Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Super Nova conference in San Francisco.  I was encouraged to attend this event by friends of the Consortium Chris Carfi and John Maloney and it proved to be a great recommendation.  The conference is hosted by Wharton Business School and was attended by some of the deep thinkers whose work we watch including John Hagel (author of “The Only Sustainable Edge” and more recently the “Shift Index“) and Doc Searls (author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto” and currently doing some interesting customer empowerment work at Harvard called VRM).  Other interesting folks included Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Craig Newmark (Craig’s list),  Alec Ross (State Department, innovation) and about 60 other bright people thinking about the world as a network.

We have been talking about support as a network for the past 8 years. As we have been imagining and exploring these principles and concepts we have referred to this work using a number of different names; the Betty model, the Adaptive Organization and the organization as a network. They all referrer to the same vision. We have also done some thinking about the leadership changes needed to implement the Adaptive Organization

Some reflections/validation from the Super Nova conference discussions:

• Knowledge flow is the new critical enabler for business success (KCS on steroids?)
• The link between passion and fun and the need for both in a networked model
• Validation for our assertion that “fun is the most under rated element of a healthy business environment” -  constructive laughter and fun are indicators of emotional engagement, caring and trust.
• Emotion and action are interrelated; we don’t take action with out an accompanying emotion
• Observation: We don’t have a vocabulary in business to talk about intangibles like knowledge, emotions and relationships.  All of our vocabulary is based on tangibles and a mechanical, linear model based on a philosophy or belief of scarcity.  Terms like “intellectual property”, “social capital”, “social tokens” all have tangible roots/implications.  It seems we need new vocabulary that is based on a philosophy or belief of abundance.
• Observation: Relationships are more important than rules – customer centric organizations act based on this value. Self-centric organizations have lots of rules that protect them? Consider Nordstrom’s philosophy as opposed to United Airlines
• Models for talking/thinking about emotions – “Beyond Reason” by Fisher and Shapiro
• Also see research and writings by Alfie Kohn about human behavior and parenting as well as the implications for business – its about cooperation/collaboration not competition
• Intent (business model or approach to the market)?  Is it to sell or to serve?
• The importance of the “know me factor” – the need for a very rich model for identity, reputation and profiles

It seems to me we are onto something very big with the Adaptive Organization concepts, principle and emerging practices.  AT the moment there are more questions than answers around this big idea.  And, there are more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it than we realized!

A few weeks we held our 15th Annual Member Summit. Many thanks to Mike Runda, Laura Savio and Intuit for hosting the meeting at their Plano Texas facility. We had 65 people attend, a sell out crowd. The focus of this years summit was “optimizing your investment in knowledge management”. In keeping with the economic climate we thought it would be best to talk about how to get the most out of one’s past investment in KCS.

Members can see the agenda, presentations and notes in the Consortium wiki.

Congratulations and …. thank you to Brad and Amanda as they join our list of outstanding contributors to the Consortium’s work.

We have been asked a few times recently to present on “innovation”. This seems to be a hot topic for business these days. So, with a little reflection on how we do what we do and some help from some of our often cited authors and books on the subject (Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, Group Genius and the Medici Effect) I put together a paper and a workshop on innovation.   See our new web pages on the subject!

Are you using machine translation for your support content and/or your web site? Are you leveraging your user community to help translate content? We (the Consortium) have been working with TAUS over the last few years on these concepts. There is, I think, a great opportunity to support global customers with translated support content done at very low cost using machine translation.

I attended and presented at the TAUS user group meeting today. The topic for my part of the agenda was “Dealing with the Content Explosion” (see the deck). This was based on our work on the content framework and integrated some of the loyalty (netpromoter) and customer life cycle stuff (Brad Smith’s work at Symantec) to set the context of why content and language is so important.

Other interesting presentations: Cisco and Intel are using machine translation for support content and reporting great success. Adobe is having success with their user community to translate content.

The group had an interactive discussion on the value of coaching and management engagement.   Although the tool is important to the success of the KCS program, those who have sustained success accredit it to the buy-in of middle management and the coaching program.

Omgeo gave a demo of their newly deployed process and KM tool that supports the KCS integrated workflow and rapid publishing to the Omgeo.com web site.

Open Space discussion topics:

Incentive and Rewards programs

ROI and Metrics for KCS

Coaching – picking and developing KCS coaches

Localization and translation strategies, use of machine translation

The topic of “good enough” content to publish was brought up as an issue within organzations . Maybe we need to change the use of the term “good enough” we seem to be scaring the marketing folks.  It was recognized that KCS 5.0 should include best practices for legal disclosures and branding for just in time knowledge content.

The matrix is a road map for a step-by-step approach to bring a support organization from a tiered hierarchical structure to a networked organization.  With this new model, we can now offer a hybrid support structure. The model recognizes that the ideal state for a mature adaptive organization is not to be completely networked but to adjust each transaction to provide the optimal balance between assisted support and unassisted support. The five phases of adoption start at Pre-KCS and move towards, KCS, Entry AO, AO and finally AO maturity.

What is important here is to realize that the once you have adopted the practices outlined in the matrix, the support analysts are empowered and equipped to decide what the best process is for solving a problem, which in turn makes the business more focused on the individual customer’s needs.  Each customer then feels like their problem is solved quickly by a network of people who make a personal connection, leading to a deeper level of support.

- Melissa and Greg

Welcome New Consortium Members 2008-2009!

• Apple
• Acatel-Lucent
• Autodesk
• Avaya
• Bright Idea
• Celegene
• Language Weaver
• Omgeo
• Oracle
• Red Hat

Upcoming Events

• August 14 and August 28, 2009 Summer Series Conference Calls
• August 26, 2009 Boston Town Meeting
• September 16-18, 2009 Program Team Meeting – NYC
• November 11-13, 2009 Consortium Member Summit Plano, Texas

Board of Directors

Mike Runda – President, V.P. Global Technical Support Services, Intuit
Rob Schauble – V.P., Director of Research and Development, HP Customer Services, Hewlett-Packard
Brad Smith – Secretary/Treasurer, Senior Director, Symantec
Bob Barnes – Member, Senior Director, Global Technology Services, Celgene Corporation
Lori Brownell – Member, General Manager – Product Quality and Online, Microsoft
Dave Cutler – Member, V.P. Global Technical Support, Novell
Greg Oxton – Member, Executive Director, Consortium for Service Innovation

January

New Consortium Web Site

The Consortium web site has been redesigned with a new look and feel.  A search capability, intent focused navigation and integration with salesforce.com tools are a few of the major features added.    The JotSpot Wiki has been moved to Google Sites.

Program Team Meeting

Hosted by Knowledge Accelerators in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Topics of discussion included

• KCS Adoption Framework
• KCS 5.0 Candidate List
• KCS v4 Verified
• KCS Maturity Survey
• Coaching Effectiveness
• Value Model for Support and KCS
• CSI community
• KCS User Interface Prototype

February

Launch of KCS v4 Verified

15 Vendors are currently verified on the original KCS v3 criteria.  We project most will obtain the updated certification.  The updated program includes:

• KCS 4.0 best practices
• An opportunity to demonstrate differentiating functionality and commitment to KCS.  We have added select new criteria based on member feedback and experience
• Additional details and clarification of requirements
• Enhancements to the process that to respond to the increase in the market demand for KCS and the evolution of technology
• Additional program education and services for verification preparation

Program Team Meeting

Hosted by Quest in Aliso Viejo, CA.  This was the Consortium’s 1st program team meeting that was held via a teleconference.  Members have the option to dial-in or attend sessions in person.  Twelve members joined via conference.   We will continue to offer dial-in topics at the future program team meetings.  Topics of discussion at the February meeting included:

• Measuring web value and effectiveness
• The health and value of a user community
• Review of the measures used to assess community health
• The value of content
• Adaptive Organization measures, review the funnel and the cloud metrics
• Engaging customers in product improvements
• The value of collaboration

March

Executive Summit

The Annual Executive Summit was held in Georgetown DC the theme of this years meeting was Maximizing customer productivity and experience while minimizing support costs. 

Innovative open space discussion topics included recognizing the entire support ecosystem and the currency for the “E” company.

The Consortium’s Work is Getting World Wide Recognition

Greg worked with the International Trade Commission ( funded by the UN and World Trade Commission) on a chapter for their book on service innovation and a workshop for services development in emerging economies.

Melissa was interview by and quoted in the Enterprise 2.0 Wikinomics in Contact Centers  Research document by nGenera

Idea Voting Site (IdeaStorm)

We set up a site for members to submit, vote or comment on topics for Consortium events; conference calls, team meetings and the Annual Member Summit.  The IdeaStorm site is hosted by BrightIdea (a recent new member of the consortium).

April

KCS Adoption Sessions

These sessions consisted of two hour sessions held over a three days.  Topics included:

• Identifying Effective KCS Coaches
• Managing the Quality of Articles
• Best practice communicating KCS success to management
• Linking the A-Loop and B-Loop processes

May

Developed KCS Verified V4 for trainers program

• Interest in delivering KCS training is growing around the world, we have had interest from groups in both the UK and Australia in getting certified to teach KCS. We are finalizing the KCS Verified v4 for Trainers program.

Next Generation Knowledge Management Conference Call

• The content explosion and how to deal with it?
  • Multiple types: KCS solutions, wikis, blogs, IM, twitter, FAQs, white papers, formal docs…and multiple sources: vendors, partners, customers….
• A content framework – continuing the discussion on understanding the content landscape
• Next generation KM – a comprehensive view of content and the principles and practices to organize and leverage mass collaboration  (a content view of the Adaptive Organization? )

June

Certified a consulting group in Australia to train KCS (ProActive Services – they do a lot of ITIL training and see KCS as a good fit with ITIL, also working with Pink Elephant in the UK on KCS training certification)

Town Meeting Sydney

Conducted a town meeting in Sydney, hosted by Alcatel-Lucent; 12 people attended, good discussion on measures and behavior change.

Program Team Meeting

Team meeting in Broomfield  hosted by Sun.  Thanks to Tom Floodeen for hosting a cookout at his house!

Topics included:

• Members’ experience with KCS Adoptions
• Known vs. New
• Content Framework attributes
• Measures for the Adaptive Organization
• Working session on measurement framework
• Optimizing your Knowledge Management Investment

July

Summer conference call series

July 17 – Melissa did an overview of the new KCS Verified V4 Program (click the link to go to the KCS Verified Program page on the Consortium web site)

July 31 – Greg did a session on Known vs. New – is your reuse too high?   Over 50 members attended the online session to discuss  a simple methodology to assess new vs known and identify opportunities to improve the problem solving process for new and opportunities to remove known from the assisted model. Several members signed up to try the model and provide feedback.

Multi-vendor Support Model

A small group of Consortium members have been discussing ways to improve the industry’s ability to hand multi-vendor issues.  The key question is “can we improve the customer’s support experience when dealing with multiple vendors on complex multi-vendor issues?” We are capitalizing on work done by the Consortium in this area over the past 10 years. In July we did a multi-vendor support model scenario session host by Dell in Austin TX.  Attending companies are Dell, HP, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat. We identified some short term and long term opportunities to improve multi-vendor support.  The team is continuing the discussion with conference calls.

August

Summer Series Tele-Conferences continue

August 14 Swarming and Reputation

August 28 How to measure the engagement of people in KCS