Courtney Mohr's Radio Weblog

Notes and commentary on Active Words presentation

Guest speaker: Burton (Buzz) Bruggeman buzz@activewords.com

§ Active Words – enables you to create macros on your computer so that it understands your shortcut commands. Ex: ‘xl’ will open excel. BOR inserts bill of rights into text.

§ Created eight main functions for most PC users.

§ Active Words is a “front end knowledge management tool.”

§ Sounds like a lot of customized short-cuts. Is it new knowledge? Or is it just a time saving device? Return on investment calculated by multiplying time saved by cost of user’s time. Potential for significant time (and $) savings. My opinion: I think it depends on what specific activities you do daily. More applicable for some types of jobs than others. Attorneys, maybe, since it requires significant document creation. I think this is a cool technology that I wouldn’t be willing to pay that much for. It might take me longer to memorize all the shortcuts than to just go through the keystrokes.

§ McGee students can get active words software for free.

§ Tough to catch on b/c:

o People who have it want to keep the competitive advantage

o Users don’t want to be “tech support” for new users who “don’t get it”

o Many execs don’t get the importance of the savings. They see implementation problems.

§ Outlook agent – allows user to sync with all outlook users. (All users? Or just users you have put in there? I think just your own contacts.) Calls up useful information about these people. Address, phone, title, kids names, etc. Saves the number of key strokes it requires to open outlook and search for the person on your own. My opinion: This doesn’t seem like a huge time savings to me. A matter of seconds. Most people have their outlook open all the time anyway.

§ It’s hard for me to buy into this as a knowledge management tool. Maybe a ‘personal knowledge management’ tool if you stretch the definition to mean easy access to stuff you created before and use all the time. Like a good filing system.

§ What’s in it for me? (WIIFM) If managing knowledge makes you more productive, better team member, etc. – that’s what is in it for you.

§ Example: BOR = 3,000+ characters. My opinion: Buzz calculates his time savings based on this. But can’t you just use copy and paste (ctrl c, ctrl v)? That’s 2 key strokes. Or at most 5-7 if you need to open a file. Sorry to sound so skeptical. I guess I would have to use it for a while to be convinced.

§ You can build all the shortcuts you want. “have it your way” Highly customizable. Some prescripted shortcuts for common functions. Many for Outlook. “Tool for smart people to unleash their imagination.”

§ Scripting – allows you to create shortcuts that will create an e-mail with template text. It will open a new message, tab down, and insert the appropriate text.

§ Clichés – abound because they are true. “Hitting head against the wall…” Kind of like navigating the MS maze. Active Words lets you avoid the maze.

§ Three most important advances in technology today:

o Weblogs

o WiFi

o Webservers
All 3 are about managing knowledge.

§ KM vs. km:

o KM – institutional knowledge management

o km – the individual knowledge worker

My notes and thoughts from 6/4 class:

Prof. McGee Lecture:

§ Evolution of knowledge management in organizations:

§ KM in craft organizations is tacit

§ Industrial orgs thrive on explicit knowledge

o Perceive, frame, design, then build, operate, improve cycle

o A few brains and lots of hands

§ Knowledge orgs must design for knowledge explicitly

o Perceive, frame, then design, build, operate, and improve cycle

o All brains required

o The business problems have changed

§ Aside: Orgs need to hire smarter and smarter people. Managers get tripped up b/c they are afraid to hire people who will challenge them.

§ Generic process for knowledge management

o Iterative and cyclical

o Impossible to map a specific process b/c knowledge work changes

o Quality before quantity

o Improve at the periphery and outside the process. What does this mean? Help people learn to frame the problems. Develop guidelines for estimations. Create sources of reliable information. Etc.

o This makes a lot of sense to me. This is what went wrong at Towers Perrin. They tried to get KM down to a science and then forgot that they are knowledge workers who need to take the template and use it as a tool to do their job. Finding the right template is not the job.

o This is exactly what people at D&T feared and resisted about the ROKnet (return of knowledge network). Many of the managers feared that KM would give people and excuse to get lazy about solving client problems. People would joke about the day in the future where we could push the magic button and solve the client problems. There was such a buzz around KM that most people did not understand that it is used as a tool to help knowledge workers to their jobs better, not a tool that does their jobs for them.

Random Star Wars Post

This post is not KM related and probably violates some kind of unwritten blogging rule, but did anyone see the new Star Wars movie? I saw it over the weekend and thought it rocked. The story and the special effects. If you haven't seen it and you are into that kind of stuff, I recommend it.

Back to the blogging rules...are there any? How many people have I irritated by posting a random thought? You can be honest. I might learn something. -CTM

KM products for teachers/schools:

Laura, Jed, & Mark - Here is the list of vendors that we discussed at our meeting. This may be interesting for other teams as well.

www.lessonlab.com (can sign up for e-mail newsletter)

www.teachscape.com (SD team - use net ID and password from Jed's e-mail)

www.teachfirst.com

www.ecollege.com

www.blackboard.com (can sign up for e-mail newsletter)

ProAct - (have not yet located the appropriate website. Does anyone know about this technology as it relates to education?)

Do any of our other classmates know about KM tools designed for educators?

KM Articles

Hey classmates - While researching for our paper, I found some articles that might be useful for your projects as well. I have posted them on my weblog under "Stories". Check them out and feel free to use them for background research. - CTM

In class, Jim talked about developing a new "picture" around the idea of knowledge management. Here's one I found in a recent article by Christopher Wainwright. See what you think. -CTM

Proquest link

If you could co-chair an eLearning and Knowledge Management club at a leading business school, what would you want to do with the experience? Woud you promote eL and KM issues with guest speakers and panel discussions on campus? Would you try to link up with other MBA programs? Would you organize off-campus visits to corporations to see eL and KM in action? Send me your ideas! -JBT [Jeb Trowbridge's Radio Weblog]

Great question Jeb-

If I were co-chair for an e-learning and knowledge management club at "a leading business school" I would...
-Sponsor guest speakers and panel discussions on the timely topics
-Jointly sponsor weblogging (or another knowledge sharing tool) between two leading schools for students to share ideas and experiences across institutional boundaries
-Work with other popular clubs to sponsor speakers/panels (example: knowledge management issues in consulting... or the financial services industry... or product management)
-Provide students an opportunity to work with faculty to solve a real knowledge management issue in the academic environment. Could be independent study or a competition with a cool prize.

--CTM

Operationalizing Knowledge Management - What happens when incentives conflict?

In our last class we managed to hit Professor McGee's hot button about controlling information when too much is being shared - but what about the reverse situation? Specifically, I worked for a consulting firm that built a very functional tool for knowledge sharing, but had a hard time convincing people to put anything of value out there for others to see (or "steal" as was the fear). In professional services, your value is often defined by what you know and how many people come to you for your expertise. Given this "knowledge is power" mindset, how do you get people excited about revealing their insights and knowledge in the public domain? Has anyone else experienced similar conflicts? Are there success stories out there to give us hope?

A little about me...

I'm currently a second year in the full time program. Prior to Kellogg, I worked as a consultant at Deloitte & Touche in the Human Capital practice. Depending on the day and the economic climate, that could mean any number of things. Early on it was benefits and compensation with prioirty on cost containment. In the last few years, as the economy picked up, our work focused more on large scale change initiatives, recruiting, retention, communications and incentives. I plan on returning to D&T after graduation, but my exact area of focus is yet to be determined. Add in the current uncertainty around consulting vs. audit vs. special services - and your guess is as good as mine.

Last summer I worked at Tribune Companies in their Ventures group. I really loved the company and had a great summer, but I discovered that staring at financial statements for 8+ hours a day didn't really do it for me. So it is back to the "people issues" for me.