Exactly the same thing I was.

It was then that I had a sudden realization about productivity: while technology may enhance our productivity when compared to how productive we used to be without (or with a ‘lesser’) technology, I seldom think about how little my productivity actually increases compared to others.

In the 1950s, Pancho Gonzales was one of the best tennis players in the world, and was known to have a particularly fast serve. At a 1951 tournament, officials decided to measure the players’ serves to see whose was the fastest — and Pancho Gonzales beat everybody with a speed of about 214 km/h.

Gonzales’ serve is certainly much faster than mine will ever be. But consider that Andy Roddick, the player who currently has the fastest serve in tennis, has the recorded fastest serve with a speed of 249.5 km/h. Tennis serves have gotten faster in the past 60 years.

Much like there’s more to productivity than technology, there’s more to being a great tennis player than just having a fast serve. But having a faster serve certainly doesn’t hurt.

But let’s go back to Pancho Gonzales for a second. If we could enter Gonzales into a present-day tennis tournament, his once-astounding 214 km/h serve wouldn’t be that far above the average speed of the first serve — around 185 km/h.

So as individual players have gotten faster, other players have had to get faster too, or else face getting left behind by their colleagues. But the speed of your serve is only one aspect of tennis, and as other players get better at hitting returns or improve the accuracy of their serves, that individual player has to get better at all those elements as well.

This kind of evolutionary arms race is similar to the Red Queen effect:

“For an evolutionary system, continuing development is needed just in order to maintain its fitness relative to the systems it is co-evolving with.”

And in terms of technology, we really are evolving one technology within a broader, complex web of other technologies, where continued evolution is necessary just to stay afloat within that broader system.

So while I may be able to read and respond to email while sitting in that train, if everybody else has the same ability, then I’m not really much ahead of where I was before. And if there were some new device that allowed you to send email while the subway was underground, would I be falling behind if I couldn’t do that as well (and yes, the amount of email you send is probably the worst measure of productivity )?

I’ll try to remember to bring a magazine next time I take the subway.

The video has to be your own work and publicly available for people to watch, but other than that, there’s not really many rules as far as content or subject matter go. So if you’ve got something to say about knowledge management, or are just super-talented at making viral videos, why not submit something?

Patrick’s also giving away some prizes: KM Method Cards, KM Approaches, Methods and Tools – A Guidebook, and his Organisation Culture Cards (worth US$140).

I know that 2009 was a rough year for many, but let’s hope things continue to pick up in 2010. Hopefully you all got to spend some time with friend and family before the end of the calendar year (and some rest as well!). All the best in the upcoming year.

The Wired wiki (yes, there’s a Wired wiki) has an entry to help you un-FaceBook yourself — or if you’re not willing (or able) to break your FaceBook addiction, you can at least fiddle with the site’s privacy settings to allow yourself to get some sleep at night without worrying who’s looking at the skeletons in your FaceBook closet.

As I’ve said before, I’m pretty terrible at responding to anything on FaceBook — but I’ve been trying to get better. But I wonder, if I’m not able to keep up with FaceBook, how will I ever be able to keep up with Twitter? I thought that getting Twitter on my mobile might get me using it more, but so far it’s a no-go.

While there have been a few mixed reviews about the phone, I’m fairly confident that the robust hardware (a 1GHz processor and 448 MB of RAM) would be enough to keep me happy for a while (I seem to only be able to keep a phone for just under a year these days).

I’ve had a good run with the Diamond, and can’t really say that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it (besides a few peeling edges on the casing, which probably has more to do with my rough handling of the phone than anything else). As usual, I’m just interested in having the latest and greatest… but I’m really debating whether I pick up this device or wait for Windows Mobile 7 (supposedly coming out sometime soon in 2010). I don’t imagine that HTC or Microsoft is going to provide any ROM-update ability to Windows Mobile 7.

If you’re interested in reading a review of the HD2, GSMArena’s got a pretty good summary of the pros and cons of the phone, as well as a good outline (as usual) of the features and specs of the HD2.

And just for the record, I’d still rather have one of these than the Nexus One. EDIT: If you’re already dying to get your hands on the ‘Google Phone’, first make sure you know what you’re getting. PC World’s got a bit of a different take on why the ‘Google Phone’ may not be everything the world had hoped for.

Not many surprises there really, but apparently I use the word ‘things’ a lot. Who knew. Click on the image below for a bigger version.

Looks pretty cool… I especially like the live typing in IM conversations, as well as the notion of having all of your communication and collaboration options consolidated into one platform.

In case you’re interested in watching the video as well, here it is:

Before I get into these signs however, I want to point out two things. First, while the presence of any of these indicators may be a death knell for your current strategy, this should be viewed as an opportunity to craft a new strategy that better meets the challenge you and your organization are facing — not that you should put your head in your hands and give up.

Second, the presence of any one (or even several) of these indicators in not necessarily a sign that your strategy is totally off-base — these indicators are meant to be used as a warning that you should be constantly adapting your strategy to new challenges. At the same time however, don’t get so mired in strategic decision-making that you never actually get any work done. Strategize, adapt and move forward — making major strategy changes only when things are not going the way you had hoped.

That being said, keep these warning signs in mind when you are examining (or reexamining) your current or upcoming knowledge management strategy.

1. People outside your group don’t understand what you’re doing.

I’ve listed this as warning sign number one, since I personally believe it’s one of the most dangerous indicators that your strategy is not accomplishing its intended goals. Assuming you’re communicating your strategy appropriately (and yes, communicating your strategy is important), the fact that no one else gets it usually means that far from being too brilliant to grasp, that instead you’ve simply got your head in the clouds. Talk to your stakeholders and consider rebuilding your strategy from the ground up.

2. You keep changing vendors/technologies/products.

As stated above, this isn’t always a bad thing. There are times when vendors/products/technologies are just difficult to deal with, and you need to simply change directions. However, these types of strategic changes should be exactly that — strategic. Look very carefully to make sure that what you’re attributing to be a set of technology defects or a vendor deficiency isn’t actually a non-existent content management process or broken governance model. Changing vendors/technologies/products won’t help you with those sorts of issues.

3. You keep layering vendors/technologies/products on top of each other.

More’s better right? Unfortunately, it’s usually not. More vendors and products to deal with usually also means added complexity — and unless you have a strategy and the resources to deal with that added complexity, you’re going to drop a few when trying to juggle all those balls. Before looking at new vendors, I would strongly recommend two things.

First make sure that your current suite of products can’t already do what you need — most of the time, enterprise products (such as content management systems, financial systems or project/process management software) have all kinds of features you didn’t know were  in there — do your research before going out and buying something else.

Second of all, make sure that your clients (even if those are internal clients), actually need the functionality/features you believe they do. Have conversations with everyone who’s going to be using this type of functionality, and make sure you understand what they need almost as well as they do. You don’t want to buy something that’s never going to get used.

4. You find it difficult to explain what you’re trying to accomplish.

This is another big one. When this happens, you may wonder if it’s your listener who’s just not getting it (or, perhaps wonder if you haven’t crafted your explanation very well). Both of these assumptions are dangerous. If it’s really that tough to explain what you want to get done, it’s probably going to be really tough to get the money, support and people to get it done. That’s not to say that complex things that are difficult to explain should never be done — just don’t underestimate the complexity when you start out.

5. You’re prescribing organizational change.

Okay, so prescribing organizational change doesn’t automatically get you a failing mark. Organizations can be changed — but a knowledge management strategy that seeks to change every part of an organization at once is pretty much doomed to fail. Seeking organizational change also comes across too often when there are immediate problems that are difficult to address and the solution is unknown. Use the phrase “organizational change” sparingly and extremely carefully.

6. You’re making big promises.

Again, making promises isn’t a bad thing — knowledge management should be there to generally make things better for everybody. If you aren’t making things better, you’re not really doing your job (and of course, that’s not just true of KM, it’s also true of human resources, finance and every other group). But don’t promise things you aren’t sure you can deliver — or assume that certain longstanding problems can be fixed via knowledge management.

This is related to my point above; some problems are more deeply entrenched than they may at first seem to be. Take a long, careful look at what you really think you can change, and reach just beyond what you’ve promised.