Knowing what good looks like...

Last week marked the end of this year’s Masterchef competition in the UK.  Once again our family sat, drooled and marvelled at the creations of Simon Wood, this year’s winner. His combination of ingredients, skills, techniques and presentation was outstanding, and from the minute the camera zoomed in on his final three courses, you know that you had seen what good looks like.

For his starter he cooked octopus served with chorizo crisps, cannellini beans and chorizo salad, brunoise tomatoes and a sherry and smoked paprika vinaigrette. His main course was squab pigeon served two ways — roasted breast, and a pigeon leg bon-bon, stuffed with pigeon leg meat, chicken, mushroom duxelle and Armagnac — served with three types of heritage carrots, pommes parisienne, girolle and trumpet mushrooms, carrot puree, watercress puree and a cassis jus. For pudding he whipped up a lemon posset topped with citrus tutti-frutti - charred grapefruit and orange, a lime tuile and limoncello — topped with pistachio crumb, edible flowers, tarragon leaves and a lime air.  Mmmm.

When it comes to organisations, with such a wide range of available knowledge-related ingredients, tools and techniques which can have a potential impact, it can difficult to discern "what good looks like" and which ingredients should be given prominence at different times.  But that shouldn't stop us trying!

Here's my attempt to describe what it good looks like when it comes to knowledge management...

Leadership. Leaders in the organisation are collaborative role models, challenging people to ask for help, seek out, share and apply good practices. This inspires curiosity and a commitment to improve.

Collaboration. People have the desire and capability to use work collaboratively, using a variety of technology tools with confidence.  Collaboration is a natural act, whether spontaneous or scheduled.  People work with an awareness of their colleagues’ availability and expertise and use collaboration tools as instinctively as the telephone to increase their productivity.

Learning. People instinctively seek to learn before doing.  Lessons from successes and failures are drawn out in an effective manner and shared openly with others who are genuinely eager to learn, apply and improve. Lessons lead to actions and improvement. Project and programme management create a healthy supply and demand for knowledge, and can demonstrate the value it creates.

Networking. People are actively networking, seamlessly participating in formal communities and harnessing informal social networks to get help, share solutions, lessons and good practices. The boundaries between internal and external networks are blurred and all employees understand the benefits and take personal responsibility for managing the risks.

Navigation. There are no unnecessary barriers to information, which is shared by default and restricted only where necessary. Information management tools and protocols are intuitive, simple and well understood by everybody.  This results in a navigable, searchable, intelligently tagged and appropriately classified asset for the whole organisation, with secure access for trusted partners.

Embedding. Knowledge management is fully embedded in people management and development, influencing recruitment and selection. Knowledge-sharing behaviours are built-into induction programmes and are evident in corporate values and individual competencies.  Knowledge transfer is part of the strategic agenda for HR. The risks of knowledge loss are addressed proactively. Knowledge salvage efforts during hurried exit interviews are a thing of the past!

Consolidation. People know which knowledge is strategically important, and treat it as an asset.  Relevant lessons and practival recommendations are drawn from the experience of many, and consolidated into guidelines. These are brought to life with stories and narrative, useful documents and templates and links to individuals with experience and expertise. These living “knowledge assets” are refreshed and updated regularly by a community of practitioners.

Social Media. Everybody understands how to get the best from the available tools and channels. Social media is just part of business as usual; people have stopped making a distinction. Serendipity, authenticity and customer intimacy are increasing.  People are no longer tentative and are encouraged to innovate and experiment. The old dogs have learned new tricks!  Policies are supportive and constantly evolving, keeping pace with innovation in the industry.

Storytelling. Stories are told, stories are listened to, stories are re-told and experience is shared. People know how to use the influencing power of storytelling.  Narrative is valued, captured, analysed and used to identify emergent patterns that inform current practice and future strategy.

Environment. The physical workplace reflects a culture of openness and collaboration.  Everyone feels part of what’s going on in the office.  Informal and formal meetings are easily arranged without space constraints and technology is always on hand to enhance productivity and involve participants who can’t be there in person.

How's that for some food for thought?

My favourite things...

Next month marks my tenth year as an independent consultant.  How time flies when you're, well, learning to fly...

As I look back over those years, and the privilege of working with 120 different organisations, there are many high spots (as well the odd moment I'd prefer to forget!).  One particular type of activity stands out as my favourite, running a knowledge-sharing and learning consortium.

Let me explain how they work, and why they are so effective.

They typically start with a conversation initiated by a client which goes something like this...

“We keep going to conferences and feel like we're hearing from the usual suspects, and seeing the same glossy presentations, but not learning anything new.   Could you find us a number of peer organisations to learn from and with - and facilitate a number of high-intensity meetings for us?”

And in a nutshell, that’s what a knowledge-sharing consortium is: a limited series of meetings between different organisations at similar levels of maturity with a commitment to openly share and learn. You could say that it’s the perfect blend of a Community of Practice and a Peer Assist, with a brilliant mix of non-competing organisations.

I have co-facilitated my consortium programmes with my good friend and consultant colleague Elizabeth Lank. It takes the energy and abilities of two facilitators to help 25 participants get the maximum benefit from their investment. You need to give it everything you’ve got. I know that both Elizabeth and I end each event with that feeling of “positive-tiredness” that comes after the last member has departed happy and the celebratory G&T has been poured, to help with our After Action Review.

So thank you to Schlumberger, Shell, BT, Unilever, GSK, Freshfields, Oracle, ABN Amro, Syngenta,  Pfizer, PwC, Freshfields, Linklaters, NHS, Audit Commission, the International Olympic Committee and others - thank you for making those events so memorable and enjoyable.

Here are my reflections...

Lessons, recommendations and design principles for a knowledge-sharing consortium.

• Forming a consortium works best when there is a founding organization – a client with a need and a curiosity and desire to learn. Recruiting and inviting other participating companies is so much easier when you can say, for example, “Schlumberger are looking to learn from some other great knowledge companies about maximising the value from Communities of Practice. Would you be interested in joining us?”

• We found that 4-8 member organisations worked best. Any less than 4 and members feel that they are exhausting the possibilities for learning. If you go much higher then 8 and it becomes too difficult to sustain relationships or remember what was discussed – you end up with something more like a conference.

• Ask for 2-4 participants per company. This enables them to provide members from complimentary functions in their own organisations, and gives a critical mass for company break-out moments when they create space and time to consider “what will we do with all the good practice ideas that we’re picking up?. It also enables them to share their own story from multiple perspectives.

• The series of meetings (usually 3 or 4 over a 12 month period) is deliberately time-bound, with a clear end in mind. This gives a focus and a helpful sense of urgency to extract the maximum value from every hour of each event.

• Invest in forming relationships right from the start. Ensure each event has an over-night stay in a pleasant venue, great food and drink, space for informal conversations. Ensure that people have bios or social media profiles available, and include early ice-breaker events which make use of this information and get the group laughing together.

• Ensure that there are sessions where participating organisations tell their story (as creatively as they like – you might chose to ban PowerPoint from some sessions). Balance this time evenly between telling and asking questions. Do everything you can to make it unlike a conference!

• Solve real problems brought by the participants, as early as the first meeting. This sets the tone not just for subsequent face-to-face meetings, but creates the expectation and openness to request and respond.

• Have fun together! We’ve incorporated treasure hunts, photo-safaris, museum trips, role-play, board games, playlists and karaoke into the designs in order to create memories, bind the group together, and, well enjoy having fun!

• Make full use of artifacts. If every picture tells a story, then physical objects can write a book. We’ve curated displays of awards, posters, t-shirts, stress balls, card games, mugs, books, calendars and quizzes and explored their effectiveness at length. It’s been brilliant to see some consensual stealing-with-pride going on between the members.

• Stay flexible. The best-planned agenda needs to be sacrificed if the group collectively choose to go somewhere else. We’ve learned to build in flexibility and use methods like Openspace to keep the power of choice firmly in the hands of the participants.

• Vary the methods, techniques and tools – and debrief their use with the participants. We have found that our participants have really valued the use of new techniques. We’ve introduced reverse brainstorming, appreciative inquiry, project retrospects, social reporting, knowledge asset creation, social network mapping, speed-consulting, peer assists – and some experimental techniques which evolve on the day. Every time we use a technique, we review the outcome and the process and encourage reflection in company teams on how they can be adapted for use.

• Focus facilitation on the process rather than the content.  Elizabeth and I are both frequently called upon to speak as experts on knowledge management and collaboration, but in a room with 25 experienced practitioners, our focus is usually on helping them to learn from each other - and just interjecting with the occasional story or 10 minute context-setting session.

• Keep the discussion going between events. We’ve successfully used Google Sites, teleconferences, vlogging, individual telephone calls and even good old email to keep the party going between face-to-face events, and to build anticipation for the next meeting.

Stop press! We've had an approach from a large international company who want to participate in a consortium focusing on effective collaboration, virtual working and network/community building, and we have just started the search for suitable consortium members.

So if this an area that your organisation has experience with, and you're particularly interest in joining with some peer organisations to learn more, then please contact me for details.  I can guarantee it's even better than raindrops on roses...

Just thinking...

Is it true that the best things come in small packages when it comes to knowledge?

I came across this helpful framework for thinking about the way we approach the packaging and sharing of knowledge. (Thanks Elizabeth for spotting it).

Just in Case.   That’s been the unspoken but underlying mantra of many KM programmes. Let’s capture everything - all of those documents, lessons, transcripts and store them in a folder, just in case we need them in the future. It’s like archiving, but without the indexing rigour that a professional would apply.

So when that moment of need does arrive, it’s often too difficult to extract than insightful nugget or reusable example. It can be like rummaging through the rubbish bin to find that set of keys you dropped. You get messy and frustrated trying, then you give up and get a new set cut.

Now of course, there are often procedural and legal reasons why we do need to store everything associated with a particular individual or process – but we should watch out for tendencies to become Organisational Hoarders!

Just in Time.   One of Dave Snowden’s truisms is “you don’t know what you know until you need it”. We need a way to harness current knowledge and recent experience right in our moment of need. We’re not going to do battle with the SharePoint search function, and we’re not going to read through a pile of case studies or lessons learned reports in order to separate the signal from the noise.

And how do we know that yesterday’s lesson will serve today’s problem? We don’t have time for that – we have a real need, a desire to satisfy that need right now and we can’t ask questions of our documents!

How do we best respond to that? Just-in-time points us towards the tapping of formal communities and informal networks, inside and outside organisations. It’s the domain of knowledge jams on Jive and Yammer, questions to our Twitter networks. Face-to-face, it’s a great place to use techniques like Peer Assists and  “Speed Consulting”. Sometimes those interactions will point people back to content and documents, but they cut through the noise and provide access to a willing army of experienced volunteers - when faced with a cry for help – are often only too willing to help.

Just enough.I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one. Lack of time, and lack of strategic focus are two reasons why we end up with a Just-in-Case approach to content and documents.

Curation takes time, and it requires expertise. It’s best played as a team sport rather than an individual perspective – but it makes a huge difference when it comes to creating an asset which educates and informs the reader/learner.

Are we planting vast fields of information assets? Or are we harvesting fruitful knowledge assets?  The latter is designed to provide just enough - and also to enable digging on the specifics details

Just for me.   Perhaps that should be the ultimate goal of our work an KM professionals.  To be able to mine the riches of just-in-case knowledge, to deliver it  at the moment I need it, to hone it down so that it's the perfect fit (not too much or too little) for my knowledge gaps and can be easily applied... and to do it in such a way that it's tailored for my personal needs.  Now that's quite a proposition.

Seeing the whole elephant...

It shouldn't surprise me after all this time, but it does.

I've conducted around 30 interviews in two different organisations in the last couple of months, as part of some KM strategy work.  The answers to the question: "what does knowledge management mean to you?" are often so varied, and usually include just one or two components or approaches . People have such different perspectives on what knowledge management is - and it's rare for anyone to connect the different components together in any kind of holistic framework. "It's about how we  get the right knowledge to the right person at the right time.  Oh and it's to do with networks and conversations too."

To be fair, knowledge management has been poorly defined and communicated in the external world, so it's little wonder that people in organisations often approach it like the blind men and the elephant - each sensing a part, but not the whole, and drawing their own conclusions.

Here's a holistic model for knowledge management. It isn't new (it's based on the model from BP in Learning to Fly)- but it's still relevant and current today and does a good job of plotting a route through the KM landscape. Let me build it up for you.

Start with the day-to-day matter of performance management and project management, where people and teams agree to goals and targets in order to deliver value which generally takes the form of profits for shareholders - or value for stakeholders.

How do they do this? By using and developing knowledge - their own expertise, knowledge from the team, elsewhere in the organisation, from professional advisors or others outside the organisation.

It's a given that KM needs to connect directly to the goals and objectives of the organisation. So how does knowledge management improve, or accelerate the way in which they are achieved?

Firstly, through the application of learning.  Learning before, during and after activities. Without learning, we end up recycling old knowledge and documents - trapped between "connect and collect", but not creating anything new.

• Learning before: how do we know that we've tapped into what the organisation already knows, and can we make sense of what it is knowing today?
• Learning after: how good are we at really learning and applying lessons from stories of personal experience?
• Learning during: do we have a culture of continuous learning, reviewing and improving?

With processes for learning before and after in place, it's important to manage the outputs of those processes - and to continue to refine, collate and curate a living, evolving, media-rich "knowledge bank", from which withdrawals and deposits can be made.

...but of course, the capture knowledge is just a shadow of the knowledge which will always remain in the heads of individual experts, and within networks of people with questions, answers, experience and ideas. The reserves in this human knowledge bank are far greater.These networks and experts play a vital role in collating and curating knowledge on behalf of the organisation.  They have the current awareness and they understand the most pressing business issues. Who better to steward the knowledge than an emergent community of subject matter experts and practitioners?

So now we've connected performance and project management with learning, learning with codification, and codification with networks, experience and expertise.  The final part of the model recognises the role that culture and leadership behaviours and actions play to sustain an environment where these processes can thrive and interconnect.

What motivates people to make the time to learn, connect and collate knowledge such that the value and efficiencies have a chance to flow through and create the stories to inspire others?  How can leaders reinforce and role-model this?

It can take a little time to give birth to this kind of a supportive culture - but then again, elephants to have the longest gestation period of any mammal, so we shouldn't be surprised.

Looking back – KM highlights from last year (part 2)

Continuing from my top ten KM consulting highlights (in no particular order!) from 2014...6. Sharing Knowledge in the Offshore Wind community

The UK is a world leader in the Offshore Wind Energy business, and with multiple companies involved in planning, developing and constructing wind farms, there is huge potential for reducing the cost (and increasing the size of renewable energy “pie”) by sharing knowledge between the industry players – who happen to be competitors! It’s a classic example of tragedy of the commons.

I have been working with all of the main stakeholders over the past year to develop a community of practice, a common language, and a series of sharing workshops to help this group of companies to trust, share, connect and learn whilst respecting the commercial limitations which exist. Where of you start? Where are the safe places to begin knowledge-sharing? It’s an unconventional community of practice – but a fascinating one to work with.

osw

7. Communities in Copenhagen 

After nearly ten years of independent consultancy in KM, I finally managed to combine a business trip with an extra family holiday. My wife and daughters accompanied me to Copenhagen for a brilliant weekend, whilst I stayed on to work with Maersk Oil and help shape their work on communities of practice.

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8. The African Evaluation Association conference in Cameroon.

I have to admit, I love visiting new countries, so when I was asked to speak and deliver workshops at the AfrEA 2014 conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, it didn’t take much to persuade me.

Being exposed to the sheer breadth and depth of M&E activity in the development sector – and the natural way in which Knowledge Management dovetails into this important work was an eye-opener. Meeting Rituu Nanda, who has worked so hard with the AIDS constellation, building on Geoff’s work with UNAIDS which we wrote up in Learning to Fly, was a real highlight for me.

Oh and the bread basket was certainly eye-catching!

croc

9. Board Gamification in Syngenta

MAKE award winners Syngenta have been one of my longest-running clients, and I’ve had the opportunity to support their KM Strategy, Communities of Practice, Lessons Learned and Operational Excellence programmes. Whether it’s cartoons, glass knowledge-sharing awards, pocket cards or toolkits, I’ve always enjoyed their love of embedding knowledge in artifacts and their courage to innovate. One of the best examples of this was the creation of a board game about the early stages of leading of a community of practice, based on Snakes and Ladders. Of course, we called it "Snakes and Leaders". The game was used as part of an internal training programme for Network Leaders, and incorporated the ups and downs, celebrations and pitfalls of the first 100 days of a typical network, with some additional randomised surprises and challenges.

Here it is being played by fellow participants in the Knowledge Driven Performance consortium.

Snakes and Leaders

10.  Tearfund

Tearfund is a charity which has been important to me for as long as I can remember.  Their approach to After Action Reviews made it into Learning to Fly, and I had the chance to visit them to work on their Organisational Learning Strategy a few years ago.  Towards the end of last year, I was asked to join their People and Learning committee as an non-executive external advisor; something I really look forward to contributing towards.  What makes this extra special is that my eldest daughter Martha is also working with Tearfund on their No Child Taken campaign against Human Trafficking as a public figure, following her appearance on the Great British Bake Off (aka PBS British Baking Show), so we will be able to share knowledge over her cake experiments!

nct

Looking forward to seeing what 2015 has in store...

Changing the end-game.

See if you can find the connection between these three things: a news item, a book and a song. 1) There was an interesting article in the news this week, regarding a radical proposal to change the way international football matches (soccer – stay with me, my American friends…) are handled in the event of a level score after all the time has been played.

The traditional sequence of events is that after 90 minutes of normal time, and 30 minutes of extra time, a penalty shootout ensues – and sooner or later, one or more unfortunate players commit the heinous, unforgettable crime of missing a penalty – and endures a lifetime of shame from unforgiving fans. It’s a tough, but dramatic way to end a game – or a career as a popular footballer. Most fans would much prefer a legitimate win in the conventional way.

The radical idea (proposed by UEFA, which represents European football associations) was to hold a penalty shootout at the start of every international game, just in case it ends in a draw. That way everyone gets to enjoy the drama of the event without creating instant villains - and the game which follows has an extra degree of urgency. When you think about it, it’s actually quite a good idea – bringing forward what you occasionally do at the end of the game, so that everyone gets the benefit.

2) In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer becomes fascinated with the idea of attending his own funeral – and, by faking own death, he gets to do exactly that, and upon hearing his own obituary and seeing the grieving Aunt Polly he comes to realise how much he was loved, and is filled with remorse.At least for a little while until his next adventure.

3) Joni Mitchel’s “Big Yellow Taxi” – and in particular the famous line from the chorus: “Don’t it always seem to be, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…”

Can you see the connection?

Now, more importantly can you see the connection to our world of Knowledge Management?

Here it is:  Harvesting knowledge from someone leaving the organisation, just before they go.

Why do we leave it until too late to start paying attention to the know-how and know-who bound up in our most valued employees? How many leaving parties have you been to where you leave saying “I never knew that about Bob, and I’ve worked with him for 20 years!”

Wouldn’t it be cool to work in a organisation where you got to “fake your own retirement” after 5 years. You get to hear how your colleagues valued and appreciated you, they get to discover so much more about your background and experience, and it all happens in time to have a positive impact on the ‘game’ which is the rest of your career in that organisation.

The good news is that we can do this more and more as our digital histories in organisations become longer and more readily accessible. All those contributions to discussions and conversations can be mined through my Yammer or Twitter profiles. My contributions to Wikis are marked by my electronic fingerprints. My blog entries reveal my personal thoughts and ideas in an ever-evolving memoir. My profile (internal and public) provides me with space to declare my interests, passions and past. Add to this some of the processes carried out in more progressive, networked organisations, where I’m connected to buddies and mentors and I’m deliberately introduced into networks and communities as part of my induction.  Perhaps after a few years I get invited to do a "hot seat" exercise within a community, whereby members of the community can ask me questions over a 24 hour period.

If we were able to piece together all of these knowledge touchpoints from my career, then last-minute salvage exercises like "knowledge harvesting" would no longer necessary.

Now that would be a game-changer.

iWatch but do iLearn?

Like hundreds of millions of others, I enthusiastically  tuned in to watch the Apple Launch event yesterday.

And like hundreds of millions of others, I was frustrated by a the spectacular failure of the live-streaming of the event, which stuttered, error-messaged restarted, over-dubbed Chinese real-time translation, and regularly reverted to a bizarre test-card of a Truck Schedule.

Very un-Apple-like. Very embarrassing.

Needless to say, Twitter was in uproar baying for retribution; this tweet summarising the mood.

When things go publicly wrong, this is so often the reaction.  We look for the fall-guy and take 'decisive action'.

Does this change anything?  Does it reduce the risk that the source of the failure will repeat it in the future?  I don't believe so. Somewhere out there, there are one or more totally committed Apple employees who have experienced the most agonizing, unforgettable public professional moment of shame.  They probably worked through the night for weeks in advance to make this a success - and somewhere, someone screwed up, in front of one of the largest audiences in the world.  Does anyone really think they would want to re-live that experience? Does anyone  think that they  - more than anyone else - will want to know who, when and why this failure happened?

So why would any sane organisation want heads to roll after such a one-off failure?

Because the trouble is, when heads roll, knowledge and experience rolls too.

All this reminds me of an apocryphal story from IBM - one which I often use to illustrate true cost of failure - failing to learn from it.

A sales executive was working on a big deal for IBM - around $10m of potential value. Somewhere along the way, they screwed up and lost the deal to a competitor. That was a big deal.

The salesperson was summoned to Lou Gertsner [or perhaps his predecessor CEO, John Akers?] to explain himself.  After hearing the  explanation, Gerstner asked the salesperson, "What do you think I should do?".

"Well, I guess you're going to fire me." came the faltering response.

"Fire you?  Why would I fire you when I've just invested ten million dollars in your education?" retorted Gerstner.

Now that's knowledge leadership in action.

I hope that today, intelligence triumphs over indignation  at  1, Infinite Loop, Cupertino, and Apple are smart enough to do the same.

Secret Objectives v Shared Knowledge. Open Performance Management anyone?

I've been musing on the traditional approach to performance management, and how management-by-objectives could release so much more value if it was more transparent. I've seen so many examples where people rely on serendipity to discover a colleague or a project with an aligned objective. And they often discover it too late!

OK - most of us know our own objectives, but Dilbert has a point...

Perhaps this is all a bit obvious, but, inspired by a recent talk from Euan Semple not to eschew stating the obvious, I thought I'd pose the question:

Why is is that even in enlightened organisations who emphasise collaboration and connection, personal performance objectives still seem to be treated with the same level of protection and secrecy as personal salaries?  It's like we are asking people to complete a jigsaw with all of the pieces upside-down.

What if everyone's profile page carried their objectives by default?

You know the kind of thing: "This is me and this is what I'm directing my energy into, to make our company more successful this year. Are you doing anything that might complement or align with me?"

Naturally you'll need to conceal the ones which are commercially, personally or legally sensitive - but I would suggest that the majority of individual objectives could be shared, but remain barricaded into performance management silos.

Do you know of any examples of organisations where individual performance objectives are generally visible to all, and where people look for synergies?  I've started to discuss this on the Gurteen Linked-In group too  - getting plenty of agreement, but no mould-breaking examples yet.

Grateful for pointers or examples from anyone.

So let's push this a bit further...

• What if not just our objectives were visible, but also how we're progressing in meeting them?
• What if I could reach out and offer to help a colleague to prevent them from missing a target?
• What if we could remove the perceived need to out-perform and compete with our colleagues, focus on being greater than the sum of our parts,  like the HBR article on T-shaped management, but on a truly corporate scale?

And to be truly revolutionary,

• What if we could bury forced-ranking and focus on releasing best from our people; start managing talent collectively rather than individually, and reform closed performance management into collaborative knowledge sharing?

Now that sounds like the kind of courageous company which I'd like to work for.

Perhaps it's time we discussed some what-if questions with our allies in HR?

Scaffolding for sharing knowledge

Last week the Daily Telegraph published an article about the "truth behind British politeness" which revisited the phrases which we British often use, the real meaning, and what (as the Telegraph charmingly puts it) "foreigners" understand. I've seen it printed off and pinned on the walls of several offices over the years - usually within easy view of the telephone.  It's a great (and humourous) way to help create understanding, enhance conversations and prevent people talking past each other.  I'd even to so far as to say that it's not bad!

The idea of a common language - a frame of reference to support better understanding and more focused conversations is what lies at the heart of the creation and use of self-assessment models.  Whilst they are similar in concept to maturity models, the purpose is less to track and measure - and more to create a shared vocabulary to enable more targeted knowledge sharing.  I've seen them used to great effect in a wide range of organisations and topics:  Engineering, Energy, Operations Maintenance, Safety, Environmental Performance, Supply Chain Management, Collaboration and Health... There are some health-related examples here which grew out of  work with the UNAIDS programme, and has  been reapplied by the Constellation intoself-assessments for Malaria and Diabetes as well as HIV. (please check the advice page for usage guidance)

I like to think of them as scaffolding for knowledge sharing.  It's scaffolding which enables people to climb higher and faster to have richer conversations with deeper understanding.

  In each case the self-assessment tool was created by the group who would ultimately use it. That's an important principle.  They can recognise their own words - and the results of their discussions - in the practices chosen and the  levels and language used to represent each practice. Creating a model together ia a tremendous way to have a group make explicit some of their  knowledge, stories, assumptions and unarticulated rules of thumb.  It gives a great sense of achievement - having rigourously discussed something they care about  and understand deeply - and created an artefact which they can then use. We talk a lot about Communities of Practice - but sometimes communities never work the detail together on what their practice really is, and what good might look like. What a missed opportunity!    Building a self-assessment model with members of a community forces a lot of helpful discussion, gives the group a product to be proud of  and provides a very easy way for members to self-assess and then share their relative strengths and weaknesses in a knowledge marketplace. it also gives them a framework against which they can store share artefacts and examples (see the AIDS Competence knowledge asset example). Tools like the River Diagram and Stairs Diagram and reciprocal sharing techiques like Offers and Requests help to map out the dimensions of the marketplace ready for knowledge exchange. All of this sounds a lot more purposeful than hoping that needs and responses will serendipitously collide whilst we're talking past each other... So with the greatest of respect, do you hear what I say?

10 characteristics of a great KM Sponsor

I've been thinking recently about the role of sponsorship in enabling knowledge management, and it took me back to some Change Management principles which I learned from ChangeFirst, when I was responsible for Change Management as well as Knowledge Management at Centrica.The ChangeFirst model was based on Darryl Connor's "Managing at the speed of change", but also had much in  common with the work of John Kotter.  Both excellent reads with similar roots.

Depending on your KM strategy, sponsorship is always important and often absolutely critical to the success of a knowledge change programme - and let's face it, most of our work as practitioners is all about creating change and making it stick.  So here's what I learned from my various Change Management gurus about the ten characteristics of effective sponsors.

Think about the leader who sponsors your KM activities as you read then through - or use it as a checklist to help you select the ideal candidate, if you're still looking...

1. Dissatisfaction.  You want your Sponsor to be agitated about the current state of knowledge sharing in your organisation.  They need to be frustrated at the loss of value, the inefficiency, the corporate stupidity, the missed innovations and the embarrassment of re-invention or repetition.  A sponsor who thinks "everything is generally OK, and this KM stuff - well, it's just the icing on the cake!"  is going to struggle to defend or promote your work with any authenticity. If they're not already sufficiently fired up, then you might want to find some provocative horror stories to spark things along.

2. Making resources available.  It's an obvious one - but there's little point in firing up a sponsor who lacks the wherewithal to help you take action.    If they don't have the budget or resource available themselves, can they help you through their contacts and relationships?

3. Understand the impact on people.  Particularly true of Knowledge Management sponsors, because KM is fundamentally a people-based approach.  How would you rate your sponsor's emotional intelligence? You will need to be able to engage them in discussions about the culture of the organisation and the behaviours of leaders. If that's an uncomfortable area for them, then keep looking!

4. Public Support.  Bit of a no-brainer, but naturally you will want a sponsor who is willing and able to speak on behalf of your 'programme' at every opportunity.  You may well need to equip them with an 'elevator speech' and some compelling success stories - and remind them of their dissatisfaction.

5. Private Support.  Ah yes.  The authenticity test.  Will your sponsor speak with the same level of passion and heartfelt credibility in a private conversation with their peers - or is it just a mask they wear when they're wheeled out to make positive speeches.  You need a believer!

6. Good Networkers.   Perhaps this should be at the top.  Your sponsor need to be adept at spanning boundaries, spotting synergies and sneaking around the back door of silos.  Their network needs to become your network.

7. Tracking performance.  This is one of the acid tests of interest and commitment.  Is sponsorship of your activity something which is on their agenda, or are you just a medal that they wear to special occasions?  Agree what good looks like, agree the immediate steps and agree on the indicators and measures you need to focus on. Get that meeting in their diary at least quarterly.  If they're dashboard-oriented, then build one for them, but remember Einstein's classic quote:  "Not everything that can be counted  counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

8. Reinforcement when needed.  Sometimes you might need to 'send for reinforcements', so select a sponsor who is willing to challenge, knock heads together, unblock the corporate drains and generally provide you with air cover when you want it. You need a fighter as well as a lover.

9. Focus on the future.  Ensure that your sponsor gets the big picture - and can communicate it compellingly.  What is their personal vision for the organisation five years from now?  Does it match yours? Does it line up with your KM strategy and plan.  If they have a tendency to get lost in the details of performance targets, then make sure that some of your measures are long term.  You don't really want them fussing over how many documents were uploaded into a SharePoint folder this week when there's a demographic knowledge-leaving-the-organisation bubble which threatens to burst 3 years from now.  Help them to lift their heads up - and ask them to lift yours too.

10. Behavioural modelling.  Your sponsor needs to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk. When you champion knowledge sharing, you lay yourself open to accusations of hypocrisy much more than if you were the sponsor of systems implementation programme.  It's behavioural.  It's relational.   And people notice. You might want to equip them with some simple questions to ask others which help them nail their colours to the mast.  Syngenta are good at this, and put a number of "leading questions" on a pocket card to help all of their senior champions to verbalise their commitment:

"Who could you share this with?"  "Who did you learn from?" "Who might have done this before?" "Who could you ask for help and advice?"

University College Hospital's After Action Review behavioural programme has taken training to the very top of the hospital tree to ensure that anyone is equipped (and expected) to facilitate an AAR. Would your Sponsor know how to lead a simple period of team reflection?  It would certainly increase their impact if you could help them to become the "knowledge conscience" in the boardroom...

So how does your sponsor measure up? 
If you can nod gratefully to most of the above as you read it, then count your blessings….