Exploration of the Organizational Technology Pathway of Digital KM with Arshad Ahmed

Arshad has been involved in Knowledge Management and learning for 20 years in the areas of professional services, financial services, legal, the third sector and more recently oil and gas. He currently is working in the Middle East. Arshad is the founder of Intoto Knowledge Intoto Knowledge – Intoto Knowledge, a consultancy focused on Knowledge and Information Management. https://youtu.be/JUZxaHj0FEI

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
This is Edwin k Morris,
and you are about to embark on thenext Pioneer Knowledge Services
because you need to know a digitalresource for you to listen to folks
share their experience and knowledgearound the field of knowledge management
and nonprofit work.

(00:34):
My name is osha. I'm from Manchester,
and currently residing andworking in Doha in Qatar.
The field that I work in is knowledgemanagement and predominantly the, uh,
the energy sector and the topic Ican talk for hours about is augmented
reality. If I wasstranded on an island, uh,

(00:54):
my top three must haves, at leastat this point in my time in my life,
would be a, a, a phone, a prayermap, and uh, a bottle of ol.
What is a bottle of ol What is that?
Detol is, it's an antiseptic,it's like a disinfected. Ah.
Smart guy. Yeah.
I just like this. Yeah. I dunno ifthey had it in America. Lon. Maybe.
Maybe that's the closestthing. My mentor was, uh,

(01:18):
actually still is a guy called StephanLaflow. He was a knowledge management.
He, he was a chief knowledgeofficer at PepsiCo once upon a time,
got a substantial history in knowledgemanagement. But that's by the, by really,
because when I was a relative,nobody in this field,
he was one of the only people whoactually gave me time and gave me his
knowledge and gave me his advice. I, Ireally appreciate it. Up to the list day.

(01:41):
How did you two meet?
Yeah, there was a site calledknowledge board. You know,
typically people say that the bestconnections you make are face-to-face and
then, you know, connections cango virtual and, uh, you know,
I agree with that for the most part.But actually with, uh, with Stephan,
we actually met virtually, if youlike, on this site. We were both, uh,
online sig editors. Uh, I was prettymuch a very green, just completed a,

(02:06):
a degree in knowledge managementwhere he was a seasoned expert.
He was from Chicago, and Ihave an auntie from Chicago.
The next time I was there, uh, I said,you know, we should meet up for a coffee.
So, uh, yeah, that was a sortof a, of a beautiful friendship.
The idea that there is adifference or a quality difference
of a face-to-face versus anon-face-to-face connection,

(02:28):
that there seems to be amystique or a misnomer. I,
it doesn't seem to be real tome that when people say, oh,
I can't wait till we getback to face to face,
cuz that's where everything's morebetter, you know? And it's like,
it doesn't really matter.
And you just brought up a good point aboutyou found somebody that impacted your

(02:49):
life in a positive way. Yep.
You didn't meet face toface until way later.
You're right. I mean,
there was a friend who was a girl whoI to know who used to do kind of online
dating and, uh, it was a bit aliento me, so I said, you know, how,
how do you find that ? And shegoes, oh, well, you know, I actually, uh,
find that I can know,
get to know a person much better kindof virtually before meeting them and

(03:13):
getting an idea of the personalityand their values and, and so on.
Which is obviously, you know, virtualas you said. Mm-hmm. . Uh,
and then I remember somebodytalking about a piece of research,
and especially how we are talkingnow mm-hmm. ,
that there might be people making anargument that social media isn't the best
way of making friendships and connection.
But there's some research sayingthat a high definition camera mm-hmm.

(03:34):
. So we we're, youknow, having a video conference,
it's almost as good as areal thing. Uh, you know,
i I do feel you can build up a rapportwith somebody through, through video.
Yeah. That certainlybuilds it with yourself.
I agree. Uh, I So why do youthink there is such a, a dam,
a rub of friction for some peoplethat don't feel comfortable in

(03:54):
a digital space?
It's a good question. It, it's,it's interesting cuz in this region,
for example, generally speaking,even though things are changing,
the culture is to come into theoffice. Even during Covid times,
I remember they had people on rotation.
So even though the majorityof us we were at home,
there was an expectation to still comeinto the office. There's that there.

(04:16):
And then you've got the older hands aswell who maybe prefer kind of that firm
sh handshake that look inthe eye, you know, and,
and they don't find a substitute forthat with the latest technologies.
I think those are factors,I think for sure. So it's.
Comfortable, it's a comfortability factor,
and I think it's apreconceived idea that is a
bit of a ludite in the fact that theydon't want to adopt the new technology as

(04:41):
much as they want to stay with what'sworked or what they're comfortable with.
I think there's a bridge that has tobe made for some of these folks to
just say, you know what, we'renot running a telegraph anymore.
We need to move along tothe new world or the new way
and not get stuck ondefending what used to be.

(05:03):
Again. Look, I agree with Edwin. I mean,
another thoughts just coming tomy head mm-hmm. , um,
they were talking about adopting a newsystem at work as a kind of a demand
management.
So rather than going through somebodyjust grabbing you in the lift or phoning
you, it goes througha portal, if you like.
So demands can be made and they can betracked and so on. Ooh, that's fine.
But again, as I was saying, peoplestick to what they know. Mm-hmm.

(05:26):
, how wouldyou stop that? Well,
there's maybe a decommissioningelement there, right?
If you were to shut those channels off,that kind of happened with Covid. Yeah.
You know, there was a situationwhere we all had to socially distant,
we couldn't be in close vicinity. Soeven if you didn't like it, you were,
you were kind of forced to do it. Iguess. I was also one of these people who,

(05:46):
you know, are like a face-to-face andso on. Yeah. After a while I thought,
actually this isn't, this isn'ttoo bad, you know, it's okay,
you I fall into it. But thenI thought, yeah, it's alright. This,
you know.
The new technologies, uh,
in in particular augmented realityand in our recent conversation at
prep for this show, we talkedabout assisted reality.

(06:07):
Can you kind of walk us through thedefinitional difference and expectation of
both?
Uh, in a nutshell, assistedreality, if you like,
is a less glamorous cousinof, of augment .
Okay. But yeah, so whereas, uh, Iguess augmented reality might have,
uh, like the fancy rendering,you can have a model,

(06:30):
you can sh you can movethat model with your hands.
That also means complexity in terms ofdeveloping that model in the first place.
Yeah. And then manipulating thatmodel through your own field of view,
which then I think we've talkedabout user experience and to make
something less busy is probably better.
You want something to be an aidand not a distraction. Yeah.

(06:50):
It's great to show theaudience practically speaking, probably not the best use.
So augmented reality is very muchin your field of view. There,
there's other elements to it,
but you can tag informationonto real world objects.
The kind of, the busyness is a lot less,
the actual tagging of thisinformation is much easier to do.

(07:10):
There's voice commands. It, it doesn'treally impair your field of view as well.
So depending on what kind of, uh,scenario you're in, where you need that,
that focus and where you need bothhands free, for example as well.
It's a far more effectivesolution. There's no,
you can't really say one technologyis better than the other,
but you can say what is a bestfit for a particular purpose?

(07:31):
And this is where I think augmentedreality is definitely the future,
but maybe the, the technology needsto, uh, mature a little bit more.
Walk me through an example ofwhere, and I'm assuming there's a,
probably a blend of what assistedreality is and environmental computing.
There's probably a little bit of bothhappening. Can you give us an example?

(07:53):
The use of, uh, assisted reality?Sure. Could do a virtual audit.
That might be one of the uses.One place that I've worked in,
they like to do a quarterly safetyinspection. So it could be like a,
is a fire extinguisher working?Are the coveralls intact?
That could be done as achecklist if you like. Now,
which might be a manual checklist.However, through the headsets,

(08:13):
you can actually have that numbered ina sequence so you don't miss that as a
procedure. That could be a a use.Another one could be to dismantle a,
a safety valve, for example. Um,how do you de depressurize it?
How do you close the inlet valves?How do you close the outlet valves?
There might be a sequence to all of that.
So this can be captured by a subjectmatter expert as a procedure.

(08:34):
So then when the next person who comes,
who hasn't got that knowledgecan open up a QR code,
which is created when itgets published and they can,
they're able to walk through itand complete those steps. Yeah.
And this is where the transferand knowledge management element.
So in recent history, the commonreference is YouTube University.
So when you don't knowhow to do something,
you go look for a video on YouTubeto show you how to do something.

(08:58):
It sounds like there's justa lot of different things that are really delivering
the same punch. Well, in your case,it's gonna be right on the spot.
It's gonna be a protocol thathas got some audit and, uh,
liability with it,
especially for these types of instancesthat you just said where something has
to be done in a, in a proper procedure.

(09:21):
So safety is a key elementwhere these could have huge
benefit. Right, right. That's, that'swhere these are coming into play. Uh.
Absolutely. I think when it comesto, I guess reducing errors,
increasing productivity,
and I think those two things are actuallyrelatively easy to measure as well.
You can measure the reduction in errorsand you can measure the increase in

(09:41):
productivity,
I guess boldly by reducing the amount oftime that it takes to complete a task.
Uh, it's funny you mentionedYouTube University because again,
what was going in my head was, yeah,
what are the majority of the videosthat are kind of delivered on YouTube?
I dunno what the statistics are,but these headsets that are used,
they were described as basically anAndroid phone as a wearable. You know,

(10:02):
it actually uses an Androidoperating system as well. It's been,
I guess if you like, augmented becauseit's got voice commands, so you know,
you, when you span left or right,it will go to the, to the right app.
But essentially it's a, it's amobile phone on, on your head.
Hmm. Yeah.
We're ever gonna get to wherethis technology is inborn to the human framework.
We're gonna have biotech and we won'thave to have a phone stuck to our head.

(10:24):
Yeah. It's, uh, I'm just wondering howfar that stretches until it becomes, uh,
a bit creepy. You, you'reright, . Um,
whether I saw somebody witha contact lens and you know,
it was given the same kindof information, uh, you know,
a super computer of sorts in a contactlens, maybe the day will come, you know?
Yeah. And then you probably remember,if you remember Google class as well,

(10:45):
I think the term part of my friendship,
I think they called them glass holes atthe time, you know, because, you know,
again, it was just, justthe fear of the unknown.
Well, there's quite a bitto expect in the future,
and I think there's a lot ofindustries that are going to need
to experiment to find out what works.And the weird thing is, is that,

(11:06):
as we both know,
lifespan of a technologyis the fickle part.
So once you get hooked up and you'relike, okay, we're going down this way,
whoop, uh, we've justleapt forward and sideways,
and now what? Now we gottaredo everything again.
How do you future proof an organizationand not be spending money all the time?

(11:28):
It's a very, very, very good question.
And I'm trying to think about an answer as I, as I'm thinking .
So the way I approach augmentedreality is why I like it is
because knowledge management to methat what I call classical knowledge
management is around lessonslearned, collaboration,
information management. And,
and I guess as I might havementioned to you before,

(11:49):
I think it's getting a bit samey for me.
It needs to be rejiggedreimagined, uh, revamped.
And I see technology asthe enabler to do this.
Can that technology be superseded? Yes.
But the important thing is that w it isstill relying on classic KM principles.
Is camera technology gonna improve?Of course it will. You know,

(12:09):
will battery technology improve? Willconnectivity improve all the things that,
you know, are factors in a successfulheadset? But the the fundamentals, uh,
should stay the same. That'swhat made it a success.
What's realware?
Realware, as far as I know, isa Canadian company and it's,
it's relatively small comparedto the likes of Microsoft.
So Microsoft probably best knownfor Hollowlens. And then you,

(12:33):
you're familiar with Magic Leap as well.
That's a new one.
Um, which I think is Florida based.There's other headsets in the market,
but the ones that I know areHoloLens, uh, magic Leap and Realware,
and Realware is really the assistedreality headset that I was mentioning.
So a lot less glamorousthan the other two. Mm-hmm.
But then the other two also arenot as rugged. So for example,

(12:55):
the the real work headset,it can withstand a,
a drop from 1.5 meters onto solidconcrete from any angle. Yeah.
Which obviously if you'regonna be sat at home gaming,
that doesn't really make adifference. But if you're in a plant,
it will make a difference.
Then they've also got certain scenariosin oil and gas bearing your mind that
the, the whole area can be quite riskaverse. Mm-hmm. and, uh,

(13:15):
and, and rightfully so in a lot of,
there's a oxygen enriched environmentor there's, there's a risk of sour gas,
which is again, highly flammable.
A spark in a conventional headsetor even a mi in a mobile phone. Uh,
under normal circumstancesit's not even an issue,
but in these highly flammable environmentsthat could cause an explosion and

(13:36):
therefore fatality. So the Realwareheadset that we were using, uh,
was also one of the only ones thatwas certified to be what you call
intrinsically. Okay. So therewas, there was no risk of it, uh,
causing an explosion caused by aspark depending on the environment,
the environments that we were using inthis was the most feel ready if you like.
Mm-hmm. probablythe less, the most low tech.

(13:57):
But that also had itsdisadvantages. Cause it was.
Well I just looked up, uh,
magic Leap and they've got a notehere that says magically receives
60 61 certification for usein an operating room. Okay.
So there's another environment that'sprobably got a lot of liability and safety
concerns. Right. Yeah. That's good news.I mean, I would think that most people,

(14:19):
when they hear of augmented reality,
all they think about is the metaverseand uh, Facebook stuff. And,
and that is purely from my, what Ican gather is just entertainment.
That's all that is, is anotherentertainment delivery system.
But these are actual functionaltools that can enhance an

(14:39):
environment and deliver knowledgemanagement in a very easy way.
You know, Edwin, maybe we couldeven go beyond that. Okay. You know,
going beyond using the same rationale,I was always told not to lead with,
with the technology solution.
So many times you see a technology beingbrought in and then they're struggling
to find a use for it. .
Yeah. Just cause it wascool, right? Or or oh my,

(15:00):
just think what we could do with it.
But they don't think of what theydo with it until they get it.
And then it's like, oh,what do we do with this?
So it's actually just saying it to,to, to my colleagues today, blockchain,
internet of things, uh, big data, the,
these are some of the kindof the modern buzzwords.
I'm not gonna say buzzwords cause I'msure there's some legitimacy behind them,
but to me they're buzzwords because Idon't really understand the use of it.

(15:23):
That's not to say there aren't usesof it. Right. I'm sure there are.
I can't think of, of a solidapplication for at least my work. Now,
how it came to be with thiswas, I just remember thinking,
I think I might have told you,
there was an advert that was on TV whereit was a real estate agent and there
was spanning over a houseand the house, it gave the,
the energy rating of the house,what the average rent might be,

(15:45):
how the number of bedrooms.And I thought, you know what,
that would be fantastic if wecould just zoom over something.
And you were able to get that kindof metadata if you like. Yeah.
And that's when augmented reality hit me,
rather than going out with let's getaugmented reality and now let's find a use
for it. So again, it camefrom a, a genuine need.
And then pulling itback to the technology.

(16:05):
There's a similar case withsomething called Matterport Camera
System. Matterport. Right. Andwhen I first saw it, I was like,
oh my gosh, this is incredible nowin the use cases with real estate.
And that's what that gotme thinking about it. Okay.
They go in with this 360 scannabledigital system and they set it

(16:26):
up in the house in different spotsand it does this 360 digital build of
the room that it can see, and then itconnects and meshes it to the next spot.
And you basically get a complete3D feel of walking through the
house and looking and seeing everything.And and I thought, oh my gosh,
that'll sell more houses thananything. Yes. And you know what?

(16:51):
I see less and less people doingit because the user interface and
the bridge to get those people,
the new buyers to go throughthat technological hoop. I mean,
to me it was just click and go and,
and it was a lot of fun to exploreand it was really cool. Yeah.
But apparently the majority of peopledidn't get it. And they're like,
I just want to go look at the house.

(17:11):
I don't wanna mess aroundwith this technology stuff,
but I think how are we ever gonnaget the masses to get on board
with anything, let alone an organization?
Yes. Well you, it's interestingyou mentioned, did you say it was,
was it quite clunky in its delivery or.
No? Well, I thought it was pretty slick.You would have this internal model,

(17:32):
digital digitized modelthat you could enter in,
and then you would jump from circle tocircle on the floor because the circle
actually represented where the tripodsat in this thing did this thing. Right.
So you could jump over there and nowyou're by the sink and you're like looking
in the sink and you're lookingat the stove and you're looking,
the field of view is just phenomenal.I'm like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

(17:54):
Yeah.
So with the realware, again, the factthat it can fit onto p e equipment,
so it can fit into a, into a, anexisting helmet, it's very unobtrusive.
So it'll only, you can pull it down as a,
as a small little visor when youneed it, rather than the HoloLens,
which is more kind of a biggoggle. Right. You know,
that it's in your viewall the time. You know,

(18:15):
so that was a factor that the batterylife is close. I think 17 hours,
which is an for a full shift. You know,
these are all factors that will helpthe adoption. Right. You know, because,
so if you talk about maybe, maybethe people change element, you know,
people don't like change. Right. But ifyou can kind of make that change easier,
then they're less likely to the, youknow, as we say, they're more ready,
they're more willing and they'remore able to do it then. All.

(18:37):
Right. Well we've talkeda lot about technology,
so let's get back to knowledge management.
If knowledge management principles andpractices are not driving whatever the IT
solution is, the nextthing, does it matter?
Does knowledge management just loseits impact in a lot of IT structures
because it's,
the consideration is more aroundwhatever the new capacity can be.

(19:01):
You know, I've been in this field quitea long time now, Edwin, and I think,
do I believe in knowledge management?Yes, I do. Do I think it's easy to do?
Yes and no .
Um.
You know, it's, um, ifit's about quick wins,
then technology kind of i issomething that could be, you know,
rolled out relatively easilyfor true knowledge management,

(19:24):
it takes time with a cultural changeand for things to mature. And, you know,
we take a community of practice, I'ma big supporter of that. But equally,
there's another process that Irecommend called knowledge retention.
If there's a leaving expert and youknow, they've slipped through the net,
they're not being part of any communitiesor the company just isn't mature
enough to have communities of practice.
They've only got a fewweeks before they leave. A,

(19:46):
a community of practice is notgoing to be able to do that job.
So then you need more tactical measuresas opposed to strategic. Uh, I,
I digress on a golf on ao off on a tangent here.
I'm trying to answer yourquestion. But technology,
I think showcases knowledge managementbetter. I think that's where they,
the two are needed, you know,
and I think it brings some honesty totechnology as well, because, you know,

(20:06):
it's almost like a symbioticrelationship that Yeah.
The two in certain ways needeach other, you know? Absolutely.
Yeah.
Don't you feel that most organizationsare reliant on the C T O or the i,
uh, folks to drive the train versus a CKO
or somebody in the knowledge managementframework that's looking at the culture

(20:26):
as much as that solution? Oh.
All the time. Yeah. I mean, in fact,
a good IT friendly was also the headof technology at a company at the time
said, well, look, we like to buildthings. So, you know, they'll do the, uh,
. So they'll do all thetechnical things, and then after that,
the implementation, we don'treally wanna do that. .

(20:46):
In that framework.
The product development is not reallylooking at the customer whatsoever.
We're just gonna build stuff. Is it likenot really looking at the user at all?
So.
It, I don't know if it's a bit like acar, you know, when it's out of the, uh,
manufacturing facility, we built it,right? All the, the aftercare and,
and the kind of the, you know,
the customer service and all ofthat has to be done by some other,

(21:08):
I was gonna say schmuckthen, but you know, ,
this is where knowledge management canYeah, absolutely. Through a framework.
Yeah. Roles and responsibilities,the whole people cultural change,
having the right processesso people know how to use it.
Having the roles and responsibility.So it is somebody's job to do the,
all these things. This is wherethey're coming into play. Then.
So how easy is it to do knowledgemanagement then? You said it was easy.

(21:30):
Tell me an easy thing about it. Um.
If, if we are taking the notion thatsomebody leaving is taking all those ex,
you know, assumptions, experience,insight, knowledge with them,
and is there some way you could capturethat, then it's gonna make sense. Now,
one of the problems with knowledgemanagement is it's one of the problems and
it's one of the beauties.It it's common sense,

(21:51):
even if it's not common practice. Yeah.But one of the challenges I found is,
okay, well let's, let me take lessonslearned. Lessons learned comes under the,
the whole banner of learningin knowledge management.
But I was at a company trying topitch lessons learned to their project
management department. It was p oproject manage office department.
And their lessons learned wasactually pretty bloody good.

(22:12):
Then there's collaboration and yougo to internal cons and you know,
they've got metrics set up,they've got other things set up,
and you thinking actually they'vegot a pretty good business case.
So it's almost like a fightwith existing things that can,
and this is where I like the idea ofaugmented reality because it's still an
emerging technology. Yeah. There'sstill space to get onto that early. Uh,
this is one of the, I guess,
other practical problems Ifind with knowledge management.

(22:33):
That's somebody's alreadythere and established.
How would you defineknowledge management then?
I used to have a kind of adefinition that I'd remembered, but.
, what is it today?See, let's not go backwards.
What is it right now?
If I can say connection, collaboration,
codification. How does that sound?

(22:55):
Okay, how about application?
Okay. Yeah. So two people talking, thatdoesn't necessarily mean, so then they,
they're therefore collaborating. Okay.
And can knowledge management help connectthose people? Well, it should. Okay.
So if you've got somebodyin content or Europe,
can you connect them tosomeone in Asia Pacific?
And they have a similar problem, they'reable to share the solution to that.

(23:15):
And this is where I like theidea of connecting, if you like,
tacit knowledge becausemm-hmm. ,
nothing has to be necessarily writtendown, but knowledge management as a kid,
right? Because two peoplehave, have talked and collaborated to solve a problem.
This is the element where maybe at theend there is some kind of codification.
So maybe there's a documentdis produced. What.
If we could just move the,the whole framework of,

(23:37):
and I was just getting this asyou said this because I am a,
a key driver for lessonslearned or that process.
And if we could take the technologyavailable in assisted reality
and tie in all the knowledge that could be
elicited and recorded invideo and audio to be a

(24:00):
dynamic system of interface for the field
to have that instant connection to,and I don't even know how you'd do it,
because you'd have to tag so muchstuff to, to make connections.
So if Bob, uh,
who has 23 years experience andsteel structures and you could

(24:21):
tie his most recentinterview or his most recent
publication or his most whatever audio,
and then have that interfaceto the augmented reality to be
instantaneous knowledge access.Oh my goodness. Let's build that.
So, you know,
it's funny you should mention that Iwas shown a very impressive piece of
lessons learned software. I was actuallyquite blown away from it with it.

(24:44):
I feel embarrassed cause Iforgot his name now, ,
I won't blow away with it at thetime. I've got the notes somewhere.
I actually mentioned to the guy, I'm,
I'm actually working on augmented realityand would you be able to produce a for
something like this? Andthey were open to the idea.
So just to take your example there,
if we talk about a piece of machinerythat an operator is having problem, uh,

(25:05):
is having trouble using, andif we take these headsets,
and I think I might have mentioned itto you before that there's a camera
present,
you could have a subject matter expertthat doesn't necessarily have to be on
site who can look through that andgive the right guidance mm-hmm.
to what needs tobe done to com to fix an issue.
Now that is also recorded,right? So if that is then later,

(25:27):
uh, developed into, if you like, a,a learning and a multimedia learning.
So it's a video. Yeah. So thenthe next time somebody's there,
the expectation is to actually,before you do anything,
search the video lessons learneddatabase, if you like. Right? Yep.
As a form of learning before.Yeah. An actual activity.
There could be a lot ofvalue in that, I think. Well.
I'm excited to get started with that.

(25:48):
So let me know when wecan put that together.
Absolutely. Absolutely. the firstthing and actually mean that as well.
Okay, perfect.
Well thanks for beinghere today and stay safe.
Yep, you too. Thanks, Edwin.
You have just finished our latest becauseyou need to know a public service of

(26:09):
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