Amid the Noise and Haste

Team Building

When it comes to companies with many different deparments the unfortunate downside is silos.  Each department can become so focused on their own tasks at hand that the other departments become secondary in priority.  There are two key things I have seen when this happens:

1. Departments are made up of people (the people part usually gets lost); and
2. Departments need to work together as a team to keep the machine running

The Reforming Project Management Blog had a great list of questions to ask when dealing with "Team Communication and Health."  Asking these questions can help identify gaps in communication that can then be addressed with team building exercises, lessons in communication and development.

• To what extent is the team positive?
• To what extent is honesty and trust evident?
• To what extent is the team learning and improving?
• Is morale improving, steady or declining?
• To what extent are team members being open and honest with each other?
• Are there barriers between trades and professions and if so How high are the silo walls?
• How long or short are tempers?
• To what extent are team members collaborating?

Connections

In real estate it's all about location, location, location.  In business, it's all about who you know.  Alacra has taken this and built a new database, Alacra Connections, that lets you search for people based on mapped information from multiple databases.  Read about the "rapidly changing world of people data."

The Federal Judiciary Enters World of Web 2.0

The 7th Circuit has entered the Web 2.0 world of social networking and user generated content with their own Wiki, as reported by the National Law Journal (subscription required), Bob Ambrogi and Carolyn Elefant at the Law.com blog network.  The NLJ interviewed Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook who noted:

"The goal is to concentrate on procedure (in both the court of appeals and the district courts) but not to cover substance. We aren't interested in comments about the meaning of ERISA or the Internal Revenue Code and will take down any pages that go beyond the scope of practice and procedure (including jurisdiction)."

A site focused on bringing the collective knowledge of attorneys and judges to work on making procedures more transparent and efficient is smart and prudent.  I hope this is a sign of something bigger in the legal world.

Social Bookmarking as a Knowledge Management Strategy

I hand it over to Robert Berkman of the Intelligent Agent Blog who links to an article from the March 2007 issue of Information Advisor.   As Berkman mentions:

the "4 page article describes the use of social bookmarking services for knowledge management applications for use within the enterprise, and contains a detailed feature comparison chart of both fee based social bookmarking sites, as well as free personal ones that were determined to be suitable for enterprise use.'

Capitalizing on New Business Information Revenue Streams

Today I spent the day with business leaders at American Business Media's Business Information: Capitalizing on New Business Information Revenue Streams.  Keynote speaker Tom Henricks, President of McGraw-Hill Aerospace and Defense Division set the tone for the day with his six-sigma black belt approach to realigning an organization to leverage products across different channels.  Where to begin?  Listen and respond to customers.  He also outlined the "P's" to help get the ball rolling:

• Prioritize: pick the 3 most important growth initiatives
• Productivity:  process management, retool the production process for efficiency and effectiveness
• Process:  look at the product pipeline to find "gate discipline" points to help reduce risk
• PMP (Performance based management):  Look at the organization design, culture, metrics, and yes...include editors!
• Partners:  is it more efficient to build new, buy existing, or partner with someone on new initiatives
• Products:  leverage what you have in new ways
• Performance:  begin with the voice of the customer - are you performing to their needs?

Stay tuned for for more posts on this interesting and informational day.

Social Networking Sites Worth Checking Out

Clever and simple:

www.ning.com:  set up your own online community
www.thisnext.com:  social shopping
www.geni.com:  create your family tree
Many Eyes:  IBM's social data visualization project

Thought Dysplasia

By and by the thoughts and ideas we have amass and distort unless there is a guiding mechanism to carry them through to completion.  Without the proper mechanism(s), the "thought mass" becomes a cancerous vortex of lost time and energy.

In an office (and I am generalizing), the the thought mass grows from the top down.   If upper management  keeps spinning in new a direction chasing the  latest buzz word of the day with no strategy they wind up sending the rest of the company spinning in response.  The result is akin to chaos theory.  People wind up chasing projects and bumping into each other without reaching a goal.

So what is the "mechanism" to help guide and untangle the thought mass thereby achieving results and progress?  I think it is organization and open communication, knowledge management and focus.  I didn't say it was easy.