With the current downturn in the economy, many companies are starting to feel a little less secure about their market positioning than they were a year ago. And understandably so — extra cash is becoming tough to come by in almost any company.

We’ve seen banks fail outright, and we’ve seen many companies trying desperately to cut costs; and, in more than one place, I’ve heard the same discussion — can knowledge management save a failing company? Well, the short answer seems to be ‘no’, and the long answer is a decisive, yes, you guessed it, ‘maybe’.

Let me first say that (while I’m not any kind of expert in failing companies or in turning said companies around), that there can be any number of reasons why a company fails. If we’re talking about a start-up, the ‘maybe it was just a bad idea’ reason seems to often be an obvious culprit.

Yet if we’re talking about an established company whose business has suddenly (or even gradually) started to turn, I would argue that there is usually a complex set of interdependent factors that contribute to this turn (while there are examples of singular causes, I would suggest they are more the exception than the rule).

Let me put it this way: a business that’s sick or dying can be sick or dying from many different causes, and they may exacerbating each other. Market pressures from an increasingly global business, inventory problems and low morale may all be manifesting themselves in the organization, but which is really the root cause of the company’s decline? It’s often hard to tell the symptoms from the disease.

Enter knowledge management, which happens to come in so many different flavours that what one company may call knowledge management, another organization may call something else entirely. Knowledge management also rarely sits in the same place in any two organizations.

So while knowledge management will occasionally be the medicine that heals a sick organization, applying the wrong medicine to the wrong illness can still be fatal. A misformed or inappropriate (for that particular organization) KM program can actually make things worse — while also costing you money.

Not to mention the fact that attempting to apply knowledge management principles as a short-term fix for long-term problems is doomed from the outset — while some quick fixes are sometimes the best way to go, they rarely have anything to do with knowledge.

Yet before I sound like I’m spelling out a no-hope situation for knowledge management to improve an organization, I should also say that it goes without saying that the right medicine for the right illness can work wonders — but over the long term, your organization still has to work at staying in good general health.

And KM, applied preventatively, is always going to be more effective than trying to do it after things go wrong.

Patrick Lambe over at Green Chameleon has an interesting post about the holy trinity of people, process and technology that is a response to Dave Snowden’s suggestion that the three have become a pointless reductionist categorization.

I think Patrick’s point here is an important one — both IT and non-IT folks need a remember now and then that technology is not going to solve all their problems. While it may seem obvious that all three of these factors need to be considered in any technology rollout, it’s surprising how often only the ‘technology’ part really gets considered.

So while I agree that lumping these three things together has certainly become clichéd, there still exists a decent reason for putting them together, as Patrick has suggested in his post.

It’s also worth remembering here that unwilling people and poorly-conceived processes can break even the best technology, and that conversely, even inferior technologies sometimes take hold because of a dedicated group of a people.

I’ve been on the lookout for a place to find free blog pictures, and it looks like I may have found something that works for me. While I’ve found other services that offer blog pictures, every other service I’ve found has had some kind of fee or restriction.

Acobox allows you to choose from a wide variety of images (there are lots of images, but I would still like to see more added to certain categories, especially the abstract and technology categories).

Acobox also takes care of the licensing and other unsavoury issues so that all you need to do is select an image, copy the code, and paste it into your post. You don’t even need to host the image yourself, Acobox hosts the image for you.

I’ve included an image in this post so you can get an idea of the quality of the images hosted on the service (yes, I know, a radio observatory doesn’t really have anything to do with this post, but I thought it was a pretty cool photo).

Acobox also allows you to submit your own photos, which can be used by other members under a variety of licenses. I think this is a great idea — it builds a community around free photo sharing for the purposes of blogging, which benefits both contributors (who can use others’ photos) and members (who get to use everyone’s photos). I may just have to contribute a few photos myself.

I came across a post over at ClappingTrees this morning that pointed out the rise in content creation among young people on the web, as well as an increase in their use of social networking tools.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project survey (in .pdf) found that 93% of teens use the internet, and that teens tend to post and view more videos and pictures than adults (interestingly, they also tend to limit access to their photos and videos more than adults).

Email, in the eyes of teens, has dropped to the bottom of the list in terms of the preferred way to contact friends. Take a look at the technologies they prefer to use in order of most preferred to least preferred:

1. Landline (those teens with cell phones would prefer to use their cellular phone, but it’s either not available to all teens, or prohibitively expensive);

2. Cellular phone;

3. Face to face;

4. Instant messaging;

5. Text message;

6. Social network;

7. Email.

So while email is the information currency of choice in the workplace, teens communicate much differently than the average cubicle drone. But does this mean that everything’s going to change in the workplace once these teens are old enough to become office employees? Not likely — chances are, they’ll have to conform to the workplace, not the other way around.

What this could mean however, is a slower erosion of the importance of email as other technologies mature. Remember chat rooms? In 2000, 55% of teens visited chat rooms, and in 2006, that number dropped to 18%. Kind of a simliar pattern to email, isn’t it?

Chat rooms were one of the first web technologies that provided users with the ability to have fragmented conversations, rather than sending the ‘letter’ that was an email. And in the office world, email is still basically that: an electronic version of the antiquated inter-office memo.

Interestingly however, the email/memo metaphor has hung on in the office — yet even email is changing from the inside out. Mobile email (largely through the limitations of mobile devices, combined with people wanting to avoid typing out a ‘memo’ on the go) have led to increasingly fragmented email communications.

This preference for fragmented, conversational communication and an abandonment of the cohensive, structured communications that existed before mark a significant change in workplace interaction. But does that mean that the death of email is imminent? What do you think?

There was a time (which seems like many years ago now), where I thought wasteful publications (and I think you can guess what I mean by that: flyers, catalogues and other things you get, but never asked for) would become extinct.

So I was rather dismayed by an announcement made by the City of Toronto (where I live) that they are going to publish a new publication, called Our Toronto, up to four times a year, which would incorporate ‘newsletters’ that would go out to city residents about things like crime, garbage and taxes. The publication is going to cost about $800 000 per year.

While those familiar with Toronto might already know that the city is almost 3 billion dollars in debt — and wonder why close to a million dollars is being spent on this publication — something else came to mind as I read this story.

Most Canadians, like most people around the world, are relying more and more on the internet for information and transactions — so why is the city trying to turn back the clock and publish a newsletter that will almost certainly end up going straight in the recycling bins of most city residents?

People are already bombarded with information on a daily basis — and as any advertising agency would tell you, getting a few minutes of people’s time to read your message is extremely difficult (and not getting any easier). So what is it about Our Toronto that is going to be different?

And while official sources of electronic information are still important to web users, people have come to rely increasingly on divergent sources of information — not just the City of Toronto’s website to find out what’s going on in the city, but online newspapers, blogs and forums to get a more holistic perspective on any issue that happens to interest them.

A publication that is so obviously put out in the interest of the mayor (and which you can see from the article I’ve linked to), and does not even have the support of the city’s councillors, is going to be of little interest to a populace that has a wealth of choice when it comes to information consumption.

It’s not just that this idea is cost-ineffective — it’s just plain and simply ineffective. I’m not going to preach about what better uses $800 000 could have gone to, but I think you can probably think of something.

I don’t want to sound like I’m always picking on Microsoft. I use their products every day, and I can’t really say I have too many complaints (I have some, but this isn’t a post about any issues I might have with Microsoft’s products).

I’ve done my share of complaining, however, about the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld team-up that went so horribly wrong — but it would seem that Microsoft has managed to salvage something from the wreckage. Check it out:

Crispin Porter + Bugowsky, an ad firm that has worked with all kinds of big-name clients, is also responsible for the new Microsoft ads (they also came up with the Burger King).

This ad not only makes sense, but it’s a witty prod back at Apple for their “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” ads. And to Microsoft’s credit, they have made some important improvements to their software and operating system when it comes to multimedia, gaming and the like.

My real beef with Apple has always been twofold: the price of their hardware is out of touch with current hardware prices, and for something like gaming, you’re going to get more software (read: games) supported on Windows versus on a Mac.

Since I’ve already digressed, is that Torontonian Spencer Rice in this ad at 0:12? Funny, I just saw him a few weeks ago at a pub on Yonge Street here in Toronto. He’s a funny guy — and apparently a PC. Unless that’s just a guy that looks like Spencer Rice…

In one of my previous posts, I talked about the first steps that one should take when looking to implement a content management system. Stephanie left a comment that got me thinking: what do you do when you already have a content management system that’s been implemented and you have to go back and enhance that existing system?

First off, I’d like to say that it’s easy to start playing the blame game when things don’t go as well as one had hoped. This is even easier when you weren’t the one who put the offending system in place — “if only they had done things such and such a way”…

This type of thinking does little to address current problems, and can actually run the risk of alienating you from those who put the system in place and have valuable knowledge about how it works. You’re going to need their help, so don’t get off on the wrong foot by trying to blame them for the current state of the system.

The other side of that coin is the fact that they almost certainly didn’t want to put a system in place that doesn’t work. Think back to any project you’ve worked on that didn’t turn out well — you can surely think of a whole host of external factors that contributed to a lack of project success.

The key to turning a system that doesn’t work into one that does work is figuring out where the real problems are. While technology may seem to be an overwhelming problem for people trying to use a system, the real problem might actually be a lack of processes.

While technology is often a symptom of a failed system, it’s very rarely the root cause. Figure out the processes and mindset that is currently in place, and you’ll go a long way to laying the groundwork for implementing improved technology.

Once you’ve figured out where the problems are, develop a strategy to move from the current state (where you don’t want to be) to the desired state (where you do want to be). The point is to have a plan of attack to move in a positive direction.

And that’s really the toughest part — getting the momentum going. Once you’ve got agreement and movement in the right direction, things get much easier. It’s getting the behemoth moving in the first place that’s the toughest challenge.

Let me first say that I’ve been with BlueHost since I started this blog. While it’s had its ups and downs (and at several points I certainly would say I pretty much hated them as a webhost, due to a bout of downtime around last December), they haven’t really been too bad to me overall.

I say this because there are lots of webhosts out there that are just terrible (I won’t mention any names, but I’ve heard horror stories from more than one person who either lost their site completely or had endless downtime. For this reason, I’ve been trolling sites Web Hosting Rating, checking out which hosts people have had particularly bad experiences with.

While I don’t feel it’s really fair of me to start naming names here, you can take a look for yourself and see which sites have really bad reputations for webhosting.

As for me, I’m mainly looking for cheaper hosting — I don’t really need unlimited traffic or the ability to host unlimited domains or any of the other features that go with my current host. I’d much rather have a reliable host that just offers me the ability to host my few sites with a reasonable amount of traffic and charges me next to nothing.

So if anyone has any experiences with their host (good, bad or completely horrific), I’d love to hear them.

The tendency when dealing with many knowledge management issues is often to jump right into the solution phase, when really it makes more sense to determine the strengths and weaknesses of what you’re currently doing, and how your current practices could be improved.

Similarly, most knowledge management can be broken down into several sub-issues. Depending on the specific problem at hand, most issues can be broken down into the following sub-issues:

1. People: Who needs access to what? Does everybody have the same needs? Are there sub-groups that are readily identifiable within your primary group (this usually works only if you have a large enough primary group)?

2. Processes: How is information/knowledge going to be transmitted/shared between people and groups? What oversight is going to be in place to make sure that processes get followed?

3. Technology: What is the best technology platform to enable our people? What technology do we currently have that we don’t need any more? How are people going to learn how to use new technology tools?

The first two often get neglected, but are just as important as the technology you go with (even if that’s just a network folder structure). Also, getting agreement on a ‘way’ to organize is important (whether that’s by department, by type of content [all presentations go together, all forms go together, etc.] and stick to it (departmental divisions are usually clear and hard to argue with, so they’re a good place to start).

Getting people to start thinking about, discussing and eventually agreeing on other things like what you do with different document versions and what naming convention should be used for files (i.e. if I have a sales presentation from August 2007, it doesn’t really help if I call all my files SALMARPRES0807.ppt and someone else is calling it Sales & Marketing Presentation, August, 2007.ppt) should also be a priority. While this sometimes sounds like just nitpicking, it can alleviate a great deal of frustration.

This work should all happen before you ever even entertain the possibility of selecting a vendor or previewing content management systems (and if you can’t make that happen, then try to at least do these things concurrently).

Thinking about standards and processes is not always glamorous, exciting work, but it needs to be done. Otherwise, you’re just setting people loose on a system that they don’t know anything about — and this will always lead to having to go back and correct yours and their mistakes later on.