Untapped Knowledge Calculator

Use the Videojug Pages calculator to find out how much your unused knowledge is worth @ www.theknowledgecalculator.com (mine is worth £34k)

CILIP practical guide – Negotiating for pay

The Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals offer a very useful guide on negotiating for pay.

I noted particularly:

• employers will look at your contribution to further the aims and success of the organisation when negotiating salary
• consider asking your line manager what you would need to do to achieve a pay rise, and then work towards the objectives set
• do not discuss or negotiate salary and benefit before you are offered a new post
• use “negotiable” when asked to name a salary expectation figure on application forms
• use “I would consider a reasonable offer that reflects the responsibilities of the post” when discussing pay in interviews
• use “not appropriate to the application” if asked about present salary when applying for a new post

What is an Information Contextualiser?

Paul Bridle wrote “The new breed of business advisor – the information contextualiser” for the Knowledge Board (1 June 2010), and here is his definition for Information Contextualiser (in case you are intrigued like me):

“My role is not just the sourcing of data and information – something search engines and research agencies can do easily. My place is to provide the right information in such a way as to be useful for a particular problem faced by a specific organization,” 

“As an Information Contextualiser I draw on the global consciousness and knowledge base; my own experiences and case studies; contacts and individual experts in diverse fields of expertise. I then provide the information in a format that suits my client’s organisation.”

The core skills we need… amid information overload

Charles Jennings wrote “Data: Sometimes less is more” for Knowledge Board (29 May 2010). I really agree with his argument that in the information-overload world today, knowledge has become social and dynamic. Therefore, L&D needs to focus on the core skills we need.

Here is the excerpt of these skills from the article:

• Search and ‘find’ skills: To find the right information when it’s needed
• Critical thinking skills: To extract meaning and significance
• Creative thinking skills: To generate new ideas about, and ways of, using the information
• Analytical skills: To visualise, articulate and solve complex problems and concepts, and make decisions that make sense based on the available information
• Networking skills: To identify and build relationships with others who are potential sources of knowledge and expertise, within and outside the organisation
• People skills: To build trust and productive relationships that are mutually beneficial for information sharing
• Logic: To apply reason and argument to extract meaning and significance
• A solid understanding of research methodology: To validate data and the underlying assumptions on which information and knowledge is based

Social media

What is social media? Here is a video by Common Craft on social media in plain English. The characteristics of social media include:

• Following – group of people who are “fans”
• Persistent search – similar “template” presenting information on every participants
• Mindset not tools – social media tools merely assist the mindset of social networking

These are the popular tools currently available:

• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Social bookmarks e.g. Digg, Reddit, Technorati
• Twitter
• Blogs e.g. Blogger, MySpace, WordPress
• Wikis e.g. Wikipedia, Hudong, Wikitravel
• RSS

What is the model for businesses to use social media?

• Fans – who become the marketers for the products they provide comments
• R&D – fans do the R&D for companies
• Manufacturing – R&D by fans drives the production

The business benefits include:

• Better interactions with customers
• Faster innovation through customers’ participation
• Reduced costs e.g. R&D cost on unsuccessful product
• Boost brand through customer fans base
• Common goals/shared club environment for customers

But there are also risks using social media:

• Copyright issues
• Negative impact on people by brand damagers
• Characteristics of the web e.g. information overload
• Identity theft

Source: “Why social media? Bright beehive… enhancing the buzz of your business” by Cormac Heron and Nick O’Doherty

Discover your strengths

My coach at work recommended the book by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton to me. It is an easy and good read. You also get to do a Strengthsfinder profile online to identify your five strong “themes”. The theory is you can shape your role in any industry to maximise your strengths, and therefore excel at what you do and live a strong life.

People need to maximise their strengths to perform at their best; not to fix their weaknesses. Damage control i.e. fixing weaknesses can prevent failure; but not bring about excellence.

You must be able to perform an activity consistently for it to be your strength. Nevertheless, you can excel without strengths in every aspect of your role.

Strengths are made up of three elements:

1. Talent – naturally recurring thought, feeling, or behaviour
2. Knowledge – facts acquired (factual knowledge) and lessons learned (experiential knowledge)
3. Skills – steps of an activity; brings structure to experiential knowledge

To develop and maximise strengths, the balanced scorecard of an employee should provide objective picture of performance in three areas: business results, impact on the customer, and impact on the culture. Note that the talent of individual is unique, therefore performance measurement should focus on outcomes; not procedures and competencies.

Ask internal and external clients to provide ratings for three questions to measure impact on customer:

1. How well did the service meet expectations overall?
2. How likely would you recommend this produce/service to others?
3. How likely would you continue using this product/service?

Ask the peers of employee to give ratings for four questions to measure impact on culture:

Is the performance of this person

• timely?
• accurate?
• positive & helpful?
• making you feel your opinions count?

Immediate line manager should have regular and productive meetings with employee to develop strengths. Focus on three questions in every meeting:

1. What is the focus of the employee in the next quarter?
2. What new discoveries or learning have been planned?
3. Who does the employee hope to build new relationship with?

The whole balanced scorecard process should be repeated every six months at least.

The manager of the employee should also strive to achieve highest rating out of five to twelve questions:

1. Does the employee know what is expected of him/her at work?
2. Does the employee have the materials and equipment to do the work properly?
3. Does the employee have the opportunity to do what s/he does best every day?
4. Has the employee received recognition or praise for good work in the last seven days?
5. Does the employee have someone or a supervisor who seems to care about him/her as a person at work?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages the development of the employee?
7. Does the opinions of the employee seems to count at work?
8. Does the mission of the company make the employee feels like his/her work is important?
9. Does the employee feel that the co-workers are committed to do quality work?
10. Does the employee have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months the employee has talked with someone about progress?
12. Does the employee feel that s/he had the opportunities in the last year to learn and grow at work?

Finally, the book intends to make you realise what is right about you and your employees.

The new St. Gallen management model

Basic categories of an integrated management ~ by Johannes Ruegg-Sturm

A management model is like map designed to achieve particular tasks. It also accounts for all the dynamic interactions brought about by the elements that form the complex systems in organisations. A good model enables a company to react to change adequately.

The St. Gallen management model is used by corporations worldwide to analyse their activities. The ‘activity chain’ demonstrates how the actions of a company are linked. The ‘process control’ assigns level of priority to these activities. There are six ‘central descriptive categories’ – environmental spheres, stakeholders, interaction issues, structuring forces, processes and organisational change. The four ‘environmental spheres’ are social norms, nature, technology and the economy. The company stakeholders share ‘culture’ or sense of meaning. The company needs to meet it stakeholders’ long term needs to succeed.

The first step to create a model is establishing its purpose. Generally, models:

• represent the elements that really matter in managerial tasks
• depict the cause-and-effect relationships of these elements
• provide direction and focus for the content of communication
• make available common company language and enable quicker responses

The four environmental spheres in detail:

1)     Society

• technological developments
• regulations and laws
• competitive environment (e.g. work force and its age, risk tolerance, innovation, distribution of wealth, political forces, culture and infrastructure, social unrest)

2)     Nature

• climate and pollution
• raw materials
• access to waterways

3)     Technology

• dynamic and rapidly growing technological development

4)     Economy

• markets and competitive pressure
• capital
• demand

There are two approaches to model the stakeholders elements:

1)     Strategic stakeholder value – where the best way to maximise shareholder value is to balance the long term needs of all stakeholders from employees to shareholders

2)     Ethically critical stakeholder value – considers all stakeholders’ needs equally

The model will identify the many interactions between the stakeholders and the company: commercial, cultural and political. A company has to decide its ‘strategic positioning’ in all these relationships.

The next step would be to create a structuring force by developing a company strategy that states:

• its stakeholders and their needs
• its products and services
• the aspects that it will focus on creating value for
• its core competencies

The ‘outside-in’ approach devises a company strategy by looking at its market and industry. Whilst the ‘inside-out’ approach develops unique capabilities and resources of the company to sustain competitive edge.

Activity modeling examines processes and establishes:

• ‘activity chain’ – connections among activities
• ‘process control’ – the operational priorities
• ‘process development’ – how processes evolve into ‘process architecture’ that involves the company’s suppliers, employees and customers

A company is influenced by two dimensions of change that affect one another: the ‘analytical-technical’ and the ‘cultural-relational’ perspectives. In turn,  three elements affect the level of change in the organisation:

• scope – number of people and processes
• scale – fundamental or superficial changes in the view of those who will implement them
• intensity – the speed of the change and if ‘rest period’ is available to employees

Company leaders must weigh the purpose of the organisation against the need for organisational change.

The model was developed in the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland which was once a monastery. The criticism of the model is that it can be too theoretical for the real business world.

Chartership and beyond

I shared chartership experience with fellow CILIP members in London, here is the link to the presentation, Chartership and beyond.

Agenda:

• How to organize the collecting of evidence
• Mentor relationship
• How to decide on what to include in portfolio
• What to include in the personal statement
• How to find time to do it
• What did I get out of it in terms of development?

Thinking outside the box

I learned at the staff management seminar by Zoinul Abidin on 24 October 2006, organised by CILIP Career Development Group:

• Successful managers communicate their visions tirelessly
• They take risk, and take responsibility for the consequences resulted by the action of the team
• They work with, not against, the bureaucracy
• They mix play with work
• They treat staff equally and fairly
• They provide their staff the adequate resources for the job
• They believe in common sense and logic
• They promote excellent customer service, as part of the drive to meet the service target
• They go the extra mile to engage customers, to maximise the success of projects and the service

The complete work of Charles Darwin online

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

This University of Cambridge website led by Dr John van Wyhe is a fine example of manuscript catalogue in my view because:

• It is a well-designed and informative website
• There is an option to view scans of text and images side by side
• Links for catalogues are positioned next to the category headings, together with the introduction and browse option; this feature accommodates browsability and serendipity of a physical library