And my response to Madhukar's post:

So Madhukar,

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the
organization's KM needs should be tied to it's learning processes
and it would make sense like that.

If that is so, where does the framework of organizational processes
fit in (apart from the Perf Mgmt framework that you talked about)?

Does one build a structure and system after diagnosing the
organization's knowledge needs ? How does one ensure that this
system does not become counter productive and hinders knowledge
sharing.

How does the formal organization system recognise the informal
knowledge sharing that goes on in the company, e.g. between a new
joinee and an old achiever, between a mentor and a mentee in
different departments ? Should an organization try to "interfere" in
this human processes by acknowledging them , or will doing so
subvert them ?

What about IT needs? If KM is all about content and connections,
where does the IT diagnosis come in after the Knowledge diagnosis ?

Where structurally does the ownership of KM lie ? In this egroup
Sethu had mentioned that it should lie with the owner of the
learning processes, ie. the organization's learning and development
division, while others have argued that the ownership should lie
with either an independent structure called the KM department , and
others have said that it should lie with the top management.

The reason, in my view is that, KM is looked upon by the senior
management with the mental model of "extracting" while
training/learning/OD initiatives have the mental models of "giving"
the employees..

Is that the reason why KM is given more strategic importance than
training in the top management's eyes ??

Warm regards,
Gautam

Dr. Madhukar Shukla of XLRI Jamshedpur On Designing a KM System @ KMSI


My understanding is that there is no 'silver bullet' for designing the KM
system, and has to be designed around specific needs of the organisation....
Essentially, these are questions which help diagnosing the organisation's
knowledge-needs, and make choices about how to organise the knowedge
processes.

Some may find this useful

ciao
madhukar
====================

1. How effectively do we source/ acquire knowledge which is relevant for business/ work of the stakeholders?

i. What kind of knowledge is relevant to the stakeholders?
ii. Where does it reside? Within or outside the company?
iii. How do we access/ acquire it?

2. Do people have the problem-solving skills & capability to work on that knowledge?

i. What problem-solving skills are required?
ii. How do we impart them?
iii. What forums/ methodologies need to be created to encourage and ensure the use of these skills?

3. How effective are our systems for sharing local knowledge/ solutions to make them collective learning?\

i. Does our Performance Management & Reward System encourage sharing of knowledge/ information? What changes are needed to encourage people to share?
ii. What methodology/ platform of sharing would be appropriate? Centralised or decentralized?
iii. What processes/ systems need to be developed for sharing/ dissemination of tacit knowledge?

4. Are people encouraged and empowered to act on and experiment with what they have learnt?

i. Does the Performance Management & Reward system encourage people to take initiative?
ii. How does one relate learning/ knowledge-sharing to performance and consequent reward?

One line of discussion on the XL GRAX egroup went somewhat like this, between Vinod Baptist, Madhukar Shukla and yours truly :-)

Vinod's (VB) opening post:
HI ..

Grax is institutionalised networking, so am posting this on this group.

Heres a request to find out what other E-groups are available for joining..
XL oriented and even non XL oriented.

also is there a gyaan base on networking and the power of networking.. and
any personal comments on networking tips. ?

Does XL or any other management insti deal with or discuss networking (not
the techie type) within the syllabus?

cheers.
VB.

and I answered:
hi Vinod,

That would depend on your areas of interest. You can do a search on
http://groups.yahoo.com Home page and search for egroups in your
areas.

Some HRD related egroups are trdev (for people interested in
training) , HRNET (very US based so might not make sense too much
for desi queries to be posted there),perfman (for Performance Mgmt)
HRinIndia, HRavenues, IHRC , HRGyan (which I moderate :-),
comp_n_ben (which I co-moderate with Sanjay Jorapur),
employmentlaw_india (moderated by Sameer Nagajaran, Rajeev Kumar and
Sanjay again !), worldofHR (moderated by KS Kumar) , citybased HR
egroups like HRbang (moderated by Titto and Kim) , HRHyd (yours
truly again ;-)

Coolavenues.com actually run a host of egroups focussed on each
functional area, so you have consultavenues, techavenues etc. An
IIMB faculty also runs another egroup on consulting called 'india-
consulting'..

Madhukar moderates an egroup on his CCM course called xlCCM...

I know there have been books published on networking...remember one
called Rolodex something...there might be some gyaan base on the net
somewhere...

regards,
Hope that helps,
GG

and Madhukar said :

Vinod
there is an interesting online book on Virtual Communities, which you
can read on:

http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/
I have also sent you a couple of articles on Networking (I think they
have gone to your official mailid which is there by default;-(

GG, you forgot to mention KMSI egroup

ciao
madhukar

Vinod again :

Thanks GG.. and Madhukar. Lots of stuff there.. i think six degrees of
seperation is an appropiate tag to attach to the networked world we live in
nowdays..

finding info and people and resources is about tapping into the correct
network.. cultivating those networks by investing in them and withdrawing
from them when required... Howz that for a shabby description of
networking.. anyone care to improve on that ?


Vb.

and I wrote back:
hi Vinod

Some personal insights I have come up with after being a member of a
number of online fora over the last three years...

1. Text matters like never before in the virtual world. Because the
face to face richness is missing (Madhukar terms it the "reach vs
richness debate") you have to be very sure of what you write and
what it could be interpreted as, as the person reading might not
have the benefit of knowledge of your contexts.

2. Communities in the networked world perhaps need a lot of
investment with regard to time and effort , in my view perhaps more
than social "real" communities.

3. Virtual reputations might be different from 'real' ones , but
they stick just as much.

4. Giving more than recieving is the golden rule but seldom gets
followed, as most people are in a recipient mode in such communities
and don't have an iota of clue about their influence or power.

5. It takes a lot of guts to 'say' something on a mailing list...
and most people are uncomfortable doing that as it means taking a
stand , and not just verbally...your stand is going in text format
to hundreds and thousands of mail boxes, being read by people you
might never meet. I guess journalists, writers and poets are also
afflicted by these blocks.

6. Any lack of integrity on these listservs are sensed by people on
these groups and even if they do not tell one on the face , the
damage can be irrepairable.

7. When in doubt , the Golden Rule continues to be "Honesty is the
Best Policy"...saying "i don't know" is a valued comment , because
it is so rare.

8. When you cannot help, redirect. On a lot of HR/OD/Trng egroups I
come across a lot of "I need help regarding XYZ" kind of mails..it
takes me a second to refer the person who queries to folks like
Madhukar, Premu , Sarin etc...building up XL's brand in the
process...and the person is also thankful for the info if the
faculty responds quickly.

9. Time is the essence. No point answering someone's query after 3
days..the time you could have built your impact is passe...for
making an impact it has to be immediate ...

Hope these nine mantras of virtual communication and engagement help
not just you but everyone :-)

Mebbe, I just need to copyright it ;-))

ciao,
GG

VB again:

One parameter that we've talked about is giving and receiving.. another
seems to be finding the right person with the most useful info in the least
time.. Something like a "Virtual networking search" but without a google
type search engine .. but there must be some kind of intuitive algo that
people follow.

and my reply:
well Vinod,

That "intuitive algorithm" you talked about was quite
interesting..it's also called "gut instinct" and seems to afflict
the decision making processes of outstanding individuals...

Madhukar covers this point at some part of his MOC course and he
hypothesised that "intuition" is merely the very fast decision
making capability of the human mind when it processes conscious and
unconscious data, information and experiences to come up with a
decision point.

Madhukar also talks about a certain type of people (in organizations
and outside) who connect seekers to either people or information. He
calls these kind of people "knowledge brokers" and in the
conventional management measurement systems these kind of people do
not seem to add any visible value to the organizations and are
usually the first to get affected by downsizing. There was a
fascinating article by Prusak on "knowledge networks" in the HBR
issue some months back.

Think this topic would be more suitable to the KMSI egroup , what
say, Sir (this was addressed to Madhukar, who didn't accept the bait)?

regards,
GG

And VB got back with this one:
now let me see.. KMSI wud be Knowledge Management ( SI - something ) group..

In the context of the discussions so far one cud say .. That which u call KM wud by any other name like Grax smell as sweet ..

(sorry folks.. cudnt resist that one.. this one belongs in the PJAXI group i wud think.. )


vb

And my reply:

hi Vinod

You got that bang-on !!

KMSI which Madhukar refered is the "KM Society of India" egroup that I started over 2 years ago , and Madhukar co-moderates with me.

In fact your insight is quite true...one of Nonaka's Knowledge sharing method is face to face tacit knowledge sharing called "socialization"...in other words, story-telling or Grax !!

Defined in hi-fi corporate jargon some writer wrote :
"The process that transfers tacit knowledge in one person to tacit knowledge in another person is socialization. It is experiential, active and a "living thing," involving capturing knowledge by walking around and through direct interaction with customers and suppliers outside the organization and people inside the organization. This
depends on having shared experience, and results in acquired skills and common mental models. Socialization is primarily a process between individuals."

Yeah totally Grax !!

In fact one major example of how a company realised such grax is actually useful is when Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre discovered that the service engineers arranged themselves as "communities of practice" ...grax groups in our words ! and they actually gave these guys money and time to grax amongst themselves :-)) Check out this
site

The new book that Nonaka wrote is outlined here
Ciao,
GG

And Mustafa of Ma Foi Management said:


Identity is the crux of the issue in understanding cultures, peoples and
individuals. Certainly, it may not be the lens at which we look at someone,
but it certainly is the platform on which all of us stand. I think that
Madhukar has just posited the 3 levels. To me identity, which we are
discussing now is at level two - the collective unconscious (CU). What we
have done in the past in this group is to break down this collective
unconscious into very small bits and put them down as collective habits -
ex: timeliness for the english or germans or americans, or consensus making
for the japanese etc.

I think to really understand cultures we need to look at it holistically.
This is why we value the opinions of people who have been staying in
different cultures for some time - these are people who get seeped into the
local culture and are able to decipher the ditinctness of the culture as
compared to ours. For example we say many things about being on time - I do
not think a Brit would see something like that of americans. we tend to see
differences a lot more sharply than similarities.

The CU comes out the histories and experiences of the people. Say a simple
thing like wearing a helmet has taken a generation to get into the habit in
UK, and now every wears it without thinking twice. The parents of this
generation had a very difficult time doing this. In India we are perhaps
going through that right now.

I heard a very interesting angle about Jews. Since a long time (ecnturies)
they have kept getting displaced with their assets taken away (for whatever
reason). Over many centuries they have learnt to keep their assets where it
cannot be taken away - in their heads. This is why many people friom this
community wherever they are in the world move towards the intellectual
pursuits. This to me is a great understanding of a culture holistically,
arising from the CU.

While I do not think this forum needs to be locked into the CU, it would be
very interesting for the many of us to try and offer a glimpse of the CU
behind the small habits and tendencies we see.

Then we really understand cultures across the world.

Regards,

Mustafa alias Moochhi
1985

On Cross Cultural Management egroup on Identity, Cultures and the Common Human Ancestor :
hi folks,

Just thought of adding this perspective:

Discovering this fact that all of humanity is descended from one
African who lived 60,000 years ago has tremendous repercussions for
understanding human beings.

Imagine, all of us actually does have a common collective
unconscious (if you go by Jungian theory, and I do !) which is so
deep and now we have proof for it :-)

Somebody, help me, Sir, if you can...what does this mean for
understanding human behaviour? How do layers in the collective
unconscious differ?

I know that I am digressing from the stated focus of this
forum...but how does this discovery change and alter your view of
cross cultural understanding? Do we remain so cross (pun intended ;-
) anymore?

regards,
GG

And the replies to this :

Hi,
I am not sure what I want to say on this issue. But I just couldnt
let it go without comment, so bear with me :-D!

I think, on the face of it, the assumption is a trifle far fetched.
I began by thinking, "well, since all life forms on earth are carbon
based, does that mean we have commonalitites with everything! PAH!"

But then I felt, maybe we do.

I mean, on a generic level we share the need to survive!!

We are the most evolved (sic!) species and so maybe we do share to
the extent of the level of evolution of the other species. For
instance with organisms which do not have brains, we share simple
nervous reflexes like harm avoidance, need for nutrition, need for
rest, need to procreate. With more evolved species, we share stuff
like territorial behaviour, then further tool making etc etc.

Sure there is the common unconscious, and I think its not just with
the long lost ancestor but with all other living beings- and it
consists of SELF PRESERVATION!! Needless to say, the physical
manifestations change frorm species to species- whereas it consists
of hiding the tail between the hind legs and running, in us it is
more covert, and manifests itself in back scratching behaviour (esp.
seen in organisaitons!)

But more seriously, going back to the issue of a common ancestor. We
sure share some commonality with it. To the extent that it was
evolved when groups migrated - it lives in all of us irrespective of
culture. But at that time , how far socially and psychologically was
it evolved? And how much evolution has happened thereafter? The
present level of physical evolution was reached , but I do not think
complex relationships had yet started to take place. Religeon, for
one was probably not around then! So my opinion is, that what we
share with those guys and thru them with the rest of our brothers
around the world is probably only the genes and the basic emotions
and motivations.

And I, for one, did not need a skeleton to be found to tell me that
when we look at simple people all over the world, their lives are
identical. If you take away the politics and the religeons, and the
power of money and commercialisation, we are all the same. We are the
same as the first human beings - doing our best to ensure the
survival of the species - its just getting more and more complex!!

Any takers?

Soma

And another one posted by Dr. Madhukar Shukla:

In any case, there is some relevance to cultural consiousness, so let me
attempt:

Dont know how many are aware of the work of Ken Wilber [I know him from a
book which we used to have till Sai Sambath 93PMIR borrowed it;-))- and a
couple of articles which I read in Journal of Transpersonal Psy, till it
stopped publishing] - he talked of three levels of psyche:

1. personal unconscious (arising out of personal experiences)
2. collective unconscious (arising from the cultural experiences across generations)
3. the Basic Ground (the universal tendencies which are common across humanity)
[those who did CCM would remember - perhaps - a small exercise we would do
in one of the early session in which a list of behaviours is to be
classified in three categories - personal, cultural and universal]

The Common Ancestor is a part of the Basic Ground - the carbon-base which
Soma talked about... or if one goes by other examples - there is something
"universal" in the facts of reflexes, music being represented in
mathematical harmonic series, in the common forms of equations for gravity,
magnetism, elecrticity, etc. [(M1 x M2)/Rsquare], Fibonacci Series being
found in nature (shells, pinapples, etc.), etc, etc....

But coming to collective uncounscious and culture - there is a pretty strong
link. One of my favourite examples is the comparison between the Indian and
Greeko-Roman mythology. If you look at any character of Ramayana or
Mahabharat, they are bound by the "karmas" - something which happened
to/done by them in one of the past lives... the "hero myth" here revolves
around an adventure in which one pays past dues and collects new baggages
(boons and curses)... moreover, since these "karmas" are also tied to what
is owed to specific people, the relationships in pretty complicated form
(look at Shikhandi;-) play an important role... and so we have a cultural
consciousness which is bound by a past and relationships (my identity is
based on what roots I come from - as GG mentioned,
Bangali/Kayastha/etc.).... [the nearest something in West comes to this are
the Celtic and Scandenavian mythologies - which Tolkein used generously for
Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion/ Book of Lost Tales, etc..]

Compare that to the Greeko-Roman Mythology - Myth of Gilgimesh/ The Titans/
Hercules/ Icarus, etc. - these were independent beings who don't carry much
baggages of the past, but have an adventure which takes them into unknown
(pl notice, the "unknown" does not feature in Indian mythologies) through
hurdles, which exist by themselves (not due to some past karma which the
hero had done)... and so the Greeko-Roman cultures have an individualistic
orientation in which time is linear (and not cyclic) - You live your life
once, and then wait for the "Day of Judgement", not get born again according
to your "sanchit karma"....

I know this would look slightly far-fetched and unconnected to some - but
actually it is not, if you compare dominant popular cultural themes (e.g.,
if you compare the characters and the "karmas" they carry/don't carry in
popular TV serials from two cultures - for instance, "Saans Bhi Kabhi Bahu
Thi" to "Friends")

Application to business? yes, there is - if you compare how Time is treated
in two cultures, how decisions are made, goals formulated, projects
implemented (with or without cost/time overruns), etc. etc.

ciao
madhukar

On Assessment Centres and Balanced Score Cards :
My personal view is that competencies in the sense they are
understood and mapped in today's context have become outdated. Most
competency modelling techniques take into account past benchmarks
for behaviour assessment and does not take into account the future
perspective. IMHO, competencies were suitable for an age where work
was more predictable and individualistic in nature, and as greater
margin for error when work gets to be more knowledge-based, grou-
based and constanly in a flux. In such a case more broader
competencies might need to be considered...and I don't think ACs or
BEI are the correct way to go ahead and measure them :-)

Another one on the "essence of HR":

The key question for HR is that "does it itself look as a 'cost
centre' ?" If yes then its no wonder that such a mindset is common
between business leaders also

The question is not that "should HR make revenue" for the
organization , but "how can HR add value to the organization?" ,
because only when HR adds value to the business will others and HR
itself stop seeing itself as a "cost centre" and start seeing itself
as an "investment centre" ...

Only then can the HR function realise its true potential.

And any business culture that equalises only rupee revenue with
value will remain only transactional in nature and very short term
focussed.

Regards,
Gautam

My replies to questions on HRGyan , an egroup I moderate: On Retention Strategies :

I am a little sceptical always of these so-called "strategies" for
things like attraction and retention of people to an organization.

I believe that the best employers are firms that build processes and
policies around people and not vice versa. These are practices that
view the people who work not as a faceless nameless mass of "Human
Resources" but as live, real people who have live real issues.

And whether senior or junior management, blue or white collar, the
best way to retain your employees is to respect them and care for
them. It is when HR people try to be 'extra smart' and manipulative
that people see through it and it breeds cynicism of the HR
function. Why, there are companies where the HR function has
dispensed with its glorified name and calls itself simply
the "people department"...maybe just a cosmetic change ...but can go
a long way to remove mistrust and change mindsets on both sides.

My friends who have stuck to their companies in the FMCG sector tell
me its because they feel valued there, and the organization has gone
out of its way to accomodate their desires for growth and learning.
They also accomodate needs for transfers easily and my friends have
also been open enough to look at cross functional moves when the
company has given them an option.

Of course there have been people who have left these firms, and yet
even the disengagement process has not left them with a bitter taste
in the mouth.

The underlying theme for a great relationship between any employee
and employer ? Mutual respect and acknowledgment of the tacit
psychological contract .

Hope this helps :-)

Regards,
Gautam

A great book I am reading these days is the Dance of Change by Peter Senge , Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross, George Roth and Bryan Smith

just checking

what's the difference between just post and 'post and publish' ?

Some of my online publications are listed below:

on e-Learning : Rhetoric vs Reality

'On Knowledge as Stories'

On "IDEAS, KNOWLEDGE, INTELLECT AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE"

On "HR's Evolving Role"

On "The HR and IT Partnership at Satyam: Reaching out to people"'
This paper was submitted to National HRD network's National Conference of Young HR Professionals "HR in the Next Millennium" in 1999 and was awarded the Second Runner-up Prize.

book

have been reading this book by Peter Senge called "The Dance of Change"...something about the book makes sense to me.

Who are leaders? what do they achieve? Why can't we achieve the same ?

Links

A few of my favourite sites are :

The Web Page of my OB professor, Dr. Madhukar Shukla contains a whole lot of useful links and downloadable content
http://www.madhukarshukla.com
Donald Clark's Training, HRD and Leadership pages amazing Quantity and Quality !
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd.html

My current web page is at Gautam's Wiki Page

The first post ever on this blog

Hi,

My name is Gautam Ghosh and I work in India. I am married to Ekta and we have a lovely daughter called Saachi who's right now 11 months old :-) !

Ekta and I are both HR professionals with an interest in the areas of HR and OD consulting. I am also interested in the area of Knowledge Creation and Innovation.