The 18 commandments of Knowledge-conscious managers

Blogged at Mopsos:

1. Don't always challenge. Welcome one another's thoughts and opinions.


2. Experiment constantly. Enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects.


3. Release the need to be right. It's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.


4. Know by doing, so that there is no gap between what you know and what you do.


5. What you know does matters, but who you know and who knows you matter even more.


6. Don't refer to internal organizations. Talk about specific people.


7. Consider internal client-supplier relationships as the worst possible form of internal collaboration.


8. Before deciding on a plan, always ask with whom the plan was discussed.


9. Involve people collectively in your thinking.


10. Management is not so much about delegating to individuals than about organizing and empowering groups.


11. It's not about giving objectives. It's about making sure they understand your intent.


12. Never give targets without negotiating them first.


13. Deliver high quality information and develop shared situation awareness.


14. Balance planning for the future with learning from the past.


15. Don't promote people that sound smart, but those who make sure that smart things happen.


16. Don't expect dedication from someone who fears for his job.


17. Never manipulate your staff.


18. Get yourself a technology coach.

Representing Data in Wireframes

Dave Rogers, at UXCentric: Wireframe UX introduces Dan Brown's poster, "Representing Data in Wireframes".

"wireframes provide a positive user experience. They're primarily communication tools that depict site layout, navigational elements, content priorities and the site interface. They also act as integrators, bringing content, engineering, visual design, information structure and UX together in a single document. Their most important function is to create a prototype, a 'shared space' that facilitates collaboration and innovation."

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Online staff directories: survey results and key findings

"Online staff directories" by James Robertson of StepTwo Design:

Online staff directories (also known as phone directories, corporate phone books, or internal whitepages) are generally the most used element of a corporate intranet. They are also one of the few tools that are used every day by staff, and as such, they have a considerable impact upon the efficiency of staff throughout the organisation.

A survey was conducted in 2004 exploring how many organisations have a staff directory, how they had been implemented and to what degree they are relied on by staff. The results of this survey are summarised in this article.

Additional research was then conducted into the design and implementation of staff directories, and the key findings of this work are presented later in the article.

Adding "favicon" to your web site

Dave Taylor has written about "favicons" in "Ask Dave Taylor". To quote:-

Getting Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac happy is a different subject. From all I can tell, MSIE only grabs the favicon.ico graphic if you bookmark the site. Otherwise it just uses the generic icon that's used for every other Web site on the net.
Just for good luck, you are using the right format for your favicon too, right?

There are two approaches, ".ico" if you want to monkey with the ".ico" graphics format. But it turns out that other common Web graphics formats are supported, including GIF, JPEG and PNG. To use one of those, specify the "MIME" filetype:

Introduction to Structured Content Management with XML -- Featured Topic -- CMS Watch

Introduction to Structured Content Management with XML -- Featured Topic -- CMS Watch: "Introduction to Structured Content Management with XML
by Kay Ethier and Scott Abel, Bright Path Solutions
2004-09-15

Organizations of all sizes are beginning to realize how content and its reuse across the enterprise can improve productivity--and the bottom line. The need for change is driven by the desire to better manage information assets (documents, creative ideas, illustrations, charts, graphics, multimedia, etc.) and eliminate costly processes that fail to facilitate the effective and consistent re-use of content. "