Content Precedes Design

Your meeting turned into a circus? Triage the 'elephant in the room'...

You never know what collaborations could evolve when you fully participate in something... These days, especially with Zoom, etc., it's always tempting to just consume off-camera or multi-task during online workshops instead of really engaging with the content and contributing back. After a stimulating Guided Insights Roundtable in November, Nancy Settle-Murphy and I ended up continuing the conversation on a particular aspect from the session that we were both quite interested in exploring further together.

Our work eventually evolved into an article and tip sheet. Across in-person and virtual, I've certainly been in my fair share of contentious meetings. Personally, I trend towards avoiding confrontation at all costs. Having a concise triage method at-the-ready can definitely help in being prepared for that inevitable tense situation.

Please take advantage of our guidance:

Tips for Naming the Elephant in the Room, Safely

and the download:

De-Escalation Triage Model

I'm very glad we took the opportunity to work together on this. Not something I would usually have written about or devoted time to... grateful for that unexpected result of full participation. If you're not familiar, I highly recommend signing up for her email Communiqué and taking advantage of any upcoming offerings.

A New Year, A New Era for Generative AI

As we step into 2025 amidst rapidly evolving GenAI capabilities, one question looms large...

How will humans and AI work together?

If you’re energized by GenAI, are you also concerned by the problems employing it presents? Fear not!

Knowledge Managers can provide sanity amid the GenAI mania.

Drawing upon our collective decades of practical, applied experience across industries and the globe, my SIKM Boston co-authors and I offer this timely article exploring how we can shape the GenAI value landscape by blending human creativity with AI’s power. We argue, as KM practitioners, that we have novel approaches to harnessing this new toolset… leveraging Collectivity (facility with human intuition and interaction), Nostalgia (wielding a rich, non-linear information recall), and Selectivity (attention to weak signals).

Collaborative Innovation

Employing collective sense-making to enhance AI outcomes and foster trust.

Harnessing the Past for the Future

Dynamic curation of historical knowledge to improve AI’s accuracy and relevance.

Breaking the Mold

Out-of-box thinking to unlock hidden opportunities and mitigate the risks of AI conformity.

2025 is the year to lean into collaboration between human knowledge-based expertise and GenAI. The future isn't about AI replacing human knowledge workers—it's about creating an evolving, valuable human-AI ecosystem where KM professionals play a crucial role in ensuring accuracy, context, and innovation. These behaviors will be critical. Will we seize this opportunity?

Andrew Trickett, Eve Porter-Zuckerman, Katrina Pugh, Marc Solomon, and myself invite you to read our article and share your thoughts. Let’s shape this new landscape together!

https://osf.io/atfyz