Ask and You Shall Receive via Enterprise Microblogging

A lot of electronic ink has been spilled on the possibility of adapting microblogging technology for use behind the firewall. As with other social media tools, the ability of many to imagine enterprise uses for microblogging (or microsharing or microlearning) has been constrained by their encounters with the microblogging tools some of us have learned to love in our leisure hours such as Twitter. A casual visitor to Twitter sees lots of social interchanges and some downright inane ones, and wonders in their skepticism if this is a plague that should be inflicted on their law firm. (Included in the mix is plenty of useful work-related information, as well as recommendations for reading** and for life, but a casual observer may not notice those right away.) Others will say, given the existing worries about of information overload, we should not add to the pressure by exposing law firm employees to loads of trivia.

As with most things, we know what we know and don't know what we don't know.

For those of us in need of having our vision expanded a little on this topic, I'd recommend you take a look at a terrific piece in Fast Company by Marcia Conner entitled Enterprise Micro-Learning. In it she provides lots of examples of how these tools could improve social conditions and business productivity within an enterprise. For knowledge management folks, there is a gem in that article that is worth thinking about a little further:

Too frequently organizational knowledge-sharing mirrors the news-cycle society around us, in which we share the highs and lows, ignoring the ordinary stuff in the middle. It's in that middle ground people make sense of the work done around them, understand how we can play a part to help fulfill the vision, and know where we can turn to find the help we need. It's the middle stuff that's truly interesting and helps us connect with one another.

She is absolutely right. For many, law firm knowledge management is about capturing and sharing the "high value items" such best practices and models. In most cases, we don't have the time or tools to handle the items from any other part of the spectrum and allow requests for those to clutter e-mail or go unfulfilled. Yet, it is those requests for the "ordinary stuff" that actually allow folks within the law firm to work more easily and productively. Enterprise microblogging could fill this need.

And what about the information overload issue? To begin with, unlike e-mail, the user can choose with laser-like precision from whom they would like to hear (or "follow" in Twitter speak). So, you get to put together your own cabinet of advisers: perhaps the partner from the capital markets (or bankruptcy) practice to shed light on current economic conditions + the savvy junior associate who is completely plugged in + the person who makes great recommendations regarding what's good to eat in the law firm cafeteria. In addition, there are technologies emerging (such as TweetDeck) to help you filter what could be a constant stream of inputs. With these tools, you can decide whom you'd like to follow and how you'd like to group those folks. So each user could create, for example, a practice-focused group, a client or matter focused group, an economy alert group, a firms news group (including your cafeteria advisor), a collection of lawyers in your affinity group, etc. With this structure in place, you could then follow at any particular time the group that is most pertinent for your work or life.

Microblogging presents lots of possibilities for productivity and for building community within your law firm. Don't make the mistake of discounting this technology just because you haven't yet had an opportunity to broaden your experience and vision with social media tools.

[**I discovered Marcia Conner's article through a tweet by noted social media industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang.]

Another Reason to Resist Change

In a recent post in the Forrester blog, Tim Walters discusses some of the reasons why IT (and knowledge management) folks cling to their top-down one-size-fits-all approach and resist the drive to enable personalization of their offerings. He clearly finds this frustrating since, in his view, personalization is now a matter of "Thurvival".** Unfortunately, the folks resistant to change have a new compelling excuse to hide behind. Here's how he paraphrases it:

It’s the economy, stupid. The trouble with a trial and error approach to personalization is that it harbors the possibility (and probably guarantees the occurrence) of error – and error is an expense that, at this juncture, we’d best avoid. For now, let’s stick with what we know works, and we’ll indulge in experimentation when our corporate head is back above the surface of the water.

So now it's the state of economy that gives them license to cling to the Pantyhose Fallacy. Yet, in Walters' view, taking the one-size-fits-all approach ensures that your site "will be really relevant and engaging for almost no one. " That's quite an accomplishment.

In light of this, it appears that we have two options. We can either sit tight and hope to weather the economic storm without daring to risk anything in the short-term or we can take a radically different approach in which we permit a few short-term risks in order to gain some significant long-term benefits. Tim Walters definitely favors the latter approach:

...now is the time to make selective, small scale investments in personalization tools and skills. Yes, your experiments will produce errors, and the effect will probably not be as favorable as your “sure bets.” But in addition to whatever financial benefits you achieve, you’re building up a knowledge base, intellectual capital, and competitive advantages that will be extremely valuable later.

So what are you going to do? Make a smart short-term investment (at the price of a few managed errors) or hide behind the economy as a reason to resist change?


** According to Tim Walters, "Survival during the downturn + Ability to thrive afterwards = Thurvival."

Scary Times for IT

In honor of Halloween, I thought we might take this opportunity to scare our information technology colleagues, as well as those knowledge management folks who have been unable to rise above and beyond technology. Let's start with an interesting piece by Susan Cramm entitled IT Project Funding: Less is More. In it she confronts the reality that IT budgets are likely to be slashed during the downturn, and proposes a new way of working in face of this reality. She suggests that the old "boil the ocean" approach of grand projects based on years of painful analysis is not going to cut it any more -- especially in light of her assertion that while "only 1/3 of IT-enabled business initiatives deliver as planned, project success declines dramatically as project size increases."

Continuing with her theme that bigger is not necessarily better, she recommends the following alternative approach:

Given that only about 20% of applications functionality is typically used (and which 20% is unpredictable), it's impossible to figure it all out in advance. The key to bringing the future forward is getting tools in the hands of the users as quickly as possible. If they use them, you are on the right track. If they don't, find out why and give it another go.

This stumbling and bumbling, learn-by-doing approach may seem a little chaotic, but it's reflective of how organizations, and people, change and grow. Mistakes will be made, but it's better to make a series of small mistakes and mid-course corrections, than it is to make one huge, multi-million dollar mistake from which there is no way to recover.

Without a doubt, this approach will be infinitely more successful if you have the kind of corporate culture I described yesterday in my post When Failure is Fine. However, even if you don't yet have that culture, take advantage of the constraints imposed by the economy to manage and change the expectations of your users. Since your law firm is unlikely to set aside unlimited funds for a large technology or knowledge management project, dial down expectations and ask your users to join you in a journey through the land of perpetual beta. They trade the possibility of perfection (which rarely is realized) for the actuality of functional and timely technology. Even the most demanding users will come to realize that having the technology in use is better than having unfulfilled paper plans.

Being a kind and generous person, let me offer a treat to offset the trickiness of the fast-delivery approach advocated by Cramm. She recommends that you have the following in place if you wish to maximize your chances of delivering the right technology quickly:

Executive leadership: Don't confuse sponsorship with leadership. Sponsors show up at steering committee meetings when invited, leaders demonstrate passion and commitment by showing up in cubicles and conference rooms uninvited

Clear definition of success: Use process measurements that impact financial performance and baseline them at the start of the project

Predefined kill switch: Take the emotion out of the decision making process by defining what defines failure, so that the project can fail fast and be restarted when conditions are more favorable

Small, experienced team: Wait to start your project until you have a seasoned project manager supported by a small team (less than 12) of full time, subject matter experts

Laser sharp focus on critical requirements: Avoid defining requirements by committee by using the success measurements to manage scope

Respect for the future and the past: Factor in the implications of existing business and technology plans while accelerating progress by leveraging legacy systems and existing infrastructure

There you have it -- a cautionary tale for Halloween. Scary times are ahead, but a willingness to adapt (together with some nimble footwork) should allow you to make useful advances with respect to your firm's technology despite the economy. In the process, you'll shed the tendency for bloated IT and knowledge management projects, and adopt a sleeker, streamlined approach that is more in keeping with the times.

Trust But Verify

In one of the articles that accompanied the AmLaw Tech Survey 2008, Alan Cohen reports on a conversation he had with Bob Craig, chief information officer at Baker & Hostetler. According to Craig, the next big challenge is to change the way the IT department relates to the lawyers of his firm. He likened the current relationship between the two groups to the relationship between "a teenage driver ready to hit the road and a nervous parent wary about forking over the keys." Under the current model, "all new technology gets controlled, vetted, and often limited by the technology department." In Craig's view, that approach is untenable with the advent of the new web 2.0 tools. Instead, he wants to change the way IT departments work with lawyers, by implementing a "trust but verify" system that allows users to install the tools they need without permission, provided that IT can check to make sure "no harm is done."

Bob Craig's vision of the IT/Lawyer relationship is laudable:

We want IT to inspire lawyers to unleash their creativity - not lock them down. ... The fundamental concept of Web 2.0 is to empower users to contribute and collaborate. If we're going to take advantage of Web 2.0, there's a whole mind-set shift that has to take place in IT. "Trust but verify" is the precursor.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

The Pantyhose Fallacy and the Reality of Pants

In my earlier post today, KM and the Pantyhose Fallacy, I begged the indulgence of my male readers with the following words: "Stick with me, gentlemen. I'm sure there's a male equivalent to this that I haven't thought of yet." Well there is an equivalent (or near equivalent) that is instructive: pants.

Traditionally, better quality men's trousers have been sold in the following manner: they are ready to wear except for the fact that the hem is unfinished so that each wearer can tailor their pant legs to suit their individual preferences. This is a great example of the new operating principle I proposed in my prior post with respect to how we should deploy knowledge management tools in the 21st century:

Facing this challenge requires switching from anodyne mega projects to deploying technology that is capable and robust enough at the core to permit users to lightly tinker with its functionality around the fringes without requiring a team of IT experts. Following this path, you should end up with tools that perform their basic functions reliably and well, while allowing individual users to tailor those tools to meet their immediate needs.

This will require a new kind of discipline from knowledge managers and their IT colleagues. Rather than looking for an application that merely meets the expectations of the lowest common denominator of users, we'll need to look for intelligently-engineered apps that do the basics well but that can be tweaked by users to meet their (reasonable) needs. The trick here is to find software that permits this kind of tailoring, yet does not require a great deal of money, training, time or IT intervention to accomplish the modifications. In other words, wiki-like simplicity and Facebook-like flexibility.

Here endeth my disquisition on knowledge management and clothing -- at least for now!

KM and the Pantyhose Fallacy

The Pantyhose* Fallacy may not yet be a term of art in knowledge management and information technology, but I can guarantee that you already understand its underlying principle. [Stick with me, gentlemen. I'm sure there's a male equivalent to this that I haven't thought of yet.] Here's the Pantyhose Fallacy: for years retailers have sold us a bill of goods -- that it is possible for people of varying sizes and shapes to wear an article of clothing sold in a single size. They call it "one size fits all." The sad truth is that the one size fits badly and doesn't remotely fit all.

In the world of knowledge management, vendors have led us to bland, standardized implementations of tools that barely meet the needs of users. Perhaps we were unduly influenced by the big legal publishers who insisted we do it their way or not at all, but far too many KM efforts have forced square pegs into round holes. The imagined benefits of standardization caused us to overlook the real benefits of judicious customization to meet the needs of individual users. And now, those users are rebelling. Forget the rigid top-down taxonomy. They want to tag and organize content on the fly. Forget about limiting them to a small collection of recommended content. They want easy ways of identifying, segregating and then sharing their own "favorites." Forget about hermetically sealing employees behind the firewall. They want to be able to mix and match the best of internal and external content as the spirit moves or the circumstances dictate.

The challenge for KM is to give up the imagined security of rigid standardization and adopt more flexible means of meeting user needs. This challenge moves KM personnel out of the role of prison warden and into the role of companion and facilitator. Facing this challenge requires switching from anodyne mega projects to deploying technology that is capable and robust enough at the core to permit users to lightly tinker with its functionality around the fringes without requiring a team of IT experts. Following this path, you should end up with tools that perform their basic functions reliably and well, while allowing individual users to tailor those tools to meet their immediate needs. Although we've been told that few users actually take the time to customize or edit, I wonder if this will change as more users begin to use flexible internet apps in their leisure time, and thereby learn the value of customizing tools to meet personal preferences and maximize personal expression.

But, even if you're not entirely sure about the 21st century trends for technology, remember that 20th century example of pantyhose: One size almost never fits all.


[*A note to readers outside North America: pantyhose is also known as tights in many parts of the English-speaking world.]

Do You Have What It Takes?

Knowledge management folks have to interact with technology daily. In fact, all knowledge workers have to interact with technology daily. There's no other way to do your job well in the 21st century. The problem is that those of us who are 40 years old or more learned to be knowledge workers at a time when there was much less technology, and the technology we had didn't work terribly well. In the nearly 20 years I've been in the workforce, we've seen enormous changes: from the IBM Selectric to desktop computers to fully mobile computing; from telephones to e-mail to microblogging; from internal memos to enterprise blogs and wikis. And there's more change coming down the pike.

Are you ready?

Are you sure you're ready?

Being ready is not just about knowing about the tool or knowing how to use the technology. It's about changing your attitude and approach to the technology so that you really know how to use it well. For example, if you were trained to find information in a time when information appeared to be scarce, you developed some great sleuthing skills. (Remember having to go to a library, and then to the card catalog, and then to the place on the shelf where the book should have been, only to find it missing? That's one form of info scarcity -- when finding it is hard.) Now contrast that with our current situation, where you can Google "knowledge management blogs" and get 6,760,000 results in 0.15 seconds. That's not just information abundance, that's information overload. And that overload calls for different skills; it calls for filtering skills.

In a helpful post, New Work and New Work Skills, Tony Karrer sets out some benchmarks against which we can measure our readiness for 21st century work in an age of information abundance. Here are some of the ways of working he believes we should learn:

• How to take notes on a laptop, PC
• How to work with mobile devices and keep them in sync
• How to effectively filter
• How to reach out and find expertise
• How to use Social Media to Find Answers to Anything
• How to Learn through Conversation
• How to keep track of information, organize it, refind it and be reminded about it

And here's his quick test to see how well we've adopted the change in attitude and approach necessary to master the new technology:

• I effectively use the Google filetype operator
  
• I know what the Google "~" operator does
• I'm effective at reaching out to get help from people I don't already know
• I'm good at keeping, organizing my documents, web pages that I've encountered in ways that allow me to find it again when I need it and remind me that it exists when I'm not sure what I'm looking for
• I'm good at filtering information
• I'm good at collaboratively working with virtual work teams and use Google Docs or a Wiki as appropriate in these situations

So, take the test and tell me. Do you have what it takes to be an effective knowledge worker in the 21st century?

[Thanks to Bill Brantley for pointing out Tony Karrer's post.]

Web 2.0 Resistance in Law Firms?

Penny Edwards at Headshift characterizes the 2008 AmLaw Tech Survey as a "disappointing read from a social software/organizational change perspective." Alan Cohen, who reported on the survey in Law.com's Legal Technology section, admits that while there's lots of talk within law firms about social media tools, relatively few of those firms have deployed many of these tools given the ubiquity of these tools on the internet. And, those that have attempted to take a walk on the wild web 2.0 side have limited themselves to "ho-hum stuff by internet standards." The survey reports that 43% of the firms have at least one blog and 24% have internal wikis, but I suspect that much of this has happened because these tools were bundled (albeit imperfectly) with the SharePoint platforms these firms have deployed. With a few notable exceptions (see Penny Edwards' post), we haven't heard about many truly transformative deployments of social media tools within law firms.

Why?

According to Alan Cohen, law firm CIOs and IT directors are definitely thinking about web 2.0, but in the following terms: "What emerging technologies are worth investing in -- and which aren't ready for prime time? " Prime time? When folks all over the world are diving into social computing with remarkable enthusiasm, can you really treat these technologies as experimental? Perhaps the real issue is that law firms have not yet identified uses for these technologies that feel like incremental rather than revolutionary changes to current business processes. So, to the extent you can use a blog or wiki to do something that is already done by e-mail, it's a safe option to propose to your firm -- provided you can convince folks to leave their Outlook cocoons. For law firm knowledge management programs, the usual approach is to identify and implement these incremental uses of social media tools and then coax your colleagues a little further out of their comfort zone with more ambitious implementations of these tools. Unfortunately, this "substitution innovation" does not take advantage of what Penny Edwards considers the greatest asset of "new technologies like RSS, micro-blogging, social tagging and networking tools, [which] offer possibilities for radical change in the way in which things are done."

The other significant challenge that results in what appears to be law firm resistance to web 2.0 is that for quite some time now the big IT issue for these firms has been electronic discovery. And, eDiscovery has led to a whole host of new tech problems that law firm IT departments are forced to tackle. Therefore, while web 2.0 tools may be the latest wave to sweep the technosphere, law firm CIOs and IT directors believe that they have more pressing issues to handle, such as ... data storage.

Add the inevitable slowdown in IT spending that is emerging in the current economic environment, and you have yet another reason to decide that web 2.0 is not yet ready for law firm "prime time." To be honest, however, is the real issue that law firm knowledge managers and their IT counterparts are not themselves ready for web 2.0?

[For other helpful analysis of the IT Survey, see Ron Friedmann's Strategic Legal Technology blog, which reports, among other things, that the survey provides "good confirmation for those struggling with these issues daily."]

Microblogging: Private Conversations at a Live Mike

In ReadWriteWeb's report on microblogging at BestBuy, Laura Fitton (of Pistachio Consulting) writes about her conversation with Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt regarding their implementation of Mix. Mix (built on HeadMix) is described as an "enterprise microsharing application," which is intended to faciliate networking, problem solving and idea sharing among Best Buy's 160,000 employees. According to this report, Best Buy's deployment is the first of its kind at a large company.

In reading through the report, a couple of things struck me. First, Koelling and Bendt acknowledge the weird dynamic that gets going with microblogging: you're having quasi-personal conversations in a forum where you can be overheard by the world. While it's easy to forget that fact when you're in the middle of some witty Twitter repartee, none of this is private. Interestingly, a quick check on Twitter indicates that there seems to be a wide range of responses to this fact of microblogging life. Some users are extremely circumspect or even cryptic. Others appear to damn the torpedoes and blab full speed ahead, with little regard for the consequences.

When you transplant this issue to the work environment, you find the problem compounded. Here's how it's described in the Best Buy context:

There are what, 160,000 employees at Best Buy? It’s like a few of you are thrown into a dark room together. You don’t really know who anyone is or who to trust. You’re told it’s okay, they’re all employees, go ahead, talk. But trust is an issue. Who are these people? How do we know them? What can we say?

This is a challenging context in which to try to foster the open exchange of information. Unfortunately, the report doesn't explain how the system's designers plan to increase the levels of trust. As I've noted earlier, trust is a critical element without which collaboration is virtually impossible. And, in our KM 2.0 world, collaboration is key. It will be interesting to see what the adoption rate is at Best Buy and whether the quality of the information exchanges meets expectations.

The other striking thing for me was the basis on which the designers chose HeadMix. Besides liking the developer team and the flexibility of the application, the other positive attribute in their estimation was the application's ease of use:

We liked that it’s simple, but had the extra features when you wanted them. It sounds goofy, but we really liked the Outlook plugin — that’s where our employees live. That will make it easier to use.

Here, they clearly were trying to reduce the barriers to entry -- to the point that they allowed easy access from Outlook. These folks are not microblogging purists who insist that if you want to use the tool you too must be a true believer who is willing to leave the Outlook cocoon in order to microblog. Instead, they made the boundary between the two applications permeable. There's an important lesson here as we consider how best to integrate new knowledge management technology into existing work flow, calibrate it to user comfort levels, and thereby increase user adoption.

Koelling and Bendt established themselves with their implementation of Blue Shirt Nation, a social networking tool for Best Buy employees. It will be interesting to see how they overcome the trust issues to achieve a productive company-wide conversation via Mix.

Culture and Technology

Knowledge management without cultural awareness rarely is successful. You can be on the verge of deploying the best technology tools in the world, but if those tools aren't in synch with your organizational culture, you might as well distribute quill pens and parchment. Carl Frappaolo (VP Market Intelligence a AIIM International) and Dan Keldsen (Director, Market Intelligence at AIIM International) made this point very clearly in a terrific presentation they gave on October 3. (For helpful summaries of their presentation, see Ron Friedmann's blog and Jack Vinson's blog.)

Carl has posted their slides on his blog, Taking AIIM. When you get over to that blog, pay particular attention to slide 16, which shows the stages of cultural evolution, overlaid with the stages of technology. This slide demonstrates that you need an organizational culture that reflects a specific level of collaboration before you can implement particular tools successfully. If you've got folks working in splendid isolation with no desire to change their modus operandi (i.e., "islands of me"), they won't be receptive to your brilliant web 2.0 technological advances. You can coax, you can beg, you can embarrass yourself anyway you choose, but they just won't get it. And they most certainly won't adopt your new tool.

Besides the degree of collaboration prevalent in your organizational culture, you also have to be aware of the limits your culture puts on information. So, you want a wiki? Make sure you've got an organizational culture that permits the free and open exchange of information. If you're in an organization that discloses information on a need to know basis only, don't be surprised if your wikis are under-utilized. Equally, if you're in an organization that is excessively hierarchical, don't expect junior folks to contribute to your new blog or wiki without explicit permission from senior managers. In each case, the organizational culture will severely curtail the open information exchange that blogs and wikis promote.

The trick here is to get better at anthropology and then pitch the tools to meet the culture. If you've got your heart set on yanking your law firm knowledge management program into the 21st century by introducing social media tools, wait until you see specific forms of collaboration or conversation emerging among your lawyers. Let them enjoy that for a while and then watch for stresses or pain points to emerge. If they do, offer a tool that can alleviate the pain. If there's no pain, it's unlikely there will be much user interest in changing how they work. Busy lawyers rarely push for new technology if what they've got basically functions -- even if there is something that would objectively work much better. They sensibly weigh any inconvenience of their current methods against the perceived gross inconvenience of learning something new. As with most things, overcoming inertia is tough. However, it's a much easier battle if you harness the natural forces of your organizational culture.

Information Overload is a Cop-Out

Clay Shirky has fired a shot across the bow of every person who ever complained that they couldn't get things done because of information overload. He suggests that our current approach to the Internet has infantalized users. As he points out, there have always been more books in any given bookstore than you can read in one sitting. So how do you deal with it? You make choices based on quality, price, needs, interests and personal taste. Now contrast that with the multitude of materials to read on the Internet? Do we make intelligent choices? More often than not, we abdicate personal responsibility and resort to complaining about information overload. The main difference between the bookstore and the Internet is the price of the information presented. Now that we have access to a vast array of free information, we can't use the price filter. However, there is nothing about the virtual information source that relieves the consumer of the necessity of making choices based on the other filters of quality, needs, interests and personal taste.

For some, law firm knowledge management's answer has been to spoonfeed the lawyers by using administrative staff and tech tools to scour the resources, make editorial choices, and then pass on the cream of the crop to the lawyers. And, we lawyers have enjoyed the service, while complaining when those editors don't quite make the right choices. However, the minute the editor (virtual or real) disappears, the lawyers find themselves on the wrong end of the firehose of information with no personal tools for managing the flood. This creates a class of people who know how to consume fish, but haven't been taught to fish. That's failure of knowledge management and information technology training. It's a place where basic instruction in personal knowledge management can yield great dividends.

Continuing the fish metaphor, Clay Shirky says, "we are to information overload as fish are to water. It's what we swim in." So, from his perpective, it's time we stopped bemoaning the existence of our information environment and started paying closer attention to the filters we use. His advice: whenever it feels like you're drowning in information, stop and take a look to see if you can identify which of your information filters just broke. And, my advice? None of this works if you don't have a sensible set of personal information filters. So the onus is on you to find and use tools that tailor the information to your interests, needs and tastes. While law firm knowledge management can provide lawyers with some basic personal KM training and help identify useful tools, each individual lawyer has got to quit the moaning and start taking personal responsibility for the quality and quantity of information they process daily.

You can't (and probably don't want to) stop the information flow. All you can do is manage it effectively so that it doesn't wrestle you to the floor every day. Good luck!

For more on this topic, see the video of Clay Shirky's presentation.

[Thanks to Gina Trapani for pointing out this Shirky presentation.]

Overcoming Hurdles to Web 2.0

There are some bright shining examples of web 2.0 implementations in law firms and then there are the vast majority of the web 1.0 firms. While it may be natural for law firm knowledge management personnel in web 1.0 firms to envy their counterparts in that relatively small group of web 2.0 firms, it's not a terribly productive exercise. It's more useful to analyze and address the issues that are holding the web 1.0 firms back.

Ruth Ward, head of knowledge systems and development at Allen & Overy LLP mentions a common web 2.0 hurdle in her article Know-how to network:

Drilling down from firm-wide initiatives, practice and team communities and project spaces have been at the heart of A&O’s Web 2.0 work for a number of years. We have used the same site build for over 50 sites – to improve cross-border communication and collaboration among practice groups and business teams divided by geography and time zones, and to manage business projects and initiatives more effectively. Activity on most of these member-specific sites centres on news, discussions and Q&As on the group blog, but the sites also include a wiki to use as a shared knowledge base or to collaborate on documents and reports and external newsfeeds using RSS and shared bookmarks. Our experience is that these sites work much more effectively than the traditional email, document management (DM) and intranet toolset, and my experience from talking with many law firms and legal departments over the past few years is that most people can immediately see how they would benefit their own business teams – if only they could get the IT buy-in either to buy or build them! [emphasis added]

Is the IT department the stumbling block in your firm? Why? Is it because the knowledge management group has failed to articulate clearly the business case for web 2.0? Is it because the IT folks in your firm are inherently uncomfortable with emerging technology and won't take a risk on anything that isn't widely seen as mature technology? Is it because IT sees the technology as being beneficial only to KM rather than the entire firm? Is it because your IT staff are really dinosaurs in drag? Until you've answered these questions, it's hard to identify a strategy to overcome this hurdle.

Another objection, is that law firm decision makers can't seem to think about social media tools without thinking about teens running wild on the internet. Ruth Ward puts it a little differently:

Social tools and networks can bring real business value, especially in a professional-services setting. But many partners and practices seem to struggle to get beyond their press-led perceptions of Facebook and Wikipedia, and their natural scepticism of blogging.

Either way, this is about managers not understanding that most of us behave differently at work than we do in our social lives. We know that we're expected to conform to specific rules in the workplace and usually are happy to comply in exchange for a paycheck. And, when the occasional renegade mixes up their office staff directory with their personal Facebook page, peer pressure (or a gentle nudge from their supervisor) should bring them back into line.

Another common problem is the natural conservatism and skepticism of lawyers, which often makes them reluctant to be the first to adopt new technology. I call this the Early Adoption Aversion Syndrome (EAASy) , but others might more charitably characterize it as an excessive reliance on precedent. In firms afflicted with Early Adoption Aversion Syndrome, partners and managers invariably ask what peer firms are doing with respect to the particular technology you're trying to implement. This means that an important part of your business case needs to be a good survey of those firms. I'd encourage you to read the rest of Ruth Ward's article to learn about the success Allen & Overy has been having with web 2.0. Doug Cornelius at KMSpace is another great resource for information about web 2.0 generally, and about Goodwin Procter, specifically. Ron Friedmann at Strategic Legal Technology regularly reports on innovative uses of technology by law firms.

We're not quite at the tipping point regarding web 2.0 adoption in law firms. That makes each decision to proceed with web 2.0 tools now critical for everyone in the legal industry. Once the tipping point occurs, the only question law firm managers will be asking of law firm knowledge management personnel is, why did you let us fall behind the competition?

Putting Blinders on to Enhance Productivity

Do you remember the conversations we had within law firms when we began to consider permitting desktop access to the Internet? Everyone focused on the potential loss of productivity. To be fair, that can be a problem. You don't have to walk far in any office to find someone surfing the net. Equally, you don't have to walk far to find someone using e-mail or the telephone for personal business during business hours. Regardless of the type of technology tool (e.g., the web, e-mail or the phone), people can always find non-business ways of using that tool.

Nonetheless, withholding technology for fear of productivity losses is a little like trying to put blinders on your people to keep them focused on work. The problem is that while this strategy works with horses, it's considerably less successful with people. Never underestimate the creativity of a person determined not to work.

As various enterprises now consider bringing the benefits of social media tools within their firewalls, they can be overly-concerned with the negative aspects of social networking and fail to appreciate the potential productivity gains. As reported by Atul Rai in IBM and Social Networking, while IBM had some initial qualms about productivity losses resulting from new social media tools, the powers-that-be decided that the risk was no greater than the normal tendency to have conversations over the water cooler or in the hallway about nonwork-related topics. Now that IBM has deployed social media tools to wide acclaim, they've discovered that the tools don't interfere with an employee's ability to meet work goals. In fact, the tools have provided significant productivity benefits.

This seems like a good point to suggest that instead of withholding tools in an attempt to force employees to focus on work, we should take a closer look at what really allows people to work well.

In a recent series of posts, Daniel Pink reported on an interview he did with Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, authors of the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. In their book they propose a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). According to Pink, key features of a ROWE are: "people show up to the office when they want, meetings are optional, and nobody’s watching the clock." (This is a far cry from most offices.) The bottom line is that "each person in an office environment is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. " [emphasis added]

One common worry raised by critics is that employees won't be able to handle a ROWE (i.e., they aren't grown up enough to be responsible for their own time and performance). Here's how the authors respond to that criticism:

... how do you know that some people can’t handle ROWE? Don’t assume what you don’t know. If you and your employees work on the clear expectations that are expected in order for them to keep their job, then set them free to reach their outcomes. Worrying that some people can’t handle ROWE is a waste of time. It’s paternalistic thinking that just doesn’t have a place in the 21^st century. We’ve found that there is so much productivity being left on the table in companies because managers are orchestrating everything according to their liking. Unleash the untapped potential around you – it’s waiting to come out!

In a law firm that charges by the billable hour, there is a natural fixation on time and how that time is spent. Further, many law firms tend to be populated by inherently conservative people who have a hard time thinking about radical changes to their work style or work environment. However, if we could look past the billable hour for a moment, we'd realize that in a ROWE it doesn't matter if a wonderful tech tool also provides a handy distraction since it's ultimately up to the individual employee to meet their performance goals in a timely manner. Therefore, as long as the firm provides useful tools, it's the employee's responsibility to use those tools wisely -- or not. In this way, the employer gives up the nanny role and gets to spend more time setting strategy, hiring good people, and then letting those people loose to meet strategic goals.

This should be the new mantra for law firm knowledge management and information technology specialists: instead of micromanaging employees to make them work, just articulate clear expectations and performance goals, provide great tools, and then set them free to work as they see fit. Don't shy away from web 2.0 technology simply because you are concerned about the social aspects of the tools. When you try to put blinders on your people, you fail. Instead of hampering their ability to goof off, you hamper their ability to work. In effect, instead of blinders, you're putting handcuffs on them. Now how is that conducive to work?

Twittering Inside the Firewall

Are you tempted by the idea of Twitter inside the firewall? For true Twitter junkies, it may be nearly irresistible. And, now, we're hearing about some new Twitter-clones that are designed to operate within enterprises. However, before you start pushing this as the next big thing for law firm knowledge management, consider the following: What existing workflow or tool will Twitter replace or enhance within your law firm?

In my earlier post, Are You Creating Problems or Solutions, I discussed the negative repercussions of pushing a tool versus identifying a current way of doing things that could be done better with a little technical assistance. In the case of Twitter, it could be an obvious substitute for IM. However, how many law firms have overcome their record retention questions and discovery phobia to the extent that they have actually implemented a robust IM program? If your lawyers are not IMing now, why would they start Twittering?

Alternatively, if you are in one of those rare firms where the lawyers unfailingly inform their assistants exactly where they may be found at all times, a Twitter-like tool could be a nice enhancement. However, if your lawyers tend to wander off at will, why do you think Twitter will change that behavior?

For more issues to consider before you promote a Twitter clone within your law firm, see Lee Bryant's helpful post on the Headshift blog, It's like Twitter, but for .... (For those of you who have read this far, but aren't entirely sure you understand what Twitter or Microblogging is all about or how it might operate within a law firm, take a look at the following post by Björn Negelman (recommended by Lee Bryant): Microblogging as a Corporate Tool.)

Now, before you start jumping up and down, let me be clear. This is not intended as a screed against technology generally or Twitter (or Yammer or ESME or laconi.ca) specifically. It is just a reminder that no technology is a silver bullet. As knowledge management experts will tell you time and time again, you need the right people and processes in place first or else your new tech toy will fall flat on its face.

Consider yourself warned.

Update: See also Jevon MacDonald's post, Will you Twitter inside the enterprise and Jeremiah Owyang's List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools: Twitter for the Intranet.

Walk on the Wild Side

How do you get a conservative Baby Boomer manager or a conservative law firm to take a walk on the wild side? That's the challenge for law firm knowledge managers looking for ways to introduce social media tools into their array of knowledge management offerings.

The first question most conservatives will ask is: what are our peer firms doing? You'd better know the answer to that. The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) and blogs like KM Space and Strategic Legal Technology can help answer that question for law firms.

But even if you can benchmark your firm against others, it's hard to sell technology that you haven't used. In fact, Luis Suarez suggests that the best way to sell social media tools is to use them, master them, and then demonstrate (with passion) how well they work. In his post, Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss - Don't Forget About Yourself, he cites the Twelve Ways suggested by Chris Brogan, but then goes on to say:

In short, in order to sell Social Media to our boss, we need to ensure we are passionate enough to demonstrate actively, and time and time again, the kind of impact that social software is having not only within our daily job(s), but also within our own personal lives. Because there is a great chance that passion you are willing to share with your boss is what will make it all contagious and get your management line sold out as soon as they see that excitement, that commitment, that involvement, that willingness to make a difference within your company and show everyone else it is possible. And you know why?

Well, more than anything else because you are the first one who is clearly benefiting from it all. You are the one, who, as a result, are much more productive, much more knowledgeable about your daily job, have an extensive social network of various dozens, perhaps, of subject matter experts as part of your social networks and, above all, are willing to spend some time showing everyone else why they would need to start paying attention to it, if they haven’t done so already, and engage actively from there onwards. *That*, to me, is how I would sell Social Computing to my boss!

This doesn't mean you have to race out there and start blogging today, but it would be wise for you to take the time to try these tools out and educate yourself as to what types of material improvements might be gained within your firm by employing these new tools. Given your knowledge of your firm's history, organizational culture and technology, you are well-placed to identify these potential benefits. Don't abdicate your role to a consultant.

One key advantage of social media tools is that they present very low barriers to entry. So we really have no excuse for refusing to take them out for a test drive. After all, if the knowledge managers won't do it, how can we expect the lawyers within our firms to adopt these tools?

The Credible Alternative to Work

Sitting on my desk is a mug with the inscription: "Meetings -- The Credible Alternative to Work."

We've all had the experience of being trapped in a never-ending meeting that doesn't appear to be accomplishing anything useful. Meetings can be hijacked by poor preparation, inadequate leadership, reluctant participants and bad conference room food, among other things. It is possible to have productive meetings, but that requires meeting leaders and participants to change the way they interact in these sessions. On the theory that it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, take a look at 5 Alternatives to Time-Wasting Meetings. In this post, Dustin Wax suggests the following ways to use technology to reduce the number of bad meetings:

- Instant Messaging
- Teleconferencing
- Wikis
- E-mail Lists/Groups
- Collaboration Apps

Admittedly, each of these tools has its own hazards. However, when used properly, these tools allow you to reserve face-to-face meetings for those rare occasions when it is important for everyone to be in the same room in order to make a decision. And, while you're waiting for those rare occasions to arise, perhaps you can put your new-found time to good use by teaching an old dog some new technology tricks.

Are You Creating Problems or Solutions?

The enormous enthusiasm of web 2.0 boosters is enough to make even a Luddite wonder if maybe web 2.0 is the answer to everything that ails you. Before you indulge that line of thinking too much, take a look at Mark Shead's interesting description of The Two Types of Technology Users:

I noticed that some people seemed to use the technology very well and it seemed to make a big difference in their productivity. On the other hand, there was another group of people who never seemed to get much of a benefit out of their tools. What was odd, is that the ineffective group usually had newer, faster, shinier, more feature rich gadgets than the effective group.

Over time, I began to see that the difference between the two groups was fundamentally about how they approached technology. One group would spend time thinking about how they, personally, worked and what areas were slowing them down. When they came to talk to me, they usually had a very good definition of the problems that they were looking for technology to solve. We would sit down and find a more effective way of accomplishing their current activities. Sometimes it involved a new PDA or piece of software, but often it involved learning how to use a feature of something that they already had.

...

The second group generally spent more time at Best Buy looking over the latest PDA’s and cell phones. They also tended to talk with friends to find out what they were using. They would find out about a new feature and imagine ways that they could use it in their work. They would usually approach me looking for a specific device so they could do something that they weren’t currently doing.

For Shead, the essential difference between the two technology users is that the first one has identified a problem and has some thoughts about a reasonable solution, but is now looking for a better way to solve that problem. The second user has identified a nifty solution and is looking for a problem to apply it to.

Now, be honest. When you first heard about the wonderful range of social media tools, wasn't your initial reaction to wonder how you could deploy them within your own law firm? It certainly was mine. Unfortunately, that puts us squarely in the company of the second technology user who is in search of a problem for which he has already found a solution.

If we were to follow the good example of the first technology user, we'd find a business process that is a work-around to a problem and then see if there is a social media tool that can deal with that problem more efficiently. However, the user needs to understand there is a problem before we try to sell them a web 2.0 solution.

In the context of law firm knowledge management, this suggests that we shouldn't be flogging web 2.0 features in the hopes of attracting the support of lawyers who like cool toys. Instead, we should listen to the lawyers to understand better where their pain points lie and then identify the tools that can alleviate that pain. Perhaps the solution will lie in social media 2.0 tools, or perhaps not. If we treat web 2.0 tools as a panacea we will raise user expectations unfairly, thereby doing the tools a great disservice and seriously undermining the chances of a successful deployment of these tools. On the other hand, if we match the appropriate tool to a persistent problem, we should materially increase the chances of achieving a high rate of adoption and user satisfaction.

Can you really afford to do it any other way?

Do You Dare Do This?

Dave Pollard has posted on his blog, How to Save the World, a memorandum that every firm should consider sending.

The question is, how would sending it change the practice of law in your firm?

Take the challenge of this thought experiment. At a minimum, it will help you better understand which communication tools best suit particular types of communication:

- decision-making in real time by employees in a single location
- decision-making in real time by employees in different locations
- arranging appointments
- simple requests for information and quick responses to them
- conveying project status/update information
- FYI communications
- survey requests
- providing training information

For too long, we've been using e-mail and voice mail like overly-large machetes to drive a rough path through the communications jungle. There now appears to be a consensus that while these may be relatively fast tools, they are rarely effective or efficient for the myriad purposes to which they are put. Further, there are now available a much wider range of alternative tools that do the job better. And, savvy folks are reviving some rather retro methods (e.g., talking face-to-face!) to improve the quality and efficacy of their communications.

Read Dave Pollard's memorandum and think about how you personally could improve the way you match communication tools to communication goals. Then think about how to teach this to your law firm colleagues. It would make a world of difference to your knowledge management program and to the quality of life within your firm.

Hijacking Knowledge Management

Each week, Stan Garfield puts the following question to a different KM thought leader: "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?" This week's answer in The Weekly Knowledge Management Blog is from Fred Nickols, Toolmaker to Knowledge Workers.

It seems to me that KM, like lots of other things (e.g., reengineering, change management, and communities of practice to name three) has been hijacked by the information technology (IT) folks. Abraham Maslow is often credited with saying that “If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.” To paraphrase him, when your only tool is a computer, then every problem reduces to the bits and bytes of data. For me, people should be front and center in any true KM effort and, as far as I can tell, they are not. As a consequence, neither is the most important form of knowledge: the kind that resides in human beings.

Nickols goes on to identify the three types of knowledge (i.e., explicit, tacit and implicit), and points out that current technology deals best with explicit knowledge while largely ignoring tacit and implicit forms of knowledge. In his view, this leads to the following sad state of affairs: "we have huge databases and huge piles of documented practices, etc., etc., but we are no closer to being able to manage knowledge (i.e., concentrate and channel the capability for action along productive lines) than when the KM movement began. Many others will no doubt argue otherwise, but they have a huge investment to protect and I don’t."

For Nickols, the "true focal point" of knowledge management should be "managing human capability for effective action." This suggests less attention paid to structured content and more attention paid to storytelling, mentoring, training, communities of practice, etc. A shift away from technology towards people and how they interact with and learn from each other. This is tough stuff. It almost makes one long for the seemingly simple off-the-shelf solutions technology vendors claim they can provide. If only it were so.

Twitter and the Dinosaur

On the days when I feel like a total technology dinosaur, I've found myself completely mystified by Twitter. I've heard people raving about it, but have always been left with the same three questions:

1. Who has the time to send updates?
2. Who has the time to read them?
3. Who (other than a mother) actually cares about the minutiae of another person's life?

Today, even this dinosaur began to comprehend the potential power of Twitter when I read the story of James Karl Buck who used Twitter to let his network know that he had been arrested in Egypt. Here's an excerpt from the summary from CNN:

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt -- the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier -- were alerted that he was being held.

Buck's network then acted to spread news of his circumstances and help win his release. It's a great story that depended on one piece of good luck -- the police let Buck keep his cellphone.

So, while I mostly still don't want to know that you're about to go to a movie or have just had lunch, news of your arrest probably would rouse this dinosaur. Maybe it's time for me to take another look at Twitter...

PS: Look out for the inevitable blogpile on this story. It will be hard to avoid.