This collection of posts is part ideology and part methodology aimed at Knowledge Workers still struggling to embrace the Blog and Wiki whateveryoucallit. I don't blame them. The words "Blog", "Wiki", "Tag", and so on, meant very little to me as well until I put each of the technologies to a very specific use.
What started out as a system to manage developer teams overseas turned into a Pipeline for Knowledge Sharing within a Team.
To me, collaboration is a Bottom-to-Top story. It begins with a very selfish Network of One. And that's OK! If you can't prove value to yourself, how can you prove it to the guy sitting next to you at meetings?
Mental Filters
Like many Knowledge Workers, I suffer from information overload and a bad memory. First step is always admitting you have a problem, right? Now, I tend to ask myself two questions whenever I deal with information:
- Is it useful to me now?
- Might it be useful to me later?
A Blog is a Personal, Ad-hoc Knowledge Base
It just so happens that the simplest and most complete Knowledge Base I know of is my Blog. It's mine. It's for me. I don't care about structure, colorful phrasings, or a full bibliography. I just need useful knowledge sans the BS. If I take the time out of my Very Busy Schedule to throw something into my Knowledge Base (KB), I owe it to no-one but myself to only post useful and Highly Relevant information.
I also haven't figured out how to not live in my INBOX so I want to be able to email my KB.
Side Note: But wait, why not store everything in email and search there? With Blogging, selfishness turns into something very useful for the rest of the Team. Email just doesn't have that kind of potential for collaboration.
Finally, I want control over the organization of my Knowledge Base but I don't have time to organize into pretty folders. I just want the information I need at my fingertips with minimum management. And while on the topic of being selfish, I want the search functionality to work for me; I want to help it help me. I want to be able to Tag my KB posts with words or phrases that serve as Keys to Knowledge in my head. It should be easy for me to share these Keys with the cyborg extension to my head that is my personal KB. The search functionality in my KB should pay special attention to these Tags a.k.a Keys. It's a matter of improving relevancy and hence my productivity.
A note about Privacy Concerns
Start with a Blog that your Firm provides for you. It should be internal and inaccessible from the outside world by the outside world. Don't worry about protecting your posts from the prying eyes of colleagues. Focus on yourself. Only your immediate network will ever care about what you have to say anyway. Post openly, but only post work-related information. Remember, you don't have the time to post on anything else.
What kinds of things should I post about?
It took me a bit of trial and error to figure out my Blogging sweet-spot. At first you'll post too much or too little. Remember, it's for you so figure out what works for you.
Some ideas on what you may want to track in your KB:
- You figure out how to do something, save yourself brain space, write yourself a mini how-to
- You solve a problem, post solution so you don't have to solve it again
- Someone owes you a TPS report
- You've identified follow-up items at your 3-hour meeting
- You wish to condense your meeting to 15 minutes by posting an Agenda to your KB
- Someone else posted something that may be useful to you later
Conclusion
When picking out a KB starter-kit, be selfish. My recommendation is to go with a Blog. Blogs have many useful features; clearly I've only scratched the surface. But really, the other features will come in handy later. Here is what you should ask of your Personal, Ad-hoc Knowledge Base Blog:
- Can you email it?
- Can you tag posts?
- Can you tag posts within your email?
- Can you search it?
- Are your search results influenced by the tags you assign to your posts?
Up Next
In my next post, I will talk about how KB-directed Selfishness is, in fact, very useful to Team-mates.
I like this idea. I tend to use Wiki or e-mail for the "Knowledge Base" style articles, but I do realize that e-mail is a relatively bad medium for this since no one remembers it three months later, when, by Murphy's Law, they'll probably need it.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't help that most companies use Outlook and Outlook's search really stinks, so 3 month old e-mails may as well be deleted. (I get around this problem with Copernic Desktop Search, but hey.)
Also, new hires on a team don't get access to old e-mails in typical office setups.
One thing about blogs I debated personally is whether to consider them useful as a developer soapbox. In other words, if I think XYZ idea is cool and should be used more within my company, or I think XYZ process stinks currently and could be improved, is an intranet blog a good place to post articles of that sort?
Personally, the only post on my blog at work is the "hello, world!" one to make sure it works. Hopefully, I'll change that in coming weeks/months, taking "baby steps" with the personal KB approach. We'll see where it leads. Thanks for the food for thought...