Across the spectrum of the Knowledge and Information Management services offered by Enterprise Knowledge, one of the common themes of late has been the design and development of knowledge bases for helps desks and call centers.  We’ve all heard the phrase that content is king, recognizing that knowledge and information management systems are only as good as the information within them.  This is especially true for knowledge bases, where getting quick access to a complete set of meaningful “answers” is directly related to customer satisfaction and end user service.

There are many aspects to the design and implementation of knowledge bases that will determine return on investment and overall success and adoption.  In our experience, the below are the most critical best practices to ensuring the appropriate information is captured and enhanced, ensuring your organization’s knowledge will be used and reused by those who need it.

Make it Easy

Through our many knowledge gathering activities at organizations around the world, we consistently hear that one of the greatest impediments to information sharing is that it is too hard to load information into the systems at hand.  Often times, this is an issue with poor user interface design or overly complex workflows.  Knowledge bases must be designed and configured to allow information to easily flow into them.  We often use email as a comparison for this:  It should be simpler and faster to load a piece of information into a knowledge base than it would be to send an email with an attachment.

There are several means to support ease of information sharing.  As mentioned above, one is user interface design and related content “uploading” functionality.  Creating a simple “drag-and-drop” type of interface will help users easily upload content.  Ensuring the process to upload content is simple and straightforward, requiring as few clicks or manual entry of information will help minimize the time and complexity of information uploading.
 
Make it Rich

Well-designed knowledge bases also offer significant opportunities to improve the state of content and enrich it to be easier to find and manage.  One way to achieve this is to ensure that knowledge base designs and systems go beyond text to allow for the inclusion of images, videos, logical decision flows, and integrated functionality.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a succinct video from an organizational expert is worth a million.  When designing your knowledge base, think beyond text to support the capture, management, and findability of a wide range of media in an integrated fashion.

Your knowledge base content can also be enriched with metadata tags to support its findability and discoverability.  This is especially important for non-text content, but is important for all.  Designing an easy to use and intuitive business taxonomy and applying it to all your content will support faceted navigation and the discovery of related content on key topics.

Of course, it is incumbent on knowledge base designers to ensure metadata can be applied quickly to support the aforementioned need for easy publishing.  There are three primary options for this:

    1.    If you are applying metadata manually and asking your business users to apply it, focus on the one or two most valuable fields that won’t take undue time or consideration to apply.
    2.    Consider leveraging supporting staff and a concise content governance plan to own the metadata application process, taking the onus off the business users.
    3.    Explore the use of automated metadata tools to speed and simplify the metadata application process.
Overall, a hybrid approach with all three of these options is typically the ideal but there are many permutations that can work.  For a more in depth discussion of ways to simplify metadata management see our blog “Six ways to Simplify Metadata Management.”
 
Embed it in the Business

Like any knowledge or information management system, a knowledge base should exist as one component within an integrated enterprise.  Defining the processes, technical integration points, and related governance between systems will help to ensure meaningful content consistently gets captured within the knowledge base.

Integrating your knowledge base with other knowledge and information systems provides easier means of information sharing.  For example, EK recently helped a client integrate their existing social platforms and content management system with their new knowledge base to allow key content to “flow” into the knowledge base with one click.  Now, select users can easily share their knowledge through a range of means, ensuring that it is captured for others to leverage and enhance
 
Provide Value-Added Constraints

Many organizations make a mistake of overly constraining the means by which information flows into a knowledge base, who’s allowed to publish into knowledge bases, or what types or formats of information may be placed within the knowledge base.  Overly constrained systems tend to choke.  At the same time, “Wild West” systems that allow anyone to load anything in any place will quickly run out of control, diluting the most valuable information to the extent that finding it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack, with an additional haystack getting dumped on top of the pile every few months.
Organizations have to endeavor to provide value-added constraints that walk the line between overly loose and overly tight governance models.  Simple workflow that provides quick content editing and metadata enrichment is great, but overly complex workflows that delay the publication of content must be avoided.  Equally, clear definition of article types and development of templates for consistently formatted content is a huge value-add, as long as it is designed with involvement from the business users to ensure the right article types are defined and the templates actually meet the business needs.
 
Support Evolution

Knowledge and knowledge systems, like the business itself, will die if they don’t continuously evolve.  As discussed above, content governance and supporting processes are critical to ensuring good information is consistently captured and enhanced within the system.

Smart application of technology also plays an important role.  For instance, we recently worked with one of our customers to design a two-tier knowledge base.  Official content that has gone through established content governance reviews is the anchor of the knowledge base, but working content in the form of collaborative blogs serves to support the evolution of the system.  The call center agents are empowered to use their time in between calls to create or edit working content, which is then reviewed by content reviewers and “graduated” as official content following review and approval.  This two-tier process makes the best use of agent time and knowledge, content processes, and supporting technologies.  It holds the added value of elevating call center agent responsibilities and giving them the welcome responsibility to enhance their own tools by sharing their expertise.
 
Listen to Your End Users

Along with the evolution of content, organizations must focus on understanding and serving the needs of their end users.  Ideally, this can be accomplished through a combination of active and passive means.  Active engagement will include polling your call center agents or providing them with technical means to report on commonly asked questions or topics and potentially engaging your end users directly to understand their satisfaction with the knowledge base, the topics they care about, and the areas they wish for more depth of content.  Passive monitoring will focus on knowledge base system metrics including common search terms, most popular content and topics, and navigational paths of users.

With a combination of Active and Passive metrics, organizations will have the means to focus their knowledge crtion on the topics that are most important to their users.  This also requires an active governance model and an investment in knowledge capture to ensure the evolution of content discussed above.
 
Reward Participation

Finally, the most successful knowledge base efforts will be those where content creators and contributors are rewarded for their efforts.  There is any number of means to do this.  This may simply mean identifying the most active or most valued contributors or providing them simple incentives.  One organization with whom EK works decided to reward additional hours of paid leave each month for the MVP content contributors.  Another provides gift cards each quarter.  Yet another took a much more advanced view of content contribution and created a gamification model that includes knowledge base content contribution as one of 10 factors that figured into bonuses and promotions.  Regardless of the specifics, content contribution should be celebrated and rewarded within an organization.

Getting the right knowledge into your knowledge base, and offering supporting processes and technologies to ensure this continues to happen over time is a key factor for success of your systems over time.  Whether you’re designing a new knowledge base or seeking to improve the value of an existing system, EK is poised to help by providing the strategic guidance, design, and implementation services necessary for success.  Contact us to learn more.

       If you ask 100 Knowledge Management experts how to effectively implement and practice KM, you really do get close to 100 different answers.  I believe this is because there isn’t one right answer.   I believe that we should consider that before we go into looking at maturity models and k-strategies that we must attend to and address how people in our organization feel and how we engage with each other.   A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting John Stepper.   John has written about ways to help people work and share knowledge by helping us understand that we each have a personal responsibility to help each other.    At the core of John’s message lives a theme around choice.   We have a choice on how we behave and respond to others.   We have a choice to help others and share our knowledge.    Here is a link to John’s blog.

So now, when someone asks me “What’s Working Out Loud”?, here’s what I say:

“Working Out Loud starts with making your work visible in such a way that it might help others. When you do that – when you work in a more open, connected way – you can build a purposeful network that makes you more effective and provides access to more opportunities.”

Making your work visible: As Bryce described, this is indeed the fundamental starting point for working out loud.
Making work better: One of the main reasons for openly narrating your work is to find ways to improve it. You’re publishing so other people will see it, including some who can provide useful feedback, connections, or other things that will make your work better.
Leading with generosity: By framing your posts as contributions – as opposed to, say, efforts at self-promotion or personal branding – you’re more likely to engage other people. You’re not just looking for help but offering to help others, too. As Keith Ferrazzi said, “The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”

Building a social network: As you work out loud over time, you’ll be interacting with a broader range of people. The further you develop relationships with people in your network, the more likely it will be that you’ll collaborate with them and that they’ll be willing help you in other ways.
Making it all purposeful: Finally, since there’s an infinite amount of  contributing and connecting you can do, you need to make it purposeful in order to be effective. (Goals might be as simple as “I want more recognition in my firm.” or “I’d like to explore opportunities in another industry or location.”) You can still have plenty of room for serendipity, but having a goal in mind focuses your learning, your publishing, and your connections.

Starting with Respect

Author: Barbara Richman
Organization: HR Mpact states

If each employee develops an awareness of respectful behaviors and necessary skills, it is anticipated that employees will serve as role models and that these behaviors will spread in the workplace and beyond.  The following are ten tips to assist you in accomplishing this objective:

• Before acting, consider the impact of your words and actions on others.
• Create an inclusive work environment.  Only by recognizing and respecting individual differences and qualities can your organization fully realize its potential.
• Self-monitor the respect that you display in all areas of your communications, including verbal, body language, and listening.
• Understand your triggers or “hot buttons.”  Knowing what makes you angry and frustrated enables you to manage your reactions and respond in a more appropriate manner.
• Take responsibility for your actions and practice self-restraint and anger management skills in responding to potential conflicts.
• Adopt a positive and solution-driven approach in resolving conflicts.
• Rely on facts rather than assumptions.  Gather relevant facts, especially before acting on  assumptions that can damage relationships.
• Include others in your focus by considering their needs and avoiding the perception that you view yourself as the “center of the universe.”
• View today’s difficult situations from a broader (big picture) and more realistic perspective by considering what they mean in the overall scheme of things.
• “Each one influence one” by becoming a bridge builder and role model for civility and respect. Act in a manner whereby you respect yourself, demonstrate respect for others, and take advantage of every opportunity to be proactive in promoting civility and respect in your workplace.

http://www.lorman.com/resources/ten-tips-for-creating-respect-and-civility-in-your-workplace-15463

There is a saying that we only have one chance for a first impression.   I believe this is true but I don’t think it stops there.   Even if we made a good first impression, our relationship and interaction depends on what we do next.   All of the listed behaviors above can only be effective if we make a choice.    Choosing to behave as indicated takes a lot of energy.    In order to practically apply these behaviors, we must first realize that there is a cost upfront.   I haven’t read anywhere about this but I have experienced it.   Just because you make a choice to be civil doesn’t mean that people around you will make the same choice.   I have found in my own experience that have to spend time explaining to people why I am choosing to behave or respond to them in a certain way.   It does amaze me sometimes that it appears we have lost something of ourselves due to different forms of psychological distance    Our relationships have become more abstract and how we interact with others is less personal and more disconnected.   If we look at each other through the lens of an Iphone or email, we as people become something less than a person.   As we continue to move in the next generation of electronic connectedness, we are allowing our human connectedness to slip away. One example may be the commodity based or flexible workforce.   Why do I want or need to know Howie if he will only be here for a short time?    Another aspect is that we as workers have a clear affirmation that we are only a line item on a spreadsheet.

The Connection

If we are simply a line item on a spreadsheet why does any of this matter?

Have you ever used http://www.ancestry.com/?  I went to the library a few months ago and looked up people from my family history.   The only thing I could find was their names on a list.  It was a handwritten list from the census.  I could barely read the handwriting but I could see the names of my great grandparents or so I thought.   The generations that came before me are not even known to me and the people who are closest in terms of generation are just names on a list.   At the end of the day,  we are really names on a list.  If we allow that to rule over us and govern our behavior, we close the door to our experiences in the moment.  The connection is that we have a choice and it goes back to John Stepper.   We can choose to keep information to ourselves hoping that hoarding will help us personally or we can recognize that we are part of something bigger.  We are part of a network and we are connected to each other in ways that we can only discover through sharing and openness.  Our knowledge strategies must include an understanding and practice in sharing behaviors.   Our underlying objective should be that we become so good at sharing that there is no need for people to help facilitate sharing activities in that it happens naturally.   At the end of the day we all share a common end but we have a choice on how we behave and how we feel along the way.

Final Thought

A recent PBS documentary called This Emotional Life talks about happiness.   Something to consider based on the research is that approximately 50% of our happiness comes from our genetics, 10% comes from environment and 40% comes from choice.   What this means to me is that if we choose to respect each other and we choose to be kind and we choose to share and we choose to be happy, the moments of our lives will be rich and overall more pleasurable and full.

Before you go … please take a look at this (Happy)

Last month, I was on a two week trip to Italy; a week in Sardinia and a week in Rome. After several flight cancellations due to a fire at the Rome airport, I arrived 9 hours late but safely at my first destination in Cagliari Sardinia. My suitcase did not.

I now faced the prospect of traveling for at least the first of the two weeks in the clothes I arrived in--a pair of pants, tank top, black sweater, and sandals. (Lesson learned for future: take their advice—find room to pack a change of clothes in your carry-on.)

In the big scheme of things, losing luggage is a very minor inconvenience. And it can easily suck the enjoyment out of the trip when dealing with an airline system seemingly designed to be as customer-unfriendly as possible, in another language, in another culture.

In my 'old' self, I would want action and decisiveness and try to regain as much control as I could. I would have been anxious, frustrated, and angry. And I know it would have been hard for me to put those feelings aside to do what I really came to Italy for--enjoying the food and the friends I was there to meet.

Now was a good time to kick in all the EQ I preach about to others and see if it makes a difference. Here are the five EQ competencies I called on to help me manage this situation:

1. Emotional Self-Awareness.Yea, losing my luggage sucked. Acknowledged. AND I was in Italy and how fantastic is that? I didn't deny the frustration; I just made sure it wasn't front and center of every day.I gave it a few minutes thought when I checked in at the front desk for any status, and then focused on enjoying the rest of the day.

2. Interpersonal Relationships. To keep my mind off the challenge of living in the same clothes day after day, I turned my attention to the others in my group engaging them in stories about their life. I focused on deeply listening and enjoying their company. I had nothing to worry about except what was right there right now.

3.Reality Testing. What is irreplaceable? The time I am spending with this group of new friends. Clothes and shoes can be replaced. And in reality, what can I do about it? Choosing to give up control gave me the space to immerse myself in each experience.

4. Stress Tolerance. This was a big one. 15 minutes of clearing my mind with meditation in the morning calmed the underlying anxiety and helped me set an intention to focus on what was in each day not what I was missing.

You can't go more than a few steps in Italy without tripping over a church and I used that as an opportunity to pop my head in and offer up control to a greater being.

And a prayer to St. Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost things, maybe helped too :-)

The lighter version:
Tony, Tony
Look around
Something's lost and
Must be found.

5. Optimism. Several times each day I reminded myself: "Whatever works out is going to be absolutely fantastic." By focusing on the enjoyment of each activity I had little room left for negative thoughts.Another traveler commented, "For losing all your luggage you are amazingly joyful. I would be worried and a wreck."

St. Anthony must have been listening…At midnight of the 4th day in Italy, my suitcase found its way to me in the tiny seaside village of Cabras.

I was happy to avoid the hassle of filing a claim...and also a bit disappointed. I relished the challenge of traveling in one set of clothes and finding out how little I really needed to be truly happy.

To your best potential,
Jane

Following is an excerpt from Dr. Rhem's latest book, Knowledge Management in Practice due out at the end of the year:

Social media brings the power of sharing and collaboration to the masses. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube… knowledge sharing and collaboration has become a way of life. At the core of knowledge management is knowledge sharing and collaboration and social media tools have business and government taking notice.

Social media offers organizations the opportunity of connecting with potential customers at virtually no cost. It is possible to set goals and get ROI, however you have to know where you’re going and what you want to achieve. A way to understand where you want to go is to analyze the Participatory Communication Cycle.

Participatory Communication Cycle

The Participatory Communication Cycle is leveraged to enhance the capacity of individuals and communities to sustain communication activities (Corbett, 2010). The Participatory Communication Cycle consists of assessing your communication capacity, developing a communication plan, implementing communication activities and monitoring and evaluating the results.

Assess Communication Capacity as it pertains to implementing social media is to understand the potential constraints of the proposed medium being utilized (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.), ascertain the staff needed to produce, send, and respond to communication within the perspective channel(s). The assessment should include an analysis of your organization’s legal and political constraints to social media, conventional sources and types of messages as well as communication style and scope, Corbett (2010). Incorporating knowledge management will bring needed structure and focus when leveraging the Participatory Communication Cycle.

Knowledge Management and the Participatory Communication Cycle

Knowledge management within the Participatory Communication Cycle occurs as the organization assesses and learns from the impacts of communication within the various social media outlets as dictated by the action plan. Through interaction with constituents your organization will gain valuable knowledge of issues, opinions, and perception of your product and services as well as the company as a whole. In responding to the various comments within social media concerning your organization with an attempt to answer/respond in the correct way, company representatives must have access to the right knowledge. This knowledge will facilitate representatives to respond in a consistent manner and take control of your company’s voice within social media.

Social Media, KM and the Enterprise

Social media takes knowledge and makes it highly iterative. It creates content as a social object. That is, content is no longer a point in time, but something that is part of a social interaction, such as a discussion. It easily disassembles the pillars of structure as it evolves. As examples: content in a micro-blogging service can shift meaning as a discussion unfolds; conversations in enterprise social networks that link people and customer data can defy categorization; and internal blogs and their comments don’t lend themselves to obvious taxonomy.

Social media in the enterprise has gotten the attention of knowledge management scholars and practitioners. It should mean that many of the benefits we experience in the consumer web space which include effective searching, grouping of associated unstructured data sources, and ranking of relevance will become basic features of enterprise solutions. In the enterprise for example when looking to staff a project with a certain skillset the social capabilities that will be leverage would include role, primary skillsets, secondary skillsets, number of years of experience, rating on efficiency of each skill, etc. Social media’s impact on KM will bring about more time analyzing the knowledge that is being created through social interactions.

Social Media Strategy

A social media strategy is your organization’s roadmap to plot this destination. To reach your customers and potential customers successfully you need to start telling your stories directly, and do it in a way that sparks conversations, interest and action. The value proposition of Social Media for is sustained conversations that shape perceptions and attract students to enroll in programs and participate in its activities.

Reference:
Corbett, J. (2010) Participatory mapping and communication, a guide to developing a participatory communication strategy to support participatory mapping. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Washington, DC.

The examination of social media and KM is furthered detailed in chapter 3.

I've been on a roll about Learning Circles...get it circle, roll...?

Learning Circles is a peer coaching method which can be incredibly effective when done correctly.

You may have experienced one-on-one coaching, maybe executive coaching, leadership, career, or life coaching. All of these are ways in which a professional coach helps an individual discover new insights, make coherent choices, and integrate new behaviors. It can be a very powerful way to make transformative lasting change in your life.

Peer coaching takes the coaching model of discovery, insight, and action and makes it accessible to a wider range of people. It is a way to promote continuous learning and growth in an organization. That is why I call them Learning Circles.

The method is adopted from Action Learning, an adult development theory which posits that adults learn by gathering what is known (explicit and tacit), asking questions to create deeper insights, and reflecting on actions

Learning circles use the real world issues of the participants as a sort of "active case study" for exploration and action planning. When properly facilitated, Learning Circles create change as well as enable the development of trust, authenticity, and resilience in an organization.

Here's an example of an issue that one of the participants brought to the Learning Circle.

"I'm working on a major tech implementation that will change the process that many people use to order parts. The rank and file seems pretty happy with the change. They see that it will make things easier for them.

The problem I'm having is with the senior leadership, especially the director. This will require changes from everyone and the senior level is not walking the talk. The employees see that and they are losing confidence in the system, starting to talk about it as another 'flavor of the month.' This happened a few years ago with another tech system--successfully implemented but ultimately disregarded because the senior leadership never made it a priority."

This participant wanted to explore ideas for what to do to get the senior leadership on board before the project failed.

After about 12 minutes of clarifying questions and brainstorming possibilities, the person bringing this to the table talked through three ideas she felt might work and committed to action steps to take, reporting back to the circle in two weeks with observations and insights of the impact this plan made.

Then it was the next participants turn to share a challenge they were facing.

How often do you have the opportunity to share a pressing issue with a group of colleagues, have them listen to hear the deeper issues you may be missing, and offer helpful insights that may accelerate the resolution of that issue?