Confession time: I think there is a link between improvements in personal productivity or effectiveness and increased organisational performance. (Where the organisation may be as small as a team or as large as a firm.) However, I am happy to admit that I know of no real evidence for this assertion: it is a bold statement to make without qualification. I am sure there are many examples where personal endeavours have not led to improvements in the business — because other factors have intervened, or because the individuals’ activities were poorly focused.
That said, I would be surprised if Doug Cornelius doesn’t turn out to be a real asset to Beacon Capital Partners because of his personal knowledge management practices. As Doug explains in his old blog, he has been using a blog as a learning platform in his new role as Chief Compliance Officer, and he has just opened it up to wider viewing.
It was an interesting experience using a blog as a learning tool. The blog was a very convenient way to link to relevant articles, cases, statutes and regulations that play a role in my job.
If I were in law school now, I would use a blog to keep my notes. The blog platform is just a great way to keep information organized and retrievable. The blog posts are arranged in chronological order, making them easy to find based on date. I use the categories to keep the posts organized by topic. I use the tags to organize the posts around sub-topic, author and publication. Pages provide an overview, with easy editing.
I currently have no interest in compliance and business ethics, but if I did Doug’s notes would be an incredible resource. In the period since late September, when he took on the new role, Doug has posted over 360 items to the blog.
If anyone needs an example to demonstrate how effective blogging can be for knowledge and learning, I think Doug’s new blog is perfect.
Yes, difficult to prove, but I agree that there must be some link between personal effectiveness and organisational performance. From a personal perspective, I suspect that my use of an internal blogspace plus access to tools such as del.ici.ous and netvibes have made me (I hope!) a more valuable and informed colleague. As an aside, I have found that the very act of ‘processing’ a piece of knowledge via such tools – adding tags, writing a summary – has aided recall during a future conversation in a way that filing articles in a folder never has done. At one level I just find it more fun; but it also involves, I guess, a level of engagement and reflection that happens without necessarily being aware of it.
Mark -
Thank you for your kind words.
After publicly blogging for so long at KM Space, it was a bit strange working in a private blog. It was like talking myself. It was very effective and useful as a learning tool. But I missed the public discussions. That was one of the reasons that I continued to blog at KM Space.
Thanks for the pointer. First, since metrics are hard to define for productivity, gauging the impact of personal improvements is therefore hard. I’ve blogged about it a few times, e.g., http://matthewcornell.org/search/node/metrics . Ultimately it might be like defining pornography – “I know it when I see it.”
Those posts look interesting Matthew. More reading!