measure-Learn loop with a minimum amount of effort and the least amount of development time. The minimum viable product lacks many features that may prove essential later on. (Eric Ries in the Lean Startup p. 77) Thus it serves the needs of the users/customers and is the first step in a journey of learning and fine tuning the product. In this way it certainly fits the design thinking approach where it can prove to be of better service than the prototype as the MVP is put to the test in a real productive environment interacting with the intended user/customer.
Based on this description of the MVP it is ideally fit to be applied in a green-field, developing a new product or service. Based on a conceptual understanding of the needs of the intended customer a first basic version of the product can be put to the test, seeking feedback, while already earning some income through the new service or product that is ready for a ramp up based on the feedback provided by user interaction and interaction measurement. The learning based on the first use of the product can and should then be transformed into new product feature, for which the demand is clearly demonstrated, new product ‘behaviour’ or configuration conforming the wishes and needs that have be tracked based on use. Therefor producing MVPs require the courage to put one’s assumptions to the test.
The MVP is often positioned in larger organisations. However, it does not succeed in delivery on expectations. Are there obvious reasons why the MVP approach is not taken up or even met with resistance by project or product owners in organisations?
A MVP is often seen as a phase of the product development and release life cycle, when developing new solutions or replacing existing solutions. The expectation level in this situations and certainly in the latter case is not the same, maybe even not similar to those of a green-field development. In the context of the succesion of an existing product or process, one is often confronted with an extensive set of requirements, and a high level of detail in the requests detailing the needs for the product to be developed. Unless the product to be developed holds a complete change of concept, the set of requirements is often that large and detailed that the initial release can, in my opinion, hardly be considered a MVP.
The cited MVP is not really an MVP in a large number of enterprise projects. In the context of the succession planning of an existing application, the product to be delivered, even though the technology or system basis changes is a new release, not a new product. Current users expect the new product to perform better than the product they are currently using. It should contain all current features, be modern and have increased performance and improved usability compared to the current product. The product to be delivered is not subject of discovery and learning it is expected to be an improvement for features well known and – when lucky – well documented.
It is to be discussed whether providing automated support to a running process can result in the release of an MVP. Although the (software) product may be new and its usage and usability is subject to testing and feedback, process and information support requirements are sufficiently known to be explicitly discussed and documented. It might be that the processes to be supported are fraught with bureaucratic controls and needs to be cut down, the concept as such is not to be tested.
Even when we are talking about a real MVP, there are potential reasons for reluctancy to adopt a MVP as step in the way to the implementation of a solution of product are to be found in relationships, the disruptive nature of the approach where majority of interactions are contractually defined.
Relationship with the IT solution supplier – an external contractor is expected to work for a limited time and should deliver the product as defined initially, when granting the project. Even when working with the internal company or organisation’s own IT department, relations are often not as smooth as they could be. In some cases the department is seen as an enemy, it transpires to know better the needs of the business than business departments do and behave in a similar contractual relationship as the external supplier. Challenged by lack of resources, they tend to block of extra requests or changes in scope or requirements, increasing resentment while taking a reactive stance rather than pro-actively participating in the definition of the product along and together with the business department that is product owner.
We want everything to go to plan attitude is part of the overall culture we live in. This need-to-be-in-control, and to act in a predictable way, leads to a lack of open communication, where mistakes, misunderstandings and planning deviation are tucked away by not communicating or vaguely communicating about progress, results and problems while preceding in the development of the product. An efficiency culture that starts with the premise that all is to be done based on past experience, known facts and on precedents or similar activities executed in the past increases expectations and decreases the perceived need to be explicit and clear when expressing requirements and desires. It has been done before, relax, is the standard (requested) attitude… Focus is not on a discovery of the real need and the real added value as design thinking promotes.
In order to profit fully from agile and lean innovation concepts including the use of MVPs, a cultural turn around is needed for departments and enterprises that will thrive on innovation and adaptability. They should go from a command and control view on things, where the few plan and think out products and the majority execute without question what they are ordered to do, to a learning and improvement attitude where everything is in flux, knowledge is gained and all participants in the organisation participate in creating it and its products. All concerned have to work with the same overall purpose in mind, bringing down the walls between departments and teams introduced with an eye on efficiency and task specialisation.

Positioning Advanced Case Management and Business Process Management

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Case management is an addition to the stack of business solutions, and is only recently permeating in a growing number of organisations.
Case management is positioned as a knowledge worker enabling tool. It places the knowledge worker at the center of the solution. He decides on the basis of case information on the process to follow. He can interact with the case through the case file or through an inbox presenting tasks generated by the business process underlying the case. Tasks may occur in an unpredictable order in response to evolving situations. At the other side of the process tasks are triggered by either internal or external events.
A well developed case management platform or package should support easy configuration for quick delivery.
With this capability it permits developing solutions for a lower number of cases and for smaller teams.
Compared with BPM solutions which are best suited for well-structure and highly predictable work; there knowledge workers mainly execute tasks that come in high volume and are presented to bigger user groups. Configuration effort is higher as you require to foresee all variants and conditions to be defined in the business process solution. You could compare business process solutions to assembly chains but for administrative work. All actors perform well specified roles fulfilling specific tasks presented to them using the application’s inbox. And like for assembly chains definition (like in the automobile sector), setup and modification or update of the chain requires considerable effort, quality checking and testing so the process does not contain any contradictions.
Functionality and features to look for
First and foremost the software solution supporting knowledgeable case workers should support the overall process for handling a case and give them sufficient freedom to make decisions along the way or to invoke case events that can influence the course of action.
The platform should support administrative procedures and should permit to automate clerical work to a maximum so case worker can focus on the content and the decision to make while handling the case.
This also implies that it is possible to interact with the case both via an inbox confronting case actors with tasks to perform but also with the case overview option from where it should be possible to initiate actions at any moment in time or during any phase in the handling of the case. Actions allowed should be governed by the possible actions allowed through the different phases of the case development.
Taking the example of a legal investigation case, where detectives build the file for prosecution, they don’t necessarily know what the sequencing of actions to be taken will be. They interact with the findings they establish. The result of an action may initiate new initiatives that were not foreseen at the onset of the case. Certain actions are strictly regulated and require specific authorisations. Obtaining these authorisation often goes through a fixed hierarchy. These procedures should be implemented as workflows interacting with the standing organisation and when required generate formal documents to be presented to the investigated parties. This digital interaction will speed up the work. The initiative is taken by the investigator.
In the course of the investigation there should be room to add an extensive set of investigative materials to the case. They can hold a variety of information file formats. While working the material conclusions may trigger new actions.
In more client oriented activities like insurance files or complaints cases, regular or ad hoc communication with clients require direct interaction with communication channels as standard mail, customer interaction portals or e-mail. These hooks should be available at any moment and are chosen by the case handler either at the moment of launching the communication or based on the declaration of the preferred interaction channel for the case/customer.
Pre-conditions for successful use of Case Management as technological component in the company solution stack
On a global level it should be clear for what business processes, organisational units or business cases, Case Management will be deployed. How does the case management solution positions itself with other applications and solutions and what is the nature of cases to be handled. Whether the majority of the work you do is based on data intensive or documentary information, it will have an important impact on your product or case management solution choice.
In order to be able to quickly deliver case management solutions you should have not only a clear view of your infrastructure requirements but als of the generic services providing information to the cases initiated. Think of user and customer directories, messaging services or common databases containing essential business data. The software providing the necessary information needs to be connected, taking into account global policies such as those dictated by legislation such as GDPR and more general principles as ‘store once’ and data integrity.
When to choose for Case Management
Taking into account the setup effort of well developed case management packages, they are candidates for implementing less intensely used business processes or less structured processes requiring knowledge worker initiative and decision taking. One should see them as complementary to BPM, specific or bespoke solutions when they are positioned as supporting exception handling for the main process, on the condition the exception handling is important enough to create an independent case file containing the necessary documentation. Alternatively they are to be used for less structured knowledge intensive work processes requiring longer time to close the case while collecting diverse materials to support the decision process.
When setting up case management a four phase approach is advised:
  • Evaluate the business architecture and identify the potential domains where case management solutions will provide added value. In parallel lay out an overview of the application landscape and identify on the one hand the applications to which case management can be an add-on concentrating on non structured exceptions that cannot be supported in an economic efficient way or for which no software support is available and on the other hand applications that provide standard services providing general information or data with which generic integration is a bonus for knowledge workers’ productivity.
  • Integrate standard components with the platform. When working in an agile framework or using scrum foresee a few sprints to realise these connections.
  • Architect your case management solutions in order to streamline the case types, their domains and storage setup.
  • Develop specific case management solutions with a clear focus on creating added value, fast delivery cycles and standard capabilities of the platform.

LeSS is the Holocracy for IT

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
In the past I wrote about holocracy and self managing teams as a system of balance, stressing mutual interest propagating overall business goals like in feudal society. All teams are driven by a purpose of providing a certain service to some other entity or to the final customer.  Teams specialise in a functional domain. Coordination between teams is done through a team delegate participating in the team meetings of teams for which they have a client or provider relation.
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a methodology for developing products along the lines of SCRUM adapted for scaling. It depends largely on focused teams directed at customer, product or product feature, functioning with minimal or no management overhead. Member teams work together at realising a complex product for a business represented by what is called a Product Owner in SCRUM. Coordinating happens through participation of a team members in each others team. A team is tasked with developing a component or better a feature that fits in the overall product and therefore they have to understand what is needed by the business team/unit that will be using the software product supporting their processes. As such it applies the same philosophy as Holocracy but adapted for software or ICT departments.
As holocracy teams are oriented at certain products or customer groups there should be a match with the product or feature teams identified in the software development LeSS teams. This match will ensure better understanding, efficiency as well as continuity in the development and direction of development.
When applying the logic fully, it means pairs are formed between business and ICT teams. In some cases the product provided by the ICT group might cover different customer channels, customer target groups or products addressing the clientele or at least parts of it. It might lead to priority discussions. However, relations between both sides of the story are clear. The lines of communication are short and priority discussion can be held in a transparent way with all parties involved present. Pairing will improve focus, direction and understanding of needs of both customer and the people providing the necessary services. Integrated working will avoid the need of translating business needs to IT requirements. The Product Owner as linking pin is part of the business team who understands due to proximity better than ever how development of software solutions work. The IT team will understand the needs of the business team better as they have a structural and long term relationship with the business team(s) they support even when stories are rather vague and lack information about the technical implementation of the request.
The functional focus will require a mix of technical skills and requires knowledge sharing on this level. Therefore, the creation of functional/product clusters should not lead to new silos. Technical oriented communities of practice covering the technology used within the organisation should provide a space for sharing knowledge and experiences concerning development practices and infrastructural issues related to deployment and system management. Alternatively people with specialist technical knowledge can be delegated to participate in development of a feature team to bring them up to speed. In this way one can avoid the reflex existing in current organisations to build technology oriented teams focusing on technical components  that tend to live in their world having a hard job understanding business needs.
Pushing the envelope further, a good understanding between business and ICT teams can and will lead to more innovative products and fundamental digitalisation of business processes and customer interaction. The SCRUM methodology stresses the importance of the Product Owner as the person representing the business needs and thus piloting the development team laying out priorities and explaining the underlying reasons for a requested functionality. The relationship is mainly one directional, resulting in smaller incremental changes than what would be able to achieve when ICT potential would be used at its potential. Often scanning incoming documents is positioned as process digitalisation, actually it hardly changes anything more than facilitating the communication of the document through the process. Using a structured data entry form at the start of the process would permit instant data quality controls with the possibility to change and enhance data on the spot. Other examples can be imagined resulting in better use of digital technology. This potential often is not recognised by non tech savvy people concerned mainly with coping with the incoming work volume.
Establishing a tight relationship between ICT and business teams will most certainly enhance business performance when the purpose is clear and bidirectional communication facilitating the creation of added value. Therefore all talents should be used in an environment of mutual willingness to understand participants having different backgrounds.

Search – Find – Retrieve

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
All we do is talk about searching. Finding is what we should be talking about. Hence the interest for the findability idea with content publishers on the world wide web as it leads people to their web site. Authors motivated by earnings as in content marketing environment will adopt a specific writing style influencing search engine algorithms giving them a higher ranking in the search results. Inside the company a lot of content is written in the context of a specific business process or satisfying the execution of a task, and when is does not concern marketing, the author does not tweak his texts for easy finding, discovery and retrieval. The information contained by the content, however, can have extreme high knowledge value in times of efficiency and stressing the innovative capacity of organisations.
The search and search experience
However not all searches are equal. We often refer to google as the search experience of reference. You often hear “Why can’t we have a google at the office, then we would find the information we need”. There might even be a full text engine already available in that organisation. What makes that we are  that happy with the finding capability of google?
We list some elements:
The boundaries of the ‘collection’ – in the case of the use of google, with which most of us are familiar, we search the internet, a vague concept when looked at it from the point of view of a library or repository. The internet as such has vague boundaries. We have no idea of the content available. The amount of information is huge. As a consequence, the statistical chance of finding something interesting and/or relevant is high. In a corporate environment we are talking of a well circumscribed library of content with a relatively small amount of information artefacts (at least compared to the world wide web).
Related to the boundaries of the collection there is also the group of contributors, that is fairly limited, whilst rather endless on the internet not counting the free services provided by volunteer groups as in the case of wikipedia, who summarise information about most general topics.
Search coverage – Often not all information sources in an organisation is indexed or accessible using the same search engine. Whilst this is largely irrelevant for information available on the internet given its vague boundaries and sheer volume of information available.
The context of the search performed – generally speaking internet searches are there to get acquainted or informed about a certain topic. In a business context, searches are much more targeted, often driven by the execution and deadline of a specific task or case oriented.
This leads us to the goal of the information search – in general when searching the internet our attitude is more of the nature of ‘I want to know something about …’. A number of internet sources are specifically geared toward these ‘what about’ questions. In contrast majority of requests in the corporate environment are very targeted, aimed at confirming factual data. The find expectation is very targeted at a specific result. In a number of cases, we are looking for confirmation or proof, having the document or information artefact in mind. We however forgot the specific wording or document reference.
The feedback model which is strongly related with the earning model in the case of google is pushing them to deliver. The more targeted the search result is, the more likely one will click on it, visit the site and google gets paid for associated publicity. Internal search engines are generally licensed on a server based licence. There is no incentive included based on the quality of the services provided.
Optimising Search and Discovery is a challenge that is not really taken up by search technology providers. Majority of solutions are driven by and inverted file index, listing all keywords used in indexed content with a reference to the source as you will find in the back of a book with a search interface running against it. Basically the search request is mapped with the entries available in the index.
Although precision and high relevance of the search results are highly appreciated by people searching for information there is a balance through volume. The higher the volume of information the larger the result set requires a higher level of precision in indicating relevance in the result set. While in smaller sets the diversity in the result set may be higher the decrease in precision while going through the result list is more visible for the searcher.
In a context of limited content volume introducing the notion of synonym rings, a list of terms having similar meaning,  may ensure recall or a somewhat more important search result list, giving value to searches in a multi-disciplinary environment using different terminology or in a multi-lingual environment. Setting up the synonym lists requires important effort. In a similar effort, enhancing search results, the introduction of semantic web applications controlling vocabulary certainly helped search result quality. It makes navigating the collection possible through the use of a controlled vocabulary whilst not requiring extensive human indexing effort. Alternatively upstream tweaks, at the intake of content, as through automatic classification try to take over the work of the human indexer by automating it after a training period.
The use of clustering on the level of presenting search results helps searchers target the information needed. While the overall search result may be long, topical grouping will guide him or her to obtain the information required faster. Think of requesting information on “Milan”. The search cluster will inform you whether the clusters cover tourist information on Italian city and capital of Lombardia, people having Milan as a first name (with their last name as lower level sorting order) or AC Milan the soccer club.
Characteristics of corporate context
This focus on the content index for searching denied characteristics of corporate context in which the employee is looking to find information. Contrary to the generic web search we know a lot about the person launching the search. Like Google and other public social platforms, as Facebook, we can work with the search and response history when tuning search results. Which items of the result list were visited? Is there a pattern in the visits?  Coupling the search results to content ratings evaluating information found on corporate networks can be used to define the domain of interest.
Unlike on the internet content types with associated meta data can be identified. In the corporate environment adding meta data can be much more controlled, supported by value lists established in a specific business or process context by trained business analist. This does not prevent that additional free tags can be added to content items. Belonging to the same organisation and specific department will per definition enhance external qualifiers or content attributes. All people live in the same terminology cloud defined by their practice, corporate culture and corporate speak. Although slightly modified to unit or team adherence, vocabulary coherence is much higher than used by the widely scattered internet population.
Completely dissimilar to the internet, organisational and functional data is available on the user launching his search. We know in which department, team, project the person works, what the main focus of activities is. For each of the organisational units it is possible to indicate the semantic field of activity, linking the corporate directory to the semantic map declared and maintained in the corporate triple store.
Building these elements into the relevance ranking algorithm combined with the capacities of big data, of AI and the use of probabilistic reasoning and learning from previous search and retrieval behaviour and occasional feedback on content, search results can be targeted much better reducing searcher frustration even with a smaller library and the fundamental different search motivation in corporate contexts. Combined with already existing technological solutions this can lead to superior search and retrieval experience.
Thesauri and ontologies can both standardise language while also added flexibility to searches. Relationships built into the model can take variations into account as they are created on the author side or on the side of the searcher who may use sub vocabularies as created in sub-domains or teams. Some discipline oriented thesauri are available, customising them to the in-house dialects is time consuming and costly, the same goes for specific once when the material is not available. Feedback on the use of search queries and the interaction with the proposed result lists, that are built by the search engine, combined with big data and AI may kick start this process.
km-search
Example implementations, not necessarily covering all elements of the model are:
Open Semantic Search (www.opensemanticsearch.org)
Nuance in the medical sector (https://www.nuance.com/healthcare.html)

Knowledge Maturity Modelling

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
When reading the last release of the APQC knowledge management maturity model and related KM Capability Assessment Tool, that is part of the march APQC content update on knowledge management. As for the majority of maturity assessment approaches, focus is on the management and rather institutional aspects. The levels indicated in the model indicate a focus on the knowledge management practice to be evaluated in isolation as a formal process. The knowledge management process, its standardisation and roll out of it is placed at the center of the evaluation.
In current society with a stress on innovation, routine and replication is less important than in an era or environment of industrial production where quality and productivity were and are central points to address. In a context of commodity however the traditional maturity models have proven to be valuable. They reflect the need for and value of reuse in different contexts scaling to the complete organisation, thus most valuable to large organisations.
Another angle on the maturity modelling could stress the cultural and intrinsic knowledge value. It would stress knowledge creation, sharing, dissemination, cultural openness and position knowledge as creative asset in relation to organisational and corporate value creation.
Although the same approach would be followed and similar stages will be identified others would be specific.
Proposed levels
Level 1 – Growing awareness on the value of knowledge for the organisation’s performance and growth.
Level 2 – First approaches for sharing knowledge both on the level of organisation and infrastructure mostly confined in existing silos.
Level 3 – Cross unit/discipline sharing of knowledge experience and ideas. The organisational fabric and information sharing and collaboration infrastructure and culture permits sharing of knowledge across the board.
Level 4 – Valuing of knowledge as a core asses: in this phase people are appreciated and  encouraged for coming up with ideas and sharing them. It becomes part of the evaluation and promotion
Level 5 – Knowledge is used to innovate and to innovate the knowledge pool in the organisation. Thinking further and being innovative creates a vibe in the organisation so that value is added to products, the product portfolio and the group does not suffer from the Red Queen effect.
However comparable to the APQC model, we stress, if only through wording, the knowledge that is managed, less on the management process and the related standardisation. Ultimately we strive for dynamic knowledge and related knowledge dynamics. Progressing through the stages focus is more on sharing and generating rather than managing and controlling knowledge, giving more room for emergence. Taking knowledge value up as an asset in the corporate balance is an ultimate stage but difficult to achieve when it comes to measuring knowledge value.

Arrange sites & spaces High level structuring of content & information sharing platforms

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Information platforms are increasingly structured along the lines of sites or spaces at top level.
The available functional/technical capability alone however, does not guarantee a good organisation appealing to your users. The structure has to take into account their working and social context.
Coming from the image created by web sites and made popular for corporate internal use of content and information by Microsoft SharePoint, there is little thought given to the logical structuring of sites and spaces. Often they are created on request and the environment becomes an ad hoc loose collection.  Current platforms have a wide variety of functionality which make them suitable for a broader use than sharing information on projects or structures along the lines of the formal organisation of the company. More so, in current organisations, there are more dimensions to be discerned. Not only do we need to be more efficient and work cross-departmental with a stronger focus on customer and consumer needs, our work place is also a social construct in which we interact and have a richer experience than the one strictly confined to the execution of tasks. Therefore an information platform has to be more than an intranet on which static content is to be made available. Social interaction and cross functional and hierarchical conversation is increasingly expected by colleagues and employees. In ages where innovation and creativity are perceived as the most important success factor of an organisation. Information sharing and conversation should foster engagement and belongness as profound as possible. The platform should also be able to quickly engage new comers and temps.
It is while thinking along these lines we come with a meta-structure or a number of dimensions along which one can organise these information intense platforms while fostering conversation and providing direct usefulness for corporate users.
The Home space or site is the starting point when accessing the intranet.
The content of this space reflects:
• global information of and on the company
• what you should know about the company as a newcomer
• press relations (both outgoing and incoming – comments made in the global press)
• global management information and announcements of the direction/general management
• references to practical information on how to find your way on the campus or the buildings
Per organisational unit or department a space or site gives the frame for specific organisational exchanges. As such it has a more operational character than the home space.
The content of this space reflects:
• information on and about the unit
• organisation of work
• notes periodic meetings
• person related notices about department members
• departmental announcements of practical nature
• references to practical information on the workings of the department
• operational announcement
This personalised space contains everything you need. It focuses on the tasks you need to perform, the information that is addressed to you as a member of the organisation or has specific pertinence (e.g. positing in discussions you follow) and can be enhanced with information or reference that are of particular use.
These (social) group spaces are free subscription based getting togethers where information and thoughts are exchanged. They may concern professional or practical topics relating to company life, logistics or amenities that can make life agreeable. It is here that communities of interest or practice would thrive. They contain discussions, documentation, postings, polls, … Topical interest may obviously also relate to products or services of a company or group.
For each recognised project a space grouping related information is accessible for the project participants. It is here they will report on progress, post information and documents related to the project. It is also here the planning is to be found.
For project and line management specific progress dashboards are made available.
The Geographical site is similar or a sub set of the overall company home space. It contains specificities related to a specific location, campus or building group.
The HR site is common for all staff of the company provides information on global HR policy and personalised services regarding holiday planning, compensation and benefits, career planning and evaluation, training …
The Governance space is a restricted area for the actors concerned with maintenance and extension of the intranet environment. Here administrators will find tools and documentation for enhancing and managing the intranet platform.
Relating to these space types, templates or models can be devised to structure the setup of requested environments referring to each of these types.
They are documented in the specific governance space.
A personalised global navigation instrument will give an overall user experience permitting to go directly to the information one needs, without having to recall individual destination addresses.
See also the related slide doc published on slideshare.

Deep content is what will remain in a digital world

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Currently there is a lot discussion going on about the digitalisation of our lives. Even though we find it disrupting we are still in the early stages of fundamental digitalisation of products, work processes and services.
Like with other new technology introduced, it takes a while to understand its full capacity and potential. It is already clear that in the evolution to a real digital society and business model we should leverage technology better. An increasing volume of data will be captured in original electronic formats, ready for direct consumption by back-end applications. It will certainly have an impact on what documentary information will be created and how it will be edited. Today still a lot of data is collected through paper forms, as a relic from the traditional administrative processes or bureaucratic tradition. Often scanning solutions with extensive form recognition capabilities are used to digitalise the capture of data filled out by customers, consumers and citizens. This however, does not change processes, services or user experience fundamentally.
Citizens are increasingly invited to launch transaction and interact via the internet. Although not everybody is already sufficiently computer literate we are all taking up more of the administrative processes ourselves, ousting administrative clerks. Nevertheless filling in forms is a burden. The device we use for subscribing to a service or the launch a business transaction like an online sale should be able to help us. Certainly smart phones contain a lot of data on the user and the situational environment he is in. It can be used in contexts of data analysis but should also be able to support us when filling out the umpteenth form. Identification and address data could be filled in automatically saving us time and focusing on verifying and releasing the data. This with the increasing spread of easy to use carry on digital devises will lead to a diminishing of traditional paper documents used to capture structured data, for which computer apps or forms can guarantee more structure and quality control than the lenient paper form.
Shifting to digital will be enabled on the level of the user devise, that is increasingly compact, light and cheap. Tablets and smart phones have not only sleek tactile and intuitive user interfaces they also attain processing power capacity of standard desktop or portables. Interaction with applications is increasingly supported with apps and applications best adapted to the device used, thus encouraging the use of digital native data and information formats. Also important is the increased connectivity, permitting to be online at all time and nearly everywhere. Increased screen quality, size, enhanced setting and flexible positioning invites to more on screen reading and increasing the number of people, currently mainly confined to younger generations, consuming information on screen. From a content provisioning point of view fluent transition into content made available, needs to be provided. The traditional document paradigm will make room for richer content that is however easier to access.
The document, as currently supported by document management and file sharing solutions, are individual files made up in their specific binary format only accessible using specific editing or viewing software, resulting in a cumbersome process opening the document which incurs long waiting times. In their formatting they inherit directly from the paper age, adapting the text presentation to the borders laid out by paper formats such as A4, folio or other printing standards. Digital screens are not confined by these measures, they permit for continuous scrolling. Features available in software and supported by globally accepted standards as applied in browser support hypertext features permit hopping between content parts. This supports a more liberal consumption of textual materials than through written cross references used in printed materials. The use of smaller components will of course have an impact on the writing styles used in non-fictional prose.
This will most certainly lead to a broader adoption of wiki-like technology letting us focus on the actual content or text rather than formatting and inviting us to collaborate even more intensely in the creative process of writing.
A similar evolution is to be recognised in the context of structured data and reporting. Usability and intuitiveness of data analysis tools will push us more to active interaction with data sources, building our own reports and dashboards, based initially on internal data but increasingly enhanced with external sources, either coming from customer tracking or public sources provided by governments in open data formats or from commercial partners collecting data coming through users interacting with their systems (think of the data google has available). It will not only permit to analyse current population but extrapolate on larger demographics exhibiting trends and highlighting fundamental needs.
Further enrichment of information and explicit or implicit interaction with information and data will reveal other information and insights.
The use of multi-media content mixed with more traditional textual content will certainly impact education. Enriching the learning experience using richer media appeals to all learners. It permits to interact calling upon various learning styles and predispositions. The use of digital interfaces permits to mix audio, video and gaming elements in educational and informative content. Why not include interactive graphics with 3D aspects permitting the information consumer to navigate through the elements in any chosen way.
On a lower, more granular level working with real digital content also permits to increase value like through adding index elements. In a document environment, indexes or meta data were added external to documents submitted. A dedicated document index could be added but would only function within the context of the document, like we are used to in books. Native digital content or text larded with index and index barrier markers can be exposed on larger collections and used as navigating instruments adding an additional reading experience. Enriched with search and semantic web possibilities it will increase usability and potentially interact with personal context, terminological preferences and frame of reference. The same can be applied to classification engines, working on paragraph level rather than on document level.
Traditional documents will disappear. Maybe not in the short term, certainly those designed to support administrative processes capturing data. Personal data will almost certainly be a system commodity provided by individual devices we use daily to communicate, to come online and to interact as social beings regardless the location of others.

The feudal organisation

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Most of us know feudality from school, being the predominant way of organising a state during the Middle Ages. Although embedded in a traditional society based on a stable order imposed by god, some elements may still be of value in current contexts.
Discarding the basis for legitimising the position of nobility as the leaders in the Middle Ages, feudality is mainly a method for distributing power and a way for the king or emperor to exert control over his realm while having a sustainable community.
Looking at the material context of medieval society, feudality was a logical organisational format. Traveling even over short distance was difficult and took time. Roads were rarely paved so using them was mainly restricted to summertime when it was dry and days were long. As it easily took a day to travel to the next village, it was hardly feasible for the lord to enforce strict control on regions further away. Giving instructions and receiving feedback on them easily took weeks. On matters not involving the overall structure, fiefs were alone in their decision process. Although set in a rigid and strictly hierarchical context, legitimised by god, fiefs were largely independent, autarchic units. They had to decide on their operational besognes.
A fief had to be able to subsist independently of others. It could and should survive on its own, provide in its victuals, producing enough agricultural produce for its own inhabitants, be able to construct housing, furniture and tools to get necessary production going. Specialisation was limited. They were also self policing on the level of internal peace keeping and justice. They also produced enough surplus to support nobility and clergy. Their focus was on their purpose: subsist.
They were only called to help when neighbouring or when fiefs of which they were part of were under attack of an external source. On the other hand they presented enough force to ascertain the equilibrium with neighbouring fiefs.
In the ceremony, where a lord got ordained, tokens of trust were exchanged delegating full control to the lord while promising the lord eternal support and assistance. As such the local lord was also representing his higher master to which he had sworn obedience, while assuring representation of his domain with higher authorities when it came to engagements of a broader nature. Other interlinking was extremely limited, thus evolution was slow.
This is the basic setup of feudal society without distortions incurred by powerplay or unbalancing privileges.
Considering current organisations and societal evolutions a new type of distance could be identified. Increasing specialisation, either technical or functional, makes communication across the board more difficult. Vocabulary and practices often differ between groups and they have different support, infrastructure and tooling needs. Competition requires light, flexible and adjustable setups, quick on their feet to respond to changing contexts under their own responsibility not needing to go long ways through the overall organisation to obtain feedback or authorisation. This would take too long.
The medieval principles of autarchic units existing in balance with neighbouring units are also found in new organisation types heralded in modern management literature.
The Connected company defines it a podular organisation where “you divide labor into “businesses within the business”” fully oriented at its customer. An infrastructural platform sees to it that the necessary information and knowledge can be shared and common support activities are mutualised.
In holacracy work is organised in holons, “a whole that is part of a larger whole”. These holons or circles are organised along the lines of business functions and processes and fundamentally autonomous for their internal organisation of work, however constrained by the need of other circles and anchored in the context of the organisation. “The “Lead Link” is appointed by the super-circle to represent its needs in the sub-circle. A lead link holds the perspective and functions needed to align the sub-circle with the purpose, strategy and needs of its broader context. The other link, called a “Representative Link” (…) is elected by the members of the sub-circle, and represents the sub-circle within its super-circle.”
Different to the past, management or leadership overhead is out of the question. Each unit should be self steering based on a set of basic governing principles, mutual member negotiation and unit democracy.
Although recurring in other contexts mechanisms from the past re-appear, ideas are recycled and depend on similar conditions for their success and sustainability.
Each member of the organisation should be taking up responsibilities for the role (holacracy) or tasks assigned to or taken up by him/her, he should act as an engaged adult
Have a clear view on the organisational purpose and vision
Share the common vision or purpose declared or grown in the organisation
Avoid powerplay, created when units see possibilities to lift the equilibrium instated in the initial organisation
When providing a governance framework keep it crisp and stick to general widely applicable rules. Avoid to let it become an elaborate set of detailed rules and procedures.
In this context it is also tempting to retreat in the own autarchic circle, not sharing any knowledge or learning and to focus on the internals of the working of the circle. The businesses in the business not contributing to the whole will eventually lose efficiency by not sharing experience across the board, merely being a franchise or an independent organisation. The potential for corporate learning is clearly available based on the platform services on global level.
Keep connected to your customer (in a broad definition) and continue to observe how needs and behaviour are evolving while capitalising on your talents, knowledge, competences and experience.

Archiving

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
Archiving is for posterity. Archiving is linked to long term conservation and history books, so not our concern. This is the general reaction of business people when launching a discussion on archiving. Does this mean that keeping information for the longer term has no value?
Although it has never been easier to store data, documents and information for eternity, the coming of the digital working environment has led to disappear good practices applied in the paper world. The historian will be very concerned with the potential gap in source material from the 2000s onward. The threat mainly comes from digital information formats. Native formats are generally ephemeral. Version upgrades of standard office documents came frequently, making initial word and powerpoint versions quasi unreadable. Digital perenniality is not strictly limited to file formats, it includes underlying storage characteristics and formatting, related to Operating System evolutions.
It seems this is mainly a concern for the archivist and historian, with which companies or organisations are confronted when they plan to write a corporate history at the occasion of a lustrum. Yes, this is a concern on the very long term of which you might dream but is certainly not one of your running concerns. You are convinced that it will not come to that. Although, a number of companies are known to have had a hard time to write a desirable lustrum book after the container having been placed under the office windows when cleaning up or moving to new offices. Due to the lack of physical aspect of digital information combined with technical issues mentioned, lack of substituting good practices, pure economical reflections and the focus on ongoing concerns lead to silent destruction and disappearing archives.
When discussing archiving with IT departments a number of concepts are synonymous for them, varying from providing back-ups for business data to providing for mass storage solutions in a life cycle management approach or when linked to e-mail archiving solutions. Main concern is reducing volume and thus managing the related budget.
Key for corporate archiving initiatives is to be sure of the quality of the information archived and its accessibility or findability.
Assuring access over time will certainly play a role when handling long running contracts, the foundation file, products serving for long periods – think of infrastructure – with long maintenance and repair periods and when confronted with long liability periods and long running statutes of limitations for which liability may be claimed related to product development or project delivery.
When having to produce information in legal proceedings, one should be able to ascertain the authenticity and integrity of the information produced. The authentic document gives no reason to discuss its origin, its reliability or trustworthiness, where it is above any doubt that no unauthorised modifications have been made to the information. These are core elements in a records management setup together with the mechanisms to control and manage retention of information. The latter will permit control over the unwieldy growth of information created and accumulated by every organisation.
Even when stressing the quick evolution in markets and technology, an archive kept over time, contains a lot of knowledge. It can be referred to when referring similar cases, mining trends and evolutions.
The biggest added value of an archiving initiative is undoubtedly establishing, maintaining and managing retention periods, based on the minimal legal requirements, functional and business value of the information retained. Implemented as part of an electronic records management or archiving solution it relates to the filing plan. So, it is part of an overall information governance plan and requires extensive coordination with the legal department, IT and insight in the overall corporate strategy.
A number of standards can be used for reference in the archiving domain. They have their specific focus. OAIS main focus is preservation over time, while the records management standards DoD 5015.2, Moreq, ISO 15489 and Remano give a good base layer for providing authentic records in reply to legal compliance frameworks.
ermregulation
For many organisations it is not clear how to handle and integrate paper and digitally born documents. They either go for printing and storing the documents and filing them the traditional way or they attempt a full digitalisation effort. During time we lost the good practices established during 19th and early 20th century supporting the bureaucratic organisation. Trust in computer technology and the anticipated hope that technology will solve all issues has lead to creating a big digital landfill, full of unstructured document and information collections. Technology, such as search technology helps you find more in a larger pile in shorter times. However, the standard relevance ranking mechanisms in the search environment are surpassed, result list are to long, search brings up multiple copies of the same document, … Starting to organise then has become an even more daunting effort.
File Plan
The concept of file plan is set in Records Management. Techniques of building the file plan are also useful in a global context of enterprise content management.
According to the United Nations Archives and Records Management Section it is “A plan or scheme developed by an office, department or organisation to organise and arrange different types of files”. The file plan is also known as file classification scheme; “a system that describes standard categories and that is used to organise records with common characteristics.” In the following we will see how to specify these fairly open definitions.
Practically, it is the backbone for organising records. The fact that it groups files and documents makes it a starting point for relating to the corporate established retention schedule.
These definitions might indicate that the usefulness of the file plan is confined to the records management domain. It is also useful for document management or structuring any content.
File plan, concept definition
A file plan is basically a hierarchical tree structure reflecting the business of an organisation in a top down method, or built from general to specific. As such it provides a stable classification model for storing content. When retrieving content from an entry, the entry provides you with the creation context, thus elements for interpreting and understanding the content and its value. In most ECM systems this structure is created through the setup of folders. Although some people will argue that IT systems do not need folder structures I’m still a partisan of a firm file structure implemented as folders. On a lot of fora there is much discussion on the (exclusive) use of meta data for structuring and grouping content or applying folders as basic structuring element. The choice on how to implement your structure will depend on
  • the technical characteristics of the platform in use
  • the stability and clarity of the business domain
  • the granularity of information managed in relation to business processes
  • the familiarity of users with a certain way of working
  • the constraints related tot the management of permissions and
  • the ergonomics related to submitting content and working with content.
As in all designs the good solution will be found in a balanced mix of approaches.
Constructing the file plan
Although the United Nations Archives and Records Management Section hints at a creation of a file plan along the line of the organisation as the basis of arranging files, following options are available:
  • format or type – where you collect series of documents chronologically according to its type, e.g. invoices, reports, letters, …
  • case or object managed or handled resulting in a number of files or dossiers
  • subject – the subject discussed in documents
  • organisation – where you bring files and documentation together in line with the organisation chart
  • business function or main business process creating value for the organisation
For constructing the file plan following general requirements can be cited:
  • reflect the working of the organisation
  • be recognised by employees or otherwise that employees recognise their ‘place’ in the file plan setup
  • be stable over time
  • be as simple as possible
Constructing a file plan along the lines of document series groups documents or records of the same type  chronologically (at least in the physical world). A series folder containing invoices or purchase orders may be broken down further by (accounting)year. From the transactional point of view this is an excellent option with easy matching of transaction entry and related document.
The case or “thing” approach is strongly related with the central unit of management or activity. The object is relatively broad and reflects in the file or dossier. The central object considered in a personnel department is an employee for which a personnel file is kept. In an insurance company claims files are related to customer files. With a growing stress on case based working and decision taking in non-routine processes this approach will be recognised more often.
Building the file plan along the organisation is often applied. For every devision, department, unit and team a file plan entry is made. It is extremely simple to setup, just copy the organisation chart and apply some further division. It is easy to adopt by the organisation. Everybody is member of an organisational unit and recognises the setup and structure. At the same time it is synonymous for the user groups governing permissions. However, as we all know the organisation chart fluctuates as it reflects the power distribution in the organisation and may follow management fads. Parallel to any restructuring, entries and often also individual documents needs to be moved between entries in the old and new file plan. This often takes quite some time and may pause the creation of documents. I have known organisations where a 6 months overhaul was common.
A strict organisational view will also result in the storage of multiple copies of documents as they are sent around for communication. The sending unit will store the document in the context of the execution of its tasks as author. The recipient stores as guideline for his activities.
Topic or subject as the basis for organising the file plan is mainly motivated by the needs of retrieval and reflects the content of a document. For setting up one can refer to general classification schemes as UDC (universal decimal classification) often used in academic libraries, Dewey classification (often used in the US and similar to UDC) or SISO (often used in smaller community libraries in Flanders and the Netherlands). They often provide not enough depth for company use. Specific branche oriented classification schemes can be found, certainly for the chemical and pharmaceutical domain. Main challenge when classifying documents is a lot of them cover different topics, think of meeting minutes and the development of the topic domain needing extension or even modifications. A topic or subject model reflect and models the state of art of a certain domain and changes accordingly.
Setting up the file plan along the lines of business function or main process (also called end-to-end process) results in a more abstract structure. It reflects the activities of the organisation. This approach is best and most stable when it is tied to the organisational core, its mission or reason of being and places the primary functions or processes at the core of the file plan model completed management and supporting functions.
In the ACA IT context it is fair to say that developing IT solution for customers in a project setting will be a core activity for quite some time to come. Central to the setup of the file plan is the project file, the central ‘thing’ we manage, as part of the function project management. In preparation of projects the acquisition process is structured along the lines of customers/prospects for which a file with commercial information is collected.
When you want to extend this approach to a collaborative document management environment you might want to stretch up the model and insert entries for more general reference materials and documentation.

Knowledge Management in times of Google and the internet

Posted on By Koenraad Seys
“Just Google it”. An often heard statement, certainly with the younger and more tech savvy parts of the work force. The most popular of public and free accessible search engines is most certainly a portal to huge amounts of information and of knowledge shared by any wiling person on the internet. With all this information available should we then still organise for collecting, curating and creating knowledge in the confinement of individual organisations?
From a pragmatic and economical point of view one should say no. Why should an organisation bother to document and organise knowledge and information that is already available? This argument may hold for more generally applicable or domain independent knowledge. You may find a lot of IT related ‘how-to’ materials ranging from general information on programming to video presenting technological solutions and how to use them. And more, this information is evolving at a high pace. However it is also the information publishers distribute as paper print books or online materials that lead to the creation of libraries for those who do not want every member of the organisation buying a copy of the book they may need. Digital availability however has virtualised the library and what once was the beginning of knowledge management has been made redundant, certainly when you look at the corporate space.
Another argument not to invest in knowledge management is the quick paced change and innovation in current society. Why would you invest in knowledge that is short lived? Shouldn’t we better invest in capacity and competence to learn and adapt? Most certainly, staff that is capable of learning new skills and techniques will be worth  more and ensure organisational agility and sustainability. Opposite to this argument is of course that innovation can only be generated with sufficient knowledgeable and talented people building further on an already available corpus of knowledge.
In positioning the issue a question comes to mind. Is there something like corporate knowledge? Thus, is there value in governing corporate knowledge?
From a protectionist or legal asset point of view, corporate knowledge is all that  should be protected, that is part of intellectual property (IP) and that sets an organisation a side in the innovation landscape. It builds on a notion of ‘knowledge as property’ that is an asset or tool for building innovation, new products and services. Organisations with a strong research and development wing, would certainly fall in this category of corporate knowledge use. But also here, open innovation initiatives break down barriers and put the property reflex into perspective. Would this then mean that there is a knowledge of practice (as Cook and Brown state in their 1999 article on the epistemologies of knowledge). As they indicate the common knowledge pool is situated on the level of activity domain – such as medicine or mechanical engineering – or more specifically on the level of a company or a group adhering to specific working methods.
The technological asset view strives to the creation of an analytical inventory of knowledge elements. They will be expressed as business rules by business analysts and IT people or derived by learning algorithms to be integrated in business applications automating a maximum of processes and tasks. Knowledge is here seen as a productivity asset increasingly standardising and commoditising knowledge work with a repetitive nature.
Taking a human resource based vantage would see knowledge as the possession or attribute of somebody and reduce knowledge management to recruiting for a context and task at hand, and so a proponent of the resource approach will look for somebody with the required training and/or experience to get a specific job done. Extending the resource view to a social level this would imply that knowledge is shared either through education and training or via professional networks of likewise trained professionals that build a certain experience. As a consequence  organisations are not stable, oriented to short term goals and populated with itinerants renting out their skills.
The culture stance on the issue certainly stresses the existence of organisational knowledge expressed in working methods, specific vocabulary and shared experiences and understanding or historical cases that transmit knowledge. Reasoning in a culture building logic will require strong group building and socialisation for all new comers, embedding them in the group logic.
In a social group logic, discussion is central to transferring knowledge and attaching meaning and applicability to the context of use. Knowledge is contextually requested, explained and adapted to the needs of solving the problem at hand. In this way no stable corpus will be established and thus relates strongly to the human resources approach.
In view of the conclusions that Tsoukas and Vladimirov draw on the fact that “individuals understand generalisations only through connecting the latter to particular circumstances” and as such knowledge is developed by employees while doing their job stable knowledge does not exist. It is a continuous succession of learning experiences. Tuning the wheels of learning efficiency “knowledge management then is primarily the dynamic process of of turning a unreflective practice into a reflective one but elucidating the rules guiding the activities of practice.” In this way one should consider the need for guiding information and knowledge presented on a structured meta level balanced with social sharing of knowledge through discussion initiated by a problem to be solved related to the task at hand at a specific point in time.
In this context knowledge management will focus on
  • education and training, however not necessarily covering only ad hoc needs answering concrete learning needs
  • providing structure, context and finding aids giving access to the materials needed for tackling the task at hand
  • providing (access to) a social infrastructure permitting to contact and interact with knowledgeable people or the ones having experienced a similar challenge
This will give opportunities to address problem solving tactics that differ across generations. The older generations will mainly draw from memory, what they have learned in the past and turn to documentation when the answer is not known. The younger people tend to start googling and in a next resort launching requests in their social network.

Why innovate and knowledge as the most valuable asset in the process

Posted on By sk14926-ovh
The pressure is on innovative capacity. Everybody agrees. Trends indicate shorter product or service life cycles. Customer satisfaction is short lived. Earlier than ever they want something new. Building on experience or a long lasting competitive advantage is less an option. However innovation can only be realised and delivered with a motivated team of knowledgeable people having sufficient entrepreneurial blood so they want to go and explore. They will explore the fundamental needs of existing and potential customers, but also their capacity to be creative and learn new skills and techniques and optimise team interaction. Younger employees tend to have higher education than previous generations. They are skilled in new technology however lack experience.
Learning and knowledge exchange or sharing patterns will need an upgrade. Not only is experience still an asset, existing workforce will need to work longer careers than previous generations. Increasing age and life expectance, decreasing numbers of younger people will require all of us to make longer careers. Understanding added value of all team members will become key differentiator for teams, groups and companies to maintain their market postion. We summarised the reasons for investing in innovation, knowledge creation sharing and new approaches to come to products and services in a slide doc stuffed with facts and figures about the need for investing in what is most probably the strongest sustainable asset you will ever have.