Conversations with Dave Pollard
Weblogs and Other Social Software for Knowledge Work

Dave Pollard
Consultant
Meeting of Minds and blogger, "How to Save the World"

Editor's note: This is a summary of the "Conversations with Dave Pollard" held in March, 2004. The monthly STAR Series Dialogues are moderated by world KM luminaries who volunteer to discuss topics in email digests with AOK members over a two-week period.

Summary by Carol Butler

Dave Pollard, guest moderator for the STAR Dialogue for March, was chief knowledge officer for Ernst & Young in Canada from 1994 until recently, following 20 years as an entrepreneurial services practitioner. He left Ernst & Young, citing differences in philosophies on knowledge management. He has now established his own consultancy, Meeting of Minds, and continues his highly regarded blog, "How to Save the World."

Dave is jaundiced about the possibility of changing knowledge culture, processes or behaviors in large organizations, and believes the evolution from KM to PKM will occur bottom-up, virally. Because many knowledge workers are still "opting out" of using their PCs because of poor PKM systems, efforts to get KM working will be stymied. A coordinated suite of "one-click simple" tools is needed.

Dave Pollard presented for discussion 11 Principles of Knowledge Management that underscore his belief that KM is fundamentally about enabling better conversations. These principles were discussed with vigor and a variety of perspectives.

We talked about how management control issues affect KM, the varieties of types of conversations and dialogue we normally engage in, time limitations as perceived by employees, and getting people on the same wavelength in the first place. There was an in-depth discussion between Dave Pollard and Joe Firestone about the fundamental KM value propositions implied by the 11 principles.

Brian Sarrazin mentioned the challenges of sharing concept maps. Dave Pollard wondered "whether they are too complex and over-engineered for most knowledge sharing needs." Brian responded: "I do not think we should look for KM solutions in narrative (Spaulding Gray) but in reality shows (Donald Trump?). That is, let users see experts (or anyone) make decisions, with a running commentary (like surgery at Med School). Referents then gain meaning through linkage to events and to things."

This led to a lively interchange about the role of storytelling in KM. Dave Pollard felt most people are poor storytellers. Steve Denning said his experience demonstrates that "we can all upgrade our storytelling capacity very rapidly, once we start to understand why stories work and how they work and what are the narrative patterns associated with achieving different purposes in an organizational setting."

Euan Semple wondered if the problem doesn't stem from the same hierarchical structures in organizations that make people feel they need to protect their position with an invisible cultural armor that others find off-putting. This lead Dave Pollard to wonder: "It may mean we use stories to disguise knowledge so it can actually be transferred downwards (e.g., teacher to child) or upwards (e.g., jester to king), without the cultural resistance that such transfers would normally run up against."

Fred Schoeps suggests that, even though he agrees that training people to tell better stories is valuable, getting management to invest depends on the language used to sell the concept.

Mark McElroy raised the question of ascertaining the truth of stories and Joe Firestone argued that stories, because they are better able to persuade, are more dangerous if we don't remain vigilant to possible propaganda. Euan Semple thought the participation of many in the sense-making story-telling process is good for democracy, productivity, and engagement.

Joe Firestone worried that there is "tremendous emphasis on novel techniques and experiences for generating knowledge claims, but very little concern and emphasis on how claims, once generated, will be tested and evaluated."

Bruce Karney shared his document, "How to Ask Others to Share Knowledge," with the group. Many responses were positive, but John Barrett found that using a similar set of guidelines in his organization actually discouraged knowledge sharing, perhaps because people found the guidelines too onerous. Dave Pollard reported a similar experience: "Although they were widely read and discussed, nobody used them, and some people actually resented the suggestion that their emails were less than perfect."

Christy Conte wondered where effective storytelling was occurring in virtual synchronous/asynchronous forums, and Euan Semple argued the better blogs accomplish just that. The Star Series Discussion then moved on to the subject of blogs.

Not everyone's experience with blogging has been the same. Some find them difficult to follow, others feel they've transformed their experience of the Web. Dave Pollard believes blogs will improve significantly in the near future with better integration with tools to truly facilitate conversations. Brian Sarrazin said the interesting part is between blogs, using RSS/XML and Trackback. Denham Grey just doesn't think they'll play a big role in KM. "The free-flowing dynamic of the blog is at odds with the discipline and focus of the large organization, and given the blog's potentially infinite circulation, it is likely to be seen more as a threat than a promise by the powers that be, if not "tamed" and "brought under control." At that point, it may of course cease to be of interest to anyone except the management." Denham sees more promise in Wiki's which he calls "a blog built for a community."

According to Bill Hall, blogs and wikis are two ends of the same spectrum. At one end you have blogs containing uncriticized collections of personal musings, copyright infringements and links to passing fancies. At the other end you have a socially constructed wiki environment where numerous participants share and criticize knowledge with a common goal to get it right. He discussed how his experience with LiveLink combined aspects of both.

Kaye Vivian felt blogs are "probably optimal in small to mid-size organizations . . . say 20-200 people . . . and especially consulting organizations and/or organizations with a lot of under-30 users."

We discussed who might be the first internal business bloggers: COP people, subject matter experts, internal publishers, laboratory researchers, new product developers, front line customer service workers, and competitive intelligence people.

During the second week of the Dialogue, Dave Pollard guided the discussion to the importance of trust. He argued "there is less trust up and down the hierarchy in today's businesses than there has been since the 'Robber Baron' era of the late 19th century which gave rise to the union movement," and asked to what extent the failings of KM to date are actually failings of trust.

Brian Sarrazin argued for offering visibility into action. "There is no better way to "know" someone (within the context) than to see them make decisions and take action based on those decisions." He says, "I think we should seek ways to efficiently enable such visibility."

For Dave Pollard, this is a huge argument in favor of PKM. Perhaps then, there is a third reason people don't use knowledge in central repositories: In the absence of knowing its author well, we don't trust it. Maybe this is why knowledge (usually top-down, highly filtered knowledge) that has the weight of authority behind it is used in central repositories, where more peer-to-peer unfiltered knowledge is usually not. Could a blog or other personal content repository be used to engender trust?

We discussed trust differences in different communities, and within organizations as opposed to within other communities outside of one's organization. Why is the medical community more likely to share knowledge outside their own organization?

Dave Pollard concluded by noting that the jury is still out on many of the tools and trends we are seeing and talking about today.

For synchronized version of the Pollard Dialogue archive, download the PDF.

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