Mapping the KM Landscape

Knowledge Management has become an ever-increasing suite of interconnected tools and techniques - it's easy to feel overwhelmed without a map. Having bounced some early ideas around with Geoff, and spent far too many idle moments at airports fiddling with PowerPoint,  I think it's time to stop tweaking and start sharing.  So here it is: my rendition of the KM Landscape  (click to enlarge).

KM Landscape
KM Landscape

I wanted to try and show the breadth of techniques and processes, the connections between them, and also some of our neighbouring disciplines and opportunities for boundary collaboration.

It’s far from perfect  (I need more than two dimensions to really do the juxtaposition justice) – but hopefully it’ll illustrate some new places to explore.

Let me know if you find any new destinations, landmarks or pub walks to include.

How The Beatles Share Knowledge!

How the Beatles Share Knowledge! I'm currently co-facilitating a series of consortium meetings with my friend and colleague Elizabeth Lank  for six leading organisations, all well known and well-respected for their KM capability.

One of the more light-hearted activities in preparation for the next meeting is for each of the participants to select a suitable "track to share knowledge by", which has generated some fascinating insights, as well as providing us with a background soundtrack for some of the activities we have planned.

One band which cropped up repeatedly was the Beatles, which got me thinking, and digging through my own collection of Beatles singles - and I thought I'd share the outcome here (there and everywhere...)

What's wrong with Lessons Learned? Part 3.

In the last few posts we've been exploring what's wrong with the way we position "lessons learned".  In part one, we looked at the passive problem of people's tendency to focus on the lessons rather than the activity of learning.  In part two, we looked at the negative associations of the term 'lessons', and the impact that this can have. In part three, I want to look at the problem of ambiguity.

The label "lessons learned" trips off the tongue easily, but that doesn't mean that everybody hears it in the same way. Learning appears in more than one place on an learning loop, so there is plenty of room here for confusion. It can be an output, an input, or an agent of change. Here is one, very simple question you can ask to check whats going on in your lessons learned process.

Who is learning?

Here are potential three recipients of the learning - let's imagine we give a badge of recognition in each case:

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It could be person or team who had the experience, who completed the activity and then reflected upon it.

In this case, learning is an output.

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It could be a function or department who learn from a team's experience and make a change to a process, policy, standard or working practice -  thereby reducing the risk or improving the prospects for everyone who follows. In this case, learning is an agent of change to the structural capital of the organisation. It becomes an embedded inheritance for all who follow.

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It could be another team about to commence a new activity who are learning from the experience of a previous team. In this case, learning is an input. This input could proactively pushed to another team, or pulled by the new team, through a peer assist, for example.

It's important to recognise that all of of these are valid and desirable outcomes , or there's a danger that we allow learning from lessons to be a slightly self-indulgent team huddle.  Worse still, we focus on building the library of lessons rather than actioning the change that the learning should produce, see my earlier shaggy dog story about selling a BMW.

MAKE award winners ConocoPhillips and Syngenta both recognise the need to lubricate all parts of the learning and sharing cycle with appropriate senior recognition.

ConocoPhillips have their 4G awards:  Give (sharing knowledge), Grab (applying someone else's knowledge), Gather (consolidating knowledge), Guts (sharing learning from failure).

Agri-business Syngenta loved this, and created their own TREE awards along very similar lines:  Transfer, Re-use, Embed and [share a difficult] Experience.

In each case, senior leaders are involved in judging and celebrating the best examples of these essential behaviours, and the teams or individuals concerned receive a physical recognition award.  It's very clear who is learning, who is sharing, what is improving and where the value is - all of which is the best antidote for ambiguity.

Syngenta TREE award
Syngenta TREE award

Knowledge Pit Stops

Back in 2009, I blogged about some heart-warming examples of cross-industry peer assists,  involving Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Ferrari Formula 1 pit team.  Geoff and I wrote the story up fully in our second book, "No more Consultants". The specific example related to the operating theatre team improving their handover processes during an operation called the "arterial switch" - and the insights of Professor Martin Elliott and his colleagues who had the curiosity and the passion to approach Ferrari and ask for help.

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It reminded me of Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat" where he wrote:

“I have concluded that in a flat world, IQ- Intelligence Quotient – still matters, but CQ and PQ – Curioity Quotient and Passion Quotient – matter even more. I live by the equation CQ+PQ>IQ. Give me a kid with a passion to learn and a curiosity to discover and I will take him or her over a less passionate kid with a high IQ every day of the week.”

I was interested to see that Formula One was in the news again this week with another example of curiosity-driven cross-sector knowledge sharing - this time with public transport.  Train manufacturer Alstom, who say that the knowledge they gained has enabled them reduce a 2-day repair job to just 4 hours.

We need more of these "I wonder" moments to bring knowledge together, where curiosity triumphs over the "but we're different" default reaction of not-invented-here cultures which drives those connections and overlaps apart.

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Knowledge Management, Stories, Roald Dahl and Matilda!

Last week I had the opportunity to see Matilda  in the West End. Coincidentally, it's just opened on Broadway to well-deserved rave reviews.For the uninitiated, it's a musical production of Roald Dahl's book of the same name - about a little girl who develops her own knowledge, imagination, stories and her own special powers in some pretty extreme family and school circumstances.  It's Dahl, (and Tim Minchin who wrote the musical), at their best - my family loved it.  Here's a 90 second clip:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjj56XZcCAc]

 

Reading the programme in the interval, I was really  struck by a phrase in an interview Tim Minchin's Olivier Best Director acceptance speech:

"Denying stories is denying the most human part of being a human. Without stories we’re just eating machines with shoes."

I like that.

It challenges me a bit too, as I think about the way in which organisations often treat their employees, focusing only on their current role and failing to surface their stories and experience. It's like they're "working machines with shoes" rather than people with a wealth of experience. Here's a picture I ask people to reflect upon during my training programmes on knowledge-sharing, networks and communities of practice. I ask them to describe how it relates to their own organisations.

Upturned jigsaw pieces

They usually talk about not knowing who to connect with, not knowing where expertise and relevant experience lies, relying on serendipity, not knowing where to start (no corners or edges), lacking strategy (no picture to copy) etc. Then we discuss what it would take to turn the pieces over, so that we learn more about each others' stories.

That then leads nicely into a conversation about social media, or into some practical, no-tech activities like personal social network mapping on paper (thank you Cheryl Cooper), anecdote circles (thank you Ron Donaldson), peer assists (thank you Geoff Parcell) and knowledge cafe's (thank you David Gurteen) - or a trip to the bar (thank you Stella Artois and Samuel Adams). That way, we move from being eating machines with shoes to drinking machines with stories!

I'm sure Roald would have approved. Even if Miss Trunchbull wouldn't.