Playtime is Over, It's Time for Business Collaboration

I was fortunate to be invited to a small dinner party last night. The "keynote" was given by Bonnie Cheuk, whom I've been a fan of for years. 

There were 21 of us in the cozy, yet swanky "back room" of a hotel in London. It was literally called the back room. If I recall correctly, it had all white walls covered in some stucco white design, with one huge glass window facing the street. The room was probably 25' by 25' with one long dinner table diagonally across the middle. In one corner there was a secret little table in a cutout area of the wall, people put their bags and belongings there. The chandelier was overwhelming, the ceiling was only 10 feet and the chandelier was just feet above you and purposefully way too big for the room. A posh white couch, chair and side table anchored the other side of the room.

For the first 30 minutes they served drinks and we stood and chatted. It always fascinates me to watch group dynamics. We started in a small group standing in a circle, once we hit 8 people, a side conversation started. That spurred several other side conversations to start and all of a sudden there were 20 people each talking 1:1. 

We were asked to sit down so the evening could begin. We were literally shoulder to shoulder and yet we had just enough room to not feel over-crowded. Some people would say it was perfect for group conversation.

Bonnie Cheuk kicked off the night and shared her thoughts on global knowledge management, having just lead km for a multi billion £ organisation. I've admired Bonnie's work for years, so it was great to meet her in person. 

As the fantastic food came out in course after course, I was slightly surprised that conversation remained at the full 21-person group level. It felt like a family dinner, quite nice. Several key points were made, and it was a bit of an "information versus knowledge, culture vs technology" tone. 

Here are some of the key points I heard:

-Believe in yourself, KM is hard

-Change is one conversation at a time

-Drop the "social solution", focus on business needs

-Focus on business processes, as opposed to tools

-Focus on user experience (which later became a debate about "users" vs "employees" vs "people")

-Replicate the success

-Be passionate, find the other passionate people (one org called them "agents" as opposed to the popular naming of "ambassadors")

-Find the ppl in your org that are on linked in and twitter and send them an email, use them as a first pilot community

-"We have an org memory of about a year, older than that, it may well have not happened"

-"All of our reward is based on heros, how do we change that?"

-"After completing a task, we don't think about 'who else should know this', and how would you know?"

-"If you've been here 20 years then you know who to go to, how do you get employees that have been here 2 months to know who to go to?"

-"Playtime is over" (I thought that was a cool quote)

-"Better to get punched in the face on your intranet than to be stabbed in the back on glass door[.com]" (wow, there's a backstory there for sure)

After dinner was over, a few people stuck around to do a bit more networking. The whole night had a great feel to it, very comfortable and validating. I'm hoping to keep in touch with several of the folks I met, I definitely appreciate the invitation and where it might take us in the future.