What people say about metaKnowledge

A strategic and operational plan completed for a start-up, non-profit journalist organization, forming in the collapse of the traditional business, editorial model, brought this praise from the client: "I want to thank you for your superb work. The presentation, conversation and recommendations have all been enormously helpful and clarifying. They've reaffirmed some core directions and challenged others, forcing us to sharpen and refine our approach further. And that's deeply appreciated. Your recommendations about frequency of content and organizational structure have been especially instructive. And despite our misgivings about an unwieldy production schedule, I actually think there's a wonderful way for us to produce valuable content on a frequent basis without undermining our more immersive project work. All to say for these and many other reasons, I'm grateful for your time and expertise."

My colleague Jon Powell, formerly Chief Knowledge Officer at Hewitt Consulting, described my knack this way: "Debra has unique abilities to see the 'big picture' and still remain highly detail-oriented. In my work with Debra at A.T. Kearney and at Plural, she always articulated and pioneered a solid vision and direction in knowledge management, research and technology. Her strong understanding of principles -- and when to relax them -- aids her application and execution." Jon now consults at Ernst & Young.
Read more about the knowledge management initiative at A.T. Kearney.

"Debra did a superior job at building highly valued research services. She steers her staff in the right direction to add increased value to our consulting work. [A firmwide study] ranked her group first among support services for value to consultants. Debra has worked hard and with success to raise the caliber of research staff and research services. Her clients respect her. Debra has been particularly helpful in the knowledge management area and has frequently provided throughtful and valued counsel. She is a good manager, takes her work very seriously, looks after her clients and her staff well, and strives to introduce her approaches, tools and technology." My boss Sally Randall, Chief Knowledge Officer at A.T. Kearney, taught me so much about being effective for progress and, by her example, about being a good manager. She was a great pleasure to work for and with.

"Debra applied her thorough understanding of information management and supporting technologies to create innovative programs for research and knowledge sharing. Debra excels in managing people. She is able to draw disparate personalities and skills into a cohesive team. Debra clearly articulated her vision for our department, developed creative and challenging plans to achieve the vision, and implemented the plans successfully. She asked us to change our processes dramatically while giving us the encouragement, skills and tools we needed to implement the changes. Debra is an outstanding coach and mentor who shares information freely with her staff to create a truly collaborative working envirnoment." No praise means more than from a colleague and member of one's staff: Pat Porter, knowledge manager, A.T. Kearney, Inc.

"Debra Hammond has a superb skill set that stands at the center of where the Internet and Intranets are going. Debra is on top of all these areas theoretically and has outstanding , practical, hands-on ability to apply technology to business problems", writes Tim Bray, Director of Web Technolgoies at Sun Microsystems, founder of Antartica Systems, Inc., cofounder of Open Text Corp., and coinventor of XML.

Joe Stolarski, Senior Vice President of Engineering & Operations at Jones Lang LaSalle, and his group became energized about turning their intranet site into a knowledge repository. "Debra Hammond made knowledge management understandable to those in the trenches and convinced us of the added client benefit of our coordinated efforts: we saw the business sense and professional advantage gained from working together to build tools and resources and sharing them on our new, global intranet. She diplomatically facilitated and steered these efforts and the resources of 13 different departments and business units into a single, organized site. She was instrumental in helping us create this valuable tool and left us with a process, guidelines and roles for keeping our knowledge-base fresh and useful.

John Wallerius, Global Chief Information Officer, Jones Lang LaSalle, headed the global knowledge management team of which I was the Americas representative. "Debra Hammond exhibited outstanding leadership in the creation and launch of our new, global intranet.  She was instrumental in the successful migration and integration of three regional intranets into a single, global XML platform.  She helped shape its functionality and its look-and-feel as well as its vision, strategy, and goals.  Debra defined the global roles, metadata, standards, and processes needed to sustain best practices and intellectual capital.  Her focus on usability put in place metrics and benchmarks, and helped us ensure that technology supported our business goals.  Debra brought her considerable expertise and know-how to help us learn from other corporations already in the knowledge management game, and leap-frog ahead of our competition."
Read more about the metadata project, one piece of the work completed at Jones Lang LaSalle.

More references and a profile at LinkedIn.

@ 2011 metaKnowledge, LLC