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I heard Marshall Goldsmith say this on my ipod this morning: “So many people have spent a lifetime for preparing themselves for technological skills yet have spent no time training themselves on how to influence people so the technical skills make a difference.” The same is true for collaboration. So many people have spent countless […]

The ability to collaborate is becoming an essential capability for innovative organisations (actually, for any organisation). Imagine getting any big project done without collaborating. Here’s what scientist and Australian of the Year, Fiona Wood, said on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope TV show about collaboration: “I haven’t got the intellectual capacity or the time or energy […]

Here is a poem by Lao Tsu, a Chinese philosopher circa 700 BC. It’s well quoted on the web but it was difficult to find exactly which writing it was included in (any ideas?). Anyway, it speaks to how we should be helping our communities of practice develop. Go to the People Live with them […]

Your teleconference system is one of your most important KM technologies. Here are 7 things a facilitator can do to improve teleconference experience. Encourage everyone to be on time . Unlike f2f meetings where people can sneek in and catch up, arriving late at a teleconference meeting seems to be doubly disruptive. Introduce everyone. When […]

BHP Billiton axed their division called Operational Excellence last year. This was the group that, among other services, supported the organisations Knowledge Networks (also called communities of practice but language matters in this story). BHPB had developed the networks over the last 10 years but when the new CEO arrived he thought that if the […]

Just to let you know that Etienne Wenger and his collaborators at CPSquare are running their 4 week online workshop shortly (starts the 28th of January so you had better hurry). If you are interested go to: http://www.cpsquare.org/edu/foundations/index.htm Let them know you found out about the course via the Anecdote blog and they will provide […]

I recently picked up a copy of Fast Thinking magazine (summer 2007 issue), and found an interesting article on a group of software developers who organically-formed a community of practice. They call themselves SuperHappyDevHouse, and although they started off in California’s Silicon Valley, they have attracted interest from other places in the world, including New […]

One tragic example [of mis-coordination] is recounted in Peter Denning’s article about HFN [hastily formed networks], in which he describes analysis of the disaster response efforts after the attack on the World Trade Center: New York Police Department (NYPD) helicopters that had been monitoring conditions by circling the towers had observed signs of structural collapse […]

BusinessWeek picks up on the move to collaboration in the creative and sometimes ego-driven world of product design. “Just as forward-thinking engineering firms have worked to team up with design partners to offer a holistic output to clients, many design consultancies have responded to the seismic shifts in technology and culture by adopting a radical, […]

Everywhere I turn recently and I hear people talking about the need to collaborate as if the idea was new. Why has collaboration become the capability organisations must have? And why now? I think I have an inkling. About 20 years ago a lot was being written about collaboration (this was just the growing snowball […]