Librarians as Knowledge Managers: The View from the Executive Suite

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Librarians as Knowledge Managers The View from
the Executive Suite

• Dave Pollard
• SLA Annual Conference
• June 6, 2007
• dave.pollard_at_sympatico.ca

Meeting of Minds
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A Tale of Two Executives
D We figured that by providing all this
Knowledge Management software to our people, we
could get rid of the library, and everyone could
do their own research online. R Information
Professionals are specialists like everyone else
today. Its insane to have our managers and staff
trying, badly, to do research, when IPs have
spent their careers learning to do it very well.
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Daves Cultural Anthropology Story(1) The View
from the Executive Suite

• We dont know how to use this knowledge stuff.
  And we dont need it. Weve already got what we
  need.
• Heres whats keeping us awake at night
• Mitigating risk
• Reducing costs
• Increasing value/person
• Strengthening key customer relationships
• Tell us how KM, IPs and librarians can help us
  with that.

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Daves Cultural Anthropology Story(2) The View
from the Front Lines
I cant find anything on my computer. I can
search, but I cant research. Why didnt
anyone show me this before? My task is to
assess what all this data means. I dont need
a perfect answer. But I need one right
now. Half of my calls are to ask me if I know
about X, or, if not, who does. The things
were worst at are collaboration and innovation.
Can you help us with that?
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Daves Cultural Anthropology Story(3) The View
from the Customers
Why isnt KM enabling our suppliers to reduce
the cost of their services? We dont choose a
supplier based on what they know about our
business (and we assume they know their
business). We choose based on the quality of the
relationship we have with our supplier
representative. We expect our suppliers to be
leveraging best practices and their communities
of practice, to improve their services to us and
leverage what they all know. Arent they?
Different from what the Executives
view. Different from the Front Lines view.
Which group do you want to please?
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The View from the Executive Suite Panel Results
Part 1Who Owns KM? Whats the IPs Role?

• No agreement on what it is or if its needed
• No agreement on who owns it or what it should do
• Not sure whether to centralize, decentralize or
  outsource ICM
• Type D view Its everyones job. If people cant
  do it themselves, get rid of them
• Type R view The BUs own the content
• If librarians are focused on content, they
  probably belong in BUs too. Or maybe in RD? Or
  marketing?
• If KM is about infrastructure (technology), then
  IT owns it (they have the budgets)
• If KM is about learning, HR owns it
• Librarians are becoming IPs and they have two
  roles research and cataloguing/metadata
• Librarians have to specialize or theyll be
  outsourced if they specialize they could become
  SMEs
• IPs are increasingly overskilled and
  underemployed

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The View from the Executive Suite Panel Results
Part 2Where Does KM Fit? Whats its Mission?

• Still dont see the benefits Few senior
  champions, and disconnect with perceptions of the
  front lines
• Obsession with risk cost Is knowledge-sharing
  risky? Can KM increase value-based billings?
  Reduce headcount?
• Dont care about customers unmet needs or
  innovation or collaboration
• Customers want knowledge delivered on their site,
  their way, not on Extranet/Internet
• Information we buy is too raw
• Information on Intranet is not very useful
• Execs still trying to change the culture and
  processes and expect KM to help
• Intrigued by new tech (Facebook, UTube, blogs,
  wikis) but dont get them
• Decentralizing (Type R) organizations see the
  value in KM that the front lines see, but they
  are outnumbered by centralizing (Type D)
  organizations

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Diagnosing Your Organizations Knowledge Culture
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How Executives See the Role of Information and
Information Professionals
(These charts to be re-done to improve legibility)
Type R Organizations
Type D Organizations
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Type R Organizations The Challenge
add value
Librarians are good at this
disseminate
acquire
Know-what Collection Content Just in case
store
connect canvass
But can they do this?
synthesize
Know-who Connection Context Just in time
apply
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Type D Organizations The Waiting Game
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A KM Framework Why Its Important

• Design Development
• Principles
• What guides what we do
• and how we do it?

• Value Propositions
• Why are we doing this?
• What is expected?

• Outcomes
• How do we measure
• success?

• KM Services Products
• Content acquisition provision
• Research, knowledge transfer
• Architecture, tools, spaces
• Support Training
• etc.

• Customers
• Who are we doing
• this for?

• To guide KM activities and provide context for KM
  projects
• To explain the what and why of KM (over
  over, consistently)
• To frame elevator pitches

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Six KM Quick Win Ideas

• Introduce IM
• Introduce Google Desktop and other PCM tools
• Introduce Desktop Videoconferencing
• Create a JIT Canvassing system
• Improve Know-Who Directories
• Introduce RSS Aggregator Pages

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What You Can Do Now Type R Organizations

• Quick Wins
• Cultural Anthropology (study all 3 groups)
• current state use of information technology
• needs
• time motion data (see Davenports study)
• information behaviours (incl. dysfunctional ones)
  
• Experiments e.g.
• personal productivity improvement
• proactive research adding meaning
• collaboration
• harvesting
• stories
• mindmaps
• social networking tools
• wisdom of crowds canvassing
• thinking customers ahead

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Davenports Study of Knowledge Worker Activity
Volumes

• Workers spend an average every day of
• 3 ¼ hours processing work-related information
• Half of that is e-mail (processing and sending 17
  e-mails, receiving and processing 44 e-mails,
  participating in 16 IMs)
• A quarter of that is phone (making 15 calls,
  receiving 18 calls and 8 voice messages and
  participating in 1 teleconference)
• Much of the remainder is looking for information
• Multiple, un-integrated tools, not effectively
  used, not well supported
• Most have poor search, poorer research skills
• Work effectiveness tends to be proportional to
  time invested in and size of networks
• Pilot experiments lack rigour
• No end of process yet!

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Dysfunctional Information Behaviours

• (list of 4 categories, 25 total types of
  dysfunctional information behaviour e.g. bad news
  never travels up) this list explains why its
  so difficult to change culture in organizations

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What You Can Do Now Type D Organizations

• Quick Wins
• Assess the Cost of Not Knowing (Christensen, risk
  assessment)
• Competitive Intelligence pilot environmental
  scanning, strategy canvasses etc.
• Then skunkworks, vision, learn more about the
  business, and/or wait

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Now Lets Brainstorm

• Whats your biggest KM challenge
• Knowing whats needed?
• Finding good models success stories?
• Selling investment in KM to management?
• How have you solved these challenges?
• Is your organization ready for the Connect,
  Canvass, Synthesize, Apply model of KM? Are you?
• What do you need, to be able to persuade your
  organization to let you add more value to
  information? To let you become a personal
  productivity enabler? Do you even want to do
  this?
• What else can IPs do in Type R organizations? In
  Type D organizations?
• Tell us your story.