I wrote 50 Valentine cards today. Actually that’s a lie – 51 in total, if you include the one for my wife.
In a moment of madness I offered to follow-up on an “offers and requests” process at a recent meeting of the Henley KM Forum looking at the topic of Collaboration. The participants had just finished a post-it note exercise, identifying their needs and offerings on a set of flipcharts. It’s hard to keep the momentum going, even with a good network like this one, once people have left the room.
So… I spent today matching up people “who have something to share” with people who have “something to learn”. Seeing as tomorrow is a day for matchmaking, we’re sending each of the potential “knowledge dates” a personalised electronic Valentine card like this mock-up - but with their photos. (With apologies to Cilla Black and Leonardo!).
There’s a lot of KM and networking insights to be drawn from Dating agencies…
February 14, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Hi Chris,
I have a question; if you’ve got a well-networked group like this and it takes a fair bit of work to keep everyone in touch post-event, how might a not so well-networked group with not such an experienced facilitator be expected to be get on?
Alex
February 14, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Hi Alex,
Good question.
I think it hinges on the group’s perception of the untapped *potential* for learning and sharing.
In a really well networked group, you’d expect them to have already got to know each other pretty intimately, and identified the easy opportunities for learning and sharing. An “offers and requests” exercise works to wring some additional value out of the group.
With a newer group, there can be a greater sense of the “undiscovered” – a kind of honeymoon period – where there is a surprising openness to disclose weaknesses and support eachother, even if the relationships don’t have a lot of history. I’ve noticed it in myself – sometimes I’ll respond in depth to a request on someone’s blog or website, even though I don’t know them at all. It’s part of that natural human response to an expressed need.
The Henley KM Forum meeting last week was a mixture – some established relationships and some organisations who were entirely new to the group. The key things for us were to have a common theme to focus the offers and requests around(in our case, it was “collaboration”), and encouragement to frame them in a clear way – e.g. post-it notes which start with the phrase “I need help with…” or “I can help you with…”
Do I detect a KM Review article coming on..? :O)
September 9, 2007 at 5:17 am
[...] grandiose site now audit this snippet http://chriscollison.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/lonely-hearts and give comments [...]