Organizations: keep an eye on your high speed learners

A participant during my master class on learning of the future shares: "I was learning a lot through the online world and would be at the cutting-edge in my field, this learning was logical part of my work as recruiter. Now I have a new job and it is not a logical part of my function. I don't have the time anymore to be active online. I see that I am no longer aware of all the new developments in my field". You will not get better proof of the power of online, informal learning. And at the same time it shows what the biggest bottleneck is: organizations do not have an eye for self-learning professionals and do not facilitate this type of learning either. The focus is still on courses.

The masterclass started with my definition of the knowmad: "someone who learns continuously and thereby makes smart use of the online world"

The first part of the masterclass I focussed on skills for knowmads, including developing (online) identity, networking, smart use of tools and technology and application in practice: translating the online world and applying learnings. The second part I discussed the organization as a learning environment for the knowmad. Although I do know that many organizations do not actively facilitate informal learning, it was quite shocking (but interesting of course!) to hear stories from the participants.

Two important things struck me:

The big challenge for professionals is to deal with information overload: people indicated that they continuous flow of all information and via various channels (emails, apps, Linked) makes them feel bad. The consequence of this is that they withdraw from the flows and start to avoid information, get rid of Twitter and only follow what is needed (emails). This is a logical response if you start to feel bad because of the flows of information, right? The entire group felt that they had no control over the many information flows. No participant worked in an organization that supports employees to take back control over the information flows.

Organizations do not have a keen eye for inquisitive employees, the high speed learners: that is why professionals often do informal learning in the evenings. This means, for example, that someone who works in a high-tech environment and constantly keeps up to date via podcasts and youtube videos may look for the new job after a few years. To what extent has the organization benefited from this knowledge development? As long as the employee works in the organization, he or she will apply this knowledge. However, it remains personal knowledge but does not become organizational knowledge unless there is a conscious focus on collaborative learning and sharing this knowledge.

An interesting question from a participant: innovation seems to be a keyword for knowmads who learn continuously, but not everyone needs to focus on innovation? I think it's a good question and I am not sure about the answer. There is definitely a difference between functions in their focus on innovation. A high tech environment for instance will have an inherent need to innovate. Personally, I think that actually there is no single function in which innovation is not necessary.  Contexts and technology are changing. The customer also wants something 'new'. What do you think?

The slides of this master class:
 

Knowmadisch werken: het leren van de toekomst from Joitske Hulsebosch

Knowmads: the battle of generations

Generational differences in the workplace are debated. On the one hand you have the people who believe there are differences and that every organization should be responsive to those differences. Especially the millennials are seen as a different breed, for instance I read the book by Jamie Notter: When millennials take over. On the other hand there are those who think it is a myth that generations would adhere to other values, see eg. Cut the crap: the make up nonsense about generations at work.  Stassen, Anseel en Levecque have analyzed several studies. They state that the research structure of most studies is not capable of making a valid verdict. An important methodological problem is the distinction between the effects of three different factors: age, period and generation. Either way: it's hard to proof. 

The battle of the knowmads

I attended a festival in the north of the Netherlands called Beleef de zandbak. It offered me the opportunity to do an experiment: the battle of generations. My own curiosity is with different uses of technology in the workplace: I see that there are differences, but somehow people are sensitive to generalizations. What differences? I'm pretty fast online, but I see that youngsters are much faster. On the other hand I did sessions for students, but very few students knew what social bookmarking was. That's why I was eager to organize an experiment with practical knowledge assignments to see whether different generations would tackle the assignments differently. The assignments were arranged in such a way that there was a winner for each question. I had about 18 people in my workshop and used the following generations to group them:

• Babyboomers: born between 1940-1955
• Generation X: 1956 en 1970
• Generation Y: 1971 en 1990
• Millennials born after 1990

Because not all generations were represented I ended up with three groups. In each group one person was appointed as observer. 

• Generatie X  - old (1956-1963)
• Generatie X -  young (1964-1970)
• Generatie Y and one millennial (after 1971)

Generation Y and millennial

Generation X 1956-1963

The winner(s)

The winner was ... generation Y (with one millennial). Generation X-old was occupying the second place. I must say: observing from a distance I saw little differences between the three groups. . However, the observations of the researchers and the teams showed quite some differences; with very interesting conclusions!

Striking observations

• The two 'older' groups were smarter in using online media. All groups used online media to find answers to a network assignment (collect responses to a statement). However, the younger generation used only Twitter and then especially to search. The other groups also used Facebook and Whatsapp. My personal observation is that nobody thought of starting a poll, which would be my way to collect responses online. In the exchange everyone agreed that if Y's uses their online networks they will probably get faster responses. 
• All groups also used offline networks in the same way by sending group members out to collect answers face-to-face. No difference.
• Generation X had more ready knowledge within the group. Generation X-old won at the first question because they simply know all the answers by heart. Googling could not beat that. Furthermore, the observers of X knew the answers but were not allowed to participate in responding. 
• Generation Y was faster. This lead them to the victory at the third question. According to the observer, "they were enormously fast in shifting from team communication to individual google searches and back to team collaboration". However, in two cases, the speed lead them to the wrong answer. In one case, they searched for NPO2 instead of NVO2. In another question they had an answer which was not logical at all. Critical thinking would have helped to know this.
• Both generation X groups were very critical of questions and answers, really thought about it, and sometimes criticized the questions. Generation Y was fast and less thought-full. A trade-off between speed and critical thinking?
• Generation Y collaborated very smoothly, much better than generation X-young. The discussion revealed that not everyone in the room had learned to work together during their education, and this translates into current practices. Generation X-young seemed to have a more solistic approach. But this depends on your type of education, for instance I have worked half of my university time in Wageningen in groups. 

Conclusions 

This is not a groundbreaking research, but a nice experiment. I draw three key conclusions.

1. A first conclusion is that both generations show their own strengths in this experiment. Generation X has logically more knowledge of the top of their heads, which can be very useful. In addition, they think critically about questions and answers. Generation Y googlet faster and can switch quickly, but sometimes this is at the expense of critical reflection and may therefore put them on the wrong track. Ultimately, it is good to work together among generations to take advantage of everybody's qualities. Don't be shy to discuss them. 
2. A second conclusion is that Generation Y is by definition not that good in leveraging online networks and using online tools. That could be a pitfall if you think they are good because of their presence on social media. Basic collaborative skills are taught during your education, and most millennials were not taught to leverage online networks.
3. A third conclusion is that there are equally differences within generations (contribution Mirjam Neelen: as a result so you can never generalize the conclusions and apply them to individuals. 

How I share online

This is my contribution to the blogcarnaval  of the LOSmakers. The subject is online sharing of knowledge and experiences. "We all talk about online knowledge sharing, but who is really practising it? And if you don't why not?" If you are Dutch and want to join you can find the invitation in our LinkedIn group. The deadline is 15 november.

I surfed back to my very first blogpost - which has really been the start of my online sharing career. On the 24th of october 2005 (11 years ago!) my first blogpost went live with the title "I did it!"



I do remember that it was very exciting to throw something openly on the Internet. There's a picture of my bike - no idea why :). Probably I found a bike picture very personal. As you can see there are 4 positive comments, from my fellow participants in an online course on facilitation. I started because I was inspired by Beth Kanter who was together with me in this course. These comments gave me the courage to persevere, at least someone who read it ... I needed perseverance because it was scary to blog outloud in the public blogosphere. Sometimes people would ask me how I was able to write so personal and easy - a tone in between an article and small talk. I think this was easy because I wrote for the small group of my course and not for "everyone on the Internet." I soon realized that it is more likely that your blog is read by nobody than by everyone. What I like about blogging is that it helps to organize your thoughts and I enjoy to build something on the internet which is really mine. I had very positive feedback. I got comments from strangers (on the blog but also by mail), and it was funny when I someone during a face-to-face meeting - "oh you are  Joitske from Lasagne and chips!" (that was the name of my blog). I got comments from the author about whom I had done a book review. I noticed various times that my blogpost had landed somewhere in a online course or MOOC due to the high number of clicks from the same course environment. Read more details about my first blog period in my pathway into blogging.

11 years later I don't get adrenaline anymore from comments on my blog. Besides they are often spam .. Blogging has become something normal, but also a part of my routines. The number of places where I share online has expanded (see drawing). The online space can be grouped into 8 major social networks where I share varying from public to more private spaces. Twitter and Youtube screencasts have become important but also LinkedIn groups that are more private. The number of blogs have expanded: next to my own blog, I blog for Ennuonline, our company. Yet my blog remains special because it is my own personal place, it feels different, less marketing oriented. I still enjoy share with a community feeling, knowing that there is a core group who reads it, then you know better what you need to share. This happens with some Twitter hashtags. Pinterest is in it as well, but you could argue that pinterest boards are not so much about knowledge sharing but more about content curation. The challenges that I see / feel are:

• With so many online spaces and followers: know what you want to share and where- I recently asked a question on three sites, but then you have the answers from three spaces to work with. The responses from two private communities were more relevant than through the public Twitter.
• Finding a balance in sharing and reading / responding - with blogs I manage to do so,  I read more than I write, but with Twitter, I find it a challenge with so many lists. So I do try to respond to someone everyday at least.
• Continue to share about the practice. It is sometimes easier to write 10 tips .. then blogging about your own experiences or clients. It is sometimes difficult to blog about a client without the need for approval by the communications department. A related dilemma is whether you write from an expert role or from practice exploration. With 10 tips you put yourself more in an expert role, but you get closer to reality with an honest practice story and add more value to advancing the overall practice. I'm convinced!

Finding time to share online has never been a challenge to me. It's important to me, so I'll make time for. It is important for organizing my thoughts, and has become part of my routine. A month without a blog is a month not lived :).

How to mix work and private life on social media: tips for finding the right balance

The picture says: Don't forget to unfriend your boss when the weekend begins... Loesje

If you are a professional engaging in social media you need to find a balance between the sharing of private and professional information and bringing together or separating different networks; networks of friends and colleagues. Inherent in social media is that there is no clear separation between work and private life, because usually you have only one account on eg Facebook or Twitter. On that account you may be followed by friends and family on the one hand, but also by people from various professional networks. When you have a mix of people, what will you post? Pictures of the children? Professional articles? Or a mix? Personally, I don't have a dilemma on Twitter which I mainly use as a professional network about social and informal learning. On Facebook it is more tricky for me. I started on Facebook with mostly people from my international professional communities (eg Km4dev), but now there are more and more friends on Facebook. Do I hence share my vacation or share more about the content of my work? and I do post in Dutch, English or Spanish?. I end up sharing very little. I suspect that for many young people the dilemma will be reverse: they have a private network of friends on social media and beyond may later become active as a professional.

Different identities
As a basis, it is good to also look to see how you're separating - private- worklife in general in life. What are your different identities / caps you are wearing?. Everyone has their own different identities as family member, professional, friend, expert in ICT or enthusiastic music connoisseur, which identity in which you engage online? Do you know who you are and what you stand for? From my past experience working in international cooperation, I am quite used to a blurred boundary between private life and work. You know a lot of about your colleagues private lives in international developmen, from, for instance, driving 5 hours in the car together .... and in your free time you talk again about the work. Josien Kapma told me once that for farmers it is actually quite normal to integration private life and work, and that it is actually a separation which only began with the industrial revolution. If you are used not so strict separation will also be easier online more mixing. On a similar note a new job may bring about a new identity or new focus. That does require you to build a new network online. 

Separating different identities online 
If you clearly have different identities which are hard to mix and would like to separate them online, there are different options:

1. You can choose to have 2 different accounts. For instance, in primary schools is it often recommended to have a private account and a teacher's account. Eventually you may not want all your students to know about your parties. On the other hand, there is a Dutch professor Mooi who deliberately invites students to his facebook profile and also talks about concerts he has been too and other personal interests. Mooi: "I chose to present myself as a person and to see how students would react. I started posting inspiring images with captions, but soon I noticed that students were open to conversation." Another reason for separate accounts may be language, eg a Dutch and english twitter account. I mix Dutch and English tweets but are still struggling. 
2. Beside having different accounts you can use some features like lists on Twitter or Google + circles to distinguish networks via one account.  
3. You could also make a distinction in social networks used for private or professional engagement, such as Facebook for personal and Twitter for professional contacts. 

Here you will find 5 more tips to separate private and professional lives online. And here's also a blogpost with some figures on how people separate their professional and private lives.

Showing your unique professional perspective
Balancing between work and private life in social media is not just about your personal life and sharing your hamster or not but it is also about showing your personal color and unique views as a professional, your unique perspective. Do you share what you feel strongly about as a professional or do you neutrally retweet others without stating your opinion or view? I always try to give my opinion about things I share. I think it is also better for people to make a decision whether to click on something you share. See this tweet about a certain presentation of where I indicate slide 5 is funny.

Being honest and open versus thinking about your personal branding / clients/ people's feelings  What makes social media so compelling are the real stories, and those stories may be both personal and professional. Through social media people share their own stories, which give a different insight into somebody's life compared to eg. scientific articles. The question here is what you like to show. Recently I participated in the blogpraat chat where this was also a question: How can you blog about a sensitive situation at work without it being recognizable to colleagues? This is something I myself am also struggling with. On the one hand, because you do not want people to recognize themselves when the situation is sensitive. On the other hand, because you also want to create a certain professional image. While those 'war stories' about difficulties are often the most powerful stories. How open do you want to be? And it's even harder if you active on behalf of an organization. 

Balance between online and offline  
Furthermore, of course you also have to find a balance investing in online social media versus face-to-face contacts. When I am too much online I find it boring, when I am too busy I can't find the time to blog.. When you have to meet many deadlines it might be wise to put all social media off ... and yet keep some light engagement. You might need to meet and talk with new contacts on Twitter. Also here you need to find the right balance. 

NB. Input and inspiration for this blogpost gained during our 8 month course de leergang leren en veranderen met sociale media

About blogging, tunneling visions and knowledge entrepreneurship

I had the pleasure to attend a presentation by Julie Ferguson. Julie is doing research for the university of Amsterdam (VU) into (micro-)blogging as part of her PdD research about knowledge and power in the development sector. The research has not yet been published.

This research had the goal to investigate how knowledge related to a shared organising vision (in this case (ICT4D, about ICT for development). It analyzes the behaviour and perception of the bloggers. She interviewed 7 professional ICT4D bloggers (used interviews to identify those) and analysed their blogs. She has some remarkable conclusions.

Blogging has some so-called 'affordances':

• Many to many communication


• Reflection in practice
  


• Open and interactive
  

Because of these affordances blogs may enhance participation in ICT4D policy and practice, creating an organising vision. It has the potential to close the gap between the discours at policy level and the discours at country level, by organisations and 'the poor'. This was what the bloggers believed in. In practice things were slightly different. The findings:

Blogging as 'reflective practitioner'

All bloggers basically blogged for themselves, not for marketing or other purposes. Blogging helped them in sense-making, development of ideas and reflection on their practice as 'reflective practitioners'. Blogging may hence be an important activity for professional development of knowledge workers and can help develop their professional identity.

Blogging outside the organisational boundaries

All bloggers were pioneers and ahead in thinking of their own organisations. For some their blogging activities were controversial within the organisation. Blogging offered an important space for professionals outside the organisation, to exchange ideas with a wider group of people, mostly outside their organisation.

Bloggers contributed to a tunneling vision instead of organising vision

The idea of creating an organising vision through participation on blogs was not found through analysis of the blogs. The number of comments were relatively low (an average of 1,1 comment per blogpost); even though there were quite some readers. Most of the comments were positive, so the fear for negative comments that many organisations have was not confirmed by this research. (if I recall well, she said only 2% of comments were negative). On the contrary, many comments were appreciative like 'What a great post!'. By lack of real content interaction, the blogs were most of all a reflection of the individual professional bloggers, who we may see as 'knowledge-enterpreneur'. As a result, there was an overall fragmentation of ideas, instead of convergence. She could not discover an emerging organising vision. (it was not clear to me whether the bloggers were reading each other's blogs). Rather, ideas went into all kind of different directions.

New discours

However, despite the fragmentation of ideas, there was a new discours, outside the accepted visions of the organisation. You might say there were new lines of thinking, new directions explicited by these knowledge entrepreneurs. I asked Julie whether they influenced actual practice or policy, but that was outside the scope of her research. In some cases, she did get that impression though, that the blogs did influence policy and practice. This means that blogs can be a good tool for knowledge-entrepreneurs to stimulate innovative thinking within a sector. Though the research focused on the fragmentation, I do see this a something very positive.

Facilitators: we are needed!...

Simply by bloggers a new organising vision does not emerge spontaneous. This is the part where the obvious comes up: there is more needed than blogs to cultivate a collective vision, eg to cultivate a bloggers community, organise meetings, discussions of ideas presented in blogs. Think of what Global Voices ("the world is talking are you listening?") is doing to amplify the voices of bloggers in different countries. Also a teamblog might be an interesting alternative, like thes teamblog of NVO2. A teamblog might be more conducive to read each other's contributions than individual blogs.

What motivates knowledge workers?

I just listened to a teleconference where the presentor has an accent and it was tough to listen. In those situations using visuals like a presentation or typing on an etherpad page or whiteboard can help too. Then I found this wonderful video here ... a cartoonist draws the story while it is told. A beautiful form!

But the content is equally appealing to me. Daniel Pink (I liked his book A whole new mind) explains how motivation of knowledge workers works. When paid more, they perform less. It does work to motivate people with payment when the tasks are mechanical. For knowledge workers, it doesn't work. What they are really looking for is self-direction and autonomy, mastery and making a contribution. That's what drives them. An example is giving of a firm where employees were allowed 100% self-direction for 24 hours. And then asked to share, which yielded nice work.

I recognize this from my own experiences working in organizations. I'm much happier working on my own, enjoying my autonomy. I think it is hard for organizations to offer that space. One thing I'm missing is that knowledge workers in organisations also need recognition. I had a hard time because I was always searching for recognition of my work, whereas managers were hardly interesting in what I was really doing. I hear this too in the experiences of friends who work in organizations. Managers tend to want to take the credit, which bereaves workers of the needed recognition for their contributions.

Well, if you have 10 minutes and are interested, watch it..

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• Book 60: A Whole New Mind (mootbox.com)

Follow the instructions or think for yourself?

I found this cartoon on the blog of Marnix Catteeuw. If you can't read the text, you can go to his blog. It was originally posted on the xkcd blog.

I fell into the same trap when I was trying to locate a physiotherapist with google maps. I thought it was handy that you can locate them on the map immediately. I discovered later that the good old fat yellow pages had many more referrals than google maps..

Great reminder that good professionals think for themselves and don't routinely follow the instructions..

The networked student and knowledge worker

Irene Hanraets alerted me about this video about the networked student by wdrexler:



The way the networked student uses web2.0 services is basically the way I use them. So it could be the knowledge worker2.0 too. I wonder though, about individual paths and diversity. I don't think learning by blogging works for every student, or does it? I also wonder what it takes in terms of knowing what direction you want to take. In my experience you have to be quite focused (and not loosing any serendipity at the same time) not to waste a lot of time. What do you think?

And what does it mean for education. I'm teaching too, but the blog idea I introduced didn't take off naturally and I didn't have time to guide it properly. So it would need sufficient guidance from teachers to make it really useful..

The organization is there to stay, but the manager is not

In an earlier blogpost I proposed to experiment with a blog debate and Josien and Andy were into to trying this. Josien kicked off a debate about The end of the organization? Based on an essay by Michael Gilbert.

A quote:

Is this the end of the organization? Probably not by name and certainly not in the broadest sense of the term. But the traditional, tightly controlled, top down, branded organization is finding itself having to adapt and change. The
organizations of the future will not look like the organizations of today. Whether the organization as we know it survives or not, it is by studying the changing patterns of communication that we will discover the new
shape of civil society. Our methods of analysis - and possibly our methods of regulation, funding, and participation - will shift from those that reflect managerial thinking to those that reflect ecosystem thinking.

Josien responded by agreeing that organizations are shaped by communication patterns, communication patterns are changing, therefore organizations are changing. Communication channels have determined organigrams. The social web is a revolution which has really changed the principles of communication. Secondly, she argues that it is already happening, the future is now. For instance in the music, travel industries etc. New business models emerge. Best is the read the full post.

So I will argue that the organization is here to stay. I think both are putting too much emphasis on communication. The basis of organizations is their mission, aim, goal, whatever you name it. In the commercial sector it is about products and services, in the government is it about legislation, in the nonprofit sector is it about a societal goal.. The function of an organization is to deliver that product or to achieve that mission by integrating the work of its employees. So the organization is there to stay, because its basis it collaborating to produce a product or service of value for society. Communication is a means to an end.

But I do think there are changes underway, since more and more organizations thrive on knowledge workers, professionals. I would like to point to Stephen Collin's presentation Power to the People. Stephen points to the fact that knowledge workers (people working primarily with information and developing and using knowledge) are often demotivated and restrictred by their organizations. The manager's wish to control the outputs of the organizations leads to overly controlling behaviour towards knowledge workers who feel withheld in their practice by the managers. This is a core conflict between managers and knowledge workers who don't want to be managed. So the organizations of the future will have found ways of dealing with this conflict and are smart in leveraging the power of the knowledge workers. Possible contributions to dealing with this conflict may be found in the following 3 areas:

1. Communities of practice - whereby value created is measured and effectiveness closely monitored- this needs much more attention.
2. Online communication and collaboration tools- which make help reducing the tension between managers and knowledge workers because it makes the work of knowledge workers more accessible and transparent. (after all, online communication leaves visible traces, face-to-face communication doesn't)
3. Disappearance of the division between knowledge worker and managers, managers will increasingly be knowledge workers and be parttime managers - hence the disappearance of the full-time manager.

Aid is a knowledge industry?

picture: Mariette Heres

In the Broker you can find an article called Aid is a knowledge industry in which Mariette Heres argues that "although NGOs are taking more interest in knowledge management, they have so far failed to recognize that they are part of a knowledge industry, of which the delivery of goods and services is only a part."

I think it is interesting to put up such a statement, which makes people think. Unfortunately she does not define what a knowledge industry is, which makes the argumentation weaker. And there is no definition to be found on wikipedia. It made me think about what a knowledge industry is, compared to a service/product industry. The knowledge worker is a term I use myself at times. Anecdote wrote that the word knowledge worker is now meaningless in developed countries because the shift from manual labour to job requiring knowledge work is now complete. If you look at it from that angle, all professionals are knowledge workers, and the term becomes obsolete. Is a farmer not a knowledge worker?

Mariette explains the 'stock and flow' approaches to knowledge. (by the way an article from 2002 by Dick Stenmark that I still like very much for its explanation of the two approaches can be found here). He states that supporters of the flow view of knowledge:

"may thus understand knowledge management systems not as an IT artefact but as an environment of people, organizational processes, business strategies and IT, where the objective is to leverage and advance the knowledge of those people."

And states that: "the ICCO alliance is one of the few NGOs to have taken a step towards adopting the flow approach to knowledge." I think it is a bit tricky to use the approaches to label one or the other organization. It might be better to use the distinction between the two approaches to point out where some approaches may be flawed or to understand a difference in thinking about the best knowledge management intervention in a certain situation.

Wenger furthermore talks about a third wave of knowledge management:

" The third wave is now starting to focus on strategic capabilities. It reflects a view of knowledge as strategic asset and places the emphasis on the strategic stewardship of knowledge domains. The promise of knowledge management now lies in a systematic knowledge strategy and in the potential of communities of practice as a vehicle for engaging
practitioners in the required strategic conversation."

Maybe organizations should learn how to manage knowledge as a strategic asset?

Let me finish by trying to formulate my opinion about the statement made by the article: I think the development sector can indeed benefit from improved knowledge management interventions. Nevertheless, I think I disagree that knowledge was never a concern. Lots of organizations started out with 'knowledge transfer' strategies. For instance, it is a sector where evaluation is really institutionalized and embedded.

It would be good to see a better knowledge systems analysis of the development sector and where knowledge creation and innovate is hampered. I see the gap mainly in separate learning circles in the south and in the north that do not sufficiently merge. And Dick Stenmark gives a hint to why this gap may exist: 'only individuals who have a requisite level of shared background can truly exchange knowledge. Tradition, profession and organizational belonging all carry their own assumptions. The more overlapping these tacit assumptions and experiences the better (eg. if all three realms overlap likelihood of understanding will increase.'

The new knowledge worker

I participated in a teleconference by CPsquare where Jeroen van Bree presented his Phd research about What we can learn from Virtual Gaming Worlds. You can find another dutch set of slides here.

He spoke about the new knowledge worker who does not find enough space to be creative and to apply his/her skills in organisations, and especially not the way they are structured now. His idea is that we can learn from virtual gaming worlds where people are highly motivated and stimulated to develop their skills. What can we learn from this to change the structures and processes within organisations?

Though I'm not into virtual gaming, this is a question that I think is very important, and I experienced it throughout my own career in organisations. It's really hard to find an organisation where you get the space to innovate and develop yourself without managers getting in the way. Personally, I see a potential for communities of practice to provide that space. Jack Vinson had a nice presentation about the knowledge worker 2.0