January 23, 2005

Conference Framework

Visitors and Contributors:

Welcome to the Archestra Conference. The Conference Framework below illustrates how to explore and anticipate Archestra content, using business improvement objectives as "themes" and solution levers as "tracks".

The "conference" framework anticipates and tracks ideas and content by cross referencing the themes and tracks.
- Business improvement objectives: are key generic characteristics representing health and growth.
- Solution Levers: are standardized managed approaches to shaping business improvements.
- Each cross-reference indicates challenges and approaches in discrete improvement opportunities.

Without specific content, the framework indicates the highest or most abstract level of the ideas in Archestra. Catalogued by those ideas, specific content is added into the areas, related to each other by the framework. The content can then be navigated end-to-end from general theory issues to specific practice issues and back, as a diagnostic exercise or as an educational exercise. This allows for an agenda to be pursued, whether ad hoc or predefined, during the visit to the content collection.

Using the Framework for Concept Navigation

(1) The vertical axis is Business Improvement Objectives -- the four things (value, performance, quality, risk) that describe whether what you're doing is good for the business.

(2) The horizontal axis is Solution Levers -- which identify the basic things that can and should be known and done about how those business improvement objectives on the vertical axis are taken from being abstract to being realized.

(3) Cross-referencing the improvement objectives against the solution levers generates intersections in the framework -- each of which typically represents an opportunity to institutionalize the fix or enhancement within a business improvement objective.

(4) The derived improvement opportunities populate the framework and bring things down to the ground level.

(5) Moreso, each improvement opportunity can be seen from multiple perspectives that comprise a complete solution approach -- including policy, knowledge, processes or resources. Any particular Archestra content may discuss all or part of the solution approach.

Organizing ideas with the Conference Framework

Because the framework is an abstraction, it is portable -- that is, it applies intact as a generic concept organizer to various different "practitioner" fields like IT, marketing, or whatever.

Therefore, the framework itself is independent of specific practitioner fields, but in use it guides development and storage of content that is field-specific, such as the particular entries, papers, presentations, and links.

That content may additionally highlight issues with other kinds of specificity -- including method-specific issues such as for a role, or industry-specific issues such as in a bank or law firm.

Whether as an audience member or contributor, you bring your own focus to the conference framework. One user has offered the following example:

If you are a senior law firm manager concerned about "Quality", you might want to start with "Drivers" of quality. That would lead you to investigate or discuss things like collaboration among lawyers, high-quality hires, strong professional development, etc. Focus on high-quality hires: a "resource" could be Ivy League law schools, a "process" could be how you go about interviewing and seducing the best and brightest, "knowledge" could be your on-the-ground experience with the track records (historically demonstrated impact) of grads from different law schools, and "policy" could be ways to qualify schools you will/will not hire from... Particular content might touch on any of these issues or all the ideas together.

As a content visitor, you'll probably have one or more of the following things in mind when you consider what's on your research list above:
- is there something I should know about that I don't already know?
- is what I already do likely to succeed (at least passably, for me?)
- are there "best practices" etc. that I'm violating or actually innovating?

The content you find in the "Quality / Drivers" cell will answer those questions. And as you go across the framework from left to right, you find additional answers to those questions by looking at the content that people have contributed and comparing it to your issues and experiences.

As a contributor to the conference, you provide the answers instead of just looking for them, at a scope and frequency that you choose yourself.

The framework allows you to focus cross-area as well. For example: you can specialize on a perspective by addressing it across all the various improvement objectives and/or solution levers.
- Your knowledge or research about KM could "stretch" across all the Solution Levers within the notion of how KM relates to the Quality objective.
- Someone else might pursue similar KM breadth across the Value objective.
- Meanwhile, someone else might track the Process view across the Quality objective.
- Another person might focus just on Drivers, across all the Improvement Objectives, with a Process view.
- Etc.

The framework will collect contributions big and small, and systematically relate them. The effort to define and relate them is guided by two Archestra goals.

One: as content gets more specific, it is more important to reflect the point of view that characterizes the role of the persons who might manage the practical use of the information.
- The point-of-view of a role affects what is most likely to be attended to within any solution lever, and
- those choices will be what is used in accordance with the perspectives that round out the improvement opportunity.

Consequently, much of the content might reflect issues as illustrated here:

Two: topical discussions come with a tremendously wide variety in their scope and focus of ideas. But the general subject of Archestra does not change with the topics. Consequently, it is also important to provide a conceptual framework for "comparing apples to oranges." In order to maintain the coherency of the coverage of Archestra's subject, the Topical Framework illustrates how ideas, references, and the materials of management interrelate to constitute the underlying architecture of strategy.

Link to the Topical Framework here or at the Main page of the Archestra site.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at 9:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack