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A prospective client asked “what do you charge by the hour?”. My response…”I don’t”.  The prospect then asked “then how do you determine how much to charge me?”. My response “By the value you desire me to deliver using my knowledge”.

Knowledge needed to ring up sales at a cash register is different than knowledge needed to engage more customer that will ring the cash register or reduce lost productivity which improves business efficiency. Which has more value?

If your business is wasting time, effort and energy “producing things” and causing customers to waste time, effort and energy to interact with your business then you are wasting money. If someone had the knowledge required to help you reduce the waste and improve productivity how much would it be worth?

Let’s say you employ 50 people at an average payroll cost of $52,000 per year per employee.  Let’s consider the lost productivity of employees simply misplacing or not having relevant information (which precedes not having the right knowledge).

Calculate The Cost Of Lost Productivity The information you provide is not collected by our company in any way. To get started, simply fill in the values requested below (do not use dollar signs or commas). The results will show how many hours you’re losing per year– and how much those hours are costing you— due to the inefficiency of lost information. To calculate the cost of disorganization for your department or company, please indicate number of employees and provide an average figure in the other fields. Average salary $ 52000 Number of employees Number of non-working (vacation) weeks/year Number of hours worked/week What Lost Productivity Costs You or Your Company* Per Year $ 6760 Per Month $ 563 Per Week $ 130 *Calculations based on the average amount of time an employee wastes per day looking for misplaced items.

That would represent lost productivity valued at $6,760 per employee per year ($338,000) and this doesn’t include the cost of creating lost productivity for customers and prospects (which represents even higher cost per customer than employee.) How about revenue gains from giving customers more productivity?.  What is that worth?

Social Productivity Factors Driven By Knowledge Assets

Finding solutions that enable us individually and organizations collectively requires knowledge outside of an existing ecosystem. The ecosystem of any organization is largely influenced by the knowledge assets which rest with the human capital within an organization.  Human capital is considered the vital engine needed to support any organization. It is this “capital” where innovation and continuous improvement comes from, if you know how to tap and use it.

The challenge of any organization is learning new knowledge that maximizes human capital effectively and efficiently.  New knowledge typically comes from the outside but can be tapped inside with the right “social encouragement“. Social encouragement is not typical to corporate containers where power and fear steal “social, intellectual and creative capital” that rest within the human capital.

Social Business & Knowledge Assets

All this social stuff goes way beyond marketing and advertising which seems to be in vogue for the moment. The “social business” model is one where the ecosystem is learning how to tap all the knowledge assets resting in the human capital. Tapping this capital can be accomplished using social technology beyond marketing and advertising.  Consider the knowledge assets that can be tapped if your culture and organization adopted the social business model. The productivity gains rest in functional roles and departments such as:

1. Marketing, advertising and public relations
2. Customer service
3. Hiring and recruitment
4. Workplace Collaboration
5. Outsourcing
   
6. R&D
7. Operations
8. Communications
9. Finance
10. Management

Now to optimize productivity one must consider the implications on human capital. In order to make these considerations one much engage with the humans who hold the capital.  Doing so is something that requires knowledge assets not typically contained inside the corporate walls. If the knowledge assets where there well more and more organizations would be making significant strides in productivity and most aren’t.

The problem with most people claiming to be social media gurus is they are selling task oriented work, not knowledge assets to be transferred internally for everyone’s benefit. I don’t sell knowledge by the hour but not having the right knowledge cost you productivity by the hour. My cost is less.

• The Content Economy by Oscar Berg: Control is waste & trust drives value creation
• Trojan mice approach enterprise 2.0

If I knew what you know and you knew what I know what we we both know? If we all knew what each other knew how much value could we create from what everyone knows? Social technology will eventually lead us to a “knowledge inventory which indexes what everyone knows. Think about it.

As we share content we are sharing what we think we know or want to know. Not knowing something can mean the difference in gaining or loosing productivity, economic gain and relational value.  Gaining knowledge is how people and organizations learn how to do things more efficiently and effectively which improves productivity.

The Cluster Effect

As social technology grows users tend to “cluster” around an affinity of what they know or want to know. The cluster effect is evident by the proliferation of communities centric to “knowledge” people have or want to have.  Subsequently these communities converse around topical content indexed by all the search engines. The content generated comes from the people participating. The search engines index key words but what if they were able to index what lies in the brains of the people who participate? Call it a knowledge inventory which reflects what we know. How would that change the game?

The cluster effect is similar to (but not the same as) the network effect. It is similar in the sense that the affinity preferences of both the medium and its participants are based on each ones perception of others knowledge, affiliation, status and value. Thus the cluster effect usually creates and emergence of new knowledge fueled by the interactions of different knowledge nodes, i.e. me and you..

The emergence of social technology is the revolutionary wave of consumer generated “knowledge” and “connections” is controversial to say the least. The media sends a stream of opinions on “how” the systemic dynamics of social technology works and the impact of what it produces for businesses and society in general. Upon discovery of anything new everyone thinks they understand the new phenomena but few are able to truly comprehend the long term implications since there is no one historical reference to explain the dynamics in an orderly fashion.

What we are experiencing is the emergence of  knowledge assets being transformed by  technological. This emergence  has a long tail of discovery with ongoing analysis and development of new intellectual properties being defined to explain the phenomena, i.e. new knowledge.

What does all this mean?

We’ve discussed what is converging together and creating the phenomenon of a knowledge inventory. There are a host of other factors that influence the dynamics of the emerging “knowledge inventory” and to say the least, we’ve only just begun to learn and understand what it all means to all of us  as a global community of individuals with diverse interest and knowledge.

Just imagine if the medium evolved and enabled us to quickly access the knowledge needed to make better decisions, to become more productive and to revolutionize the value of the human network. What new economies could be created? How much faster could we solve relevant problems? How much more productive could we all become?

I like reading content that teaches me something. I don't like reading blogs that teach the wrong thing. But how would we know the difference?

Knowing whether something is the proper perspective, the correct analysis or insightful is relevant to our existing knowledge asset in reference to other knowledge assets. A knowledge asset is simply that which we've learned, experienced or discovered. Our knowledge asset rest between our ears and in our hearts. We own, use, share and increase it every day, at least some of us do.

Life emerges in front of us based on our individual knowledge assets. We make choices based on what we know and we create things based on what we know. What we create is emergent properties of knowledge we think we have for others to consume. What we consume is emergent properties of knowledge others think they have. Everything in life is filtered through and by our knowledge assets. We call it an asset because everything of worth is created from and with it.  The worth can be positive or negative based on how much knowledge we have and how well we use or grow it.

A Web of Knowledge?

The World Wide Web is a popular example of a decentralized system exhibiting emergent properties. There is no central organization rationing the number of links, yet the number of links pointing to each page follows a power law in which a few pages are linked to many times and most pages are seldom linked to. A related property of the network of links in the World Wide Web is that almost any pair of pages can be connected to each other through a relatively short chain of links. Although relatively well known now, this property was initially unexpected in an unregulated network. It is shared with many other types of networks called small-world networks.(Barabasi, Jeong, & Albert 1999, pp. 130-131)

Emergence of Convergence?

The word convergence implies the approach toward a definite value, a definite point, a common view or opinion, or toward a fixed or equilibrium state. One might ask what is the definite value, definite point,  common view or opinion about what is emerging from all the interactions of the web today.  The answer seems to be pointing towards the pursuit of "social capital, social currency" and a defined new currency. The words capital and currency are terms that related to economics.  The economics of all things social seem to be the obsession of the marketplace seeking to measure a return on efforts from most things that are free.

What seems evident is that the convergence of thought and conversations are moving knowledge forward but knowledge yet to be defined with common agreement to its meaning and relevant definition.  Brian Solis sparked some dialog with his "Social Capital: The Currency of the Social Economy" post. Venessa Miemis added to the dialog in two post : What Could the Future of Money Look Like? and "Social Capital is Not the Same As Whuffie". All three of these post created a stir of dialog, definition, argument, perspectives and attempts to put new meaning into new knowledge emerging before our eyes.

The irony of all this dialog is that most of us use existing "knowledge assets" (that which we've learned, experience and create) to try and frame the emergence of innovation. Innovation typically is something, including knowledge, that previously did not exist. So maybe we need to "link" old knowledge to create new knowledge that can converge and create new assets. Imagine linking our collective "knowledge assets" and aiming the process at innovation that creates a new economy.

Could it be done? Yes if we could agree to a process of ego convergence.

• No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The 3 Types of Knowledge")
  It's not about increasing what you know, but decreasing stuff you don't know you don't know
• Research shows that stories create personal motivation and increase productivity
• The Community Roundtable's Community Maturity Model
• Rethinking Marketing - Harvard Business Review
  Cultivate customers rather than market a product - shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value - making products and brands subservient to long-term customer relationships

What’s your social media story? If you could have the space to say exactly what social media meant to you personally, how would your story unfold?

Would it be about the fantastic job opportunity you got?

Would it be about the great connections you’ve met and how they changed your life?

Would it be about how a cause dear to your heart was suddenly launched into the stratosphere?

Would it be about friends you’ve made that have no real interest in social media, but simply use the tools to make new friends themselves?

Would it be that love story that wouldn’t have happened?

The reason I ask is simple. We all hear about the social media success stories, but they’re usually the same companies (JetBlue, Zappos, Dell) or the same practices (marketing, PR, customer service). And while they’re great examples, there’s much more to it than this.

There’s the human side and the people stories. The things that we can really relate to. So here’s a request/offer. I’d love you to share your social media story with us. Here’s how.

In the month of April, I want to feature ten personal social media stories. It could be any of the reasons featured in the introduction to this post – job, connections, cause, love, friends – or how your business succeeded. Or your blog growth. Or your skill sets. Anything.

Each story will be in the shape of a guest post. This can be normal text, or podcast, or video – the choice is yours. However you feel most comfortable. All it needs to be is either around 300-500 words for text, or 5-10 minutes for audio or video. If you’re interested, here’s what to do:

• Send a Word document, audio file or video file to my email address.
• Title the post, and if it’s text, highlight where you’d want any sub-headers.
• Reference any links you wish to.
• Include a picture of you and a 2-3 line bio with up to 2 links back to your blog, or social profile.
• Send it in.

That’s it. I’ll choose ten that I feel really show the people, personalities and cool success behind each social media story. If there are more than ten posts come in, I’ll do the same in May, then June, and on.

As I say, we’ve seen all the cool case studies and examples of the same names that get cited today. Let’s go deeper than that and show the real social media stories.

What say you – in?

photo credit: Travel Aficionado

© dannybrown for danny brown, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: people, personal stories, social media
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My last post was a review of a paper by Patrick Lambe, and in this post I review yet another paper on the same topic.

The point of this paper, called “Knowledge and Tragedy: or why we shouldn’t share knowledge”, is that sharing, even Just-in-Time sharing is not enough or a complete KM infrastructure, it’s the gap between knowing and acting that is often missing.

We often read about the same thing related to Lesson Learned…which need to be transferred into Lessons Applied.

The phrases below represent just a part of the KM program:

“If only we knew what we know”
“Right information, right time, right place”

These quotes are good but they are a plea, or ideal situation…they seem to highlight more of the distribution and management aspect, ie. describing ideal information management, rather than knowledge management…see my post on informal IM vs KM for more on this.

They are a starting point to get us thinking…but they don’t explicitly speak of real KM or the heart of KM ie. conversation/communication where queries and clarifications can be made, where information can be re-framed into usable contexts, and then applied becoming internalised as knowledge.
From which the output is again information, only waiting to be re-mixed into knowledge for someone else. For more on this thinking see my post It’s not about knowledge sharing, it’s about engagement and context!

Just-in-Time is only half of the story

Patrick uses story as a way to explain and remember this concept.

Artemidorus the philosopher passed on a note to Caesar “Just-in-Time” to avoid death…he gave him the note before Caesar entered the meeting hall where the senate were waiting to kill him (and indeed did).

As usual Caesar gave the note to one of his aides for keeping, as he is a busy man…he nearly got round to opening the note but was constantly distracted as busy men are.

Patrick says:

“Just-in-time knowledge wasn’t quite enough.”

“If we were relieved when Artemidorus turned up with the warning note, we were going as far as most knowledge management goes: getting the infrastructure in place to deliver the right knowledge to the right desktop in time for it to be used.”

And this is where the heart of KM lies:

“We also have to ensure that the recipient is capable of opening up the knowledge, understanding and using it appropriately, and that they have resources to do so”

NOTE: I would use the term “information” rather than “knowledge”

Work is conversation

This rings true with what David Weinberger says in relation to “work is conversation”:

“Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation - literally. And ‘knowledge workers’ are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations.”

David quotes on how conversation is the heart of KM:

“We get to knowledge — especially “actionable” knowledge — by having desires and curiosity, through plotting and play, by being wrong more often than right, by talking with others and forming social bonds, by applying methods and then backing away from them, by calculation and serendipity, by rationality and intuition, by institutional processes and social roles.

Most important in this regard, where the decisions are tough and knowledge is hard to come by, knowledge is not determined by information, for it is the knowing process that first decides which information is relevant, and how it is to be used.”

Patrick says:

“…the greater part of knowledge management lies not in information delivery (where we pay the most attention), but in the knowledge interpretation and deployment skills of knowledge workers…”

Asymmetries of knowledge

Patrick moves on to talk about asymmetries of knowledge (some people knowing what others don’t), basically “knowledge is power”.

“…lack of knowledge, disguise, conspiracy, forgery, misunderstandings, treachery and betrayal, drive the plots of tragedy forward”

He says:

“…in order to succeed, we need to know things that our competitor’s don’t know. We need imperfect knowledge to exist”

…”it can only be shared if sharing moves the plot forward towards triumph and away from tragedy”

The issue here is that this happens within an organisation, where it ideally shouldn’t. The reason for this is covered in my post, “I dont want to share that’s counter to meeting my objectives and reward”…in reference to the model of “well defined measurable objectives and tying them directly to compensation”

To quote myself:

“…this is a strategy to amass an aggregate of personal efficiency ie an incentive to stack a pile of efficient people, at the expense of an effective organisation where the people share what they know with each other so the organisation can adapt, be resilient, innovate, etc…”

Of course there are many other factors that lead to silo’d models…departments competing for resources, politics, etc…silos are natural (we need to bridge, not smash).

Then Patrick gives it the full blow:

“Successful knowledge management in the real world is not about indiscriminate knowledge sharing at all: it’s far more about knowing what to share and when and with whom, what to keep secret, and what to reveal, whom to trust, and whom to avoid”

Our behaviours are servants to the game

This sounds terrible, but it is real in a capitalist society…we are servants of this system, and behave in ways to survive, and beyond…greed!

I do think things are changing, we are moving away from the fetish of fake customer service, to a more real relationship with customers/clients, based on transparency, co-creation, trust, loyalty and being treated as a real relationship, rather than fake customer service.

As long as our industrial structures and models are about compensating for individual action (over collaboration) knowledge hoarding is a model for not only survival, but success.

I say this in relation to the individual department, at the expense of the organisation as a whole.
I say this in relation to the organisation as a whole, at the expense of the industry.
I say this in relation to the industry, at the expense of society.

I really like that capitalism has provided opportunity for freedom, experimentation, innovation; but as a whole the invisible hand model of competition and consumers is flawed (but aren’t all, maybe it’s the players)…it’s absent of the holistic person, and sees them as actors in a game. Maybe this is what religious texts means by the anti-christ…our economic model is leading us more and more away from our spirit/humanity.

And then came the web, and places like the blogosphere, wikipedia and Twitter…but the information/network economy is different from the; “competing for resources”, “attention for consumers”,“tragedy of the commons” economy…but they are also intertwined.

But we need to digest more than information and connecting in networks to survive eg food…the world is not Twitter…not yet anyway

Sorry about the tangent into capitalism…

Knowledge secrecy

Patrick uses a story to describe the nature of “knowledge is power” in an economy based on competition.

He talks about a food business that sells quail products called the House of Quail.

They share some recipes, nutrition and quail information as it’s in their interests to attract and inform customers…creating a world for them.

But they would be foolish to share the recipes they use in their food stall (based on a family history of trial and error), and they would be foolish to share where they source their high quality qualis (based on a lot of research and connections).

Now I agree to not share all your intellectual capital, as we need to survive in a economy based on competition. But, it’s important not to just rely on this as your differentiator.

In today’s economy someone else will open a Quail shop and be able just like you, and without your help, to source good quail and possess amazing family recipes. In fact they may even be cashed up, and buy in bulk so they can offer cheaper quail but still the same quality…and have a better and faster supply chain, etc…

What I’m getting at is that the true value today is not just the quality, affordability and uniqueness of what you do and offer, but the community you generate. The sustainable value is engaged workers, and engaged clients/customers based on transparency, loyalty, trust, co-creation, etc…

If you have these things as well, you will attract a community…a community generates a likeable atmosphere, so much so that you would rather hang out there even though some other place is cheaper or more unique. You would rather hang where you have already established a relationship, where you have a history of fulfillment.

As long as you have conditions to generate a community, you have the number one thing.

Near my work we have an animal welfare information/association place. Now you can imagine that sort of place would have it’s niche community. Several years on I have noticed they now have a cafe, and it was thriving. It’s not in a real good location where there is foot traffic, the place is not really pleasing to the eye, and I’m not sure if they have anything unique on their menu. But I bet the staff are down to earth, honest, respect and chat to their customers in a more real and friendly way (building relationships), etc…

Another anecdote…

I used to work in a tiny video shop that specialised in arthouse and foreign films. Our customers were mostly film buffs and academics…we provided to a niche market. We also had to stock some mainstream stuff to service some locals and to also make sure we generated a profit.
Lot’s of our customers became friends…when they came to the shop we could talk for an hour about film and other stuff, we were very low key and informal…people felt comfortable (at home). So much so that it was a great place for people to hang.
This gave us the idea to open a cafe and sell film stuff eg. scripts, a place for students to write and talk. Why not, we had a community of people in our hands who had passion for film.
If we implemented our idea I bet it would have worked, but unfortunately a major chain video shop opened across the road and killed us. You see, we could not survive on our niche product alone, we needed our mainstream customers, but now they got a better deal from the major chain.

The major chain don’t care about film like our shop, they just care about making money…they don’t have a community feel when you visit, it’s more just consumer transactions…they don’t offer niche films, they just offer what sells. Basically the major chain killed culture. But I’m not having a go at them, it’s just the reality of capitalism, the fact that it has no ceiling, and no holisitic intention for a better society.

Sorry about the tangent again…

Patrick also shares a few other stories: like the warehouse manager that won’t share how things are done, for fear of potentionally being replaced, and the executive who queried about the threat of KM…could it know how he swings a deal, his network of contacts and strong relationships that took years to build.

Patrick comments on the reality of the situation:

“If newer, cheaper and more malleable executives work for long enough with the target of the desired knowledge, eventually they will acquire enough confidence to cut the umbilical cord. They’ll never do the same job…they they’ll muddle through and learn their own way to success once they’ve got the basics. The business will survive”

Some might say it’s a choice: you either hoard so you have an edge, or you share and build a social reputation. When you share you are not just a dynamic performer, but you are also helping everyone else to be one as well, and that is reason for the company to actually hold on to you…it’s doing wonders for celebrity chefs.

Conclusion

This conclusion is outstanding, and reminds me of wise words by some other bloggers that I will share in the next post.

Patrick concludes:

“We assume, naïvely, that only the corporate plot and its aspiration towards triumph matters when it comes to knowledge asymmetries, and that everybody will share knowledge willingly once they understand what the corporate plot is. We forget that individuals and small groups also have smaller plots, smaller tragedies and triumphs, and their own unique aspirations. And they will also use knowledge asymmetries to drive themselves towards success, regardless of what the bigger, more impersonal plots of our superiors dictate.”

Patrick summarizes:

“Caesar’s unopened letter…teaches us…it’s not enough to simply deliver the knowledge, important though that is. The key is whether knowledge is, or can be, acted upon. That means far more emphasis on helping our people become skilled knowledge users.”

“…we don’t have to have perfect knowledge management, nor would we particularly enjoy it. In a competitive world, we simply have to be better at managing knowledge asymmetries than our current competitors are. As it turns out, that also means a greater emphasis on skills: building the experience, intuition and resourcefulness of our knowledge workers.”

“…we need to recognise that the corporate plot occupies only a part of most people’s lives. Knowledge sharing and knowledge secrecy also operate in our personal trajectories through life. When the two conflict, when my interest appears to be compromised by the dictates of my masters, then I will deploy my knowledge asymmetries first in my own defense – if not actively, at least passively. And unless our interests are selfish and cruel, it is right that we should do so.”

My post “The Emergence of the “Know” Profile” stirred numerous responses. Within these responses, and the subsequent dialog within the blogosphere , came many questions and perceptions as to the validity of someday actualizing the “know” profile as described.

Given this exchange I thought it would be worthy to examine some of the relevant issues raised and address them by sharing more details of how the “know” profile will emerge and how it will work.

How Can Knowledge be Indexed into an Inventory?

Libraries use numerical indexing to categorize books and the relevant content. The numerical indexing system applies numbers to make a search of relevant and relative words all contained in a taxonomy of subjects. These numeric indexes began in approximately 1894. This “taxonomy” of knowledge assets (contained in libraries of knowledge) can be found in places like Amazon, Encyclopedia Britannica or the Library of Congress etc. Ever seen anything like this ISBN 0-534-39200-8? That is the numerical index number for a book.

Now take that same concept and apply the related methodologies to “indexing an individuals knowledge assets” and what you create is a library of individual knowledge inventory. Computer algebra system would perform the required calculations. The new system would include various versions of  algorithms used to index ones knowledge inventory based on education, learning degrees, life experiences and original published content. All of this currently rest in our social profiles but is yet to be indexed to reflect our individual knowledge inventory. Not yet but soon.

Couldn’t People Create Fake Knowledge Assets?

I suppose they could but “fake” is now transparent. College professors use software to screen student papers for plagiarism. Resumes are not vetted and education and experience is verified by computer programs. Said mechanisms could easily be used to “vet” an individuals profile. Additionally people who know and or have had relational experience with individuals will easily vet out the “lies”.

Our blogging could be added to our “Knowledge Inventory” and the numerical indexing of the content along with vetting mechanisms would verify original thought vs. copy. Ideation, creativity of thought and value of thought can all be indexed and vetted.  Essentially we already have a significant system of vetting in place and much of those activities establish our social capital which could also be indexed.

How would our knowledge inventory be visualized?

Look at the graphic in this post. There are low, median and high ranges of each “knowledge asset”. Below each asset their is a related taxonomy of affinity knowledge contained within the indexes.  A computer generated algorithm would create a histogram that places our individual “knowledge assets” into a range that relates to the “pool” of knowledge inventory represented by everyone’s profile and from established “knowledge” contained in Libraries everywhere. Said algorithms and histograms would create a “numerical analysis” and subsequent score that would plot our individual knowledge assets against the “knowledge inventory” library. What you get is a graphic display with plotted dots on each top level “capital category” in a picture such as that framed in the graphic on this page.

We all have profiles of ourselves everywhere. Our profiles “contain” relevant information about our educations, experience and interest. Every time we “tweet” or write a post the context of what we share is also a reflection of our “profile“.

The word “profile” carries many meanings including:

1. a verbal, arithmetical, or graphic summary or analysis of the history, status, etc., of a process, activity, relationship,or set of characteristics:
2. an informal biography or a concisely presented sketch of the life and character of a person.
3. set of characteristics or qualities that identify a type or category of person or thing:
4. a description of behavioral and personality traits of a person compared with accepted norms or standards.

Given the progress of technology in the near future our “profiles” will integrate our individual “knowledge inventory” relevant to intellectual, social, creative and spiritual capital we all possess. Today our profiles are not integrated into a “taxonomy” of knowledge assets that one would find in places like Amazon, Encyclopedia Britannica or the Library of Congress. Rather our current profiles rest in contextual containers that reflect “key words” that create our on-line identity. The problem is that none of the “contextual containers” are integrated into a taxonomy that indexes the “knowledge assets” each of us possesses.

Why The “Know” Profile Will Emerge

Content on the net represents various forms of knowledge. Content is produced, propagated and published by people. Content attracts people whom have an affinity to the context of the content as it relates to what people want to “know“.  What people know is a reflection of their intellectual capital.

People socialize around content which again is produced by people. Popular content may reflect creative perspectives, innovation, new ideas and insights. People also migrate to other people based on spiritual capital meaning common beliefs, principles and practices.

People socialize around content which again is produced by people. The sphere of influence that attracts people to other people represents the collective value attributed by the four elements of “knowledge assets“. The collective value of our individual knowledge assets represent “social currency” that most of us share freely.

Now imagine being able to access a “Knowledge Inventory” that indexed people who have the right combination of “knowledge assets” that could be used to solve whatever problem people  or organizations seek to solve. The Knowledge Inventory would be build by categorizing our individual knowledge assets into the following capital indexes that could be measured and vetted over time:

1. Intellectual Capital reflects a taxonomy of knowledge  gained from our education, experience, relationships and organizations. The common definition of intellectual capital includes relational capital, human capital and organizational capital.
2. Social capital is a sociological concept used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and the social sciences in general to refer to connections within and between social networks.
3. Creative capital implies is a mental process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the existing ideas or concepts, fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight.
4. Spiritual capital is a concept that involves the quantification of the value to individuals, groups and society of spiritual, moral or psychological beliefs and practices.

The Value of Creating a “Know” Profile

Whether an individual, organization or society at large having access to the right “knowledge” at the right time represents a significant increase in productivity. Productivity is what fuels the economy. Any economy is tied to productivity. Economic growth is defined as any production increase of a business or nation (whatever you are measuring). Real economic growth consists of two components. These components are an increase in production input and an increase in productivity. (Genesca & Grifell 1992, Saari 2006)

The value of accessing the right knowledge assets applied to any given problem, any new innovation or market opportunity is increased productivity. People are the “containers” of knowledge. Being able to create a knowledge inventory accessible to everyone enables everyone to increase productivity. Doing so would fuel a new economy based on a new currency and everyone could become their own “knowledge corporation”.

While becoming more mainstream, social media still holds fear for many businesses, especially small local business.

Fear of time involved; fear of where to start; fear of where to be.

While this fear is understandable, it also means that many local small business owners miss out on social media and all the benefits it can offer, especially when it comes to competing with the big boys.

While I’ve written before about how expensive social media can be from a corporate campaign viewpoint, for small businesses it’s still one of the most cost-effective methods of being visible to your customers, new and existing. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube – they all offer possibilities for the small business owner.

Then there’s the real workhorse – the blog. The best marketing tool you will ever have as a small business owner, a blog can be a myriad of things:

• A promotional tool.
• An information hub.
• A resource centre.
• Your own personal social network.
• A live, ever-fresh FAQ section.

In fact, the only limitation to what a blog can do for you is the limitations you put on the blog itself. And again, this is where many small business owners – especially local small business owners – bypass social media’s strengths and opportunities.

Fear comes back in. Fear of what to blog about; fear of how to target an audience; fear of how to promote a new (or existing) blog; fear of setting yourself apart when there are so many other voices around.

Apart from that fear, perhaps the biggest stumbling block is setting up the blog in the first place. If you’re not doing it yourself, where do you find a designer (and for many small business owners, one that doesn’t break your budget or rip you off). Again, this fear is only natural.

Yet help is at hand.

In the next couple of weeks, a new course will be unveiled that takes the fear out of social media and blogging for small business owners. Some of the features will include:

• Using social media and your blog to market your small business.
• Using online tools to benefit your brick and mortar business (or a simple home-based one).
• Getting a fully-functional blog and social media tools set up from day one.
• Course “mentors” that bring a vast and comprehensive set of skills to the table (oh, and me).

These are just some of the features and benefits, with more to be announced over the coming weeks. It’s a course designed specifically for small and local business owners that get social media and its benefits (like blogs), but need that extra bit of help to really start utilizing it. Best of all, it won’t cost you anywhere near $22,000 a day…

More information will be available very soon. To make sure you get the latest updates, as well as details of what’s in store and who’ll be part of the course, you can sign up for the latest news via the newsletter form below. Don’t worry, you won’t be spammed and you definitely won’t be sold to any dodgy characters!

Social media and blogging was made for small business owners. Here’s a great chance to be that business – look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

photo credit: DBarefoot

© dannybrown for danny brown, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: blogging, Small business, social media
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Every time we converse, post and respond on-line and off we reveal ourselves. The word reveal means to make known, disclose, divulge, to lay open to view, display or exhibit. When something or someone is revealed each of us decides whether what or who is revealed has any relevance to us.

Many of us don’t realize how we reveal ourselves.   What we reveal are the things that attract others to us or us to others.  Whether an organization or an individual what we reveal are common characteristics that bring us together or separate us.

These common characteristics are transparently revealed in content that is in context to four things that determine who we are, who we want to be as well as who and what we attract.

We are all assets of the human network exchanging value with others. Our value makeup is reflected by four knowledge assets that represents value to the human network. An asset can appreciate or depreciate based on many variables. The primary variable that increases or decreases an assets value is determined by the demand for use.

Do The Assets You Reveal Create Demand for Use?

When we use the term asset we think of things that stores or lends economic value. When we think of the term value many would quickly reference terms of an economic transaction. The human network creates economic value by what we do. We earn money for what we do and exchange the money for other things of value. What we do and the exchanges we make represent "value creation and exchanges" that are and continue to be produced by knowledge assets borrowed, owned or traded between two or more individuals.

Knowledge assets are contained within human beings.  The human network reveals four types of capital: 1) intellectual capital, 2)social capital, 3)spiritual capital and 4) creative capital. These four knowledge assets are used to create "value" that is traded with people and things we "value". These four assets which reveal us are defined as:

1. Intellectual Capital: That which we have learned, understand, know and apply to life experiences.
2. Social Capital: The relationships we build and our ability to interact with others.
3. Spiritual Capital: Our sense and faith in a higher power other than ourselves, our intellect and our social capital. This capital is usually referred to as the knowledge of "God".
4. Creative capital: The insights we see and the possibilities we create. Creative capital is influenced by the internal and external interaction of 1,2 & 3.

We use our knowledge assets and share them with others, organizations, institutions and society at large. We get hired for who we are which is reflective of our knowledge assets. Organizations use and abuse our knowledge assets to their gain or lose. We share our knowledge assets with family, friends and associates. We exchange knowledge assets in the form of conversations, actions and insights.

The #1 influence over economic output is individual and collective knowledge assets of people working together towards a common aim.  Imagine if our collective knowledge assets were indexed, able to be searched and subsequently used, borrowed, shared and executed more efficiently. What could happen if we were enabled to identify and connect knowledge assets for collective gain?

Our life experiences shape our knowledge assets  defined and then revealed by what we say and do.  Collectively our knowledge assets  represent the gifts and abilities  we have, both the good and bad, which are ultimately shared with others through interactions and future experiences.

The Future Web of Knowledge Assets Connected

Social technology could enable individuals to leverage their knowledge assets for the benefit of others thus creating a giving exchange that provides exponential value.   The technological medium will eventually index knowledge assets and create a new economic paradigm when knowledge becomes  connected and taken out of silos of information.

The future web will enrich human experiences by giving, sharing, learning, relating and re-enforcing or improving the four things that reveal who each of us really are and what we have to offer and learn from each others.

• Incredibly Dull: Lurking, a Personal Story
  Lurkers can be passing your links on. They can be taking on what you say and have conversations infecting others with what they learnt from you.
• Anecdote: Endings are important for how we remember experiences
• Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?
• The Problem with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom Hierarchy - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

When it comes to the Headway premium WordPress theme, there’s no question I’m incredibly biased about what it can do for bloggers.

I’ve written about it more than once on here, and I use it on the three sites I’ve created so far, with more to be shared soon. In fact, it’s the only product that I’ve fallen in love with so much that I’ve signed up as an affiliate. So yes, when it comes to premium WordPress themes, Headway stands head and shoulders above everything else (at least I think so).

Yet as much as I recommend the theme, it’s still only words (and obviously the design of this blog, the 12for12k site and Just Kickin’ It) that tell you some of the cool stuff Headway can do. Sure, I can say it’s easy to use and it really does make your life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to designing your blog. But words only tell half the story.

Which is why this video from David Wang is perfect. In less than ten minutes, he takes the standard Headway theme layout and transforms it into a great-looking business site. Sure, it’s just the home page and you still need to add all your other pages and posts. But as an example of just how quickly you can begin to build your blog/site, under ten minutes is pretty damn impressive! Have a look for yourself.

Now that you’ve seen how simple it is to make the Headway theme sing on WordPress, what else does it have in store for you? Currently version 1.6 is in beta, and I’ve been messing around with it behind closed doors. Some of the cool features include:

• Live CSS editor. While the theme allows you to make a great website with absolutely no coding needed, it also allows you to get as down and dirty as you like with coding. The new live CSS box means you can drop CSS code in and see the changes take place right in front of your eyes – no saving and checking to see how it looks.
• Skins and Templates. When Headway first hit the premium WordPress theme market, one of the things it promised was the option for skins. This is where you can upload a specially developed skin that changes the look of your blog completely (if you don’t want to design your look yourself). This is now live with Headway 1.6 and you can access them from within the dashboard or from dedicated theme stores.
• Default Leaf set. Headway uses a system called Leafs, which is basically your content body and sidebars (albeit in a far cooler, interactive way). While you can use any mix of set-up for your blog, with a different sidebar on every page, Headway 1.6 allows the option of a standard leaf throughout your site. Perfect if you don’t want any extra work when designing your blog.
• Automatic SEO slug clean-up. This is a great new feature that cleans up your search engine visibility by removing words like “the” and “and”, etc, that Google doesn’t really bother with. You can switch this on and off in the SEO area of Headway.

These are just some of the features that the guys behind the Headway theme will be bringing to you soon. The beta is almost ready to go live, and will be available as a free upgrade for existing users and available for purchase to new users imminently.

Watching the new features that developer Clay Griffiths puts out in each new update is almost like a game in betting on just what he won’t add in each new version – it’s that crazy how much he gives WordPress bloggers. And the support is second-to-none as well.

If you’re looking for a new premium WordPress theme, Headway delivers in spades. And as a special promotion, any purchases of the theme via this blog in March will see all affiliate earnings go to the current 12for12k charity.

So, the best premium WordPress theme around and all Headway sales going to charity – what better time to upgrade your blog? Just click on the image to the right to get your copy.

© dannybrown for danny brown, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: 12for12k Challenge, blogging, headway wordpress theme
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Numbers drive organizational decisions. Numbers are used to try and determine what and how one can improve a result.

In the world of social media everyone has become obsessed with the numbers. The irony of collecting and measuring social media data is that the moment of measure changes by the dynamic developments that happen every moment. Conversations are dynamic, numbers are static.

Knowledge is dynamic and contained within each person. Our experiences, our conversations and relevant relations changes our knowledge. That is if we approach people with a willingness to learn what they know or don’t know. Doing so requires listening which in itself is a knowledge funnel.

Listening to Moments?

In business things change moment by moment. Adjusting to these changes requires a agile thinking about the meaning of changes that ultimately drive the end result. The end result of a business is represented by value obtained from the value given. Value of products, services, relationships and processes are consumed by buyers. Buyers get value when their intents are fulfilled beyond their expectations.

Expectations of buyers change and when they do a business must change how they fulfill new expectations. Unless a business is listening to the marketplace, their employees and the end buyer they cannot hear the changing expectations. Not hearing means you are not likely able to meet the expectations satisfactorily.

Social media is nothing more than a channel of communications. Technological innovation has fueled communications and the subsequent “media” is no longer controlled by the few rather by the many. Conversations change and it is the rate of change that represents dynamic moments with meaning. Measuring a point in time may reflect that moment or past moments of dialog but not future moments. To change the future you have to understand the past. However, the future is not merely a reflection of the past especially when dealing with a dynamic system changing moment by moment.

Listening to the Future

Listening to the future is a predictive model of outcomes, actions and subsequent results of the moment.  If we measure moments to determine the effectiveness of past actions the results tell us little about the future. If, on the other hand, our measures are centric to probable future outcomes influenced by previous moments then we can use data to predict future moments. The problem with determining or influencing future social media moments is that the “system” is not stable rather dynamic and filled with special cause variation. Any good statistician will tell you that trying to measure an unstable system is only relevant if you understand and can measure root cuases.

So what are the root causes of social media moments? The answer is people’s intent. Understanding intents will lead you to measure the things that can fulfill or constrain intents. Said things have nothing to do with use of  social media by suppliers rather it has everything to do with a suppliers ability to fulfill the buyers intent. Which by the way changes moment by moment.

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Here’s a question for you. If you’re in business, how do you treat your clients?

Or, to look at it another way, how do your clients treat you?

Is it with respect and shared passion for doing the same work, or is it just having a need for each other and no more?

When dealing with a client, do you meet your deadlines or do you constantly offer excuses why their project isn’t ready? Do you work closely together, listen to/make suggestions for improving and strive for excellence on the fly, or do you simply turn in the work, take the money and walk?

I ask this simply because it seems many big businesses have forgotten the art of either being a client or providing for one. From having a maze of contact information to wade through to losing the personal touch that won them the following of the customers in the first place, larger businesses are forgetting how to communicate.

So here’s an idea.

Go back to basics. Remember when you first started your business and you had time for everyone (because everyone was important)? Find that business owner again.

Ask yourself how you’re communicating and how you can improve. Are you using the online space effectively? Look at your Internet strategy and see how your brand is viewed. There’s a billion voices waiting to answer you and offer you invaluable advice and insight into making your brand the authority in your niche.

The question is, will you be listening?

photo credit: fofurasfelinas

© dannybrown for danny brown, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: branding, Business, Customer service
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