Knowledge Management Practitioners Group

Remina Rashopola kindly shared this Recall with us. She is currently a second year KM student at the University of Johannesburg, and cannot wait to engage in a professional career that will provide her with the opportunity to fulfil her passion.

The Method and overview of the discussion

I think the method works very well and the facilitator-independence nature of the discussion is just fantastic. I was impressed about the rather unfamiliar (at least to me) role of the facilitator (which I believe is part of this method) of effectively observing the discussion and particularly recording the happenings as the discussions went and on, the report back statistics were very impressive. An interesting question from all this then becomes, are there any indicators from what was observed, that can be used to determine the success of the method for effective implementation of the fishbowl method in our various environments.

Discussion points picked up

With regards to the experiences of the anchors in relation to the organisational culture and support/lack of it from the top/executives within the organisation particularly looking at some organisational structures that are mostly hierarchical in nature and often encourages too much individuality which in turn and to a larger extent discourages sharing? And how can one effectively implement KM initiatives where there is lack of support or buy in from the top?

Some responses to this covered important points such as the fact that, KM should not only be up to a certain (practitioner) level, but rather that it has to be organisation wide, starting from top executives to practitioner level. It is the duty of the KM manager to sell the KM initiative or the benefits to all and more importantly to the executives within the organisation, and the approach that one chooses becomes very important.
It is highly important to align KM activities with existing culture rather than to try and change the culture. An example of a government structure has been used, highlighting more importantly the fact that the government structure is very hierarchical in nature, and protocol is the most important element approach to introduce any new initiative.

The best advice was to try and concentrate on smaller initiatives with clear benefits that could be clearly seen, but also to try and avoid the use of KM term to describe any KM initiative if possibility of resistance is likely.

Another important point was raised to get the views of the anchors with regard to the fact that when looking at issues of culture and culture change, practically what happens is that, there will be pockets and pockets of different cultures in various units within the organisation, this is normal and need to be embraced, and the good advice however is to try and break those barriers that may otherwise block the sharing between those organisational units (the role of the KM manager also highly important here).

Regarding the location of the KM manager within an organisation, it was very clear from the anchors experiences as well as the discussions around this that in actual fact, where the KM manager is located within the organisational structure should not be an issue at all, but the role that s/he plays is what matters. The KM manager has a bigger role to play interms of encouraging the creation of partnerships within an organisation. The role is more of a coordination/facilitation role and this person has got to develop a skill to be able to do this across the organisation unit borders. The anchors and all also agree to the importance of having the KM manager at a senior position/level to be able to drive the KM initiative forward. The experience of one anchor who is a knowledge manager in an international company is that although her role is showing positive results/benefits for the organisation, the company has not yet created similar positions in other branches in two other countries and this creates some problems in trying to communicate and share company wide experiences in terms of best practices and improvements that could be done for the benefit of the company as a whole. Thus, lack of peers in other offices creates some frustrations for the KM manager to spread and share the good lessons and best practices that could be implemented across the organisation. Thus, coordination is proves to be difficult.

Reflections

Points: the group raised various issues around the method and very important comments around participation.

Point 1: the need/importance of participants to know each other: this was raised by a participant as a comment/suggestion based on the fact that when the discussion started in the inner circle, the process became a bit slow (that is for participants on the outer circle to join). , and this participant thought that may be if we “knew” each other (may be by just doing a round of introduction at the beginning), it might help to “break some ice”, and participants may feel comfortable to join the inner circle. although joining the inner circle was slow in the beginning it interestingly improved as the discussion progressed. I think as the participant observed, it took a longer time for people to feel comfortable to join the inner circle than it could have if they “knew” each other before the discussion started.

Point 2: an issue raised around the capturing of the discussion for future reference, of which all agreed that it is important to capture in order to make it explicit and a point of reference in future. What was not clear though was the method of capture that will be used. Discussion and suggestions that followed included some examples of methods which were used elsewhere, but it was very clear during the discussion that each method may have some advantages as well as disadvantages. For instance, the examples shared included experiences in certain groups or countries, where they used the scribe to capture important points, which are normally read at the end of the discussions, or where they use flip charts for participants who spoke to a particular point during discussion to write it down themselves, to be captured later and stored for future reference

Point 3: The way the discussion unfolded, was very natural, and totally independent of the facilitator, some participants felt that this method does not work well for people who are not good in just “jumping” in and raising a point without being formally given chance to speak, hence it was difficult for them to join the inner circle. Some felt that for them not to participate is because they felt that they are still learning, and they have to learn first in order for them to make valid contributions, while others observed the discussion and felt that something else (IM) rather than KM was being discussed (loss of focus)? Suggestions here included the points such as the need for an active facilitator to control and direct the discussion, or to have some cards with numbers attached to each sit, such that when participants talk, they follow the order according to the numbers allocated to seats they occupy.

Whatever could work better, I happen to hold a different view here, and my view is that (although I haven’t read about the fishbowl method as yet to understand how it should work and what it aims to achieve), I believe that some of the principles is to leave the discussion to be as natural as possible, “informal” and uncontrolled or influenced by the facilitator, to allow free flow of discussion, ideas, and sharing on anything that will tap into the experiences of the anchors/experts and others in the group. I think this is good. Where there is a need for a facilitator I believe will probably be in situations where a particular topic has been identified for discussion in order to achieve a particular outcome. For people who are threatened by the “informality” of the method to stand up and join the inner circle or to just jump in and speak, I see this as the same situation with formal discussions. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the basis of the method, and thre is no need to change the method to suit them, but rather they must learn to use the method. My approach is that I am a shy person, but since I have the love for KM and know that my future career will fly with colours in KM, I chose to deal with my shyness and particularly when I got the invite for this discussion, this is what I went through:

f I have to be there to observe and witness it because it seemed it was going to be fun and the biggest challenge to me, given the new environment with new faces. I never thought I will join the inner circle, but while I was sitting there, I have had my inner struggle with one desire to join the inner circle and the other which kept on telling me how shy I am and that I cannot go there and join the inner circle. But the comment from IBM anchor about the brilliant lady who is so good in what she does, but too shy and therefore has difficulties in selling her good work to others, and how she motivates her to change that, by saying, if you have done something good/beneficial, why cannt you have the courage to “brag” about it, became very important and indeed useful to me. I believed I had valid points to share in the inner circle, and particularly to raise some realities that we are faced with in the public service. so I had to develop the courage to stand up and do just that. Shyness and KM responsibility does not get along very well at all. A KM manager has to be a very active member within the organisation in teams of facilitation and coordination. It is important for such a manager to develop important skills like interpersonal skills in this regard. I am passionate about KM, and I know I have to get rid of the shy in me. I totally disagree with any suggestion that will “force” people to join the inner circle. It has to come natural, otherwise, my feeling is that if you come up with any method to force people to participate in the inner circle, the likelihood is that people may not come to the discussion forum at all. I believe that what is important atleast is that even those who end up not joining the inner circle, the benefit is that they help to observe the process, and also learn something in the process.

The issue of capturing the discussion: although so important, I also agree entirely that the method or tool that may be used, should not be anything that will discourage participation in anyway whatsoever, because once the issue of capturing is introduced, even those who participate happen to try and be selective and “professional” in their participants, and this might limit certain important points to be shared with the group.

Suggestions
* It is important that with this discussions, we also strengthen the issue of networking, I think it is important to have the contacts of the anchors accessible to all participants for them to be able to make follow ups when they need,
* It is important to ask each participant to introduce themselves covering the organisation, short indication of what they do at work, to give the rest of the group an idea of whos who in the group.

The different experiences shared were just interesting, I cannot wait for the next session.