Thinking of tools for knowledge workers

I’ve been thinking about Ted Leavitt recently.

Leavitt taught marketing at the Harvard Business School. His most famous aphorism is that “customers don’t but a quarter-inch drill bit, they buy a quarter-inch hole.” Clever, and possibly helpful, if you’re a marketer by trade. But what if you happen to be a knowledge worker? You don’t have the luxury of knowing that what you need is a quarter-inch hole.

While every technology marketer out there is trying to sell you quarter-inch holes, you actually need to be thinking in terms of what kind of general purpose knowledge work toolkit you need to assemble to address the changing and unpredictable demands you face. For knowledge work, solution selling gets in the way at best. A tool perspective will be more productive, even if it is working against the grain.

Here are some quick contrasts between a solutions perspective and a tools perspective:

Solutions Tools
Passive Active
Accept/Reject Co-create
Train Learn
Conformance Craft
Consumer Producer
CEO Hacker

One challenge to overcome is that we’ve been conditioned to think in terms of solutions. We wait for the early adopters to figure everything out so that we can buy the answer off the shelf. We are still too soon in the world of knowledge work. If you are a knowledge worker, then circumstances have forced you back to the level of creating your own toolset. And back to the level of digging underneath the hypothetical solutions to hypothetical problems that today’s marketing conventions will layer on top of the tools themselves that ought to be your target.

Risking curiosity

This struck a chord. I make no secret of being cursed with curiosity and it has come close to killing me a few times both metaphorically and literally (there was that high voltage probe on a Hewlett Packard scintillometer back in high school that wasn’t quite properly grounded).

Curiosity is not something greatly respected in our culture today and that is a dangerous thing. It makes you easier to manipulate. Hemingway’s advice on crap detectors applies to more than writers and appears to be in desparately short supply these days.

My only caveat here is that while I agree that “the pursuit of knowledge is never done,” that does not imply for me that there are no objective truths in the world. If I let go of this laptop in the TSA security line, it will hit the floor. That does complicate things because “agreeing to disagree” isn’t always an out in all conversations. There are “facts” that can be agreed on, but that doesn’t finish the conversation or the deeper search for truth.

Children are our best guides here. None of them need to be trained in the techniques of 7 whys (would that toddlers would stop at 7). After formal schooling, however, most of us need to rediscover what we naturally know how to do.

Can we teach the joy of thinking?. I have been blessed – and cursed – with a curious mind. I say cursed not simply because curiosity killed the cat, but because it makes it very difficult for me to understand people who seem to lack curiosity about themselves and the world around them. This difficulty causes me the most grief when, every fall, I am faced with students who appear to utterly lack curiosity. When I am in a good mood, I ask myself how that is even possible. When I am in poor humour, I wonder why they’ve bothered to go to university at all.

Sound harsh? Well, it probably is. And no doubt oversimplified. But here’s the thing: in a world where people are not equal in terms of interest, how can we teach wonder?

You see, I wonder all the time. Actually, I would need several lifetimes to understand all the things I wonder about. I don’t know how not to wonder. I keep a notebook that contains only questions – hundreds of them – which I share with my students whenever they say that can’t think of anything to research or write about. Colleagues have warned me that I am “giving away” my ideas for future research and, presumably, some sort of future glory. But for me, the beauty and the reward is in our ever-changing understandings – and it sure won’t be me who definitively sorts the world. I only hope there are enough people who keep asking hard questions.

I genuinely believe that the pursuit of knowledge is never done. This is, in part, related to my understanding that there is no absolute, determining, objective truth in the world – a position which obligates me to continue asking questions and forces me to acknowledge that no knowledge is neutral or impartial.

If the best we can offer is subjective, multiple, and partial truths, then learning and understanding requires critical thinking, the questioning of assumptions, self-reflection and self-awareness. In a world that doesn’t want to “waste time” with things other than “the facts,” it turns out that these inter-related practices are, by far, the hardest ones to teach. And I can’t help but to believe they are the most important. [Purse Lip Square Jaw]

Putting the hours in- working on your craft

This got a lot of play earlier this month in my aggregator, but I only managed to get to it this weekend. It certainly lives up to its billing and Gaping Void now has a place in my aggregator.

Too much writing and thinking about creativity perpetuates a myth that creativity is some sort of innate binary characteristic–you either have it or you don’t. I much prefer a perspective that, regardless of your creative gifts, there is craft to be learned and developed. You can’t do anything about the raw material you were given at birth, but, as Macleod also points out, it is within your power to put the hours in. Reminds me of Jerry Pournelle’s classic advice on how to get his job.

Hard Truths from the Gaping Void.

A few months ago I stumbled upon Hugh Macleod’s Gaping Void weblog, enjoying his crazed cartoons and his jaundiced insights. He has one post that he keeps adding to that is just completely fricking brilliant, called “How to be Creative”. The original post is good, but he has a couple elaborations that are even better:

He has one observation that is straight out of the advice I hear over and over for new writers, most of whom are looking for some sort of silver bullet that will allow them to become successful without spending all that boring time with their ass in a chair doing the work:

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what seperates successful people and failed people is time and stamina.

This stuff is all good reading, and worth thinking about if you have any ambitions towards being creative – as an artist, as an entrepeneur, as a software developer, as a person.

Comment on Hard Truths from the Gaping Void [Evil Genius Chronicles]

Martin Roell on Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity

Martin has put together a nice synthesis of thinking about weblogs and knowledge worker productivity.

Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing.

In case you wonder what to read this weekend: Martin Roell published 0.9 version of the paper for his BlogTalk presentationDistributed KM – Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing.

This paper briefly explores the failure of traditional knowledge management to adress the problem of knowledge worker productivity and argues that a deeper understanding of knowledge work is necessary to improve it. It then explores knowledge work and how it is supported with information technology tools today, focussing specially on the email client as a knowledge work tool.

The paper introduces weblogs as personal publishing tools for knowledge workers and shows how personal publishing supports knowledg work processes, is personally beneficial to the knowledge worker and helps the dissemination of knowledge through an organisation.

Martin intergrates lots of thinking on “blogs in KM”, so, next to an interesting read by itself, this paper is a good starting point to discover follow-up reading.

[Mathemagenic]

David Gelerntner on Beauty in Computing

Here’s a great thought to start off my day. I think it applies beyond the obvious complexity of computing.

David Gelerntner on Beauty in Computing.

David Gelerntner, a computer scientist at Yale, perhaps put it best when he said, “Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity.”

Quoted in the Economist article “Unix’s founding fathers” (via Dan Hill)

[Tesugen.com: Peter Lindbergs Weblog]

Weblogs and literacy for knowledge workers

Substitute “knowledge worker” for “information literate student.”

Which raises the next question. How good a job are we doing at preparing people to be knowledge workers in today’s world?

Weblogs and Literacy.

“The information literate student validates understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners.”
ALA

I’ve been working through some ideas for a piece about Weblogs and wikis and all these new tools and their impact on “literacy.” In a nutshell, the Internet has changed the requirements of what it means to be literate. While just about everything we used to teach with was a finished, edited text, the Web now provides us with a gazillion unedited texts, which means it’s no longer enough just to be able to read; we have to read critically. And now that the Internet is a read AND write technology, part of our literacy has to include skills to communicate and collaborate with a much larger, less contrived audience. Finally, since there will no doubt be an ever-growing body of information out there to deal with, we need to be literate in managing information what we find relevant and meaningful.

In my travels this morning, I landed on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education put up by the American Library Association. It gives some pretty in depth definitions of information literacy, and lists 23 performance indicators for information literate students. What struck me is how many of them can be addressed by blogging:

  • The information literate student retrieves information online or in person using a variety of methods.
  • The information literate student extracts, records, and manages the information and its sources.
  • The information literate student summarizes the main ideas to be extracted from the information gathered.
  • The information literate student articulates and applies initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources.
  • The information literate student synthesizes main ideas to construct new concepts.
  • The information literate student compares new knowledge with prior knowledge to determine the value added, contradictions, or other unique characteristics of the information.
  • The information literate student validates understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners.
  • The information literate student applies new and prior information to the planning and creation of a particular product or performance.
  • The information literate student communicates the product or performance effectively to others.
  • The information literate student follows laws, regulations, institutional policies, and etiquette related to the access and use of information resources.
  • The information literate student acknowledges the use of information sources in communicating the product or performance.Weblogs are such a great tool for doing much of this, and they offer a transparent, organized way for teachers and students to measure these proficiencies and others. [Weblogg-ed News]
  • The importance of going native

    This is the kind of post that makes us happy to see folks like Nancy White join the ranks of bloggers. Insightful, based on experience, and, already, well tuned to the emerging standards and conventions of blogging. danah’s original post that triggered Nancy’s post is also well worth following up on as well.

    I’m one of those, for example, who finds web-based discussion less satisfying than blogging. Denham, on the other hand, appears to prefer web-based discussion. But he has made the effort to try the alternatives and can ground his preferences in that experience. You need to “go native” long enough to grasp what makes each of these new experiences worthwhile in their own right. You can’t stop at the metaphorical level. And you can’t stay detached.

    There are two reasons I prefer blogging over web-based discussion. First, it allows me to get my own thoughts in order at my own pace. I lose the thread in threaded discussions. Second, blogs make it easier for me to find and link to others’ thinking. The conversation moves at a slower pace and in chunks I find more satisfying.

    All of these tools ought to be in the repetoire of any knowledge worker. But that requires a commitment to experimenting and working with the tools long enough to discover their signature rhythms and styles. That runs counter to software marketing practices that emphasize “out of the box experince” over time enough to learn how to use the tools and fit them to your needs. Those of us who are scouts in these new territories need to think about how to ease the transition for the settlers who will follow.

    Don’t Practice? Watch your Preachin!. danah posted on Many2Many something that I want to pick up and run witha bit farther:

    “This is precisely why it’s bloody hard to study/discuss these technologies without being a practitioner. Distance is valuable as a researcher, but it’s also limiting. You need to engage with the culture at a deep level in order to study it. Because digital technology cultures are so peculiar, you need to be involved at an intimate level. Being a lurker is just not the same. It is the practice of engaging with these technologies that makes you able to move beyond the metaphor.”

    I have been harboring a bit of inner burn over the past few months as well. It stems from the ease of condemnation people seem to be able to conjure about things they have not experienced, or perhaps more importantly, not experienced in the same way as another. “If it didn’t work for me, it’s bad. I don’t care that it worked for you.”

    I seethe when a “blogger” or a “wiki person” condemns as inferior a web-based discussion and call it a controlling environment. It may have been inferior to them, but for others it is a very freeing, useful and even preferred medium. I boil over when a web-based discussion person dismisses the possibility that bloggers experience “community.” Just because something gets a label slapped on it like “social software” or “old style” does not make it universally better or worse. There is far more subtlety in the context of each instance and deployment. There is the unseen ways in which users bend technology to meet their needs, irrespective of the intention of the designer. This is not taken into account.

    There is insufficient experience and practice to slap labels around and make claims that completely ignore a key factor of online interaction technologies.

    • They are designed for a group experience.
    • They are almost always experienced by an individual in the isolation in interaction with their computer.

    My experience is not your experience. Further more, it is hard to even describe OUR experience. We romanticize the concept of group interaction, but in truth, it is imperfect, online and offline. And online we don’t see the consequences as quickly nor are our communication antennae, trained for millennium to F2F communication, as attuned to online communication. I think we are getting better. I see changes. But I can’t see if you are smiling, frowning, curious or pissed off as you read this. And if I want to communicate and engage with you, that matters to me. (If I just want to spout and publish, well, you are out of luck!)

    Circling back to danah’s observation about the need to be involved at an intimate level, I want to chime in with a big AMEN. Intimacy means being ready to let my perceptions aside for a moment and get a peek into yours. In means slowing down, experimenting, diving in, risking failure and god forbid, being wrong.

    Or perhaps better, being both right and wrong which is how the world works. Context is everything and my right may be your wrong and visa versa. That’s life.

    Also posted at Many2Many
    [Full Circle Associates Online Interaction & Community Blog]

    Corporate Blogging – Blogs as Paths in Open Spaces

    This is a classic and largely familiar story of user center designed from the field of architecture. It had never occurred to me to make this very natural connection to blogs and blogging in the organization. Now that someone else has, however, I expect to use the analogy routinely (with all due credit recorded here).

    Thank you, Dina.

    Corporate Blogging – Blogs as Paths in Open Spaces.

    One more way of looking at blogging in organisations …

    Blogging Paths in the Grass – Will Pate.

    Jon Strande was blogging the other day about how Slonian corporate structures divorce employees from each other and customers. He told this litle story that sparked some thinking about one of my favorite subjects these days, organizational blogging.

    An architect once designed a cluster of buildings. When asked by the landscape crew where to pave the sidewalks, he told them to plant grass between all the buildings, wait a year, then, after the occupants had worn the most useful paths, the architect told the landscape crew to pave the pathways that the occupants had created.

    In an organization blogs can operate much the same way. They become open spaces where people can create their own path. Discussions emerge and the lines wear deeper into the solid ground, creating meaningful relationships built on common interests.”

    [Conversations with Dina]

    Welcome, Nancy!

    Welcome, indeed. Nancy and I started talking about getting her up and blogging over a year ago. I’d like to think the delay was a function of other things on her plate, rather than testimony to my persuasive skills. Regardless, it’s nice to have her here finally.

    Welcome, Nancy!. Woo-friggin-hoo! Long-time online facilitation expert Nancy White has finally started her own weblog (did she hear my plea?). The online community toolkit that she s been building for years is chock-full of great material, which I suppose she ll do us the pleasure of introducing bit by bit.

    A recent post reports on an experiment I d been meaning to try but had yet to find the right conditions for: having group of chat participants listen the same music while chatting – much as would happen at a party – as a means of creating a shared atmosphere and giving participants a better sense of togetherness. Apparently it turned out very well I ll really have to try it. Webjay could make it quite easy.

    This post also appears on channel social software

    [Seb’s Open Research]