Technology Anthropologists - I have talked before about the idea of being a technology anthropologist.  It was a random phrase that popped in my head one day.  Some of you remember Dian Fossey the anthropologist who went to Rwanda to live among, and thereby study, gorrillas.  There was movie about her life called Gorillas in the Mist. 

Anyway, I sometimes find myself observing people as they interact with technology as an anthropologist would observe, say, gorilla behavior.  Now, I don't mean that I think that I'm somehow superior to others and I therefor see them as apes.  What I mean is that I am fascinated by how the rapid intrusion of technology into our lives has forced us to grapple with strange tools.  The gap between the capabilities of the tools and our understanding of how to best make use of them is somewhat akin to the gap between two closely related species. 

Anyway, perhaps there is a safer metaphor.  But the key thing is curiousity.  I am infinitely curious about how we will learn to accommodate technology.  Kids are interesting, but they aren't adapting to technology.  It's just there and they use it.  But adults, especially older adults are fascinating.  I'm not the only one who is reporting on these strange encounters.  Jenny does it frequently, and did it again today in a post that starts by referencing a Dave Barry article.  Jim McGee does it too; his inclination is toward the effect of technology on business.  But, of course, he's interested in technology in broader ways than just business, as his post today on the difference between technology and magic demonstrates.

Phil Windley has a post today on KmIrony that qualifies.  Any others?

[Ernie the Attorney]

Ernie is on to a nice meme here. Another term to throw into the mix is "ethnography." While usually associated with doing anthropology in the field, it's also become a legitimate research tool in organizational settings. I find an anthropological approach particularly useful in the realm of technology for a couple of reasons. First, technology is too dynamic for a lot of other research approaches. Along a similar line, organizational research is not a place where you get to do controlled experiments. It's either impractical or unethical (sometimes both). That leaves you with observational techniques of one sort or another. One advantage of ethnographic/anthropological approaches is that they explicitly recognize that the anthropologist/observer is part of the system.

Another reason that I prefer anthorpological approaches is that technology and knowledge management issues lie in a space that Gerry Weinberg describes as "organized complexity." The following diagram comes from his excellent Introduction to General Systems Thinking:

In that environment you need tools that are robust more than you need tools that are precise. You tolerate fuzziness in the answers in exchange for getting answers that are directionally correct in a manageable amount of time.

One consequence of doing anthropology is that you have to develop some sense for who the observer is. You're not doing experimental work that can be replicated. You're doing a certain kind of storytelling that depends on observational skills and narrative skills. Unlike a fiction writer, you aren't using stories for the abiilty to make stuff up out of whole cloth (I suppose fiction writers don't really do that either). You are using narrative as a tool to reveal gaps in the logic, to discover what's missing in the logic of the story that will point you toward new things to look for.

4:22:19 PM •  • comment  

[Point of clarification. The resources listed here were pulled together and organized by Joy London on her excellent blog - Excited Utterances. Although it's cited below, some readers missed that, meaning Joy isn't getting the credit she deserves. 

I continue to struggle with how best to reference material here. My preference is to post all the material that comes through my aggregator and then to add my commentary. I typically indent/blockquote the posted material and add my comments at the end. Once I have some more time to figure out CSS and stylesheets I can probably figure out a more visual way of setting off quoted material from my own stuff. Anyway, Joy did the heavy lifting here. I just used it as a launching pad for a few observations. I also wanted to make sure that I had all these excellent materials ready to hand as part of my use of this weblog as my backup brain.] 

Proxemics and Law Firm Workspace. I've always been fascinated by "proxemics"—man's appreciation and use of physical space. The significance of proxemics in law firms is readily apparent as we consider ways to form communities of practice. A number of law firms have rethought their physical spaces to achieve more innovative and flexible knowledge sharing environments.

Doug Zucker and Christopher Murray, at Gensler, an international architectural and design firm, have consulted with a number of law firms on the use of its physical space.

McDermott, Will & Emory (Washington, DC) clustered its associate offices around partner secretarial staff.

Cooley Godward (Reston, VA) provides visitor lounges as part of its conference center. With full voice/data capability and soft seating designed for work as well as conversation, it's an ideal flex space that can also support teamwork and breakout sessions.

Gunderson, Dettmar (Menlo Park, CA) sets its paralegal/administrative workspace at the center of a converted warehouse to create a sense of openness and community. (See a virtual tour of Gunderson's Menlo Park, Boston and New York offices).

Other Gensler law firm clients include San Francisco firms Bingham McCutchen, Brobeck, Heller Ehrman, and Graham & James (now merged with Squire Sanders).

For further reading:

(1) Law Firms: Design for Flexibility by Christopher Murray, III

(2) Law Firms: Trends & Implications by Doug Zucker

(3) Law Office Design by Doug Zucker

(4) It's Not Your Father's Law Firm Any More by Deborah Elliott: a profile of Morrison & Foerster's San Diego office (full article available via subscription)

(5) A Different Kind of Sandbox by Janet Wiens: a profile of Greenberg Traurig's, Tysons Corner office

(6) Flexibility is In, Rigidity Out as Law Firm Offices Evolve by Andrea Vanecko

(7) Benchmarking the Law Office by Margo Grant Walsh

(8) The Shape of the Legal Office Today (a breakfast seminar held by architects Pringle Brandon with speakers from Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Nabarro Nathanson and Slaughter and May)

(9) KnowledgeBoard's Space special interest group's (SIG) news and documents

Architectural firms:

(1) Gensler [additional clients: King & Spalding (New York office)

(2) Calloway Johnson Moore & West [client: Blanco Tackabery's office in Winston-Salem]

(3) Swanke Hayden Connell [clients: Dibb Lupton Alsop (Leeds office) and Greenberg Traurig (Tysons Corner office)]

(4) Callison Architects [clients: Latham & Watkins (Orange County office) and Orrick, Herrington]

(5) Pringle Brandon [clients: Allen & Overy's and Linklater's open-plan office spaces]

Workspace Design Consultants

Sparknow, a KM consultancy. Read some of their excellent publications (21 papers which can be downloaded beginning on this page) Notable mentions:

Designing Spaces for Knowledge Work—Can the Use of Fiction Help Construct New Realities?

The Role of Private and Public Spaces in Knowledge Management

Physical Space—the Most Neglected Resource in Contemporary Knowledge Management? [excited utterances]

An Excellent collection of resources.

The issues of proxemics extend well beyond law firms. When we designed our first office space for Diamond in the Hancock building, we made a couple of interesting decisions with the help of Perkins & Will , our architects. For example, we turned all the corners of the floor into team rooms where project teams could work. That left no corner offices to fight over among the partners. The Hancock has great views and we were on the 30th floor. We designed the partner offices with glass partitions separating them from the inner areas so that those views were available. A couple of partners wanted to restrict use of partner offices, but that lasted about 15 minutes. Partners are on the road most of the time, so partner offices rapidly became yet another meeting room for small teams.

One little lesson we learned and applied when we added space. The first offices had lots of power and network connections but they required crawling under credenzas to get to. In the second stage build out, the offices had all power and network connections available at desktop height at the back of the desks.

1:58:53 PM •  • comment  

ad hoc knowledge management tools. In a follow-up to my quick look at Ideagraph I spent a little time going though my bookmarks for similar... [Way.Nu]

Slowly catching up with stuff that came through my aggregator over the holidays. This is some excellent thinking on the right frame of reference for thinking about knowledge management. Some key excerpts:

...while a batch of VC dollars have been spent on intranets and portal creation software, the whole concept of centralized knowledge management feels wrong to me...

What's more the knowledge that workers create must be portable, for no matter how much companies wish to lock up employees' ideas as intellectual property, the cross-pollination that occurs when people move from company to company is critical to innovation. We should be building tools to encourage innovation and collaboration, not constrain and control it....

The integration of personal and published web content, content and concept sharing, RSS aggregation and publishing, blogging, email filtering/storage/extraction and powerful collaborative searching is bringing a real revolution in knowledge working productivity into view.

There's a marketing challenge here. While the answer is decentralized, solutions typically get sold to someone who's been put in charge of the problem. Until you've thought long and hard about knowledge management from an operational point of view, the centralized solutions promoted by technology vendors are certainly going to sound like a faster and easier solution to your (i.e. newly appointed chief knowledge officer or equivalent) problem.  That they aren't won't be immediately apparent and won't easily be traced to adopting a centralized approach.

Making knowledge management work requires a delicate blend of technology tools, organizational sensitivity, patience, and persistence. A difficult message to get across in a technology marketing environment addicted to peddling instant miracle cures.

11:06:23 AM •  • comment