Forget History quote

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There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good.

- Stephen Colbert

the knowledge capture meeting - who is it for?

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I spent the last couple of days facilitating lessons-identification meetings in Sweden, and it reinforced to me that there are really two beneficiaries from these meetings.

The obvious beneficiary is the rest of the organisation. The project team are donating their time and energy in identifying and discussing learnings which will hekp others in future.

Yet the project team are not just philanthropic donors; they also benefit.

They benefit in two ways.

Firstly they also become conscious of what they have learned. Until we discuss as a group, they are largely uncionscious of their learning.

Secondly the discussion itself is very therapeautic, especially when you are reviewing a project that went wrong. Project teams are often too busy, or never take the time, to talk through some of the challenges and shocks and problems and disasters. WHich of course we have to doi before we can draw out the learning. Often when conducting these meetings it feels a little but like group therapy or analysis.

But in a good way!

Difficulties of knowledge transfer (quote)

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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.


- Robert McCloskey

Weaknesses in the Knowledge Supply Chain

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The figure here is reproduced with permission from a thesis dissertation by Catherine Barney, entitled "Cross-project learning in project-based organizations"

Catherine was studying knowledge management and lesson-learning in a major European engineering company. As part of her dissertation, Catherine surveyed the company to measure employees' satisfaction with various steps (or "aspects") in the lessons learned cycle (what I have referred to as the knowledge supply chain).

Her lower diagram (opposite) is interesting - there's a reasonable satisfaction with lessons identification and capture, but with every step after that, dissatisfaction grows. This could either be because this company (like many others) thinks the job is done once the lesson is "captured", or because inefficiencies along the chain combine to make each step progressively less satisfactory (in other words, poor verification on top of poor capture leads to even less satisfaction with application).

For me the lesson is clear.

There's no point in capturing lessons, unless you look at the whole supply chain, from supplier to user.

Making the knowledge gaps visible

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One of the biggest challenges in working with knowledge is that it is invisible.

Nobody can tell what you know by looking at you, and nobody can tell what you need to know either, just by looking at you. Two people can pass each other in a corridor, one of whom possesses the solution to a problem that is taxing the other out of their mind, and they don't even realise the need to talk, because the knowledge and its need are invisible.

I have been in a number of settings where we have made the knowledge visible, and also where we have made the knowledge gaps- the questions - visible. In a setting like this you can just watch the interactions start to happen.

One was in a conference, where we asked people to write, on their name badge, an issue or problem that was taxing them. Then, as people circulated for coffee, others who had ideas or solutions to the problem could introduce themselves, and knowledge exchange could start.

Mars did a similar exercise, using electronic tags which lit up when someone with similar knowledge or interests came near.

Then we have done Knowledge Markets, where people host a poster listing their knowledge issues and their knowledge offers, and others circulate, looking for answers to their problems and problems they can answer.

The ultimate vision will be to introduce a system at work where both knowledge and questions are visible. The first would be a yellow pages system, where people can identify what they know, and where you can conduct searches based on knowledge.  The second would be a system of broadcasting questions, such as a Q&A forum, or using Social Networking status labels. In Knoco we use Yammer as a way to tap into the knowledge of our world-wide colleagues.

The more we can make the knowledge visible, and make the questions, or knowledge gaps, visble, the more we can put people together with others to improve knowledge transfer and solve problems.

Are you listening?

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Listening is a skill we are in danger of losing, and its a skill that's crucial to knowledge transfer.

I read recently that in a conversation, our listening effectiveness is on average about 40%. In an argument, it falls to 10%, and 90% of what the other person says is lost, because we are too busy marshaling our own thoughts to listen properly.

Poor listening is often fed by poor speaking, and everyone knows how dire it can be listening to someone drone on and on, as the audience falls asleep one by one. So I have sympathy with those who find it hard to listen. Also very often people try to transfer knowledge through marathon bouts of one-way traffic - one-hour lectures that don't hold the attention, death by PowerPoint, sermons we sleep through. There is a lot of poorly-thought-through, poorly-structured speaking going on; trying to do in a 1-hour speech what 10 minutes of interactive dialogue would achieve more easily.

But no matter how brief the conversation - one hour or one minute - there are two roles here; the speaker and the listener, and the role of the listener is an active one, not a passive one. The listener's role consists of focusing attention, and of attempting to understand. Not to evaluate, not to think of why they are wrong in what they say, but actively to pay attention, and activeiyl to seek understanding. Seeking to understand doesn't mean that you agree, but it means that you stand a better chance of learning rather than dismissing.

I tell you what though - active listening is very hard! Most of the time our attention wanders, much of the time we are thinking of something else, and crucial knowledge may fail to catch our attention. I think that's one reason why I am not a fan of tweeting during presentations - it destroys active listening for the tweeter.

One organisation I am working with is looking at changing their culture to a learning culture, and one of their initiatives is to teach active listening. And I think that's a great initiative.

Learning quote

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Learning

is a

contact

sport

Kent Greenes, BP CKO in the 1990s

The link between business strategy and knowledge

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The link between business strategy and knowledge management is organisational competence.

 

To make this link, you need to ask three questions

  

1. Ask your senior managers (or if you are a senior manager, ask yourself) "what do we need to be able to do (ie what competencies do we need) in order to deliver our strategy".
2. Then ask "what do we need to know, to be competent"
3. Then ask "how do we acquire, develop and protect that knowledge"

 

The answer to that third question identifies the critical company knowledge which drives your KM strategy.

When communities are not the answer

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Communities of practice are one of the cornerstone concepts of Knowledge Management, and a tool that many KM strategists or implementers reach for when looking to start a KM program.

However a community is not always the tool you need, and just because they are a successful component of KM, doesn't mean they are the answer to every KM problem.

Here's what John Keeble of Enterprise Oil says about communities

"We have had some people come to us saying they want to launch a community, and we have ended up encouraging them just to have a workshop. Invite the same people you would have invited to the launch of the community, and just see what level of interest there is. I think the one advantage of that is that it avoids overloading the community with excessive expectations early on. It is much easier to say "we had a workshop; we covered the subject and thats it", whereas if you launch a community, people expect to to have a lifecycle of at least 2 years, and you may discover that's not what you need"

Sometimes you don't need a community of practice, sometimes you need a workshop, or a training course, or better communication within a team or a department.

So when do you need communities of practice? You need them where they can address issues which are not otherwise easily addressed by any other group. You need them where they can cross the organisational boundaries and the organisational silos. You need them where they are multilocational and multi-departmental. Have a look at the boston square above, and the four situations it paints

• Where the knowledge needs to be shared across locations and across organisational boundaries between departments, then communities are ideal
• Where the knowledge needs to be shared across at a single locations and within a single department, then you don't need a community of practice. The community would merely duplicate the existing organisational structure. You don't need new structures or new community leaders or community sponsors - what you need is a better way of sharing knowledge within that department. This is the situation we describe here.
• Where the knowledge needs to be shared across locations within the same department (ie you have an organisational department with geographic spread), then communities are useful when tied into the departmental structure.
• Where the knowledge needs to be shared across departments  within the same location, then you need a better system for sharing knowledge at that location. This may be a community of practice (which can meet face to face), or it may be a series of problem-solving workshops, or it may be a single conference. Communities are an option, but not the only option.

So think before you reach into the KM toolbox for that community tool. Make sure it's the right one for the job.

What was KM like, before IT?

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It seems to be almost a reflex action among knowledge managers, to see IT as the solution.

"I have a knowledge sharing problem in my company- I will buy SharePoint 2010"

"Knowledge is being hoarded, I will buy Yammer"

"Knowledge is held in silos, we must get blogging software"

But if knowledge is the problem, is IT always the solution?

Or to put it another way, what was KM like before IT?

Knowledge management, knowledge sharing and knowledge re-use are not exclusively modern problems, and have been addressed in many ways over the centuries and milennia. The storytelling rituals of so-called primitive tribes were ways of encoding knowledge into story, so it could be retained and transferred and reused across the generations, and between the villages. Technology, in these early days, was provided by pigment on cave walls, or totems carved into antlers and bones. Oral storytelling may still be the primary mechanism of knowledge sharing in societies with low literacy rates.

Knowledge sharing in 15th century Portugal has already been described in this post, where the Sagres school of Henry the Navigator provided a mechanism and a focus for building and sharing knowledge of navigation, and knowledge of the geography of West Africa (knowledge which gave Portugal a highly competitive advantage). The combination of a shared library, and a place where pilots and captains could meet, learn, discuss, tell stories and learn new techniques, new approaches, new harbours and new routes.

Knowledge sharing in the medieval times was also provided by the craftsmen's guilds. Acting like communities of practice, the guilds were where the silversmiths, or the goldsmiths, or the engravers, went to learn and practice their craft. The guildhalls were where the community met, and where the transfer of knowledge was arranged through the apprentice-journeyman-master-grandmaster progression. Guilds "owned" instructional capital and intellectual property, and often gained huge competitive advantage for guild members through that ownership.

More recently, I was involved with a knowledge management solution for a team working in Vietnam, when western technology was still embargoed. Their solution was based on a team-room, on after action reviews and conversations, and on wall-charts and flipcharts.

Knowledge Management can be done without IT, but in some cases IT makes KM much easier. Knowledge management is based on conversation and story, and IT can sometimes allow conversations that otherwise would not be possible. Knowledge management requires people to meet and discuss, and IT can provide the virtual meeting points - the virtual Guildhalls if you like. Knowledge management requires somewhere where common intellectual property can be stored, and IT can provide the virtual library for a community. IT allows the age-old and traditional mechanisms of KM to be made virtual and global.

The problem arises when IT is selected blindly, and becomes inappropriate - when IT replaces or blocks the very behaviours it needs to maintain. I have blogged before about the company that introduced community technology to spark conversation among its specialist community, in a situation where requiring a co-located group to converse online in English was far less effective than introducing a few face-to-face conversation processes which they could hold in their native language. IT got in the way, it blocked conversation, and unsurprisingly the community forums were empty. Similarly there are situations where a blog is far less effective than a meeting, or where a sharepoint site is far less effective than a notice-board.

KM can survive without IT, but there are many situations where IT makes KM easier, or gives it a geographic spread it would otherwise lack. 

Similarly there are other situations where IT does not help, gets in the way, or blocks or buries conversation.

The key is to think, not to assume. Think what's needed, rather than assume a toolkit from the start.  The key is to think "What conversations are needed, and how and where should they take place? What communal knowledge or stories need to be made available, and how and where should they be stored? Which people do we need to connect, and how and where is this best done?"

Once you have answered these questions, you will understand better how IT can play it's supporting role.

Learning organisation, or organisation of learners?

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This thought was sparked by a blog post from Roxanna Samii about learning organisations, where she quotes a definition as follows

The literature says that a learning organization is one that “facilitates learning of its members to continuously transform themselves and enables them to remain competitive”.

Now that, to me, sounds like an organization of learners, rather than learning organisation.  The learning organisation, surely, should be more than the sum of its members?  It should be the organisation that learns, over and above the individual members within it, or at least that was my first reaction.

Perhaps we ought to ask, can an organisation really learn?  Is learning something that organisations can do?  Wikipedia tells us that learning is “one of the most important mental functions of humans, animals and artificial cognitive systems”, but organizations aren’t humans, they aren’t animals, and they aren’t artificial cognitive systems.  Unlike animals, organizations have no brains, so do they actually have anything to learn with?  Does an organisation have a memory, or mental models that they can update based on stimuli and responses?

In my experience, its pretty obvious that organizations can learn above and beyond the sum of individual “learning people”. Teams can learn, communities can learn, functions and projects can learn, just as an individual can learn. They can learn from experience, whether this is their own experience, or experience from other teams, other communities, other functions. It is this vision of “learning from experience” that has led so many companies to set up a lessons learned process within their Knowledge Management approach, so that if something does not go according to plan, they hope the company as a whole can reflect on what has happened, draw lessons from the past, and ensure not to repeat them in future.

However lesson-learning in organisations as far more complex than it is in a human. An organisation is not a single connected brain. There are no sensory neurons carrying messages of stimulus and response to the memory centres. An organisation does not contain connected learning pathways as a human brain does, unless we deliberately introduce them (which is what a lessons learned system is, in reality). An organisation doesn't have a Memory in the same way that a person does, although it has its own memory in the form of embedded structures, processes, procedures, and the stories and oral history of the organisation.

So can organisations learn, over and above the learning of their individual members? I would say there is ample evidence they do.They learn the same way that individuals do; by becoming conscious (as an organisation) of the need to learn, by acquiring that learning (as an organisation) through organisational reflection, conceptualisation and activity, and by finally becoming unconscious of the learning as it becomes embedded in organisational processes and procedures.

If the learning is addressed strategically, in the light of company competence requirements, and if organisational and individual learning are aligned structurally as part of a blended learning portfolio, then what Peter Senge said about individuals, can become true of organisations (my brackets added)

“Through learning (the organisation) re-creates (itself). Through learning (the organisation) becomes able to do something it never was able to do. Through learning (the organisation) perceives the world and its relationship to it. Through learning (the organisation)extends its capacity to create".

He concludes this quote  by saying, of individuals, that "There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning”.

I am yet to be convinced, however, that there is the same deep hunger in organisations. And that's where organisational learning differs from individual learning.  Individual learning is a natural act, that we all seek to do.  Organisational learning is an unnatural act that few organizations seek to do, even though the organisation that does not learn will not survive in the long term.

senior managers leading the way in KM

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Last week I blogged a letter from the Knowledge Management team to senior managers in the organisation. In that letter I asked for their support - not just in words, but in action - and for their involvement in early knowledge management activity.

An excellent example of this comes from the early days of knowledge management at BP, where we were introducing a Yellow Pages system (a directory of "who knows what") which we referred to as "BP Connect". We asked the senior managers to lead the way and set an example by entering their own profiles into the system first. Then they used the little notices shown here as email signatures, to broadcast to the rest of the organisation that "they were connected". All the people shown here were from the senior management team at the time, including the CEO, Lord Browne.

These "I'm Connected" email sigs caught on and became quite popular, and were a key factor in driving involvement in  the Connect system. Now, 13 years later, there are 45000 BP employees on the system

Communities of Practice at Caterpillar

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I wonder if they use a slightly different definition of CoP, as it would be hard to imagine 4000 separate practice areas in one organisation

After Action review video

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Great YouTube video on delivering effective After Action reviews, containing real footage of an AAR from the Wildland Fire lessons learned centre



More on After Action reviews

This blog welcomes it's 100th follower

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Welcome and congratulations to our 100th follower, Jeff Hester of  California, " KM guru, social media expert, mountain biker, backpacker, father, grandfather, author, speaker, dog walker, web developer and a damn good listener"

The knowledge managers request to senior management

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Dear Senior Managers

Over the past year, our pilot projects in Knowledge Management have shown that there is huge value to be delivered to the organisation, by introducing a systematic managed approach to knowledge. The ROI of these pilots has been in the order of 10-fold, and we believe this can be scaled up to corporate level.

We, the KM team, commit to delivering this value to you, but we need something in return.

Here are our requests for you

1.  We need you to steer our program. Help us to understand what knowledge is strategic to the organisation, so that KM activities can fully support your own strategic agenda. Lets work together to make KM a core supporter of the business strategy.

2. We need your endorsement. We need you to be talking about the importance of knowledge. We need you to be asking the questions "Who have you learned from?" and "Who will you share this with?" Eventually we will be asking you to set clear expectations for KM in the organisation.

3. We need your example. As someone once said, "I cannot hear what you say, for the thunder of what you do", so you need to be acting, as well as talking. Get involved in KM. Hold your own learning reviews. Capture and share and build knowledge at senior management level.

4. We need you to reward and recognise wisely. KM requires a change in culture, and people will be very alert to how you recognise behaviours. If you reward and recognise the wrong things, such as internal competition, or the lone hero who "doesn't need to learn", or the knowledge hoarders who keep it all "in their heads", then our good work of culture change will be in vain. Recognise instead those who learn before doing, those who share hard-won lessons, and those who show bravery in admitting to mistakes from which others can learn.

5. We need you to be consistent in how you follow up expectations. The company will watch how you deal with the project that doesn't hold a learning review, or the expert who neglects their community. If you let them get away with bad KM behaviours, you have sent a strong message to the organisation; that you can refuse to be involved in KM, and nobody will make a fuss.

6. Finally, we need you to challenge us. We know the value of KM, and you need to challenge us to use it to make a real step-change in business deliverables.

Together, we can make a real difference through knowledge management.

Sincerely,

the KM team

The four business focus areas for KM

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We all know you shouldn't talk to business staff in KM-speak, but in the language of the business. We also all know we should focus our KM efforts on business benefits. But what are those benefits? And how do you describe them in business-speak? Basically there are 4 areas of benefit, as shown on the picture to the right; innovation, collaboration, standardisation and retention

Innovation is about creating new knowledge, and learning new things. This is the are where you need to create innovation communities and learning communities, where you put in place action learning programs and knowledge acquisition programs.

Collaboration is about pulling together the knowledge you already have in order to find better approaches, through communities of practice, and through project-based learning processes.

Standardisation is also about pulling together the knowledge you already have, but in this case the purpose is to find a best standard approach which the company can stand behind. Of course you would only do this with a very mature knowledge area, but the value of standardisation is well known.

Retention is about holding onto the knowledge you have, through a systematic approach to knowledge retention and harvesting.

The business can understand all these, and can clearly graps the benefits. Knowledge Management then needs to support the business, and to deliver the benefits.

Solving the KM jigsaw puzzle

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As a consultant, I visit many many organisations to perform reviews or audits of their knowledge management systems (by which I dont just mean IT systems, I mean the whole systematic approach to KM).

Most companies have some elements of KM in place already; many are doing pretty well. All have some holes in their system.

It strikes me as being a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. The client has many of the pieces on the table already. Some are joined up. Some aren't. Some pieces are missing. The client doesn't really know what the joined up puzzle will look like - they don't know "the picture on the box". But they know they don't have the full picture, as they are not getting the value they expected from KM.

Often they have many of the technology pieces of the puzzle, often they have a few process pieces, usually they are struggling with the "roles and accountability" pieces, and seldom have they addressed the pieces that drive culture (such as the governance aspects).

Our role as consultants is to take the pieces that work well - that form part of the picture - join them together and integrate them- fill in the gaps, then make sure that the final system is firmly embedded into the organisational culture and working habits.

Integrate, enhance, embed, was the mantra that we came up with this week.

Integrate = join the existing pieces of the KM puzzle
Enhance = fill in the gaps
Embed = fix it to the table so it doesn't slide off (in other words to embed it into cultural process and behaviours)

And a key part of our role as consultants is to know what the "picture on the box" would look like, for any given client.

Machiavelli's warning to the Knowledge Manager

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"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand,


more perilous to conduct,


Or more uncertain of success,


Than to take the lead in the


Introduction of a new order


Of things"


Machiavelli,


The Prince, c 1570

13 rules for KM pilots

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Here's a checklist from the archives.

I'm not sure where it came from originally, but it's a good checklist for KM pilots.


1. The results have to be clear enough to provide an answer (pilots don’t make management decisions ). A pilot may be requested by the sponsor to avoid making a decision between a number of options. Be wary of putting anything that requires an organisational/management decision into a pilot. You can avoid this by revisiting the objectives of the pilot with the sponsor).

2. The people you choose to pilot have to be ‘up for it.’  There will always be issues with a pilot. It is sometimes better to pilot with a group who show the most enthusiasm even if they are not the target audience of the pilot. This will enable you to check processes and procedures first, particularly if the pilot is around new ways of working. You can then invite a more appropriate and targeted community for the main pilot).

3. Avoid checking technical issues within the remit of a pilot. Questions around ‘can we do it’ should be resolved outside of any pilots. You can avoid this by revisiting top-level objectives with your sponsor and asking questions such as are you looking for new ways of working, what are your criteria for success

4. Avoid placing all responsibilities on your project manager. Using a group of three - a project manager (for business processes), a finance person (to look at the budget for the pilot and whether financial benefits are being achieved) and a KM specialist

5. Sponsorship is not sponsorship unless it brings funding. Ensure your sponsor understands that they will not always be able to guarantee savings as a result of the pilot, they may have to spend money to save money - it may be a return in future benefits such as derisking. You may to quantify the cost of derisking at project initiation stage to assess whether the project is worth the cost.

6. A project by definition is throwaway

7. Target project champions who understand where the business is going and why they are adding to that vision

8. Minor scope creep is an important and necessary step within a pilot

9. Technology should not drive the pilot, the pilot should drive the technology

10. Focus on the business processes which each business area identifies will make the most savings

11. Be prepared to factor in additional costs to help pilot users keep up to date. New systems or processes may cause users delays in their day job. Service Level Agreements may not be able to be changed for short periods of time, so you may have to factor in additional funding to help them keep up to date with their date job

12. When a pilot ends, ensure that users understand where any funding ends. If they wish to continue with the process/system, help them look at what can be done to extend pilot arrangements

13. stablish a mechanism for selecting what to pilot. This could be looking at objectives as they arise, revisiting high level aims and going back to the sponsor to agree costs.

Oscar on Knowledge

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There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
  - Oscar Wilde

KM and clones revisited

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I blogged a while ago about the powerful combination of standardisation and knowledge management as a way of driving down project costs and times, with some illustrations from clone projects within the oil sector.

Here's an example from another sector - the Nuclear sector. According to this great presentation, Korea pursued a clear strategy for their Nuclear Reactors, building each one to a standard design, and ensuring a rigourous approach to "Lesson learned from one project implementation to another by both factory and field labor". The attached graph shows the result - a progressive reduction in time and cost to build their plants.

Now perhaps this is natural learning. Perhaps KM has nothing to do with it?  But contrast this with the Japanese equivalent, where there was no program of standardisation, and therefore no opportunity for learning from one construction to another. In the Japanese case, we see no learning curve at all. So yet again the combination of standardisation and lesson-learning can be a powerful driver behind industry economics and competitiveness.

Lessons meetings, where do you stand? Literally?

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I got some interesting feedback last week at a lessons identification/capture meeting.

They said "it was great that, instead of standing up the front with a flipchart, you sat down at the table with us and took notes. It felt like a conversation, that you were part of".

I have been reflecting on this, and I am increasingly thinking that standing up the front with a flpchart is counterproductive.

When you are up front

• you are the focus
• it's about you
• you are separate
• people look at you
• people listen to you
• people read what you write
• people analyse and judge what you write

When you are at the table with the team

• the team is the focus
• its about the team
• you are part of the team*
• people look at each other
• people listen to each other
• people don't read, analyse or judge, they converse

So if you find your knowledge capture meetings or lessons identification meetings are stilted, are not flowing, and are not producing the results you hoped for, then put down your marker**, and go sit at the table.

Join the team, and join the conversation.

* I use "we language" in the meeting - "So what have we learned"- "if we were going to do this again, what would we do" and so on.


** The other benefit is that you can take proper notes. Voluminous notes. Which you can't do on a flipchart. Which means that the stories, the context and the knowledge gets lost.