I’ve written a few posts about Doctor Nicholas Christakis and Doctor James Fowlers' research. This post is about their book - Connected: the Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives . Their research uses network analysis techniques to the aid the understanding obesity, smoking, happiness, back pain, sexual practices, beliefs, and other social phenomena. Their interesting finding is that all these phenomena are contagious.

Christakis and Fowler base their findings on a careful analysis of the Framingham Heart Study, conducted from 1948 to the present in a small Massachusetts city. They have mapped more than 50,000 ties between just over 12,000 people. In essence they argue that if friend’s friend’s friend - whom you’ve never met, and lives 50 kilometres away - is unhappy, then you’re likely to be unhappy as well. In other words there are three degrees of influence. They demonstrate the same outcome for smoking behaviour and obesity, and attribute it to “norming behaviour”. In short we are part of a collective (social network) that seeks homeostasis and is bound by certain rules. According to Christakis and Fowler these are:

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A little while ago I wrote a post titled “Visualisations Are Not Everything” . Here’s a good example, which uses data from Google Scholar to show collaboration between Iranian Nuclear Physicists. The data is visualised in UCINET/NetDraw and NetMiner III, and shows the dangers of incomplete data sets, poor interpretation, and poor understanding of how to use the tools.

Consider the network diagram below, which has been visualised in UCINET/NetDraw. The nodes are Iranian Nuclear Physicists, and the red nodes are the network cut points – that is the individuals who are holding the network together.

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Sometime ago I posted some commentary about this study by Doctor Nicholas Christakis and Doctor James Fowler, who used network analysis to aid understanding of obesity, and some commentary on this study where they used network analysis to aid the understanding smoking behaviour.  Both studies were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I also posted some commentary about a study on happiness published in the January 2009 edition of the British Medical Journal, or BMJ for short.  Last year Doctors Christakis and Fowler published a book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.  I'll be doing a book review in the next few days.  In the meantime the video below features Doctor Fowler talking about their work - it's well worth viewing.

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I think that a missing component in the corporate literature on knowledge management, and for that matter the management literature, is discipline. It seems that as a society we are afraid of discipline because it conjures up images of corporal punishment. Yet I would say to you that ‘discipline is not a dirty word’! Indeed, in 1918 one of Australia’s most famous generals and citizens – Lieutenant General Sir John Monash - captured the meaning of discipline very well. He said:

“Discipline is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the power to secure coordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose”.

A subtle tweak provides a pretty good working description of the intent of knowledge management –

“Knowledge management is, after all, only a means to an end, and that end is the means to secure coordinated action among a large number of individuals for the achievement of a definite purpose”.

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On the 1st of March 1971 a significant government department report, which took two years to develop, was submitted to the Minister of the day. I've just found a copy and read it from cover to cover. By today's standards it probably wouldn't pass muster - its only 74 pages and it just doesn't look pretty. It is devoid of colour, pictures, and diagrams, but it does have tables and numbers, and more importantly the principle recommendation is in the first paragraph clearly flagged in bold type. The other recommendations are easy to find and follow.

The report is remarkable for its clarity and succinctness. Its also remarkable for its predictions and its recommendations, some of which were enacted just last year, but quite independently of this report! I doubt today's policy and decision makers even know of its existence, yet it could easily have been rebadged and resubmitted. Even more astounding is the report references recommendations made and approved in 1922, but never enacted. Similar recommendations were again made in 1955 and were not enacted. And of course the 1971 report was referenced in 1997, and you guessed it the recommendations were not enacted (I've also found and read the 1997 report). A new report was commissioned in January 2008 and its recommendations approved in July 2008. The recommendations in the 2008 report could have been plagiarised from the 1971 report, and presumably the 1955 and 1922 reports, yet they were arrived at independently and in ignorance of the existence of the other reports.

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Yesterday I was asked – “What are the essential components of a knowledge management system?” Now this is no easy question because it is laden with assumptions, most often that we can actually build a knowledge management system from the ground up! The assumption being that a knowledge management system is a hard system, which it isn’t. Here’s my answer.

A knowledge management system is a soft system of systems with open boundaries. It is made up of components from the mnemonic PISHI (1), which stands for people, infrastructure, software, hardware, and information. This classification represents real things in the real world, and each of these things is linked together by processes so that an output is realised to meet an objective – in this case knowledge. In the modern business world, all components are essential.

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Is project management a knowledge management activity? To answer this question we must first define “project” and “project management”, and then see how it relates to knowledge management (I’ll use the definition of knowledge management that I posted yesterday ).

Projects are different from business as usual, or operational activities, in that they are unique undertakings, are non-repetitive, and often deliver revolutionary change rather than evolutionary change. The Project Management Institute, which is widely recognised as the world peak body for project management, picks up on the uniqueness and temporal ideas by defining a project as ‘… a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique produce, service or result’ (PMI 2004, p. 368). Similarly, the United Kingdom Office of Government Commence, which is also a world peak body for project management, defines a project as being ‘… a temporary organisation that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case' (Office of Government Commerce 2005, p. 6).

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It seems to me that part of the problem with knowledge management, apart from the word “knowledge" which I’ve discussed elsewhere , is a decent definition of “management”. Whole books have been written on management and what it means, and there is a healthy literature that seeks to define the differences between management and leadership. Despite this there is no exact meaning for management, although the generally accepted meaning, as will be seen later, is much more precise than knowledge. The concepts of management and leadership are intrinsically linked to work and organisation. Indeed Drucker said that management is a ‘… specific kind of work’ and ‘… is a generic function of all organizations, whatever their specific mission’. He also said management is quite simply ‘the application and performance of knowledge’. But just what we mean by knowledge, management, work, and organisation depends on whether we adopt a social action or an instrumental discourse.

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A couple of people have asked me why I’ve changed my logo, and in particular why I have chosen an owl. Well it’s not something I have done lightly. I actually think the owl better represents what Knowledge Matters™ - the business and the blog - is all about. Here’s why.

Owls are far-sighted, have good depth-perception, and can turn their head almost 270 degrees. They see in low-light conditions and their feathers are adapted so they can fly almost silently. Knowledge managers need to be almost invisible in the organisation and they need to understand the bigger picture – that is they need depth of understanding of organisational goals and objectives.

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The Australian Army is investing in a substantial knowledge management initiative as part of its Adaptive Army strategy. This strategy might be summarised as a "learning organisation" approach, but I digress. They have produced their first booklet for comment. Unfortunately its not available for public comment, but it is an interesting read. I thought I would share the thrust of the document.

The first thing I like is the focus on informed decision making and the strong recognition that knowledge management must focus on the human dimension. Even more interesting is the use of historical battle examples throughout the booklet. These range from the December 2004 ambush at Tel Afar to the July 1918 Battle of Hamel.

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Once again I’m running a Network Analysis seminar at the University of Canberra on Friday the 29th of January 2010. The seminar is aimed at new researchers, but is useful for anyone wanting to know more about network analysis. The seminar occurs in the morning and is organised into three sessions.

Session one:

• provides a brief history of network analysis;
• positions network analysis in the research traditions;
• explains why network analysis is useful, and why it is gaining traction now; and
• provides some examples across disciplines where network analysis is being used.

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The Invisible Organization – How Informal Networks can Lead Organizational Change by Neil Famer has been on my book shelf for about 12 months, and I’ve read it three or four times. My heavy pencil annotations in the margins are testament to the usefulness of the book. The book is about applied social and organisational network analysis in a business context – it is not a text book or a book for serious academic application. The central thesis is that organisations have invisible and public structures, both of which can be accommodated and weaved. Farmer argues that weaving both networks will result in improved business communication and a more harmonious workplace.

Farmer says that most of the real leaders are in the invisible organisation and are part of lower echelon small groups. These people are the organisational influencers and they should be cultivated. He claims that all of the formal management hierarchy combined can probably identify less than a third of the local leaders, and that management’s power to influence represents less than 20% of the potential influencing capability across all employees. These are bold claims, but they resonate with me. The problem is if influencers are in the invisible organisation, then how can they be identified and their talents harnessed? This is where social and organisational network analysis comes into play, with a particular emphasis on influence networks.

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Well it's a New Year and as you can see the site has a new look and feel - in part because I had to upgrade from Drupal 5 to 6, and in part because it needed cleaning up. The upgrade process was painful in the extreme, probably because on the Drupal 5 site I used a lot of semi-customised modules. Here the benefit of frequent documenting as you go, doing it yourself, and backing up payed off - I knew how the old site worked. I was also able to refer to website hit logs and determine that most users now use a high-resolution wide screen, so my new theme accommodates this requirement (its best viewed at 1024 pixels wide resolutions or higher). That said I've left it as a fluid theme to accommodate users who still use lower resolutions or "square screens". My irritation with the upgrade was I lost all my tailored views and they have to be rebuilt from scratch because the upgrade path is not seamless. It also resulted in lots of broken links. I've used this as an opportunity to search engine optimise the site. This means almost all the links have changed, although the content is still there. I'm still searching for broken links, but I think I've fixed most - please let me know if you find any. I've also changed the logo but I’m not entirely happy with it. What do you think?

2009 was not a good year for blogging, or any form of personal or business productivity on my behalf. There were many reasons for this not the least of which the contract I have with the Australian Defence Force precludes many activities. Other reasons include exhaustion and writers block. I'm over the first, and time will tell how writer's block goes. I have written quite a bit towards my PhD, which I plan to submit at the end of the year. Bits might also form a few blogs, but I don't want to distract myself too much from the task at hand. One thing I did do in 2009 was a lot of reading so my blogging theme for the next little while will be book reviews – these seem to be popular and get lots of hits in any case. I also did a presentation or two; attended three courses, including a Cognitive Edge accreditation course ; published a paper ; and even wrote a bagpipe tune. Beth’s Inspiration is not my best effort ever (the best is Black Pat ), but I think it’s pretty good and more importantly Beth says she likes it – perhaps she’s just being nice!

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