Knowledge Management (Part 6)

Mnemosyne (depicted here in a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1881); courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial) is the Greek Goddess of memory. She is also the mother of the nine Muses, implying that memory is the mother of all art. I would contend that memory is also the mother of all business.


Continuing our review from Friday of KM practices:

Wikis- A wiki is a user-editable website designed to promote the accretion of knowledge by individuals contributing content to create a larger whole. At first, I guessed that wikis would be used in the fashion of Wikipedia to create a sort of law encyclopedia, but one other common use of a wiki is as a project management tool, where COP’s can post meeting notes, documents and other content.Wikis have received much public acclaim, but it’s hard to measure what their success metrics are for an internal collaborative website. I would suggest that 100% awareness, 50% usage, with 20% of employees as regular contributors is a good goal.

Law Subscription Service- The concept of a Law Subscription Service is to have a central area on a department’s intranet where attorneys can subscribe to the multitude of free newsletters made available by law firms and other publishers. Each person can tailor their subscription profile to meet their interests. This is an inexpensive and easy way to stay abreast of current developments in a subject area.

Law Calendar- A Law Events Calendar can be used to advertise events of interest to all members of a department, including department meetings, training opportunities, and other events of interest. Again, a simple, yet effective, way to disseminate knowledge assets.

Suggestion Boxes- Suggestion boxes are a common tool, but in my experience are most valuable as a method for changing an organization’s communication structure than for the ideas they generate. Once people know that the ideas submitted to a suggestion box will be treated constructively, then more employees will offer suggestions directly, rather than through the suggestion box. Once employees become comfortable raising their thoughts through other channels, a suggestion box is rendered superfluous.

Publicity- It is important for a KM team to make a concerted effort to publicize its initiatives because (i) good publicity increases team morale, and (ii) good publicity encourages participation in the creation of knowledge management assets.

Collaboration with Outside Vendors- Having attended LegalTech in New York in years past, I was astounded by the plethora of legal technology vendors. What is apparent to me is that the best of these vendors can be important partners in the KM enterprise. Certainly vendors have an economic interest in cultivating relationships with law departments and one should never forget where their ultimate interests lie. That said, a dynamic relationship with a quality vendor can be a win-win situation.

Knowledge management systems have been around since the first stone tablet. What excites me is that today’s technology offers such an impressive extension of the human brain; one that dramatically magnifies human capabilities, just like the invention of the steam engine increased man’s physical abilities. I will continue to build and promote knowledge systems until that magical day when all necessary information is at every person’s fingertips when they want it, how they want it and in the format they want it.

Knowledge Management (Part 5)

Now that we have reviewed the theories of and strategies for implementing knowledge management programs, I want to provide a few real-life knowledge management tools that I have seen work:

Newsletters- Newsletters can be both the flagship of KM efforts and an important outlet for knowledge “assets.” While at Alcatel-Lucent, I edited the LawLink quarterly newsletter for ten issues. Despite my initial fears, not once did I ever lack for enough content. It seems attorneys have a lot of info and insights they like to share, but don’t always have an outlet, so the newsletter provided a much needed media platform. Of course, smaller departments may not have the same need for an internal newsletter, but may want to consider broadening the audience to include internal non-law colleagues as a way to promote greater understanding of the role and value of the law department. One of the more acclaimed features was a “Spotlight On…” column which consisted of interviews of colleagues. In that aspect, a newsletter is as valuable a tool for teambuilding as it is for knowledge sharing.

After Action Reviews- An After Action Review is designed for people to share their first-person experiences and lessons learned in a simple format. The AAR is designed to capture information from people who don’t want to write a “researched” article, but still want to share lessons learned from their experiences. In a variation on the After Action Review concept, colleagues can create a modular training packages based upon an after-action analysis.

Subject Matter Expert “Yellow Pages”- It’s surprising how little employees know about the expertise and experience of their own colleagues. Creating a comprehensive skills/experience directory is a simple step that pays huge dividends in knowledge sharing. Currency is critical for the credibility of directories, so I recommend a regular update schedule.

Communities of Practice-Communities of Practice (COPs) are universally hailed as the “killer application” of Knowledge Management programs. Yet, they are hard to conceptualize. At their core COP’s are based on a simple concept: Learning and Knowledge Sharing are primarily social activities.

Etienne Wegner, a leading theorist in COP’s writes:

Apprenticeship works by being integrated in social participation. Whenever high levels of skills are required-whether we are to become a fluent speaker of a language, a neurosurgeon, a nurse, an X-ray technician, a physicist, or a master mechanic-we organize learning in an apprenticeship-like fashion. The social world, then, is not a distraction, but a rich resource essential to learning. In fact, there is no distinction between learning and social participation, and that is what makes learning possible, enduring, and meaningful.

Whether a COP’s meets monthly, six times a year, quarterly or annually, I have found that this type of information sharing forum is one of the most effective KM initiatives.

Brown Bag Lunches- Lunch seminars are a low-tech way to disseminate information and achieve esprit de corps.

The Virtual Law Library- Maintaining currency in a legal field can be encouraged through a Virtual Library Program (VLP). Under the VLP each participant is given an allowance of up to $200 per annum to purchase a book or subscription related to an area of the law relevant to her/his practice. The quid pro quo for receiving this allowance is that each participating member must (i) create a Knowledge Asset out of the book (e.g.- an article for the newsletter, a summary/digest of the book for the law website, etc.) and (ii) be a consultant on such topic(s) for their colleagues. The goal of the VLP is to foster a learning culture, to provide attorneys with the current research tools needed to perform most effectively, to promote collaborative work habits, and to encourage development of expertise in important areas of the law.

On Monday, we will conclude the Knowledge Management series by profiling some additional KM practices.

Knowledge Management (Part 4)

Continuing our theme from Friday’s post, here are some additional strategies for implementing knowledge management initiatives:

6) Lower the Barriers for Creation and Submission of KM “Assets”- Employees have an astounding amount of information and knowledge to share but often are reluctant to do so because they feel that the information must be “perfect” or “complete.” Therefore, a good KM program needs to have multiple avenues of cataloging information regardless of its format. For instance, those who prefer formal legal writing can prepare articles for a department newsletter, while those who lean toward a more informal approach can submit material in an after-action review format that allows for a first-person narrative of experience. For tidbits of information that require context- a wiki can be useful, while for small items that don’t require much context, something simpler, such as an email alert, can be useful.

The key is to provide many avenues for the information to be converted to some sort of shareable format.

7) Encourage Many to Give a Little, so the Whole Gets a Lot- Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network increases proportionally to the number of users. Similarly, the KM “network” will increase in value as more people participate, even if any given individual’s participation is relatively small. This rule is a corollary to the concept of lowering the knowledge creation barriers and emphasizes the social good that will occur if each person contributes even a small number of knowledge assets.

8) Focus on High-Relevance Efforts- There is no value in a project that does not offer real and tangible value for users. The value of a project cannot always be determined beforehand, so if a project appears to have missed the mark on usefulness, just stop it.

9) Be Inclusive- A successful KM program must include all levels of staff in a given organization. Some of the most important ideas can be created, fostered and developed by administrative staff. Remember the maxim, that “Every person is my superior, in that I may learn from them.”

10) Set clear goals, both general and specific- In the first flush of enthusiasm for KM projects, it is easy to become over-extended. Make sure that you keep the number and type of projects manageable and that each project contributes to your overall mission.

In next Friday’s post, we’ll explore how these ideas can be reduced to practice.

Knowledge Management (Part 3)

Today’s post will delve into the specific techniques that I have used in building an effective knowledge management program. Every law department is different and not all these methods scale for all size law departments. In a three-person, co-located department, the best KM program may be to have robust lunch time discussions. But whatever the size and type of your law department, the goal of a KM initiative is the same: To create a knowledge sharing system that maximizes the resources available within the department to enable team members to provide quick, insightful, and meaningful advice to clients. Here are some approaches that can help achieve that aim:

1) Benchmark yourself. The first step is to mine your organization’s past for lessons and seek advice from others who have traveled the KM road. At the beginning of many KM initiatives, you may well discover that you are not really at the beginning. In fact, most organizations have made some inchoate attempts to capture and disseminate relevant knowledge. These efforts may take the form of intranet sites, bulletin boards, interactive legal advice applications, form libraries, document repositories, and on-line policies. Chances are also that these projects will be like the sand-swept pyramids, impressive monuments of limited utility.

Many companies develop some form of KM practice, often an ad hoc response to perceived bottlenecks, sometimes under the guise of an efficiency or quality program, but organizations rarely follow through with a holistic, systematic approach.

So, meet with colleagues who have been involved in your company’s earlier KM projects and run a KM Workshop to solicit additional ideas and feedback from colleagues.

2) Benchmark others. Visit other companies and organizations dedicated to applying KM and related technologies to the practice of law. I find that law departments are usually justifiably proud of their knowledge management efforts and are more than happy to offer pointers to interested parties.

3) Enlist Executive Support Early, With the day-to-day crush of duties faced by the average employee, it is hard to get buy-in of the rank-and-file workers without explicit direction or encouragement from senior management. This is especially true of a KM program that by definition requires interactive, not passive, participation from a substantial number of employees. As such you must (i) keep senior management closely informed of your intended goals and outcomes; (ii) find a supportive executive sponsor; and (iii) lobby for and include specific KM requirements in every law employee’s annual goals and objectives.

The individual goal requirement should be drafted both to capture a general support requirement and a specific output requirement (e.g. the creation of at least one knowledge asset) while still allowing the employee broad flexibility in achieving that goal.

Ideally one can impose a direct connection between participation in KM efforts and bonuses, but even without this carrot, KM participation can be a consideration in relative ranking and rating, and thus, participation in KM efforts can correlate in some way with compensation. Some companies make more explicit the connection between participation in these initiatives and a bonus. I know of one firm that earmarks 5% of each person’s annual bonus to their KM participation.

4) Rotation of Duties is Critically Important. Nearly as important as executive sponsorship is finding a cadre of dedicated leaders who will help drive discrete initiatives to a successful conclusion. There is a danger of overloading this set of employees with “extra” work and having the KM work fall by the wayside. To combat this, I recommend the practice of limiting leadership of KM projects to a defined term of six to twelve months, depending on the project. This approach:

-Lessens the likelihood that people will burn out ;
-Maximizes the enthusiasm of project leaders;
-Ensures the flow of new ideas ; and,
-Instills a healthy level of competition into how project leaders approach their tasks.

5) At the Outset, a Focus on Social Networking is Recommended. Literature suggests that 80% of knowledge sharing is done through informal social networking. As such, a good start can be had through low cost, high impact augmentation of social networking devices. A corollary to this rule is “don’t fall in love with the technology.” Technology is a tool, but not usually an end in itself. The landscape is littered with remnants of nifty technologies that didn’t resonate with employee needs.

More strategies for implementing KM initiatives will follow in my next post.

Knowledge Management (Part 2)

Thanks to the internet, it won’t be long before most, or all, of the world’s explicit knowledge will be at our fingertips. But the mere presence of information does not necessarily impart knowledge. For example, if all the world’s understanding on how to play the violin were reduced to a two-volume set, would reading it bring you any closer to making a harmonious sound? Would you want your surgeon to have imbibed every technical piece of data about your appendix, but never to have actually performed an appendectomy? Certainly not. And that is because true craftsmanship is not simply the ability to find information, but rather the practical application of that knowledge. And the world pays a premium for those who can reduce theory to practice.

One fundamental precept of Knowledge Management is that there is a distinction to be made between explicit knowledge (objective, rules-based, easily captured) and tacit knowledge (subjective judgment, insights, experience, rules of thumb, technique). It is exceedingly difficult to systematically capture tacit knowledge, so an effective KM program must create effective channels to access this tacit know-how.

All too often KM initiatives go astray by failing to understand the explicit/tacit distinction. Corporate portals and databases are built and then filled beyond capacity with data of every description. Due to the overload of information, and the difficulty of maintaining currency, and the complexity of searching huge databases, this type of data junkyard lacks the context that allows use of the data to actually make a decision.

It is the combination of explicit and tacit knowledge that leads to the end goal of all KM programs: Information in context to produce an actionable understanding.

With this in mind, a law department can undertake initiatives designed to enhance knowledge sharing habits and add appropriate tools to:

· Foster a culture of knowledge sharing;

· Provide easy access to tools for the creation, sharing and using of information;

· Allow high quality work to be achieved in less time;

· Impart a greater sense of professional value.

Upcoming posts will explore specific methods to achieve these aims.

In the previous post, we imagined a fictional individual who had to relearn his life on a daily basis. On the other end of the spectrum, Issac Asimov wrote of a fictional race of aliens who had the capacity to share experience across each other’s minds, so that a learning by one would be immediately understood by all. Perhaps such a complete state of knowledge sharing is only in the realm of science fiction, yet it is a goal for which any law department can strive.

Knowledge Management (Part 1)

Here in South Carolina, it’s back to school time. All the teaching and learning that’s about to go on in the school inspired me to think about how to develop a teaching and learning law department. As such, I thought I’d make the next few posts about a related subject: knowledge management and its application to lawyers.

First off, what is Knowledge Management?

Imagine waking up one day and having to re-learn how you commute to work, where you left your car keys, and even how to drive. Now imagine having to relive that experience day after day after day. You may think such a scenario is merely fodder for movies or old episodes of the “Twilight Zone, and yet countless corporations are living with this situation as precious institutional memory is routinely discarded, forgotten, misfiled, and otherwise lost.

It’s easy to lump KM initiatives as another management fad of the month. Such a characterization would be wrong. Managing knowledge is fundamental for business success and confers a competitive advantage on those organizations that do it best. This is especially true for corporate lawyers, whose stock in trade is knowledge, wisdom and judgment.

An effective KM program involves many complex organizational issues; merely building elaborate technology tools is not sufficient; instead knowledge sharing must be woven into the daily habits of the corporation. In fact, KM literature suggests that as much as 80% of knowledge sharing is done through social networks.

Origins of KM Theory

While the aggregation, cataloging and distribution of knowledge dates back to time immemorial, “Knowledge Management” as a business discipline was founded by Karl-Erik Sveiby. Sveiby, an accountant by trade, was troubled that traditional balance sheets did not adequately take into account the vast amount of intangible assets, such as knowledge and business contacts, that were integral to business success. In 1986, Sveiby co-authored The Invisible Balance Sheet a book that popularized the idea of KM. As developed nations evolved from manufacturing-based to services-based economies, the focus on intangible assets accelerated.

Sveiby developed a three-part framework for assessing intangible assets; Employee Competence, Internal Structure and External Structure. Employee Competence is defined as the capabilities and skills of the people in an organization. Internal Structure is the patents, processes, information flows, vision, strategy, policies and communication habits of a company. External Structure is the value of the relationships with those entities with whom you do business.

On the next post, I’ll continue this discussion of KM theory.

Setting Goals

Setting goals, whether in your professional or personal life, can be a tricky task. By definition, most goals define something that you lack (e.g. I want to get in good shape, I want to have a million dollars, I want to attain a 50% market share) and I worry that when focusing on what one is not, a person may miss out on opportunities arising from what one is. Furthermore, it’s easy to become goal-bound, which is to say, so obsessed with a particular vision of the future that one loses perspective on other present opportunities.

Goal-setting advisors recommend so-called SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented and Time-bound). This approach certainly makes sense for certain types of goals, but also seems a bit mechanistic. Between the setting of a goal and its attainment, one can be certain that changes will intervene. This theme was recently explored by David Brooks of the New York Times in his article "The Summoned Self" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/opinion/03brooks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20summoned%20self&st=cse ).

In his column, Mr. Brooks contrasts the “Well-Planned Life” with the “Summoned Life,” which he describes as:

This mode of thinking [the “Summoned Life”] starts from an entirely different perspective. Life isn’t a project to be completed; it is an unknowable landscape to be explored. A 24-year-old can’t sit down and define the purpose of life in the manner of a school exercise because she is not yet deep enough into the landscape to know herself or her purpose. That young person — or any person — can’t see into the future to know what wars, loves, diseases and chances may loom. She may know concepts, like parenthood or old age, but she doesn’t really understand their meanings until she is engaged in them.

Moreover, people who think in this mode are skeptical that business models can be applied to other realms of life. Business is about making choices that maximize utility. But the most important features of the human landscape are commitments that precede choice — commitments to family, nation, faith or some cause. These commitments defy the logic of cost and benefit, investment and return.

The person leading the Well-Planned Life emphasizes individual agency, and asks, What should I do?” The person leading the Summoned Life emphasizes the context, and asks, “What are my circumstances asking me to do?”

In the Summoned Life, values rather than specific goals act as the polestar to guide one’s actions. I would suggest that melding Summoned Life values with meaningful, yet adaptable goals from the Well-Planned Life yields a powerful combination.

The purpose of a goal is to allow a person to figure out what to do next to make the most beneficial use of one's time, energy and attention. How do we identify what to do in the face of an unknowable future, rapidly changing circumstances, and ambiguous conditions? Perhaps we listen to the advice of Jose Raul Capablanca, the early 20th century international chess champion, who, when asked how many chess moves ahead he looked while playing a game, responded: "Only one, but it's always the right one."

On Charleston

Travel and Leisure magazine has just ranked the top “Most Romantic” cities in the US, with Charleston coming in at # 2, http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/americas-most-romantic-cities/3. The magazine cites the city’s rich history and Southern charm.

I’d also point out Charleston’s uniquely changing, yet resilient character. The resilience has been necessitated by events such as British occupation during the Revolutionary War, the tempestuous events leading to succession from the US in 1860, a shattering siege during the Civil War, a destructive earthquake in 1886, and the occasional hurricane. But each blow has bounced off the fair City, much like the British cannonballs bounced off the palmetto log walls of Fort Moultrie when the King’s army first tried to take Charleston in June, 1776. (This victory led to the Palmetto being named the official state tree.)

With each challenge, the City has adapted.

As the surrounding marshes change with the tides, and the weather with the seasons, so too the city has changed with society (albeit not always willingly) and reinvented itself at each turn, while preserving its historic personality.

A common sight in town is the South Carolina Palmetto Flag. The symbols on the flag so well capture the special essence of Charleston. The ever-changing moon represents the adaptable nature of the city and the palmetto tree stands for its resilient sturdiness.

The resulting combination is a modern city with a traditional heart. Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

Simplicity

“Think simple,” as my old master used to say- meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles. - Frank Lloyd Wright

It’s a constant battle to achieve simplicity. Complex organizations have a tendency to over-complicate matters. I think we in the legal profession, analytical by nature, are often the culprits. We become enamored of fiendishly clever arguments (e.g. Section 4 read in conjunction with Section 5(j) and buttressed by the language in Section 17 (b)(iii) clearly vindicates my client’s position), but in my experience, having fewer dots that need to be connected make a more compelling narrative. And whether the task is to convince a judge, a juror, a business counterpart, or the CEO, success is all about creating a forceful narrative.

Life will impose its own complications, so our job is to distill critical information to its clearest essence. I tell my team to make things as simple as possible, and then find a way to make them simpler still.