EIGHTTEENTH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ROUNDTABLE
CONVENED ON MAY 19, 2004 AT
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION HEADQUARTERS.
Resources:
- Meeting Overview
- Agenda
- Oranization List
- Presentation 1, by Professor Robert Cross
- Presentation 2, by Dr. Moonja Kim
- Presentation 3, by Ms. Alex Bennet & Dr. David Bennet
Brief:
The 18th meeting of the Knowledge Management Roundtable (KM RT) series was held in the auditorium of George Mason University Arlington Campus, 3401 Fairfax Drive , Arlington , VA 22201 , on May 19, 2004 . It was jointly sponsored by Defense Contract Management Agency (WWW.DCMA.MIL) and the Federal CIO Council's KM Working Group (WWW.KM.GOV) Community of Practice Special Interest Group.
Held in conjunction with the School of Public Policy's International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology (ICASIT) and Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology (CIT), the KM RT seeks to broaden the application and advance the effectiveness of KM practice in organizations in the region. CIT seeks to increase the Commonwealth's economic competitiveness and quality of life by advancing the development of Virginia as a technology state and by creating and retaining technology-based jobs and businesses.
As part of its efforts to achieve these results, CIT provided a grant to ICASIT to help initiate a shared KM culture among organizations in Virginia by identifying organizations interested in KM and convening the first KM Roundtable that was held in March 1999. (KM Roundtable, March 1999). Subsequently, a KM RT has been convened nearly every quarter: KM Roundtable, June 1999, KM Roundtable, September 1999, KM Roundtable, February 2000, KM Roundtable, May 2000, KM Roundtable, August 2000, KM Roundtable, November 2000, KM Roundtable, February 2001, KM Roundtable, May 2001, KM Roundtable, August 2001, KM Roundtable, November 2001, KM Roundtable, February 2002, KM Roundtable, May 2002 , KM Roundtable, October 2002, KM Roundtable, February 2003, KM Roundtable, September 2003 , KM Roundtable, March 2004. and KM Roundtable, May 2004.
MEETING OVERVIEW
The Knowledge Management Roundtable (KMRT) met with 44 members present to hear presentations on the topic of "Social Networks." The objective for the session was for the Round Table members (1) to leave with a better understanding of social networks, (2) to learn about how other organizations are utilizing social networks to improve collaboration and performance and (3) to share knowledge among the members KMRT regarding social networks by facilitated discussions. The presenters related stories regarding how social networks are used in many organizations based on their real experiences within large organizations. Another topic covered was about developing energy in Networks. We also had a short discussion on the Intelligent Adaptive Complex Systems as the knowledge organization of the future.
The agenda for the meeting is shown below:
9:00am Hidden power of Social Networks (click to download the slides)
- Professor Rob Cross, McIntire School of Commerce , University of Virginia
11:00am Facilitated Discussions
- Rick Dickey, Defense Contract Management
11:30am How Social Network Analysis could help Communities of Practice ( click to download the slides )
- Dr. Moonja Kim, Defense Contract Management Agency
01:30pm From Social Network Analysis to Relationship network Management to the Future Organizations ( click to download the slides )
- Ms. Alex Bennet & Dr. David Bennet, Mountain Quest Institute
03:30am Facilitated Discussions
- Rick Dickey, Defense Contract Management
Presenter: Professor Rob Cross, McIntire School of Commerce , University of Virginia
Professor Cross talked about two major topics of Social Networks: (1).”Managing” networks in organizations, and (2) Developing Energy in Networks. First, he said that relationships are multi-dimensional and ‘discovered' through the questions we ask and network structure can facilitate or impede effectiveness:
- Are certain people overly central?
- Are some people loosely connected and so under-utilized?
- Are there divisive subgroups?
- Is the network's level of connection sufficient?
He also said, “getting things done often depends less on formal structure than on an informal network of colleagues” and compared two in diagrams. SNA can be a powerful tool to look across divisional boundaries..He talked about his study with a Fortune 250 organization to assess the network of its top 114 executives.
- Company had grown by acquisition over the past five years and wanted to assess integration across divisions.
- Also, wanted to work toward a leadership network that was better able to sense and respond to new opportunities.
- He helped initiate a program to develop not a top management team, but a top management network.
- Assessed the advice network of this group.
- Introduced both technical and organizational interventions.
He also said “Energy (and energizers) matters quite a bit when you start to think about it.” Energizers get more from those around them.
- People are more engaged in a given conversation…and are likely to devote discretionary time to these issues.
- People tend to be more innovative and creative with energizers…and do not seek out de-energizers for information.
- Energizers tend to win out in the internal labor market and with customers --- ability to inspire is critical.
- Energy spills over into follow on interactions.
- De-energizers can be deadly on this front.
His in depth discussions are in his new book “The Hidden Power of Social Networks – Understanding how work really gets done in organizations,” published by Harvard Business School Press (2004).
Professor Robert Cross' Powerpoint presentation slides are available for download .
Presenters: Dr. Moonja Kim, Knowledge Management Center , Defense Contract Management Agency.
Dr. Kim provided a short description of the Defense Contract Management Agency then talked about historical facts on Social Networks, starting from a Social Psychologist, J Moreno's book (1934) on “Who shall Survive”, a Cultural Anthropologist, Nadel's work (1957) and a communication researcher, Rogers ' book (1995) “Diffusion of Innovations.” She talked about Fax Machine adoption as an example of importance of network for technology diffusion. Discussion was lead to one of the best seller “The Tipping Point” by M Gladwell (2000), and talked about importance of connectors, maven and salesperson. She also presented many examples of Social Network Analysis applications that were accomplished by Valdis Krebs from Orgnet.com. She described four different roles within a informal network—Central connectors, boundary expanders, information brokers and peripheral specialists. She also provided the website for International Network for Social Network Analysis and a list of popular software tools for SNA. Then a discussion was led on how to use Social Network Analysis to energize the Communities of Practice.
Dr. Moonja Kim's Powerpoint presentation slides are available for download .
Presenter:. Ms. Alex Bennet & Dr. David Bennet, Mountain Quest Institute
Alex Bennet started her presentation with the following axioms:
- Interactions are the foundation of doing business.
- They affect the way we think, feel and make decisions over both the short and long-term.
- Every interaction embeds information in our subconscious, information that can emerge as it is needed, often without reference to where it was obtained.
- How we interact is more important than how often we interact as long as we continue interacting.
She said that good relationships emerge from a history of interactions. They are built on the concepts of interdependency, trust, a common framework, openness, flow and equitability. She suggested that Relationship Network Management occurs when we recognize the potential of these relationships and use them to share and learn, creating and sustaining a conscious flow of information across the organization.
She also talked about new competencies we need to survive under CUCA:
- Rate of C hange doubling every two years
- Escalating U ncertainty
- Exploding C omplexity
- Spreading A nxiety
Dr. David Bennet talked about the Complexity as a system or situation that has some degree of order but has too many elements and relationships to understand in simple cause and effect relationships. He explained Emergence as Global property of complex adaptive systems that is created through the multiple interactions and reactions of the agents or elements within the system. He said that survival of the firm depends upon the sum of all of the daily actions of employees. He also talked about complexity guiding principles and the system space from simple, complicated, complex, complex adaptive, chaotic.
He said that we are facing the age of complexity and networks are the key to the age of complexity, and provided a short explanation of the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System, which is described in detail in their new book “Organizational Survival in the New World- The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System, “ published by Elsevier (2004).
They raised the following questions for discussions with the audience and we had very interesting actively participated discussions:
- How can networks create knowledge?
- How can networks leverage knowledge?
- How can networks apply knowledge?
- How can we make networks healthy?
- How can we replicate network relationships?
Bennets' presentation slides are available for download .
Our thanks are extended to Professor Steve Ruth and Mr. Jiwan Giri, School of Public Policy , George Mason University , for hosting the KMRT with plenty of coffee for the day.
Moonja P. Kim,
Coordinator of KM Roundtable meetings, Defense Contract Management Agency, 6350 Walker Lane, Alexandria, VA 22310 (703) 428-1483