Oscar Berg of The Content Economy, tweeted 10 insightful questions for knowledge workers this morning.  (Try this link to see directly in twitter.)  These 10 questions should be asked by anyone doing knowledge work or anyone helping knowledge workers do their work better.  Even though, these are questions we ask (or should ask) ourselves everyday, knowledge workers don’t necessarily have the tools to efficiently find the answers.

Case in point–Knowledge worker question #8: How do I keep, access and re-find information that I find potentially valuable? Most people I know keep their important documents and information in their outlook folders and are proud of the fact that they have over a Gig of emails in the pst files.  Some of these people actually find the information they need, but they waste half their days doing so.  Finding solutions to this problem on a organizational level saves hours upon hours of time and terrabytes of data.

See below for more:

I just saw that Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) has warded off Twitter.  Apparently, Twitter is just too one minute ago.  In Scoble’s eyes, Twitter and Friendfeed are not effective agents for creating long term knowledge.

One thing is that knowledge is suffering [in Twitter]. See, [in the blogosphere], it is easy to find old blogs. Just go to Google and search. What would you like me to find? Chinese Earthquake? Google has it.

Now, quick, find the first 20 tweets or FriendFeed items about the Chinese Earthquake. It’s impossible. I’m an advanced searcher and I can’t find them, even using the cool Twitter Search engine.

This is a compelling arguement against using Twitter to share everything that’s on one’s mind–especially if you want your tweets to be found sometime in the future.  I’m not going to argue with Scoble about this.  In my estimation, he’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’m warding off Twitter too.

My interest lies mostly in the use of  Twitter, Yammer, SocialText, etc as communication tool within an organizational setting.  In the organization, being able to search for information is important, but Twitter’s strength is in being able to communicate ideas NOW.   Yes, Twitter may present problems with Search, but it is highly effective in other ways.

• Twitter Answers Questions. Post a question, get an answer–and an answer–and yet another answer.  Allowing an open forum for answering questions provides a way for employees to get the information they need quickly.
• Twitter Creates networks.  Everyone wants to be a part of a group and Twitter connects people.  Strengthening your company networks is key to efficient communication and innovation.
• Twitter Provides an Avenue for Sharing. Read a useful book, blog, or magazine article?  Tell your peers.  Maybe they can use the information to make their own department/business unit/company even better.
• Twitter lets Executives Jump into the Corporate Culture. Executives can’t talk to everyone, but they CAN dip into the Twitter stream to see what’s working and what’s not for employees.

I’m sure there are other benefits for using microbloging in the enterprise, but these are just a few.   Any others???

This is the first installment of “Process Alerts.”  Look out for more of these.  As I find interesting process changes in the news, I’ll post them on the blog as a “Process Alert.”  In the comments, please submit your predictions whether these changes will succeed or fail…

Instead of grinding coffee only in the morning, baristas will grind beans each time a new pot is brewed.

From “At Starbucks, It’s back to the grind” WSJ – June 17, 2009 (Subscription required)

Next month Starbucks will begin to make some changes they hope will bring customers back to their shops.  Along with changing their coffee grinding schedule, Starbucks will also change how they utilize their coffee brewers.  Today, they dedicate each brewer to one coffee variety.  Starting next month the coffee chain will begin to rotate the varieties through the brewers as necessary.

There are at least two reasons for these process changes–each having something to do with meeting customers’ expectations.

• Reducing wait times for customers.  By rotating the coffee varieties through the brewers, Starbucks claims their is a better likelihood that all varieties will be available when ordered. Starbucks fears they are losing customers when they do not have all varieties available.
• Revitalizing the customer experience.  By grinding coffee throughout the day, Starbucks hopes to increase the aroma in the stores and “restore some of the theater.”

Whether  or not the smell of coffee enhances the Starbucks experience and  impacts sales and market share remains to be seen, but the changes are compelling nonetheless.  This seems like an excellent example of changing a process with customer expectations in mind.  The process change most likely did not emerge from an exercise of capturing boxes, diamonds, and lines on a Visio diagram.

I’ve been away from the blogosphere for a while.  Life happens.  Lots has changed in my professional world, and I’m looking forward to shifting some of my writing towards some new”ish” interests including:

• Social Networking and Media as productivity tools in the workplace,
• The technology of public relations,
• Solution development with technology, without the I.T. department.

I’ll be teasing out these ideas and revisiting some of my old themes such as business process management and innovation strategies.  I’m particularly excited about writing periodic posts that I will call “Process Alerts.”  These Process Alerts will focus on recent news regarding how businesses have changed their processes.

My goals for this blog are three-fold:

1. To learn by writing.
2. To develop a network (please comment on my posts).
3. To share what I have learned.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to providing my insights and reading yours…

Where have all the people gone?
Originally uploaded by uncleboatshoes

Over the last several years, I have been the designated grocery shopper in the family.  I go to Trader Joe's for much of my shopping, but I will go to Fry's or Safeway for items that I either don't want to pay  the Trader Joe's premium or for items that they just don't have.

This is a fantastic presentation about Dan Pink's new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.  I wrote about the book in a previous post.  If you don't read the book, you should take a look at this presentation.  It's well designed (by a master) and presents the essence of the book.

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Is Innovation an exercise in creativity or synthesis? A post by James Todhunter at the Innovating to Win blog lays out a compelling argument that:

The vast majority of innovation is not driven by pure creation; it
is driven by synthesis, a particular form of creation that builds on
the existing to make something which is new.

I’d like to add that innovation is driven by synthesizing
interdisciplinary ideas as well as synthesizing the old and new.  So to
extend Todhunters point, innovation can be driven by the synthesis of seemingly unrelated ideas that builds on the existing to make something which is new.

Innovating To Win: Is Too Much Creativity Killing Innovation?

From the Heart of Innovation Blog comes a great list of 100 ways to be more creative.  My personal favorites are:   

• Present your biggest challenge to a child (I can’t wait to see what my 5 year old comes up with).
• Schedule time with the smartest people at work.   
• Ask five people how they would improve your idea.

The Heart of Innovation: 100 Simple Ways to Be More Creative on the Job

The title and simple cover art of Dan Roam’s new book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures drew me right in (pun intended).  My drawing skills are in a word–bad, and I thought, "If this book can help me to to draw like that, I want to read it."

Well, the  book didn’t transform me into an artist. In fact, it probably had no effect on my (in)ability to draw even the simplest of stick figures.  An abundance of drawing books exist to help the average person become a better drawer. Roam’s book, however, focused on using drawings (even the most rudimentary of drawings) to help solve problems.  So, even though I did not come away a better drawer, I did learn how to use drawing as a tool.

The Back of the Napkin combines three frameworks to create a powerful problem-solving and communication tool.  The three frameworks are:

• SQUID (or SQVIΔ): A series of questions to help clarify and direct focus on an idea.   SQUID is a mnemonic for

Simple vs. Elaborate
Quality vs. Quantity
Vision vs. Execution
Individual Attributes vs. Comparison
Delta (Δ) or Change vs. Status Quo

Each of these continuums can be communicated using a set of pictures.  Roam spends some time explaining how best to communicate each of the dimensions above.

• Visual Thinking Frameworks: A group of six drawing types and what they communicate.  They are tightly connected to the six types of questions:  Who/What, How Much, Where, When, How, and Why.  A Timeline, for example, best answers "when?"

• "The Visual Thinking Codex": This framework puts everything together.  Roam describes it as "a master list of problem solving pictures."  It takes the SQUID Questioning and Overlays it with the Visual Thinking Framework.  An example: Answering the question of "What?" using a Simple (the ‘S’ from SQUID) focus would be different than answering the same question using a focus on change (the ‘D’ from SQUID).

This Codex is not complicated, yet it provides a usable framework for analyzing any problem.  Almost a third of the book is dedicated to running through a real-life example of how to use the Codex. Roam’s description of his approach combined with the case study provides a usable decision making tool that can easily be used after reading The Back of the Napkin.

Bottom Line: I closed the book with more courage to use drawings and a better understanding of how to use them to solve and communicate problems.

I just finished reading The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need by Daniel Pink.  Not your run of the mill career guide.   Pink (the author of one of my recent favorite books A Whole New Mind), writes this career guide in the form of a manga.  The book took me about 1 hour to read, but don’t let that fool you–it’s packed with insightful lessons  (6 lesson to be exact).   

The story’s protagonist Johny Bunko is in  a dead-end job.  His boss sucks, his work is uninspiring, and his talents are not being utilized. Diana, a modern-day genie, appears after rubbing some chopsticks and sets Johnny straight with six quick lessons.   If you are not into fun books and don’t have an hour to spare, just turn to the last page for a list of the lessons.  But It’s a quick read, so I recommend  investing the hour or so to read from the beginning.

This is not a book about how to find a new job or even how to determine the optimal job for you.  It is a book about how to approach your career.  The first lesson, "There is no plan" helps frame the context for the rest of the lessons.  Basically, career plans are too simplistic and rarely stand up to the twists and turns of a career.  Accentuating one of the main premises of A Whole New Mind, Diana the Genie explains that the idea that we can plan out a career with any smidgen of accuracy is

…a fantasy.  The world changes. Ten Years from now your job might be in India.  Your industry might not even exist.

The other five lessons are equally insightful and fun.  Although I presume that  this book was written for those at the beginning of their career, the six lessons are very useful for those of us closer to the middle of our careers as well. 

Thanks for another insightful and useful book Daniel Pink!