Looking for Identity in a 2.0 World

So I return to this question of "knowledge charity"—when, and how, did the floodgates open? "Getting employees to contribute to the knowledgebase has indeed been the Holy Grail," agrees Daryl. "A lot of vendors are thinking that the Web 2.0 stuff will magically make that happen. But social networks are grassroots from the ground up; people need to see the value they get from it. It’s very hard to mandate that from a management standpoint."

Daryl continues: "As small clusters of users—such as development groups—get value from collaboration, it creates a groundswell of adoption. The evolution from a ‘command and control’ environment to a collaborative environment must happen gradually. There’s not a magic technology that any KM company can provide that will just... make it happen. We can enable it, but in the end, there has to be a business driver that people get value from."

"There’s a complete process change, enabled by the technology, taking place," says Mark Buckallew. "Even in an agent-assisted situation, if the problem can’t be resolved it is escalated not to a ‘senior agent’ but to the discussion forums. The experts respond, collaborate and more quickly come to a solution. Then they can harvest that content into a new solutions article that makes its way back out to the Web. It’s a whole new ecosystem," he says.

Another reason for KM’s newfound popularity in the Web 2.0 era is that "customers helping customers" can be seen as cost saving. "You can make a good case to executives that customers helping themselves results in fewer calls, fewer emails and less chat," says Bob Peery. "You’ll never hear an entire pitch to a CXO based only on ‘customer sat.’ The business case BETTER have some cost savings in it.

"Most companies realize that (investing in the support necessary) for Web 2.0 is inevitable," Bob continues. "They realize that if they ignore it, it will not go away. I think the way it will end up is with the ‘KM team’ and the ‘community team’ sharing responsibility until, over time, the KM managers will become the community managers."

The Ego Factor
That’s all well and good. I like a business management revolution as much as the next guy. But it still doesn’t satisfactorily explain the newfound sharing culture to me. "There are people who are just jazzed by sharing what they know," says Bob Peery. "They have always been there; it’s just easier for them now. These are the people who can sit down in a lunchroom and talk for hours... about everything... episodes of ‘Lost,’... whatever. Today’s blogs and forums just make it easier to do."

There’s another practical explanation. "If someone is the subject-matter expert, it’s just easier, faster and less intrusive for him to go to a wiki page than to have everyone calling individually, asking the same questions over and over," explains Daryl Orts. "In this case, sharing information is actually beneficial, because it frees up time. The new technologies simply make it easier to do." Anand adds: "It helps that the reach of the application goes a lot further. Look at Wikipedia... it has, like, five full time employees...but there are people all over the world who are ‘subject-matter experts.’"

OK, I think. Now we’re getting somewhere... a self-rewarding justification that makes sense.

Kayode Dada agrees that there needs to be a sense of reward—in some form—for the plan to work. "There has to be an emotional connection to sharing information. How do I feel about the benefits I contribute to the organization? I want to believe that people want recognition for the information they share, either through awards that recognize content that rises to the top, or becomes best practices, or even through cash rewards. But people mainly want the feedback and recognition. It’s the reason people follow certain blogs, and quote the author... it’s that recognition that’s important," insists Kayode.

"Conversation threads are created through conversations among different members of the organization, and then the thread stops when it becomes a solution that can help a customer. The thing that companies should now be doing is learning to capture those threads that are successful, and turning them into the playbook for the organization," says Kayode.

As I hinted earlier, there will be a little sense of déjà vu when you read the other white paper in this issue’s cycle. There, we focus a little more closely on social networking aspects as they apply to real business concerns, and, we hope, shed some light on the best practices at work in the most "forward-thinking" organizations. Taken together, these two white papers—KM" and "social nets"—should at the very least get you thinking about the most potentially revolutionary trend in information management I’ve ever been privileged to watch. Stay tuned for much more.