While I haven’t posted on this site for some time – I have to admit to being a bit lazy about keeping it up to date. I have been doing some fascinating work in the information and knowledge management sectors which has led me to now working with a wonderful new company called Organic Intelligence.
Organic Intelligence is the brainchild of Hamid Soltani and Associate Professor Anthony Bedford.
Organic Intelligence is a set of principles and management practices designed to provide essential wisdom and perspectives to organisations on how to view their business complexities and develop necessary capabilities for measuring and managing them. Such a body of knowledge provides organisations with the required intelligence to help them organically self-regulate and sustainably deal with their competing needs and their diverse stakeholders’ expectations.
Organic Intelligence is a collaborative organisation specialising in niche management advisory services, education and custom implementation of focused solutions for the measurement, optimisation and enablement of complex business capabilities and behaviours.
Through such services, they enable organisations to sustainably balance their financial and non-financial operating perspectives and holistically meet their strategic visions. They apply a multidisciplinary approach to our client’s needs and ensure every organisational problem is considered within the context of the client’s specific operating domain, systemic influences, behavioural factors and statistical lenses.
More information can be found at https://www.organicintelligence.net.au/
Librarians who have moved out of the library space. Are you willing to be interviewed?
I am doing some research into librarians who have moved out of the library space without undertaking further study – that is they have built a new career based on their library skills and knowledge. This includes those who have moved to new organisations, new positions within their organisation and those who have moved out of libraries and have also returned to working in libraries after undertaking other roles. It may be you have moved to records management, knowledge management, project management or a position which on first impression looks like it is not even related in any way to information management. It may even be that your ‘library’ no longer resembles a ‘library’ as such.
The research will be in two parts:
- first an online survey to gather the demographics – this data will be aggregated up so I get a general profile of the group being interviewed in part 2. I do not intend to identify individuals unless they are happy for me to do so. You can link to the survey here;
- second will be one on one interviews to gather the narrative (or individual stories) about your key skills, knowledge and attributes which made your library training valuable outside libraries. This will include how you have made the move and what parts of your library/information management skills and knowledge have been most valuable in achieving the move. Interviews will be achieved via Skype (if possible) to keep costs down.
I intend to publish the results of this piece of research late in 2012 or early 2013.
If you are wondering why I want to to do this research my story is as follows:
From 2006 to 2009 I was engaged as the Program Manager for the Knowledge for Regional NRM Program at Land & Water Australia. The team had a total of three professional librarians (including myself). We also had an ecologist, a science communication professional and an environmental science practitioner in the team. It was an excellent and diverse mix of individuals and we all learnt a huge amount from each other. One of the things we noticed as we moved around the National Resource Management (NRM) organisations across Australia was that we experienced similar conversations and comments from our stakeholders when they discovered the library background of the three librarians. It was basically “Thank goodness you are here”. Every organisation we went in to had challenges with information and knowledge management and the identification as a ‘librarian’ brought about a very positive reaction.
Since leaving my position at Land & Water Australia and the Australian Public Service to set up my own consultancy I have had nothing but positive comments about my library background. I constantly discover just how much I know about finding information in comparison to my clients and colleagues. I used to call myself a ‘recovering librarian’ but now am happy to state that you don’t recover as your librarian skills, knowledge and attitude is one of your greatest assets.
As the 2012 President of the Special Libraries Association ANZ Chapter and a former Chair of the KM Division, I decided it was time to get some hard evidence on why librarians are viewed so positively outside the traditional library sector. As such I invite you to be part of my research.
To take part please send me an email to nerida@hartknowledge.com.au with a brief background and contact details (especially your Skype ID) and I will be back in touch with more details.
A brief update on this project – I will be sending out the survey component the first week of July as other work pressures are keeping me busy at the moment. There is still time to participate by sending me an email.
I am thrilled that the latest project I have been working on with a number of other consultants has now been published.
True Tales of the Trout Cod has absorbed the last 9 months of my life and has been probably the most enjoyable project I have worked on in a very long time. Will Trueman (author) has written the most amazing book. He has spent a considerable part of his life studying the Trout Cod in the Murray-Darling Basin. He compiled the science, photographic evidence with the oral histories to match, and newspaper articles from the National Library of Australia’s Trove database to show us what native fish existed and no longer exist in the lower Murray-Darling Basin.
This is the best example of science communicated through story that I have seen. It has been a great privilege to work with Will Trueman (the amazing author), Siwan Lovett (Director of the Australian River Restoration Centre), Richard Snashall (our brilliant film maker), Vikki Bell (our wonderful editor and indexer), Allison Mortlock (our graphic designer), Melissa Gabelle (our wonderful web designer) and Heleena Bamford (our fantastic MDBA project manager).
I have to admit to being a bit biased as my favourite part of the project was Will telling us about the importance of the National Library’s Trove database. The video link for this can be found here. Although the story of how the Campaspe got it’s name is the most memorable – I cannot see the name Campaspe without thinking of his story. You will have to read the chapter to find out why !!
I hope you can take the time to explore the new web site and learn so much about the native fish of the Murray-Darling Basin – I feel I have learnt so much from Will and now see our river system with fresh eyes and find I am keen to see our rivers and streams restored and preserved.
Nerida
Graham Durant-Law and I will be conducting a 1 day workshop as part of the actKM conference in Melbourne, 10-12 October 2011. This is the first time we have run this particular workshop and it draws upon a number of previous shorter workshops we have conducted separately. As such it is available at a bargain basement cost of $200.00 for the day (and this includes morning and afternoon teas as well as lunch).
We all have various needs for effective stakeholder or client engagement. If you get it wrong it can be disastrous and take a lot of effort to retrieve the relationship. If you get it right the results can be spectacular.
Graham and I will be taking you through a number of stakeholder engagement techniques (including how to identify your stakeholders) with a bit of theory as well as experiential sessions. In the afternoon we will take a look at how you monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of those techniques.
The hypothetical for the day will be:
Your local community has been granted $10m over 3 years to address teenage delinquency and drug and alcohol problems. We need to identify in broad terms: the desired program outcomes; the projects to satisfy the outcomes; the likely key stakeholders for the program and each project; and how we will monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the program and each project.
The workshop will be held at RMIT on the 12th of October 2011. You can register for both the actKM conference and our workshop here http://actkm2011.eventbrite.com/
Everywhere you turn there seems to be someone complaining about ‘Information Overload’, but what does this really mean? Yes, there is an exponential growth in the amount of information availabe for us to access, but it is how we handle the information that determines whether it makes a difference. I have been thinking long and hard about this issue and have come across some interesting theories to do with just too much information, plus a few theories of my own.
Firstly we have Information Overload
This is where you are not in control of the amount of information being directed at you. It could be that it is all work related and there does not seem to be a way to turn it all off. We have seen a proliferation of courses (such as Personal Effectiveness Program – PEP), systems for prioritising emails, new ways of managing meetings etc – but it just seems you cannot turn the information tap off. I am not sure there is a solution to this one – except for turning off the world and becoming a hermit.
Secondly we have Information Obesity
To me this is similar to the issues described by Clive Hamilton in Affluenza where we just want more and more and more. Luke Naismith called this Infoluenza – but I think it is more like the obesity issues we have in our society. We feel like we have to have it all or we might miss something. This one really is self-induced and probably requires a level of therapy to overcome the problem. I also suspect this one has a lot to do with lack of information literacy as I am sure there are a lot of people who unable to make a judgement on the value of the information they are busy collecting.
Then we have Information Anorexia
Like the eating disorder ‘anorexia’, information anorexia is where the information receiver starts off trying to limit the amount of information they are consuming. This control becomes an obsession and they run a real risk of limiting their intake to such a degree that they only see a distorted view of the world. I have seen this when working in libraries when doing information research where the client says I want information on ‘x topic’ but I only want you to look at this source and that source (often these were 2-3 think tanks only). By limiting or controlling the source you end up missing potentially important and perhaps counter-evidence in your research. Potentially a very dangerous situation if you are doing research for public policy, medicine, intelligence or legal issues.
And finally we have Information Dismorphia
This is a symptom I have seen often where the information receiver is so obsessed by the detail in the information they miss the big picture. I remember a situation many years ago where I sent a data visualisation example to a colleague and suggested they have a look at the method being used to communicate complex data only to have it sent back telling me there were gaps in the data being used. If I remember correctly I made a decision not to pursue the idea as I was aware that my colleague was unlikely to understand what I was driving at as he was too far down in the weeds to see the landscape.
I know I am probably in the information obesity category – but my excuse is that I love finding information and then being able to send it to someone I know is also interested in that topic. I just wish I had more time to read and learn about new and exciting topics.
Reverse Brainstorm “Eliminating collaboration in your organisation”
I first heard about this technique from David Gurteen who used it with a group of librarians in Ireland. He told me the story of trying to get them to do some strategic planning and how they kept going back to the negative as their libraries were all being closed down (now doesn’t this sound familiar). He then decided to take them into the negative space to let them vent and his topic was – What would you have to do to ensure your library was closed? Apparently the session went exceptionally well and so I decided to try this for myself. I have now used this technique with many of my clients and also at the Origins conference in Singapore last year with great success.
The May meeting for 2011 will be a Reverse brainstorming session to uncover how to introduce or improve collaboration in your organisation. Reverse Brainstorming helps solve problems by combining brainstorming and reversal techniques. Humans are better at being negative than positive and this technique goes negative in order to realise the positive. More theory and practice.
Come along and learn this relatively simple but powerful technique for both identifying risk and articulating the problem you might have in your organisation.
Facilitated by Nerida Hart and Siwan Lovett
Details:
When: 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm Tuesday 24 May 2011
Where: The Chocolate Olive Cafe, Colbee Crt Phillip Canberra
Skype in address: david_williams546
Cost: Gold $5 donation on the night to cover coffee etc
Register at: http://actkmmay2011.eventbrite.com/
HartKnowledge 