Sameer Agarwal

An IIT Bombay student (Sweta Mehta) contacted me recently for a project she was doing on Knowledge Management. I answered some questions for her, which I thought I ought to share here as well:

1. When did KM start in India?
   KM in some form or other existed ever since enterprises started! The whole process of filing documents is knowledge management in itself! The term knowledge management was probably coined sometime in the 1980s and organizations started formal programs on KM in the early 1990s. McKinsey and some other consulting firms were the front-runners in embracing KM. GE, HP, Boeing etc also boast of formal KM programs that started in early 90s. Of course India offices of some of the firms mentioned above also embraced KM around the same time, but amongst the Indian companies probably Infosys is one of the first Indian organizations to have embraced KM in the mid-late 90s. Airtel, Satyam, Wipro and lately Mind Tree have also been some of the Indian companies that have created an impact in the KM space.

2. What is the difference between Indian and international KM standards?
   Unfortunately there is no such thing as “KM standards”! This is bad because most organizations grapple with evolving a “KM strategy” but this is also a blessing in disguise since “one size doesn’t fit all”. Any successful KM program needs to be customized according to the culture, people and nature of work of the organization. So the KM framework of a consulting organization will be very different from the KM framework for a BPO. The ‘lack of standards’ actually encourages organizations to ‘think’ and evolve their strategy. Of course there are benchmarks available in terms of what other organizations are doing, and there are frameworks like the APQC road-map available to help one get started.

   To answer your specific question about the difference between Indian and international KM standards – well honestly, that’s food for thought and requires research. I’m not aware of any such research that has been conducted in the past. However, I do think that there will be a significant difference in global and India-only KM programs because of the difference in cultures. As I mentioned above, a KM strategy is/should always be based on the culture of the organization/the country it operates in (and hence the culture of such countries).

3. What is KM portal?
   The literal meaning of a ‘portal’ is gateway. So by definition, the KM portal is a gateway/starting point for the ‘knowledge’ available in an organization. There is debate around whether you should have a ‘separate’ KM portal, or if one org portal (intranet) should be good enough so as to not confuse people with multiple starting points – ideally (in my opinion) there should be ‘one’ integrated portal and several sites for various KM tools as needed.

4. How is Knowledge Management implemented?
   The first step is to define the KM strategy for an organization. Such strategy should be evolved on the basis of organizational priorities and should have the buy-in of senior management. Unless the top management is convinced that the KM strategy is actually impacting the organization you can be sure that the program will fail. Once you have a high-level strategy, then a multi-generation plan should be evolved in consultation with several influencers in the organization who can champion the program eventually. While creating the strategy it’s important to understand what the ‘people’ want out of the program and what ‘processes’ can be set that will drive/sustain/control the program. Once you know what you want out of your KM program then technologies/tools should be evaluated. Remember technology is an enabler and merely deploying technology does not mean that you have “implemented” KM. KM is a continuous journey – the strategy needs to be revisited and tweaked as required. And never forget that it’s the people who make or break a KM program, so have utmost focus on people, and think of ways of engaging them at all levels in the program – through rewards, recognition and whatever else it takes!

5. Who is the key person responsible for formulating the KM strategy?
   The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) will typically formulate the KM strategy in collaboration with senior management. (CKO is merely a title – anybody who has the mandate to lead the KM program is responsible). It is important that the CKO understands the business well, is a good communicator, can network well with people at all levels and is senior enough to understand business drivers and people behavior.

6. How can KM implementation affect the organization and its stakeholders?
   The success of a KM program can be felt but not measured accurately. Unfortunately there are no accepted ROI models for KM. Typically KM professionals ask senior management to think about the cost of not doing KM rather than the cost of doing it and/or asking for ROI! Measurement can of course be done hypothetically – based on the assumed time saved by employees in finding knowledge/information and hence illustrating productivity benefits. Such models will however remain debatable and hence it’s best to not create an ROI model in the first place! KM is a continuous journey, and you do ‘it’ because you believe in it.

7. Which companies in India have the best KM implementation process?
   The only recognized KM awards are the MAKE awards. Last year, Mindtree was the winner of the MAKE India awards. Airtel, Eureka Forbes, Infosys, Satyam were among the other finalists. You can find the details of the 2007 MAKE awards here (scroll down to the 2007 Indian MAKE Study Executive Summary).

Champagne. Bouquets. Several courses of meal without the hassle of deciding what to order (that’s a big incentive to me!). Birthday cake. A linen jacket that I wanted for several months, or maybe years! All this without the slightest hint. Yes, that’s what Sakshi did on my birthday on Jun 9.

She insisted on picking me up from work to go to Taj Residency even though her office is close to that place and it just didn’t make sense with Bangalore traffic. The booking was for 7 PM but we were on our way at 5 so we decided to have a couple of drinks. Sakshi was careful in avoiding that ‘one drink too much’ for me despite my insistence, and without leaving a hint of what was in store.

So we arrived at around 7:20, and the restaurant I discovered that we were going to was called “Graze”. It is a beautiful, Victorian, poolside restaurant, that is quiet and niche. This was only the beginning of discoveries for the evening. Quickly I realized that the table was already chosen, and the servers already knew Sakshi. Whoa! Even before I could digest that, champagne came rolling, and I was already feeling royal!

Cheers, and then the flowers came. Then the first course. Then flowers and then the next course. Man it just couldn’t get better. Wait – there was a cake and a linen jacket for me as well!!

It was all so well planned. Right to the last detail. Completely based on what I like and what I don’t. So much thought to make your husband happy. God – I don’t deserve her at all! As Richa said, “I’m a lucky dog”!

A lot has been said about the wisdom of crowds, and how the ‘crowds’ built Wikipedia. In fact, to a large extent this assumed ‘wisdom’ is the premise of everything that’s happening in the Web 2.0 space.

Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb makes a good point of having some rules to get the best out of crowds in his recent post (as a follow-up to a similar post last year).

• Crowds should operate within constraints
• Not everything can be democratic
• Crowds must retain their individuality
• Crowds are better at vetting content than creating it

These rules may make a lot of sense because we all know the “herd behavior” and how “dumb” it can get at times. But like most other things in life, there is no best way of doing ‘it’, and surely “one size doesn’t fit all”. Now ‘that’ is an art more than a science, so know the rules, but don’t always play by them I guess…

What happens when you put a bunch of insecure people together? Cat-fight? Rat Race? Circus? All of them? Well I guess most of us, including the ‘cats’, ‘rats’ and other ‘circus’ material, will pick Option D.

The working class is unsure of their future, their career and their lives because they work for someone for money. And that’s the reason why I call them insecure. They (read we) do not have the strength to live it on their own. Put such people together in a situation where they are competing with each other, directly as peers, or indirectly as reportees or managers and imagine what you get.

By the way, the reason I think there is a competition between reportees and managers is because the reportees often think that they are smarter than their bosses and hence ought to be in their place, and the managers often think that’s true, and sometimes, this is actually true! Also, the whole definition of peers is complicated – is it the people at the same ‘level’ in an organization (out of the zillion levels that exist no matter how ‘flat’ your organization is), is it the people who make similar money, is it the people who passed out of the same class, or what?

So be it peer, superior or subordinate, everybody wants a piece of ‘the’ cake. What is ‘the’ cake – well it’s more money and better respect I guess, but I’m sure the definition of the cake will also vary.

Since making your own cake is too complicated you make a large cake with others. This cake is being made and consumed at the same time. How do you keep getting bites of ‘the’ cake? The logic should be that you get to eat what you can produce. But that’s not how it works and don’t we all know that! So you pounce, push others out of your way, play dirty and whatever else you think will get you your piece.

But the big question now is that even if you make your own cake what’s the guarantee that a competitor will not pounce on it? Do the dynamics change? Probably only to the extent that you’re more motivated to save ‘your’ cake rather than ‘the’ cake. I don’t know…

Well I guess this is an endless thought that I don’t have the ability to conclude. So I better go, join back the circus as of now!

There’s a site called Browse Happy which is nothing but a campaign against Internet Explorer. That’s “hate groups” coming of age! Well disclaimer – I’m not supporting this campaign in particular… especially because I’m making this particular post from IE (my office computer ‘standard built’ browser) even though I use Firefox on my home computer.

Firefox is of course good with plenty of plugins freely available, tabbed browsing (that’s standard in IE 7) and “more security”. Though I know nothing about what that “more security” is but guess if the world thinks it’s more secure I’ll assume it’s more secure.

But anyway, I guess what’s happening is that it is a war between communities and organizations. Organizations are sort of trying to create communities (that’s the whole Web 2.0 strategy piece) while communities are sort of becoming enterprises (take Firefox or WordPress as examples) in a way. It’s a strange convergence where warring factions seem to be becoming more like the other, even though the purpose of their existence ‘was’ different.

My signature (hand) has been the way it is ever since I remember. In fact it probably does not even qualify as a signature since it’s merely an angular curved line with a couple of dots. I’ve always had people, including bankers, telling me how easy it is to copy my signature. I always mocked the comment saying I’ve nothing to lose! I’ve heard comments like “Is that your signature” or “Oh we actually wanted your signature” and mostly accompanied with giggles! In fact I’ve been quite embarrassed several times and contemplated changing my signature. However the administrative hassles involved with it – like getting them changed in legal and financial records – have discouraged me. And then there will always be the risk of signing it the new way for an entity whose record has my earlier signature, or vice versa. Well that’s that.

Whoa! There’s more. Today’s Bangalore Mirror has an article on handwriting/signature analysis. This is what Vishwas Heathcliff had to say about ‘illegible’ signatures:

……… A person who guards his inner feelings in public always maintains a certain degree of illegibility in signature……. Incidentally, signature shows how people behave in public and how they want others to perceive them. For instance, a girl with an illegible signature won’t possess a transparent nature and her activities – good or bad – can remain unknown for a long period…. In fact, illegible signature reflects and inclination to remain mysterious, impenetrable and enigmatic, but the reason behind the tendency can be both malicious and benevolent. One must check all aspects of handwriting before arriving at conclusions.

I guess I only like the last line! Yes I’d rather be enigmatic and impenetrable but not opaque.  Can’t impenetrable  be  opaque?  Can’t a clear glass be bullet proof! Also, I guess if I change my signature because others don’t like it, then how transparent will that be?! I don’t know…

Here’s a testimonial I put for Stan Garfield – a very respectable global thought leader in Knowledge Management who I’ve had the good fortune to work with.

I knew Stan as a KM Guru even before I joined HP – and in fact he was one of the reasons I joined HP!

Stan is a great leader – very organized, methodical, motivating and approachable. His personal contact list is better than most org directories I’ve seen. He can pull references and examples to just about every fathomable topic. He has an exceptional ability to collaborate and get the best out of his people. And last but not the least, he stands by his team like no one else, in a world where it’s always “each one to her own”!

Yes, believe it or not, Rs 16.71 crore (USD 4m+) was the power bill for the President of India for the past 5 years while the prime minister of the country spent Rs 37.56 lakhs (USD 90k+) over the past 3 years. Forget about the money spent imagine the amount of ‘energy’ wasted. Wonder if the Govt. of India will ever “go green“!

Btw, these figures were revealed as a “Right to Information” response, so guess the citizens of India can now make the government bare it all. Good!

I’ve been sort of annoyed at the hype around Web 2.0. What is so different about Web 2.0? Was there a Web 1.0? Heck, what is the definition, or scope of Web 2.0?! Did collabaoration not exist before Web 2.0 (the term was coined around 2004)? Did JavaScript not exist before Web 2.0? Did CSS and SQL queries and iframes not exist before? Of course AJAX got coined and JavaScript/CSS/SQL sounded so much like an outdated thing – but come to think of it, have any fundamentals changed? Has the value proposition changed? In fact, I don’t even know if e-commerce is still e-commerce or if its now called Web 3.0 (since Web 2.0 is for collaboration and social networking!)

But the fact of the matter is that everyone seems to be selling Web 2.0 these days. Probably I’m doing so too by mentioning Web 2.0 probably the zillionth time in this post making it more likely for search and RSS crawlers to index my post! Most large enterprises today have a Web 2.0 strategy. Seminars and conferences and unconferences and BarCamps are organized on Web 2.0. So what if they end up talking about the same old things, but the fact of the matter is that the audience is listening. Probably its the fascination with acronyms, or maybe 2.0 sounds new-age. Whatever it is, good for the Internet, oops Web 2.0 industry!

It’s heartening to see the internet hype coming a full circle – from the dotcom days (or the bust!) to Web 2.0. There is renewed interest and hype about internet startups. Check out http://www.startupdunia.com/ to get a feeler!

What differentiates the Web 2.0 era from the dot-com days is probably the more conscious congnizance of revenue streams. Or so they say! I hope I do not get sued for libel, but I still fail to see the business model of many of these ‘social networking’ sites that are mushrooming. We had an Orkut and a Facebook and a MySpace and then our desi iBibo came and I’m sure a dozen others already exist, and a zillion more will follow! Is there space for so many of them? Maybe I’m a ‘balti’ (iBibo campaign – “Don’t be a balti” – closely means that don’t be dumb) but how are these social networking sites going to differentiate themselves, how will they manage loyalty and most importantly how will they make money?

To my mind, Web 2.0 has become a fancy term and everybody wants a piece of it. Just like the dot-com days. I think they are still not paying as much attention as they should to the revenue model.

Of course there are some exceptions. One such site I came across is CommonFloor. Think of it as a custom Yahoo/Google group for an apartment society. It is a web-based society management software if you will. It provides several features like posting notices, secure member directory, interest groups (could be to create a car pool or find a golf partner or whatever!), classifieds, event management (this one is impressive with its Outlook styled calendards) and more! Good luck to the guys who are promoting this initiative.