Dilbert and social media

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Click on the image for the Dilbert site

Known Knowns and formal collection

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In this blog post I introduced a Boston Square

which explored the four ideological quadrants of KM, based on Connect vs Collect, and on Formal vs Informal.  I was using this diagram to look at different starting points for KM, and making the point that we need to look at a blend, or spectrum, of approaches, rather than sticking to one corner of the diagram.

I was at a conference this week with the NATO JALLC (Joint analysis and Lessons Learned centre), where John Redmayne, one of the JALLC suggested a development of this diagram. John's point was that the segments of the diagram can be associated with the four components of the Rumsfeld matrix - the known knowns, unknown knowns etc. John's diagram is shown to the right.

Here the lessons databases hold the known knowns - the things we know we know, and which can be formally shared and stored. The formal networks are where we ask questions about the things we know we dont know, and so can set up networks to address them. The wikis are where the unknown knowns come to light, as people collaborate and share, and discover things that we know as a group. And in the social networks, we may luck upon the things we never knew that we didn't know, through serendipity and change encounters.

I like this analysis, as it suggests that each of the qudrants, and each of the tools, may have its own role to play, and that each complements the others. And in addition, it starts to point out which role each quadrant may play. It also reinforces the need for a blend of approaches, rather than choosing just one.

Spike Milligan quote

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Spike Milligan
Originally uploaded by Simon Harriyott

'We don't have a plan so nothing can go wrong!'
Spike Milligan

Heard yesterday at JALLC - excellent quote!

Lessons escalation, and the issue of credibility

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Escalation
Originally uploaded by Thunderchild7

I was musing today on the issue of escalating lessons, and therefore the issue of the credibility of the lessons themselves.

Imagine a set of lessons originating with a team. The team identifies the lessons, and assigns actions to deal with them. If all of the actions associated with the lessons can be applied within the team, then there is no problem. The actions can be assigned by the project manager or the team leader, who has the correct authority to require people to do things. Whoever manages the lessons learned process for the project can then make sure that the lessons are closed out.

However, sometimes the action is for somebody outside the team to take. Maybe the team has identified a company process that needs to be updated or written. Maybe an equipment redesign is needed. These are actions for either the company process owner or the person who holds the contract with the equipment supplier. Neither of these people is in the team, and the team leader doesn’t have authority to tell them what to do. The action has to be escalated to a level where the required authority lies. This may be with the head of projects, the leader of a particular functional discipline, or a member of the senior level steering group. In each case, this person or group of people have to be bought into the lesson learning process, realise that lessons need to lead to changes, and be willing to assign actions to the correct people so that these changes are made.

Sometimes the action lies outside that organisation. Imagine two companies working together on a project. One team in one company identifies actions which need to be taken jointly. The lesson has to be escalated to a level where decisions can be made which affect both companies.

This is where the issue of credibility lies.

Will people at this decision-making level actually believe the lessons?

Take an extreme example. The Deepwater Horizon disaster.

BP have already done an internal investigation, and published a set of lessons. Many actions are identified, most of them for the company to handle, some of them with inter-company implications. But will anyone accept these lessons as being valid? Even if the investigation was done with complete impartiality and thoroughness, BPs bad press and financial and legal exposure means those lessons are going to lack external credibility, and have of course already been challenged by Transocean, Halliburton, and sectors of the press and senate. In a case like this, the only option is to re-investigate, through the use of an impartial body, which is of course what the US administration is planning to do (although you could question whether even they are impartial).

This is an extreme case, but something similar may happen whenever lessons are escalated to a point where a decision needs to be made outside the organisation or unit that identified the lesson, and people start to think "is this objective, or is it just their opinion"? It's that differentiation again between opinion and knowledge.

So it is quite possible, and may in fact be a general rule, that lessons can be escalated only so far, before they need to be impartially re-examined, and that point comes when the lesson reaches a point where decisions need to be made outside the organisation which identified the lesson.

Post number 500

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Ladies and gents, welcome to post number 500.

Thanks to your comments and subscriptions, the feeling that I am speaking to nobody is steadily decreasing! Thanks for your support - let me know if there are any topics you want covered, or any questions you want to ask.

Nick

More on checklists and communication

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I posted a while ago about checklists in KM, and how these have been used in hospitals to make remarkable improvements in patient safety statistics.

And  again more recently I blogged about how better communication saves lives in the intensive care unit.

Since then, I have found an example of the medical checklists which are used in surgery. It's interesting to see how much of the checklist deals with communication. 10 of the 14 checkboxes in the blue and green checklists  are about communicating and reviewing as a team. Sometimes the simplest KM tools are the best - a simple checkist, driving communicating about the important items, just to make sure that nothing is missed and no corners are cut, is enough to cut deaths by more than 40% and complications by more than a third.

Watch the checklist in action below

Knowledge Sharing between Academia and Industry conference

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Alastair Stewart has asked me to publicise this upcoming conference

Academia is constantly berated for not obeying industry’s demand to “Give Me Something I Can Make Money With”, i.e. collaborating enough with industry to create new products, generate jobs and (the cynic would say) taxes.

But it shouldn’t be seen as a one way street. Academia needs examples to keep teaching current, speakers to give practical applications of theories, new research areas and partners to develop careers.

The problem isn’t working out how the two groups can work together – there’s a myriad of ways: transfer partnerships, PhDs, long term collaborative research, contract facilities, training, EngDs, knowledge transfer networks, spin-outs and licensing, to name but a few.

The problem is each world has its own distinct and usually conflicting drivers: academics strive to conduct new research to publish, while industry needs to maximise profits now and (in sensible companies at least) in the future.

This means that academics might not be interested in transfering blue sky research which they did 10 years ago. Or they might shy from entering a new sector to start a spin-out. And industry isn’t necessarily interested in a three year research programme when “I need the results yesterday!” 

The barriers to collaboration are numerous. But there are also many sources of support. Several universities have tied up with venture capital companies to support spin-outs. Governments have transfer support schemes such as the knowledge transfer partnerships in the UK. Commercial departments in higher education have the ability to protect and license intellectual property rights. Most academics welcome the opportunity to supervise industrial PhDs, and most institutes support academics in attracting them. Most large companies have research departments which help to alleviate the yesterday! pressures from the rest of the organisation.

The real trick is (as it usually is) the right people on both sides finding each other at the right time. And that takes time. Time to network, time to figure out who’s doing what, time to determine what you really really want.

All these issues and ideas are within the purview of the Institute of Knowledge Transfer. The Institute’s conference, Innovation through Knowledge Transfer (IKT’10) is in Coventry, UK on 7/8 December. Non-members welcome.

The no-blame society? Not by a long way!

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Told you so
Originally uploaded by Violator3

We all know the importance of a no-blame culture when it comes to promoting learning and reflection.

A no-blame culture in an organisation allows people to open up about their mistakes, to understand the root causes, to identify the learning points, to take the learning actions, and so ensure that the mistake is never made again.

A no-blame culture is just about possible to achieve in an organisation, witness the story below

"Warren Bennis wrote about a promising junior executive at IBM who was involved in a risky venture for the company and ended up losing ten million dollars in the gamble. He was called into the office of Tom Watson Sr., the founder and leader of IBM for forty years, a business legend. The junior exec, overwhelmed with guilt and fear, blurted out: 'I guess you've called me in for my resignation. Here it is. I resign.' Watson replied, 'You must be joking. I have just invested ten million dollars educating you; I can't afford your resignation'."

You can imagine the result - firstly a culture that rewards learning, and secondly an executive who will never make that mistake again.

Now imagine that happening in the public sector, or in public life.

Imagine the government minister (congresman) who makes a massive mistake. The school principal who narrowly averts a risk to the children. The banker who makes an apallingly bad decision. What sort of reaction do we get?

Generally we get outrage. We get press headlines "Minister admits to mistake" - "Calls for Principal to resign" - "Greedy bankers to face sack". We get hate mail, we get boycotts, we get blame in abundance. Never do we see the sort of response we saw above from Tom Watson. Never does the press or the public say "that Minister/CEO/Principal may have made a mistake, but they have learned, and will never do that again". No, we get blame.

And worse than that - with blame comes litigation. "You screwed up, you must suffer, and I will sue your ass".

So which minister, which principal, which CEO is going to openly analyse their mistakes, and draw out the learning points? Who is going to say, "with hindsight, we could have done it better"? Instead, so long as public enquiries are witchhunts and blamestorms, then mistakes are hidden, people shift the blame onto each other, and learning never happens.

One day, hopefully, we will have a no blame society that promotes public learning. But we are a long way from that day. While there is a blame culture, there is no learning culture.

So what do you want to do?

Blame?

Or learn?

Einstein - "I never teach"

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Einstein statue
Originally uploaded by maveric2003

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
- Albert Einstein

Signal to noise ratio on social media

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Social Media Signals
Originally uploaded by Intersection Consulting

A social media enthusiast is visiting a conference in Sao Paolo. He takes time out, and visits a coffee bar in the city. He tweets where he is, and one of his 4000 twitter followers picks up this tweet and joins him. They have a good conversation.

Another social media enthusiast is at another conference; a social media conference in Los Angeles. He finds he has forgotten his laptop cable. He tweets this to his 1800 followers, and three people at the conference offer him a cable.

These stories illustrate both the power and the weakness of social media. In the first case, the message is relevant to one follower, who happens to be out and about in Sao Paolo that day at that time. It is irrelevant to 3999. He gets a result, from one person. For 3999 people, he creates noise. Signal to noise ratio; 1:3999.

In the second case, the message is relevant to three people, and irrelevant to 1797, for whom it is just noise. Signal to noise ratio 1:899. He would have been far better served to have just made an announcement at the conference itself. Then the message would have been relevant to all its receivers, as they were all at the conference and all had laptop cables. The message would have been all signal, an no noise.

Twitter is a scattergun. The more followers you have, the wider the scatter. Maybe one pellet will hit a target. For the others, its just noise. OK, you can use hashtags to reduce the scatter to a degree, but the signal to noise ratio is often still very low, at least with the hashtags I am familiar with. Filtering is vital if you are to gain value from the stream, given the amount of noise. Compare this to a targeted community forum, where all messages are relevant.

The picture I have reproduced with this post (from Flickr, with attribution) makes the same point. On Flickr, the authors say "There is a need for organizations to develop processes that go beyond the tools, to hear (and act on) relevant signals in the sea of social media noise. The concept of meta-filtering signals and having strategies/resources in place to act on those signals in a meaningful way, adds an important new dimension to social media strategy for business".

There is huge power in connecting people, and social media gives us this power. However attention needs to be paid to the signal:noise ratio. Too much noise and not enough signal, and people start to switch off, even with the best filter. I know I do - there are people I have unfollowed purely due to the excess of noise compared to signal. And sometimes, tools like Twitter are just not the right tools. Maybe sometimes we need to just speak to the people at the conference, rather than reaching for the iPhone.

Lots of things we don't know (quote)

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There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know.


- Ambrose Bierce

Knowledge-management tools helping treat brain injuries

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A great blog post here on how the US Army are using KM in all aspects of their work, including looking after soldiers in the Wounded Warrior program, suffering ffrom Traumatic Brain Injury.

I quote

"The knowledge management community has a vital role to play in the continued success of our Army," Chiarelli said. "The capabilities you are designing and fielding will help our leaders to learn faster, understand better and adapt more rapidly."

"By employing knowledge managing concepts and principles, we will be able to share efforts with the civilian medical community, other government agencies and organizations to more quickly develop methods to identify and treat these conditions".

What a KM failure looks like

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cage
Originally uploaded by kevinzim

Here's a great example someone shared with me, of a real KM failure in the mining industry. (In the text that follows, a "cage" is like the lift or elevator by which miners are lowered into the mine, and a "winder" is the cable and cable drum that lowers the cage. An incident in which the cage "slips", is like being in a lift or elevator, when it slips down the lift shaft. Scary, and potentially very dangerous).

A winder incident occurred in Australia in which the cage slipped in the shaft. The winder was shut down and an investigation started. Company resources in Australia were consulted, but they were on holiday. Experts outside the company in Australia were consulted, but they were also on holiday. There was no backup knowledge support for the mine.

The mine found out at a later date that every mine in Australia who had installed this type of winder had suffered slippage, irrespective of the mine operator or the material being mined. They didn’t know that when their slippage occurred, and consequently they implemented their own investigation.

So we see here, three symptoms of KM failure

1. Equipment was installed, without a review of lessons from the use of that equipment elsewhere.  so no "learning before doing". Knowledge existed elsewhere, which was not accessed.
2. Equipment failed, and there was no way to access internal expertise (company resources were on holiday). Crucial knowledge was not codified, remained tacit, and so was not accessible when needed.
3. Equipment failed, and there was no access to previous knowledge. An investigation was implemented, without knowing that the same incident had been investigated already, many times over. Again, a failure to access existing knowledge.

If KM had been in place, then perhaps the slip could have been avoided, perhaps the problem could have been fixed far sooner, and perhaps a repeat investigation could have been unnecessary.

KM success story number 17 - $200m per year at Shell

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Shell Sign
Originally uploaded by InAweofGod'sCreation

Shell have been implementing Knowledge Management for many years, with a clear framework of KM processes, technologies and roles. One plank in this framework is  Communities of Practice; online global peer networks, often involving thousands of members, enabled by a governance structure, and a simple Q&A technology called SiteScape.

The savings attributable to these communities were reported in CIO magazine in 2007 as follows

Shell International Exploration and Production attributes more than $200 million in direct costs saved and additional income in 2002 to the use of its SiteScape online collaboration forum. The division has clearly contributed to the success of its parent, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which was ranked number four on the Fortune Global 500 this year. Royal Dutch/Shell increased its revenue a startling 33 percent from 2001 to 2002.

Shell's van Unnik estimates the annual cost of the KM system at about $5 million, with the majority of that sum going toward engaging community members. "The cost is man power," he says, including two to three full-time employees per major online COP (of which Shell has 12). But with an estimated annual return of more than $200 million, the investment is more than sound.

An annual return of $200 million, from an annual investment of $5 million, and that's just from one component of KM.

That's good business, in anyone's book

Knowledge Sharing is an unnatural act

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Unnatural Act - Contortionists, Union Square
Originally uploaded by Saucy Salad

One of the most senior guys at BP always used to say "Knowledge Sharing is an unnatural act". By this, he meant that it is counter-cultural for a staff member to voluntarily take time out of his or her busy life, to potentially help someone else whom they have never met.

Hubert St Onge has said the same thing, as did Andrew L. Michuda Jr., CEO, Teltech Resource Network, and Lee and Al-Hawamdeh (2002), Al-Hawamdeh (2003), and many others.

The degree of unnaturality varies from culture to culture, but its always unnatural, requiring a level of out-group altruism that you seldom see elsewhere in human behaviour.

That's why the promise of technology - "provide it, and they will use it" - has seldom been delivered in KM. "Provide it and they will use it" will work for natural acts, such as friendship, socialising, gossip etc. But not for unnatural acts. Just giving them smart shiny new technology (even web 2.0 technology) will not convince them to do something unnatural.

That's why we see such a polarisation in responses to KM - the 20% who say "its a little bit unnatural, but I fully see the value", the 60% who say "it's unnatural, give me a good reason to do it" and the 20% who say "It's too unnatural, I won't do it".

The good news, is that in business we have already got people to do things that are unnatural - things like budgeting, like timewriting, like risk management. These are things that few or none of us does well at home, yet business have found a way to make them happen at work.

KM can learn from how other management disciplines such as financial management, risk management and safety management have been applied and embedded. If you want to understand how KM can be sustained, look at how safety management and financial management are sustained (and the answer to sustaining, is often governance).

So if you are at the early stages of KM implementation, and are seduced by the promises of software vendors who say "buy this, and people will naturally start to share knowledge", then challenge that word "naturally".

Knowledge sharing is unnatural behaviour, and you need to treat it as such.

The cost of knowledge loss at Boeing

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Boeing 737-300 der Ukraine International Airlines
Originally uploaded by maiak.info

According to the Press and Journal, Scotland

When Boeing offered early retirement to 9,000 senior employees during a business downturn, an unexpected rush of new commercial airplane orders left the company critically short of skilled production workers.

The knowledge lost from veteran employees, combined with the inexperience of their replacements, threw the firm’s 737 and 747 assembly lines into chaos. Overtime skyrocketed and workers were chasing planes along the line to finish assembly.

Management finally had to shut down production for more than three weeks to straighten out the assembly process, which forced Boeing to take a $1.6billion charge against earnings and contributed to an eventual management shake-up.

Press and Journal Scotland, 1/9/2008

J-DIAL

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JFDI
Originally uploaded by DesheBoard

We are all familiar with "JDI" - "Just DO It", sometimes strengthened to JFDI. It is a useful reminder to avoid prevarication and over analysis.

However there is an even more powerful version

J-DIAL

Just Do It, And Learn.

The problem with JDI is that It often doesn't work first time. But if you J-DIAL, you quickly iterate to a smart solution.

Knowing is not enough - Goethe

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Goethe
Originally uploaded by motograf

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do. --

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Saving lives through communication

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Reproduced below is a study from Brazil, reported by Sergio Storch, translated by Google, and entitled "Communication gap between doctors causes fatal delays in procedures - Study with 792 patients showed that mortality rate drops when teams do more information sharing"

The Google Translation reads as follows

"The lack of communication between doctors in the ICU (intensive care unit) may increase the mortality rate, according to a study by a group linked to Windmills Hospital and University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre. So severe, the problem is a priority of the campaign launched this week by the Brazilian Association of Critical Care Medicine in order to increase safety in intensive care units.

"Certainly, the lack of communication is the primary cause of adverse events in ICUs," says Alvaro Rea-Neto, campaign coordinator of the entity, which provides for meetings in various capitals.  The crowded environment of critical patients, the rush of professionals and lack of established routines to disseminate information creates a fertile ground for lack of communication.

LACK OF MEETINGS

Among the problems cited are the lack of meetings between all professionals involved, delays in proceedings as the beginning of a therapy with antibiotics, withdrawal of mechanical ventilation and techniques for prevention of deep vein thrombosis.  Experts also note the different perceptions of what is important to report, and difficulties that the younger members have to challenge the older and different visions of conduct within the team.

"A major problem is communication between different professionals. Not always what is communicated by one is the same as is heard by the other," says a specialist in critical care medicine Cassian Tan, a leader of the work.  "The ideal routine is one in which all participants of the event can meet at some point during the day to discuss the case." But that does not always happen.

 To reach the result, the researchers followed 792 patients for a year and a half.  They were divided into three groups according to frequency of communication between the medical assistant, who lead the case, but not spend all their time in ICU, and routine medical unit, responsible for acute complications.

The mortality rate was 26% in the group that rarely communicated, which included nearly 10% of patients. Those in which the conversations were almost daily, the rate was 13%.

"The important thing is not to find fault but to find processes that lead to (elimination of?)repetition of mistakes. If you do not take care of the process, not replace good people," says Rhea-Neto. 

 "It's a matter of habit, good will, but many teams have not developed this habit," says Mary Angela Paschoal Goncalves, chief nurse of the ICU of Hospital Santa Isabel and Santa Casa de São Paulo.

Well now, isn't that interesting, and worrying. Developing a process and a habit to talk about whats going on, and to share and communicate with each other, can cut the death rate in half. 10% of patients would be 79 people, a 23% death rate represents 18 people, and maybe 9 would still be alive if there had been more regular and more effective communication.

This reminds me of two things, one is the After Action Review habit developed by the Army, and the other is the Checklists of Atul Gawande. And it also suggests to me the importance of governance. If sharing knowledge within the teams could save 9 lives, then the Hospital administration needs to ensure that this conversation happens, and happens well. Good governance reinforces and embeds good habits.

The Pull Matrix - a useful KM table

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Here's a useful chart from this blog post on KM at Goddard

I like the concept, and particularly like the fact that is it pull-driven - "Who can I learn from", "What can I learn", "How can I learn it"

This is refreshingly different from the more normal "who can I share with", "where shall I store this" conversation. It's like a personal Knowledge Management Plan - all that's missing is the "What do I need to learn" element.

I would like to extend this table a bit, because there is a big jump between "my friends" and "the whole organisation". We could include in this, for example, "my project team", and "my community of practice", both of which are organisational constructs which don't necessarily map onto "my friends". Also, "company experts" are a source of learning too

Here's my extended version

I hope this is useful

KM and the public sector cuts

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We have a new White Paper on "KM and the public sector cuts", available for free download here -  scroll towards the bottom of the page to find this particular white paper.

 

 

What can the public sector learn from the private sector response to the recession cuts in its response to the public sector reforms being introduced to deliver the spending cuts? In particular, how can knowledge management help the public sector to transform these cuts from a challenge into an opportunity?

 

This white paper explores the question, introducing three lessons from the private sector;

 

• The need to view such public sector reforms as an opportunity to refocus on “core business”,
• The need to take a competence-centred view of the transition, and
• The need to transform to networked organization

 

The paper looks at these three lessons in more detail.

 

 

 

No silver bullet in KM

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Bullet holes
Originally uploaded by Isbi Armor

Folks, we have known for a long time that there is no silver bullet in KM, despite what the software vendors tried to tell us.

• Groupware? Not a silver bullet
• Intranets? Not a silver bullet
• Enterprise Search? Not a silver bullet
• SharePoint? Not a silver bullet.

So it's not really surprising if we have to add another to the list

• Social Media? Not a silver bullet.

There is a lot to be said for social media in support of KM, and certain social tools, such as wikis, are already proving their worth as part of an overall KM framework. But that is as part of a framework, not as a silver bullet. There are plenty of failed wikis out there - wikis with no process, roles or governance to support them. They start with a burst of enthusiasm, then wither and die rapidly.

In fact, that seems to be all too common for social media implementations. I was reviewing KM at a big company a couple of weeks ago, and they had done the default thing of introducing social media tools on their own. The result? A few half-formed wiki pages, mostly a year out of date. One or two blogs by senior managers, replacing newsletters. Yammer, rolled out to all staff, and 95% of staff disillusioned by the aimlessness of it already. And what about KM? It's working the way its always worked in that company, through personal networks and face to face meetings.

Social media is not a silver bullet. You can't just introduce social media and expect "knowledge to be managed" (or even, "knowledge to be shared"). There is no short cut.

Instead you have to address KM the hard way, the rigorous way, the business-led way.

• What knowledge is crucial to business strategy?
• Who needs that knowledge?
• Who has it?
• If nobody has it, how do we develop it?
• If we have it in-house, then how do we get it to the people who need it, at the time they need it?
• What framework shall we put in to ensure this happens?
• Within that framework, what technology is needed? (and sometimes, some of this may be social media)
• What governance is needed to drive it?

There is no easy way, no easy answer, no silver bullet.

Sorry.

KM and Googletrends

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In this post, Rick Ladd observes that the Googletrend for Knowledge Management is steadily declining, unlike the Googletrend for Social Media.

Rick suggests that

"I suppose some would suggest this portends the eventual death of KM, but I really don't think that true . . . or even possible. KM has always been based on the belief that we humans are unique in our ability to pass knowledge on to others, as well as to collectively create new knowledge and retain it for future use".

However rather than compare Knowledge Management against Social Media, lets compare it against some background reference, which we know is not dying. Project management, for example, or risk management, or financial management.

In each case, we see the same decline. The same tail-off in searches for KM is seen for project management, safety management, rick management, and financial management.

So I agree with Rick - this trend does not tell us that KM is dying, any more than project management, risk management, or financial management are dying.

See also this blog by Axel Horn which suggests that if the decline in Googletrends shows that knowledge management is dying, then so are patents, intellectual property, innovation, trademarks, and the European patent office.

I dont know what there are fewer searches for these terms, but its nothing to do with their increasing irrelevance. 

Knowledge is addictive (picture)

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Knowledge is addictive
Originally uploaded by blmurch

Knowledge gives confidence (video)

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Knowledge is sexy video

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Xerox video, information overload

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KM tailoring guide

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day 259: expert tailoring

Originally uploaded by cuttlefish

Lets think about Knowledge Transfer, through a Push mechanism

Imagine you have some learnings within a team. How do you pass them on?

I am a great believer in tailoring your approach to circumstances, and the circumstances you need to consider are as follows

• Who needs the knowledge? The same team as generated it, or a different team?
• When do they need it? Now, or at some undetermined time in the future?
• Where are they? Near enough to sit down with, or somewhere remote?

So we have three variables, so we can't draw a Boston Square with four divisions - we have to draw a Boston Cube with eight. And in each of those divisions, we take a different approach to how we transfer the knowledge.

1. Same team, same place, same time - hold an AAR. Discuss the learning, and help everyone internalise it.
2. Same team, different place, same time (virtual team) - hold a virtual AAR. Discuss the learning, and help everyone internalise it. Checking for internalisation will be harder without access to body language.
3. Same team, same place, different time - hold a Retrospect and update and improve your team processes, procedures and practices. Then if you follow those next time, performance will improve.  
4. Same team, different place(virtual team), different time  -  conduct a Learning History and update and improve your team processes, procedures and practices. Then if you follow those next time, performance will improve.
5. Different team, same place, same time - hold a Peer Assist. Discuss the learning, and help the other team internalise it. Or host a site knowledge visit
6. Different team, different place, same time - hold a virtual Peer Assist. Discuss the learning, and help everyone internalise it. Checking for internalisation will be harder without access to body language. Set up a community of practice, or virtual coaching group.
7. Different  team, same place, different time - hold a Retrospect and document a Knowledge Asset. When the knowledge is needed, find someone from the original team to talk through the Knowledge Asset.
8. Different team, different place, different time - hold a Retrospect and document a stand-alone Knowledge Asset.

Different contexts, different approaches.

Efficiency or quality?

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An interesting article here that claims that claims that KM delivers only efficiency improvements, and not quality improvements. This is based on a study if several IT projects, looking at their use of a "KM system".  I quote

The research results show that mean team knowledge use is positively related to improved project performance, but not ‘significantly related to the quality outcome’. As the paper says, delivering defect-free code requires that team members solve their assigned tasks, but ‘also successfully integrate the tasks’.

However whan you look at that they mean by a KM system, they mean a database containing documents, white papers, and bits of code. This is a long long way from a complete KM framework.

In a way it is good news that even this truncated and stunted KM system delivers some benefit. I wonder what they would have gained if they had used a full KM framework? I bet they would have seen quality rise, as well as efficiency.

MBA student endorsement

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Sometimes its hard to remember just how exciting and revolutionary KM was the first time we met it.

Here are the words of an MBA student who took a KM elective

This has been a fascinating and horizon-expanding elective in which a broad vista of unexplored intellectual territory has been unveiled. Given that KM itself is a somewhat low viscosity (slippery) concept, the elective was, literally, very thought-provoking. I found the topic inherently exciting. Perhaps more than any other topic encountered on the MBA, knowledge management seems to me to hold the promise to fundamentally reshape, perhaps revolutionise, organisations in the 21st century.

There's a reminder for us, to stop us getting jaded!

Knowledge Management in projects

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I have been asked to give 1000 word summary of my presentation at KM Russia 2010, on the topic of knowledge management in projects.

Here it is for your interest.

Knowledge management represents how you manage your organisation, your team or your project, once you realise how important knowledge is. Once you realise that knowledge is fundamental to making the correct decisions and taking the right courses of action, then you will put in place certain interventions to guard that knowledge, to build it, and to make sure it is applied where it's needed. This is knowledge management.

Knowledge management is a combination of people (roles and accountabilities), processes, technologies and governance, with knowledge is a focus. However above all, it is a change program, changing the organisation from one in which knowledge is seen as personal property, to one in which knowledge is seen as fundamental to team and organisational success.

Project an ideal testing ground for knowledge management, projects are discrete, they repeat, their focus is clear, and their scope and remit is limited. Where knowledge management is applied to projects, the results can be seen in learning curves. Learning curves represent process improvement over time, and are generated through learning. The only thing that you have at the end of the learning curve that you do not have at the start, is knowledge. Knowledge management can accelerate the learning curve and deliver value.

Knowledge management can be seen as one of many project disciplines. Together with a risk management, safety management, cost and schedule management and so on, knowledge management addresses some of the key assets and enablers of the project. It is a component of good management practice; the component that delivers continuous improvement. Therefore it needs discipline and rigour, it needs to be a business requirement, it needs to be integrated with the other disciplines, and it needs to be governed in the same way as the other disciplines.

So what is knowledge management looked like in a project context? It will probably addressed learning before, during and after a project activity, it will probably address knowledge sharing between the projects, it will address knowledge ownership (who looks after the knowledge?) and it will address the issues of a knowledge base of reference material which projects can access.
A key tool in learning before project is the project knowledge management plan. This provides a focus on the critical knowledge for the project, and then addresses how the knowledge will be accessed, who will find it, how and when, and how new knowledge will be created and stored. You can think of knowledge as flowing into a project at the start, and out of the project at the end, and this flow of knowledge needs to be managed. The KM plan is the tool that manages this flow.

The plan is created at the planning workshop involving all the project team, and one of the key outputs from this workshop will be the knowledge needs register.
Learning during the project is conducted through after action reviews after each crucial milestone or activity. However the after action reviews need to be linked with process improvement within the project, so that the project can adapt and react to every new learning.

Learning after the project is linked to lessons identification. This can be done either by scheduling and lessons identification meeting such as the retrospect, or actually embedding the learning engineer with the project in the later stages. The retrospect is like a large-scale after action review, where attention is paid, and discussion held among the team, on each of the learning points in turn. This review should be externally facilitated, and the aim is to identify their lessons and document them in enough detail and context that they can be useful to others in future. However the main objective is not merely to identify the lessons, but to make changes to processes, procedures and organisational structure so that the learning is embedded. To this end, there needs to be a learning workflow, so that lessons are validated, and carried through into action and process improvement.

Learning will need to be shared between projects as well, and this is where the communities of practice come in. The communities form a second, cross cutting dimension to the organisational structure, and allow knowledge to flow in and out of the project, crossing the walls and the organisational boundaries using the communities as a conduit.

As well as providing the mechanism to link practitioners with each other, other communities can also look after the organisational knowledge base, either through linking up the subject matter experts and allowing others to access the tacit knowledge, or by building and maintaining an explicit knowledge base for the community of practice. The community can also facilitate cross-project dialogue such as knowledge Handover meetings, where a recently finished project will talk through and discuss its major lessons with people from other similar projects. These meetings can be very powerful ways of transferring true learning and understanding.

So a knowledge management framework can be built for projects, including communities, project knowledge managers and learning engineers, after action reviews, Retrospects, peer assist, community knowledge bases and so on. However even the best framework will deliver no value if people do not want to use it, which is where the issue of governance comes in.

Knowledge management needs to be governed just like any other management system. The first step in governance is to make it very clear what is expected of a project in terms of knowledge management. Should every project have a knowledge management plan, for example? Should every project end with a retrospect? Should there be a retrospect at the end of each project stage?

The second step in governance is monitoring. You may want to collect statistics on how many Retrospects are being held, how many knowledge management plans are being written, how many lessons are being identified, and what percentage of identified lessons are carried through into action. This monitoring allows you to identify and recognise the good performers, and to assist those who need more help in performing better.

This combination of people, processes, technologies and governance at a project scale will deliver faster learning, steeper learning curves, and improved continuous performance improvement.

In praise of dialogue

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Hand signals at the Dialogue
Originally uploaded by ILRI

• Why do children go to school to learn, rather than staying home and reading books?

• Why, if you have access to the best cookery books in the world, do you still need to take personal tuition if you want to be a cordon blue chef?

• If you have a street map in the car, why would you ever need to stop and ask for directions?


The answer, in every case, is that knowledge transfer is a social process, and if you want to transfer detailed knowledge you have to engage in dialogue with another human being.

Dialogue allows you to ask questions, seek clarification, test understanding, and look for that "aha" moment when the knowledge is really transferred. Dialogue allows access to the deep tacit knowledge - the knowledge that people don't even know that they know - and it allows you to check whether you are really understood the knowledge. Any good teacher knows that discussion and dialogue in the class is far better at developing understanding than teaching by rote. Any cook knows there are tricks you can’t pick up from any book. Any driver knows that there comes a time when the map is not enough, and they need to wind down the window and ask a real human being with local knowledge.

Dialogue is a question-and-answer process by which people exchange knowledge. It is hard to imagine effective knowledge exchange without some form of dialogue

Dialogue is one form of conversation, in which the participants are trying to reach mutual understanding. It is a process of exchange of views and of knowledge, of asking questions and of listening to the answers. It is a combination of listening, advocacy, reasoning and consensus-seeking. It differs from argument, which is all about confrontation of views. There are no winners or losers in dialogue; you can't say "I lost the dialogue with Peter”. It differs from debate, which is all about testing the validity of a proposition rather than testing whether it is understood. It differs from interrogation, where all the questions are one-way, and only one person stands to profit from the exchange. It differs from discussion, which is often about analysis of detail rather than searching for common understanding. Nancy Dixon, in her book “Dialogue at Work” says

“In my view, dialogue is talk -- a special kind of talk -- that affirms the person-to-person relationship between discussants and which technologies their collective right and intellectual capacity to make sense of the world. Therefore, it is not talk that is one-way, such as a sales pitch, a directive or a lecture; rather it involves mutuality and jointness.

This “mutuality and jointness” lies behind the application of dialogue in many work processes; for example Dixon mentions Future Search Conferences, Open Space Technology, Action Learning, and Real-Time Strategic Change. These same attributes lie behind the application of dialogue to knowledge transfer.

The majority of knowledge within any organization is held in people’s heads. Indeed some would claim that ALL the knowledge is in people’s heads, and that anything which is written down becomes information, rather than knowledge. However for the purposes of this article we will call written knowledge “explicit” and “head knowledge” will be referred to as “tacit”.




There are two sorts of tacit knowledge in anyone’s head – the knowledge which they are conscious of, and the unconscious knowledge, the deep knowledge of which they are unaware.  The bulk of the useful knowledge is likely to lie in the box of unconscious competence, where the people who have gained the knowledge have not yet taken the time to analyse what they have learned, and make it conscious so it can be transferred to others.

Under these circumstances, the transfer of knowledge from one person to another is not an easy thing to achieve! The person who has the knowledge (the "knowledge supplier") may only be partially conscious of how much they do know. The person who needs the knowledge (the "knowledge customer") may only be partially conscious of what they need to learn. The knowledge supplier has both conscious and unconscious competence, and the knowledge customer has both conscious and unconscious incompetence. Also the knowledge supplier doesn't know what the customer needs, and the knowledge customer doesn't know what the supplier has.
Dialogue is needed, in order to

• Help the knowledge supplier understand and express what they know (moving from superficial knowledge to deep knowledge)

• Help the knowledge customer understand what they need to learn

• Transfer the knowledge from supplier to customer, and

• Check for understanding

The knowledge customer can ask the knowledge supplier for details, and this questioning will often lead them to analyse what they know and make it conscious. The knowledge supplier can tell the customer all the things they need to know, so helping them to become conscious of their lack of knowledge. As pieces of knowledge are identified, the customer and supplier question each other until they are sure that transfer has taken place.