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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75850401849827336542016-07-26T20:34:03.695+01:00Knoco storiesFrom the knowledge management front-lineNick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-82924786911310403542016-07-26T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-26T08:30:16.569+01:00Knowledge management for chefs, or for recipe-followers?

People often use the analogy of chefs and recipe users within Knowledge Management, frequently arguing that chefs are liberated by knowledge, and recipe-followers are straight-jacketed by "best practice". True to form, I challenge this view.

Being a chef, in KM terms, is often seen as "good" - creative, relying on tacit knowledge, at teh cutting edge of their craft.

Being a recipe-follower, or a user of best practice, is seen as "bad", and you will find many KM sites that use the term "best practice" as a boo-word.

However in the world of business there are places in Knowledge Management for "chefs", and places for "recipe followers", and the KM practitioner needs to know which approach to use when.

Firstly, for mature knowledge, especially with a high turnover of new staff, you primarily need people to follow recipes. You don't need to be a chef to make a white sauce, or to boil an egg. However even for this basic stuff, the complete beginner may need a beginners guide to follow (see Delia Smith's recipe "How to boil an egg"). The newest people joining your company will need a recipe book for mature knowledge, just to get them started on the basic things.

Where knowledge is mature, following a recipe can be a far more effective strategy than calling in a chef.

For some companies, the primary KM problem is educating the new people, because either of massive growth or of massive churn. The combination of rapid onboarding, rapid networking, and very good explicit guidance, needs to be part of the KM strategy (for example in the Chinese car industry, where the average age of the engineers is 23, or in telecom businesses where the annual churn rate may approach 40%). So to bring these new people up to speed with mature knowledge, they need a recipe book to follow, as well as access to chefs when things go "off-recipe".

Secondly, creativity may be crucial, but so is productisation. A chef may have a brilliant idea, but the most successful industries are not always those with the best ideas, but the ones that bring those ideas rapidly to market. Once the chef has the new recipe, the recipe followers can rapidly spread it through the market and capture the market share.

Also there can be good business in following a recipe - McDonalds, Taco Bell, Pizza hut, to name but a few, make a global business out of it. For purely financial reasons, a share in McDonalds is probably a better bet than a share in Gordon Ramsay inc (though these might be outweighed by other reasons). A commercial business needs creative poeple to come up with the new ideas and new products, and then needs an army of people following them, to get these ideas to market.

Thirdly, for the most critical knowledge, even a chef follows a recipe. Think of an experienced airline pilot taking off from heathrow. He or she goes through the pre-flight checklist step by step, "following the recipe". If I were on a plane, and the pilot came on the intercom and said "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a highly knowledgeable pilot, I have decided not to bother with the preflight checklists today" then I would expect there to be an instant mad rush for the exits.

Or a surgeon, with the pre-operational checklists described in Atul Gwande's book, which I covered in this blog post on checklists. As I say in the post, most jobs nowadays are incredibly complex. The human brain can only remember so much at one time, and suffers easily from overload. Most mistakes are made, not because we don't know what to do, but because we forget (or skip) a crucial step, especially in emergency situations. We need to be reminded of what we know, and what we need to remember. Checklists (recipes) force us to stop and review, remind us of what needs to be done, take us through the critical steps, ensure we remember the right things, ensure we ask the right questions, and ensure we have the right conversations. And updates in checklists as a result of new knowledge, can remind us to do new things.

Fourthly, too many chefs spoil the broth. Every kitchen needs a chef, then they need some sous-chefs, then they need a whole stack of people to follow recipes and follow orders. SImilarly every organisation will contain a whole spectrum of knowledge workers, and on each stage of their knowledge journey, they need their knowledge delviered or developed in a differrent way. We all start off as recipe followers, some of us end up as chefs, but we are all knowledge workers and Knowledge Management needs to address all our needs.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-40063194160004448082016-07-25T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-25T08:30:33.042+01:00Making best use of the human brain in Knowledge Management

I have long argued that the human brain is a poor long term store for Knowledge. Here are the three cases where it's the best store there is.

Image from wikimedia commons

The poor human brain gets a bit of a bad press at times. The cognitive biases that plague us all are becoming well known and popularised in many books, and we recognise the cognitive illusions that get in the way of effective use of knowledge, such as

the illusion of memory

the illusion of knowledge, and

the illusion of confidence.

With such illusions as these, can we trust the memories in our heads?

However a recent post on the Farham Street blog, based on this book by Daniel Schacter makes the point that the human brain works marvellously well in getting us through life, by selecting automatically what we remember and what we don't.

It makes the point that

"Our brain has limitations, and with those limitations come trade-offs. One of the trade-offs our brain makes is to prioritize which information [knowledge] to hold on to, and which to let go of. It must do this — as stated above, we'd be overloaded with information without this ability. The brain has evolved to prioritize information which is:

Used frequently

Used recently

Likely to be needed"

The converse of this is that knowledge which is used infrequently, was used some time ago, and which we did not realise was likely to be needed, gets forgotten.

This is exactly the knowledge which needs to be documented, lest we forget.

The current knowledge is best left in human brains, connected into Communities of Practice, where the knowledge can be shared, improved, discussed and kept fresh. The occasional knowledge should not be left in the human memory without augmenting this somehow through collecting, recording and structuring it in Knowledge Assets, so that it is given a shelf-life which the human brain cannot give.

Our responsibility as knowledge managers is to work out which knowledge to deal with through connection, and which through collection.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-86895252539931196342016-07-24T13:32:00.002+01:002016-07-24T13:32:26.133+01:00Knowledge transfer requires interactions between people (quote)

Picture from www.public-domain-image.com

"Successful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor documents but rather interactions between people."

Tom Davenport
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-33488273324058382872016-07-23T14:32:00.000+01:002016-07-23T14:32:00.220+01:00

Those companies that don't adapt to understanding knowledge as a force of production more important than land, labour or capital, will slowly die, and will never know what killed them".

Larry Prusak, KM guru
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-52252666264741217442016-07-22T08:38:00.000+01:002016-07-22T08:38:02.281+01:003 ways to make tacit knowledge as findable as Pokemon

Lots of work is done, as part of Knowledge Management programs, to increase the findability of documents. But how do you make tacit knowledge findable, given that it is as invisible to the naked eye as Pokemon?

Source publicdomainpictures.net

The ratio of tacit to explicit knowledge in an organisation is an unknown factor. People often quote "80% of the knowledge is tacit" - but nobody knows for cure. It's a large proportion for sure, and in some organisations very new to Knowledge Management it can be way more than 80%. So how do we find that tacit knowledge when we need it? You can't see it, you don't know where it is; you just know you need it.

We work on finding documented knowledge through several approaches:

Making sure it is owned

Making sure it is collected and stored in findable places (the knowledge supermarket - also see my post on "a haystack is no place to store a needle")

Making sure it is named properly

Making sure it is tagged and categorised.

But how do we ensure tacit knowledge, still in people's heads, is findable? The problem with tacit knowledge is that it is invisible. Like Pokemon, we can't see it, unless we have the tools to look for it.

Here are three tools we can use.

Firstly we can link the people to the documented knowledge. By keeping the names with the knowledge we allow the reader of the document to find the originator, and ask for more detail - to ask for the tacit knowledge which never got into the document.

Secondly we network the people into communities of practice. If you ask a question of a community of practice, it will reach the person with the answer and with the relevant tacit knowledge, even if you do not know that person.

Thirdly we introduce a knowledge-finder system. By this I do not mean a personal directory system such as Facebook, LinkedIn or SharePoint's MySite. These sort of systems are very good for finding the personal details of someone who's name you already know, but are poor for finding people with specific knowledge or skills. Even LinkedIn struggles with this, with no way to search for a combination of endorsed skills, even if you trusted the endorsement system.

No, the best analogue for a people-finder is a dating site. Dating sites are designed to make people findable, based on certain personal characteristics ("Tall, dark haired, handsome, single etc"). People-finders in organisations need to make knowledge-holders equally findable ("expert in knowledge management, experienced in KM strategy and framework development") which means using metada lists of knowledge categories. Selecting knowledge-types from preset lists is constraining in terms of data entry, but it massively enhances findability, and findability is what we are looking for here - finding the tacit knowledge that is otherwise as invisible as Pokemon.

This sort of tacit-knowledge-finder is the Knowledge Manager's equivalent of Pokemon Go, acting as an index to all the tacit knowledge which is out there, but invisible to the naked eye.

Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-86634560734452511832016-07-21T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-21T08:30:06.171+01:00Learning rates, and the value of Knowledge Management

Over time, with any technology, the costs come down. This is known as the learning rate. One value proposition for Knowledge Management is to increase the learning rate.

What is your organisation's learning rate? What could KM increase this to? And what's the value of the difference?

The concept of the learning curve is very common. Wikipedia tells us that the term is used when the same task is repeated in a series of trials, or where a body of knowledge is learned over time. The first person to describe the learning curve was Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, in the field of the psychology of learning, and in 1936, Theodore Paul Wright described the effect of learning on production costs in the aircraft industry. This form, in which unit cost is plotted against total production, is sometimes called an experience curve.

Learning curves can be drawn as an upward sloping curve, representing gaining knowledge over time, or a downward sloping curve, representing decreasing costs over time. Experience curves are generally drawn as downward sloping curves, as are these learning curves from drilling in Oman, and oil platforms in Trinidad. The steepness of teh curve is determined by something called the Learning Rate.

The value of Knowledge Management

The Learning Rate, in the case of production costs, represents the percentage reduction in cost when production doubles. In the case of oil wells, its the percentage reduction in cost when the number of wells doubles. Learning rate therefore is linked to cost. I have explained here that the value of learning is represented by the area under the learning curve. The greater the learning rate, the steeper the curve, and so the more value generated through learning.

The value in Knowledge Management, in any organisation involved in repeat activity or in learnign something new, comes in increasing the learning rate. The diagram above shows the link between learning rate and savings. Imagine you do a task 10 times, with a learning rate of 8%. The reduction in cost should deliver 17% savings compared to no learning at all. However if you can learn twice as quickly (16%) the savings increase to 30%.

Typical learning rates.

There is a natural learning rate, where people just get better through practice with no intervention from KM. Knowledge Management should help you improve on this natural learning rate, and so deliver added value. But what is a typical natural learning rate, and what is an enhanced KM-accelerated learning rate?

This is difficult to answer, and any studies of experience curves are usually careful to point out that there are other factors than knowledge behind the reductions in cost (economies of scale, innovations in labour, costs of raw materials etc).

However this paper shows some learning rates for Power Generation technology, for example

Coal - 8.3%

Onshore wind - 12%

Natural Gas - 14%

Solar - 23%

Also we have the examples of learning curves already mentioned on this blog:

Trinidad Patforms - 16%

Oman oil wells - 21%

I also have a North Sea example with a learning rate of 34%

The paper on the power generation examples attempts to separate what they call "learning by doing" from "learning through research", which maybe gets close to a "natural learning rate" vs an "enhanced learning rate". For the 5 examples where they manage to separate these factors, "learning by doing" averages at 7.5% and "learning through research" at an additional 11%. The difference between 7.5% and 18.5% is an additional 20% savings over a program of 10 projects.

It would be interesting to see if this also holds within organisations, with in-company Knowledge Management replacing "learning through research".

Implications for Knowledge Management programs

The implication for Knowledge Management is that this provides us with a potential way to measure the value delivered through Knowledge Management. You would need to do the following:

Collect data on the learning rate of repeat projects within the organisation prior to the introduction of Knowledge Management

Collect data on the learning rate of repeat projects within the organisation after the introduction of Knowledge Management

Calculate the additional cost savings related to the increase in learning rates.

This should work when the organisation is involved in repeat activity, where operational efficiency (measured in cost or time) is the primary business driver.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-50348558402318422492016-07-20T08:19:00.000+01:002016-07-20T08:19:07.537+01:00Why you should not ask your senior managers to blog

 If you wish to introduce blogs as a knowledge management tool, it is tempting, but dangerous, to ask senior managers to take the lead. Here's why it's dangerous, and what you should do instead.

Let's assume

1) that you want to introduce Knowledge Management,
2) that you want to improve exchange and re-use of knowledge between peers in the organisation,
3) that you have chosen blogging as a component in the toolbox, and that
4) you would like this tool to be used widely by the knowledge workers for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Perhaps your vision is that a project team could use a blog as a shared, recorded and comment-able "project log" for storing lessons as they are identified, or a community of practice could use a blog as a way to develop knowledge collaboratively (see for example this story on the use of blogs and wikis for collaborative problem solving).

It can be very tempting to ask someone senior to take the lead in blogging and to set an example for the organisation, and he or she will very often agree. Your KM sponsor, for example, might agree to lead by example. But this will not help you in the long run.

The wrong model
The big problem with senior manager blogs is that they are not the example that you want to set or the model you want others to copy. They are different, and generally they are not focused on knowledge sharing.

A director blogging is a bit like a director standing up behind the lectern and making a speech. It's heirarchical - it's "me preaching to all of you". Is not really very conducive to two-way discussion or dialogue. Most of the directors blogs that I have seen have been one-way, with little or no comments. And if you want to know more about the topic covered by the blog, there are pressures against picking up the phone and asking the director for more details. This one-way blogging belongs to Internal Communications and not to Knowledge Management. It is not collaborative, and its not an example you want to set as part of your KM program.

Very rarely is does the blog contain knowledge (by which I mean concrete "how to" advice and details which will help the reader do their job better). The director is not communicating to peers. Most of the directors blogs that I have seen have been general musings, or thought pieces. They may sometimes be of interest to the audience, but they're not going to teach the audience anything that helps them do their job better. It won't make a difference to the way people work. It won't add immediate value. Blogging which does not transfer knowledge to help people work better is not an example you want to set.

If you are a director, you care about style (with a few happy exceptions, of course). You want your post to be well crafted. You may even get somebody else to write it for you. It becomes formal, it becomes a publication, and not the start of an informal conversation that invites others to take part. That's not the blogging example you want to set; you would much rather have that sort of messy informal creativeness that leads to real knowledge.

It becomes "something extra to read". Instead of providing a better alternative to existing mechanisms of sharing knowledge between peers, you have created something new to read which doesn't teach you anything that really helps you, but is just "yet another top-down communication from management". You are adding noise to the system.

Blogging per se - blogging for the sake of it - is not worth doing. Blogging to share knowledge and collaborate is what you need, and this should be the first model you set.

A better way
A better way to introduce blogging is to take the already existing internal communication mechanisms within communities of practice or projects, and replace some of these with blogs. Take the ways people currently try to share knowledge, and improve them. For example -

Maybe your community of practice has a quarterly newsletter, with a dozen articles. Replace this with a weekly blog, in order to get the news out more quickly, and in order to allow commentary on, and discussion of, the key items (which was never possible in a hard copy newsletter).

Your community of practice may routinely send out email alerts about new lessons, improve practices, and other things that the community members really need to know about. Replace these Email alerts with blog items, which can be searched, can spawn comment threads, and which avoid the curse of "reply all".

Perhaps your project manager sends out a weekly email summarising progress and learnings. Replace this with a blog, and ask people to comment on the learnings and the actions arising, and add other insights they may have. This can be very useful for virtual teams.

Think carefully about how you promote blogging.

Start by modelling the outcome that you want to see, which is peer-level sharing of useful knowledge that others will use to improve the way they work. Think about the WIIFM for the reader, and make sure the blog gives them something they can use immediately to make their work better or their life easier.

Beware the seductive but potentially damaging option of the senior manager's blog.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-5859411367602661342016-07-19T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-19T08:30:17.930+01:00How Mars implemented Knowledge Management

There are two main ways to implement Knowledge Management. You can roll out a KM solution across the organisation, or you can take a business focused approach. Mars did the latter.

One of the Case Studies in my latest book "The Knowledge manager's handbook" is written by Linda Davies, the Head of Knowledge for Mars. Linda explains how, from a very early stage, her KM program was clearly focused on the needs of the business.

"KM in Mars started formally in 2003 with a KM conference attracting around 100 associates from around the business. Initial KM work-streams in that first year led to a second conference one year later that came to the attention of the Mars CEO. The great excitement at such senior support was rapidly muted by his strong guidance that whilst he "instinctively believed that KM would benefit the business", until he could understand specifically how it would help the business, the conference could not go ahead.

"I now look back on that series of events and see it as the key which unlocked KM at Mars. It taught me the utmost necessity of knowing why we were doing what we were doing, of focusing on the business need, and determining the size of the benefit KM could bring. And it highlighted that unless we ourselves could clearly explain the importance of our activities and how they would help the business, we could not expect anyone else to understand KM and what it could offer."

Linda went away and re crafted her Knowledge Management Strategy to be entirely business focused. Then, instead of rolling out KM tool by tool (blogs this quarter, improved search next quarter) she rolled out KM business issue by business issue, at a rate of no more than two or three business issues per year.

Two or three issues a year, but BIG issues; thorny business issues which needed good KM to solve. As Linda says:

"The power of focusing on two or three challenges in any one year became apparent, resulting in rapid progress and big wins and proving the concept of the value that KM can bring to the business. This led to a regular increase in KM budget and resource which enabled subsequent initiatives. The principle of focus became core to the KM team, with a structured plan submitted each year containing initiatives clearly focused on a maximum of two to three key business objectives".

This is a completely different implementation strategy to almost every other Knowledge Management strategy you read about. It was a business led strategy, focused on solving business issues, and driven from the very top of the company. It made her some powerful friends in high places, and to date has delivered knowledge-enabled value in excess of £1 billion.

I often write about being business-led in KM, and Linda's story was one of the most complete examples of this that I have seen, as well as delivering huge value to Mars. It stands as an example to all KM initiatives, and it won the award for "Best KM Implementation" at KMUK in 2011.

Consider this approach as you plan your KM implementation; it is an approach wth proven success.

Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-77584612336672364632016-07-18T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-18T14:37:45.307+01:00A great story of tacit knowledge, and how to make it explicit

I came across this story twice recently, and it is a graphic example of the tacit nature of knowledge, with some pointers about how this may be made explicit.

Image from wikimedia commons

One instance of the story was in Nancy Dixon's blog, and the other was a blog post by the psychologist Gary Klein. The story is of a firefighter who made a "gut judgement" based on unconscious (tacit) knowledge. As Gary explains:

"One of my first interviews with firefighters, described in my book Sources of Power, covered an incident in which a young lieutenant was called out on a simple house fire. At least it seemed simple. The flames were coming from the rear of the single family, one-story home. Almost certainly the kitchen.

Kitchen fires are pretty common, and there is a straightforward script for handling them: send the hose crew into the house and attack the fire from the inside. That's what the lieutenant did. Then he ordered the water to be turned off, to see the effect. But there was no effect — the fire came roaring back with as much intensity as before. They tried again, with the same result. When they stopped spraying water on what they thought was the seat of the fire, the fire showed no reduction.

"This was bizarre. The lieutenant gathered his crew back into the living room to plan his next move. And then he became tremendously uneasy — so uneasy that he ordered his entire crew to vacate the building. Just as they were leaving, the living room floor collapsed. If they had stood there another minute, they would have dropped into the fire below. Unbeknownst to the firefighters, the house had a basement and that's where the fire was burning, right under the living room.

"I had a chance to interview the lieutenant about this incident, and asked him why he gave the order to evacuate. The only reason he could think of was that he had extrasensory perception. He firmly believed he had ESP".

This is an example of knowledge so deep, the person holding the knowledge doesn't realise what he knows. He does not know the grounds on which he made the decision to evacuate the building, and so can only explain it as Extra Sensory Perception.

Can such knowledge ever be made conscious (explicit) in such a way that it can be shared with others? Well, yes, it can, because Gary Klein helped the firefighter become aware of what he knew, and so made the knowledge explicit. Here is how he did it.

Gary interviewed the firefighter

He got him to recall the events of the fire - what he saw, what he heard, what he felt

He got him to reflect on those impressions, and analyse what was unusual; what was different. Indeed the firefighter had noticed two anomalies - the fire was much hotter than expected for a kitchen fire, and also much quieter than expected. These anomalies had alerted him that something was different - something was wrong.

 By the end of the interview he understood why it was so quiet: because the fire was in the basement, and the floor was muffling the sounds.

As Gary says in the blog post -

A critical cue was what wasn't happening: The noise he expected was absent. And that, as much as anything else, made him nervous and led him to order the evacuation. As a result of the interview, he could see that it wasn't ESP that saved him, it was his experience. His experience enabled him to notice a cue — noisiness — that was missing.

Before the interview, this knowledge was so tacit the firefighter thought it was ESP. After the interview, he not only realised what he knew, he would be in a position to teach others and to pass that knowledge on.

It is through knowledge harvesting interviews such as this, and other question-based processes such as Peer Assist, After Action Review and Retrospect, that tacit knowledge becomes explicit. Nancy Dixon calls these processes "collective sense making", and often these processes require skilled facilitation. The task of making unconscious (tacit) knowledge conscious (explicit) is not an easy one, as shown above.

Without such questioning, the firefighter's knowledge would have remained tacit and, if he had been asked to advise others, he could have said little more than "try to develop ESP". After the interview, his advice would have been far more helpful.

Making tacit knowledge explicit can be done, it takes time and effort, but it can add huge value. In cases such as the one in this story it can save lives.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-13217337443047434082016-07-15T08:45:00.000+01:002016-07-15T13:22:19.866+01:00KM - the next best thing to "sitting next to Carlos"

In this article, Tom Stewart makes some interesting points about Knowledge Management, and the balance between technology and human interaction.

Image from wikipedia

The article is entitled "The case against knowledge management" and is taken from Stewart's book "The Wealth of Knowledge". In the article, he tells this cautionary tale regarding Knowledge Management.

"Jack Whalen, a sociologist, works at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. A few years ago, he was assigned to the Institute for Research on Learning, a nonprofit group Xerox supported. He spent a couple of years there studying how people, computers, and expert-system software interacted in a customer service call center in Lewisville, Texas, north of Dallas.

"The software (in this case, Inference Corp.'s CasePoint) was supposed to help employees tell customers how to fix problems with copiers -- paper jams, faded copies, and the like. When the call-center operator typed words spoken by a customer -- "jam," for example -- the software searched its memory bank of diagnoses and solutions. Trouble was, employees weren't using the new software. Management decided that employees needed an incentive to change.

"The company held a month-long contest in which employees earned points (which translated into cash) each time they solved a customer problem, by whatever means. The winner was an eight-year veteran named Carlos, with more than 900 points. Carlos wasn't a big favorite among managers -- "He's a cowboy," one of them said -- but his victory was no surprise. He almost never used the software.

"The runner-up was a shock. Trish had been with the company just four months and had no previous experience with copying equipment. Her 600 points more than doubled the score of the third-place finisher. She didn't even have the new software, only an older, less sophisticated system. But she had a secret weapon: She sat across from Carlos. She overheard him when he talked. She apprenticed herself to him and persuaded him to show her the innards of copiers during lunch breaks. She built up a personal collection of manuals and handwritten notes about how to fix problems".
In this story, and in the rest of the article, Stewart makes the case that addressing KM through software gets you nowhere without also addressing KM through "wetware" (people). As we say at Knoco, you need connection as well as collection, and you need to address conversation as well as content. Both of these aspects need to be part of any balanced Knowledge Management framework - both collecting the solutions, and "sitting across from Carlos".

Stewart continues his article by analysing a KM solution that actually does work - an informal community-based solution at PWC known as Kraken - and draws out the following success factors:

 First, it's demand-driven. The founders imagined that people would spark discussion by uploading white papers and the like .... Instead, the spark comes first -- 80 percent of Kraken traffic starts with questions: Does anybody know? Does anybody have? Has anybody ever done something like?

Second, the Kraken gets at tacit and latent knowledge, provoking responses from people who didn't know they had something to contribute until they heard the discussion; similarly, it tolerates fuzzy, badly formed questions better than formal databases where one often needs a bit of expertise even to begin.

Third, it's front of mind, right there with the morning mail and coffee -- you don't have to make an effort to go there.

Fourth, it's full of engaging opinion held strongly, rightly or wrongly. There's an old saying at Xerox PARC: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points."

 All of these are pointers towards what is needed for KM - a focus on demand for knowledge as well as supply, on seeking as well as sharing, on connection as well as collection, on wetware as well as software, on conversation as well as content, and as making it as similar as possible to "sitting across from Carlos".

If you need help balancing your Knowledge Management framework in this way, we can help you.

Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-16936132602552152932016-07-14T08:27:00.000+01:002016-07-14T08:27:02.342+01:00Dare to be wrong

Learning often requires accepting that we could be wrong.

Image from destinydavidson.deviantart.com

Acquisition of new knowledge often requires that we have to let go of old knowledge. Learning something new therefore means that we need to accept that what we "knew" before was wrong, or not good enough, and that we need to know something new.

Being Wrong is an uncomfortable position, and in many corporate or professional cultures, being wrong involves a loss of face. This is what we call a "Knower culture"; a culture where status is associated with being Right. In such a culture, being Right is expected; being Right is linked to position and power, and being Wrong is a bad thing. You can test the health of your KM culture by measuring how easy it is to be wrong.

In a changing world, however, nobody can be right about everything. If our organisations are to learn, then the individuals within those organisations must become learners as well. To become learners, they must be willing to let go of being knowers, and must be willing to say "I could be wrong here - lets think about this some more".

New knowledge is tested through practice, but it needs to be tested with an open mind, and with the acceptance that all knowledge is provisional and subject to improvement. It is the continual improvement of knowledge that is behind the continuous improvement of performance, and you cannot continuously improve knowledge without accepting that aspects of the old knowledge were wrong.

This TED talk by Kathryn Schultz on "Being Wrong" is well worth watching, as she explores some of the barriers to, and advantages of, being wrong.

Let's dare to be wrong. Let's dare to learn.

Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-55852358136694957112016-07-13T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-13T08:30:06.153+01:00Taking a risk can pay off in a Knowledge Management career

Sometimes playing it safe in a Knowledge Management role is the worst thing you can do, and you need to take a risk, and live dangerously.

Jon Harman is the head of Knowledge Management at Syngenta crop protection. I know him quite well, and admire the work he has been doing. In 2010 John had been in post for many years, making steady though slow progress. Then, in 2011 he had a breakthough - he had the most productive year in KM that he has ever had.

The reason? He had lost his job.

Or perhaps to be more exact, he was under notice that his KM post was closing.

For Jon, this was liberating. Released from the fear that he might lose his job (because he knew the axe had already fallen), Jon decided to live dangerously. Instead of waiting for permission, he acted. Instead of working through is boss, he went direct to the CEO. Things started to happen, the CEO liked what he saw, and the KM train started to accelerate. Not only that, but Jon was offered another KM post within Syngenta.

So what's the lesson, ladies and gentlemen?

If you are going to make Knowledge Management work, you have to be bold. You have to live dangerously, because (as I said in yesterday's post), "it needs courage and it needs dedication and it needs perseverence and a thick skin, and it needs you to work at some very difficult conversations".

Jon learned the lesson through the risk of losing his job. If you learn the lesson, rather than making your job more risky, it may actually make your job safer.
Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-46523082940959755252016-07-12T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-12T08:30:32.719+01:00Knowledge Management, simple but difficult

Knowledge Management is actually really quite a simple concept, but simple does not equate to easy.

Knowledge Management is a really simple idea.

For all the tools and all the strategies and all the nuances and all the things that we to do complicate knowledge management, at it's heart it is about making sure that the decision makers in the organisation have access to the crucial knowledge they need to make decisions. Then its about making sure that the right conversations happen to identify and transfer that knowledge.

Seeking, sharing, using knowledge, transferred through content or conversation. That's all that KM is.

However the difficulties come when you try and make this happen. Knowledge sharing is in many ways an unnatural act; it's not a habit, it's not something we do automatically, and its something that requires changed behaviours and changed priorities.

It's the change management aspect that's the hard aspect. There is enough technology out there, there are well-defined processes that work extremely well, there is an understanding of the roles and skillsets needed, and there's a pretty good understanding of the governance elements as well. All of that is easy enough. It's the change that's hard.

I think that's where people often go wrong with their KM programs. They do the easy stuff, not the hard stuff. They buy the technologies. They print the booklets. They work with the enthusiasts and sing with the choir.

What they don't do so often, is have the really hard discussion with the CEO and the senior management team about the value KM can deliver to the organisation, and the few focus areas they need to address. They don't gain those high level sponsors. They don't go and tussle with the hard-pressed team leaders and work out what they can do to help them, and what they can do to help you. They don't get out and work in detail with the pilot projects, to deliver the spectacular successes that act as a beacon to the rest of the organisation.

Knowledge Management is not complicated. It really isn't, despite the complicated models people sometimes build. But it needs courage and it needs dedication and it needs perseverance and a thick skin, and it needs you to work at some very difficult conversations.

That's hard.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-35214761547439998312016-07-11T08:47:00.000+01:002016-07-11T08:47:00.151+01:0030 years of KM in the US Army

Last year the US Army "Center for Army Lessons Learned" celebrated it's 30th anniversary. Here's what it does for the Army.

CALL logo, from Wikipedia

One of the longest-running organisational Knowledge Management initiatives in the world, and one of the most successful, the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) has been at the heart of the US Army's attempt to become a leading learning organisation. As the CALL Director, Colonel Paul Reese, says,

"CALL is the one Army directorate completely dedicated to making sure the Army does not repeat the same mistakes twice and to save Soldiers lives in future conflicts."

CALL is a function and a set of roles and accountabilities within the Army Knowledge Management Framework that continuously leads the Army Lessons Learned Program and identifies, collects, analyzes, synthesises, publishes and archives lessons and best practices. It is a body of about 70 people in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas consisting of analysts, experts, facilitators and editors.

By looking at the CALL Bulletins we can see some of the tasks that this function performs.

Owning and operating the Army Lessons Learned Program. "The ALLP uses people, processes, tools, and organizations to gather, rapidly share, and integrate lessons and best practices across networked commands, units, organizations, and UAPs. CALL .... implements the ALLP as the office of primary responsibility"

Collecting and analysing lessons from various operations and exercises. "CALL recently collected and analyzed lessons learned and best practices in Australia at the Talisman Saber '15 exercise, which provided a great opportunity, and model, to simultaneously collect at a combined, joint, and multi-echeloned training event".

Hosting workshops on key topics. "CALL hosted the second annual Army Lessons Learned Synchronization Workshop, [which] synchronized and prioritized 309 topics/issues to 13 key efforts the Army lessons learned community will address in fiscal year"

Creating guidance note publications. "The Security Cooperation Bulletin ... provides observations, analysis, lessons, and best practices gleaned from the past decade of war that can be applied toward all theatres of operation"

Observing partner organisations. "CALL has embedded liaison officers (ELOs) deployed at major Army headquarters to observe operations in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe ... to collect what these headquarters are seeing on the ground and then pass them back to CALL for analysis and dissemination to units getting ready to go into those environments".

Teaching lesson learned courses. "CALL conducts a five-day course designed to train multiservice officers and non-commissioned officers serving as lessons learned officers at battalion, brigade, division, or corps levels."

The Non-Military equivalent.

CALL effectively provides a military lessons management function. Many large project-based organisations have something similar. Often hosted within the Project Management Office, the lessons management team will:

Own and manage the lesson learning process

Facilitate and collect lessons from major projects

Arrange for the synthesis of these lessons into organisation guidance by subject matter experts

Teach lesson learning skills.

This is a crucial function within the lesson learning framework, and is an area where any project based organisation needs to invest some KM resource.

Let's learn from the 30-year success of CALL, and build this role into our Knowledge Management Frameworks.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-89475291562414611922016-07-08T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-08T08:48:56.212+01:00The dangers of knowledge bubbles - the Brexit example
I introduced on this blog, over 5 years ago, the issue of the danger of Knowledge Bubbles. We have now just seen this phenomenon potentially derail a country, or even a whole continent.

Fingers in Ears by Craig Dennis on Flickr

The knowledge bubble is a construct that filters out knowledge that those within the bubble disagree with. Hitler and Stalin created their own knowledge bubbles, and you can also see the phenomenon in the way we tend to create knowledge silos in social media, exacerbated search engines and social sites that preferentially point you towards items they think you will agree with.

 It has been argued that knowledge bubbles may have been behind many major disasters, such as the lack of recognition of the imminence of Bin Laden's plans to attack the USA, or the loss of the Titanic, or the Challenger Shuttle disaster.Maybe we can now add Brexit to the list of examples.

During the Brexit debate in the run-up to the recent UK referendum on membership of the EU, voters instinctively polarised into two camps and read the articles, followed the twitter accounts and joined the conversations that reinforced (or, in the case of newspapers, formed) their personal views. The Leave campaigners were bolstered in their views by other Leave campaigners, and the Remain camp bolstered by other Remainers.

Now the best way to burst knowledge bubbles is to commission, and remain open to the results of, independent expert review.

You listen carefully to the experts, and use this to inform your opinion and update your knowledge. In the Brexit debate, you think this might have been very useful, as there was a huge amount of evidence about the level of value the UK gained or lost from it's EU membership, and the amount of risk/value it stood to gain/lose by exiting. And the experts were pretty much unanimous (see here for a good example) that to leave the EU would be a Bad Decision.

The response to this expert opinion by the Leave campaign was the most telling example of a Knowledge Bubble I have ever seen; specifically the response by one of the leaders of the Leave campaign that

"People in this country have had enough of experts".
Widely derided as anti-intellectualism or "post truth" politics, I would rather see this statement as evidence of a robust knowledge bubble, and an example of an individual refusing to accept knowledge (no matter how expert the source) that challenged their own position. By refusing to listen to experts and preferring to listen (within their bubble) to politicians with whom they agreed, a significant proportion of the British public voted to leave the EU. The jury is out on the long term consequences, but the short term consequences have been chaotic in both economic and political terms, and will require a much more robust approach to knowledge if we are to recover the situation.

We are all prone to knowledge bubbles. Individuals, teams, projects, organisations and countries. It is when we refuse to learn, turn down knowledge and stop listening to experts that the bubbles become become most robust, and the consequences most dire.

Please, as knowledge managers, listen out for statements like the one highlighted above, and if you hear them, sound your warning klaxon as loud as you can. It might just save a disaster.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-92177690360738524032016-07-07T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-07T08:30:00.783+01:00Building a body of knowledge

For any tasks or activities or conceptual frameworks which have to last beyond the limits of reliability of the reliability of human memory, you need to start to build a Body of Knowledge.

Image from wikimedia commons

Using human memory as a long term store of knowledge is a risky strategy. Unless that knowledge is frequently refreshed and discussed within a community of practice, you run the risk of falling foul of the illusion of memory, the illusion of confidence, and the illusion of knowledge. To avoid these risks, an organisation needs to build a shared and documented body of knowledge. #

Wikipedia describes a Body of Knowledge as "the complete set of concepts, terms and activities that make up a professional domain, as defined by the relevant learned society or professional association." Within an organisation, the "relevant learned society or professional association" is usually the relevant community of practice or community of technical experts.

In Shell, the Body of Knowledge is represented by the Shell Wiki and the documents linked from the wiki.

In Pfizer, the Body of Knowledge is summarised and indexed by the Pfizerpedia wiki

In DaimlerChrysler it was the EBOK - the Engineering Book of Knowledge

In BP it was the Engineering Technical Practices and the accompanying Guidance Notes.

One of the better online examples is the NASA body of knowledge. In fact every technical discipline within NASA has its own body of knowledge. We can see for example

The systems engineering body of knowledge

The Body of Knowledge for Leadless Quad Flat No-Lead/bottom Termination Components

The Body of Knowledge for copper wire bonds,

The Body of Knowledge for spaceport operations,

and so on.

A Body of Knowledge is what we in Knoco call a "Knowledge Asset", and needs to have the following:

An owner/editor/custodian

A community of practice acting as contributors and users

A way to synthesise existing knowledge into "the body

A mechanism for continuous review and update

A "host space" for the Body of Knowledge which means it can be very easily found and updated

A way of tracking usage.

If you feel your organisation needs to build a Body of Knowledge, contact us for help and advice.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-2637787069045926142016-07-06T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-06T08:30:20.351+01:002 questions that show KM is broken

The two questions in this little conversation are evidence of a broken KM culture.

It's the sort of conversation most of us have had at some time on our lives. In this conversation we can see evidence of a missed opportunity to share knowledge ("I could have told you...") which had negative consequences ("... it wouldn't work"). This is what we call the "Cost of Lost Knowledge", and the elimination of such consequences is the primary value that Knowledge Management will deliver.

Why was this opportunity to share missed?

Firstly there was no supply of knowledge ("Why didn't you tell me?"), and the knowledge manager exploring such a Lost Knowledge Incident would want to explore this lack of supply. Did the knowledge supplier not want to share? Did they not know how to share? Or did they not even know they were supposed to share?

Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, there was a lack of demand for knowledge ("Why didn't you ask me?"). Again, this needs to be explored - was the knowledge seeker unable, unwilling, or unaware?

Them the knowledge manager can address the awareness, the willingness, and the mechanism, and ensure that the sort of conversation shown here never happens again.

If this conversation reminds you of your organisation, and you would like help sorting it out, give us a call.  We can help.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-76501884989914155872016-07-05T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-05T08:30:37.420+01:003 questions that drive innovation

Three simple and open questions are at the heart of an innovation process.

Berger's book

At Knoco, we believe innovation and creative problem solving is a process - a process that we call "Deep Dive." Now via the Farnham Street blog we have some insight to the key questions that drive the process.

This Farnham street blog post references the book by Warren Berger called "A more beautiful question" where Berger describes three key questions as being vital to creative thinking and innovation.

The first question is Why. Why are things the way they are? Why can't they be different? (Why is closely allied to Why Not). This is a challenging question, that challenges the status quo and accepted wisdom, and opens the possibility of out-of-the-box thinking. It also ensures we fully understand the problem and the issues that create it. As Berger says:

Although we may think we have a brilliant idea in our heads for a new product, or a new answer to an old question, or a new way of doing an old thing, unless we understand why things are the way they are, we're not yet on solid ground.
 Once we understand why things are the way they are, the next question is What If? This is the question that opens new possibilities, not by concentrating on solutions, bit on vision. What If is a visionary leap. Berger tells us:

The What If stage is the blue-sky moment of questioning, when anything is possible. Those possibilities may not survive the more practical How stage; but it's critical to innovation that there be time for wild, improbable ideas to surface and to inspire. If the word Why has penetrative power, enabling the questioner to get past assumptions and dig deep into problems, the words What if have a more expansive effect–allowing us to think without limits or constraints, firing the imagination.
The final question is the one that fills the gap between the understood current state and the blue sky future; it is the How question. How is the reality test, which Berger suggests we can best explore through trial and error, as we work our way towards the What If vision.

These simple questions, within a framework like Deep Dive, and accompanied by suspension of judgement, can form the basis of a solid innovation process.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-11301255213020901502016-07-04T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-04T08:30:25.960+01:00Public access KM toolkit

A new resource is now available on the Internet, the Aerospace Knowledge Management toolkit

The toolkit, which can be found here, was created by my colleague Rupert Lescott of Knoco on behalf of the Aerospace Growth Partnership (AGP) Skills Working Group.

Chapters of the toolkit include:

What is Knowledge Management and why do it?

Retaining Critical Skills

Building Best Practice

Learning from Projects

Enabling Collaboration

Finding and Structuring Knowledge

Although the toolkit is focused at aerospace, the techniques described are applicable to most or all project-based organisations.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-46522361119087595082016-07-01T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-01T14:47:11.543+01:00"Too much knowledge" is counterproductive

From the world of sport, here is a cautionary tale about providing too much knowledge.

Image from wikimedia commons

Knowledge overload is as bad as not enough knowledge. If you give people too much, they can't process it all.

This is the moral of a story told by David Flatman, the sports writer, in <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/next%20weekend%20I%20didn%E2%80%99t%20receive%20the%20usual%2050%20tips.%20Instead,%20I%20got%20a%20scrap%20of%20paper%20with%20two%20things%20written%20on%20it:%20%E2%80%9CIf%20you%20are%20caught%20out%20wide%20in%20defence,%20work%20your%20nuts%20off%20to%20get%20closer%20to%20the%20breakdown.%E2%80%9D%20And:%20%E2%80%9CIf%20it%20moves,%20hit%20it.%E2%80%9D%20That%20was%20it.%20And%20it%20changed%20my%20game.%20%20I%20looked%20over%20at%20him%20as%20I%20received%20it;%20he%20winked.%20After%20the%20game%20I%20quizzed%20him,%20and%20his%20answer%20was%20simple:%20%E2%80%9CYou%20need%20to%20see%20your%20tips;%20telling%20you%20isn%E2%80%99t%20enough.%20You%20also,%20like%20every%20player,%20can%20only%20retain%20a%20tiny%20amount%20of%20information%20on%20game%20day%20due%20to%20the%20stresses%20involved,%20so%20that%E2%80%99s%20what%20we%20gave%20you.%E2%80%9D%20%20%20Read%20more%20at%20http://talksport.com/rugby-union/david-flatman-column-coaches-say-it-best-when-they-say-nothing-all-13090558762#8IoQypuivWW2LR13.99" target="_blank">his column this week. Flatman first describes a coach who was prone to providing knowledge overload.

One thing he did struggle with was delivering information on game day. He didn't get nervous or lack clarity of message. It's just that there were way, way too many messages. On a Friday morning, we would each be given a 'tip sheet' designed to offer us key pieces of information to remember and what we call 'triggers'. These are initial actions the opposition would take that we knew, from extensive analysis, led to certain plays. However, this sheet contained something like 50 tips. Even for your average brainiac, that's an awful lot to take in.
Then things changed after the coach hired a learning specialist.

Next weekend I didn't receive the usual 50 tips. Instead, I got a scrap of paper with two things written on it: "If you are caught out wide in defence, work your nuts off to get closer to the breakdown." And: "If it moves, hit it." That was it. And it changed my game.

 After the game I quizzed [the learning specialist], and his answer was simple: "You need to see your tips; telling you isn't enough. You also, like every player, can only retain a tiny amount of information on game day due to the stresses involved, so that's what we gave you."
The same is true in the work situation. You don't need to give people all the knowledge - give them enough to make a difference, and then let them reach for more as and when they need it. Let them "zoom in" on the items they need, rather than presenting them will everything all at once.
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-71996274441661374632016-06-30T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-25T10:45:14.526+01:00Balancing knowledge supply and demand

If we view the flow of knowledge within an organisation as a Market, then we need to address the issues of supply and demand, and there are many advantages to starting by stimulating demand.

We can look at the flow of knowledge within an organisation as a market connecting the suppliers of knowledge and users of knowledge; the people in whose minds the knowledge is buried, and the people and teams who need access to that knowledge.

Knowledge is created through experience and through the reflection on experience, in order to derive guidelines, rules, theories, heuristics and doctrines. Knowledge may be created by individuals, through reflecting on their own experience, or it may be created by teams reflecting on team experience. It may also be created by experts or communities of practice reflecting on the experience of many individuals and teams across an organisation. The individuals, teams and communities who do this reflecting can be considered as 'knowledge suppliers'.

Knowledge is applied within organisational activity by individuals and teams. They can apply their own personal knowledge and experience, or they can look elsewhere for knowledge – to learn before they start. The more knowledgeable they are at the start of the activity or project, the more likely they are to avoid mistakes, repeat good practice, and avoid risk. These people are 'knowledge users'.

Once we have knowledge suppliers and users, we have a marketplace for knowledge, where suppliers and users come together and exchange a "commodity" - knowledge. Knowledge is not like a normal commodity in that the supplier does not lose the knowledge, and both supplier and user get to keep the knowledge which has been exchanged. However a marketplace analogy is a popular one in KM terms, and its an analogy I would like to explore here.

A marketplace works when there is supply and demand - suppliers and users. Supply and demand is at the base of much economic theory, and the concept of an equilibrium market as applied to normal products is that supply and demand will match each other through the mechanism of price adjustment. When supply and demand are out of synch, then prices adjust as follows:

When demand exceeds supply there is a shortage in the market and prices rise until demand decreases

When supply exceeds demand, there is a glut in the market and prices fall until demand increases.

We see this very clearly in the oil markets. When oil supply falters, prices skyrocket. When oil production picks up, for example through the advent of shale-oil, prices fall.

This relationship works with established commodities - any new product will create its own demand, at least for a while. There was no market for mp3 players before they were invented, and no market for Rubik's cubes or Pokemon until it was stimulated by supply of these new playthings. After a while this "fad effect" wears off, and companies seek to stimulate continued demand through marketing and advertising in order to keep prices high.

The Knowledge Market

In a Knowledge market there is no monetary price payable for knowledge, at least not within any one organisation. The price that a user pays for knowledge is the degree of effort they will put in to get it, and the amount of searching, filtering, asking and browsing they are prepared to do.

The diagram above shows four potential states for the Knowledge Market within an organisation.

Where there is low supply and low demand, there is no knowledge market.

Where there high supply and high demand, there is an equilibrium knowledge market, and to reach this level should be the Knowledge manager's goal.

Where there is high supply and low demand, we find the typical problem area of knowledge oversupply. Here we find the huge databases nobody ever reads, the massive lessons learned systems with no lessons re-use, the communities or social groups where announcements and notifications outweigh the questions. The effect of this oversupply is both to introduce waste into the system, and also to destroy value. Larry Prusak said that the best way to de-knowledge knowledge is through oversupply. Oversupply would not be problem if the price/cost of the knowledge dropped to compensate, but in fact the opposite happens. The more you oversupply knowledge, the more time and effort it costs to search, sift and sort through until you find the knowledge you need. Oversupply increases cost and decreases demand even further.

Where there is low supply and high demand, we find the less typical problem area of knowledge undersupply. Here we find lots of people looking for knowledge, but little knowledge to find. The effect of this undersupply is to make people look harder, and to seek for knowledge even if it is not yet documented. They start asking people, talking to people, and eventually finding knowledge in its richest state - tacit knowledge. What documented knowledge exists becomes highly valued.

The route to equilibrium

The instinct for many Knowledge Managers is to create an equilibrium Knowledge Market by stimulating supply, for example by capturing knowledge, rewarding knowledge publishing, creating databases, promoting "knowledge sharing", or "working out loud".

Unfortunately stimulating supply without stimulating demand leads straight into the issue of knowledge oversupply, and once this issue has arisen and knowledge has been devalued as a result, it can be very hard to escape.

Better to take the green arrow in the diagram above, and start by stimulating demand for knowledge. You do this by asking management to set the expectation that people and projects will learn before doing, and by promoting knowledge gap analysis, peer assists, question-driven communities of practice, and "knowledge seeking". Better to have the seekers outnumber the sharers, and to watch the value of knowledge rise as the seekers find what they need, apply it, and gain value as a result.

Begining by stimulating demand avoids the common pitfall of the knowledge glut and a devaluation of knowledge.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-7546231932028836272016-06-29T08:30:00.000+01:002016-07-25T10:45:14.531+01:00The Knowledge Manager as Demand Chain manager

Part of the role of the Knowledge Manager is demand chain management, and this needs to be recognised in the job description.

Image from wikimedia commons

I blogged last week about the Knowledge Manager as a Supply Chain manager, and cross-rerenced a Supply Chain manager role description with parallel tasks for the Knowledge Manager.

However I also made the point that the Knowledge Manager needs to manage demand as well as supply. We already see this mentioned in KM job descriptions such as the following:

UNDP analyst role- "facilitate demand and supply of knowledge"

Legal Knowledge Manager - "Work with the Groups and the Knowledge Management Officer to assess the relevant knowledge needs, define and implement a plan to meet those needs, and establish mechanisms for regular review of the plan".

The US Army KM Officer - "Help the staff perform internal and external knowledge gap analyses. Create techniques to bridge gaps"

Samsung Knowledge Manager - "Performs the task of establishing the direction and strategy of knowledge management activities by analyzing an enterprise's management strategy and employees' knowledge requests and planning knowledge management programs

Sample Job Description & Specification From CILIP - "To ensure that the information needs of the organisation are met in a timely, effective and efficient manner" which sort of implies that you need to analyse these needs.

However while the demand side is mentioned in these job descriptions, it is generally either one line, or part of one line, and outweighed by the supply side activities.

We can therefore compare a typical demand Chain Manager role description with potential demand-side elements of the KM role. This comparison leads us into a more rigorous approach to knowledge forecasting, such as statistical forecast models, and also highlights the area where Demand Chain management is weak, namely the stimulation of demand (which in most sales organisations would be addressed by Marketing).

Demand chain manager job description

Knowledge manager job description (demand side)

This role is responsible for all demand forecasting activities associated with customers and products. 	This role is responsible for all activities associated with the demand for knowledge, including demand stimulation and demand forecasting

Develop demand forecasts (operational forecasts) at multiple levels of aggregation for multiple time horizons as part of a demand planning function. 	Develop demand forecasts for knowledge at multiple levels of aggregation for multiple time horizons as part of a KM planning or strategy function.

Review historical sales trends, research demand drivers, prepare forecast data, develop statistical forecast models, and evaluate forecast results. 	Review historical use of knowledge, research drivers for knowledge demand, prepare forecast data, develop statistical forecast models, and evaluate forecast results.

Interact with sales, marketing, and customer finance to understand demand forecast drivers.	Interact with the business to understand the drivers for the future demand for knowledge.

Provide input to the Supply Planning organization in developing inventory strategies on existing items, new products, and product phase-outs.	Provide input to the KM and R&D organization in developing knowledge acquisition strategies.

(missing)	Promote the demand for knowledge within the organisation

Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-86854834366522568522016-06-28T08:30:00.000+01:002016-06-28T12:13:49.993+01:00A great video metaphor for social knowledge "sharing"

The video below is a great metaphor for knowledge sharing. Or is it???

I use this video a lot in our Knoco Knowledge Management training courses. I have yet to find a better metaphor for connectivity within communities of practice and social networks.

BT used the video (about 5 years ago) to sell the concept of connectivity, and to show the possible power when large communities of people are connected and can interact.

However as you watch the video, make a note of the sort of interactions that take place, and then scroll down to my analysis below, to see if you noticed the same thing that I did.

Now scroll

Scroll a little more

Here you are

Analysis
Did you notice that almost every interaction, other than the last one, was driven by a Question?

What's this groove called under my nose?

Who wants to buy my fish?

What do you think of our prototype?

I love being a mum, but does anyone else sometimes feel overwhelmed?

Did anyone here go to St Margarets school, Tobago, in 1952?

I am looking to meet someone .....

Even that last one is a quesiton in disguise - "does anyone want to go out with me?"

Questions lead to rich interaction. Announcements don't.

We can see this in LinkedIn, where the announcements-heavy groups have mostly become ghost towns, other than the few question-led examples. Announcement threads received on average 0.1 follow-up responses and comments. Threads that started with a real question received on average 13.5 comments.

Imagine the BT video, but where the interactions were all led by anouncements, and imagine how different the scenario would have felt. Imagine in each case it was the supplier of knowledge stood in the centre of the stadium, starting with the guy in the white coat announcing that "The groove under your nose is called a filtrum", and hoping that someone, somewhere might be interested. That would have been a far less compelling video.

The video is a great metaphor for knowledge seeking, rather than knowledge sharing. This is important - direct requests for help drive 75% to 90% of exchanged knowledge, and asking for help is a far tougher barrier than reponding and should therefore become the focus for our communication and culture change efforts.

If you are taking the trouble to connect up the individuals in your organisation, by social media or in communities of practice, make sure that the interactions are question-driven wherever possible.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-4078696747099391042016-06-27T08:30:00.000+01:002016-06-27T08:30:23.785+01:00Sports KM is not for the athletes

Sometimes we use Knowledge Management to improve the performance of someone who is not a knowledge worker, by improving the knowledge of their coach.

Image from wikimedia commons

Two weeks ago at KMUK 2016 we heard two presentations from the Sports industry on Knowledge Management - one from Peter Brown of the English Institute for Sport (EIS), and the other from Chris Payne of the Olympic Games association. Both described KM in Sport, and in neither case did they focus on providing knowledge to the individual athlete.

(Note I am focusing here on individual athletes - runners, boxers, gymnasts, canoeists, triathletes etc - rather than on team sports. KM has a lot to offer sports teams, as described here, here and here).

Peter Brown described KM at EIS as being in service of the drive for team GB to win even more medals at the Rio Olympics than they did in London. His main focus is on developing and sharing knowledge between the technical specialists - the performance coaches, the nutritionists, the biomechanics experts, the designers of bicycles and bobsleighs, the physiotherapists and the strength and conditioning teams. He also looks at knowledge sharing between the athletes, on issues such as "how to prepare for a trip to Rio", but the primary focus is on the management of Sport Science knowledge.

Chris Payne focused on knowledge related to the logistics of the Olympic Games rather than knowledge available to the athletes, as is appropriate for an organisation that must remain objective. I have already shared a video of knowledge management for Olympic airport logistics, and Chris gave other examples, such as knowledge related to providing TV lighting.

In a competitive situation like the Olympics, the athletes themselves provide mostly physical factors such as strength, skill, endurance, coordination, use of equipment and so on. The bulk of the knowledge work is done by the coaches, the equipment providers and the support staff, which is where KM efforts are best focused.

We can translate this into the business world.

There are some cases where vital work requires less on knowledge and more on the skills of individual performers. Certainly this is true of manual workers, but can also be true of sales staff, for example. If you try to apply KM to a sales persons role, you often meet the challenge that "Salesmanship can't be taught - you either have it or you don't".

There is some truth in this statement. The sales person is often an individual performer, applying soft skills such as relationship-building, influencing, negotiation and persuasion. Knowledge can improve these skills to an extent, but often they are innate.

In a circumstance like this, Knowledge Management can be better focused on the people who "coach" the sales staff - their team leaders for example. We did a very interesting peiece of work for a global provider of consumer goods where we conducted knowledge interviews with the top sales team leaders across the world to develop good practices and best practices in managing a sales team.

This produced some fantastic knowledge, which the sales team leaders could use to bring the best out of their sales staff.

Sometimes KM should be focused not so much at the people "at the sharp end of the business", but more on those who support and coach them.

Nick Miltonhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-7585040184982733654.post-89063292379206224552016-06-25T08:07:00.000+01:002016-06-25T08:07:01.751+01:00Understanding decisions, understanding knowledge

"Decision making is a knowledge-intensive endeavour ... To understand decisions and decision making, we need to understand knowledge and knowledge management"

It's your decision, by ljphillips34 on Flickr

(Holsapple, C. W. Decisions and Knowledge, Handbook on Decision Support Systems 1, International Handbook on Information Systems F. Burstein and C. W. Holsapple, eds., pp. 21-53: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.)
Nick Miltonhttp://email@example.com


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Licensed to Rice University HY-TEK's Meet Manager 3/21/2013 02:32 PM Victor Lopez Classic - 3/21/2013 to 3/23/2013 Rice University Houston, TX Meet Program Event 128 Men Hammer Throw University =============================================================================== Friday 3/22/2013 - 10:00 AM Name Year School =============================================================================== Flight 1 Finals 1 Longino, Philip Texas Southe 2 Brady, Greg Texas Southe 3 Lambert, Kurt Prairie View 4 Bonnet, Dillon Prairie View 5 Slater, Wesley Prairie View 6 Ramsey, Derric Texas Southe 7 Smith, Anthony Prairie View 8 Tamez, Chris Texas-Pan Am 9 Alvarez, Jesus Texas-Pan Am 10 Padovano, Dominick Notre Dame 11 McCarthy, Ammaad Sam Houston 12 Thomas, Anthony Notre Dame 13 Williams, Nick Rice 14 Adkins, Jake Hbu 15 Fortune, John Houston 16 Stumph, Jordan Notre Dame 17 Gilliam, Jarrett Hbu 18 Polega, Matt Harvard 19 Hall, James Northeastern 20 Canchola, Thomas McNeese Stat 21 Christensen, Brek Sam Houston 22 Fenton, Rick Houston 23 Sealy, Trevor Sam Houston 24 Brode, Dustin Harvard 25 Milder, Max Northeastern 26 Glauser, Ben Harvard 27 Hannie, Frederick Unattached 28 Cralle, Chris Unattached Event 127 Women Hammer Throw University =============================================================================== Friday 3/22/2013 - 12:00 PM Name Year School =============================================================================== Flight 1 Finals 1 Wilson, Kiara Prairie View 2 Abadom, Valerie Hbu 3 Martin, Simone Rice 4 Parker, Ashley Prairie View 5 Gonzalez, Klarissa Texas-Pan Am 6 Buck, Erin Hbu 7 Talamantez, Brittany Texas-Pan Am 8 Anderson, Erika Texas-Pan Am 9 Sampson, Rose Prairie View 10 Wiliams, Olivia Rice 11 Turner, RaKira McNeese Stat 12 Espinoza, Vivian Texas-Pan Am 13 Galaviz, Victoria McNeese Stat 14 Lozano, Nicole Texas-Pan Am 15 Jackson, Melanie McNeese Stat 16 Earl, Britney Prairie View 17 Hiler, Andrea Western Mich 18 Jenkins, Ashley Sam Houston 19 Wright, Alexa Huston-Tillo 20 Penick, Jade Hbu 21 Nnokwam, Emily Houston 22 Quillin, Adrienne Sam Houston 23 Negrete, Stephanie Western Mich 24 Benton, Nicole Houston 25 DuPont, Taylor Harvard 26 Gerbers, Chelsea Western Mich 27 Zoch, Jenny Sam Houston 28 Foster, Karina Texas Southe 29 Davison, Jasmine Texas-Pan Am 30 Robinson, Sharae Rice 31 Devaney, Vivien Notre Dame 32 Rounds, La'Shantena McNeese Stat 33 Casanova, Madeline Notre Dame 34 Ekechukwu, Adabelle Harvard
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Microsoft just launched an iPhone camera app
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Volleyball Scholarships
Although some schools have both male and female volleyball teams, scholarships for female athletes are much more common due to the sheer number of women's volleyball teams. In the NCAA's Division I, for example, there are 247 sponsored female teams compared to 23 on the men's side, and those men's teams are found predominantly at large schools like The University of California-Los Angeles.
Traditional volleyball scholarships from big schools with the top programs are very competitive, and require minimum GPAs in their eligibility standards. Don't rule out smaller schools with lesser-known programs where funding may be more available, especially if you're targeting men's teams. Volleyball players who want to play the sport on the club or intramural level still may be eligible for scholarships set up by local leagues and organizations who judge athletes less on talent and more on other factors such as academic achievement, work in the community or affiliations with their groups. Players then at all skill levels may find themselves eligible for awards not offered directly by the college they plan to attend.
For additional information about volleyball scholarships and awards based on different criteria, try conducting a free college scholarship search at Scholarships.com.
Alliance Pipeline Scholarship
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Established by Alliance Pipeline in 2001, this scholarship will be awarded on an annual basis to a student-athlete who demonstrates strong academic performance. The student must maintain a 3.0 GPA and participate in an intercollegiate sport. The amount of the scholarship will be determined by January of each year by the Director of the University Advancement based on the interest earnings in the [...] More
Augustana College Athletic Grant
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The scholarship program at Augustana is made possible by the generous support from alumni, special friends of the University, corporations, and foundations. Through their dedication and generosity, students are realizing their dreams of a liberal arts education.
To be considered for scholarships at Augustana based on academic performance and/or talent requires a completed Application for [...] More
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The Athletics Scholarship is available to student-athletes in CCU's College of Undergraduate Studies who are recommended for scholarship consideration by the CCU Athletics Department. Recipients must maintain satisfactory academic progress, unless otherwise noted by the Athletics Department. Scholarship amounts vary. Prospective student athletes should contact their specific coach for further [...] More
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This scholarship was established in memory of Albert Holloway who served for many years on the Academic Support, Intercollegiate Athletics, Nominating, and Student Support Committees of the Foundation. He was a great supporter of academics, extracurricular, student service programs, and the athletic program.
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Lee Arthur Sr., was a devoted and dedicated member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, an educator with the Saginaw Public School System and head coach of girls' softball and volleyball teams at Saginaw High School. Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity makes this scholarship available to a female graduate from Saginaw High School who participated in softball and/or volleyball during her high school career and [...] More
Kyle R. Magoto Scholarship Fund
Application Deadlines: March 15, Annually
To be eligible for an award from the Kyle R. Magoto Scholarship Fund, the applicant must be a Russia High School (Shelby Co., Ohio) graduating senior pursuing an associate's or a bachelor's degree as a full-time student at an accredited educational institution. Applicant must have a minimum 3.0 GPA and participated in at lease five (5) athletic seasons throughout high school.
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Mike Lozano Scholarship
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This scholarship fund was established in 2013 by family and friends of Coach Lozano. The fund will provide one scholarship annually to a graduating high school senior athlete from the northernmost 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle.
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WWU Scholar-Athlete Award
Application Deadlines: February 15, Annually
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