Knowledge Management and Training

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We are doing a piece of work for a corporate client, looking at the link between Knowledge management and Training. On the face of it, there should be a strong link, as both are about learning, and about the development of capability through learning. In many companies, Training is focused on development of the individual, and KM is focused on learning and at team, project and community scale (or, sadly all to often, its focused at IT and document repositories).

Yet teams and projects and communities are made up of individuals. Traditional learning was classroom focused, but increasingly a wider view of L&OD is incorporating learning on the job – online learning, the use of learning blogs and wikis, and remote learning through webcasts and other tools. KM and Training converge under a heading of "Learning".

Our first thought is that, at a strategic level, KM and Training should be linked, and the strategic competencies of the organisation should be addressed by both disciplines. Consistent resources could be created, ensuring that new knowledge is provided consistently through training, through reference materials and through communities. KM can provide support and learning solutions outside the classroom, and personal development through interventions like site visits and learning visits can be linked with team learning as well. We have worked with one organisation where the corporate university is supported by a series of communities of practice, so that Training and KM are structurally connected through the university.

Training addresses the “Internalisation” box in the Nonaka and Takeuchi SECI model, which we have always found the hardest box to address through KM. This is the box where the individual or team interacts with the organisational knowledge base, and structures like simulations, role playing and games can provide a powerful way of transferring knowledge.

This message was passed on to us many years ago from Colonel Ed of the US Army, who have a very close link between KM and training. The Training budget is 15% of the Army’s budget, which is a proportion no business will come anywhere near matching, but which enables the soldier to fully internalise, through experience, the most up-to-date war-fighting "doctrine" (the Army's name of codified knowledge). However a proper linkage between training and knowledge sharing, between building the capability of the individual and that of the organisation, and between L&OD and KM, is likely to be the next step forward in consolidating Knowledge Management as a fully embedded support mechanism for performance.

In order to link the two, you need the following -

1. An integrated KM/L&OD strategy, focused around the critical reas of knowledge for the orgnisation
2. Structural linkage of the KM and Training functions
3. Structural linkage between the communities of practice and the course owners
4. A feed mechanism for new knowledge, case studies and lessons to enter training content
5. A feed mechanism for new lessons gained through training (especially through practical exercises and simulations) to be fed into business process


Photo - Training the trainers - from Flickr
Originally uploaded by Army.mil and described as follows. A bonfire lit the sky of Babil Province, as noncommissioned officers
from the 172nd Infantry Brigade welcomed 22 graduates into the ranks of leadership at the first-ever Blackhawk Warrior Leader Course in theater.
The week-long accelerated training program has a focus on over 20 hands-on, performance-based skills ranging from Iraqi security
professionalization to fundamental lifesaving skills. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Bethany L. Little)

Quantified KM success stories number 6 - community success

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One of our clients was putting together a knowledge management strategy, and discussed the idea of strategic focus with their senior management. A few focus areas were chosen for KM, one of which being "sales and marketing in the developing world" (where conventional developed-world sales channels did not exist). A global community of practice was set up to drive the sharing and implementation of knowledge in this new area. Within 4 years, the community of practice had helped turnover in that part of the business to double from approx $1 billion to nearly $2 billion, and the share of profits from that area had risen from 6.6% to 10%

Classic quote

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It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
- Oscar Wilde"

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) = corporate failure?

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There's a lot out there in the blogosphere at the moment about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), and I have to admit, it's something that I find a little disturbing. You see, for me, Knowledge Management is not a personal thing; it's a communal thing. The whole culture change associated with KM lies in seeing knowledge not as personal property, to be held, hoarded or traded personally, but as community property to be sought, shared, reused and refreshed in community.

There's a saying that "all of us are smarter than any of us"* which bears this out - that the more people involved in the creation and reuse of knowledge, the more valuable that knowledge will be. Now community knowledge management, or even corporate knowledge management, is a difficult thing to do, and needs to be addressed as a company-wide change in culture, behaviour, process and accountability. It's easier to reorganise your personal information habits, than it is to change the culture of a company. It's easier to be personal, than it is to work in community. But for me, working KM as a personal issue just does not deliver the value. It may give the individual more efficient access to information and documents, but it does not give access to better knowledge. And that makes personal KM a red herring, a cul-de-sac, a distraction.

Now I know that many people develop PKM habits out of frustration. The information they need is not readily available through the company, or through the community, so they build their own stores. But as soon as the content of those personal knowledge stores starts to drift away from community knowledge, then all you are doing is introducing information and knowledge silos at the level of the individual. If the company is doing Knowledge Management properly, and making communal knowledge transparently available at the point of need, then you would not need PKM.

So for me, PKM is a sign of failure of corporate KM. If you get corporate KM correct, you don't need personal knowledge management, as all knowledge management will be collective, giving the individual access to far far more than their personal store.

Picture from Flickr creative commons, taken by ktheory

*Although there is a fine line between the wisdom of the crowds, and the madness of the mob. And just because an idea is popular, does not mean it's correct.

Quantified KM success stories number 5 - database uploads

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A company was uploading country data to a new database - firstly data from Africa, secondly data from Brazil, thirdly data from Canada. As this was repeat activity, they decided to introduce Knowledge Management to the exercise. This took the form of an After Action Review after the African deployment, updated after the Brazilian deployment. The output was a simple note, short and concise, not more than a side of A4 paper, but containing really valuable tips and hints about how the upload should be conducted.

The result was that the Africa deploment took a month, the Brazilian deployment took two weeks, and the Canadian deployment took three days - a tenfold performance increase compared to Africa.

As our contact said at the time "When our database adminstrator called me after three days and said she was ready to come home, I thought - Oh my goodness, what are people going to say! I wasn't sure how to react to that. But I spoke with the manager, and she really was done, and it was an excellent job. So it was a great feeling to know that all that preparation and all those learning experiences had been so valuable to us down the line".

Economist survey on agility - KM and downturn again?

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I came across this report recently which has some implications for KM in a downturn. The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 349 executives between Dec 08 and Jan 09, on the topic of "Business agility" - a very important asset in turbulent times. Although the focus of their questions was on Technology, and many of the people they talked to seem to be CIOs or the like, there were some interesting conclusions with regard to Knowledge management*

Firstly, when asked to rank what they will do to increase agility, and the ability to make fast, correct decisions, the action of "Improving knowledge management and information sharing processes" was ranked the second highest, chosen by 38% of those interviewed**.

The report concludes as follows -
"For most companies, the path to organisational agility involves transformation, the ability to whittle away at inefficiency and regroup around what is truly core to the business. While the task may appear daunting, there are a number of steps that management can consider to lighten the burden of change:

• Optimise core processes.


• Minimise information silos***. Barriers to change include confl icting departmental goals and priorities, a culture of risk aversion and silo-based information. By reducing silos, business leaders can improve collaboration inside and outside their enterprise and better align departmental goals and performance measures with overall strategy.


• Integrate and automate fundamental knowledge-sharing processes. Such integration will enable IT to advance an organisation’s ability to problem-solve, improve decision-making and convert information into insight".

I very much agree with the last point, although I don't see this as something IT can solve on its own. I would rewrite it as "Integrate and systematise fundamental knowledge-sharing processes. Such integration will enable an organisation to advance an ability to problem-solve, improve decision-making and convert information into insight".

*which as you know encapsulates far more than technology**It is interesting that the graph shows this as "Improving knowledge management and information sharing processes" but by the time it gets to the text, it has morphed to "
seek to make better use of knowledge management and information-sharing
systems" - an example of the IT bias creeping in?***You will see from the text, that this is "silos in general" and not just Information silos

the "Generational war" between social media and KM

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Here's a nice provocative article on the "Generational war" between social media and KM. The author believes there is a generational war between Generation Y believers in social media on one hand, and Baby Boomer supports of KM on the other.

Now a couple of things raise my hackles immediately. He characterises KM as "that venerable IT-based social engineering discipline" - which those of us who have spent years on people-centric, knowledge-based KM may well take exception to. But perhaps there is a polariation of views as he describes.


Here is one deliberately cynical explanation for why that polarisation may be happening.


The baby boomers have been around in industry for a while. They have seen knowledge management go through a number of cycles over the past 10-12 years, and have seen some false starts and some successes. They have seen various waves of technology, each of which has been announced as "the answer to KM" and each of which has, on its own, not been the whole answer (though each has provided a step forward).

1. Bulletin boards. These were the earliest form of socio-business networking, and were a real enabler for communities of practice. We know that CoPs are more than the technology they use, but the technology really helps with dispersed global communities.

2. Groupware. Lotus notes (Teamrooms, Sharepoint etc). For the first time, we had collaborative possibilities. This really helped the development of common knowledge, filesharing and virtual teaming, but we know that there needs to be a whole raft of people and process elements as well as collaboration technology.

3. Intranets and search engines. Suddenly, access to documents becomes easy. This content-accessibility revolution was seen as "the answer to KM", which is partly why the term "KM" has got so muddied by the IT-providers and content managers. Yes, you can ceess documents, that's good, but can you find the knowledge you need, when you need it, in a reliable and usable and trustworthy form?

4. Web 2.0 and social media.

A cynic might argue that Web 2.0 is the latest "technology push" ("Web 2.0 is the answer. Now what was the question?"). A cynic might argue that the reason why Gen Y sees social media as the answer, and the baby boomers don't, is that the baby boomers have seen 3 waves of technology push already, and have the experience to know that KM needs much more than technology. Gen Y don't have that experience. Personally, I would rather they did not learn the hard way - I have seen far too much money wasted by organisations buying software in the naive assumption that knowledge will suddenly be reused and applied for business gain.

Now I am not a social media cynic - I have my own blog, I work with wikis, I am on linkedin and facebook etc etc - but I have lived through many cycles of KM, and seen many technology promises fail to be delivered.

My conclusion is that KM and web 2.0 overlap. Web 2.0 is about more than KM, and KM is about more than technology or web 2.0. There are elements of Web 2.0 that can fill needed gaps in a KM system - wikis, for example, are a real step forward in collaborative ownership. There are elements of web 2.0 that are a poor replacement for existing technologies (CoP forums, for example, are far better than linkedin style forums; the best yellow pages systems are more fit for purpose than facebook, validated community knowledge is more reusable than blogged individual opinion). There are elements of web 2.0 that are not directly about exchange of knowledge at all, but about social relationship building (although social relationships can of course support business relationships, which support the culture, which enables knowledge management). And then knowledge management, in addition to the technologies, needs strategic focus, needs governance, needs a set of processes built into the operational cycle, and needs clear accountabilities.

So is there a war? If there is a war, maybe it's between naive enthusiasm for web 2.0 and jaded experience? In which case, the answer (as to many wars) lies in dialogue.

Quantified success stories number 4

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Here you can find an excellent example of quantified Knowledge management value, related to learning curves. It comes from Shell, drilling for deep gas in Oman, and the Knowledge Management approach was applied as part of what Shell call "Technical Limit".

As the article says, "The Saih Rawl experience illustrates that the time value of knowledge supersedes the time value of money, especially when drilling for deep gas. The primary objective of the team's knowledge management strategy was to drill each hole section correctly the first time. Recycling of knowledge and lessonslearned were de-emphasized in favor of reinforcing practicesworth replicating or best practices, and this expedited decision making. Total Quality Well Delivery(TQWD) was achieved in Saih Rawl field by adequately managing lessons learned from past wells and applying them to subsequent wells"

The end result was the ability to drill wells in 60 days, as against the budget figure of 75 days - a 20% reduction in both time and cost against budget, and 40% against historical performance.

Again I quote "Knowledge management in the Saih Rawl field has had to be dynamic since 2003, because at any point in time there are at least three rigs drilling different hole sections or performing different phases of well construction. The drilling team was given the rare opportunity of simultaneously learning before-doing, learning-while-doing and learning-after-doing. The end result is the progressive downward trend in learning curve time".

Malaysia KM conference

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I am speaking at a conference in Kuala Lumpur in the first week in June. The organisers are offering a 10% discount for any Knoco clients, so please contact me if you are interested in attending. Full details of the conference can be found here.

Sean McPheat's 4 fundamentals

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An interesting blog post by Sean McPheat, where he suggests four fundamental things to remember about knowledge

• Knowledge is never scarce. Knowledge is abundant. In many cases it is just waiting to be discovered.
• The best thing you can do with knowledge is share it. Hoarding knowledge is useless.
• People are the most valuable resource you can have on your side. They’re the ones that hold all the knowledge you’ll ever need.
• Knowledge is gained through experience and learning.

These for me are refreshing and valuable. The only one I would edit would be the second - I think the best thing you can do with knowledge is seek it out, and re-use it (bearing in mind that re-use requries some evaluation and adaptation - not just slavishly copying*).

Also on the 4th point - Knowledge is gained through experience and learning, and shared knowledge is gained through shared experience and shared learning. Learning is a social activity, and sharing experience in the first step to sharing knowledge.

* Mind you, sometimes slavish copying is the best thing you can do. Remember the value Intel delivered through their "copy exactly" program?

New Video - the lessons learned loop

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see more knowledge management video here

Scale Model to Capture Knowledge

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I was visiting a museum and as I walked around I came across the most wonderful scale model of a sailing ship. The caption informed me that the King of the country had used foreign ship designers but was afraid that if they left his country he wouldn't have any drawings or plans to create his own ships. His answer was to have them create an exact replica of one of his ships, but at reduced scale. The idea was to capture the knowledge in three dimensions in the form of a scale model. I don't know why but that very early example of knowledge capture always stays with me.

Common enablers and blockers in Knowledge Management - Benchmarking continued

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This is a follow-on from my previous blog post on Knowledge Management benchmarking.

The other thing that ten years of assessment allowed us to do, was to look at the common enablers that companies had in place to support knowledge management, and the common blockers where they were having problems. We look at 15 different elements of KM, based on the Nonaka/Takeuchi SECI model combined with various other critical factors, and of those 15 elements there are some that consistently are seen to be stronger, and some that are consistently seen to be weaker.

The top two areas of common strength are factors in the area of communication and capture.

• Most companies had a good selection of technology for communicating knowledge - i.e. for enabling dislogue and discussion to exchange tacit knowledge. (This element scored an average of 3.3 on a 1-5 scale, in our same dataset of 28 companies)




• Most companies also had pretty good processes for knowledge identification and capture, whether these were after action reviews, project debriefs, or debriefs of individuals. (An average score of 3.1)

The top two areas of common weakness are in the area of governance and accountability.

• Many or most companies had no way of checking whether knowledge management was being applied - in other words, no performance management of KM(An average score of 1.9 on a 1-5 scale). If it's not managed, it remains options, and if it's optional, many people will opt out. We find that 80% of people in an organisation don't care about KM, and unless it is seen as part of the job, they won't bother.




• Also many or most companies had no clear accountabilities assigned to ensuring that knowledge is reused (An average score of 2.1). They might be very good at "knowledge capture" or "knowledge sharing", but if it's nobody's role to ensure re-use, then the capture and sharing is wasted effort.

Now this may or may not apply to your organisation, but it's amazing how many people react to a need for KM by throwing more communication technology at the issue, or introducing more ways to capture knowledge, when in fact the problems and the blockers lie in a completely different area! It's a good plan to map out all the factors, and then address the gaps and weaknesses, rather than building on something that is already strong.

How long does KM take to catch hold? Baselines and benchmarks in Knowledge Management

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Over the past few years we have helped many organisations to benchmark their "current status" of Knowledge Management. They ask for this for a number of reasons. Sometimes they want to see where they need to improve. Sometimes they need to see IF they need to improve. Sometimes they need to set a benchmark so they have something they can measure future improvement against.

Recently we looked back on some of our benchmark data, and looked to see if we could find any trends. Well, we could.

The first trend appears when you look at how the overall benchmark score varies with the length of time KM has been addressed by the organisation. The graph above shows the overall KM score (from zero to 5) for about 25 organisations, plotted against how long they have been deliberately working with KM, in years. Bear in mind when you look att this that not all organisations want to score 5 out of 5, and that 4 out of 5 is a pretty fine score. Also note on the plot the two red points, which represent the same organisation measured at an interval of 2 years, showing good progress. Similarly the two green points represent a different organisation, measured twice, at a 3.5 year interval, showing a similar rate of progress.

My conclusions from this plot are as follows;

Firstly, changing the culture to become a knowledge-focused organisation is a long term process. You should be able to see significant progress within a couple of years, but it may take 3 or 4 to be really become the "way we work".

Secondly, companies start from different places. There is a big range of scores on organisations who are just starting KM implementation. If you already have a collaborative, open and supportive culture, you start at a higher point, and get good pretty quickly. If your culture is hierarchical, blaming and closed, it's going to be a much longer journey.

So - its a journey, it's a slow journey, people start from differen places, but steady progress can be made

Strategic focus for knowledge management

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A video about the need to choose a strategic focus for your knowledge management program

Is too much collaboration counterproductive?

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Here is an interesting article from Rob Cross and two Accenture guys. The headline paragraph is that "Informal networks can play a pivotal role in how organizational decisions are framed and executed. But they can also result in too much collaboration—the kind of lengthy and expensive decision making that can cost companies dearly in missed opportunities". The study looks at an organisation where decision making is stifled by excessive networking and consultation, and where an anlysis of decision making networks and social networks allowed a better structure to be put in place. Personally, I think this is a very interesting look at the difference between informal networking, and managed networking. The former can actually hamper things, and a bit of structure and pruning speeds things up very well. Their conclusion is that "A network perspective—a clear understanding of how informal collaboration networks actually work—can rectify that unproductive approach. It can help leaders ensure that decision-making interactions deep within an organization are efficiently supporting strategic objectives".

More results from the longest running KM experiment

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I blogged yesterday about our Bird Island exercise*, and explained how the results of the exercise have increased steadily over the last 10 years as knowledge has been captured and carried forward into performance.



I would like to share with you today some numbers that show how much difference knowledge makes when actually going through the exercise. You could look on these numbers as the results of a controlled experiment, showing the performance increase (or at least, the estimated performance increase) associated with various components of knowledge management. So the next time someone asks "how much difference does KM make to performance" - you can answer them!






We ask the teams to build a tower, then we measure the height of their tower. We then hold an after action review (AAR) to discuss what they have learned about tower building, and after the AAR we ask them to estimate how much taller they can build, now they have knowledge and experience. The graph to the right shows as histogram, or frequency plot, of the percentage increase they recognise. This is somewhere between 0% and 120%, with a mode of 40%. This represents the performance increase a team thinks they could gain, by learning only from themselves.









Then we hold a peer assist, where the teams exchange knowledge with each other. Now they are sharing knowledge, instead of just looking at their own learning. Then after the peer assist, we ask them to estimate how tall they could build the tower. This next graph shows the percentage increase between the first tower and the post-peer assist estimate. Although the mode is still a 40% increase, the mean is now closer to an 80% increase. (The reason why the mode does not shift from 40%, is that the team with the highest tower rarely believes they gain any knowledge from the peer assist. So one team almost always does not improve their estimate. The other teams however do gain something. Thats why the frequency distribution in this graph has more than one peak).


Finally we show the teams the current best practice, and ask them to build the tower again. This gives them access to the current full state of knowledge about tower building, and really gives their performance a boost. The final graph shows the percentage increase between the first and second towers - between a state of no knowledge, and a state of fully-up-to-date knowledge. The increase they achieve is now in the order of 220% - representing a trebling of height from the first tower to the second.

For the teams going through the exercise, this is real proof of the link between knowledge and performance, and the value of knowledge management.

*Copyright Knoco, details on request

The longest running KM experiment in the world?

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For the past 10 years, we have been running a knowledge Management exercise called Bird Island*, as part of our training programs. The purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate the value of Knowledge Management by linking it clearly to performance.

The exercise is a simple one - the delegates are divided into teams, given a small set of materials, and asked to build as tall a tower as possible (with some environmental constraints). Then knowledge is brought into the equation, first through an after action review within the team, secondly through a peer assist with another team, and finally through presentation of a best practice knowledge asset showing the secrets of building the tallest towers from previous courses.

Armed with a full set of knowledge, they build the tower again, and frequently treble or quadruple their previous performance.

One of the interesting byproducts of this game, is that it allows us to look at the development of the knowledge over the 10 year period. Even with a very simple exercise, we have seen a whole series of design innovations, which have been progressively incorporated into the knowledge asset. As the knowledge grows, so the performance of the teams grows as the knowledge is carried forward into the design of the second towers. Over 10 years, progressive learning and innovation, captured in a knowledge asset through a bare-bones KM process, has resulted in a progressive increase in the height of the second towers.

This is shown in the graph above, which shows the second tower heights from teams over the last 10 years. Initially tower heights rose relatively rapidly to over 4m. At this stage, we reduced the materials for the towers and so introduced a half scale game (represented on the plot as the abrupt fall in height). This was followed by a slower, but still steady, rate of height increase, and the towers are now regularly reaching over 3m.

To me, this is a clear demonstration of the power of KM. The increased performance is not driven by new materials, as every team has exactly the same components. It is driven only by an increase in knowledge, and by progressive and systematic learning through operation of a very simple knowledge management system.

The Km system involves the following steps
*Every time a team makes a new modification and improvement to teh tower design, I photograph it
* I update the Best Practice knowledge asset to include the new modification
* I present the updated knowledge asset in the next training course
* People use this as the basis for their own design, and often innovate even further.

The results of this simple knowledge management system of capture, update and re-use are seen in the continuous improvement graph shown above, as well as the dramatic improvement experienced in the classes by the teams themselves.

*Copyright Knoco Ltd, details on request