Ignorance can sometimes help innovation....

A great little story in the news today with a couple of insights for those of us interested in knowledge management (KM).

This Telegraph news article here tells how a 16-year old schoolboy on work experience helped address the problems encountered when a heart by-pass surgery patient's records are unavailable and there is no way of knowing what work has been done before.

Observing his father (a cardiologist) dealing with a patient in this situation, he asked whether there was some way of writing a code inside the patient, so that future surgeons would have the information they needed straight away, enabling further surgery to take place without undue delay.

This innocent question sparked an idea, which resulted in his father developing a system

Two observations:

• The schoolboy was not part of the surgical team and had no direct or relevant experience that might have been helpful in this situation.  However, this 'ignorance' was to his advantage, as it meant he approached the problem with a fresh outlook.  In many day-to-day activities at work, there are times when a new perspective can help a team tackle a problem or improve performance and KM activities like a Peer Assist can help bring different perspectives to a team and new insights to a problem.
• Thankfully, the surgical team did not suffer from the 'not invented here' syndrome, whereby people resist external initiatives or suggestions simply because they came from an outsider.  This is sadly the default workplace condition and all too often leads to 'groupthink', preventing or inhibiting innovation.  Teams that have developed a learning culture are more likely to be receptive to new ideas.

For a chat about bringing new perspectives to your team, innovation or knowledge management in general, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

What does world-class KM look like?

Since we can always continue to learn from one another I am currently seeking conversations with anyone who would be happy to share how their organisation ‘does’ knowledge management (KM).  In return, I'm willing to offer reciprocal insights into some of the best KM practices we at Knoco have encountered in recent years.

In this spirit of mutual support, I recently caught up with a former Army colleague who now works for a consulting firm and, over a very enjoyable breakfast, he gave an overview of what excellent KM looks and sounds like.

He gave me permission to share his account on the condition of anonymity, so what follows is a simplified version.

He identified 6 distinct features that combine to enable world-class KM, namely:

·        A shared understanding that ‘knowledge’, for the purposes of KM, means ‘know-how’, NOT merely information;

·        A sophisticated knowledge base, wherein users can search for knowledge relating to the current project on which they are working. All content is tagged and can be ‘marked’ by other users according to its helpfulness;

·        An internal ‘people-finder’ tool, where personal profiles include past experience and the knowledge topics in which each person might be considered an expert;

·        A discrete and defined cohort of staff whose job it is to capture, organise, review and update all the firm’s knowledge – if you need to know how to do something in the field of construction in South America, and are unable to find it, they will do it for you;

·        A clear system of accountability, whereby all knowledge products need to be reviewed, approved and given a ‘stamp of approval’ by the firm’s relevant experts in the field;

·        A culture where there is no internal competition, little evidence of hierarchy and a system of compensation under which people are rewarded developing others and for creating and sharing knowledge – silos, tribalism, politicking and the ‘knowledge is power’ concept are simply forbidden.

My former colleague then shared a brief anecdote about his first day in the job: he had been added to a team working on a client project and was expected to brief the client the following day.  Using many of the features described above he produced and presented 15 slides and the client agreed the proposed project the following day.

This wasn’t a KM assessment interview but old habits die hard....as he spoke, in my head I was assigning scores (out of 5) to the various components of our KM framework model: 5, 5, 4.5, 5, 5….etc!

It was a real privilege to talk with someone from a company that not only ‘gets it’ with KM but is so clearly an example of how it’s done.

For a conversation about how your organisation manages its knowledge, and then perhaps how it might do it better, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

Let's learn from good and bad alike....

Here in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is apparently struggling to cope with the demands of a growing, ageing population in mid-winter.  I'm not going to get into the politics of this issue, funnily enough but a radio discussion on the topic yesterday raised knowledge management (KM), albeit unwittingly.

On BBC Radio 4's 'The World at One', the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green MP said, "Absolutely we've got to learn the lessons of what is going wrong and make sure it goes right, as it does in the majority of hospitals."  You can hear the relevant bit here, after 14 minutes.

Whilst I was pleased to hear lesson learning mentioned as a possible response to the current 'crisis', I was disappointed to hear further reinforcement of the widely-held view that 'lesson learning' is something we do when things go wrong.

[Let's not dwell for too long on the fact that lessons first need to be identified and are only 'learned' when we have made the recommended changes to policies, processes, procedures etc.  Most readers of this blog will be sufficiently familiar with this distinction - if not, this post here will explain more.]

Lessons can and should be identified from positive and negative experiences alike.  Indeed, when we run lessons capture meetings (or Retrospects) for clients, we ask them to consider what issues had the greatest impact on the project, for good or bad.  Then, we need to consider, for negative issues, which are most likely to recur next time unless we do something different.  And for positive ones, we need to consider what we need to do to ensure that the positive outcome can be repeated - indeed, can be guaranteed for the future.

Most of the feedback from Retrospect participants, who've not taken part before, is positive.  People have often told me how 'relieved' they were that it didn't descend into finger-poking and blaming.  Well, without a trained facilitator, keeping the focus on learning, such things can happen, alas. 

Indeed, I recall one meeting that was rescheduled twice, and eventually cancelled because 3 people turned up, out of an invited 12.  My main point of contact, when discussing the 'no-shows' over coffee later on, said, "You know, it was a real shame people didn't come along, because this was the project we really need to learn from." 

I replied, "That's not a 'shame' - it's cause and effect.  People have chosen not to come because they are worried that this would have been a 'blame game' exercise."

If you use lesson learning in your organisation, ensure that you capture the good practice as well as identifying where things didn't meet expectations - otherwise, people will continue to think that lessons = bad, and won't want to take part.

For more advice on Retrospects, lesson learning or KM in general, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

A quick win here, a success story there - how to change the culture sneakily....

Sometimes, we need to be direct.  Other times, we need to do things differently.

Indeed, many successful warriors throughout history have used what is known as the 'indirect approach'.  At the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon feinted weakness on his right in order to punch a hole through the extended lines of Austrian soldiers on the Pratzen Heights. 

More recently, a former Commanding Officer of mine (ex-SAS, awarded the Military Cross in Gulf War 1) characterised the approach thus, "It's like tapping the shoulder of the biggest, ugliest bloke in the bar, then turning with him to remain hidden and hitting him the sharpest, heaviest object you can find, before kicking his legs from underneath him and stamping on his face as hard as you possibly can...."

Those were the days....

More recently, I had a call with a client, the aim of which was to explain the Knoco approach to knowledge management (KM) and win his support for a KM project we hope to run for them next year.  At one point, he said, "Everything you've said has resonated with me, Rupert.  I'm just concerned that our culture might be a problem.  You can take a horse to water but can't make it drink.  We can provide people with the tools they need to capture and share knowledge but they still won't do it."

This is a common concern amongst clients.  Indeed, when we perform a KM assessment, culture is one of the areas we examine, under the area of Governance.  And we sometimes find that organisations have all the technology tools they could ever hope for but are nevertheless not sharing with one another.  Indeed, the problem can be compounded by some tools being duplicated, with some teams using Tool A for this function, and others using Tools B or C.

I have written about a 'learning culture' many times (e.g. all listed here).  I think culture can both help and hinder KM work, as well as itself being shaped by it.

Culture is both a symptom and a cause and is therefore difficult to tackle head-on.  The culture of a place can be described as 'the way things are done around here'.  It is the sum of everyone's hopes, fears, beliefs and values.  These in turn are the responses people make to behaviour.  Culture influences, and is influenced by, the way people work together.

Culture change programmes can work but are notoriously difficult and all too often abandoned because whilst people often seek and welcome change, they do not like to feel that they themselves are being changed.  After all, in the words of Peter Senge, "The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back." (Page 58, The Fifth Discipline)

So, instead of forcing behaviour upon people, KM managers should identify ways to make them want to behave that way because it's clearly the right thing to do.

How can they do this?

By identifying so-called 'pain points', and using KM to alleviate the pain, KM managers can win support for further KM work.  By identifying short, focussed, pilot projects that deliver value - what we at Knoco call the 'good news stories' - word will get around, assisted here and there through a communications plan.

As small numbers of people start to use new tools, follow new processes and establish new connections with people whose knowledge they can now use, they will begin to spread the word.  Good news stories should be communicated to everyone, with key participant interviews put on videos and broadcast on the company portal.

This way, energy is created, momentum builds and the culture begins to change - not because we tackle it head on, but because we we're being sneaky and using the indirect approach.

To swap war stories, from the KM frontline or elsewhere, please contact me direct, or via the Knoco website.

We don't work safely by chance so why would we manage knowledge that way?

This morning, dropping off my daughters at school, I had a brief chat with another Dad about knowledge management (KM).

He works for a local engineering company and has been investigating KM over recent months, using the toolkit we at Knoco produced for the aerospace industry for guidance.
He's planning on producing a KM policy but has yet to put pen to paper.

Our chat went something like this:

Him: Haven't got round to it yet...I need a cost-code from my Engineering Director as I'm not doing this on my own time.
Me: Ah, that old chestnut...cost-codes.
Him: Yeah.
Me: Yes, some companies do have cost-codes for KM, where they've allocated a specific budget.  But what you really want is to go the whole way and just accept that KM stuff is part of everyday working.
Him: Part of the culture, you mean?  We're a long way from that.
Me: Of course you are, but that's where you want to be headed. Think about safety, as an example.
Him: I don't follow.
Me: Well, you don't use a separate cost-code to don your safety equipment, perform safety checks or tests or do any other safety-related activities, do you?
Him: No....
Me: That's because that argument has been won.  We all see that safety is an integral part of everyday working.  That's what proper KM looks like also.
Him: That's a good analogy.
Me: Yes, I use it sometimes when people say "But surely we manage our knowledge anyway? It just happens...it's common sense."  But nothing at all gets managed without deliberate effort, does it?  People don't work safely unless they are trained to work safely, equipped to work safely and expected to work safely.  So it is with KM.  That's why it takes the time, money and effort to get to the stage where it just becomes part of everyday working.
Again, you don't work for 7 hours a day and then do an hour of 'working safely', do you?
Him: [laughing] No!
Me: And you don't have a safety team that are the ones that do 'the safe working' either.  They're the ones that help, encourage, support and require everyone to work safely.  So it is with a KM team.
Him: Yeah, that's a great example.  Thanks! 

So next time someone says they don't have time for KM, ask whether they have time for safety and, if they fail to see the connection, explain that it's all about making better ways of working, not more work.

For a chat about how to win the argument for more KM, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed – a review

This is the book that I wish I had written.

Indeed, I will even go so far as to say that some of its ideas can be found in my blog – albeit in this book they are set out far more clearly and with greater insight than I normally muster.

This is truly an excellent book, vital reading for anyone with an interest in knowledge management, organisational learning, lessons learned, organisational design, leadership development and much more.

Matthew Syed’s book looks at how we normally deal with failure (i.e. not well) and how this hinders our ability to learn, and therefore to improve.  He provides case-studies from healthcare, criminal justice, aviation, manufacturing and sport, to show how a different approach to ‘failure’ enables better performance.

Some of the key ideas include:

·        Cognitive dissonance – the discomfort we experience through our inability to cope with evidence that challenges our fundamental beliefs or assumptions, which leads to twisting facts to suit our preconceived conclusions;

·        Marginal gains – using many small improvements, both lateral (i.e. in different areas) and sequential (i.e. iterative) to produce a large improvement overall.  He uses the Team Sky approach under Sir David Brailsford, as well as Formula One teams like Mercedes, to make this point;

·        The ‘blame game’ – the toxic tendency to look for ‘fault’ in others when things go wrong – a noxious feature of what passes for political and media discourse in most Western countries; in examining this, Syed references Sidney Dekker’s excellent book, ‘Just Culture’, which I reviewed here;

·        ‘Growth’ (as opposed to ‘fixed’) mind-sets – the mature and confident outlook of those happy to fail and eager to learn in so doing.  Examples here include James Dyson and David Beckham.

Feedback that has not been sought but is offered anyway would include:

·        No mention of the former England rugby coach, Sir Clive Woodward’s approach of improving ‘100 things by 1%’ which is almost identical to that of Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ (and in fact preceded it);

·        Many of the case-studies and statistics from healthcare, criminal justice etc. are from the United States, with fewer data from the UK.  Not a major issue but, as a British reader of this book by a British author, this was notable; perhaps there is greater transparency there – if so, I would not be surprised;

·        No mention of Chris Argyris and his work on ‘organisational defensiveness’.  The book is full of sources and texts, many of which I will now seek out and read for myself.  I was just hoping to find Argyris’s famous ‘undiscussables’ and noted their absence;

·        Public life and the inter-action of the media and politicians were examined but I rather think both sides were let off far too easily, as were we, the readers and voters who permit and perpetuate what Syed calls our “blame-orientated…public culture”. 

It is in this final area (political discourse) that I think there remains much to reveal and discuss and perhaps I can do that in a book before someone else beats me to it!

Overall, this was a fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining read and I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in making things better – which should be all of us.

What's in your left-hand column?

In the last blog post, we looked at some of the ways in which knowledge management (KM) consultants help their clients before raising the importance of culture and how it can be analysed, shaped and changed through various interventions.
Whilst surveys, workshops and interviews can help provide an overview of a team, department or whole organisation, individuals can also get a sense of the tiny part they play in shaping and sustaining the culture, for good or bad.
Honesty lies at the heart of KM and successful KM often depends on the extent to which staff feel able to share their experiences openly with one another.
Good lesson learning relies on teams discussing the successes and failures of a project without fear or favour.
Best practice creation and transfer requires experts identifying and sharing the little ‘nuggets’ of know-how that may lie buried deep within their consciousness.
But these and other KM techniques can be hampered if people feel unable to share their ideas, thoughts and feelings and instead choose to omit, cover up or even lie about their experience.
This can be hard because we are all human and, being human, 4 rules apply:

·        We like to be popular and/or respected;

·        We don’t like being unpopular and/or disrespected;

·        We don’t like being embarrassed;

·        We don’t (unless we are sociopathic) like embarrassing other people.

These 4 rules make it hard for us to talk honestly about difficult subjects unless we trust the people we’re with and are confident we’re safe to do so.
An excellent tool that can show how tricky total honesty can be is the so-called ‘left-hand column’ exercise.
You can try this for yourself:

·        Think of a conversation you had recently that felt difficult in some way – it might have taken place with a colleague, your boss, a friend or relation;

·        Take some blank paper and draw a line vertically down the centre of the page;

·        On the right-hand side, write up the conversation like the dialogue in a script or screenplay; no need to recall each exchange verbatim but capture the essence of between 5 and 10 minutes’ worth.  This may take 15-30 minutes, depending on how much detail you capture;

·        Now, having written up the key exchanges, go back through and, in the left-hand column, write up what you were actually thinking before or whilst you uttered your own words;

·        Carry on throughout the whole conversation and then read back your own thoughts;

·        Now, have a think about the difference between what you said and what you were actually thinking at the time, considering the following questions:

o   Why is there a difference and what prevented you from sharing your true thoughts with this person?

o   What would need to happen for you to feel comfortable to share those thoughts?

o   What might the other person’s ‘left-hand column’ look like?

o   Can you imagine what life at work (or home) would be like if we were able to share our left-hand columns?

o  
How can we make that happen?

This exercise can be done individually or as part of a workshop, provided people are reassured beforehand that they will not be expected to share anything unless they feel comfortable in doing so.  As part of organisational learning cultural change programmes, the left-hand column exercise can help people identify the ‘blockers’ that impede effective learning from experience, as well as some of the ‘undiscussables’ that remain unsaid and will always damage such efforts until they are (a) discussed and (b) addressed.
Our paper on Organisational Learning Culture is available from the Knoco website’s downloads page.
For a conversation about the left-hand column exercise in particular, or organisational learning and knowledge management in general, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

How can KM consultants help? Let me count the ways...

Knowledge management (KM) consultants can help their clients in several ways:

·        Helping them to understand their own KM strengths and weaknesses;

·        Identifying KM and knowledge gaps and areas for improvement, in order of priority;

·        Pinning down which knowledge topics need to be managed first (because you can’t do it all at once);

·        Designing and implementing KM frameworks, to manage the knowledge;

·        Setting up pilot projects in priority areas (because you can’t do it all at once);

·        Identifying lessons from the pilot projects and using them to adjust the KM framework before it is rolled out more widely;

·        Creating KM strategies and policies, giving senior leaders the ability to drive KM programmes forward;

·        Interviewing experts in critical knowledge areas so their know-how doesn’t leave the firm when they do;

·        Creating knowledge assets so that critical knowledge becomes available to everyone;

·        Facilitating lessons capture meetings, to help project teams learn from their experience;

·        Facilitating Peer Assists, to help new project teams learn from experienced ones;

·        Shaping and adjusting the culture from one where ‘I know this’ to one where ‘we do’.

There are plenty more, but those will do for now.
The last point, about changing the culture, is both the hardest thing to do but yet the one thing that will have the greatest effect, if done properly.
There are many tools and activities that help reveal an organisation’s culture and provide evidence that things need to change – surveys, interviews and workshops can all provide an overview of the culture.  In the next blog post, we’ll look at one to help individuals alone.
For a conversation about KM with leading management consultants in the field, please visit the Knoco website or contact me direct.

Let's compete with those outside, sure but not with our team-mates, colleagues etc...

I recently conducted a KM assessment at a multinational chemicals firm, interviewing over 20 people with varying levels of experience, seniority and from across all functional teams.  The aim is to understand what KM capabilities are in place, how well they are doing and what’s missing.  One of the things we look at, when assessing a client’s KM governance, is the culture of the place.

What is it like to work there?  What do people think about KM?  What do senior managers think about it?  How are mistakes and errors viewed?  Is there a ‘blame culture’ or a ‘learning culture’?  Also, is there any internal competition between individuals, teams or departments?  How willing are people to share knowledge and information with one another?  To what extent does the maxim, ‘knowledge is power’ hold sway?

Regular readers of this blog will recall my review of Margaret Heffernan’s excellent book, ‘Wilful Blindness’ in which she examined many examples of organisations where leaders either don’t want to hear the truth or the led don’t want to tell it.  This phenomenon, common to many (most?!) organisations, is caused by a view that passing on bad or embarrassing news leads to unpopularity, demotion, or even getting fired.
In the excellent ‘Ted talk’ linked below, Margaret discusses how successful teams (and wider organisations) are those where there is a desire to help one another with knowledge and information.  She doesn’t mention the term ‘knowledge management’ but the positive examples she offers (i.e. chicken farming, engineering, responses to environmental regulations) would, if assessed using our methodology, get high ‘KM governance’ scores.
Four more quick points:

·        It’s not about technology – Margaret Heffernan recognises that technology is just an enabler and achieves absolutely nothing without the right people, processes and governance in place;

·        Knowing one another – She argues that people have to know one another in order to establish trust as well as knowing who has what skills, knowledge and experience.  I would argue that, whilst true, shortening this time is possible, not least by senior managers who lead by personal example rather than directive;

·        “Companies don’t have ideas, only people do” – Again, this is true but one of the key ‘lightbulb’ moments for senior managers on a KM journey comes when they realise that the ideas generated within their organisations should be at least be ‘possessed’ by the company. However, most knowledge remains locked in the heads of people who refuse to share it because the status quo has made it clear there is no incentive (or supporting culture) for them to do so.  So what?  Organisations should:

o   Reward teams for sharing their knowledge instead of hoarding it;

o   Create knowledge assets for the critical knowledge areas;

o   Build Communities of Practice around knowledge areas where there is strength in depth;

o   Retain experts’ knowledge rather than letting it walk out of the door when they do;

·        “Conflict is frequent because candour is safe” – yes, yes, yes.  Being honest is often hard, especially when discussing things we wish had turned out differently.  But in environments where honesty is rewarded over success, or dishonesty punished before failure, people can challenge old ideas, as well as new ones – in such places, real innovation is possible.

If you’d like to chat about these ideas, tools or more with some knowledge management consultants, please get in touch, either direct or via the Knoco website.

The NHS is starting to learn - keep it up!

This blog has previously looked (here, here, here, here and here!) at the various ways in which the British National Health Service (NHS) has grappled with knowledge management in general and, specifically, has sought to learn from both managerial and clinical mistakes.
Today brings some new developments to the story that began with the ‘Mid Staffs’ scandal a few years ago.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, will today be announcing a series of measures aimed at encouraging both openness and honesty about mistakes, as well as demonstrable learning from them.
Details will no doubt emerge later today but this article on the Huffington Post website summarises the expected announcements, with the key points, and my comments thereon, being:

·        Legal protection for anyone coming forward with information relating to hospital mistakes – this is a welcome move that may yet embed the elusive ‘just culture’ approach to handling error and balancing the need for accountability and learning;

·        Independent review and confirmation of the causes of all deaths in UK hospitals from 2018 – whilst this sounds a good idea, more details are needed as there remains the risk that good governance is simply being outsourced and that another adversarial interface has been created;

·        A so-called ‘Learning from Mistakes League’ that will measure the level of openness across NHS organisations – again, more details are needed but this sounds good as it is making it clear that learning and openness are expected; however, this needs to be managed carefully as inter-organisational learning will not happen if such a league is used as some form of internal competition – nothing kills the sharing of good practice dead more effectively than rewarding people for what they know, rather than what they share.

Effective lesson learning requires a framework within which lessons are identified, analysed, managed and then implemented.  Such a framework requires 4 enablers:

·        People with defined roles and accountabilities;

·        Processes by which lessons are identified, captured, shared and embedded in daily practices;

·        Technology through which lessons are captured, shared and managed to completion;

·        Governance by which managers clarify their expectations for lessons to be learned, reward good lesson learning performance and support such activities through the allocation of time, money and people.

The presence and effectiveness of these enablers is best measured through some form of audit or assessment, like the one we offer at Knoco.
Let’s await further details with interest and perhaps also think about how well our own organisations identify, manage and implement lessons from experience, good and bad alike.
For a conversation about lessons learned, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

Culture - a self-inflicted wound (or how the BBC and Nokia hurt themselves and how KM can help)

Today, the former judge Dame Janet Smith published her report into the culture and practices of the BBC in light of allegations of abuse by the late Jimmy Savile, during his time as a DJ and TV personality there.

The full report is available here.

Some may recall my writing about this sordid episode before (here and here).

Some key quotes that struck me:

·        “…the management culture in the BBC did not encourage openness in these respects and did not recognise the sense of insecurity which inhibited staff from speaking out.”

·        “An important feature of the culture of the BBC during the period with which we are concerned was the reluctance of staff to complain about bad things which happened to them or to raise concerns about bad things which were happening within the organisation.”

·        “…organisations both large and small find it almost impossible to inculcate a culture where people feel able to report a complaint or raise a concern without fear of adverse consequences for themselves.”

·        “…most staff (other than those who had been in the higher echelons) felt that the management culture was too deferential and that some executives were ‘above the law’.”

·        “…the culture in the BBC and the BBC’s management style did not encourage the reporting of complaints or concerns.”

·        “…fear of reprisal, fear of losing your job, fear of being known as a troublemaker and fear of not being promoted [are the] reasons why complaints might not be made.” 

Now, let’s turn to another well-known organisation – the telecommunications company, Nokia. Formerly the dominant force in the mobile phone market, Nokia sold its mobile devices division to Microsoft in 2013, having been unable to respond to the market challenges presented by Apple and Samsung over the previous 6 years.
This article here, makes a compelling case that it wasn’t Apple or Samsung that damaged Nokia but its very own culture.
Again, some key points:

·        “the company’s top managers had a terrifying reputation, which was widely shared by middle managers….some members of Nokia’s board and top management [were] “extremely temperamental” who regularly shouted at people “at the top of their lungs”….it was thus very difficult to tell them things they didn’t want to hear. Threats of firings or demotions were commonplace.”

·        “Fearing the reactions of top managers, middle managers remained silent or provided optimistic, filtered information.”

·        “…the information did not flow upwards. Top management was directly lied to….There were situations where everybody knew things were going wrong, but we were thinking, “Why tell top managers about this? It won’t make things any better.””

·        “Nokia’s ultimate fall can be put down to internal politics. In short, Nokia people weakened Nokia people and thus made the company increasingly vulnerable to competitive forces. When fear permeated all levels, the lower rungs of the organisation turned inward to protect resources, themselves and their units, giving little away, fearing harm to their personal careers. Top managers failed to motivate the middle managers with their heavy-handed approaches and they were in the dark with what was really going on.”

Two organisations with different purposes and structures but with a common problem – a culture that did not encourage openness and honesty, where only ‘good news’ gets passed on up and whereby senior management don’t have the full picture, forcing them to make decisions based on partial information.
Why?  Because of the culture that they themselves have allowed to take hold. 
But these are extreme cases, right?  That sort of thing doesn’t happen everywhere, does it?
Well, how about we delete ‘sexual abuse’ or ‘touch-screen phone’ and insert, ‘project delays’ or ‘cost over-runs’ or ‘performance issues’ or ‘safety concerns’.  Or any of the other ways in which performance can end up not quite how we had intended.  Are these reported upwards in full?  Or do we only talk about the good stuff? 
In short, many organisations are places where leaders are making decisions whilst not knowing what has really happened and, perhaps more importantly, why.
So what can they do about this?
Good knowledge management requires (amongst other things) the creation of processes to help people talk about how things are going and how they can be improved:

·        After Action Reviews get people in teams to talk openly about how things have gone  and learn from each other;

·        Peer Assists, Knowledge Exchanges and Handovers get different teams to explore issues and come up with solutions that can be embedded into everyday ways working;

·        Retrospects help project teams explore how the project (or stage thereof) went, what has been learned and what can be done differently next time;

·        Knowledge Harvesting Interviews get critical knowledge and information out of the heads of a few experts and available for others to use.

These tools and others can reveal much about what things are really like inside an organisation and, for their potential as learning techniques to be realised, senior management have to show leadership and send out the message that messengers will NOT be shot if they tell the truth.
Leaders must lead by example – which means being brutally honest about their own shortcomings, to send out the message that it’s okay to do so.  Moreover, that to do so is expected and is the essential thing that will lead to better performance – lower costs, higher profits, safer workplaces, motivated employees, better quality products.
For a chat about KM tools or how to create a learning culture, please get in touch or via the Knoco website.

Knoco newsletter - on KM Governance - is out today....

Knoco's latest newsletter is out now - available at this link here.

Let me know if you'd like to join our mailing list, or chat about KM governance, dealing with the 'if my colleague feel under a bus today' problem, lessons (both learned and unlearned), culture, rugby....

Seven things I learned in 2015

·        ‘Not invented here’ remains the default response of too many people in too many organisations to any initiative;
·        Leaders are more powerful than they themselves realise – not because of what they say but what they do, and how!
·        Initiatives survive and prosper when we first agree on the effect we wish to achieve, and then work backwards on how to do it;
·        Good knowledge management needs both the ‘push’ from those that have acquired knowledge and the ‘pull’ from those that need it;
·        ‘Lessons must be learned’ continues to be trotted out by the media, politicians, chief executives and football managers alike – almost all of whom do not know what it means or requires;
·        Brevity helps;
·        Time spent understanding the client’s needs and desires is seldom wasted.

What will 2016 bring??

It’s always what we do that matters, not what we say (Part One)

We’re all individuals, keen to be treated as such but, put us in big groups and I’ll wager we’re most of us all the same. 
Why do I say this?

This weekend I was meeting a friend of a friend who had heard what I do for a living but wanted to know more; so I explained briefly what knowledge management is.  My new acquaintance asked me, “Do you enjoy what you do?” and I replied, “I love it.”  He asked me why and so I said, “Because what I do brings me directly into contact with the human condition.”

His frown showed I needed to explain what I meant and he seemed interested enough to hear my take on what.

“Because basically, no matter what we do for a living, where we live or how old we are…we’re pretty much all the same.  We want to be respected, to feel like we make a difference.  We want to be rewarded and we want security, as far as possible.  Most of us prefer to be popular than unpopular and we don’t like hurting other people, or even merely embarrassing them.  We want people to think well of us and most of us avoid conflict whenever possible.”

He nodded along and then said, “So?”  So I continued, “So, when faced with a situation that we fear will put these things at risk, we all do the same thing.  We minimise embarrassment for ourselves and others; we avoid awkwardness and far prefer choppy waters to be smoothed than stirred up even more.  We mostly tell people what we think they want to hear or, at the very least, will pull our punches so as not to make things any worse.  In short, we won’t tell anyone what we really think or how we really feel unless we feel 100% safe and secure and whoever feels like that at work?”

Again, he asked, “So?” “So…if we are ever going to improve anything, if we are ever going to learn from the past and make the future better, we need to know all that there is to know about whatever problem we face.  We need people to be honest, which means we need to let them feel it’s okay to be honest, which means they mustn’t fear demotion or the sack if they tell the truth, or even just embarrassment for offering a different point of view.  That takes time and effort and real, brace leadership from those at the top.  They need to show by what they do and say that they value integrity and honesty and moral courage because otherwise all they’ll get, indeed all that most organisations get is defensiveness, dishonesty and fear.”

I pulled out a pen and piece of paper and drew this picture of 2 stick-men with ‘speech bubbles’ representing their conversation and ‘thought clouds’ above each man’s head.  “Most problems in the world are down to poor communication, with people either unable, or downright refusing, to express what they think and feel. This is because they’re unsure what they think or feel or because they know all too well what they think or feel but are uncomfortable with sharing that with others.  Now, we tell each other the things in the speech bubbles and yet everything we do is shaped by what is in the thought clouds. Getting people to share those inner thoughts and feelings is at the heart of what knowledge management and organisational learning is all about.  It’s incredibly difficult and, quite frankly, a thankless task but, when it works, if only briefly, it’s very rewarding.”

He smiled and bought me a pint.

To be continued….

Collaboration in an idyllic, rural setting - how KM frees us up to do more with less

Regular readers of this blog will recall last year’s post about my local village fair.  Key people were away the night beforehand, meaning that those of us left behind had to struggle to work out how to put up the marquees - which poles went where and then into which holes etc.

The end result was that we spent far too long putting them up when we could have been enjoying a drink in the warm evening sunshine.

So how did we get on this year, I hear you ask?

True to my word, I used photos I had taken of the finished products to make rudimentary ‘Knowledge Assets’.  This meant we could quickly identify whether it was the ‘spines’ ‘ribs’ or ‘legs’ of the marquees which required the short, medium or long poles and so could lay everything out with minimal waste.

Moreover, 2 key people (whose absence last year had left us flailing around with little idea what we were doing) were instead available to advise on the best construction sequence to follow.  They could also point out little tips - like how many ties were needed for each length of pole – which helped reduce waste and ensured we were able to put up all the marquees, despite it appearing that we didn’t have enough equipment.

Their assistance was akin to that of a ‘Peer Assist’: an effective way of bringing new project teams up to speed with the tips, good practice and critical know-how that have been hard-won on previous projects.  Of course, what I now need to do is update the Knowledge Asset (i.e. in this instance, a diagram with guidance notes) with these experts' insights, thereby reducing our reliance on them next year and freeing them up for more valuable tasks.

The end result?

Faster, safer, more efficient marquee construction followed by greater, more prolonged and better-deserved beer consumption. 

By some.  Apparently….

Let us help you do more with less through KM tools such as these and more.  Contact me direct or via the Knoco website.