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.

Do you want to learn for the future? Or blame someone? You can't do both

This article, published yesterday on the Guardian website, argues that the Chilcot Inquiry (i.e. examining UK involvement in the run-up to the 2003 Gulf War and blogged about by me on its day of publication here) was set up to 'focus on lessons and avoid blame'.
It goes further, reporting that this was all about 'not holding people accountable'.

So far, so very typical of the media.

To report in this way is to make a category error because you can either investigate in order to hold people accountable and find out who is to blame, or you can seek to identify lessons for the future.  You can't do both - at least, not as part of the same process you can't.

In his excellent book, 'Black Box Thinking', which I reviewed here, Matthew Syed writes about the 'blame game' and the way it prevents people, teams and organisations from learning about past performance, thereby depriving them of valuable learning opportunities for the future.

He writes,

"...if professionals think they are going to be blamed for honest mistakes, why would they be open about them?  If they do not trust their managers to take the trouble to see what really happened, why would they report what is going wrong, and how can the system adapt?" (p. 240, Black Box Thinking)

Readers may recall my review of the great Sidney Dekker's book, 'Just Culture', in which he examines the dilemma of balancing openness (and learning) with accountability (and blame).
Dekker relates a powerful story of a nurse who volunteers the information that she made a mistake which contributed towards the death of child, with the result that she loses her job and is prevented from nursing again. 

In such an environment, and with such consequences, how likely is it that other healthcare professionals will volunteer insight into their own mistakes?  Or is it more likely that they will seek to cover them up?

Back to the media, and the campaign groups, and the families of the deceased - such people need to ask themselves, what outcomes do they seek?  Do they want to learn what happened and reduce the likelihood of recurrence?  OR, do they want to hold people to account and blame them for their decisions and actions? 

They can't have both - not from the same process, at any rate.

If you run lessons capture meetings, use a structured process to examine past events and identify lessons for the future, including actions that, if implemented, will help to improve performance.

You need to ask:

• What did we expect to happen?
• What actually happened?
• Is there a difference between these and if so, why?
• What have we learned?
• What will do differently next time?
• What actions do we need to take to embed this learning?
• What was the impact of this issue?

Please don't ask 'Who?'  Even when examining 'what happened' and 'why', I am always very careful to ensure that no-one uses words like 'fault' or 'blame', and that we talk about 'actions taken' rather than 'he or she doing this or that'.

It may sound as though we're avoiding the hard questions and seeking an easy life, and it is certainly the case that organisations that have such processes hardwired into their projects and programmes are more comfortable with providing answers to questions that might be uncomfortable for others that are less familiar with this approach. 

However, the aim of such meetings in particular, and of knowledge management (KM) in general, must be to improve performance through the sharing and re-use of knowledge.  Other processes exist to 'hold people to account' and they must be kept separate from KM in order to encourage people to talk freely, without fear of consequences.

Can and should politicians and civil servants and generals be 'held to account' and 'blamed' for their decisions?  Where appropriate, absolutely. 

But an inquiry set up to identify lessons for the future is not the place for such motives and it is wilfully naïve of the media to expect both aims to be achieved through the same process.

How to plan a lessons learned meeting

Earlier this week, I discussed with a client how we can introduce Retrospects or lessons capture meetings to their organisation, as part of the wider implementation of a Knowledge Management (KM) framework.

If we go ahead, I'll be coaching him on the planning, facilitation and write-up of such events and will be using some slides I prepared some time ago.

You can view and download them from Slideshare, using this link here.

Let me know if you'd like to hear more, or have any questions about the material, either direct or via the Knoco website.

8 signs that you're not managing your knowledge

Ever said or heard these phrases at work? 

1. “Why do we keep having to re-learn this?”

2. “How do I know where to find this knowledge?”

3. “Someone must have done this before - but who?”

4. “When that guy left, he took all that knowledge with him.”

5. “It was a complete fluke that I met Kathy – she had just the answer I was looking for!”

6. “I’m sure I heard someone mention that to me the other day, now who was it?”

7. “That went very well – how can we keep doing it like that?”

8. “We made this mistake in our other office as well.”

If so, they're usually a sign that knowledge isn't being managed effectively, if at all.

This means they're also a sign of wasted time, money and effort.

Perhaps they're also a sign of unnecessary risk to our colleagues or vital equipment. 

Can you think of any more?

For a chat about knowledge management (KM), please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

Leading the way - latest Knoco newsletter - KM and leadership

The latest Knoco newsletter on the relationship between Knowledge Management (KM) and leadership is now out!

Follow this link for:

• How does leadership affect KM?
• What do good and bad KM leadership look like?
• How to manage leaders in lessons capture meetings
• How to win leaders' support
• The power of the 'CEO video'
• KM tools to deliver good leadership
• News from around the Knoco family

For a conversation about KM leadership, please get in touch direct or visit 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.

The Iraq Inquiry - what lessons?

Today’s publication of ‘The Chilcot Report’ will provide stacks of material for those of us interested in learning from the past in order to improve future performance.  A few points:

·        Firstly, I declare an interest, having deployed on Operation TELIC in February 2003 on what proved to be one of the most fascinating (if challenging) deployments of my military career. I was a Captain in an Army liaison team, embedded within the Coalition Air HQ in Saudi Arabia.  This morning I dug out the notebook I used to scribble ‘nuggets’ that I then intended to use in a novel (written, yet to be published!). Some that stand out for me below (some of which show the paucity of planning and equipment, as well as some context):

o   Sunday 16 February – Arrival in Saudi Arabia on a reinforcement C-17 aircraft that had been refused entry 4 times by the Saudi authorities, reluctant to be seen to be supporting the imminent war effort; so the RAF changed the call-sign of the aircraft to one of a routine roulement flight and got us in ‘under the wire’;

o   Monday 17 February – Work begins; all UK personnel reminded to get their respirators tested to ensure they are serviceable;

o   Thursday 20 February – Respirator testing is stopped due to the high failure rate; decision apparently made that it would be better to claim ignorance of the state of the respirator filters than have evidence that they were failing and be unable to replace them (not enough spares, apparently);

o   Thursday 6 March – 2 kinds of difficult people out here: those that simply do not understand that war entails discomfort, disturbance and friction and those that use such friction as an excuse to cover up their own failings;

o   Friday 14 March – Reports of 75 Iraqis crossing into Kuwait and trying to surrender to 1 PARA soldiers conducting training; Paras tell them to go back to Iraq;

o   Wednesday 26 March – Reports France has given Iraqi Intelligence Service access to satellite, allowing them to eavesdrop on mobile phone communications;

o   Saturday 30 March – US Army Families Network adverts gut-wrenchingly corny: “helping to spread freedom and democracy around the world”;

o   Sunday 31 March - 1 x Apache downed and every other aircraft in regiment hit by small arms fire during air assault on Medina Division south of Baghdad; reports regiment will not fly again;

o   Friday 4 April – 1 (UK) Div area, soft hats being worn; hearts and minds etc – example of how it’s done? Or is Northern Ireland experience irrelevant here?

o   Sunday 6 April – Difference of opinion between US and UK targeteers re infrastructure and/or Iraqi airforce; US wishes to destroy all aircraft, bunkers etc. UK ask why bother? Not used yet; use now even less likely; faint suspicion around that US motivation might be a wish to sell Iraq new aircraft possibly?

o   Thursday 10 April – UK forces find Iraqi forces arms cache, including 19 French MILAN anti-tank missiles with production date of 1999 (i.e. after the UN weapons inspectors were booted out by Iraq in 1998).  Puts the French opposition to the war into some sort of context, I suggest.

o   Friday 11 April – Time-sensitive targeting of ‘Chemical Ali’ attempt; bombs hit late and miss and a dud; National Component Command furious; SFHQ livid; systemic problem – 12 windows have to go green before bombs drop;

o   Monday 14 April – We have been asked for our lessons; some criticism of lessons process; too quick; not leading to anything.

·        Most of the lessons in the report have been ‘identified’ NOT ‘learned’ – as most people with a passing interest in knowledge management (KM) will know, a lesson is not learned until you have changed something (or made a deliberate, auditable decision not to do so).  Many of Chilcot’s ‘lessons’ are more properly described as ‘observations’ or ‘insights’ and, if they are to become lessons, need to be re-crafted with explicit recommendations added; hopefully this necessary work will now take place;

·        Many of the criticisms of the British Army planning and conduct of operations in Iraq can be found to have their origins in its culture, that of the ‘can-do attitude’ – which leads to senior commanders taking on more work than can be realistically done with the resources offered.  Indeed, Chilcot says:

“Ground truth is vital. Over-optimistic assessments lead to bad decisions. Senior decision-makers – Ministers, Chiefs of Staff, senior officials – must have a flow of accurate and frank reporting. A “can do” attitude is laudably ingrained in the UK Armed Forces – a determination to get on with the job, however difficult the circumstances – but this can prevent ground truth from reaching senior ears. At times, in Iraq, the bearers of bad tidings were not heard. On several occasions, decision-makers visiting Iraq (including the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chief of the General Staff) found the situation on the ground to be much worse than had been reported to them. Effective audit mechanisms need to be used to counter optimism bias, whether through changes in the culture of reporting, use of multiple channels of information – internal and external – or use of visits.”[1]

This issue is discussed at some length in the article linked from this blog post here, which looks at how the British Army tries to learn lessons from operations and training and how its efforts are hampered by its culture.  It should be obvious that it is not only the military where these problems are found and that many other organisations also have issues with discussing accidents, mistakes and errors openly.

Having read more of the report, I shall write again on this in due course.

For a conversation about knowledge management and learning cultures in general, or identifying and learning lessons in particular, please contact me direct or via the Knoco website.

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[1] http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246581/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_section-98.pdf  Volume 8, Section 9.8 ‘Conclusions: The Post-Conflict Period’, Paragraph 197, Page 504.

KM UK 2016 - Come and learn about learning...

I'll be speaking at the forthcoming KM UK Conference on 16th June.

My old boss, Colonel Ian Tinsley (Retd) and I will be talking about how the British Army learned from both the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and how it managed the knowledge it gained.

Frequent readers of this blog will have read the article linked at this post in which I examine the ways in which the Army increased its learning capacity from 2009.

Building upon some of the material in that article, we'll cover:

• What does 'good military KM' look like?
• What does it take for a lesson to be actually learned?
• Why does the Army do KM?  What should anyone?
• Top tips and things to watch for when managing lessons.

The agenda for the conference is listed here.

Come along and let's learn about learning.

If you'd like to chat about knowledge management, or 'lessons learned', please get in touch 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.

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??

Rain, drain, bucket and mud, KM clear it up

I bent forward into the drain, my shovel digging into the thick, smelly mud which squelched as I lifted it clear into the bucket.  The bucket, now almost full, stood as testament to the power of knowledge management.  With my back aching, the weak autumn sun made my brow’s sheen of sweat gleam; my breath clouded forth in the cold morning air and I steadied myself for another lunge into the now nearly empty drain.  I smiled grimly to myself, thinking, “Even this is not a lesson learned.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, I had attended a family service at my village church. Before the service began, I had noticed the unsightly mud that storms in the week had washed down the hill – it had blocked the grills sitting on top of each drain and large puddles had spread out across the car park, pavement and the footpath that leads into the church.  Members of the congregation – many of them visiting for a baptism and forming negative first impressions – gingerly tiptoed their way past the worst of the mess but few could avoid entering church without their smart footwear being spattered with small flecks of mud.

I sit on the committee that oversees the running of the church, with specific responsibility for its grounds – this usually involves asking volunteers to help with weeding, mowing the lawns, lopping or pruning trees, sweeping leaves etc.  I had made a point of arriving at church 30 minutes early, so as to clear any likely mess but, on arrival, it was clear that I could only do so much in the time available and that I would have to come back another time, better prepared [1].  A lesson learned, some might have said…and they would have been wrong.

So the following morning, I headed off to church again, armed with a broom, a hose, a rake, a bucket and a shovel.  First thing I noticed was that the tap in the churchyard was not threaded and so I couldn’t attach my hose to it.  I had to pause, head off to a hardware store and buy the necessary hose attachment [2].  Some 2 hours later, after lots of hosing, sweeping and shovelling, the main walkway into the churchyard was clean and tidy and the 2 main drains were empty [3], their muddy, smelly contents emptied into a bucket and thrown on the churchyard compost heap.

I then noticed that each of the 2 drains had the entrance of an underground pipe running between them.  I hosed it down from each end and noticed that whilst the water clearly ran from one into the other, it appeared to do so in the wrong direction.  To be clear, the drain closest to the Church (Drain A) had a pipe running from it, no doubt into a sewer deep underground; but the other drain (Drain B), whilst obviously meant to overflow into Drain A, could not do so because of the angle of the pipe running between them.

It therefore appears that, after heavy rainfall, instead of excess water and mud flowing out into the sewers below, such flotsam flows back into Drain B, from which it cannot escape.  Therefore, I will have to raise this with the local water company for them to inspect the drains [4] and, if necessary, correct the flow of water between them [5].

Now, I hear you ask, what on earth does any of this have to do with lessons learned, or knowledge management?  This insight into the travails of a rural parish church is all very well but how is it relevant to me in my law firm, battalion, hospital, laboratory, police station, shop, airport, oil rig, aircraft carrier or trading desk?

As some readers may recall, lessons first need to be identified, then the recommended actions have to be implemented before any learning can be said to have taken place.  (Regular readers of this blog will recall the 10 stages in the life of a lesson.) We’ll now show how my actions relate to lesson learning and readers may spot where their own lesson learning processes (if they have them) fall short.

So, back to the drains outside my church.  I identified 5 actions that needed to be implemented in order for any lesson to be ‘learned’ from this ecclesiastical flooding saga: these are highlighted in bold.  Here they are again, re-written as thought part of a lesson:

1. Cleaning up the drains area outside the church will take time and you will need the correct equipment.  Set aside at least 2 hours and bring the following: waterproof gloves; wellington boots; a large bucket; a wooden broom; a shovel; a rake; a hose (plus extensions, if necessary);
2. Check the tap to which you will be attaching the hose and buy an attachment to fit it before you begin work;
3. Use the rake and shovel to remove large clods of mud and leaves, then spray the cleared area with water, using the broom to clear away the surface water and remaining mud either into the bucket or into the drain if it is clear.  If the drains are full, remove and set aside the metal cover, then dig out the blocking mud and leaves into the bucket, before emptying it onto a compost heap or similar area away from the drains;
4. If the drains remain blocked, contact the local water company and request them to inspect them;
5. Pipes connecting drains must be angled correctly to ensure water flows between them and away into a sewer; drainage engineers should consult the local map of drains and sewers before installing a new connecting pipe.

You will note how the first 3 actions fall upon me; in an expanded form they could become part of a guidance document or knowledge asset, thereby embedding the knowledge gained from this experience.  Such a document should then be included along with any others relating to my role as overseer of the church grounds, so as to pass on this knowledge to a successor if/when I relinquish my role.

The final 2 actions are where this lesson needs to be ‘transferred’ or ‘elevated’ to an authority better equipped to deal with them.  Only when the connecting pipe has been angled correctly can this lesson be said to have been ‘learned’.

I hope I have shown that there is quite a bit to do when seeking to learn in a deliberate way and some might question the effort and time required. Then again, there are those that put up with living under a leaking roof, or sitting on a delayed train, or working on an unsafe oil rig, or indeed any of the many frustrations and frictions that persist from not managing knowledge properly.

For a conversation about knowledge management in general or learning lessons in particular, please get in touch or visit the Knoco website.

KM down on the farm - or, have tent and KM, will camp!

A few weeks ago I went camping in Dorset with my family and that of my brother. He and his wife have been camping a few times and have a lot of the necessary gear.  My wife and I have not, so we borrowed loads of bits and pieces from a friend – I wasn’t going to spend a small fortune on the latest tent technology only to be informed that we would not be camping again.

As things turned out, the week was a great success, despite the pouring rain for much of it.  Furthermore, the whole experience proved a useful vehicle for demonstrating the value of knowledge management.  A few examples:

Knowledge is most useful when recent and relevant – I served for over 10 years as an officer in the British Army and have spent more than my fair share of nights outdoors, under canvas, under trees and under nothing else but the stars.  Now, some of my experience was, and will always be, useful for a domestic camping trip but I will be the first to admit that my brother’s more recent and directly relevant experience was far more useful.  This should be borne in mind when planning a Peer Assist, for example.  Having him on hand when it came to erecting and collapsing our tent proved invaluable and, whilst both operations were time-consuming, they’d have taken far longer had I not had his knowledge on hand or, worse still, had I wanted to ‘do it all myself’;

• Lessons are not learned until you change something – throughout the week, we all noticed things that either did not go as well as we had hoped (e.g. an inflatable mattress with even the slightest hole in it will leave you lying on the cold ground come morning) or far surpassed our expectations (e.g. portable ‘fire pits’ (i.e. the inner metal rim of a lorry wheel) are excellent and well worth the small charge to hire them).  When this happened, someone would invariably sing out, “Ha, a lesson learned!” only for me to boringly respond, “No, a lesson identified. It’ll only be learned if we change things next time round.”
• Clothing and equipment lists can be valuable knowledge assets – this first time camping as a family was a bit of a leap in the dark as we weren’t 100% sure what we needed and ended up with far more stuff than necessary.  I need to create a list based on: what we used and was invaluable; what we had with us but never used and what we lacked but would really like to have with us next time around.  The problem is, I’ve not yet created this list and already my memory is fading, demonstrating my next point, namely:
• Wait too long to capture knowledge and its gone – when we got back from our trip: tired, in need of a decent shower and still just about on speaking terms with one another, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and write up the lessons of our trip.  But I should have done it there and then because with every passing day my recollections become less reliable and I run the risk of filling in the gaps with rubbish, as sometimes happens when project lessons capture sessions are held far too long after the project is finished.  Perhaps I’m being harsh, most projects don’t capture lessons at all so some late and inaccurate ones might be better than nothing.

So there we are: camping holidays – not for everyone but as a way of demonstrating how KM helps us save time, stay dry and have fun, they’re great.

Now, I wonder if I can book a beach holiday in the Caribbean on the company, just to compare and contrast….

For a conversation about KM, Peer Assists, lessons learned (or otherwise) and Knowledge Assets, do contact me direct or visit the Knoco website.

Hmm, now that IS interesting. Let’s keep that to ourselves.

I have written elsewhere about my admiration for the relative openness of the US military in its approach to lessons learned from operations and training.[1]  Where the British instinct has always been to keep things under wraps, the American bias is traditionally towards greater transparency.

Sadly, this article in the Marine Corps Times, reveals that things are changing.  Whereas I would love to report that the British Army has decided to publish more, unfortunately the US Marine Corps Centre for Lessons Learned (MCCLL) is going the other way.

Whilst the detailed contents of its lessons have always been classified, MCCLL used to publish an unclassified summary every month, which enabled some degree of civilian scrutiny, education, accountability and debate.  Academics, journalists, defence contractors or knowledge management (KM) consultants could keep up to debate on how the US Marine Corps was, or was not learning lessons.

Knowing how much to share and how much to keep hidden is a judgement call facing all organisations.  Making everything secret is self-defeating and prevents one’s own employees from benefiting from learning from other’s experiences.  However, sharing everything ‘warts and all’ is not without its adverse consequences either, not least for an organisation’s short-term reputation.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I err on the side of greater openness, which means more honesty, more self-criticism, more transparency and a willingness to entertain ideas and innovations from ‘outside the box’.  Whilst some lessons should be considered sensitive, and access to them limited, these should be the exception, not the norm.

Unfortunately, MCCLL decided that re-writing lessons to ‘de-classified’ status took too long.  Let’s hope that they change their mind soon.

To chat about lessons learned - military, commercial or indeed from anywhere - contact me direct or please visit the Knoco website.

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[1] “Furthermore, the traditional British predilection for over-classifying official documentation impedes both the internal sharing of knowledge hard-won on operations and its critical analysis by outsiders who, however unwelcome, may nevertheless provide valuable insights.  To make the point, you can buy the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual from Amazon whereas tracking down its British equivalent requires agility, cunning and tenacity.  It’s not the enemy’s efforts that are most frustrated by such constraints.” ‘Learning Lessons – the British Army’s Experience’, Rupert Lescott, Page 11, downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/barmychap/20140409-learning-lessonsthebritisharmyexperience on 3 June 2015

 

Are we building a farm or a zoo?

At the weekend my daughters (4 and 3) and I played with our trunk of Lego for an hour or so.

I happily followed their instructions – sometimes exacting, sometimes a little vague – and inwardly laughed when one said to the other, “Oh, are we building a zoo?  I thought we were building a farm.”

In fairness, the horse and chickens had appeared perfectly at home with the giraffe and elephant but, for my eldest, it just looked wrong and needed fixing.  Happily, on this occasion at least, the girls were able to settle their differences relatively peacefully. 

It’s not always like that, funnily enough.

This conversation reminded me of the numerous post-project lesson capture meetings I have run for clients and, in particular, the frequency with which ‘clarity of scope’ comes up as being at the heart of numerous over-runs and over-spends.

Frequent visitors to this blog will recall an earlier examination of differing interpretations of scope by clients and contractors here.

All too often, a client will presume that its contractor’s understanding of what it wants is the same as its own.  Just as all too often a contractor will rush to produce a proposal without ensuring that its assumptions are valid.  In both cases, time is considered a luxury and all involved, excited and enthused, just want to get on with ‘doing something’ and getting paid for it.

‘More haste, less speed’ is a well-worn phrase for a reason.  One project I worked on had an initial budget of $1bn.  The final spend was over $1.7bn.  Perhaps a bit more time discussing up-front might be an idea?

Consulting lessons from past projects at the bidding and planning stages can help the arrogant, ignorant and naïve from promising too much for too little.  Bringing people in from past projects as internal consultants, perhaps through Peer Assists, is also a good idea.

Hopefully, my daughters will come to learn that sitting down together and discussing what they want to do is time well spent.  Hopefully, companies with big projects to run will do so as well.

Happy New Year! 10 KM Resolutions

1.   Before starting a new piece of work, I will try to find out who has done it before.
2.   When things go off-track, I will encourage people to speak freely so we can do things better next time round.
3.   When finishing a piece of work, I will try to find who can benefit from what I’ve learned.
4.   As a leader, I will try to listen more.

5.   As a junior, I will try to be heard more.

6.   Before moving on, changing jobs or retiring, I will make time to hand over to my successor.

7.   I will write down a list of all those jobs that only I can do and start writing up procedures.

8.   As a leader, I need to know how things really are, so will let people be honest with me.

9.   As a junior, I need to tell it how it is, so will be honest with those above me.

10. I will never forget that I can always learn, from everything I do and everyone I meet.

For a conversation about how Knowledge Management (KM) can help you improve performance and protect your key assets, please get in touch direct or via the Knoco website.