Ever wanted a slick, quick video to explain Knowledge Management?

This one from Lotus does a surprisingly good job.  Not perfect, but not at all bad…

Thanks to Geoff Parcell for spotting it.

 

Bridge-building in Bangalore

I had the pleasure last week of spending two days in Bangalore with Robert Bosch India Ltd, running a number of seminars and workshops on different aspects of Knowledge Management.  One of the highlights was a bridge-building exercise designed by Learning to Fly co-author Geoff Parcell, during which the participants apply the principles of learning before, during and after, and captured knowledge to demonstrate an improvement in performance.

The picture below shows the new record span in this exercise – congratulations to the associates at Robert Bosch!

It was my first trip to India, and, although I was warned to be ready for an “assault on the senses”, and it certainly was – especially the traffic. I’m still getting over it – a whole new take on choas and complexity…

What struck me most though, was the insatiable appetite for learning and improvement demonstrated by my companions for the two days.  Robert Bosch India is already a strong performer in knowledge management, but their dissatisfaction with “good”, and unswerving desire for “great” made them a charmingly demanding client to spend time with.  There aren’t many companies in the West who could fill a conference room at 18.30 on a Friday evening for a two hour seminar on”creating a learning culture”.  Watch out Buckman Labs and Novo Nordisk…

 

Music to collaborate to…

I got back yesterday from the second meeting in a “Learning consortium” series of four events that I am co-facilitating with Elizabeth Lank, supported by TFPL.

We’re working with a group of Public Sector organisations who want to improve their capability in the fields of Communities and Collaboration by meeting, sharing, storytelling and developing new approaches.  Naturally, working with such a group requires that we invest time in building trust levels – and also in having some fun together.

Tuesday evening’s lighthearted community-building exercise involved our participants each recommending a music track which linked in some way (some of them tenuously!) to the Collaboration/Communities theme of our consortium.  Thanks to John Quinn at the Learning & Skills Council for stimulating the idea.

With the magic of iTunes, a colour printer and CD-writer, we were able to present each delegate with their own copy of “Music to Collaborate by…” at breakfast the next day. This compilation will now become the soundtrack for use our next two meetings.   
Finding a way to co-create a tangible, unique and enjoyable product is an important milestone for this particular community.

Here is a selection of the tracks…

Pulp – Common People
Sham 69 – if the kids are united
Bill Withers – Lean on me
Primal Scream – Come Together
Al Green – Let’s stay together
U2 – Somehow you keep me hanging on
Better together – Jack Johnson
The Beatles – I’ll get by with a little help from my friends

I must also take the opportunity to thank Rowan Purdy from CSIP, who gave us one the most engaging and clearest presentations on social computing that I have experienced.  Thanks Rowan – Inspirational stuff!

 

Shutting the stable door…

I ran a couple of training sessions last week, and in both of them the group ended up in a discussion about the relative merits of “knowledge harvesting”. I have always held however detailed the learning/exit interview with someone leaving a position or an organisation, both parties usually end up disappointed. However, as a salvage operation, particularly one involving a workgroup or community, it is certainly better than nothing, and can reduce some of the short-term risks.

I’d like to think that there are less reactive and more creative contractual ways of retaining access to expertise through phased retirement and voluntary alumni approaches…

Schlumberger have the right idea in the way they manage communities and special interest groups as an integral part of the development of professionals. In order to reach the upper echelons of Schlumberger’s technical professionals – the top rung of the technical ladder – you have to have spent time leading a community of practice. If you have never led a community, then you never become a “fellow”.

In order to lead a community of practice, you have to be voted in, during their annual “community election season” (sounds a little strange, but they manage it very well). Needless to say, in order to be voted in as a community leader, you have to have demonstrated the right behaviours, and been an active, knowledge-sharing member – in addition to having the requisite facilitation skills.

If the community is active and the “expert” is engaged, then there shouldn’t be too much left for the hasty harvest when the time comes for pastures new…

Far better perhaps, to consider your whole career as a 40-year exit interview!

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Six Sigma, Innovation and “shrinking your way to greatness”…

I picked up a copy of Business Week earlier in the week, attracted by the cover story : “3M’s Innovation Crisis – How Six Sigma almost smothered its idea culture”.

It provides an interesting commentary on the leadership styles of CEOs, McNerny and Buckley at 3M, and their respective attempts to introduce (or sheep-dip?) and then refocus Six Sigma to avoid that particular cuckoo pushing all the golden eggs out of the nest…

Some choice quotes:

“Perhaps one of the mistakes that we made as a company – it’s one of the dangers of six sigma – is that when you value sameness more than you value creativity, I think you potentially undermine the heart and soul of a company like 3M.”

Whilst I allowed myself a private smirk at the critical stance of the article, it got me reflecting on whether some of the tools of knowledge management, inappropriately applied, could equally easily undermine the heart and soul of a company. Too intense focus on continuous improvement and good practice sharing, at the expense of boundary-scanning, making connections and opening up resources, relationships and organisational boundaries…

Jeneanne Rae follows up the main story in Business Week with a short article on how Ambidextrous Companies can “have it both ways” and simultaneously handle incremental change and bold initiatives. She references O’Reilly and Tushman’s HBR article on the Ambidextrous Organisation – I must read this, as some of the organisations I know (and have worked in) struggle to have the left hand know what the right hand is doing, let alone successfully harmonise their activities!

Jeneanne finishes with three strategies for managing incremental and disruptive innovative initiatives simultaneously:

• Separate the efforts. Don’t expect people running mature businesses to behave the same as those in charge of startups. Each type has its own incentives, organizations, and talent needs.
• Appoint an ambidextrous senior manager to oversee both efforts. A general manager with responsibility for both traditional and new businesses will foster efficiency by sharing such resources as HR, marketing, and finance, and by promoting integration of the initiatives when the time is right.
• Support both teams appropriately. Don’t shortchange one over the other. It kills me to see so much investment in reengineering, training, and employee time being poured into Six Sigma initiatives in the name of cost savings when innovation gets starved for critical research requirements like white-space analysis, ethnographic research, or prototyping. It’s as if leadership believes companies can shrink their way to greatness.

That final quote is one to savour – and will be going into my favourite quotes list…

“It’s as if leadership believes companies can shrink their way to greatness.”

 

Lessons from Herodotus

I ran a workshop for “Connecting for Health” yesterday, and someone gave me this little story, entitled “A classic example of knowledge in practice”.

They have no physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease or have known anyone who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.

Histories of Herodotus: A history source of Persian Empire of Achaemenian era.
Herodotus (c. 484-225 BC); Translated by: George Rawlinson. Connecting for HealthConnecting for Health

In our “knowledge-sharing civilisation” I wonder whether we have the equivalent of too many physicians, no public square, a lack of passers-by or just a lack of intellectual compassion?

 

In-know-vation

I was with the Henley KM Forum last week running a workshop with Christine Van Winkelen. I’m part of a project team looking at the relationship between knowledge management and innovation, and in particular, at the way in which KM practices can support innovation.

A number of the members organisations conducted local research drawing out their innovation stories, which were scanned for recurrent themes. As a group, we then put some “flesh on the bones” and created a self-assessment tool (maturity model) , based on the combined experience of the room, plus an analysis of current research. I thought I’d share the high-level headings here:

Recognising/finding high-value opportunities to innovate, Re-using Knowledge, Internal collaboration, External Collaboration, Learning from Innovation activities, Building a learning organisation.

Next step is for the member organisations to self-assess and identify areas where they can share and learn from each other using the “River Diagram” approach – setting off a number of new conversations, and a whole lot of new learning…

 

Dissent from Snowden…

The little Peer Assist animation I blogged recently has become a subject of discussion in the Coognitive Edge blog.

I’ve responsed in the discussion there, but my comment hasn’t come out of quarantine yet (it’s my first one on the cognitive edge, so I guess I’m being screened), so I’ll pick up the thread here for now.

Dave Snowden (whose intellect I respect) makes a few points in his post – an assertion (provocatively distorted) about the nature of the peer assist process, and a comment  about the way in which simple methods can be turned into recipes (which I entirely agree with), all sugar-coated with a back-handed compliment.

 

Peer Assists – the movie…

Ever wondered how a “Peer Assist” works?  It’s a meeting designed to help a team “learn before doing” by drawing on the experience of others.  Simple eh?  But not many people do it, because we like to get straight in to the action…

Here’s a fun flash movie from the University of Ottowa that explains how it all works…

 

Herding Cats and “the nonsense of knowledge management”

I ran a lunchtime session at the National School of Government on Friday, and used the video below to illustrate that knowledge management is an oxymoron. It’s really about managing (creating, nurturing, protecting, supporting, technologically enabling) the environment for knowledge sharing – not attempting the impossible cat-herding task of managing what’s in the heads of individuals… More detailed comment from me on this topic on the Uncommon Knowledge Blog.

Meanwhile, here’s that video – an oldie, but goodie!