David Jacobson's External Insights

Demonstrating your expertise to potential customers

In the Corporate and Business Blogging session at the recent Australian Blogging Conference, 2 of the reasons given for a business to blog were to demonstrate your expertise and to show thought leadership.

During the discussion we talked about blogging policies and I said that I self-edit: I do not discuss confidential client matters and I do not talk about proprietary business methods I have developed.

The discussion moved on but I want to go back and discuss the importance of sharing information with (even educating ) potential customers.

It's long been my view that businesses (including doctors and lawyers) benefit by talking about what they do and by giving free information, whether it's building a cupboard, making cakes, medical information or administering an estate.

With information, potential customers are able to make some basic decisions: do they need your service/product or not?  How do your services/product compare with others? Can they do it themselves? Do they need an expert?

I also believe in the value of collaboration with other like-minded people (see my wiki).

I believe that the best businesses are those who are willing to share information. Because by doing so they demonstrate that what they do is work with you from a common base and add more value to your relationship than if you did not have that shared knowledge.

Who would you rather work with? Someone who is willing to provide you with information and evidence of their expertise or someone who isn't prepared to communicate at all?

April podcast

My second podcast is now available!

You can now listen to me while you eat your lunch (just turn up your speakers) or download it to your mp3 player and listen while you commute or go for a walk. Let me know what you think!

This month I discuss my collaborative compliance wiki, marketing, web 2.0 and communities of practice and what all that has to do with law, compliance and improving your business.

The podcast goes for 10 mins 35 seconds and is 9.69mb.

Listen now

Giving interesting presentations

It's easier to write a long letter than a short letter.

It's easier to use a powerpoint template with bullet points than design a visual slide.

It's easier to use technical jargon than common language.

But will anyone understand it?

Is there a story you can tell?

Everyone likes a story.

If you've chosen it well.

With care.

It will be accepted.

And understood.

I recently spoke for 3 hours (broken up into a 45 minute formal talk, a case study and a discussion with a coffee break) on a legal topic.

Imagine the possible boredom.

I used slides with pictures.

I told stories relevant to my audience.

They asked questions.

The feedback was good.

I'll do it that way again.

Why managers shun management books

Powerpoint comedy

Communities of practice

How do you access the full knowledge of your staff?

Is your business solving the same problem repeatedly, without consistent standards, strategies, or solutions?

Do your staff operate in isolation with limited collaboration and little knowledge of each other?

If so, you should understand how you can develop a community of practice within your business.

In The Craft of Connection Tim Laseter and Rob Cross discuss how organizational network analysis is helping companies share knowledge worldwide.

New Year Reflections: learning from experience

Ideally you should regularly reflect on your experiences and the lessons you have learned. But if you do not have a process for this, our calendar provides one in the form of the New Year.

In business, waiting for the New Year (or your annual holiday) may be sufficient to "recharge your batteries" but your learning and improvement cycle needs to be much shorter: you need to learn from each project or encounter with a customer.

There are different techniques for this including:

• The ADRI model used in the Australian Business Excellence Framework: It evaluates how key criteria are achieved by "exploring how the organisation puts its plans and structures into place; deploys those plans and structures; measures and analyses the outcomes; and learns from its experience. These are known as the “Assessment Dimensions” of Approach, Deployment, Results and Improvement (ADRI)."
• Action learning: Action learning can be defined as a process in which a group of people come together more or less regularly to help each other to learn from their experience.
• After Action Review , developed by the US Army. It essentially asks four questions: What did we expect to happen? What actually happened? Why was there a difference? How could we do it better next time?

The common element in these techniques is that you have to look back and learn before you can improve in the future.

Are You the Person of the Year? And how does that affect your business?

TIME  has named "YOU" as the Person of the Year for 2006, provided YOU are a participant in the internet or create content for it: through blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos or any other form by which you share information and knowledge with others.

But, you say, I run a business, what's that got to do with me?

What TIME has recognised is that web users (including your customers, employees and competitors) have evolved from being an audience to being participants.

And that change is affecting a range of industries, not just media.

Web users tell stories to each other. They make recommendations about products and companies. They share productivity information and "life hacks".

They share videos, photos, music, anything that can be digitised. And then they modify it and share that. And news about all of this is sent automatically by RSS feeds.

Businesses use web applications to automate processes and get customer and employee feedback and share knowledge.

Some businesses are afraid of this new era of interactivity. Others will take advantage of it.

If you are interested but don't know where to start or how it will help you , give me a call and I'll discuss it with you for no charge. I'll even arrange a RSS feed reader with a set of blog feeds to start you off.

Or you can browse through the following links.

LINKS

• Top web apps in Australia
• Tom Peters' short video Brawl With No Rules (top of right hand column of linked page)
• Ross Dawson's video presentation on Web 2.0
• The Corporate Blogging Book
• Deploying a corporate wiki
• Why and how does explicit knowledge sharing make a difference?

Want to know more ? The Australian Blogging Conference will be held in March 2007.

Oil-for-Food (Cole) Inquiry reports on AWB

The Attorney-General has tabled  the Report of the Inquiry into Certain Australian Companies in relation to the UN Oil-for-Food Programme in Parliament.

The 5 volume report sets out the Commission's findings of fact.

The Report concludes that breaches of the law might have been committed by AWB Limited and AWB (International) Limited and certain of its directors and officers (see summary of findings in Volume 1). No such findings were made in respect of Alkaloids of Australia, Rhine Ruhr, BHP or Tigris Petroleum. However the Commissioner was highly critical of Davidson Kelly, the President of Tigris and found that Kelly might have committed an offence.

In respect of AWB, the Commissioner did not find any basis for breaches of the law relating to bribery or corruption, money laundering or terrorism.

The Report also states that there is no evidence "that any of the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister for Trade or the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry were ever informed about, or otherwise acquired knowledge of , the relevant activities of AWB".
The Commissioner found there was no evidence to support an inference that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade turned a blind eye to allegations.

The Report also concluded that the Wheat Export Authority did not have knowledge of the true arrangements between AWB and the Iraqi government (principally because of a lack of vigour in WEA's questioning and supervision of AWB). There was no evidence that AWB officers obstructed WEA.

The Oil-for-Food Programme was established by the United Nations in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens. The Programme modified the strict sanctions on Iraq imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

If you were a director or manager of a company which traded with Iraq, what would you have done if you found that you could not keep trading with a long-standing (at least 55 years) significant customer of your country’s products without breaking the law?

When you decided what to do, how would you document your decision and archive records relating to it? How would you respond to a finding from the UN that your decision to keep trading most likely involved corrupt special payments?  And how would you respond to a decision by your own government to investigate the UN finding?

In the case of Australia’s AWB Limited a Commission of Inquiry  has concluded that rather than accept the sanctions and find alternative markets for Australian wheat, AWB decided to disguise the true nature of its transactions and pay fees not permitted under the sanctions to a company controlled by the Iraqi Government.

The Independent Inquiry Committee of the United Nations (‘IIC’) estimated that AWB accounted for more than 14% of the illicit payments made to Iraq in connection with humanitarian purchases under the Programme . Their report concluded that AWB paid 'trucking charges' of more than $US222 million to Alia, a Jordanian trucking company owned by the Iraqi Government. AWB was identified as one of the 5 largest food suppliers to Iraq under the Programme which collectively accounted for US$5billion in contracts.

In its final report, the IIC concluded that Alia was a front company for the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein and that Alia channelled these payments to Iraq in contravention of the United Nations’ sanctions. A key issue in the Cole Inquiry was whether AWB or any of its employees knew or suspected that this was the case.

Despite significant evidence in support of the IIC conclusions, AWB denied any wrongdoing to the UN, the United States Senate, the Australian Government and ultimately to the Cole Inquiry.

AWB conducted 2 internal inquiries, retained 3 external legal firms and obtained various counsels’ opinions and then claimed that it was vindicated but that the documents could not be used by the Commission as they were subject to legal professional privilege. The claim for privilege was largely unsuccessful. 

AWB's corporate reputation is in tatters. It has had to replace its Chair and CEO and other senior executives. The documents show a failure of culture, systems and procedures: a willingness to break international conventions, to pay bribes and then to cover up their activities.

Counsel assisting argued that there was "a policy of doing whatever it took to get the business done."

In the final analysis much will also be said about subsidiary issues: the function of in-house lawyers and the tension between commercial loyalty to their employer and professional ethics, the role of lawyers in internal investigations and the use of legal professional privilege to restrict access to incriminating documents, internal document management and systems for retrieving documents and emails and the appropriate corporate position to take when an investigation is launched.

Ultimately this inquiry will be about corporate culture and the harm that can be caused by a failure of board and management to show leadership.

LESSONS LEARNED

Organisations need to understand their risks and have in place systems to manage knowledge related to those risks. They need to know who does what in their organisation and how and where knowledge is stored. It should not take weeks or months to locate important information.

They need to have a corporate culture which frowns on “getting around” the law and which encourages telling the truth when problems have been identified.

UPDATE: For those who have an interest in what laws might have been breached, look at Appendix 26 , page 313 in Volume 5 of the Report.

AWB Inquiry Index
AWB Cole Inquiry Squidoo lens

Global warming impact

The movie An Inconvenient Truth has opened in Australia with a big promotion by Al Gore and mixed reactions from politicians.

What do businesses think about global warming?

At a recent International Financial Ombudsmans Conference, Bill Peck, AON's General Manager Risk Management and Compliance, delivered a paper on Global Warming-Impact on Financial Services.

Whilst the link is not the full speech, the notes themselves are sobering (starting with a tsunami crashing over the Opera House) and clearly indicate that some industries are acknowledging global warming as a growing risk and are planning for it.
 

Cole Inquiry AWB hearings conclude

The "Inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-For-Food Programme" concluded public hearings on 29 September 2006. Hearings commenced on 16 January. Its report is due on 24 November.

Although there were 3 other companies investigated, the Inquiry primarily focussed on the conduct of AWB in relation to its wheat sales to Iraq.

The last week  provided evidence of conduct worse than I foreshadowed in my post of 31 January: AWB's corporate reputation is in tatters. It has had to replace its Chair and CEO and other senior executives. The documents show a failure of culture, systems and procedures: a willingness to break international conventions, to pay bribes and then to cover up their activities.

Counsel assisting argues that there was "a policy of doing whatever it took to get the business done."

Commissions of Inquiry always look for "the smoking gun", that piece of evidence that plainly exposes the truth of what happened, but rarely find it. Commissioner Cole, in his last week, has finally obtained documents which contradict the denials of AWB witnesses.

At least one email discovered (relating to the building of bunkers by the Iraqis) has prompted the Commission to indicate that it is examining whether AWB and others might have committed an offence under the terrorism offences in the Criminal Code.

This exchange between the Commissioner and the former CEO on the last day is revealing:

THE COMMISSIONER: Q. Mr Lindberg, it does appear that large amounts of money did go from AWB to Iraq through Alia, and you've said to me that it happened and it shouldn't have happened. It's obviously been a disaster for AWB and, no doubt, for you personally. Are you able to give me any understanding as to how you think this came about, how it happened in a company like AWB?
A. I haven't followed all the evidence in this Commission, Commissioner, but it would appear that it was set up before I arrived by former employees and it continued under my stewardship, and it shouldn't have.

In the final analysis much will also be said about subsidiary issues: the function of in-house lawyers and the tension between commercial loyalty to their employer and professional ethics, the role of lawyers in internal investigations and the use of legal professional privilege to restrict access to incriminating documents, internal document management and systems for retrieving documents and emails and the appropriate corporate position to take when an investigation is launched.

Ultimately this inquiry will be about corporate culture and the harm that can be caused by a failure of board and management to show leadership.

Commissioner Cole will produce a report containing factual findings and recommendations about what legal offences may have been committed. Most likely it will become a valuable tool for training and case studies.

AWB Inquiry Index
AWB Cole Inquiry Squidoo lens

The importance of learning in business

Sir Ken Robinson recently observed that if a person went to a dinner party and announced he was a teacher there would be a deafening silence. Yet everyone claims to have an "interest" in education.

There has been much discussion about the importance of creativity and innovation in business. It has been suggested that some industries and professions will be forced to change by the commoditisation and automation of services they currently provide. Databases and software will force "knowledge workers" to develop new ways of doing business.

But according to Robinson: "We don't grow in to creativity, we grow out of it...we get educated out of it".

It's not just about technology: it's about the effort your business puts into "research and development" in areas ranging from customer service, management, employees to corporate social responsibility as well as how you use technology to make your goods or provide your services.

How many innovative businesses do you know?

References:
Sir Ken Robinson (video)
E-learning for industry
Revenge of the Right Brain
A Whole New Mind

Defining knowledge management

Is knowledge management a system, processes or technology? Is it key words or search engines? How do you get people to share knowledge?

The Wikipedia entry for "knowledge management" gives an indication of the many possible meanings people attribute to "knowledge management".

Denham Grey in Knowledge-at-work suggests that the essence of KM is cultural: an environment that increases awareness, fosters learning and supports sense-making.

It certainly has a people element: they have to want to share their research and experiences  for the benefit of customers. How? The tools help but without the culture you can't "manage" knowledge.

Improving productivity: what Bill Gates says

It is now accepted that modern companies can improve productivity by better management of their employees, especially if they are "knowledge workers".

According to Bill Gates "estimates are that information workers spend as much as 30 percent of their time searching for information, at a cost of $18,000 each year per employee in lost productivity. Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley predicts that the volume of digital data we store will nearly double in the next two years."

His solution? Microsoft is now focused on creating software that addresses specific businesses priorities:

"Productivity:  tools that help information workers prioritize their work and focus on the tasks that are truly important.

Collaboration: New meeting technologies will make distributed meetings simple and cost effective, and provide rich tools that enable team members to work together to create documents and plans. In addition, companies will be able to capture all of the interaction in meetings and preserve institutional knowledge that is often lost today.

Business intelligence: Powerful yet intuitive software that supports advanced visualization and modeling of information will be used every day by information workers to find meaningful patterns in the vast sea of data they collect.

Workflow optimization: Smarter workflow software will eliminate friction points that hamper organizational agility. These tools will automate the movement of approvals, alerts and exceptions. They will also have the intelligence to recognize inefficiencies in existing processes and make improvements. "

The race for better search engines is well and truly on.

Cole Inquiry: what the Government knew about AWB contracts

The bracket of evidence about the Government's knowledge about AWB's oil-for-food contracts has ended with the examination this week of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade Mark Vaile (here, p75), the Foreign Minister Alexander Downer (here, p46) and the Prime Minister John Howard (here, p2).

Regardless of the political consequences (some performed better as witnesses than others and the administrative failings of some were exposed), the bottom line is that AWB did not get much comfort from the evidence as shown by an exchange during Mr Downer's examination and an interview Mr Howard gave to the 7.30 Report on 13 April, both of which suggest the Commission may find that AWB mislead the Government. 

This exchange during Mr Downer's examination (asking why his office didn't follow up inquiries with AWB):

"Q. The evidence, as I understand it, is that the inquiry extended to reading to him or conveying to him the contents of the Moules cable and receiving a response, "This is bullshit", together with an emphatic denial, and that was the extent of the inquiries made by Mr Bowker. Do you
regard that as satisfactory conduct?

MR ROBERTSON: I object to that question.
MR AGIUS: I object to that question, Mr Commissioner. That question may have relevance if there was any possibility at that time that, if Mr Bowker had conducted his inquiry differently, AWB would have given him a different response. The problem with all of this examination is, if I may say so, with respect, which is why I did not embark upon it, all through this time AWB was denying that it had done anything wrong. In my respectful submission, it sets the bar too high to say and to suggest in the course of the examination that, in the face of that denial, the Commonwealth ought to have rejected the denial, and now be criticised for not conducting a different inquiry when the only inference available is that, if the different inquiry had been made, AWB would have made the same response, that it was not acting in breach of sanctions. The answer to that question can't possibly assist you, Mr Commissioner.

MR JUDD: On behalf of AWB, that is rejected as a proposition. My learned friend knows, as his questioning has indicated during the course of the examination of some of these witnesses, including the ministers, that, had specific questions been asked, there may have been specific answers. My friend has asked those questions and he's put it to witnesses on the assumption, presumably, that such questions might have elicited a different answer. Of course we don't have the answers because the questions were never asked. But it's not right, in our submission, to draw, as our friend does, the conclusion that, had the questions been asked, nothing would have been said to enlighten the questioner. That is unfair and wrong.

THE COMMISSIONER: I had thought, maybe wrongly, that up until at least 4 October 2005, and possibly later, AWB maintained that it had done nothing wrong.

MR JUDD: It did make general denials of wrongdoing, but if one looks carefully --

THE COMMISSIONER: Not just general denials, specific denials. We have a folder here of correspondence between AWB and the various departments. It will no doubt be collated at some point of time and addressed. We have the evidence of what they told the Volcker committee. We now know from the brief which was produced the other day that they had a deal of information which they withheld from the Volcker committee. The Volcker committee's report may well have been quite different if that material had been made available to them.

MR JUDD: It's rejected that material was withheld. Material was provided to the committee on exactly the same basis as it was by government. That's a matter which is established by this inquiry.

MR AGIUS: As my learned friend knows, the Hogan/Borlase trip report was not provided to the committee. My learned friend knows that the fact that the last two contracts had their prices inflated so as to conceal the Tigris debt was not provided to the committee. Not only was it not provided to the committee; it was not provided to counsel, from whom advice was sought. It's ridiculous to suggest that AWB was in the same position as the government. I'm not here to defend the government, but I'm certainly not going to sit here and hear misrepresentations put as submissions. AWB was denying that it had done anything wrong right up until at least October of 1995. To suggest that if Mr McConville had been asked any other question in any other way it would have suddenly decided to tell the truth is preposterous, in my submission.

THE COMMISSIONER: In any event, we've had enough of that. That can be the subject of submissions in due course. Your question is rejected, Mr Forrest."

From the ABC's 7.30 Report on 13 April:

"JOHN HOWARD: No, well, the reality is - and I choose my words carefully - I don't want to say something that I shouldn't be saying at this particular time but I think I can say this - that AWB has misled the following: it misled the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; it misled Mr Volcker because it didn't provide all of the information it wanted; it's misled the United Nations; it appears to have misled a former chief justice of Australia, Sir Anthony Mason, whose opinion - I understand this is now in the public domain - provided very strong legal exculpation in relation to the behaviour of AWB; it's misled the wheat export authority; and misled Ferrier Hodson. I mean, AWB, every time ministers rang them, they were going through denials. You asked me directly, "All you had to do was pick up the phone". What's wrong, Michael. "If you'd have picked up the phone", Michael, I mean that's said, that's said glibly as though it's all easy, "Just pick up the phone". The point I'm making is that if a company systematically and successfully is able to mislead people in that, of that list I've just given you and leave the Government out of it - but Sir Anthony Mason is no slouch. "

AWB Index

Cole Inquiry: what did the AWB Board know and when and why is it important?

The Oil for Food Inquiry has now moved on to hearing evidence about BHP.

Before it did so, it became clear that AWB's understanding of the purpose of the Oil for Food Inquiry and the Commissioner's understanding are different. (ABC news)

The issue that has now crystallised is whether Cole is limited to exploring whether AWB made payments of moneys which might be in breach of sanctions (and whether the Board and senior management knew about it) or whether it extends to what the Board and senior management did once the payments became public knowledge (through the UN Volcker inquiry).

If it is the latter then different issues relating to governance and potential Corporations Act breaches arise and by giving evidence on this issue the AWB directors may have to waive legal professional privilege and disclose the legal advice they received including an opinion from Sir Anthony Mason QC (a former High Court Chief Justice) obtained for an internal investigation called Project Rose.

It may well be that behind the scenes the Attorney-General is considering whether the terms of reference need to be amended. And AWB is deciding whether it goes to the Federal Court for clarification.

A Commission of Inquiry is a difficult creature: it has powers to enable it to ascertain the facts as outlined in its terms of reference but it is not a court. Once it is conceived it has a reputation of finding unexpected things and going to unexpected places. (Reflections of a Royal Commissioner)

Evidence comes out progressively under the question of counsel assisting the commission, untested by cross examination of the witness's own lawyer, so that the "truth" may not be established until the end some months later even though the media has published evidence as it is given.

When the Oil for Food Inquiry began in January it was clear early that the Inquiry was a reputation disaster for AWB.

The share price dropped. The CEO resigned.

The Treasurer even commented that the ATO should review the AWB's claims for tax deductions for the money paid.

Iraq refused to buy more wheat from the AWB.

A former AWB Chairman has resigned or taken leave from other directorships.

But these are side effects of the mere holding of an Inquiry.

The participants are looking at possible final recommendations by the Commissioner and in particular if it is found that UN sanctions were breached whether any Australian laws were breached.

This exchange from the transcript of 8 March (PDF) is fascinating, starting at page 4159, line 10:

MR JUDD (counsel for AWB): But with respect, sir, this is not an inquiry into the adequacy of the response by the board or management or anybody else to investigations by Volcker; it is an inquiry into the matters reported by Volcker. So that if there is a question of corporate governance arising legitimately under the terms of reference, it must, in our submission, be one that relates to conduct in connection with the Oil-for-Food Program and its implementation, not the response by the company and the adequacy of its own internal investigation. That's where the problem, in our submission, lies.

THE COMMISSIONER: I think that's a far too narrow view of the terms of reference.

MR JUDD: Well

THE COMMISSIONER:  That would mean that one could not examine the response of the company, the board or thedirectors to the events.

MR JUDD: After the fact. After the fact. In other words, did the board or management respond appropriately to an investigation commenced initially by the United States Senate and subsequently by the United Nations - did they respond appropriately to that - and thereby look at the level of knowledge of the board in examining whether the responses were open and frank, whether the responses involved full cooperation or less than full cooperation.

That, in our submission, is the problem with extending into this area, and that --

THE COMMISSIONER: But term of reference (a) says:

whether any decision, action, conduct, payment or writing of any of the three Australian companies mentioned in the Final Report...of the Independent Inquiry Committee...or any person associated with one of those companies --which must include the directors and senior management --might have constituted a breach of any law of the Commonwealth, a State or Territory...

MR JUDD: Yes. I have just had it handed to me now. It is confined, in our submission, to the decisions, actions,conduct, payment or writing mentioned in the final report.It is not an investigation in relation to --

THE COMMISSIONER: No, it is the three Australian companies mentioned in the final report.

MR JUDD: No, sir, with respect, if it were the case that the draftsmen of these particular terms of reference intended by that phrase "mentioned in the final report" to define the Australian companies, it seems, in our submission, extraordinary - they could have been identified very simply by name. What is intended there, in our submission, is the decisions, actions, conduct, payment or writing mentioned in the final report.

THE COMMISSIONER: No, I don't agree with that.

MR JUDD: It is, in our submission, an inquiry which is limited in time, not simply an inquiry into companies at large.

THE COMMISSIONER: In my view, a proper construction of clause (a) restricts the inquiry into three Australian companies. It is restricted by reference to decisions,actions, conducts, payments or writings which relate in some fashion to the activities which are referred to in theOil-for-Food report.

MR JUDD: Well, in our submission, sir, with the greatest respect, we contend otherwise. We say that it is the decisions, actions, conduct mentioned in the final report. Were it otherwise, it is, first of all, not confined in  time, and it is, in our submission, as a matter of proper construction --

THE COMMISSIONER: It is obviously not meant for me to go back and look at what they did in 1910; it is related to matters which come to light in relation to the Oil-for-Food Program."

To be continued.

AWB Index

AWB Index

This is an index of my postings on AWB and the Oil for Food Inquiry conducted by Commissioner Cole ("the Cole Inquiry"):

Australian companies and Iraq Oil For Food Inquiry (19 Jan)

Reputation risk: the AWB experience  (31 Jan)

Oil-for-Food Inquiry: expansion of terms of reference (3 Feb)

AWB and Oil for Food Inquiry: Managing Director resigns and corporate governance to be reviewed (9 Feb)

AWB and Oil for Food Inquiry: who knows what and where is it kept? (16 Feb)

AWB: monopoly and governance issues (22 Feb)

Cole Inquiry: what did the AWB Board know and when and why is it important? (11 March)

Cole Inquiry terms of reference amended (3) (20 March)

Cole Inquiry: isn't there a summary of AWB facts and where are the missing emails?  (25 March)

Cole Inquiry: AWB risk management advice is not legally privileged (6 April)

AWB challenges Cole (6 April)

Cole Inquiry : AWB corporate secretaries resign (12 April)

Cole Inquiry: what the Government knew about AWB contracts (14 April)

Cole Inquiry and AWB: corporate culture and criminal responsibility (25 April)

What offences might AWB have committed? (27 April)

Cole: no action over political comments  (28 April)

AWB Inquiry update (12 May)

Federal Court decision on AWB apology (17 May)

Cole publishes AWB document (18 May)

Royal Commissions Act to be amended (24 May)

Cole Inquiry: AWB goes back to court (30 May)

Royal Commissions Act amended (13 June)

AWB obtains injunction against Cole (21 June)

AWB Oil for Food Inquiry reporting date extended (22 June)

US class action against AWB (11 July)

AWB v Cole update (19 July)

Cole Inquiry and AWB update (10 August)

AWB: case study in the difficulty of apologising (17 August)

Cole Inquiry hearings resume (24 August)

Federal Court decides on AWB's claim for privilege (18 September)

Cole Inquiry reporting date extended (22 September)

AWB and Oil for Food Inquiry: who knows what and where is it kept?

It used to be that when people spoke of a document that was a smoking gun they spoke about an incriminating document that was hidden somewhere in boxes and boxes of irrelevant documents, waiting to be found.

Today a smoking gun is more likely to be an electronic document that is much harder to find than a piece of paper. And the search for these electronic files has given rise to discussions about electronic discovery, document retention and knowledge management .

Yesterday at The Oil for Food Inquiry the Commissioner and counsel expressed their frustration about the discovery of material in an AWB database that should have been produced weeks ago. That material may or may not be a smoking gun but it does appear to be important in proving knowledge of facts at particular dates.

What was interesting was the subsequent analysis of how this data was discovered: someone remembered it! It does not appear to have been catalogued anywhere or to have been reproduced in hard copy. It was someone's job to maintain this database and they asked for the hard copy to be produced. It wasn't found by a database search or any special electronic discovery software used by investigators. Once the person remembered it, retrieving it appears to have been relatively easy although there was some debate about dates and versions.

The point of this note (apart from updating the AWB saga) is that organisations need to understand their risks and have in place systems to manage knowledge related to those risks. They need to know who does what in their organisation and how and where knowledge is stored. It should not take weeks or months to locate important information.

Finding things

As more and more information is stored on our computers how do we find what we need?

Do we  use new methods of naming folders and files or just use better desktop searching tools or document management software?

The University of Washington Information School is conducting a Research Project called Keeping Found Things Found. The Project website contains ideas on labelling and organising information and retrieving it.

Peter Drucker tributes

Peter Drucker's recent death has prompted many tributes including these from The Economist and the NY Times. Forbes has a 2004 interview.

He created the concept of knowledge workers and was a leading thinker and writer on "what is the purpose of business?" and leadership.

McKinsey  has put together a collection  of articles on knowledge workers.

UPDATE: Google's Ten Golden Rules for managing knowledge workers

Electronic document retention guidelines

The US based  Sedona Working Group has published its Best Practice Guidelines Commentary for Managing Information Records in the Electronic Age (pdf).

Whilst the document is US litigation focussed, its 5 basic principles have general application:

1. An organization should have reasonable policies and procedures for managing its information and records.
2. An organization’s information and records management policies and procedures should be realistic, practical and tailored to the circumstances of the organization.
3. An organization need not retain all electronic information ever generated or received.
4. An organization adopting an information and records management policy should also develop procedures that address the creation, identification, retention, retrieval and ultimate disposition or destruction of information and records.
5. An organization’s policies and procedures must mandate the suspension of ordinary destruction practices and procedures as necessary to comply with preservation obligations related to actual or reasonably anticipated litigation, government investigation or audit.

Such policies assume your organisation has a Code of Conduct and a compliance culture which will honour the Guidelines.

Recent cases in both USA and Australia have considered the importance of electronic records and the timing of their destruction. A well thought out policy will minimise suggestions that destruction took place to avoid the law.

The policy should be integrated with your other compliance programs including your privacy policy relating to the collection and use of customer data.

Why we don't share stuff

Recently I looked at whether you can force someone to change.

In The Psychology of Information, or Why We Don't Share Stuff Dave Pollard suggests that " what impedes the sharing of information in most organizations is our personal and shared culture, rather than inadequacies in technology, knowledge management, or learning programs."

He gives 16 cultural factors which cause knowledge failures including "People know more than they can tell, and tell more than they can write down".  That remark is credited to David Snowden.

David Snowden, with the Institute for Knowledge Management, uses three principles to test if technology will work to help spread knowledge: One, knowledge can only be volunteered; it can't be conscripted. Two, people always know more than they can tell and can tell more than they can write. And three, people only know what they know when they need to know it.

The key is to find systems or technology which make the telling easy.

This Fast Company article discusses the topic in more detail.

Can you force someone to change?

Many businesses have used change agents or change management techniques. But we all know that threats to employees will not change ingrained habits.

In Forced to change Eric Mankin argues that innovative products will be more successful if they do not require the learning of new skills by potential customers eg the Toyota Prius has had a better response than the Segway. He also argues that significant changes in purchasing occur because of supply disruptions which benefit other suppliers who are in the right place at the right time.

Ron Friedmann looks at change in the context of knowledge management. What does it take for colleagues to share information with each other? He says an automated approach will work better than a manual approach which requires individuals to consciously change their habits. He says " change is hard and behavior follows external incentives."

Morris Bundaberg Hospital Commission of Inquiry and technology

It's now a matter of public record that the Morris Inquiry has been shut down because of bias against 2 hospital administrators.

Here are the reasons for judgment.(pdf)

This note is on an aspect of the inquiry that has not been discussed elsewhere: the use of technology.

From the day the Inquiry was established it maintained a website that I believe will become a model: it didn't just have the terms of reference, it had every ruling, press release, submission and, as hearings progressed, daily transcripts.

Early on the media asked for video access. Morris gave it to them (provided they didn't affect the privacy of witnesses) so that the inquiry was on every night's news and audio feeds were heard on the radio.

The use of technology gave the public confidence that the inquiry wasn't being held "behind closed doors".

Ironically the technology was used to shut the Inquiry down. DVD's of Morris' questioning of witnesses were tendered in evidence against him and were in the eyes of Justice Moynihan compelling evidence of ostensible bias. The DVD's communicated in a way that a written transcript can't. A transcript wouldn't have shown Morris descending from the bench to shake the whistleblower Toni Hoffman's hand at the end of her evidence.

The Inquiry's use of technology was a successful experiment to show that the law can improve its interactivity with its users.

Disappointingly all that's left of the inquiry is this screenshot (pdf).

Emails, organisation networks and knowledge management: 3 questions you need to answer

Do you know who is emailing who in your organisation?

Do you know what they are emailing each other about?

Do you know how your organisation's emails are archived?

There are regular news stories about the need to write emails prudently and to have a system for their destruction (see here and here).

Even though Arthur Andersen's conviction for obstruction of justice by wrongful destruction of evidence relating to Enron  has been overturned on appeal (as no criminal intention was proved), the discussion about the use of emails in Enron has provided an insight into the ways people communicate with each other inside organisations and who they communicate with.

In HBS Working Knowledge's How organisation charts lie the authors argue that :

Whether as a manager presiding over a department or as a member embedded within one, we are all dramatically affected by information flow and webs of relationships within social networks. These networks often are not depicted on any formal chart, but they are intricately intertwined with an organization's performance, the way it develops and executes strategy, and its ability to innovate. For most of us, networks also have a great deal to do with our personal productivity, learning, and career success...

Even in small, contained groups, executives are often surprised by patterns of collaboration that are quite different from their beliefs and from the formal organization chart. Getting an accurate view of a network helps with managerial decision making and informs targeted efforts to promote effective collaboration. Rather than leave the inner workings of a network to chance, executives can leverage the insights of a social network analysis to address critical disconnects or rigidities in networks and create a sense-and-respond capability deep within the organization.

In Enron's 1.5-Million Emails:  A Window Into Knowledge Management? Bruce MacEwen quotes a professor of computer science who was interviewed in  a NY Times story:

"Companies have organizational charts, but they reveal little  about how things really work, Dr. Carley said. Companies actually operate through informal networks, which can be revealed by analyzing "who spends time talking to whom, who are the power brokers, who are the hidden individuals who have to know what's going on," she said."

Knowing who is talking to who and about what is important from the point of view of productivity, collaboration and knowledge management.

Knowing where your emails are can also prove important if you are a defendant in a legal action.

Recently JP Morgan  Morgan Stanley was fined $2.1million for  overwriting backup tapes containing archived emails after a judge ordered they be produced in legal proceedings.

Do you have policies regarding the use of technology (including email) in your office?

e-learning

In this ABC radio talk, Paul McKey describes the transition in e-learning from digitised education material to collaborative, interactive and mobile learning. A key quote:

Other attempts have been made to digitise the whole classroom, teacher and all. This works well in corporate environments and has been labeled C, or collaborative learning. This uses technology simply as a medium to assist what humans do best, communicate. Some say it just replaces the classroom with all its strengths and weaknesses. Video conferencing started this trend but now we can combine video with real-time sharing of applications and information (such as those learning objects) via computers and all of a sudden people all over the world can enter our classroom. Voice Over IP, the latest craze to replace your telephone with a computer, microphone and Internet connection, is also an offshoot of this area.

But my e, i or c-learning, while very sophisticated, would be of little use if I had to always go to the mountain. What if the mountain could come to me? Then we would have M-learning. The M however is for mobile. Now I can travel anywhere and I don’t have to carry my knowledge store on my back like some sort of digital snail. I can now get access to J-I-T-L or just in time learning. And all of a sudden, because the big Telcos are involved, there are plenty of investment dollars available. Much more than for boring old education.

Is there such a thing as a good call centre?

One of the most self-aware ads currently on television is ANZ Bank's ad for its 24/7 call centre.

It features a range of robots from old television programs (starting withThe Robot from Lost in Space) who pass the telephone down the queue ("your call is important to us") until it reaches the Dalek which screeches "exterminate".

According to this HBS Working Knowledge article there is a call centre that works. It looks at the processes of  Sallie Mae in the US which looks after $100 billion in student loans for 7 million borrowers. It receives nearly 20,000 calls a day.

A sample quote:

One way Sallie Mae uncovers new trends is through a process called "hot topics." When agents notice a trend, they write a summary of it with examples and send an e-mail to management so that issue can be reviewed. Once a resolution is determined, a Knowledge Tool is created—a user-friendly online resource that agents can access for real-time information. The online system is a repository for the expertise of the entire call center. So by typing in a keyword from a caller's question, an inexperienced agent can retrieve all the information he or she will need to answer it.

I'd like to see that.

UPDATE : 5 May
This article from The McKinsey Quarterly discusses the metrics of call centres.

Usability: how good usability can improve performance in your business

Are you sure that your new client induction system, knowledge management system, your accounting system or document production system is as good as it can be? Have you asked the users?

Jakob Nielsen writes a regular column on usability at useit.com

He is recognised as a leader in website and intranet design (eg navigation and search tools) and advocate of usability testing to improve user experiences and therefore site performance.

He believes that the principle of usability applies to any system which interacts with people, from fighter planes to cars to office software.

His column this week is about medical usability. He discusses a recent hospital field study which recorded 22 instances of  how a poorly designed medication system resulted in patients getting the wrong medication.  These ranged from poor readability and wrong dates to  wrong doses. His article does not mention it but I recall recent publicity about an incident where the colour of labelling on a drug bottle  had to be changed because it had been confused with a toxic drug in an emergency. 

A key quote:

When it comes to user errors caused by bad design, there's a further problem as well: If the interface fails to provide adequate feedback, users might not even realize that they've committed an error.

How many of your office systems could be improved by asking your customers and staff to show you how they use them and problems they face?

As a bonus, the article then describes the writer's difficulty in tracking down the report used as the basis for the original New York Times story on the study.

The article is well worth reading as a case study, not just on your internal systems' usability but also in how to improve your marketing by ensuring newsworthy articles are accessible on your website.

UPDATE: Paul McKey mentioned today that Nielsen's partner, Donald Norman, wrote The Design of Everyday Things. Paul designs e-learning systems and is critical of programs that are compliance-focussed without offering a learning experience for users.

The Usernomics blog discusses "Usability in the news" . Its latest post points to an article on IBM developerworks about the design (or lack of it) of the US tax form.

Getting Things Done and Personal Productivity

We all identify time management as a skill we need to continually work on.

David Allen argues in Getting Things Done that what hinders our productivity is not managing our time but worrying about whether we will do something that needs to be done, trying to remember things and creating numerous lists. He says we can get rid of the worrying by having a system which ensures that everything in our life goes in to our in-box for appropriate action.

He says it is a "bottoms up" approach which lays the psychic base for letting our mind stop worrying about day to day items so that it can concentrate on the big picture.

He  disagrees that everything that is in our in-box should only be handled once. Instead he says that things should only go into our in-box once. The in-box is a place where things are collected for processing; we must decide what to do with the item  only once, even if it is to go into an action folder for later action (assuming you can't deal with it on the spot in less than 2 minutes). Once it is in the appropriate folder it can be regularly reviewed.

If you want to know more, read MVance's Notes and this terrific GTD workflow diagram (pdf).

GTD has attracted a cult following (see 43 Folders ,  Working Smart and Slacker Manager) but even if you don't go all the way with it there are plenty of good one-off tips.

Another productivity tip: Tips for mastering email overload.

Workplace Collaboration and Knowledge Management

One of the goals of managers of any business which employs knowledge workers is to provide a system to help them exchange information for the long-term benefit of the business.

Seven Steps to Creating an Enterprise Collaboration Strategy  (via Soul Soup) suggests the following:

1. Appoint a Chief Collaboration Officer
A chief collaboration officer is a steward responsible for creating structured collaboration policies, training and technical infrastructure.

2. Conduct a Communications Audit
During the audit, review how key business stakeholder groups currently work with one another.

3. Identify Specific Areas for Improvement
Take the audit results and pinpoint several specific areas for improvement.

4. Identify Tools and Processes to Meet Key Business Needs
Map communication tools and processes that will streamline the decision-making processes.

5. Create Communications Guidelines
Build a decision structure that provides advice on selecting the right communication tool.  Several of these options include e-mail, instant messaging, webcasting, Web-, audio- and videoconferencing, and, of course, face-to-face communication.

6. Develop and Implement a Training and Adoption Strategy
Provide opportunities to expose new users to the options, share success stories and, as appropriate, review new technologies under consideration for feedback. Involve a user committee in all major testing processes.

7. Create a Collaboration Portal
The portal can be a stand-alone entity or part of the corporate intranet.

Sounds like "knowledge management"?

This article from Strategic Legal Technology argues that there are 2 elements to knowledge management: the institutional and the individual. The first is an organisation-wide approach, the second aims at motivating the individual to co-operate (what's in it for them?)

This post by Rick Klau asks "What if... more than half of the institution’s knowledge wasn’t even captured, let alone leveraged? What if the reasons for that failure — lack of adoption, poor implementation, difficulty of encouraging use — were similar to the reasons brick & mortar [book] companies don’t stock an endless supply of books?"

He then argues:

"I’ve seen numerous examples where organizations have encouraged those in the trenches to use the tools they need to get their work done; management remains focused on the metrics that drive the business, while workers remain focused on getting the work done. Rather than suggest a wholesale shift in how management and employees interact (a nice concept, but overly utopian in practice), these organizations have simply looked to adopt lightweight tools that make it easier for their employees to get their work done.And that’s where I think the long tail comes in. Organizations that look to capture and leverage the knowledge that’s historically been so hard to manage will find they’ve got a competitive advantage."

Creative Commons Licence launched In Australia

I attended the launch today at QUT during the Open Content Licensing Conference of  Australia's version of the Creative Commons licence.

The Creative Commons system lets copyright owners (whether text, film, paintings, photos or other media) determine in advance whether their copyright works are available for use by others and on what terms. They can generate their own licence (using a pro forma without the need for lawyers) so that potential users do not need to ask for permission each time.

It does not change copyright law. It may not suit successful businesses or artists who earn significant revenue from their inventions. But if a creator or author is happy for others to "remix" or "sample" their work, then a Creative Commons licence will help.

How do you know what has been licensed under Creative Commons? The item will have a logo on it or if you're looking for something you can use freely, look here.

I've written up my thoughts on today's program at  Technology and IP Business

UPDATE: For a fair summary of the debate on the limits of copyright law , read this book review (Via Kim Weatherall).

Front line staff

At a Brightwater function last week, I heard a presentation by Chris Whitecross from Arrowdynamics.

He argued that training frontline managers and supervisors can be more cost effective than sending CEO's away to retreats.

This fits in well with the some of the ideas in the first edition of Global Knowledge Review (pdf).

Edna Pasher: " You can make people come to work on time and leave on time, but they have to choose to contribute the best of their brain work. They have to choose to please a client, to help a colleague, to share their lessons learnt from their mistakes with their team."

Dave Pollard: " What do knowledge workers want? They want individualized help to find and use information more quickly, powerfully, and effectively, help to find experts, and an appreciation for and accommodation of the knowledge processes that work for them now."

Making Intranets Effective

In this post Shorewalker highlights the problem with organised knowledge management: you can't force people to share what is in their head. But you can ask them what information they would like to have ready access to and put that on an Intranet. If it's relevant (such as staff directories), they will use it and maybe even suggest other things.

Information Sharing

In a further twist on the personal v organisation approach to knowledge management, Knowledge Jolt discusses the information snowflake and knowledge sharing.

The individual or the organisation?

Which is more important?

That is the question, at least in relation to Knowledge Management.

Law Tech Guru argues that KM should focus on the individual. Strategic Legal Technology disagrees: insitutional effort at KM must be paramount. Rick Klau also favours an individual focus.

There is no doubt in my mind that individuals (no matter how talented) perform better if they have organisational back up (be it research, marketing etc). It is two way: the individuals need to pass on their knowledge understanding that the organisation is structured so that they get the benefit of others' experience.

KM is not just a technology issue: technology is only a tool that helps individuals access and share knowledge.