This is the fifth in a new AOK series featuring the known practices of knowledge champions who are not consultants or gurus, but quiet, unassuming knowledge professionals who are "just doing it" for their organizations. The first Leading Lights were selected from among the 45 breakout speakers who presented at the March 13-15 AOK/Delphi Group Enterprise Learning and Knowledge Exchange Summit in Palm Springs, California, U.S.

An interview with Matthew Simpson

Psychologist, KM Leader, Maven -- Inside IBM

By Fred Shoeps
AOK Leading Lights Reporter

Matthew Simpson is by training a clinical psychologist and came to IBM via Lotus Institute. In the 1990s Lotus defined and pushed the envelop related to collaborative computing, e-teaming, electronic community building, and eLearning. As head of KMBlue -- IBM's corporate knowledge management initiative -- I first met Matthew at an internal KM conference. I challenged the group of more than two hundred top-notch technologists and business leaders that we were missing an essential ingredient -- namely social science -- to integrate knowledge management into the business. When I asked, "How many of you are psychologists?" two raised their hands -- Matthew's was one.

AOK: Matthew, why clinical psychology?

Matthew: It probably offered the most intense interaction with other people -- to learn about the mind. I really wanted to understand people, the psyche and the mind. The human mind is one of the most challenging and interesting things that we have to tackle.

In my work, I started to see people as having deeper potential for experiencing. Later, I started to look at the interactions of the individual within social groups as a way of tapping into a person's hidden personal potential, to transform their lives and others in deeper and more meaningful ways.

I also did five years with Harvard Medical School. This was a very meaningful time allowing me to see people who where most challenged at McLean Hospital. There, I saw people who were able to accomplish amazing things when the group supported and enabled them.

AOK: Who is Matthew Simpson today?

Matthew: Big question. The word that has come to mind is balanced. I feel extremely comfortable in the space that I am in now. I have found a niche where I can evolve and push the limit.

I'm program manager within the KMBlue initiative responsible for setting strategy, requirements, and communications addressing collaboration, communities and teams. By working with others across IBM I work to transform the business of IBM to support the healthy development of teams and communities. IBM is already supporting communities inside the company. I address how well are we doing it? Can we do it better?

Strategically, I develop systems that enhance existing systems, which in turn allow people to better tap into their potential. I am referring to 'systems' in context of systems thinking. A team is such a living system. So is a community.

AOK: How do you perceive yourself as making a difference?

Matthew: This is something I think about daily. Remember we discussed some time ago the role of the Maven* and how important it can be inside a business. People inside IBM are extremely enthusiastic to make things happen -- and they need direction to make it happen so that it is most likely to succeed. In the role of subject matter expert I'm able to lend a hand. For example, if you want to support a community the answer is not to create a new website and put the word community on it. I spend time talking to team and community leaders to take them beyond the website mindset.

* See The Tipping Point

AOK: What are some of the essentials that are critical?

Matthew: The existence of social systems. Groups will want to go off and support "collaboration." I ask the question, "Who is actually doing the act of collaboration?" Don't forget the individuals who are doing it. Don't forget the social systems. Social systems provide, for all of our knowledge management work, the context whereby this work becomes real.

AOK: That is a powerful statement.

Matthew: I believe that is a fundamental part of knowledge management.

AOK: How do you know a social system is a healthy system?

Matthew: One of the first things I look for is clear definition. I don't mean definition ala dictionary. Is there definition, or a boundary, for the group? Is there a threshold across which you can go and find yourself in the social system or out of the social system?

Essentially a community is one kind of social system. There are many kinds of social systems -- but a community is just one kind. Others are departments, organizations, and teams.

There is a definite boundary around a social system. People have some way of knowing which side of the boundary they are on. I have encountered folks who talk about such and such a community when they are really talking about a large population of people who happen to have common characteristics. Other than some common demographic, the group doesn't have definition. If you ask, "Are you a member of this community," and they say, "What community?" then they are likely part of a population with common characteristic, not a community. Demographics don't define community. A group with something in common but without unity isn't a community.

In order for people to build community they need to know whether they are in or out.
How can I get involved with other people if I don't even know that we are in the same group together. There has to be a way for members to affiliate themselves with the group and for the group in a reciprocal way to recognize and affiliate with each of the members. This way, I know that I am a member. That is a necessary requirement. Just like a person needs a skeleton, a community needs some definition, and it's provided by the boundary.

There also needs to be a sense of generalized reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity means that I give to the group and I don't expect anything directly in return. I give to the group because I know it is good for the group and know that the goodness will eventually come around. However, it's not a system in which you mainly rely on direct reciprocity (in some quid pro quo fashion). I don't contribute a single dollar to the New York Stock Exchange without expecting something immediately in return; that is direct reciprocity.

Community members also need to have some way in which they can interact with each other and communicate. A centralized broadcasting mechanism to the group doesn't fit the bill. Nor is it about monthly phone calls that are lectures and a few minutes to ask question. An open forum is so important to drive the health of the community. If the members can't interact or talk to one another openly, then how can they share what they have in common?

Those are a some of the characteristics of a healthy community.

AOK: If you were to pick something in the last five years that is close to your heart what would it be?

Matthew: One of the things close to my heart is 'CommunityBuilders' inside IBM.

AOK: What is it to you?

Matthew: It is a meta-level social system. It is a community of communities. It is a community of people who each have some direct involvement in another community, who are discussing communities. As a meta-level social system inside the larger social domain of IBM, we are able to get more mileage with our respective communities. CommunityBuilders is a common place in IBM to go to talk about community.

AOK: What are some examples of change as a result of the conversations?

Matthew: One is the identification of leadership. For example, inside part of IBM there was a full time opening to be a leader of a community. The position was to build a community support program. Within CommunityBuilder we had a rich set of knowledge and social ties to help connect the hiring manager with a would-be candidate.

AOK: Matthew, in context of knowledge management, IBM has done some fascinating things internally ­ that are pacesetting. What are three things that are near and dear to you?

Matthew: One is the valuation of intellectual capital in the knowledge network initiative within IBM Global Services. Intellectual capital in the form of information is something that communities can readily generate. In Global Services, practitioners in the field need to compile information rapidly for their customers in order to do their work. In this situation either the worker recreates information or they build off of what others have created and basically avoid reinventing the wheel.

IBM has identified domains of knowledge and an explicit process for sharing this knowledge inside a community. And we have supported communities to manage this intellectual capital very well. In fact, to date, one of the most clearly demonstrated things that a community can create that is valued by the business is intellectual capital.

The second thing is that IBM has really taken a lead in collaborative capabilities. We have excelled at promoting work processes associated with teams. IBM recognizes and identified that certain types of knowledge and information needs to be shared among a team and can be shared electronically in virtual space and that teams do not necessarily need to be co-located to do work. Through a combination of teleconferences and electronic team spaces -- the technology we use is called TeamRoom -- we can share information according to the workflow processes that the team engages in. There can be information associated with the calendar, the project plan, gathering information, and development information. We are pioneering new ways of doing this with communities. There is some extremely exciting stuff that IBM research is working on -- Babble, which is public knowledge -- is such a technology. It enables you to have a combination of asynchronous and synchronous instant messaging within a social group, to give the group a sense of social persistence on the intranet.

The third area is the web. We recognize the capability of the web as a unifying and unified platform across the enterprise. The web provides a venue through which we can interactively collaborate in virtual space. It is becoming the new workspace for employees. We are moving team rooms into the web -- as a fundamental supporting component of doing work. People because of the nature of their work need to share information. They need multiple channels -- they need to use the telephone, e-mail, team rooms, web conferences, and need to have face-to-face meeting to build trust and social capital. Teams -- as groups of people who are communicating, sharing information, who have shared documentation, who collaboratively develop of documentation, etc. -- are increasingly moving to a common platform -- our intranet web space which we are calling our eWorkplace. This is revolutionary. In our previous internal virtual environment someone would ask, where should I go to find the information I need to do my work?" The answer would be "you need to go to many places -- to this database, these team rooms, this function, these applications, etc., etc. The new evolution of our work in virtual space is to take all of these components and unify them through a common platform what we are calling the eWorkplace, our intranet workspace. Through individual profiles the workspace is configured for each individual so they can do the work they need to do within their teams, communities, and organizations.

AOK: Matthew, suppose you have five minutes with an influential person from another company who says, "Matthew, I really would like to do something with communities in my business; why is it important and how do I get started?

Matthew: Although the 'what' part is more exciting lets start with the 'why' part. If you think about the individual doing knowledge work, he or she interfaces with many groups across a business. People have buddies and belong to various groups. People are also members of teams. I consider teams the backbone of organizational work. Organizations require teams to handle projects to create deliverables. Let's think about where information resides -- and where knowledge resides over the long-term.

In context of the individual no one individual knows enough about the overall functioning of the organization to make the whole organization run. Organizations rely on knowledge accruing at an aggregate level between people to be successful. This means people need to be working together. When people are working together where does that knowledge reside?

We need to look at the system where people are actually working with each other. Take a look at teams and ask how much knowledge is contained in teams. Teams are relatively short-lived in the life of an organization. They form, do work, disseminate and disband. People also come and go from teams. Although it uses the knowledge of its members, a team isn't a viable place to contain and store knowledge. Why? Because it is a short-term social system.

Let's look at the organization as a social system. There is a lot of knowledge in an organization but not functional knowledge with respect to an individual as a professional. People can get information about the organization and the business processes of the organization within the organization itself. However, they can't get knowledge about their individual work roles. They can't learn the functional activities they need to learn in order to be able to do their job within an organization. Why? Because an organization is not job-role focused. It's a multidisciplinary social system.

For learning about the job, however, the individual needs to go and talk to other professionals who share their job role. Where does a professional go to interact and share knowledge about their professional work? The claim is that they go to communities. Why? People naturally aggregate to share things they have in common. This is especially true when it comes to work practices and their business interests. You need communities that will stand the test of time, which will not disappear as quickly as teams and will allow people to connect with each other across organizational boundaries. Teams are the social systems to handle the short-term knowledge required to do work. And communities are the groups that contain and grow the knowledge over the long term.

Now for the next question, what do you do to support communities? You have several choices. One choice is do nothing since communities will happen anyway. The second choice is the other extreme: do everything you possibly can, mandate membership, and mandate over-engineered communities -- that won't help you very much. There is, however, a third path of action -- the middle ground. You can provide support for communities that are naturally forming and provide for communities that have not yet formed.

The recommendation I would make is first go out in the organization and identify communities that already exist. Get into the regular practice of identifying and recognizing communities and look for ways that they can tap into existing infrastructure that is not going to cost you very much.

Second, identify areas where your employees should be aligned strategically with a common purpose, and where they should be sharing knowledge. Explicitly identify topical areas where it is strategically to your advantage for people to aggregate at a community level. Find communities that already exist in those areas. If they exist you want to develop a support program to encourage the health and development of those communities, but only if they need it. You can also provide incentives -- a contract with the social group -- for the community to deliver things of value to the organization. Give communities support in return.

Third, create a support program for people who are supporting communities. Support your internal community of community builders. These are the people who are creating a lot of business transformation within your organization. They are the ones who are supporting the groups that contain your organizational memory.

In summary -- identify pre-existing communities; develop a support program for communities that are strategically aligned to your business. Develop a mechanism where leaders and champions of these topical areas can get together.

AOK: From an Human Resources perspective what community work is going on?

Matthew: The challenge is always to identify the initiatives that generate business value. Recently the new hire network leaders in IBM have joined together into a community focusing on developing community support programs for new hires. For large companies it is critical to quickly provide opportunities to build the social capital among new hires. Connecting new hires into long standing communities of practice, of interest, of purpose inside the company is essential. These social systems can benefit new hires immensely.

We have also built a community map to connect new people to communities. It made sense to link the community map from the new hire home page.

AOK: There are hundreds of people in IBM that have knowledge management roles. What is being done to help them be better connected?

Matthew: We have developed a support program for the IBM knowledge management community. This includes a yearly internal conference, a process for registering into the community and linkage to all others in the community. We are using the Babble technology from our Research Group to provide a place for daily discussions and increased connectedness. As you know, as the retired former head of IBM's KMBlue, we have internal presentation within the community to build knowledge about knowledge management. We are also promoting discussions without pre-established agenda -- this is a chance for unstructured talk as members of the community. We also have an on-line collaborative web space to share information across the community.

AOK: As we go forward what do you think are the two or three things that are exciting in knowledge management?

Matthew: I've never been a technology-first type of person. I see knowledge management as a function of what people do and how people connect. Even as I say that I truly believe there is something of tremendous scale happening as we are moving into virtual space. A couple of things drive human behavior and beliefs. One of these is the way we think -- the different type of thoughts we have in our head. The second is the environment around us. People in the social sciences often underestimate the influence of the environment on our behavior. As we are increasingly developing new and better technology what is happening is that we are fundamentally changing every person's environment, and that will drive all kinds of different behaviors. In the next five to ten years the virtual workspace will become ubiquitous. The barriers to adoption are increasingly lower. You won't think twice of moving your work into that space. In fact, you won't be able to do your work outside of it. We don't think twice about picking up the phone and calling someone. The phone is just there. So too will be work in virtual space. It will just be there.

As that happens the ability to manipulate that space and re-architect it by an individual will be there -- so that each individual will have more control over the environment and be able to better utilize that environment. Virtual space will have a profound effect on the work we do as knowledge workers. Barriers will increasingly break down. Technology won't stop us from talking to each other; it will be a function of choice. We won't be limited by extra amount of time it takes to organize and document information; it will be a function of the information I choose.

As people increasingly are able to connect with each other, we are going to experience a sphere of people with whom we have strong relationships and who yet are not close to me physically. They will be out there somewhere in the world -- across geographies, across cultures, across languages.

My accountability as a person from a work standpoint and from a personal space standpoint will be increasingly challenged. I'll have a lot more opportunity to make friends with people around the world. The social norms we have in place, for example where it is not polite to ignore a person who is calling, where it is not polite to dismiss someone when they are knocking on the door, will challenge me as my social sphere expands globally.

As demands increase on me globally the importance of being able to connect locally will also increase. I'll be looking for more meaningful connections in the non-virtual world and that is exciting.

AOK: Matthew, thank you for spending this time with us and sharing insight into some of the exciting work you are doing. I appreciate the insight and experiences you shared with AOK and wish you much success.

Professionals such as Matthew who are trained in the social sciences and have business savvy, are changing how business does business. We are just at the beginning. Teams and communities as essential social systems for doing business will become part of the core language of business. Professionals such as Matthew point the way to understanding and maintaining the health of essential social systems. In time we may show a direct correlation between healthy social systems in business and balance sheet performance.

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