tfpl blog

Developing capability

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last week I attended my first NetIKX meeting at the British Dental Association.  Chris Collison was presenting on how as internal experts, knowledge and information professionals can use techniques such as ‘the river diagram’ to assess and improve the knowledge and information processes within their own organisations.  The technique takes a step on from benchmarking exercises to develop a situation whereby a learning and knowledge sharing culture can flourish.  It does this through identifying common ground on which to build a maturity model.  This model identifies key aspects to benchmark, a discussion on what ‘good’ looks like in terms of performance is then identified on a sliding scale for the model and each part of the organisation are asked to self assess their section against it.  You can read about this in more depth in Chris’ latest book ‘No more consultants, we know more than we think’ which he co-authored with Geoff Parcell.

The session itself was extremely enlightening as not only did Chris present and explain this technique but also took us through a practical exercise whereby we all made assessments of the organisations we worked in against a readymade maturity model of knowledge sharing benchmarks.  From this initial assessment we were able to develop a very clear picture in the room of where the expertise was the strongest for different bench mark measurements and where that expertise could be shared with those who wanted to learn and develop expertise.  This led us into a knowledge sharing exercise as ‘experts’ in certain areas were split on to different tables so that those who wanted to improve their progress in certain areas could learn from those who felt they were doing well in those areas.

Our table was focussed on knowledge strategy where we had a very interesting and lively discussion on best practices for building, developing and implementing a knowledge strategy.   Some of the key learning points were:

• A strategy should be simple enough to be kept in your head and not constantly referred to through a paper document
• A strategy should consider the values, ethos, and policies and culture it wishes to promote
• Advocacy and promotion through champions will aid acceptance of the strategy
• Confidence and building trust important considerations in the development and implementation of a strategy
• Technology, the environment (i.e. building space etc) are all important facilitators in the implementation of a knowledge strategy

It is interesting to note that a lot of what was discussed in this group required the use of the ‘internal consultant’ skills that we talked through at the event at Henley earlier on in the month (see post Jack of all, master of none? )  Clearly, capitalising on the ‘softer skills’ such as influencing, advocacy, and relationship management are important parts of the tool-bag of skills needed today. 

A word from our newest member of the team

Author: Tom Green, Sales Executive Training and Events

As a new member of the training team at TFPL I thought I’d note down a few points gleaned from my work to date.   In particular, Cloud technology and its future impact on organizations has become a regular topic of client conversations. The information, knowledge and records management sector is talking about this revolutionary hosted service and the effects that implementing it will have for their future. What it can provide to their current systems and what it has potential to  has created an excited hype around its revolutionary infrastructure. However, with this air of potential does come challenge. A stigma of unreliability around how connective, compliant and secure it really is still holds prominence within the minds of information professionals faced with the future potential of having to use it.

However, not all information management professionals hold similar speculations or concerns. Some see the Cloud as only a technological change so are not yet focussing on how they will manage information services within it in the future. In fairness, if the intercompany talk which surrounds them only revolves around its impact as a technology, why would they think otherwise. This is however, what we have learned to try to avoid. We are trying to encourage our community to think about its impact and, in turn, fully prepare themselves and their information service for the future. As a recent example, SharePoint had a big impact on information services that were not completely prepared for what it could do and how it should be managed. Like Cloud it was optimistically seen as a revolutionary way to host organisational information yet, through lack of preparation, could not be properly used and in turn became recognised as disruptive. From my own experiences of perspectives toward Cloud this has the potential to happen again.

This is why I feel our future event by discussing Cloud specifically in terms of its impact on information, knowledge and records management professionals is important. By creating a space for organisations to learn, share and discuss about their future in Cloud it will help lay a foundation for it to be efficiently used in the future. Take your opportunity to join the discussion and start thinking about how it will affect you at ‘Sharing Information...re-defined’ on 20^th October

 

Jack of all, master of none? The multi-skilled KM, Library and Information Manager

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

Last night we ran our second joint evening coaching event with the Henley KM Forum.  The evening was hosted by Jane McKenzie, Director of the Forum in the beautiful surroundings of Henley Business School.  Our theme was ‘Jack of all (trades), master of none? – the multi skilled KIM professional’  Ian Wooler, TFPL Senior Associate took the group through his thoughts and experiences working as a consultant and talked about the ‘internal consultant’ that is demanded more and more by the business from the KIM professional.

The idea of the growing need for a more ‘rounded’ and multi-skilled professional was backed by the research that TFPL conducted earlier in the year on the developing roles and responsibilities of the KIM profession.  Ian illustrated this well with the analogies of the Swiss army knife of ‘hard skills’ an individual needs which also need to be complemented with an artist’s palette of ‘soft skills’.  This combination of multi-skilling is seen as more and more important within organisations as KIM professionals are expected to take on an internal consultant’s role.  Ian described 4 ‘internal consultancy’ tools and techniques that he uses on a regular basis and which he felt were key skills important to KIM every role – stakeholder management, workshop design – principles and planning, force field analysis and the Six Thinking Hats from Edward de Bono.  This set the scene for the interactive discussion that followed analysing our own soft skills and what is needed in the roles we perform in our organisations.  The important points that came out of the discussion were:

The different aspects of communication skills – influencing, persuading, listening, leadership

The ability to deliver

Internal networking

Change management

Technology understanding and management

Organisational knowledge and understanding

Benchmarking and success measurement for KM

Evaluation and judgement

Horizon scanning

Management of virtual teams

Staff/HR management

Mentoring

The evening finished with further discussions over drinks and nibbles before the taxis came to return us to our respective train stations for the journey back to London and the surrounding area.  I think all took away a new perspective on their own skills; I certainly did and am looking forward to using the different tools described.

Collaborating in the Cloud / FIFA World Cup Security Team

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

I am pleased to welcome our second guest blogger and speaker at our Cloud event in October, Simon Smith, COO Extrinsica.  Below is a note from Simon around the subject of his talk:

Debate continues about whether the ‘Cloud’ IT model is THE model for business into the future. Some commentators are already describing it as dot com boom 2.0; others believe that it’s merely a passing fad. Having been both provider and consumer (we use our cloud service ourselves) of business cloud services, we believe that it’s a technology development that has the potential to revolutionise the business landscape as we know it, transforming the way we are able to work and collaborate.

It is already becoming evident that the days of companies whose core business is not IT, managing a complete on-site IT infrastructure are numbered.  Intriguingly, I overheard a conversation at a well-known IT reseller recently where one account manager said to a colleague ‘…wow on-site IT is dying on its backside at the moment!’  So, what makes the cloud so compelling?

One of the key benefits of having an organisation's data and applications in the cloud is its ability to enable much more flexible and efficient collaboration regardless of place and time.  Collaboration is the key to success in any business; the more efficient and effective collaboration can be, the more effective the organisation can be.

When IT facilities are cloud-based, people can collaborate much more efficiently from anywhere at anytime via any device. With very high availability and ubiquitous access, business users are now able to collaborate flexibly and efficiently on a global scale.

I’m looking forward to sharing our experiences of enabling collaboration between teams across continents by looking at how the FIFA 2010 World Cup Security Team used cloud technology to great effect in South Africa during the tournament.

I will also be taking a look at a development that arose out of that project to enable cloud users to continue to work and collaborate effectively in locations and scenarios where they have little or no Internet connectivity.

Simon Smith, COO, Extrinsica Global.

Storing Information in the Cloud – a records management perspective

Author: Claire Valentine, Training Manager

With our Cloud event, Sharing Information Re-defined fast approaching we will be running a series of guest blogs to introduce the speakers and their chosen topics.  Our first guest blogger is Nicole Convery, who will be presenting the findings of her research and the toolkit of best practice that was developed for records management in the Cloud.  What follows below is Nicole's blog:

"In 2009, the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University ran a small research project funded by the Society of Archivists that examined operational, legal and security issues relating to the storage of information in the cloud for access. The aim of the project was to generate debate and to highlight some of the issues surrounding the storage of information in a virtual environment. We have already seen many organisations outsourcing email and data storage to cloud providers such as Google and Amazon for cost and efficiency reasons. Cloud computing can have financial and operational advantages such as reduced deployment cost, increased storage capabilities and scalability. However, cloud computing raises quite a few security and compliance issues that need to be addressed when outsourcing information storage to third parties.

Information professionals whose organisations are about to deploy information into the cloud will need to ask the right questions and identify the right strategies for ensuring that information is kept securely, accessible and in line with relevant legislation. Areas of concern need to go further than IT security and should cover:

• Data protection – how can organisations ensure that they comply with legislation?
• Information classification and retention in the cloud – how can organisations manage information in the cloud in line with corporate policies?
• E-discovery and compliance – how can organisations ensure that they are able to produce information when needed in an accessible format?
• Long-term access and preservation – how can organisations ensure that they can identify and access information in the cloud over time?

These are just a few of the issues that spring to mind and information professionals need to ensure that they get involved in cloud projects from the start to address these issues. Cloud computing is all too often driven by IT departments in an attempt to improve efficiencies and reduce cost and is often seen as a point solution rather than part of a wider IT/IM strategy. Information management, risk and compliance concerns are sometimes not considered properly or at a later stage in the project process. Information professionals have an important role to play in pushing a cloud strategy that addresses information management and security concerns from the start in a coherent way, so that ‘compliance headache’ at a later stage can be prevented. The cloud computing toolkit that we developed for the ARA (http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/Cloud_Computing_Toolkit-2.pdf) is just a first step and envisaged to highlight areas of concern and to start the discussion among information professionals about what standards and guidelines need to be developed. Cloud computing offers exciting opportunities for managing information more efficiently, for improving business processes and for fostering collaboration and information sharing – records managers should support such developments but should also be in a position to highlight issues and suggest solutions.

Nicole will be available to speak to directly on her work on 20th October at The Cloud - Sharing Information Re-defined