Thanks, Ian, Roy, Joselito, Caroline, Eugene and Jason,
Thanks all, some great insights and new ideas, I started to reply
individually, but it seems that we can share more this way.
Ian, you're totally right about HR as 'policeman,' we strongly beleive
that such a project must be led by and for the staff themselves. The
problem is getting management to 'allow' staff to freely describe
themselves. How do we get management to 'trust' and allow them the freedom
to describe themselves the way they want to be seen, about the information
they want to share?
There's little point, and I'm afraid I must dis-agree with Joselito here,
in identifying all your experts and all their expertise if they're no
longer interested in some of those subjects and just don't want to share.
You must focus on what people are passionate about, what they want to talk
about, what they are excited by. Who cares what is the total of everything
they know. Just focus on the passion and excitment, make it genuine and
you'll already be miles ahead of attempts to statically 'capture
expertise.'
Roy, I'm particularly interested in your 3/4 person CV. 'Our internal CV
was created by asking three colleagues with whom we had extensive working
knowledge/experience to provide input. We then took their three offerings,
and did an editing job on them. The final words were our own. This
approach engendered trust amongst the four folk involved, and as we found
ourselves being a source for more than one person, small pockets of trust
were constantly being created.'
Tell me, was this directed/mandated centrally? Or did it just happen
because it was useful? It occurs to me that getting 3/4 people to
co-operate would be hard voluntarilly? I thank you for the idea, it might
be a way forward here, where it seems there must be some validation.
Caroline, thanks for the pointer to Davenport and Prusak, I've just
finished their 'Working Knowledge' which was also useful.
Eugene, love your quote ""Deprived of information one cannot assume
responsibility, but, given the information one cannot avoid
responsibility." Smitty The Janitor" Sums things up quite nicely does it
not?
Jason, I already replied to you below (above?).
Anybody agree/dis-agree with any of the above?
Laurence.
--Laurence Piers Smith <lsmith@worldbank.org>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>