'Ello, 'ello, what's all this then? Rewarded for knowing, or for sharing also?

Today the UK’s College of Policing published a report following a review into leadership, with recommendations to improve performance across the police service.  Details are available on their website here.
Regular readers of the blog will recall our examination (here) of the Hillsborough Inquiry and the issues it raised about honesty, defensiveness and poor police leadership.  So it is great to see serious efforts to address some of these issues.

In the report, there are some ideas that will appeal to those keen to learn from other’s experiences and manage their knowledge more effectively.
One encouraging point, on how the review was conducted, is revealed thus, “The review recognised the importance of capturing the lessons of leadership development from the widest range of sectors outside policing.”  So far, so good – using lessons is almost always a good idea, and to seek them from ‘outsiders’ introduces new perspectives and guards against ‘group-think’, one of the dangers highlighted in Margaret Heffernan’s excellent book, ‘Wilful Blindness’, which I reviewed here.
Welcoming fresh inputs is further encouraged through the recommendation for “a structure where officers and staff can exit and re-enter the service, bringing with them their new skills and experience.”
The value of skills, experience and knowledge is recognised in further recommendations, such as:

·        “Existing police leaders should influence and drive the required culture of change by demonstrating their own commitment to personal development….;

·        Develop career opportunities which allow recognition and reward for advanced practitioners.

·        Offering staff and officers reward and recognition for advanced skills and knowledge. We recommend that the Home Office should consider what amendments to pay and conditions are required to allow professional expertise to be appropriately recognised and rewarded.”

Again, that’s all well and good but, without explicit encouragement and enforcement of knowledge-sharing and collaboration, there is a danger that these proposals will result merely in rewarding people for what they know, without further recognition for what they share.
Incentivising the accrual of knowledge without any balancing expectation that it be shared produces employees that are reluctant to help others, or will only do so when they can spare the time (i.e. rarely).
This is common across many organisations, where the unintended consequences of rewarding knowledge are disincentives to share, reluctance to be honest and open (especially about shortcomings) and expensive losses when those with the know-how depart, leaving the remainder struggling to fill that gap.
Far better for the recommendations to read thus (my edits in bold):

·        “Existing police leaders should influence and drive the required culture of change by demonstrating their own commitment to personal development, openness and collaboration.”

·        “Develop career opportunities which allow recognition and reward for advanced practitioners that gain new knowledge and actively seek to share it as they do so.”

·        “Offering staff and officers reward and recognition for advanced skills and knowledge. We recommend that the Home Office should consider what amendments to pay and conditions are required to allow the accumulation and sharing of professional expertise to be appropriately recognised and rewarded.”

Such recommendations, just by their wording, would send the signal that hard-won knowledge must be valued, shared and used by all.  Once implemented, they would be an important part in wider efforts to create and nurture a true learning culture.
Further material on leadership, culture, knowledge-transfer and retention is available at the Knoco website.

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.

 

 

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

 

When will they ever learn? How KM can help our politicians....

Here in the UK, the dust is settling after the most surprising general election result for over 20 years.  All pollsters, commentators and the politicians themselves thought we were heading for a hung parliament.  But they were wrong.

The media had even set up studios opposite the Houses of Parliament that were thought necessary to cover the anticipated negotiations between parties that had not managed to win an overall majority.  The awnings and scaffolding are being taken down this weekend.

David Cameron, the Conservative Party has won a majority whilst the Scottish National Party (SNP) has taken all but 3 parliamentary seats in Scotland.  The Labour Party lost 10% of its Members of Parliament (MP), including several senior figures that had thought they would be Cabinet members by now.  The Liberal Democrats lost 47 MPs, retaining a paltry 8.  The UK Independence Party (UKIP), punished by the first-past-the-post electoral system, polled nearly 4 million votes yet now has only one MP – a perhaps unfair quirk of FPTP requiring concentration of votes more than numbers alone. (For example, the SNP polled a third of UKIP’s number of votes yet added 50 MPs to its numbers because of this clustering).

The obvious fall-out so far?

·        Ed Miliband has resigned as leader of The Labour Party;

·        Nick Clegg has resigned as leader of The Liberal Democrats;

·        Nigel Farage has resigned as leader of UKIP;

·        An independent inquiry will examine how the pre-election opinion polls got it so wrong.

Much of media discussion since the election has focused on these negative consequences (for those concerned, naturally) and speculation over what lessons can be learned.  Many presume that Labour and the Liberal Democrats in particular now have to examine what went wrong and try to put it right in time for the next election, scheduled for 2020.

This analysis is not wrong but it is unhelpful for those of us that use knowledge management (KM) in general and ‘lessons learned’ in particular to improve performance.  (A comprehensive look at lessons and what should be done with them to drive performance starts here.)

Why unhelpful?  Because it reinforces the idea that lessons are negative and that we only learn when we make mistakes.  We can and should learn when things go according to plan also.  Where outcomes exceed expectations there is surely an even greater need to learn why, to ensure that such success is repeated and not wasted?

It is not just the ‘losers’ that should try to identify lessons but the ‘winners’ as well.

So, whilst David Cameron is selecting his new Government, and Nicola Sturgeon (i.e. the leader of the SNP) plans how to use the enhanced influence her Westminster MPs will bring her, they should also set in train the processes by which we learn from recent events.

Team-based After Action Reviews should be held, as well as larger Retrospects.  Key individuals should be interviewed and the knowledge of highest value (i.e. how to campaign; how to record voting intentions; how to target key voters; how to win!), identified, captured, shared and any good practice replicated and embedded within party procedures.  Knowledge Assets and Learning Histories should be created or updated.  Party workers approaching retirement or those leaving for pastures new should contribute also.  There is much that can be done, although this may not seem necessary to some.  Indeed, whilst the ‘losers’ plainly see the need for change, those happy with the results might not. 

Moreover, there is the risk that obvious successes might obscure mistakes that have been made but which seem inconsequential in the warm glow of victory.  Failing to identify and address these now might mean victory is not repeated.

Real adaptive learning is hard enough in commercial organisations, with those implementing KM initiatives often needing to be ‘politically savvy’ and well-attuned to the dominant culture.  In the world of actual politics, red in tooth and claw, it might appear all but impossible.

Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen but it does mean expert advice would be useful.

If any recently depressed or elated politician wants such advice, please contact Knoco for help!

The 10 principles behind successful KM strategy implementation

I’ve just finished reading ‘Designing a Successful KM Strategy’ by Stephanie Barnes and Nick Milton.

I’ll review it in due course but for now, thought the 10 principles listed in Chapter 4 were worth listing here:

1.      KM implementation needs to be organisation-led; tied to organisation strategy and to specific organisation issues.
2.      KM needs to be delivered where the critical knowledge lies, and where the high value decisions are made.
3.      KM implementation needs to be treated as a behaviour change programme.
4.      The endgame will be to introduce a complete management framework for KM.
5.      The framework will need to be embedded into the organisation structures.
6.      The framework will need to include governance if it is to be sustainable.
7.      The framework is to be structured, rather than emergent.
8.      KM implementation should be a staged process, with regular decision points.
9.      KM implementation should contain a piloting stage.
10.   KM implementation should be run by an implementation team, reporting to a cross-organisational steering group.

I’ll look at these in more detail in my next post.

To discuss how to design and implement a KM strategy, please get in touch or visit the Knoco website.

Designing a Successful KM Strategy - Stephanie Barnes and Nick Milton

I just got my hands on a copy of this book by my colleagues, Stephanie Barnes and Nick Milton.

I'm whizzing through it (nearly done!) and hope to have a review up on this blog within the week.

The balance between researching an academic thesis and writing a 'Dummies' Guide' is a difficult one to strike. However, this book gets it just right in my view. I am impressed by how accessible it is, with valuable insights gained from many years of work at the KM coalface.

KM sometimes gets a bad name, not entirely unfairly. However, I particularly like the way this book explains why some KM interventions fail to generate their expected value and sets out how these shortcomings can be addressed.

The over-riding message I take away from this is that this isn't a game, and deserves time, effort and, crucially, judgement on where and how KM can help a business in its wider, commercial strategy.

More to follow when I'm done!

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.