Some notes taken at the Milner Award Lecture by Dr Serge Abiteboul for the Royal Society on 12th November, From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow. Dr Abiteboul was awarded the 2013 Milner Award, given annually for outstanding achievement in computer science by a European researcher.
Dr Abiteoul’s research work focuses mainly on data, information and knowledge management, particularly on the Web. Like NetIKX members, he is interested in the transition from data to knowledge. Among many prestigious projects, he has worked on Apple’s Siri interface and Active XML, a declarative framework that harnesses web services for data integration.
In a charming French accent, he explained to us that he was going to talk about networks – networks of machines (Internet), of content (Web) and people (social media).
Nowdays information is everywhere, worldwide. Everything is big and getting bigger – the size of the digital world is estimated to be doubling every 18 months. A web search engine now is a cluster of machines – maybe a million machines. In the past getting ten machines to work together was a big challenge! Engineering achievements have enabled hundreds of thousands of computers to work together.
Dr Abiteoul’s assumptions
1. The size will continue to grow
2. The information will continue to be managed by many systems (rather than a company like Facebook taking over all the world’s information).
3. These systems will be intelligent – in the sense that they produce/consume knowledge and not simply raw data.
The 4 + 1 V’s of Big Data…
Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity = four difficulties of big data. There is a huge mass of data, more than can be retrieved. And it is changing fast, particularly sets of data like the stock market. Furthermore, the information on the web is uncertain, full of imprecisions and contradictions. Search engines must contend with lies and opinions, not just facts.
Dr Abiteoul’s +1 is Value – the bottom line is, what value comes from all this data? How does a computer decide what is important to present?
Data analysis is a technical challenge as old as computer science. We know how to do it with a small amount of data; the next challenge is to do it with a huge amount. Complex algorithms will have to be designed. These will need to do low level statistical analysis, because finding the perfect statistics will take too long. Maths, informatics, engineering and hardware are all needed.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2.17)
People often prefer being given one answer rather than a multitude of options to sort through. When we ask another person an answer, they don’t reply by giving us twenty pages to read through, so why should we interact with machines (search engines) like that? (Note – should information professionals be very selective and choosy with the information we put forward to customers, would they prefer a reading list of five books rather than twenty?).
Machines prefer formatted knowledge, logical statements. Machines can be programmed to find patterns – e.g. Woody Allen ‘is married to’ Soon-Yi Previn. But people write that two people are married in many different ways. How does a search engine cope with all the false statements and contradictions, e.g. ‘Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977’ and ‘The King is alive’!
The real problem with the accuracy of Wikipedia is not incorrect amateurs but paid professionals with their own agenda, paid by companies to take a particular viewpoint.
The difficulty is when to stop searching – when to find just enough right answers. Precision, the fraction of results that are correct, must be balanced between the amount of results retrieved. There is a trade off between finding more knowledge and finding the correct knowledge. Machines will have to be programmed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Knowing the good sources, the trustable sources, is a huge advantage for this.
Serendipity
Next, Dr Abiteoul mentioned librarians! He praised the way that a librarian may suggest you read an article that transforms your research. Or you may hear by chance a song that totally obsesses you. Computers lack this serendipity – they’re square. Information professionals take heart: there is value in chance, in browsing shelves, in the ability of your brain to make suggestions computers wouldn’t.
Hyperamnesia
We cannot archive all the data we produce – there’s a lack of storage resources. How do we choose what we keep? The British Library is tackling this question through its UK Web Archive project, which involves archiving 4.8 million UK websites and one billion web pages.
The BL Web Archiving page says: “We are developing a new crowd sourcing application that will use Twitter to support an automated selection process. We envisage that in the future, automated selection of this sort will compliment manual selection by subject experts, resulting in a more representative and well-rounded set of collections.” So perhaps the web of the future will need both expert people and star computing systems.
The decisions of machines
Decisions are increasingly made by machines. For instance, automated transport systems like the Docklands Light Railway, or auto trading on the stock market. How far do we go with this, asked Dr Abiteoul. Would a machine be allowed to decide that someone is a terrorist and kill them, and if so at what level of certainty? At 90% sure? At 95% sure?
Soon machines will acquire knowledge for us, remember knowledge for us, reason for us. We should get prepared by learning informatics, so that we understand them.
There were so many ideas flying about that I was unable to note them all down! Luckily the whole lecture is freely available to watch at www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9_Xc9f96E.
Blog post by Emily Heath.
;
March 2014 Seminar: Incentivising knowledge sharing behaviours
/in Events 2014, K and IM: professional development, Knowledge and information management, Previous Events/by PerrineSummary
Steve Dale gave an excellent presentation on the ‘hot topic’ of ‘gamification’. Quite simply, ‘gamification’ is the process of applying game elements to non-game applications using the fundamentals of human psychology to address motivation, ability levels and ‘triggers’.
Steve instanced a number of examples – from a multitude: within the NHS (a gamification app to encourage exercise); within local government (Halton Borough Council puts RFID tags on bins to track correct recycling by households and rewards good practice by awarding points that can be redeemed at local shops); within the market place (Supermarket club cards and loyalty cards).
Steve cautioned against an unthinking approach to adopting ‘gamification’ within an organisation. He emphasised the need to think carefully about organisational culture and to ensure that organisational goals are clear. After Steve’s talk and questions we moved on to syndicate sessions where five groups devised a gamification strategy to achieve an objective within their organisation. We then talked about the strategies.
Speakers
Stephen Dale is the founder and Director of Collabor8now Ltd, an organisation focussed on developing collaborative environments (e.g. Communities of Practice) and the integration of knowledge management tools and processes to support business improvement. He is a KMI certified knowledge manager and the author of several published research papers on collaborative behaviours. Over a 30-year career he has led major change programmes and developed knowledge and learning strategies for clients across public, private and not-for-profit organisations. He is one of three community facilitators for Warwick Business School’s “Knowledge & Innovation Network (KIN)”, a not for profit member organisation committed to developing and sharing best practice.
Time and Venue
2pm on 18 March 2014, The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Pre Event Information
If there is anything on the flier that is not included in the meeting write up, add it here.
Slides
Steve’s presentation was available at: http://www.slideshare.net/
This site does include some Steve Dale slides, but it is not currently being managed. Contact NetIKX if you want more information
Tweets
#netikx66
Blog
See our blog report: Incentivising knowledge sharing behaviours
Study Suggestions
For more information on Steve Dake go to http://about.me/stephendale
You can also see another write up of this session in the journal “Managing Information” Vol. 21 Issue 2 2014 pp. 26-28. ISSN13520229. by Graham Coult. This is a subscription journal available at http://aslib.com/resources/mi_intro.htm
January 2014 Seminar: When space matters (for collaboration, innovation and knowledge transfer)
/in Developing and exploiting information and knowledge, Events 2014, Previous Events/by PerrineSummary
Paul delivered a thrilling tour around the world, looking at how the physical space available for knowledge management will affect the outcomes. He shared his wealth of experience with appropriate slides and anecdotes to ensure his audience were given plenty of insights into what works well and what less so. Paul also provided practical exercises to wake up our brains and get us thinking more adventurously. If stand up meetings in dramatic scenery did not appeal to everyone, we certainly gained a wide ranging set of tips to help us deliver with more breadth of knowledge.
Speakers
Paul J Corney is a Senior Business Manager with broad global experience across a range of industries from energy to finance to software to government to information and knowledge management.
He is a business developer, coach, mentor, project director and practitioner able to deal at all levels of organisations. He is proficient in turning around underperforming businesses and helping people to realise their potential. He enjoys helping organizations to improve the way they work and to equip people to make better decisions.
His background is financial yet eclectic: He spent 25 years in the City as Senior Manager at Saudi International Bank and as a Vice President at Zurich Reinsurance. He was an early pioneer of intranets in the mid 90’s, one of the first ‘knowledge managers’ in the city of London
In 1998 he embarked on a portfolio career that encompassed, consultancy, coaching and pro bono charitable work.
During that time, he has been Strategy & Business Advisor to the CEO of a dotcom software organization (Sopheon PLC) for 3 years, Information & Knowledge Advisor to the CEO of a leading reinsurance broker (BMS Group) for 7 years and Managing Partner of a successful consulting organisation, Sparknow LLP from 2008-2012. In 2014 he was a founding Trustee of PlanZheroes a UK Charity.
Time and Venue
January 2014, 2pm The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Slides
No slides available
Tweets
#netikx67
Blog
No blog available
Event report: From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow – a talk by Dr Serge Abiteboul
/in Developing and exploiting information and knowledge, Harnessing the web for information and knowledge exchange, Netikx/by AlisonSome notes taken at the Milner Award Lecture by Dr Serge Abiteboul for the Royal Society on 12th November, From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow. Dr Abiteboul was awarded the 2013 Milner Award, given annually for outstanding achievement in computer science by a European researcher.
Dr Abiteoul’s research work focuses mainly on data, information and knowledge management, particularly on the Web. Like NetIKX members, he is interested in the transition from data to knowledge. Among many prestigious projects, he has worked on Apple’s Siri interface and Active XML, a declarative framework that harnesses web services for data integration.
In a charming French accent, he explained to us that he was going to talk about networks – networks of machines (Internet), of content (Web) and people (social media).
Nowdays information is everywhere, worldwide. Everything is big and getting bigger – the size of the digital world is estimated to be doubling every 18 months. A web search engine now is a cluster of machines – maybe a million machines. In the past getting ten machines to work together was a big challenge! Engineering achievements have enabled hundreds of thousands of computers to work together.
Dr Abiteoul’s assumptions
1. The size will continue to grow
2. The information will continue to be managed by many systems (rather than a company like Facebook taking over all the world’s information).
3. These systems will be intelligent – in the sense that they produce/consume knowledge and not simply raw data.
The 4 + 1 V’s of Big Data…
Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity = four difficulties of big data. There is a huge mass of data, more than can be retrieved. And it is changing fast, particularly sets of data like the stock market. Furthermore, the information on the web is uncertain, full of imprecisions and contradictions. Search engines must contend with lies and opinions, not just facts.
Dr Abiteoul’s +1 is Value – the bottom line is, what value comes from all this data? How does a computer decide what is important to present?
Data analysis is a technical challenge as old as computer science. We know how to do it with a small amount of data; the next challenge is to do it with a huge amount. Complex algorithms will have to be designed. These will need to do low level statistical analysis, because finding the perfect statistics will take too long. Maths, informatics, engineering and hardware are all needed.
People often prefer being given one answer rather than a multitude of options to sort through. When we ask another person an answer, they don’t reply by giving us twenty pages to read through, so why should we interact with machines (search engines) like that? (Note – should information professionals be very selective and choosy with the information we put forward to customers, would they prefer a reading list of five books rather than twenty?).
Machines prefer formatted knowledge, logical statements. Machines can be programmed to find patterns – e.g. Woody Allen ‘is married to’ Soon-Yi Previn. But people write that two people are married in many different ways. How does a search engine cope with all the false statements and contradictions, e.g. ‘Elvis Presley died on 16 August 1977’ and ‘The King is alive’!
The real problem with the accuracy of Wikipedia is not incorrect amateurs but paid professionals with their own agenda, paid by companies to take a particular viewpoint.
The difficulty is when to stop searching – when to find just enough right answers. Precision, the fraction of results that are correct, must be balanced between the amount of results retrieved. There is a trade off between finding more knowledge and finding the correct knowledge. Machines will have to be programmed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Knowing the good sources, the trustable sources, is a huge advantage for this.
Serendipity
Next, Dr Abiteoul mentioned librarians! He praised the way that a librarian may suggest you read an article that transforms your research. Or you may hear by chance a song that totally obsesses you. Computers lack this serendipity – they’re square. Information professionals take heart: there is value in chance, in browsing shelves, in the ability of your brain to make suggestions computers wouldn’t.
Hyperamnesia
We cannot archive all the data we produce – there’s a lack of storage resources. How do we choose what we keep? The British Library is tackling this question through its UK Web Archive project, which involves archiving 4.8 million UK websites and one billion web pages.
The BL Web Archiving page says: “We are developing a new crowd sourcing application that will use Twitter to support an automated selection process. We envisage that in the future, automated selection of this sort will compliment manual selection by subject experts, resulting in a more representative and well-rounded set of collections.” So perhaps the web of the future will need both expert people and star computing systems.
The decisions of machines
Decisions are increasingly made by machines. For instance, automated transport systems like the Docklands Light Railway, or auto trading on the stock market. How far do we go with this, asked Dr Abiteoul. Would a machine be allowed to decide that someone is a terrorist and kill them, and if so at what level of certainty? At 90% sure? At 95% sure?
Soon machines will acquire knowledge for us, remember knowledge for us, reason for us. We should get prepared by learning informatics, so that we understand them.
There were so many ideas flying about that I was unable to note them all down! Luckily the whole lecture is freely available to watch at www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9_Xc9f96E.
Blog post by Emily Heath.
Event report: Knowledge organisation – past, present and future
/in Managing information and knowledge, Netikx/by AlisonOur latest NetIKX event on 26th November was all about information and knowledge management within organisations. We took a look at how IKM has evolved and where it’s likely to go next. Our speakers were Dr David Skryme, Analyst and Management Consultant at David Skryme Associates and Danny Budzak, Senior Information Manager at the London Legacy Development Corporation.
Dr David Skryme
In his presentation ‘The 7 Ages of IKM in Organizations’ David talked us through the development of information and knowledge management over the past few decades.
Dr David J. Skyrme
David sees capturing the most important information as being a vital part of knowledge management. Communities are essential for developing tacit knowledge, through people talking to other people and sharing their knowledge. Work organisations are really social places, about human relationships and people.
In the beginning knowledge was passed down verbally – the Icelandic sagas are a good example. Storytelling has come back into popularity as a tool for knowledge managers to bring knowledge management to life.
1995-1997
David compared the development of IKM to Shakespeare’s seven stages of mankind. He dates the formal emergence of knowledge management as a topic discussed in boardrooms by senior managers to 1995-1997, when Nonaka & Takeuchi’s seminal book ‘The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation’ was published. This highlighted many advantages of knowledge management for organisations, particularly from a research and development point of view.
The American Productivity & Quality Center’s website AQPC.org has lots of survey data on knowledge management through the years. Challenges between 1997 and 2013 have consistently been achieving knowledge capture and reuse, but there are new challenges now – social media, visualisation, ramification, co-creation with customers. Still, David feels we shouldn’t necessarily prefer the snazzy new vs the proven old; there are a lot of solid knowledge management techniques already out there.
Danny Budzak
Next Danny talked us through how he is developing data, information and knowledge management at the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), in his role as Senior Information Manager.
Danny Budzak
The LLDC has a big job to do in its role to regenerate the Olympic Park and surrounding area. There are lots of policies at local and national level to comply with, and complex financial data that must be published in an annual report.
Danny feels that information professionals can benefit from linking good data quality to risk management. For example, LLDC health and safety files need to be well maintained to avoid fines and keep employees safe.
At a conference he attended, Danny heard an analogy that chief executives are like nursery school children – they like simple things and primary colours! Use bright graphics, try and capture your organisation’s knowledge pictorially. Big paper maps on the wall can be a good way of capturing and displaying information in an easy way to see, while mind maps can be a fast and effective way of taking notes at a conference.
Email encapsulates a lot of knowledge – but unfortunately accounts are set up individually. The metadata is hard for others to access again. To try and overcome this, LLDC has set up a collaborative environment for employees to communicate within. The organisation is now not going to fall over if key people leave.
To make sure document management is more efficient, Danny has introduced document control templates and version control to make sure documents are numbered properly – e.g. v0.1 for a first draft, v0.2 for a second draft. There have been issues with some people renaming the documents in their own way, but most people are using the new system.
In Danny’s opinion, information professionals are too timid. Nothing should be too complicated or complex for us – it should all be knowable. We should get very involved in our organisations. Go to meetings you’re not invited to, offer training sessions without being asked.
Make data visible – say how many files you have in total and how many of these are duplicates. People understand concrete numbers and will appreciate how much it’s costing them.
Some really good ideas to take in here. Finally, think it was Danny that mentioned this delightful Dilbert strip, Knowledge worker!
Further reading: Our Storify collection of tweets from this event.
Blog post by Emily Heath. Many thanks to both our speakers.
November 2013 Seminar: Knowledge organisation past present and future
/in Corporate knowledge and information management, Events 2013, Organisational K and IM: knowledge harvesting, Previous Events/by PerrineSummary
This event was all about information and knowledge management within organisations. The speakers looked at how IKM has evolved and where it’s likely to go next.
David Skryme talked about capturing the most important information as being a vital part of knowledge management. Communities are essential for developing tacit knowledge, through people talking to other people and sharing their knowledge. Work organisations are really social places, about human relationships and people. Storytelling has come back into popularity as a tool for knowledge managers to bring knowledge management to life. There are many new KM challenges now – social media, visualisation, ramification, co-creation with customers. David encouraged us to look beyond the appeal of new innovations to remember that there was a good amount of solid knowledge management techniques already out there.
Next Danny Budzak talked us through how he is developing data, information and knowledge management at the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), in his role as Senior Information Manager. He drew out useful tips that would be relevant to his audiences’ own workplaces.
In conclusion the speakers suggested that: “The true success of knowledge management is when it disappears”. KM will be stronger when it becomes part and parcel of working life.
Speakers
Dr David Skryme, Analyst and Management Consultant at David Skryme Associates, is a world recognized expert on knowledge management. In a 22-year career with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), he held a variety of management roles in marketing, strategic planning and product management. During his career he was responsible for introducing new thinking, new products and services, new methods, and new initiatives.
He set up his own company in 1993 with three strands of activity – consultancy, workshops, research/writing. He has had clients across the world, ranging from large multinationals to small charities. He is a member of the ENTOVATION Network. The ENTOVATION Network is an international network of theorists and practitioners dedicated to developing a sustainable future through knowledge and innovation.
Danny Budzak, Senior Information Manager at the London Legacy Development Corporation is our second speaker and is Currently working at the London Legacy Development Corporation on the review, transfer and disposal of electronic and paper records; information transfer approach, retention and disposal schedule, stakeholder engagement, information governance and information security.
Time and Venue
2pm on 26th November, The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Slides
No slides available
Tweets
#netikx56
Blog
See our blog report: Knowledge organisation – past, present and future
Blog for September 2013: Embedding knowledge capture & retention
/in Uncategorised/by AlisonOn Wednesday I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Karen McFarlane who is Head of Profession, Knowledge & Information Management (KIM) for the UK Government’s Civil Service. I’d been invited as a guest by NetIKX as a precursor to a talk I am giving there early in 2014. And with due permission (Karen’s ‘day job’ is quite sensitive) I posted a few Tweets on what I heard which you can find on their twitter feed for the event #netikx63.
The Knowledge Council – setting frameworks and strategy for the KIM Profession
Karen outlined the work that has taken place over 18 months at the Knowledge Council to develop a framework and a new Government Knowledge & Information Strategy (GKIS). Her aim is to ensure people in KIM roles have KIM qualifications with good succession planning. A profession (currently 1,000 people across government are considered KIM professionals) that will attract and maintain talent and create an environment where KIM civil servants can move across roles equipped to do so.
These comments (which I am paraphrasing) stood out:
There is a real concern about loss of knowledge when people leave which is why a lot of effort has gone into building a knowledge harvesting toolkit for the KIM community….
One of the techniques is a Mastermind Chair; another, getting people to ask ‘what questions do you wish you’d asked…Try and identify the critical people… many departments use social media to share knowledge…
…True tacit knowledge can’t be passed on when people leave, you need a strategy to ensure you don’t get to that point…
Some organisations are now making use of Alumni networks to keep access to people who’ve left…
And finally… Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are now sharing stories on their intranet…
She then talked about an accredited career pathway. Karen painted a backdrop wherein the topic of knowledge & information management is higher up the agenda in government than it has been for more than two decades. All of which is really positive as is the work being done with external bodies such as CILIP on accreditation and training and career pathways for KIM professionals in government. Its impressive progress which the soon to be released GKIS will place into context.
This brings me back to the ‘capturing and exploiting corporate knowledge’ pilot we* have been running for HMRC’s businesses under the supervision of their KIM professionals, HMRC’s Pilot Programme: Setting Up and Capturing: Modules 2 & 3
Our’ delegates recognised:
In Module 2 we looked at the setting, preparation and clarity of purpose which are all key to successful capturing of knowledge. A key task is to think seriously about how a request for time with a knowledge holder is likely to be received.
Profiling and Archetype Mapping are used extensively in design, it is even more important when dealing with intangibles to have identified and acknowledged likely preferences of the person you are approaching?
Focusing on the individual is just one aspect of knowledge capture & retention: it’s vital to focus in addition on decisions, events and processes (documented as well as practiced) to see what knowledge is called upon in the first place and from where and then what is produced during the process.
Another key aspect is to create the right environment for the discussion/interview/observational session. This is especially important when the intervention is to be recorded or a large response is sought.
The delegates spent time thinking about the right form of consent, how they might craft the invitation to participate and the mechanism they’d use to capture material.
Module 3 was very much about trying out. The delegates looked at:
As part of the benchmarking exercise we encouraged delegates to look at the 47 step knowledge capture process as articulated in Professor Nicholas Milton’s book Knowledge Acquisition in Practice which was very successfully adapted by John Day, at Sellafield that in itself drew on work done by Shell on its Retention of Critical Knowledge (ROCK) programme.
As in the previous modules offsite work involved listening to audios developed exclusively for this programme including a clip on Baton Passing, a technique used by the British Council adapted for their use by Professor Victor Newman.
To return to the beginning. The Knowledge Council’s focus on equipping KIM Professionals with tools and techniques in Knowledge Harvesting is admirable. Yet I felt there is a missing skill from the training ‘suite’ shown by Karen McFarlane at the NetIKX meeting, namely that of facilitation which for me is critical.
If knowledge harvesting (what I might call knowledge capture and retention) is to become an ingrained ‘way of working’ across government then people in the business need to be equipped with those skills as well. KIM professionals must have the skills to facilitate others in Knowledge Harvesting not just conduct them.
The alternative scenario is that the KIM professional gets called in to do a last minute ‘tell us what you know’ knowledge harvesting session with a prominent person and the resultant ‘pearls of wisdom’ are placed on a database that few look at or listen to.
See this excellent blog report with illustrations at: ‘True tacit knowledge can’t be passed on when people leave…’ by Paul J. Corney on ‘Knowledge et al’
September 2013 Seminar: Title: The Knowledge Council and the KIM professional
/in Events 2013, K and IM: professional development, Knowledge and information management, Previous Events/by PerrineSummary
Karen took us on a tour of the Knowledge Council’s work so that we were all aware of the latest developments in the Government’s thinking. She encouraged us to be encouraged by the Government’s serious embrace of KIM ideas and practices.
Speakers
Karen McFarlane, Chair of the Government’s Knowledge Council and Government Head of Profession for Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) a Specialist with extensive experience of operating at senior levels as a knowledge and information professional in the UK government sector. She is experienced in: information management; knowledge management; records management – paper and electronic; intranet management; information governance; information risk management; information security; library and Information services.
Time and Venue
September 2013, 2pm The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Slides
No slides available
Tweets
#netikx57
Blog
See our blog report: Embedding knowledge capture & retention
See another excellent blog report: ‘True tacit knowledge can’t be passed on when people leave…’ by Paul J. Corney
July 2013 Seminar: Data protection: the good, the bad and the future
/in Events 2013, Knowledge and information security and privacy, Previous Events, Security: data protection/by PerrineSummary
Dave provided an update on the Data Protection situation in the UK and presented us with an excellent insider view of what will be important in the near future.
Speakers
Dave Evans, Senior Policy Officer, Information Commissioner’s Office. Dave has worked on local govt, health and education information governance issues including:
The DCLG’s Transparency Code of Practice; he led the ICO’s work on the information governance parts of the Health and Social Care Act; the data protection and confidentiality implications of the secondary uses of health information, especially in connection with medical research;
sharing medical information across EU member states; pharmacovigilance and data protection;
he worked with Universities UK and the Research Information Network to improve freedom of information awareness across higher education.
Time and Venue
July 2013, 2pm The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Slides
No slides available
Tweets
#netikx58
Blog report: Managing change seminar, 13 May 2013
/in Ensuring business value and cost effectiveness, Netikx/by AlisonA report on the latest NetIKX seminar on Managing change, held in London on 13 May 2013. Our speakers were Lesley Trenner, Change Coach and Janet Kaul, Knowledge Officer, NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre. The successful management of change is essential for organisations in order to achieve positive outcomes when implementing new or revised policies, procedures and projects. During the seminar we discussed how to go about successful change management.
Lesley Trenner, @LesleyTrenner
Why change doesn’t ‘just happen’ …however good the idea is
Lesley has a wealth of experience, including several years spent working at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). As a change coach, she now spends her time coaching people one-to-one when they are going through changes in their personal and professional lives.
At GSK Lesley experienced constant reorganisations, software changes and budget reductions. She observed that it is how well the change is managed that really makes a difference to successful change.
Change management is needed when there’s a change in politics, structures, culture, technology etc. Nowadays it is often used as a euphemism for cutting costs and reducing people. Ideally it should not be that – but lots of jobs advertised for Change Managers do involve doing that.
How staff deal with change
People tend to resist change. Typical responses from employees confronted with major change will include: “Why didn’t they ask me?”, “Things ain’t broke”, “What’s in it for me?” or “Does it mean I will lose my job?”.
The majority of change projects fail – countless studies have found between a 60-80% failure rate for organisational change projects. For example, the doomed National Health Service Programme for IT lost a considerable amount of money. Project management and technology issues dogged the programme; ultimately trying to force people onto one system didn’t work.
Tips for managers
Before embarking on change, managers should first:
Communication
Managers should work out what tone they want their communication to have. Is the aim to reassure, inform or maybe even scare? Communication messages should be tailored to different stakeholder groups. It also needs to be two-way – getting people’s feedback so that they feel heard is important, even if you can only say “Sorry, we need to do this anyway”.
Usually using a variety of communication methods to break the news is best. Telling staff by email can be cold and clinical, but on the other hand it can be useful for people to have something to refer to.
Lesley gave us an example from her own personal experience: GSK wanted to encourage smart working/hot desking at its headquarters in Brentford, to save space. Rather than everyone having their own desk, employees were asked to either work at home or come into work and sit at any desk available. There was a lot of resistance at first because staff were used to having their own desk, or even their own office if they were a manager.
To encourage acceptance of the new policy, the Vice-President of the department gave up her office straightaway. E-mails were sent round asking people for suggestions to give the environment a more ‘teamy’ atmosphere. Anyone leaving towels or other objects on desks at the end of the day would be reprimanded by designated change ‘sponsors’. The changes saved the company a million pounds.
Lesley’s key tips
Janet Kaul, Knowledge Officer, NHS Health & Social Care Information Centre
Online communities: Herding the scary cats
Janet’s talk focused on how to develop online communities during organisational changes and prove their value. Online communities have an important role to play in our society – some have changed the world… Indymedia (started World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests), Occupy Wall Street, Howard Dean‘s presidential campaign via Moveon.org (he set up natural and real communities in every state, which Obama copied for his election campaign) and most famous of all, Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Why create an online community?
Planning
‘If you build it they will come’ doesn’t work for online forums. Janet has found that to boost intranet usage amongst staff it pays to keep an ear open. Chip into personal conversations and suggest people post questions on the intranet forum to try and find answers.
‘For sale’ ads are usually the most popular section on a staff forum. Good online managers push ads, for example by sending them out to personal contacts who might be interested. Janet was very pleased when she helped a staff member find a new home for her rabbit and received a message saying “Thank you for finding a home for our bunny. You made my son very happy.”
Things to consider:
Implementation
Maintenance
Further reading:
Blog post by Emily Heath. Many thanks to both our speakers.
May 2013 Seminar: Managing change
/in Developing and exploiting information and knowledge, Events 2013, Previous Events/by PerrineSummary
The successful management of change is essential for organisations in order to achieve positive outcomes when implementing new or revised policies, procedures and projects. During the seminar we discussed how to go about successful change management.
In an introduction we learnt that the majority of change projects fail – countless studies have found between a 60-80% failure rate for organisational change projects. So we were pleased to hear the speakers gave us their tips for successful projects! She focused on how to develop online communities during organisational changes and prove their value.
Online communities have an important role to play in our society – some have changed the world… Indymedia (started World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests), Occupy Wall Street, Howard Dean‘s presidential campaign via Moveon.org (he set up natural and real communities in every state, which Obama copied for his election campaign) and most famous of all, Julian Assange and Wikileaks. They also talked about the impact of good of anecdotes. Find your success stories and make sure you get them heard!
Speakers
Lesley Trenner, Change Coach, a highly qualified and respected Change Coach specialising in leadership, career and midlife transitions. She has coached hundreds of clients ranging from top executives to job-seekers to people facing mid-life challenges like redundancy, career change or eldercare.
Janet Kaul, Knowledge Officer, NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre. Janet provides project and content management for the main website, as well as a personalisation site and corporate search tool. She handles service delivery, including writing business requirements and logging, tracking, and escalating bug fixes for those systems, and liaising with internal IT and vendors. Other responsibilities include handling business analysis, analytics, information architecture, taxonomy, testing, training on web systems, and user engagement. She consulted on the information architecture and usability of multiple other NHS websites, did training on corporate values, and assisted with projects including knowledge transfers, business process improvements, publications, intranet planning, and new employee orientation. She created and maintained a knowledge toolkit for retaining project and employee knowledge, and managed the transition of the corporate website into a new content management system, including tightening up the content and creating a new information architecture.
Before joining the web team, she did corporate knowledge management, setting up a knowledge library and running harvests and retrospectives, as well as managing a corporate library and knowledge networking site. She created a knowledge management group for NHS knowledge managers and spoke at various knowledge and information management seminars.
Time and Venue
2pm on 13th May, The British Dental Association, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS
Slides
Not available.
Tweets
#netikx59
Blog
See our blog report: Managing change