Knowledge Workers and K-Logs
This is another post to K-Logs. If you like this content, you are more than welcome to subscribe.
When I worked at Forrester (a top technology research company), the CEO George Colony used to say (paraphrased), “in a sense our business is a like a mill. We grind raw grain into flour. It is my job as CEO to scoop up the grain that fell to the floor and put it back on the grindstone so it can be made into useful product. Everything our analysts think about while on the job has value. We need to find new ways to capture that thinking and sell it to clients.” This is profound. In my view, this is something that all companies should strive for.
Many, if not all companies have knowledge workers. Some, are composed entirely of knowledge workers. These people are domain experts. They keep up to-date (or should) with the evolution of knowledge within their chosen domain. They have thinking skills that have been developed to process data within that domain. Everything they think about within the envelope of that domain has value. Unfortunately, most companies don't capture, package, and distribute that insight.
K-Logs makes it possible for that domain expert to share their knowledge, experience, insight, and point of view on a nearly real-time basis. It creates a stream of thought (a body of writing) that can be searched and browsed (K-Logs organize posted items over time for quick analysis). Also, since K-Logs are associated with an individual, it provides knowledge workers with a platform to demonstrate their expertise within the company (to build a personal brand).
The first step to enabling a Knowledge Worker is to put a K-Log publishing tool on their desktop. Show them how easy it is to post their thinking, useful links, important e-mails, documents, and pictures to the Intranet. Show them how to connect to other K-Loggers through community features like a http://www.weblogs.com that runs behind the firewall. Point out news feeds (both internal and external) that they can subscribe to that provides them with up-to-date information on their domain of interest. Now step back and watch them begin to post, get feedback from readers, respond to links from other K-Loggers, and develop the habit of frequent posting.
Further, begin to develop categories that they can use to route posts to reader specific Weblogs for communities of practice within the company. Develop connections to organizations that foster knowledge transfer within those domains. Make it possible for them to publish to those organizations websites and subscribe to their knowledge streams. Connect, connect, connect…..
The organic growth of connections and the rapid rise in accumulated archived knowledge will surprise you. Let it grow through careful management and pruning. Encourage it and reap the result. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]