In a recent blog post by JP Rangaswami (confused of calcutta) entitled Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 5: Knowledge Management
JP writes:
“I believe there are three primary reasons why an enterprise would want to “manage its knowledge”:
One, to share learning, so that the same mistake is not made multiple times.
Two, to share learning, so that activities get sped up.
Three, to share learning, so that people are motivated to learn and to teach.
To share learning.
Knowledge management is not really about the content, it is about creating an environment where learning takes place. Maybe we spend too much time trying to create an environment where teaching takes place, rather than focus on the learning.
Since people want to learn by watching others, what we need to do is to improve the toolsets and the environment that allows people to watch others. It could be as simple as: What does my boss do? Whom does she talk to? What are her surfing habits like? Whom does she treat as high priority in terms of communications received? What applications does she use? Which ones does she not use? When she has a particular Ghost to deal with, which particular Ghostbuster does she call?”
“To share learning” by watching others is indeed an interesting point. A point possibly lost on today’s BI community. For business intelligence is “the enterprise place” to find information, right? It is all about enhancing knowledge, right? So maybe it is time to ask the BI community what does a user, viewing a report (or even searching for one in isolation) have to truly do with shared learning.
I recently received an e-mail inviting me to a web demo of a data visualization tool I really like (to remain nameless for this post). It talked in the subject line about collaboration but in the end described a user performing a visual reporting task. Maybe shipping it to a dashboard or PowerPoint demonstration. I was a little disappointed.
If we are to truly “look over each other’s informational shoulders” should we not have the ability to publish our BI thoughts, pick freely from services (not always just those prepared in a universe or framework by an integration team) and mix in the thoughts of others? In seeing other people’s thoughts on what is interesting, seeing them build information combinations and viewing important services through shared visualizations we can start (baby steps of course) “To share learning”. Learning through others’ behaviors as they interact with information sources.
This is where the tried and true banded report sees its end? (Or at least re-defines itself for what it is.) So, yes it is good to have sliders, dimensions and drill-through views for exploration of questions — but frankly I would rather know what my experienced colleague knows and build from that basis rather then try to always discover my own result from a roll-up of my division’s sales history. Maybe the point here is overstated but if the work on collaboration is going to move out of the Ambient BI labs of BusinessObjects and actually change user behavior maybe a few bold predictions such as the death of the banded report are not as crazy as they seem.
