Slides from a talk given to the Knowledge Workers Toronto (KWT) group (search for them on Meetup.com) on the 10th November 2015.

1. The impact of Social Collaboration
technologies on Knowledge Management
Jed Cawthorne MBA MBCS CITP
Knowledge Workers Toronto 10th November 2015
Social and KM…..
Or Social KM ?

2. My Experience in the KM field
 The Open University & ESA, Mars Express Mission
 Science Data Archiving Manager, Beagle 2 Lander
 The Open University
 ECM Requirements and procurement Project Manager
 ECM Implementation Programme Manager
 Prescient Digital Media
 Intranet, CMS, Enterprise Search Consultant
 Canadian Tire Corporation
 Senior KM Specialist
 KPMG International
 Knowledge Manager, Global Quality & Risk Management
 BMO Financial Group
 Senior Strategy Consultant, ECM; Senior Manager, Major
Initiatives, Corporate Intranet Group; Director of Business
Technology Strategy & KM; Legal, Corporate & Compliance
Group
2
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

3. My very simple assertion
 You can not achieve a knowledge enabled
organization without good Information
Management; this is independent of your working
definition of Knowledge Management
 Social Collaboration technology facilitates
information and knowledge sharing to enable
elements of knowledge management to be directly
embedded in processes: social collaboration tools
are for all intents and purposes part of the
information management tool box
3
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

4. Definitions of Knowledge Management
 Prof. Michael Sutton, Gore School of Business at
Westminster College reported to the 2008 International
Conference on Knowledge Management that he had
assembled a library of over 100 definitions !
 Original definition (?) – Thomas Davenport 1994:
“Knowledge management is the process of capturing,
distributing and effectively using knowledge”
 The point I would like to make, and will illustrate as we
move ahead, is that the different definitions, indeed the
different schools of thought on KM all still require good
information management as an underpinning, and all
can benefit from social collaboration technologies and
techniques.
4
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

5. A working definition of KM
“KM is an effort to increase useful knowledge within
an organization. Ways to do this include encouraging
communication, offering opportunities to learn, and
promoting the sharing of knowledge objects or
artifacts”
Dr Claire McInerny, Knowledge Management and the Dynamic Nature of
Knowledge, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, 2002
 Knowledge Objects or artifacts: documents in an DM
repository, institutional records, pages in a wiki, blog
articles and comments, web pages on the intranet, emails
but now also news feed posts, entries in an ideation
system etc…. In other words not just Knowledge Base5
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

6. The Stages of KM
 Stage 1 – Intranets & Intellectual Capital
 Stage 2 – Human Relations, cultural dimensions
 Stage 3 – Content & retrievability
 Stage 4 – Access to external information
The Stages of KM: C.McInerny & M.Koenig, KM Processes in
Organizations, Theoretical Foundations and Practice, Synthesis
Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval and Services #18,
Morgan & Claypool, 2011
6
No ECM – No KM ! Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 22nd May 2012

7.  Stage 1: Intranets and IC
 IT driven
 Intellectual Capital
 Intranets and extranets
 Best Practices and Lessons Learned
 Stage 2: Human Relations; cultural dimensions
 Communities of Practice
 Organizational Culture
 The Learning Organization (Senge)
 Tacit Knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi – SECI)
7
No ECM – No KM ! Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 22nd May 2012

8.  Stage 3: Content & Retrievability
 Structuring content & adding index terms (metadata)
 Content Management technologies
 Taxonomies
 Stage 4: Access to External Information
 Firewall-less universal access?
 Importance of context
 ‘Social Technologies’ ? KM 2.0 ?
8
No ECM – No KM ! Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 22nd May 2012

9. Comment on The Stages of KM
 Stage 1 – Intranets & Intellectual Capital: heavy IT emphasis
 Stage 2 – Human Relations, cultural dimensions: introducing
the key human aspects
 Stage 3 – Content & retrievability: introduction of content
management related technologies !
 Stage 4 – Access to external information: KM 2.0?
 David Gurteen coined the term KM 2.0 in his 2007 Information Online Keynote in
London. His main point was that KM1.0 failed because it consisted of additional
tasks, like making sure you place a document into the RM system, or completed
an entry in the separate Knowledge Base system etc. He suggested that web 2.0
/ enterprise 2.0 “social” technologies would push forward a new way of looking at
KM – hence KM2.0
9
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

10. Enterprise Social Business Software
 Have I mentioned how much I hate the use of the
word “social”……….
 Collaboration platforms with new tools, helping us to
connect, communicate and collaborate with each
other and with information in new ways
 We collaborate on information, so social
collaboration platforms are essentially Information
Management tools, however they have application in
a KM context….
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

11. 11
http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/IM_vs_KM.html
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2

12. Social Business or E2.0
http://www.tealeshapcott.com/intranet/creating-a-better-intranet-with-slates/

13. From SLATES to FLATNESSES
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet –
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/enterprise-2-0-the-world-of-flatnesses/6709
FLATNESSES & KM see: http://www.cmswire.com/social-
business/social-to-knowledge-managements-rescue/

14. Plenty of suites to choose
 Social Business Software suites
 IBM Connections, Jive, SharePoint 2013
 WCM / Publishing
 OpenText Social Communities, Atlassian Confluence,
 Social Intranet
 ThoughtFarmer, PBWorks
 Social ‘extensions’ from Enterprise Software
vendors
 SalesForce Chatter, Tibco Tibbr
 Open Source
 eXo, elgg, Drupal, Dolphin
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

15. Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015
An example of a social collab platform

16. Botha et al (2008) “Broad Categories of KM”
16
You don't know
Knowledge
Discovery
Explore, Research,
Create
You know
Knowledge
Repository
(Knowledge Base)
Knowledge Sharing
and Transfer
Knowledge you
have
Knowledge you
don't have
Search, external social
platforms, comments on
blogs etc. social network
mining
Search, news feeds, blogs,
wikis , comments, content
rating and feedback, social
network expert discovery
Social collaboration functionality as described by either the SLATES or
FLATNESSES models can be applied to these “broad categories of KM” as
described by Botha and colleagues.
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

17. Botha – KM Process Model
17
Social tools
functionality can be
applied to all
dimensions of the
model even those
with a human focus,
for example:
Create: Micro-
blogging
Organize: Meta-
tagging
Share & Collaborate:
Comments, links,
extensions
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

18. Social enablement of KM example – SECI
18
SECI stands for Socialization, Externalization, Combination
and Internalization. The model speaks about tacit and
explicit knowledge, so first, a definition:
 Tacit knowledge: Intuitive, hard to define knowledge,
that is largely experience based. It is contextual, personal
and hard to communicate. It is often referred to as "know-
how“
 Explicit knowledge: This type of knowledge is
formalized and codified, making it easier to store,
manage and transmit. It is often referred to as "know-
what." Traditionally, this type of knowledge has been the
focus of IT based knowledge management systems
 See http://www.cmswire.com/social-business/social-collaboration-mediated-
knowledge-management/
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

19. Social enablement of knowledge spiral
19
 How can social
collaboration
functionality
enable the
various stages of
the knowledge
spiral as
knowledge
assets flow
through
processes and
across an
organization?
Social HR
platforms,
Video Sharing,
Discussion
platforms
Blogs, micro-blogs
/ news feeds,
discussions &
comments
Search, Links,
tagging,
extensions,
comments
Networks, signals:
Subscriptions,
notifications
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

20. Social KM on Wikipedia
20
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015
You know your mainstream when………
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_knowledge_management

21. Summary - Social Collaboration enabled KM
21
The application of standard
social tools to each facet of
practical KM can help
embed knowledge creation,
capture, discovery, re-use
etc.
It is easier to write a blog
post, or wiki article and
“tag” it than it is to fill out
the document template for
a bespoke “knowledge
base” and fill in 8 fields of
metadata…..
It is even easier to embed
micro-blogging (news feed)
into a business process and
add elements of KM into
those processes as normal
tasks.

22. Return to my simple assertion
 Going back to my simple assertion, I posit that
whether your organisation is in KM Stage 1 or Stage
4, whether you believe in Nonaka’s SECI theory that
you can convert tacit knowledge into explicit and
then share it, or whether you believe that only
information can be shared; this means to achieve
some contextual form of KM in your organisation
you need good enterprise information management,
and therefore for unstructured information, a good
enterprise content management strategy, and the
content of news feed posts, comments, ideation
systems etc as part of a social collaboration
system(s) is unstructured content !
22
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

23. Free learning: Knowledge Technologies in Context from
OpenLearn.open.ac.uk
Click on the graphic above to access a free online course !
23
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015

24. Jed Cawthorne, MBA MBCS CITP
www.twitter.com/jedpc
http://www.cmswire.com/author/jed-cawthorne/
Knowledge Workers Toronto
24
Social KM Jed Cawthorne for Knowledge Workers Toronto 10 November 2015