Several times I have blogged about the need to "speak to the unknown user" when capturing knowledge. A friend of mine recently took an unusual approach to this.He was running a Retrospect, and was discussing the learning points from one particularly tricky set of events. The group were struggling to express the lessons in useful terms for future projects, so he reached into his bag and pulled out a little blue toy dog which he was taking home to his son.
"This is Blue Dog" he said. "Blue Dog is running the next project. What advice would you give to Blue Dog, to help avoid the problems you had this time around?"
OK, a bit corny, but it gave the discussion a focus, and the project team were able to come up with some specific and actionable recommendations for Blue Dog. Blue Dog became a very visible stand-in for the Unknown Knowledge User.
So if your Retrospect is struggling, maybe its worth having a blue dog in your bag!
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Once a used that with a three months long training/best practices sharing online program with Sheriffs. They were challenged to give advice to a new Sheriff called Sherlock Silva about the most common problems they faced it. That worked very well and Sherlock Silva turned in a lind of a meme in the community. "What Sherlock Silva would do?"
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