How to Talk to Your Executive Team About Social

Neal Schaffer & the posse from 5150 have made an amusing rap about “selling” social media to the executives.

Click here for the 5150 Rap site

Better Knowledge-Sharing: Fill The Dry Knowledge Well With These Practices

The post below was written by Sebastian Francis in 2010 for OilandGasInvestor.com.
At that time Sebastian worked for SAIC.

It’s an excellent article that describes describes some major concerns with knowledge management (including the capturing of tacit knowledge) along with making that knowledge retrievable and useful.
I’m grateful that Sebastian has given me permission to reproduce it here.

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- a Guest Post by Sebastian Francis

Here are a variety of quick and easy ways to share important business information each generation needs to know.

Today, a popular need of organizational leaders is how to quickly identify, capture and reuse information from employees who are retiring, or about to do so, for these people have industry expertise and can make it quickly available to those who need it.

The ability to quickly access the right information can improve competitive position, promote innovation, reduce rework and errors, and increase the speed to identify new opportunities.

Unfortunately, searching for information (such as proven practices, lessons from prior unsuccessful attempts, tips and techniques, documented procedures and, most important, experience and intuitive expertise locked in the heads of individuals) can take far too much time.

As the crew shift change continues—Baby Boomers retire in mass and few Generation X and Y talent enter the oil and gas industry—leaders have an opportunity to manage this shift by leveraging the latest information-sharing technologies and methods. To meet business strategy, many leaders crave the ability to “google like Google.” They desire to create a deep reservoir of information that replenishes itself and deploy methods and tools that will enable each generation to find the right information within a few clicks.

Too often, organizations rely on only one method, such as launching communities of practice, conducting after-action reviews, and promoting the use of best practices. Or, they use a limited number of technologies such as social networking tools, content repositories and search engines, and use the same solution across the board. This tends to produce dry knowledge wells.

A savvy strategy begins with understanding the needs of the internal talent group: Who has the information and who needs it? Next is meeting unique requirements by implementing several methods and technologies to create custom solutions. Characteristics of the solution should emulate popular knowledge-sharing practices that occur outside the organization.

Understanding generational issues

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
–Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke, 1967 film starring Paul Newman

Communication problems are as old as human history. Bridging gaps is a continual challenge, and industry leaders need to know how to capitalize on overcoming those gaps.

Within the oil and gas industry (as well as in other industries), there are four generations of talent: Traditionalists (birth years 1925-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1965), Generation X (1966-1980) and Generation Y (1981-2000). Since the 1990s, professional journals have alerted oil and gas leaders that the Baby Boomers, now the largest percentage of the workforce, are exiting the workforce at an alarming rate. The potential consequences include: 
– Increased competition for talent. Due to the decrease in skilled talent following the retirement of the Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, competition for workers with required professional degrees and experience will increase. 
– Shifting geography. Technology enables talent to work from anywhere and teleworking is becoming more commonplace; therefore, organizations will be able to source talent globally. This shift will affect organizational communication, strategy and business processes.
– Shifting generation. The corporate leaders of tomorrow will most likely be talent from Generations X and Y. Currently, organizations are balancing the activities of retiring two groups and preparing the organization for two others, while not neglecting any.
– Aging workforce. A majority of Baby Boomers are predicted to exit the workforce by 2015 and are followed by a much smaller group of talent, Generation X. In addition, the next generations of talent have different learning styles, communication preferences and work/life balance requirements than their predecessors. To recruit, retain and develop the next generation of talent, organizations must recognize and adapt to these styles.
– Lost information and tacit knowledge. As Traditionalists and Baby Boomers exit organizations, some for the last time, so will their communal know-how—their tacit knowledge—especially if it has not been adequately identified, captured, codified and stored in corporate knowledge repositories.
– Preparing and training talent. The fact that Traditionalists and Baby Boomers are retiring does not mean that they will not re-enter the workforce in some capacity, such as starting a new career, or working as a consultant or part-time employee. In some cases, organizations will be able to leverage veteran expertise in this way. As a result, organizations will need to update the skills of these workers, or train them along with other new hires. Thus, learning/training departments may simultaneously have to train several generations, each having distinctly different learning styles. This can perplex learning organizations that do not understand the needs of each generation.

Bridging generational gaps to improve knowledge management

“When you’re 17 years old, green and inexperienced, you’re grateful for any guidance and direction you can get.”
–Christina Aguilera, pop singer

Leaders who recognize and respond to generational communication and learning commonalities and differences, can bridge gaps and prepare for the future.

Different generations favor different learning styles. Traditionalists and Baby Boomers usually prefer face-to-face, classroom and instructor-led training activities. In contrast, Generations X and Y may resist formal training sessions and prefer to connect to people informally and quickly search all information sources. Technology tools, such as handheld devices and social-networking sites, facilitate their fast connections to information.

Traditionalists and Baby Boomers tend to communicate using formal and personal methods, such as writing e-mails, meeting face to face and holding conference calls. In contrast, Generations X and Y usually like just the right amount of information, when and where they need it, such as sending abbreviated text and instant messages, and meeting via online chat sessions.

When information exchange is effective, employees seeking information receive what they need—a knowledge gem. Unfortunately, during communication, valuable information is often lost because the organization does not have an easy-to-use method of identifying and systematically collecting and depositing gained knowledge into a repository.

Capturing critical knowledge

“Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.”
–Henry Ford

Because the talent of today and tomorrow is multi-generational, a one-size-fits-all approach to information capture, collaboration and reuse does not work. What works are multiple approaches that consider each member of the audience.

Now that the typical characteristics of each generation group is understood, the next step is to understand the two phases of information flow: capturing it and accessing it for re-use. Let’s explore two key steps to capturing it.

– Step One: Understand and identify knowledge that fuels the organization.
What information, knowledge and expertise is valuable to the organization? Some businesses are uncertain and attempt to capture all information regardless of value. A better practice is to identify critical business processes and their associated performance targets across the organization’s value chain. In other words, identify the most important business activities that yield success, are vital to avoid failure, and identify where information gaps exist.
Analyzing key processes, creating knowledge maps and interviewing stakeholders will lead to key process identification. The output will assist leaders in understanding where the information is located, who has it and the prerequisites for information capture.

– Step Two: Capture what’s important.
Information and know-how are scattered throughout an organization in e-mails, individual and networked hard drives, binders containing operating procedures and training manuals, SharePoint or other Internet sites, conversations around water coolers, and within people’s heads.

Knowledgeable organizations use a variety of capture activities such as on-the-job team learning processes before, during and after major activities and are supplemented, when relevant, through a series of individual interviews.

“Learning before doing” is supported by a peer-assist process, which targets a specific challenge, imports knowledge from people outside the team, identifies possible approaches to address obstacles and new ideas, and promotes sharing of information and knowledge with talent through a facilitated meeting.

A U.S. Army technique called After Action Reviews involves talent in “learning while doing” by answering four questions immediately after completing each key activity: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? Why is there a difference? What can we learn from it?

At the end of a given project or accomplishment, a process called a Retrospect encourages team members to look back at the project to discover what went well and why, with a view to helping a different team repeat their success and avoid any pitfalls.

A critical component of capture technique requires an effective method to record information that is comfortable for the information providers and appeals to the information seeker. For example, a Baby Boomer’s preferred sharing method could be a written report. In contrast, a Gen Y would have no interest in such and would ignore it.

This issue raises the importance of using a variety of communication methods as well as an opportunity to emulate information and knowledge-sharing practices that occur outside the organization.

Social-networking sites such as Facebook, Wiki sites such as Wikipedia, and video-sharing sites, such as YouTube, are popular tools for capturing information, connecting with people, sharing ideas, searching for information and viewing content. Such sites are popular, free and used by each generation. Instead of inventing something new, organizations can transfer popular features from public sites into the design and functionality of corporate tools. 

For example, attaching a webcam to a laptop or using a smartphone instantly equips anyone with just-in-time ability to capture information, especially dialogue and images that are challenging to document. A handheld production studio allows for ad hoc or planned capture of interviews with experts, after-action reviews, safety procedures, an equipment repair procedure, etc.

Uploading multimedia files (sound bites and video clips) to a knowledge repository creates a powerful capture and sharing opportunity. The “YouTube” approach makes it possible for any employee to post a video to a corporate site so that any team member can watch it instantly. “Nu-tube” is the name of a concept that a nuclear energy company gives its effort.

Launching pop technology is “hip” when end-users are engaged, needs are understood and the solution meets their requirements.

Make Information Accessible Quickly and Easily

“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is.” 
–Donald Trump

With a plan now for perpetually capturing valuable information, people must be enable to access and use it. Two steps help to achieve success here. The first is to leverage technology to visually present information. The second is to involve end-users in the design of the sharing process. The following case study describes these two steps in action.

Recently, a U.S. pipeline service company realized that critical information trickled throughout its business unit. The increasing inability of talent to readily tap information sources sharply diminished the value of stored resources. The service company encountered several challenges to make information available.

The overwhelming amount of information to capture, organize, store and manage caused employees to spend days (then) versus minutes (now) searching data.

A document repository contained unmanaged versions and uncontrolled copies of files scattered in network file shares, laptops, intranet sites, CDs, flash drives and filing cabinets.

Other challenges were increasing regulatory constraints, litigation and business-continuity issues, and the rising need to capture “know how” from retiring staff.

Considering generational changes as an opportunity to plan for the future and social-networking tools as an opportunity to innovate, leaders acted. The result is “e-discovery,” a solution that increases the speed to find reporting information from across disparate business units, regulatory-compliance improvements and business-performance enhancements.

Solution highlights include preserving content on an enterprise level versus only at an individual level, implementing a self-service information portal, facilitating contextual and “smart” search, and reducing administrative costs of managing paper records.

The method of designing this solution contributed to its success. The e-discovery design team:
– Identified the valuable information needed to comply with legal requirements,
– Understood learning, technology and communication preferences of each generation,
– Devised methods to allow users to share and access information in multiple formats and
–Designed a tool that emulates features of popular social-networking sites (easy, visual presentation of information, collaboration, smart search and dashboards).

The e-discovery impact on the pipeline business segment includes preparing litigation-status reports in one step versus multiple steps; retrieving archived documents in minutes versus days; eliminating risks associated by damage to paper-based files; reducing employee frustration of not finding who or what they need; and serving as a solution model for re-use within the enterprise.

And most importantly this method helped all generations of talent quickly find the right information when they needed it, so that they can perform their job.

“Diamonds are forever.”
–De Beers ad

Information can be a valuable organizational asset when people can quickly recall where it is stored.

Fortunately, organizations have an abundance of internal information sources: documents, expertise, lessons learned, best practices and the like. Unfortunately, waves of experts are leaving or retiring, usually without depositing their rich knowledge or revealing the location of information “gems” critical to performing business processes.

Leaders can respond by providing a variety of communication and learning methods, leveraging popular social-networking technologies, and embracing the uniqueness of each generation. The impact for the organization can be a rich field of valuable information that continuously replenishes itself.

Note – this article can also be downloaded here.

“Infographic Thinking”

Troy Larson has written a post on Infographics that I like.

If you have read my earlier Infographic posts (here and here), you’ll know that I don’t think much of the majority of Infographics that I have seen.

Well, Troy has the same opinion:

…after surfing the web for a few minutes looking at some of these, you quickly come to the conclusion that most of them suck.

He follows this with the best comment on Infographics that I’ve ever seen…

most people wrongly think that information + graphics = infographics

And then he takes the whole “infographics” discussion to another level…he discusses an interview that Gestalt had with Francesco Franchi, the Art Director of one of Italy’s top financial newspapers. 

It’s a great post. Click here to read what Troy wrote (as well as watch the video of Francesco Franchi).

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UPDATE

Also just noticed that my friend Ant Clay, from 21apps has also published an amazing post on Infographics. Definitely take a look at it!
http://www.21apps.com/uncategorized/that-aint-no-infographic/

Summary of The Pharma Summit 2012 – by someone who was there

The following is an excellent overview that Carolyn Buck Luce has written on her blog of The Pharma Summit 2012, recently held in London . (Everything below is hers. The highlighting, however, is mine, and I have added my own comments.)

Clearly some very interesting topics have been discussed. And from Carolyn’s excellent notes, it’s readily apparent that there is a huge move in this industry.

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Insights from Economist Pharma Summit – Finding New Directions

Here are some insights that are “sign posts” of Pharma 3.0 where the patient is in the middle, not the product and the focus is on delivering health outcomes to individuals at an economic benefit for health systems and society.

• GSK CFO, Simon Dingeman, observed that in emerging markets most medicines are paid for “out of pocket” by individuals. This reality has spurred a different business model by more closely integrating the Consumer, Pharmaceutical and Vaccines businesses to focus on ultimate customer.

• Bruno Strigini, Merck President of Europe/Canada — reflected on the demise and bankruptcy of Kodak and observed that in hindsight the trends were visible to all but changing a business model is exceedingly hard. This is quite analogous to the pharma industry where it has to move to delivering outcomes. For Merck this includes increasing innovative partnerships with non traditional players like food and IT companies and building solutions and services.

• Managing Director of GAVI, Nina Schwalbe, discussed that every two minutes a woman dies of cervical cancer but now, based on the system working together, there is a vaccine for this.

• Stephen Whitehead, CEO ABPI, and Bruno Strigini, Merck President Europe/Canada
  — Fascinating conversation about value and outcomes. Everyone agrees that today there is not a common definition of what is the optimal health outcome with payors, patients, doctors and pharma having different perspectives. All stake holders have a role in the measures to assess value. And this can include a range of interventions to innovations. For example, if a pill can be taken once a day instead of 4 times a day could increase patient adherence and is therefore a valuable intervention.

• Patrick Flochel, EY, observed that we are in the health business not the sick business. The HC system needs to put the patient in the middle. And the HC system will be shifting to health care everywhere – beyond the two pillars of the doctors office and hospital to the “the third place(s)” —wherever the patient/health care consumer is.

• Theresa Heggle, Shire: A shift from provider to payor with the patient at the center has helped Shire shift their focus to the needs and value to the patient. Working with rare and orphan diseases, Shire works closely with patient organizations and families, possibly a model for the future of “personalized” medicines. There are already 300-350 drugs for orphan diseases and over 7000 such diseases.

• John Pottage, ViiV: HIV is a good example of patient at the center model where patients literally took an activist part to become equal partners in innovation and regulatory process. Relationships, incentives, roles and responsibilities, data transparency etc were redefined.
  Now, ViiV is an example of a business model where the focused resources of two large companies contributed to a new company that is focused on just one disease with extensive partnerships and collaborations, from medicine to delivery with the patient at the center.

• Wendy White, Siren Interactive. Patients and caregivers with rare disorders are now frequently the primary drivers of diagnosis and treatments given their active use of internet and mobile technology to get educated. Their activity can be predictors for future innovations as innovation happens at the margins.

• Fascinating conversation about the value of transparency and data.
  For example everyone publishes what IS working in clinical trials but there is a wealth of insights in the data of what didn’t work but those data are not published in an easily accessible way.
  On Social media —notwithstanding the regulatory constraints of using social media in interactions with doctors and patients, pharma companies are beginning to dip their toe in by listening. However, there are challenges —in part due to the quick response expectations that don’t leave time for appropriate reflection and educated deliberations. Building trust is key to the industry so missteps in social media would be a real setback for the industry.
  (This is an excellent point. Listening, however, is an excellent start. There is a continual stream of incredibly useful feedback that the patients are giving. – Mark)

• Discussion around the role of behavioral change in improving health http://ow.ly/8Y0z8

• Sir Andrew Dillon, Chair of NICE — the trend of value-based pricing will continue. This is a growing trend that will touch both developed and developing markets.
  Sir Andrew encourages pharma companies to not “run away” from the developed markets to find countries without this approach as there will eventually be a NICE-like agency in China and India etc. The future will have funders, providers, innovators and users working more closely together earlier and earlier in the process to come up with good decisions. There will always be tensions but they can be creative tensions that produce value for health systems and better outcomes for patients.

• Anders Ekbloom AZ - it was interesting to hear his perspective on what the innovators need from the payers:
  • reward value that medicines contribute to the overall cost of health
  • create trust by considering all the relevant data and being transparent in rules for decision making
  • insure rigor in how decisions are made to insure they reflect the needs of the population
  • justify decisions with clarity and give innovators opportunity to reflect and react
  • go faster as sometimes it takes payers up to a year after approval to agree on price but the IP clock is ticking

In the end, innovators have a long lead time and are making big investments. The more harmonized, clear and transparent rules and decision making across boundaries are with respect to reimbursement, the greater the win for all.

• Reflections upon listening to Brian Griffin, CEO Medco International on Patient Data and how it will transform the Pharma Industry:
  Many of the health systems strategies around bending the cost curve through cutting prices has not been effective and the focus is turning to increased adherence which will be driven in part by better data —integrated, actionable and accessible to stakeholders, including investors.Facts in Europe. — 50% of patients don’t take medicines. This is made up of 1/3 don’t fill their prescriptions; 1 in 10 stop taking their pills; 1/2 forget to finish regimen and 1/4 of all patients don’t take recommended dose. This costs pharma companies in Europe $125B and causes 200,000 premature deaths per year.Focusing on real of use patient data and offering an integrated medication support package with a suite of adherence services can make a real difference and provide the base line improvements that support demonstration of value. These real use data will also provide key insights on patient behavior that will help build incentives and interventions to improve adherence and safety.

• Freda Lewis-Hall, Chief Medical Officer Pfizer and HBA 2011 Woman of the Year, spoke on The Future of Medicines – The Disruptive Innovators.
  As usual, Freda had compelling perspectives of the future from the patient perspective and the need to approach this with a sense of urgency. She made the point that disruptive innovation is only disruptive in hindsight.
  Pharma can’t lower performance or be all things to all people – ie better, faster, cheaper – given the imperative to move to targeted precision therapies. More important that we start asking disruptive questions like 1) how to best characterize diseases, and 2) how do we streamline the matching of therapies to disease to increase precision and 3) how do we create 21st century science by upgrading 1950’s funding.

• The conference ended on a high note with a keynote from Tachi Yamada, former President of the Global Health program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and now EVP, Chief Medical Officer of Takeda, speaking on changing the game in global health.
  Tachi spoke eloquently about the importance of the emerging markets to the industry and the “moral tragedy” of the current state — 8 million children dying unnecessarily life expectancy less than 50 years; with examples like TB which kills millions of people every year and is being fought with a vaccine that is 80 years old and medicine that is 40 years old.
  His answer is to revolutionize innovation, turn things upside down and get to work with the following prescription: 1) Challenge accepted dogma and promote those that challenge 2) Be willing to fail and fail often and take big risks 3) Forget peer reviews because innovators HAVE NO peers and don’t let the experts kill ideas 4) Decide fast while the excitement and enthusiasm is there 5) Create a sense of urgency so that desperate ideas are welcome.(The comment “Forget peer reviews because innovators HAVE NO peers and don’t let the experts kill ideas” is brilliant and worth repeating – Mark)

Forget peer reviews because innovators HAVE NO peers and don’t let the experts kill ideas

Carolyn’s original post can be read here. Also check out her other great posts.

Related articles

• Pharma 3.0 (markjowen.wordpress.com)
• A Commentary: Pharma’s Ongoing PR Problem (biojobblog.com)
• The future of healthcare is visible but requires new ways of thinking (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
• CBR Pharma Insights’ Latest Report, The Perception of the Pharmaceutical Industry – Health Care Reform, Drug Safety, and Drug Costs (prweb.com)
• 2 Risky, 2 Safe Pharma Plays (dailyfinance.com)
• Big Pharma and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (markjowen.wordpress.com)
• Bad journalism paints unfair picture of pharma industry (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
• Medicine Makeovers – Thomas Pogge Disects the Pharma Industry’s Shortcomings & Proposes a Solution (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)

Why giving the users what they want is not enough – the Importance of communication

What follows is a post that I published on AIIM’s site as an “Expert Blogger”. (The original can be read here)

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Why giving the users what they want is not enough – the Importance of communication

As you are all most likely aware, giving the users what they want is not the right thing. Why? Because, often, the users don’t know really what they want.

Consider the following example:

A large restaurant chain has restaurants across the globe. Each restaurant needs to maintain documentation such as construction plans of each restaurant, recipes, procedures, and methodologies, etc. The “critical” documents are kept in a legacy ECM system and several SharePoint doclibs store the non-critical documents. These systems are located centrally, and are all globally accessible.

The business users work primarily with the legacy ECM system, but often also need to work with the documents in SharePoint. When a document was needed, a search was either done in SharePoint, or in the legacy system, using its rather complicated search feature.

Performing searches in two different places wasn’t easy, or efficient. And so, the users cried out “Give us a one central place where we can perform a search” When asked for more details they business users replied “Make it like Google”.

The restaurant’s IT-people (who might have been a little too enthusiastic) swung into action, without anymore questions. They found a tool that would allow SharePoint to “talk” with the legacy ECM system and crawl all the documents, indexing everything it could.

After working many weeks getting things set up, and configured, the IT-people sat and watched as SharePoint crawled through the content. Once finished, initial tests were done to ensure that a search action would actually return content. It was working perfectly. And it was “just like Google”.

A demonstration of the Search system was given to the users, who were ecstatic. They were able to easily enter search terms, and get results from the SharePoint, doclibs as well as the legacy system’s repositories. It was fantastic. It was easy to use, and there was no extensive training required. There was much cheering and showering the IT-people with small gifts. After further testing, the search facility was officially moved into production.

For the first couple of month the users were keen to use the “enterprise search facility”. But then, gradually, complaints started being heard. “The search results contained too many hits”, “Why wasn’t it more like the search feature in the legacy system?”, or “the search results were just showing the title of the document.” Users went back to using the legacy system’s search feature for the “important” documents, and the SharePoint search was just used for the documents in the document libraries. Namely, the “central” search facility was a failure.

What had gone wrong here? The business users wanted a single search facility, and they wanted it “like Google”. And that’s what the IT department had delivered – there was a single box where users could type in words they wanted find. And the search would return documents from all the different document repositories.

In this case, however, the users didn’t really know what they wanted. Yes, they wanted “easy”, but they also wanted something that allowed granular searches to be done (just like their “old” search tool). They also wanted to know where the search results came from. And they wanted the “important” documents to appear at the top of the search results.

The IT team should have asked more, and then they should have listened more. And then they should have repeated this process. Until it was understood what the Business really needed.  The team had followed a Waterfall approach, where requirements were asked up front, and then were not allowed to change. Agile programming techniques could have been used where a “finished’ product is shown to the users several times during the project. The users could give feedback which would lead to a better understanding of what they want, as well as the ability to refine the solution.

Fortunately, the IT team had the opportunity to improve the search system. They did add a small button to the search result screen, where users could provide immediate feedback. Working with this, as well as sending out regular “satisfaction” questionnaires, the IT team was able to identify areas of improvement. These include not only changes that were required on the user interface, and results screen, but it also allowed the IT team to see where further refinements were needed in the indexing process. Every four months, the improvements were presented to the business, and then implemented.

Now, the business users don’t use anything else.

Related articles

• Relevance Tuning and Competitive Advantage via Search Analytics (sematext.com)

Working with Global Teams: Not all in the same room

This is part of the Working with Global Teams series

Previous Post: Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones Revisited

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A friend of mine,Shoaib Ahmed, has an excellent blog on Agile, and Project Management. 

He’s based in New Zealand, and as New Zealand is literally so far away from “the rest of the world” (said with a cheeky wink), he has a pretty good idea of some of the challenges that are met when working in a globally dispersed group.

Shoaib’s latest post goes into this in more detail. He mentions things such as time difference, culture, and reporting lines. Click here to read what he says.

Related posts:

• How do I manage a distributed team? (Shoaib’s original post)
• Cultural Dimensions – How people from different countries and cultures are…different
• Working with Global Teams: Date Formats
• Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones
• Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones – Revisited
• Working with Global Teams: e-mail confirmation

 

Related articles

• 8 Tips for Teaming Across Time Zones (openforum.com)

Different Systems and Different Silos – A Real-life Disaster

What follows is a post that was recently published on AIIM’s site as an “Expert Blogger”. (The original can be read here)

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Different Systems and Different Silos – A Real-life Disaster

Discussions had been going on for months. Plans had been drawn up. Even though the main tasks had been itemized, there was agreement that these would still have to be refined further into the project.

Nothing had been done to assign owners to the tasks, but there was a mutual agreement that whoever could, would work on each task as they saw appropriate.

In any case, the goal, and the timeline, was clear. There was no disagreement there.

Over the weeks, considerable time and resources were committed to working through the various items that made up the project task list, and the necessary information was diligently recorded, and documented.

Progress was regularly reported to the various parties involved. This was done verbally. It involved the person who took ownership of the task describing what had been done, along with what else had to be done, and any impediments that they had encountered. If they felt it was necessary the task “owner” could describe a plan of action to overcome the impediment. The other parties involved could ask for more information, or give suggestions.

Communication was informal, but each party were confident that they were apprised of task activities, and that they knew the status of the project.

Then, one day, everyone involved, got together to “walk through” the progress of the project. This involved visiting the various locations where the tasks were done. It was, essentially, an internal, informal “audit”, and a complete day was scheduled. As is necessary for such an event, all “distractions” were removed. Everyone was asked to turn off their mobile phones, Blackberries, or similar handheld devices. An extended dinner was planned. Everyone had been working hard, and this would allow them to relax, and discuss the results of the audit, as well as talk about whether the project goal was still valid, or whether it needed to be modified.

The walk through of the first task went well. The recorded information was double-checked (obviously by someone other than the task “owner”). Everything looked good. Everyone was happy. The walk-through of the second task (identifying potential candidates for future sub-tasks) also went well.

But then, major issues were starting to appear. And these were not to do with the actual data, or even with the tasks themselves.

It turned out that each party had used their own system for recording information. This meant that the data, although present, was stored in two different systems. And in each case, the data had been recorded in a way that “suited” the person entering it. This meant that there was no “common” structure, and different metadata. And there was no way to simply “merge”, or import, the data from one to the other.

Further to this, because there was no real management of the tasks (as mentioned, it was a very informal process), it turned out that there was a duplication of activities. It appeared that some of the “unassigned” tasks, had been worked on by one party without knowing that others were also working on them. Result – a duplication of data. And, with the data recorded in two disparate systems.

To fix the “problem” would involve deciding which system would be the “master” system, and then manually entering all the data, from the unwanted system, into it. It was going to be a big job, and there was a lot of tension. The elaborate dinner that was planned was called off.

At this point, I turned to my wife, and suggested that the next time we were going to move house we need to make sure that we write everything down on the same notepad, instead of each of us having our own…

Based on true-life events.

Why Virtual Events Matter – a post by Daniel O’Leary

I have started watching the presentations from the AIIM Virtual Social Business Conference. Even though I was not able to “attend” the conference live, AIIM are making all the sessions available for a limited time.

Thanks to a twitter feed that was running at the conference, I saw that Daniel O’Leary, an “AIIM Capture Expert Blogger” had written an excellent post on the value of Virtual Events.

Here is a link to his post…Why Virtual Events Matter

 

Related articles

• I’ve just signed up for…The AIIM Social Business Virtual Conference (markjowen.wordpress.com)

Cultural Dimensions – How people from different countries and cultures are…different

This is part of my “Working with Global Teams” series.

I’ve been reading Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers“. In part of it, he delves into a study that a dutchman had done into different cultures.

I found this fascinating and looked into it further. The dutchman was Geert Hofstede and he had built a model that described different cultures using six different dimensions.

Now – ever since moving to a foreign country, and then starting work for an international company, I have been trying to find a way that would help me understand, and to describe, the differences in the cultures of the people I live with, and work with.

And, it seems that Hofstede’s model certainly helped with that.

The six dimensions are:

• Power distance index (PDI): This dimension refers to how people perceive those with power. For example – is the head of the country honoured and revered, or seen as “no different than us”.

• Individualism (IDV) vs. collectivism: – “The degree to which individuals are integrated into groups”.

• Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI):  – Best summed up as “how many rules and regulations are in place to ensure that things happen as they should.”

• Masculinity (MAS), vs. femininity: Is there a big difference between what are perceived as the “male” role, and the “female” role.

• Long term orientation (LTO), vs. short term orientation: – This dimension measures how much importance a culture puts on “the future”, as opposed to how important they hold onto traditions, and the past.

• Indulgence, vs. restraint: Hedonistic behaviour, or not.

This made it so clear for me – looking at the different cultures I have lived in, as well as the different cultures I have worked with, I was able to finally get some clarity on how the cultures differed. To be able to categorize behaviours I had seen.

Hofstede’s work is still widely use, and very relevant. In fact, here is a quote from wikipedia:

Why is it important to be aware of cultural differences?

“Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.”

Despite the evidence that groups are different from each other, we tend to believe that deep inside all people are the same. In fact, as we are generally not aware of other countries’ cultures, we tend to minimize cultural differences. This leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations between people from different countries.

Instead of the convergence phenomena we expected with information technologies availability (the “global village culture”), cultural differences are still significant today and diversity tends to increase. So, in order to be able to have cross-cultural relations, we have to be aware of these cultural differences.

With his five (the Indulgence dimension was added recently) dimensions model, Geert Hofstede has lighted on these differences. Therefore, it is a great tool to use in order to have a general overview and an approximate understanding of other cultures and, to know how to behave towards individuals from other countries. Because, we still need to cooperate with members of other cultures, and maybe more than ever with the new problems which have arisen for several decades like environmental issues. Therefore cross-cultural understanding is indispensable.

Geert Hofstede has a site where you can compare two cultures against each other, as well as learn more. Go and see how much difference there is between the cultures. (http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php?culture1=&culture2=7#compare)

Other great references:

• Wikipedia’s description of Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers” 
• Malcolm Gladwell on his book “Outliers”
• Geert Hostede’s site
• Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory (Wikipedia)
• An overview of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions on Mindtools.com

Related articles

• Beyond your borders: Overcoming cultural differences that so often cause conflict (globaleduc.wordpress.com)
• Redefining the U.S. Hispanic Consumer (jakebeniflah.wordpress.com)
• Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell’s Success Story (time.com)

Working with Global Teams: Date Formats

Image via Wikipedia

This is part of the Working with Global Teams series

 

Previous Post: Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones

OK, I’m going to give you a date, and I want you, without thinking about it, to tell me when it is.

11/7/7

Did you choose the 7th day of the 11th month of 2007? Or did you choose the 11th day of the 7th month of 2007? Or even the 7th day of June 2011?

All three are valid.

I’m sure whatever you choose was based on what is normal where you live. And that’s great when communicating with other people within that area (city, county, country).

But when you working beyond the extend of that area, as part of a global group for example, then you need to be aware of the date formats.

For example, if someone in Japan was asked to do something by 11/10/12, then they would aim at the 12th day of October 2011. While someone in North America would know that, obviously, the date is November 10, 2012.

Real life example – my car was broken into when I was in the United States. The police officer who arrived, asked me for my date of birth. I told him 17-11-73 (17th day of November 1973 – and not my real date of birth). You’d think that, obviously, there is no 17th month, that he would be able to work out what I meant. However, he was so used to MM-DD-YYY that he had to stop and think about it.

While it’s easy to rant and rave about how stupid this is, the fact is that different date formats are one of the things that comes with working with a global team.

ISO 8601 suggests using YYYY-MM-DD (similar to what our Japanese friend in the example would use). I think that this is a brilliant idea, and gives a clear standard. Also it allows a list of dates (in a spreadsheet or similar) to be easily put in order.)

However, I know that unless you were used to it, even this would cause frustration, and possible errors (until it became second nature).

When communicating with people in other parts of the world, using e-mail, fax, or carrier pigeon, I recommend using a  long date form. Something like “10 January 2013″, or “January 10, 2012″. Sure – even there, there are differences in the way that it is written, but at least you know what the month is, you can see what the year is, and (hopefully) you can work out that the rest is the day.

This would certainly prevent issues and miscommunication regarding dates.

For some interesting reading on this subject , check out the following:

• Date and Time Format (W3C)
• “A summary of the international standard date and time notation” by Markus Kuhn
• ISO 8601 (Wikipedia)