Putting your money where your mouth is!

(A sneak preview of my upcoming column in Inside Knowledge Magazine - August edition)

Counterfeit money and an art gallery.

The plot from a Bond film?  Possibly, Moneypenny but it’s also part of an activity for engaging senior managers in thinking about knowledge management....

Here’s how it works.  First, print off a large number of miniature £50 notes.  Make sure that they really are miniature, and only printed on one side of the paper, or you might find yourself facing an extended period of reflection time at Her Majesty’s pleasure...

Next, chose a selection of 10-20 quotations which relate to knowledge management, organisational learning – whatever your focus is.  David Gurteen’s website is a good source of these. Paste each quote into a PowerPoint slide of an empty, ornate picture frame, and print them off on A3 paper.  This is your art collection, ready for auction.  Put them up around the walls of your meeting room, and give the “frames” a quick coat of spray adhesive. Now you’re ready to go.

Give each of the senior manager three £50 notes and inform them that they need to peruse the gallery and identify some ‘artwork’ to hang in the office.  They are choosing the quotations which are most relevant to their part of the organisation.  They can bid on up to three of the paintings by placing their money to the sticky picture frame.  After five minutes or so, you will have a clear idea of which quotations were most resonant with the group.  Some of the frames will be covered with £50 notes. This is all so much more fun than the usual facilitation favourites: Post-it™ notes and sticky dots!

Starting with the most popular choices, invite members of the group to explain why they selected a particular quotation; then sit back, relax and let the conversation flow.  Incidentally, I used this approach to great effect with the UK’s Treasury department, and yes, they did keep the money.

In my experience with a number of groups in both the private and public sectors, two quotations from my art collection which always score highly are:

“I wish we knew what we know at HP – we’d make three times more profit tomorrow.” Lew Platt, CEO Hewlett Packard.

“Successful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor documents but rather interactions between people.” Tom Davenport.

But what if we were to limit ourselves to the quotations of company CEOs? Do they all feel the same way as Lew Platt? What are the words and concepts which they use most frequently?   I employed the unscientific approach of searching Google for quotations which met the right criteria.  Many of these quotations came from Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) winners. My list of quotable CEOs included Microsoft, Shell, BP, Halliburton, Fluor, Schlumberger, Buckman, Fuji Xerox, HP, Chevron and GE. Those final two were my favourites:

"We learned that we could use knowledge to drive learning and improvement in our company. We emphasize shopping for knowledge outside our organization rather than trying to invent everything ourselves. Every day that a better idea goes unused is a lost opportunity. We have to share more, and we have to share faster." Ken Derr, Chevron.

“An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action is the ultimate competitive business advantage” Jack Welch, GE.

Putting all of these quotes into Wordle™ (wordle.net) generated a revealing word cloud where the words “share”, “learn”, “ability” and “idea” feature far more strongly that the word “management”.

There are some messages for us here if we are seeking to engage with business leaders in a way which reflects their own language.

As anyone who has led a KM programme will tell you - having a quotation from your own CEO about the value of the organisation’s knowledge is like gold dust.  How much value does that executive support adds to your to your efforts?  It’s practically a licence to print money...

Knowledge Management and Flower Power!

Just finished my column for the next edition ofInside Knowledge, exploring someof the barriers to knowledge-sharing in organisations.   Whyis it sometimes so difficult to motivate people to share good practices - or to encourage people to look to others for potential solutions?I've looked into four syndromes which impact either the "supply side" or the "demand side" in any knowledge marketplace:  Tall Poppy Syndrome, Shrinking Violet Syndrome, Not Invented Here Syndrome and finally TomTom Syndrome (aka "Real men don't ask directions"!)

Here's the video to go with the article...

Knowledge Management, Scientology and Top Trumps...

A sneak preview of my up-coming column in the next edition of Inside Knowledge... During my childhood, I wiled away many an hour with school friends and a pack of Top Trumps cards. For the initiated amongst you, Top Trumps consists of a set of cards based around a particular topic.  (In my day, it was ships, racing cars, Olympic medallists or dinosaurs. Today, it’s more likely to be X-Factor contestants or Harry Potter characters).  Each card contained statistics about the car or dinosaur in question, which enabled you to compare scores with your friends and - if you chose the right category - to win their favourites until you possessed all of the cards. One of the side effects of overdosing on Top Trumps would be the ability to recall facts and figures about any card.  To my slight embarrassment, I can tell you without pausing that the 0-60mph acceleration of a 1978 Lamborghini Countach is 5.6 seconds.  Too bad my short-term memory is  unable to recall  where my own car keys are right now!

Last month I had the opportunity to work with a network of business improvement professionals (the I&I Network) who wanted to understand where knowledge management tools and techniques could complement their world of LEAN, Six Sigma and Kaizen.  Sensing an audience of potential Top Trumps sympathizers, I made up packs of “KM Trumps” for them to play with in pairs for ten minutes.   For my categories, I chose:  Cost, Return on investment, Learning curve, Geek Factor and Engagement Effect.  I had difficulty stopping their game to continue the workshop with them! I found that even in those few minutes, everyone picked up on the breadth and variety of tools which we place under the KM banner.  When all 36 cards were laid out, with their categories visible it was easy for my group of improvement specialists to make an informed selection about the tools and techniques which might best fit their own organisations.  They could tailor their own custom toolkit with just the right amount of “Geek Factor” and not too much learning curve.

One of my bugbears in KM circles is the way in which the labels KM 1.0, KM 2.0 and even KM 3.0 are used - as though knowledge management is only allowed to exist in a number of quantum states; or it’s a branch of scientology... Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan and big user of social media, and I think it has brought energy, connectivity, serendipity and a real-time edge to the field of knowledge management.  What it hasn’t done is to supersede the fundamentals of KM – the value of conversation, the importance of learning and reflection, the power of communities of practice, the need to both summarise and provide stories to preserve context.  Superceded?  No.  Provided a welcome shot of adrenaline?  Absolutely.

I believe that as KM professionals, we have a duty to remain aware of, and open to, the new tools and techniques which come our way.  Where we add value is in explaining how and when an approach or combination of approaches can have the biggest impact.   That might mean that this year, your organisation is KM 1.6, and next year it’s KM 2.17.  It’s our job to find out what number our organisations need. 

Sometimes we might be surprised that a simple, established KM tool has the biggest impact, just like I was surprised when my school friend trumped my prized Lamborghini card with his Isetta Bubble Car.  All because he was smart enough to choose fuel consumption as his category, rather than acceleration!

Somethin' Stupid - PM and KM?

Just enjoyed an excellent 3 days at the  10th anniversary Henley KM Forum. Against my better judgement, I provided (together with Martin Fisher), a little musical interlude as part of our project report on "knowledge-enabled project management", where we were exploring the perceptions that project managers have regarding knowledge management, and vice versa. So here is it, just in case you ever need it - Music courtesy of Frank Sinatra, words courtesy of yours truly...  KM (Frank) in black, PM (Nancy) in red!

Enjoy!

Somethin 'Stupid  (will KM and PM ever fall in love?)

I know I’ll stand in line

Until you think you have the time

To have a meeting with me.

And when I tell you all about

The way to give your  project clout

You’re pleading with me.

On time and cost and quality, your eyes grow large as you can see

why I’ve been sent.

But then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid

Knowledge management!

I can see it in your eyes

That you despise the same old lines

You think it’s just a fad.

I’ve got my targets and my plan,

I manage risks, you understand?

D'you really think I’m mad?

I manage all my stakeholders

and fill up all my sharepoint folders.

That’s what  I do.

I’m learning all the lessons though

I don’t know what’s the best one,

Or if it’s really true.

My project is unique,

No-one would seek to hear me speak, my learning to present.

And now you’ve gone  and spoilt it all by saying something stupid

“Knowledge management...”

If you were in my shoes

You mustn’t lose, what could you choose

To keep the board content?

I guess we’d find a way to save the day by just applying...

Knowledge Management

Through Project Management

<together> Good Management...  (to fade...)

Target Practice

Image by Nelson Pavlosky Urinals.  Do you spend much time looking at them?

This is just a guess, but for half of you, I’m assuming that the answer is “no”.  The other half of you are wondering where I’m going with this line of enquiry.

 If you have had the pleasure of using the urinals at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, you will have noticed that each one is embellished with a lifelike image of a fly, under the glaze – just near the drain.  Initially I dismissed this as merely an example of quirky humour from a Dutch sanitary-ware manufacturer, but I was too hasty. Apparently, since incorporating the fly into their urinals, airports and other public places have noticed a decrease in the amount of cleaning required. Some of these have improved to the extent that they have saved money by reducing the number of cleaning shifts.    If you haven’t figured out the link between the fly and the cost reduction, ask any small boy!

All of this got me thinking about how on-target we are in the way we exchange knowledge, good practices, worst practices and stories.  Despite our best efforts, do people sometimes miss the mark when it comes to knowledge exchange? 

As knowledge professionals, we work hard to use processes and social technologies to bring people together collaboratively.  On some precious occasions, we get to design and facilitate face-to-face knowledge-sharing events.  Occasionally, we even get to work on leadership behaviours and organisational design. 

In all of these worthy activities, we sometimes forget that knowledge management can also help groups of people to agree upon and describe their practices – and hence connect and share more efficiently because they have negotiated a common language.

Here’s an illustration.  In KM circles, we have talked for years about the value of nurturing communities of practice, and rightly so.  However, if we were to turn our “Community of Practice toolkits” out onto the table, the majority of our tools play into the notion of Community: role descriptions and training programmes for leaders and facilitators, templates for community charters, designs for launch events, no end of technology options for social collaboration and document management.

But what about the Practice bit?  Do we have anything in our toolkits to offer groups of professionals who want to agree upon “what’s important” and describe “what good looks like”?  Yes, we can provide wikis where people can discuss and build glossaries, definitions and reference material, but that’s a platform, rather than a process.

I’m advocating that as Knowledge Management professionals, we should be able to offer any group a simple process for describing their practices qualitatively, thereby enhancing their knowledge-sharing.   That could involve the creation of a self-assessment tool (maturity model) – or perhaps a knowledge asset which helps others to navigate through a distillation of past learning, current good practice, examples and key contacts. 

That’s more than installing a wiki, a Drupal community or a set of SharePoint libraries.  It requires  us to roll up our sleeves and engage with the subject  experts and practitioners.  It involves us in helping them to agree and describe their practice in an accessible way.  By helping them to produce a common model of the practices which make up their functional area, they will be able to target their knowledge-sharing far more precisely, and hence get more value from KM tools and techniques.

Or to put it another way - if our knowledge workers have something more clearly defined to aim at, then we’ll have to spend less time clearing up after them.

 First Published in the October Edition of Inside Knowledge

Elvis has left the Forum...

Elvis McGonagall - Performance Poet I had the pleasure of meeting "performance poet" Elvis McGonagal at the annual Henley KM Forum meeting last week. (Yes, he did wear that jacket.)

Elvis did a fantastic job of summarising the inputs from the likes of Bill Lucas from the Centre for Real World Learning at Winchester (who was inspirational), Leif Edvinsson, Raj Datta from Mindtree and Verna Allee, plus a number KM Forum projects from the last year - in a uniquely delivered poem.

He picked up from Vanessa Randle, of Thinking Visually, who has provided a brilliant visual summary of the conference for the last two years.   This year Vanessa taught the forum participants how to draw- one of these days I'll post my attempts up here...

Here's the final offering from Elvis, entitled Mister Know-it-All:

I've eaten all the fruit from the tree of knowledge

I know what's what, I know who's who

I know my onions, I know the ropes

I know a thing or two

I know the way to Amarillo

I know the way to San Jose

I know who let the dogs out

I know the time of day

I know what happened to The Likely Lads

I know what happened to Baby Jane

I know what's eating Gilbert Grape

I know the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain

I know who's been eating your porridge

I know who ate all the pies

I know which side my bread is buttered

I know the wheres, the whens, the whys

I know a hawk from a handsaw

I know chalk from cheese

I know they know it's Christmas

I know "thank you very much" in Japanese ("domo arrigato gazaimas")

I know where the bodies are buried

I know whodunnit, I know the score

I know what it's all about, Alfie

I know the capital of Ecuador (Quito)

I know how many roads a man must go down

I know where we go from here

I know why birds suddenly appear

Every time that you are near

I know the known knowns that I know I know

I know the unknown knowns that I don't

And as for Mr Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns -

Will I admit I don't know I don't know? No I won't

I know that unlike Barack Obama

Most politicians don't have a single scruple

I know that one of the speakers today

Used to be a roadie for Mott the Hoople

I'm a walking wikipedia

I'm a mobile reference library

I've got more knowledge than a London cabby

I know the quickest way from Highgate to Highbury

But little do you know that I know that you know

That I know what I know is no use

Unless I pass it on, put it over and get it across

There's no mileage in a mastermind recluse

For facts are fine as far as they go

As long as new ideas come from what we glean

Just knowing stuff is not enough

We gotta innovate - know what I mean?

And even if we know who wants to be a millionaire

We know they know that others must cooperate

That they'll have to ask the audience, they'll have to phone a friend

Communicate, convey, collaborate

We've got to work as a team, pull together

Join forces, pool resources, play ball

We gotta sail in the same boat baby

It's all for one and one for all

So - I know who put the "ram" in the "ramalamadingdong"

I know who put the "bop" in the "bop-sh-bop"

But the best piece of knowledge I'll share with you today is -

I know when to stop

by Elvis McGonagall

for the KM Forum Conference

January 2009

Bridge-building in Bangalore

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

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

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

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