Knowledge Management Systems
• Blog use
- Who’s who?
- What can make it easier?
• RSS readers good or bad?
• KMS System Evaluation
• The Future of Work
Blogging for KMS
• Everyone understanding more about
blogging?
• Does it seem worthwhile?
- Is it easier to share?
- What would make it even easier?
• Are there elements of the interface that don’t
make sense?
• What topics & categories are the most
interesting?
RSS Readers
• What is the best design?
- Private or Shared?
- Client or Server?
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Functions
Interfaces
Individual Users
Collaboration?
What about other Enterprises?
• The “blogosphere” can be thought of as an
enterprise
• In some cases, a group of bloggers might
have more in common that a group of coworkers
- Is socializing work?
- Is work socializing?
KMS System Evaluation
• Overview of the type of application
- What are it’s goals?
- Who does is help? When?
• History of the type of application
- Improvement over time
- How it is used
• Use the application (if possible)
• Screenshots of the application
• Case studies of the KMS in use
The Future of Work
• Are the reduced costs of IT “taking us across
a threshold into a place where dramatically
more decentralized ways of organizing work
become at once possible and desirable”.
• A new world, where organizations have no
center (at all?)
• How to shape the future of work, not predict it
Workd & Democracy
• Is Malone really talking about democracy at
work?
- Can you run an organization by vote?
- Profit vs. non-profit
• Where should control come from?
- Who should wield it?
- Where is the responsibility?
• “New information technologies make this
revolution possible.”
- Connected by technology, not physically
- Make decisions at new scale
Is revolution a good thing?
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Outsourcing
Ferocious competition
Venture capital optimism
New kinds of accountability
Measurement of productivity
Economics vs. Technology
Too much freedom in decision making
- Can you have too many smart people?
- How much competing free thought is enough?
The Decentralization Continuum
Implications
• Why is all this happening?
• Decisions can be made anywhere, not bound
by (most) physical rules
• The Costs of Communication
- Lower now, even lower next
• Does cheap communication always help?
- Scale
- Rapid decision making
• New kinds of management
• New kinds of knowledge?
• Changes in economies, orgs & cultures
Societies through History
Businesses in the 20th Century
Hierarchies
• What’s good & bad about them?
• What businesses have shown us the bad &
good of loose hierarchies?
- Software
- Wikipedia
• AES Example
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New & low-level employee responsibility
Careful hiring practices (good fit)
Ask for forgiveness, not permission
Managers moderate
• Coordination, conflicts, overloading
Democracy
• Is the future of work all about political
theories?
• Cooperatives
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Employee owners: decisions move up
Voting, per person: “Approval Voting”
Representatives, lobbying, politics
Motivation should be key… motivation
• Compensation
• Money
• Work
• Stockholders
Markets
• What is a knowledge market?
• What would it look like?
- at its best?
- At its worst?
• Should we have market-driven everything?
- Free-lancing
- Bids for all
• Knowledge Markets
- Pricing, availability, futures
- Recognizing value: now & over time
• Guilds
• Internal Markets
Lessons about Markets
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Incentives & Trust
Decision Making
Communication needs
Standards & conventions
Culture
Success as an influence
The myths of success
The fear of failure
Decentralizing
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Why shouldn’t you decentralize?
Who makes the decisions?
Does choice = quality?
Who leads in the sharing?
- Culture
- Coercion?
• Decentralize when motivation & creativity of people is
critical, but…
- Resolving conflicts
- Focus on details
- Specialized knowledge
• The centralizers have to choose to decentralize
Coordination
• Is coordination a different kind of control?
• Issues in Coordination:
- Skills & capabilities
- Incentives (short & long term)
- Social networks
• Who makes the goals?
• What are the standards & cultural norms?
- How do they develop?
• A paradox?
- “Rigid standards in the right part of the system can
enable much more flexibility and decentralization
in other parts of the system.”
Cultivation
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Let people choose projects
Grow from within
Harness talents & tendencies
Allow for change
- Cross-fertilization
- Improvisation
• Leading vs. Dictating
• Choices vs. chaos
Centering Business
• In a freelance world, you can choose
• What are the impacts of culture?
• What about Values?
- Freedom, creativity & fulfillment
- Money
• Why can't we talk about failures in
communication and decentralization?
• How do you measure success by voting?
• What are the values implicit in transparency?
• Are certain kinds of businesses a fit for
decentralization?
Knowledge Management Systems
• Blog use
- Who’s who?
- What can make it easier?
• RSS readers good or bad?
• KMS System Evaluation
Blogging for KMS
• Everyone understanding more about
blogging?
• Does it seem worthwhile?
- Is it easier to share?
- What would make it even easier?
• Are there elements of the interface that don’t
make sense?
• What topics & categories are the most
interesting?
RSS Readers
• What is the best design?
- Private or Shared?
- Client or Server?
•
•
•
•
Functions
Interfaces
Individual Users
Collaboration?
KMS System Evaluation
• Overview of the type of application
- What are it’s goals?
- Who does is help? When?
• History of the type of application
- Improvement over time
- How it is used
• Use the application (if possible)
• Screenshots of the application
• Case studies of the KMS in use