KM Australia Knowledge Cafe Workshop July 2011

1. The kind of conversation I’m interested in is one in which you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person. Theodore Zeldin Conversation Theodore is an Oxford Historian

2. The birth of the Gurteen Knowledge Cafe London, September 2002

4. Speed networking

5. Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop

7. Photographs

8. Our job is to have interesting conversations

9. Business is a conversation Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation - literally. And 'knowledge workers' are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting conversations. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

10. Conversation is a meeting of minds Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. Theodore Zeldin Conversation

11. KM is about understanding For all our knowledge, we have no idea what we're talking about. We don't understand what's going on in our business, our market, and our world. KM shouldn’t be about helping us to know more. It should be about helping us to understand. So, how do we understand things? It's through stories that we understand how the world works. David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

12. Dialogue The kind of conversation I’m interested in is one in which you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person. Theodore Zeldin Conversation

14. Conversation is our most effective KM tool Our most effective KM tool is conversation. The words we choose, the questions we ask, and the metaphors we use to explain ourselves, are what determine our success in creating new knowledge as well as sharing that knowledge with each other. Nancy Dixon Common Knowledge

15. Conversation is a learning technology Conversation is the most powerful learning technology ever invented. Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation. Encouraging open, honest conversation through work space design, setting ground rules for conversing productively, and baking conversation into the corporate culture spread intellectual capital, improve cooperation, and strengthen personal relationships. Jay Cross, Informal Learning

17. Conversation and Q&A

18. Gurteen Knowledge Café Process

34. Questions and Discussion

35. Lets run a Knowledge Cafe

36. Café Conversation What is the role of conversation and how do we encourage more conversation in our organizations?

37. Lunch

38. Chicken Chicken

45. We have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs. We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list. We want measurable outcomes and we want them now. What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing. We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation. This is not an argument against problem solving; it is an intention to shift the context and language within which problem solving takes place. Authentic transformation is about a shift in context and a shift in language and conversation. It is about changing our idea of what constitutes action. Peter Block

46. Café Applications

48. World Café The World Café is a methodology for hosting conversations about questions that matter. These conversations link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions or issues that are most important in their life, work, or community.

53. Questions and Discussion

54. Some actual Café applications

55. Trinidad & Tobago Oil and Gas

58. ISN Knowledge Café The knowledge café has led to a dramatic improvement in terms of inter-team dialog, collaboration & knowledge sharing. Many internal work processes are now being overhauled for the better as a result of these knowledge cafes & we have seen an explosion of new ideas & initiatives on the part of staff at all levels of the organization. Simply put, the knowledge cafe format has empowered all our staff to speak up and take the initiative in ensuring the successful development of the ISN. Chris Pallaris, Chief Editor ISN, Zurich

60. Questions and Discussion

61. Tips and techniques

68. The tables People need to be close enough to touch each other

69. Doodling

80. Cultural Considerations

84. Encouraging informal conversation

88. www.gurteen.com David GURTEEN Gurteen Knowledge Fleet, United Kingdom Tel: +44 7774 178 650 Email: david.gurteen@gurteen.com

89. Some slides I did not use

90. Business is a conversation Here's a definition of that pesky and borderline elitist phrase, 'knowledge worker'. A knowledge worker is someone whose job entails having really interesting conversations at work. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

91. Business is a conversation The characteristics of conversations map to the conditions for genuine knowledge generation and sharing: they're unpredictable interactions among people speaking in their own voice about something they're interested in. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

92. Business is a conversation People implicitly acknowledge that they don't have all the answers (or else the conversation is really a lecture) and risk being wrong in front of someone else. And conversations overcome the class structure of business, suspending the organization chart at least for a little while. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

93. Business is a conversation If you think about the aim of Knowledge Management as enabling better conversations rather than lassoing stray knowledge doggies, you end up focusing on breaking down the physical and class barriers to conversation. David Weinberger The Cluetrain Manifesto

94. The kind of conversation I like is one where I don’t feel the need to censor anything I say! David Gurteen Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. Dinah Craik

95. Conversation is the way that humans have always thought together. In conversation we discover shared meaning. It is the primal human organizing tool. Even in the corridors of power, very little real action happens in debate, but rather in the side rooms, the hallways, the lunches, the times away from the ritual spaces of authority and in the relaxed spaces of being human. In all of our design of meetings, engagement, planning or whatever, if you aren’t building conversation into the process, you will not benefit from the collective power and wisdom of humans thinking together. These are not “soft” processes. This is how wars get started and how wars end. It’s how money is made, lives started, freedom realized. It is the core human organizing competency. Margaret J. Whatley

96. Open Space Technology Open Space Technology ( OST ) is an approach for hosting meetings, conferences, corporate-style retreats and community summit events. They are focused on a specific and important purpose or task—but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme.

100. You rarely see the damage caused by bad relationships or the positive outcomes of good ones.

101. New Material to be incorporated

102. Something on not doing things to people

103. Its OK for people not to talk

104. When not to run a knowledge cafe

105. Café is divergent Meeting is convergent