Foregrounds and Backgrounds in Business

In art there is a notion of things being in the foreground and the background when composing a picture. In composing the picture of my portfolio business (and career), I’m playing around with foregrounds and backgrounds.

From the foreground to the background goes Information Management & Knowledge Management expertise and services. To the foreground comes (strongly!) Organisational Change & Learning expertise and services. This perspective switching also comes with a brand change: ‘RHX Group’ takes the IM & KM topical space, and a new brand, ‘Questo’ is the home for the workscape change space. (Questo is one of the business names for the legal entity, ‘The RHX Group Pty Ltd’.)

There’s a different energy and stance for Questo in comparison to RHX Group. It’s what I believe is essential to navigate the future of work and the changing workscape; it’s tackling the challenges for organisations as well as individuals.

As the name suggests, Questo is about quests (exploration, adventure, pioneering, experimentation, emergence) and questions (uncertainty, un-order, challenging assumptions, learning); and there’s a little bit of magic: “Hey Questo!”

Questo becomes my business foreground;  and it comes with its own website and blog space. I, and willing friends, will be writing about the things that makes us Human in an age of advancing technology. ‘Work’ as we knew it is changing in subtle and not so subtle ways, and technology is a big factor in that change. I’d like to help people come to gripes with this situation … and thrive!

As I’ll be investing writing effort and time on the Questo blog, rhxthinking blog will go into hibernation. The posts of old will still be there; there will be few posts of new.

Thanks for being a follower of rhxthinking. Want to now follow the Questo blog? Check it out here!  Questo also has its own Twitter account too.

In the spirit of content re-use, some blog posts from rhxthinking will make an appearance in Questo: You can’t keep good content down!

Signing off from rhxthinking.

Helen P

 

Welcome aboard your flight to the Future of Work

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome abroad Your Work Airways on this flight from the Present to the Future of Work.

Photo Credit: iStock Photo

Before we take off there are a few preparations I’d like to run you through to minimise anxiety and maximise possibility on your career journey.

You might note that our plane is not yet fully built, such is the uncertain nature of the flight you are taking. Don’t let that deter you from the things you can control and organise.

Our Captain today is flying with a compass rather than a map. We fully expect we’ll have to make multiple course corrections as we navigate changing conditions. We have a heading rather than a specific destination. You are going somewhere; you’ll probably know where only as we get closer.

At this time please stow away your luggage or present it to the crew to be taken away. It maybe baggage from your past that will no longer serve you where you are going. Prepare to give up or lose some things.

We anticipate turbulence. When the seatbelt sign comes on, we recommend you stay calm and remain in one place. When things get agitated, there is a temptation to Do Something. Sometimes that best thing you can do is Be Still. Turbulence typically will pass. If you are experience a sense of disequilibrium, know that this is simply a phase as you adapt to a new reality – you are not going mad. There are strategies you can learn to respond and recover from such a state graciously: ‘Mind like water.’

When the seatbelt sign is off, you are invited to get hands on and involved in shaping our flying experience. Our passengers don’t get to be passive spectators – the future is what we make it.

A normal flight would advise you to locate your nearest exit to be used in case of an emergency. You could do that – it can be prudent to have an exit strategy. However, there is a risk that an exit strategy lessens your disposition to take a leap of faith and embrace uncertainty. Like a turtle, you might only make progress if you stick your neck out.

If oxygen masks should appear (or something that seemed to fall on your head) from above – be sure to look after yourself before attending to others around you. If you are struggling to cope, then your needs come first. And remember to Breathe: In, Out and repeat. Oxygen is a fundamental resource for your whole wellbeing.

Reach out for help – your crew are there to help you. You’ll need to identify your own crew. Look about you for a special group of those who you can trust and who will support you with encouragement or a kick in the pants as you might need. Make sure they know they are your crew and you have expectations of the role they will play for you. Consider being the crew for someone else – we all need help at different times.

Should the plane need to make an unexpected landing in unknown conditions, know where to locate your life vest – as you have defined it. When indicated, put it on ensuring it fits your situation. If necessary blow a whistle to attract attention of others who can assist you; your courage to alert them of your predicament is an invitation for their compassionate action.

Unlike normal air travel we won’t be insisting on Flight mode for your communication devices. We recommend openness to variable flows of information and communication as you venture to the future. Something insightful may appear – keep an open mind. To take a break from the information flow, simply disconnect.

Fires have been known to start from excessive decision making. We desire this to be smoke-free flight so we encourage you to lessen decision fatigue by making upfront decisions wherever you can for routine things. Preserve your decision-making abilities for the novel things you have yet to learnt about or resolve.

While there are activities we discourage in the toilets, we admit they are a great place if you need to shut other people out for a time. It’s okay to hide in silent solitude. Silence can be useful if it keeps you from broadcasting an anxious version of yourself into your web of special relationships. It may be a time to listen to yourself and check in with what your inner voice has to say.

This is a flight in which we’ll be figuring stuff out as we go. It can be helpful to write things down, especially when a lot is happening all at once. Whether in the seat pocket in front of you or on your person, consider keeping a notebook so your mind is free to deal with the unexpected, rather than busy trying to remember stuff that could be written down.

On this flight we expect you will need a diverse offering of refreshments. Some of you have boarded with a hunger for knowledge to sustain you on this journey. Others are thirsty for insights to fuel your decision making. Ask for what you need and give yourself suitable time to absorb the full nutrient value. Take a course, digest a book, or savour the goodness of a mentor.

It is our pleasure to provide in-flight entertainment; this consists of an excellent view of the emergent and surprising. It is sure to affect you with a range of emotions as you move through phases of comedy, drama, horror or thriller. We don’t recommend the history channel; your future is an adventure awaiting you in a forward direction – it’s a fiction awaiting to be realised.

For those curious about the future of work, at the top of our inflight recommended reading and viewing list is Lynda Grafton speaking at TEDx on How to be ready for your future and her book, The Shift: The future of work is already here

It’s time to put away things that you don’t need right now – have what you can in order. Know where to put your hands on things quickly; keep large items stowed away for when they are needed.

On behalf of Your Work Airways I’d like to congratulate you on launching yourself to face an unknown future of work. It promises to be unpredictable.

Helen Palmer, co-founder of RHX Group, has not followed a traditional path in her career, nor does she intend to. It’s been her personal experience that she’s made career plans, then life happened and things went in a direction that wasn’t anticipated. As a consequence she’s fascinated by the emergent and serendipitous approach to life and work. She’s been thinking about ways to help others navigate the future of work, given the ambiguous possibilities and opportunities if there is courage to take that journey. And for good measure, she likes to inject humour and originality into her work.

Nuggets of knowledge

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled Knowledge in little packages in which I shared some of my favourite aphorisms and quotes.  I keep a collection of these little nuggets to inspire myself, to share with others via micro-blog posts in Twitter or LinkedIn and to underscore a key idea in a presentation or writing.  Sometimes I value such nuggets for triggering a thought that generates new knowledge; sometimes they just make me feel good – and if I’m feeling good, I’m probably more likely to have energy to be generative with knowledge.

Here’s a few more that have made it into my collection recently:

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn’t planned.
~ Melanie Benjamin

You’ll increase your creative potential once you begin to value your own thoughts.
~ Doug Hall

Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind
comes we can catch it.
~ E. F. Schumacher

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult
~ E. B. White

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.
~ T.S. Eliot

An engineer is one who can do with a dollar what any bungler can do with two.
~ Economic Theory of Railway Location (1887)

To be a designer is to be an agent of change.
~ Barbara Chandler Allen

Designers are the alchemists of the future.
~ Richard Koshalek

Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
~ VISA founder Dee Hock

What quotes have been inspiring you or stimulating new knowledge lately?

An explanation for the Knowledge-Information-Record ecology

I have a hypothesis … a working theory (WARNING: Live knowledge work!) that an analogy from nature could help explain the Knowledge-Information-Record ecology, from a Same-and-Different perspective.

This is a view that is not about a hierarchy, where you attempt to resolve questions like: Is Information a subset of Knowledge? Or is Knowledge a subset of Information? This is a different and maybe fresh perspective.

If you are reading this and need to answer the question now about ‘Why would I care about these differences?‘ then jump down to the section entitled “How the distinction might be useful“. If you are still figuring out the ‘What’ it is that you might care about, then keep reading.

Starting with physics

In nature, H₂0 is a substance that can exist in different forms or phases: Gas, Liquid and Solid. Or as we more commonly say: Steam, Water, and Ice.  There are processes that transition such substances between these phases, e.g. freezing and condensation.

Here is a perspective that recognises Related yet Separate entities: Related = Water; Separate = Solid, Liquid, Gas.

How might this be applied to Knowledge-Information-Record?  How about:
Solid = Records/Archives – as something ‘tangible’ that can be touched/seen; is preserved
Liquid = Information – as something still ‘tangible’ that can be seen; is an input or output of process
(A tangential thought: Droplets = Data – the small bits that come together to make Information)
Gas  = Knowledge – as something less tangible; not seen directly; inferred by its effect on things; very fuzzy boundaries; more problematic to contain and capture

Does that resonate with you?

Changing Form

Science gives us six phase transitions that happen to the Forms of Solid, Liquid and Gas.

              sublimation                             deposition
SOLID  ============>  GAS    ==============> SOLID

              melting                                    freezing
SOLID  ============>  LIQUID  =============>  SOLID

            condensation                          vapourisation
GAS  =============>   LIQUID  =============> GAS

Cognitive equivalents for these phase transitions might be:
Sublimation = reading, thinking and memorising about the content of a record
Deposition = reflecting and working out loud to elicit inner thoughts and record them directly as something concrete and immutable
Melting =  reading and talking about the content of a record
Freezing = talking and writing with others to make the content of a record
Condensation = speaking, showing, writing about your knowledge to make it transportable outside of you
Vapourisation = listening, learning, doing, observing as you take in the knowledge of others and what is around you to ‘store’ it inside you
NB: I didn’t specify ‘inside you’ as your head or mind. Some of your knowledge may be residing in other parts of your body! And that’s a whole other conversation for another day.

There’s an interesting relationship to explore here in comparing these phase transitions with Nonaka & Takeuchi’s SECI model (1995).  For the uninitiated, SECI stands for Socialisation – sharing tacit knowledge tacitly through shared experience or in face-to-face communication utilising practical examples; Externalisation – converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge that is in forms that others can read/listen/watch and interpret for themselves; Combination – combining explicit knowledge with other explicit knowledge to create new forms and concepts that can be analysed and organised anew; and Internalisation – understanding and taking in explicit knowledge so that it becomes an individual’s own internal and tacit knowledge.

I leave it to you to explore and make up your own mind about such a relationship.

Defining Form

Another useful construct about each of the phases has to do with shape and volume:  A Solid has a definite shape and volume. A Liquid has a definite volume but it takes the shape of a container in which is resides. A Gas expands freely filling whatever space is available regardless of the quantity.

A Record is fixed; it has a definite form and volume because it captures the cognitive substance to be immutable, a static preservation at a moment in time.  Information is more fluid it has a definite volume but can change shape based on context and utility. Knowledge is amorphous it definitely exists but is hard to see or touch as something discrete or distinct from its surroundings.

How the distinction might be useful

Making such a distinction between Knowledge, Information and Records, and thus Knowledge Management, Information Management and Records Management, might provide useful clarification about differing expertise, differing and related problem spaces and thus fit-for-purpose solutions.

When you think of the different forms of water, it’s relatively easy to think of different roles for attending to each form, e.g. a Gas Engineer compared to a Water Engineer. Also easy to consider the use of different methods, technology and containers for storing gas (or steam) compared to water/liquid and ice (or frozen stuff).

I don’t have the answers for how you might think about the role of a Knowledge Manager compared to a Records Manager, or an Information Manager.  By sharing this concept, I simply intend to catalyse a fresh and potentially useful conversation.

Where will you take this knowledge?

Reference

Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Helen Palmer is Founder of RHX Group, a boutique agency that partners with people who want to make change in how they work with information and knowledge.  She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do.

Getting help with knowledge creation

I am frequently asked for (or I seek) feedback on created knowledge with friends and colleagues. Thinking more about the Knowledge Creation phases of Develop Knowledge and Produce Knowledge described in recent blogs, what kind of contribution is sought and needed?

Scenario 1:  CV writing

My friend Mary needed to update her CV. She knew it didn’t contain the words, content or structure that she thought it should have to be effective and get her a new job. She was stuck on what changes to make. She asked me to look at her CV and suggest changes to the document.

Was my contribution sought in Develop or Produce Knowledge phase?

Answer: Produce Knowledge phase.

The help I believe she really needed was in the Develop Knowledge phase. She didn’t know what she wanted to say about herself; forget what words we’d use on the page! It was not the best use of our time or efforts to sit with the MS Word document and edit it.

She is, of course, the source of much of the knowledge (history of her work experience, her description of her skill, and her aspirations for the future, etc.) that could be communicated through the CV but it was raw knowledge, half-baked and forming. She was having trouble getting it out of her head and making sense of it before we could shape it into words that could be used to help her get a new job. Words that might make it into the CV, but also to her LinkedIn profile; what she would say in a cover letter; or at the interview; or in general conversation with people about the work she was seeking.

Scenario 2: Proposal development

Charles was a post-grad student who wanted to become a consultant. I was his business mentor and we had started a journey because he had a good idea for a strategy piece of work for potential clients. I was going to help him find his first client to get himself work experience. He had drafted a Business Proposal for a piece of work with a potential client and asked for my feedback to finalise it.

Was my contribution sought in Develop or Produce Knowledge phase?

Answer: Produce Knowledge phase.

The help I believe he really needed was in the Develop Knowledge Phase. Never having been a consultant before, he had been struggling to keep the content of the Strategy he would produce, out of a Proposal to be engaged to produce the Strategy.

He had lots he wanted to say, and he wanted to show he knew lots of useful stuff but it was not relevant to product nor purpose of the Business *Proposal*. The content may be relevant to later activity, perhaps for an analysis or report.

I chose to treat his draft as a Developed document. I didn’t think the content was fundamentally right, so I focused on the ideas for (re)Development and ignored doing any Producing critique.

Scenario 3: Memorandum of Understanding collaboration

I was asked by the CEO to prepare a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between our organisation and an external organisation, as a pre-Joint Venture document. Having never written one like this before, I asked the company lawyer for guidance. He provided a couple of templates, plus an example of a finished one. I took the finished one and deleted text that wasn’t relevant, and inserted rough notes for additional content. This was really rough – and not in legalese which he said he would fix once we got input from the other organisation about what they wanted in the Memo.

I sent the document with a mix of rough and finished text to external organisation, with the intent of being collaborative and simply putting in indicative text to get a collective sense of what the content of the document needed to be. I did this purposefully as I wanted them to have a sense that they were equally contributing to the nature of the content. (Side note: There is an argument that the Lower the Fidelity of a piece of work, the more others will take ownership, plus be prepared to revise and delete aspects rather than simply refine what is there, particularly when deleting is more valid than compromising.)

Was I asking them to contribute in Develop or Produce phases?

Answer: Develop Knowledge phase.

I was seeking feedback on a Developed document. However the external organization gave it to their legal counsel who treated it like Producing phase. They refined all my rough notes into legalese and added their own polished content. While they acted graciously, I sensed judgement that we hadn’t been ‘serious’ in the quality of the content we sent. It was clear we were operating with different intent in the review process. I wondered what kind of quality of collaboration we might have had if we both had a sense of different phases in the knowledge creation process.

The Emerging Role of Synthesiser

As I reflect on these experiences, I see the potential of a role and skill set for people who can bridge the gap between the Develop and Produce phases. Someone who can take half-baked content and shape it into a workable draft. A Synthesiser: A mix of a ghost-writer, investigator, interviewer, critic, editor.

Here’s my wish list of the skills and qualities of a Synthesiser:

• Listening and asking questions
• Reading
• Thinking critically
• Collecting the fragments
• Processing
• Digesting, musing and reflecting
• Validating – with others; against a brief
• Structuring thoughts; writing outlines
• Researching for extra details
• Organising, sorting and ordering
• Connecting and linking
• Presenting in synthesised organised form(s)
• Having, using, and understanding a notation system that differentiates editorial review vs. content review.
• Abducting – thinking about what is possible and may not be naturally indicated by the existing thought provided

In the three scenarios outlined above, the role of a Synthesiser would have helped shape all the pieces of content, such that they could be ready for the Produce phase. A Synthesiser could have bridged the gap between Develop and Produce phases by asking questions to elicit fresh thought, thinking critically, digest and ultimately offering a structured response to elevate the initial piece of work into something better and richer.

Learnings from reflection

When I am asked to review material now, I have a quick scoping conversation to gauge and set expectations about the nature of my contribution. I seek to best serve the person requesting help, so the framework of the two phases of knowledge creation is a useful reference for both to use to reach a mutually satisfying agreement.

 

Helen Palmer is Founder of RHX Group, a boutique agency that partners with people who want to make change in how they work with information and knowledge.  She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do.

Play toy and hobby illustrates knowledge work

My husband has found a new love: nanoblocks™ It started out innocently – a single package to entertain a young guest. A few single packets later, he requested the ‘free build’ multipacks for his birthday. Loving spouse that I am, I acquiesced not aware of his emerging passion. Now there are custom patterns, stacks of boxes of block pieces, a shelf full of completed objects and entering competitions.

Breed of Dogs, custom creations by Robert Heslan

What does this have to do with knowledge work? There’s a great parallel!

Inspiration for knowledge work analogy

There are two broad groups of nanoblockers: Those who get the model packs with a pattern and follow the instructions to create an artefact; and those who come up with their own creations without following a documented pattern, producing a facsimile of something in the world or a unique creation from their imagination.

This is a great analogy for differentiating knowledge workers from people who work with knowledge. Knowledge workers are a special class of workers. They can go beyond following the documented pattern or knowledge of others and create new knowledge.

All workers may produce knowledge artefacts, i.e. a report, a presentation, a completed form, a completed process. However, knowledge workers produce artefacts with new knowledge. They actively grow and cultivate knowledge that becomes the valuable content in the artefacts.  The ‘newness’ may be insights, advice or recommendations, a method or a narrative.

The knowledge work of nanoblocks

Beyond using and crafting nanoblock creations, Husband has also got into ancillary knowledge creation activities: he’s joined a Community of Practice; he’s created new tools to assist his actions; and he’s sharing his new knowledge actively and regularly with others.

His passion spilled over first into making a Facebook page to show off his creations (check it out!): creations where he followed someone else’s pattern, and those he composed himself.  Likeminded people found him, and he found others so he joined with them in an online Community of other nanoblockers. In this community, he found himself actively involved in a robust discussion about the credit and recognition of knowledge work (aka IP). Without knowing him personally, you won’t appreciate how extraordinary that is – he’d be a hermit if he had his way!

To be able to share his knowledge creation work with the community, he found he needed a way to capture the knowledge in his head to mobilise and make it definitive for someone else to apply. First he took photographs of each stage of building an object (layer by layer).

But he found it difficult to show useful orientations for someone else to understand what to do and thus copy the build.  He wanted to present his knowledge in images not text; so people could look at images and copy them rather than read written instructions – which would have been very difficult to compose. So he investigated tools for visual creation, like CAD (computer aided design). He found a LEGO® specific one but not one for nanoblocks. And as nanoblocks have a different connection mechanism – the LEGO one just wouldn’t do. He spent the winter of 2014 painstakingly measuring and creating blocks in CAD to get a set of 33 blocks/images.  As a result he could create the set of pattern instructions in colour and multiple orientations very easily. And then he wrote about this process (including graphics) and shared that knowledge!

(For true knowledge workers, it’s not uncommon to creation new tools and methods to represent or curate the new knowledge being created. There is a double level of activity going on: doing the work, plus reflecting on and improving how to do the work.)

When he shared these pattern instructions with the community – they immediately saw the potential of using the images of individual blocks to develop a database/register of blocks.  In the database, meta-data could be captured for each block and enable a consistent reference to blocks, particularly when people were seeking special blocks to solve a particular build or design problem.

It’s an example of two Knowledge Creation phases

His approach to designing new nanoblock objects follows the Develop and Produce phase that I’ve written about in previous blog posts.

In the Develop Phase … He looked about in world for objects he wanted to copy or represent. He checked if a nanoblock pattern existed – often there wasn’t one suitable. So he chose to come up with his own design.  He would get his set of nanoblock containers out and see what shapes he had to play with. He would gather a likely volume of certain shapes he might need and start building.  Following a highly iterative process he gradually figure out the final size, colour, granularity of shape in detail with the blocks, and working components. Yep, these aren’t static objects; he’d graduated to creations with moving parts, e.g. Melbourne Southern Star Ferris wheel.  (His first pattern was an Eskimo dog – in different variations that became a family of adult and puppy dogs.)

At first knowledge creation was in his head and in the prototype the he produced so the idea could be refined, then tested/valued by others. Next he utilised photography to capture knowledge of the final version and the build stages, evolving quickly to using the CAD patterns … completing the Produce phase.

 The evolution

Now he rarely buys a ‘packet’ for a singular object unless it has a unique block or set of colours he can use to solve a design problem in his own creations. What started out as simply applying someone else’s knowledge, has turned into a knowledge production factory.

Recently the love affair went to a whole new level.  He’s written and published a story about how he got into nanoblocks. A complete stranger asked him to do this, and he agreed.  This from the man who says it’s a lot of work to put a few sentences into my birthday cards!

He’s entered some of his creations into competitions sponsored by the nanoblock toy production company. A very astute business decision by them to tap into the cognitive surplus of the nanoblock hobby world and get product ideas for low cost.

I wonder if there is such a thing as a nanoblock widow? At least I got great content to write this blog post. 😉

 

Helen Palmer is Founder of RHX Group, a boutique agency that partners with people who want to make change in how they work with information and knowledge.  She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do.

12 things every knowledge worker should know how to do

As a knowledge worker you are a site of production. You are ‘plant and machinery’. You are a knowledge ‘engine’. Your capability and capacity for knowledge work is a function of the condition of YOU and the conditions you create for yourself. What should you know how to do to be the best functioning knowledge engine?

Here’s a list of twelve things.

Manage self

1. Know your own learning style/preferences (try Felder and Silverman’s Index of Learning Styles); your personal knowledge management style (try Six Cs of Personal Knowledge Management by Straits Knowledge).
2. Know your strengths and what to do to play to these (try Clifton Strengths Finder).
3. Use personal resources like Time, Attention, Energy and Relationships effectively (try Activity Time Budget, Honest Digital Calendar, Attention Filter).

Manage information

4. Title documents meaningfully – follow a naming convention that makes good sense. Use Properties and meta-data whenever you can to enrich the information, and enable quick easy discovery.
5. Setup, maintain and use an information organisation system; both for a collection of items, and with the structure within a single item. (i.e. Headings/Sections, Table of Contents, Cross Referencing, etc.).
6. Curate information; manage a collection of useful resources for self and/or others.

Develop knowledge

7. Use reflective practice including after-action reviews, to Think about what you’ve done and what could be done and what you are going to do.
8. Set an intention and test hypothesis; experiment to gain insights. Sometimes you need to Act to discover useful Thoughts.
9. Summarise and distil a set of knowledge (try Notebooking or Mindmapping).
10. Recognise knowledge creation and distribution opportunities and leverage them.

Produce knowledge

11. Create produced knowledge to address different learning styles, with communication medium appropriate for the audience.
12. Package knowledge creatively for production/publication (e.g. document, presentation, slides, session outline).

Learn more about Develop knowledge and Produce knowledge phases in knowledge creation.

If you can do all these, you have the foundations for being knowledge-savvy.

 

Helen Palmer is Founder of RHX Group, a boutique agency that partners with people who want to make change in how they work with information and knowledge.  She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do.

 

Two knowledge creation phases: Develop knowledge & Produce knowledge (Part 2)

In Part 1 of a two-part blog, I explained two separate but related phases in Knowledge Creation: Develop, where raw ideas are created as malleable knowledge elements; and Produce, where the knowledge is refined into polished deliverables to be valued and used by others.  In this blog, I go deeper into what my personal knowledge creation practice looks like in these two phases.

Develop Phase – what happens!

I observe and note things that capture my attention. I read or listen to inspired or intelligent people and think about what they are sharing. I talk with others in stimulating conversation. I sit with pen and paper and write what comes to me – a stream of consciousness. I reflect, and mix and merge form new thoughts and ideas. In this phase, much of my knowledge creation work is internal within me.  And while some of the thought is encoded in my notes, the bulk of the knowledge is not yet available or accessible by others. It is knowledge in tacit and implicit forms. Only when I start to encode my thoughts into symbols, or form them into concepts or models, can they can be tentatively explored in interaction with others.

Time spent in the Develop phase can be long – and that’s okay. It’s about quality, not speed. I like for my ideas to marinate and be iteratively explored. Albert Einstein had a analogous view about proportions of time in problem-solving: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

Practices I follow in the Develop phase :

• Be as free-form and raw as possible when documenting the emerging knowledge. Use rough forms to capture ideas: sticky notes; phrases (not sentences); and bullet points (not prose).
• Outline ideas to frame emerging thoughts. If a template artefact is involved, I extract the outline decoupling it from its format and prescribed order. (Once knowledge is structured in a working outline, it can be more readily considered for various production formats.)
• Use modular or elemental form. Having ‘parts’ allows reorganising and trying different connections and couplings. (It’s like what my aunt does when she’s quilting. She prepares her fabrics and squares so she can play with them to explore possible quilts products, all without having to stitch it together.) Such flexibility means I can test combinations for different situations or formats.  And with the non-diminishing characteristic of knowledge, from one batch of developed content, multiple products are possible!
• Keep the content as raw as possible. The more finished the content is, the more difficult it is to cull or reorganised. It’s an emotional barrier rather than a functional barrier because of the perceived loss of effort invested in word smithing, polishing and refining. This refinement also tends to ‘fix’ the content making it harder to be repurposed or re-used. I remind myself I have permission in the Develop phase to stay loose, and be messy!
• Seek old products (my own or others) to harvest for knowledge I can repurpose or reuse. I have to resist the temptation to Save As on finished products that I am re-purposing – I might unintentionally lock myself into a Production format too early or that is wrong fit.
• Use non-production tools like MS OneNote, sticky notes and scrap recycled paper (it’s not clean and fresh on purpose) and pens/pencils. Learn more about how I use MS OneNote.  (I’ve got a colleague who’s working on a new tool for collaborative knowledge creation: TribalMind – it’s in beta so why not play with it and share your thoughts with the creator.)
• Give myself permission to keep the knowledge close and not release it widely, if that’s what I feel comfortable with. Sometimes I have been accused of not sharing, of playing power games or being a perfectionist. I’m believe that knowledge in the Develop phase sometimes simply isn’t ready to be shared, and may not be sharable because it’s not yet in forms or symbols that others can access or read.
• Set good expectations with collaborators about the kinds of input or ‘feedback’ that are acceptable in Develop phase (compared to Produce phase). Censorship or editorial judgement is not appropriate for Develop phase content. Appropriate treatment is critical thinking: Is this a good idea? Is there a better idea than what I’ve got? What knowledge is missing?

A challenge of the Develop phase is making some of the knowledge Mobile (across space and time) so others can collaborate. Mobile forms of knowledge start to take on the forms of particular genre, e.g. a blog, a report, a document. Then the knowledge starts to look like a Product or the thing that would come from the Produce phase. And things that look Product-like, attract Produce-like behaviour, e.g. a critique or proof reading.

Produce Phase – what happens!

In the Produce phase, I firm up the Developed thoughts for the purpose of making it of value to others. I turn words and images into finished product with an audience in mind and a defined purpose or context. These constraints filter which parts of raw and half-baked material will make it into a product that can exist apart from me. It becomes knowledge in an explicit form that can be readily accessed and used by others.

The time required to move through the Produce phase depends on the type and quantity of products – more than one product is possible for different audiences and purposes. Arguably, if the Develop phase was thorough, then Production can be quick. The Produce phase is about packaging the knowledge, and the quality of the package depends on the quality of its original content.

Practices I follow in Produce phase:

• Use models about communication and learning styles to shape the nature and format of the finished product.
• Get creative about the way I might package the knowledge. Check out some example’s to stimulate your thinking.
• Use templates to quickly shift raw material to publication ready in the desired format. (For a workshop, I’d use a session plan.)
• Test the draft product with the intended audience and their intended use/context. Use their critique to refine to a polished product.
• Use production-specific tools and leverage their production-specific features. For example, word processer like MS Word and Styles, Table of Contents and Cross-referencing features; and Adobe Acrobat PDF creator which preserves hyperlinks and Table of Content/Outline features.
• Engage a collaborator who writes in Plain English to rewrite raw content with a fresh perspective and a talent for simplification.

There are many examples of my Produced knowledge you can access and share, that were created to be of value for knowledge workers:

1. A tool to use in your day-to-day work: Making and applying an Activity-Time budget

This blog post is one Product that has come from creating this particular knowledge. There is also a Module in a Learning Programme and a stand-alone Workshop. And that knowledge creation is nested in a broader knowledge creation activity on the concept of ‘Practices for Effective and Productive Knowledge Workers’.

2. A concept to reset your mental paradigm about your and work: Self unLimited – A vocational adventure for the 21st century

This is a Product that has come from creating the ‘Self unLimited’ body of knowledge. [As at 2017  a Learning Program and a book have emerged. The journey over past five years has involved contexts that triggered thoughts about gaps or opportunities to redress with new developing content.]

Rubber Hits the Road

This blog you are reading now was written in two phases. The Develop phase started two years ago! I intentionally wrote some rough notes to start to capture and organise my thoughts. Then I shared the concept in conversation with different people. And as new insights or refined concepts occurred to me, I added to those notes. From time to time, I would re-read the notes. Then months passed as I waited to see if the tentative knowledge felt right, or a fresh realisation had emerged.

The Produce phase for this blog started two months ago and involved me and one other. In moving to Produce phase, I created headings and initially organised the content into a logical flow, dumping some parts altogether, and putting some parts aside for another blog (and its own Develop phase). Then I sent it to my friend who turned rough blocks of text into meaningful prose – simplifying meandering sentences and refining bullet points and phrases into polished succinct text as fit a ‘blog’ format. This friend was a ‘Synthesiser’ helping me with the Develop-phase-to-Produce-phase transition.  With a really excellent draft, I then played my final part as the author of the concept, to fine-tuning nuance and flow to arrive at a blog ready to publish.  And this is what you are now reading.

Phew! Knowledge creation work is hard work.

 

Helen Palmer is Principal Consultant at RHX Group. She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do. With her colleagues at RHX Group, Helen helps teams get best value from their people and knowledge.

Two knowledge creation phases: Develop knowledge & Produce knowledge (Part 1)

In Knowledge Management, there are various lifecycles naming different stages in managing knowledge, like:
create > represent > share > utilise;
create > clarify > classify > communicate;
conceptualize > create > apply; and
create > share > retain.

See the common word? Create!

I’ve observed two different yet related phases within Knowledge Creation: I call them Develop and Produce. Appreciating the difference can help you collaborate more effectively with others; set more appropriate expectations with your clients or collaborators; and choose the best context and tools for doing knowledge creation work.

Part 1 of this two-part blog explains the idea of Develop and Produce knowledge phases. Part 2 shares practical examples of what I do and use in each of the two phases.

Characteristics of Two Knowledge Creation Phases

In Develop phase, the intent is to discover emergent ideas; formulate questions; and explore possibilities. In this phase, the knowledge creator is often internalising multiple sources of knowledge, then ‘gestating’ new knowledge. It can be difficult and may be unreasonable to have emotional distance and objectivity as the creator of knowledge during this phase.

In Produce phase, the intent is to refine and polish the knowledge to produce an output that can be used or experienced by others. In this phase, the knowledge creator externalises what they know (or are knowing), and applies contextual criteria to shape the knowledge into a product that fits a purpose and intended audience.

Here’s a table to compare and contrast the characteristics of the two phases.

Develop Phase	Produce Phase
Partial form/unformed Hunches Half baked’ Questions Unknown containers Divergent Creates value only for yourself or the internal team Context agnostic Discovery for serendipity Emergent form and function Undefined focus Exploring Rough Ideation	Codified Conclusions Condensed, Crystallised Answers Constrained to container Convergent Creates value for others (external) Contextual Expression for accessibility Defined form and function Focused for an audience and purpose Executing Polished Prototyping > Publishing

Develop Phase: Content without the pressure of form or style

In the Develop phase, it’s essential not to constrain knowledge creation activity by producing a draft of a final product. It’s best to decouple the emerging content from any potential style or form. Let the idea surface. Formatting comes later when making choices for the audience and the value you want them to gain.

In Steve Johnson’s video “Where good ideas come from“, he proposes that ideas are developed from slow hunches that take time to evolve and incubate, possibly even remaining dormant for several years. A great description of the Develop phase! Smaller hunches collide with other ideas and they potentially become breakthroughs. When this connectivity occurs, it offers new ways to involve other people who may have a ‘missing piece’ that will build or improve the original idea.

In the Develop phase, you might switch back and forth from a macro to micro perspective of the content. This allows for new ideas to emerge. You revisit where and how things connect together. You may find new ways to frame or connect things — without the pressure to sacrifice anything.  It’s an incubation, experimental period.  Anything goes!

Develop-phase content looks like scribbles, rough notes, good notes, drawings, collection of facts, bookmarked references or books, half-written paragraphs, outlines, disparate bullet points or lists. In Develop phase you are most likely to start with a blank page.

Produce Phase: Focus on generating value

In the Produce phase, the goal, as Seth Godin would put it, is “to ship”. Knowledge leaving the Develop phase can go out into the world to be used. This is the point where the knowledge acquires value. Value such as revenue; building or enhancing reputation; or enabling others to apply it in their context.

Produce-phase content looks like a blog, a book, a video, a workshop or course, a session plan for the workshop or course, a report, a video, a podcast, a presentation, a slide deck for a presentation.

If you start with a template or form, then you are already moving into the Produce phase; the context will be shaping the content. If you give something a name or title by which it is to be known, you are on the boundary or over the line into Produce phase. That’s analogous to giving a baby a name once it’s born or about to be born. (During the gestation of a baby, i.e. develop-phase, humans don’t tend to assign a name!)

The Produce phase transforms fuzzy knowledge into something is relevant to a person, purpose, place, or context. The context shapes the developed content.  As a produced piece of content, its now possible for the knowledge to be Mobile and Immutable (as John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid describe in their book “The Social Life of Information“, pp. 197-205).  Mobile because it’s now in a form that can stand apart from the knower, and circulate across people, time and space. Immutable because it’s been fixed into a form that can be relied upon to be consistent and re-usable.

Valuing the Develop Phase

Knowledge creation starts with the Develop phase. Often this is internal and invisible to others. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t get sufficient attention, or isn’t treated as having value in its own right. Content in the Develop phase may appear unordered, incomplete, nonsensical and tentative; and thus socially risky to show or involve others who may expect something more.

Once knowledge moves into the Produce phase, it’s much more difficult (and unlikely) to return to the Develop phase. Knowledge that becomes a Product tends to be resistant to being abandoned or destroyed, in favour of coming up with something fresh and better.

What does knowledge creation with the two phases look like?

The two phases of the knowledge creation activity are illustrated in the blog post, “Let others know – generating goodwill for your contacts“.

Iteration through phases

Knowledge creation may iterate through a series of Develop and Produce phases.

I wrote the blog post “Let others know – generating goodwill for your contacts” to test (and make visible) the theory. It was a Minimal Viable Product (MVP); a first release of the creation of ‘Develop-Produce Knowledge Phases’ knowledge during one of the iterations. And I expect more iterations as I find new Product opportunities (potential users with a need), or think of new or modified ideas to influence the raw in-development content.
Well, that’s the concept! Read Part 2 to see how I apply this.

 

Helen Palmer is Principal Consultant at RHX Group. She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do. With her colleagues at RHX Group, Helen helps teams get best value from their people and knowledge.

Exposing the design behind a new-style resume

Late in 2013, guest author to this blog Christoph Hewlett shared his thoughts on using a knowledge product I created: a new style resume.

In response to requests for insights about the WHAT and WHY of the resume design, I provide the following details.

The basic design

Resume is four pages; no more, no less.
Each page has specific content:
Page 1 – Contact details, Description, List of Key Skills or capabilities
Page 2 – Portfolio: List of selected items of work experience
Page 3 – Testimonials: Excerpts of recommendations that relate to the Portfolio items
Page 4 – Qualifications: list of selected items; Work history: Job Title, Organisation, Dates for all your working life

The order of the content

There is a logic in why the content is laid out in a particular order.

Page 1 is the page likely to get the most attention from your reader. Therefore it needs the most important information: how to get in contact with you; what to remember about you (you description should be memorable!); and the set of capabilities that make you useful and desirable.

Page 2 is a tailored list of things you have done, that show what you are capable of and which show you in your best light. This content differs than normal work history in a number of ways:
* You can include small items, e.g. An interesting blog post you wrote; a powerful introduction you facilitated; as well as large items, e.g. A project you managed.
* You can include old items, i.e. something you did 20 years ago, as well as recent items. Traditional resumes tend to drop off content that is not recent, i.e. last 5 years. This hides the fact that you have more experience that could be relevant or transferable than what you’ve done in the past 5 years.
* You can include extracurricular items that doesn’t have any place to go in the traditional resume because they aren’t related to a job, e.g. Social media activity; leadership in a professional association; or volunteer role.
* You can be specific and concrete, and mix activity with achievement or purpose – thus give more interesting and relevant information:
Compare “Managed large projects” with “Managed the ABC Project with $500K budget and team of 20 people, delivering on time and within budget.”
Compare “Made a blog” with “Designed, built and maintained professional blog with insights and inspiration for people  leading knowledge workers or doing knowledge work (https://rhxthinking.wordpress.com)”

Page 3 is content that provides ‘social proof’ about your experience and talents.
Some of the good things  said about you in the past, are still useful to your story even when you’ve lost contact with the person or they are not available to be a verbal referee.

Don’t leave your reader waiting to talk to referees to learn what others think about you! Provide this knowledge as soon as you can for the most positive effect.

Page 4 is the facts that need to be evident and can be checked out if necessary. This is typically not the content that is going to sway somebody towards favourably considering you – however, it’s due diligence that this information is available. The work history is downgraded content – this means presenting information in an order, where what you are capable of, is more important than the job titles you have held in organisations.

Content for the pages

A. Reuse content you have
For this new style of resume, you can reuse content from your traditional resume for Pages 1 and 4.

For Page 1 content, make sure you include ways to contact you in writing and in voice. If you have quality online profiles (e.g. LinkedIn), you could include a hyperlink.

Consider including a quality photograph.

Have a description that is more akin to a bio (though write it in first-person) and includes a sense of where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re going.  For good advice, see article ‘Does your resume tell your story?’

Be memorable; be interesting.

For Page 4 content, include Qualifications or Certifications rather than listing courses you have been on. If you wish to promote the fact that you are continuing to learn – then add that content under the Skills section or a relevant item or two in the Portfolio section.

Keep the list relevant to the audience, so be prepared to adjust this content each time you use the resume. For example, your First Aid Certification is probably not so relevant if you are applying for a Leadership role.

B. Gather and Create content you need
For this new style of resume, you probably don’t have content ready to include on Page 2 and Page 3.

For Page 2 content look back over your work life; use your old resume as a prompter and compose a list (a looong list!) of work experience items. For examples of items, see a copy of one of my resumes (MS Word DOC).

Organise the items under headings that relate directly to the audience of your resume. Where your audience is a recruitment panel or HR personnel filtering applications in response to a job advert, use the headings from the Position Description.

Include hyperlinks to online examples, or reference material relating to the items.

I keep my lists of content on pages within a MS One Note notebook, in the right typeface and font size for me to simply cut-n-paste the items into the resume when it is being constructed. Here’s a screenshot of a page in the context of a notebook.

For Page 3 content you’ve got old content to reuse, and new content to get:
a) Look through old letters of Reference and review Recommendations that have been posted online; extract short excerpts that are relevant to reuse.  Don’t be afraid to cull words – though be sure to use conventions that show if you have edited someone else’s quote.

b) Ask people for Recommendations. Ask people from your past to provide relevant content. When you are finishing up a job or project, ask people to compose you a Recommendation.

To get better quality recommendations, read this blog post.

Whether it’s old or new content, all recommendations should support what you have chosen to include in the Portfolio section on page 2.

Supplementing the resume

Your resume is a marketing document for a target audience. It isn’t a record of all the details of your work history – keep that worthy information somewhere else. I use a MS OneNote notebook to store items for the Portfolio page and Testimonial page, as well as results from assessments I’ve done, bios I’ve written for myself, and reflections about work I’ve done. The image above gives you a taste of my collection.

Just one resume?

Above is the advice for a single resume. It is entirely possible that you have a suite of resumes, tailored to a different theme or focus.  I have 6 basic resumes: 5 follow the format above for the themes of Change Management, Enterprise Business Analysis, Learning & Development, Leadership, Information Management. The sixth resume is an Academic resume and conforms to expectations of the structure and content for Academia.

For each resume theme, I change the following:
The Description on Page 1
The order of the Skills on Page 1 (put the most relevant first)
The Portfolio headings and items on Page 2
The Testimonials on Page 3

My resumes get used as an Appendix in a Tender, as an Introduction to an Agent, and as an Application for a Vacant Position. For each of these situations I change the content to best address the anticipated needs of the audience.

 

If you are inspired to use this new design, let me know how it goes. Please share with me any ideas you have to extend and enhance the design.

 

Helen Palmer is Principal Consultant at RHX Group. She thinks critically about knowledge work, and how to ensure knowledge isn’t wasted. She revels in making small changes that disrupt the way people think and what they do.  With her colleagues at RHX Group, Helen helps teams make better use of their people and knowledge.