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...

How "steal with pride" did battle with "not invented here"...

I often tell this story (complete with the parrot and gold doubloons!) when engaging leaders in thinking about practical steps thay can take to demonstrate their commitment to learning from others.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r6NlU7Guro&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

To summarise - and for those of you for whom YouTube is still a corporate no-go area:

A business unit leader in Amoco recognized that insular "not-invented-here" behaviour was limiting the potential of his business, which existed within a group of around 100 business units in the newly-merged BP Amoco. He wanted to create a culture of curiosity, encouraging his staff to look beyond the boundaries of their own business unit. He decided to create a simple monthly recognition scheme, under the banner of "steal with pride". The award was given to a member of staff who could demonstrate that they had found a good practice from a different business unit, applied it, and created value. Each story would be celebrated on the intranet, and the winner received an award in the form of a cuddly parrot, which would sit on the desk of the winner for a month (prompting questions from passers-by), before moving onto the next winner, and leaving in its place, a solid gold "pirate" doubloon worth several hundred dollars - which was theirs to keep.

I think that the parrot worked particularly well as a recognition scheme because it was visible, lighthearted, symbolic ("steal with pride" - giving permission to look outside), frequently awarded, and both clearly supported - and initiated -  by that business unit leader.

Ironically, the "steal with pride" award scheme wasn't replicated by the leaders of the other 99  business units. Perhaps they had their own personal struggles with "not invented here"....

Learning before Igloo-building

With the schools snowbound and closed for a few extra days last month, I persuaded my daughters to help me make an igloo. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. It took a lot longer than I thought and the pretence that this was “Dad helping them” began to slip after a while as and my co-labourers needed a hot chocolate break or two along the way.   I improvised with Tupperware boxes to make my bricks, learned as I went, and bullied/bribed my girls to hold up the walls when we got to the tricky bits. Getting the final block in the roof was an act of sheer desperation and good fortune.    We made it!  Not quite the classical dome shape, I’ll admit, but it lasted the night before a surprise skylight window appeared the following morning, quickly followed by total collapse.  You would think that after 41 years of waiting for that perfect snow, I would have known exactly how to make an igloo; but I didn’t.There is no shortage of material, videos and step-by-step instructions on the web .  A Google search on “how to build an igloo” yields 673,000 results, including some excellent step-by-step videos on YouTube.  If I’d bothered to look at even the first two of these, then I would have known that the whole thing is built as a self-supporting spiral.  After my first layer of snow bricks, I should have cut a shallow incline up the wall to create the beginning of my spiral; but I didn’t.  No, Google and YouTube didn’t let me down.  The fact is, I just wanted to get out there with my brick-making and build.

All traces of the igloo have now melted away, but I’m left reflecting on the way I approached the challenge.  How often in an organizational situation do we get carried away with misplaced self-belief, a little (but not enough) knowledge, a little too much ego and  an eager desire to just roll up our sleeves and get on with it?  How often do we deliver something that looks roughly right, but like my igloo, doesn’t withstand the test of time?

As knowledge professionals, it’s easy to sink time and money into making content more easily accessible, navigable, and searchable.  We can construct elegant wikis, enliven our intranets with RSS and real-time twitter feeds, but none of this will  guarantee a better outcome when people have their “igloo moments”.   Sometimes, it’s not because people lack access to the knowledge or the time to find it.  Rather it’s because they just want to get out there and try it their own way – because it’s something they’ve always wanted to.

So what might have caused me to build my igloo better? Perhaps a friend out there with me in the garden that day, saying – “Hey, I’ve tried this before.  If you want it to last, then need to build it this way...” A challenge for better performance from someone I trusted, and the benefit of their first-hand experience exactly at the moment I needed it.  Now that’s a pretty good vision for a knowledgeable, learning organization.

Finally, just to prove that my jokes are no better than my igloo-building skills...

One Eskimo enviously asks another Eskimo: “Which book did you read to find out how to build such a perfect igloo?” The other Eskimo replies:

“Oh that’s easy; I didn’t have to read it anywhere.  Inuit.”

The heAARt of the Learning Hospital...

I had the opportunity to visit University College London Hospital (UCLH) last week (but not as a patient!).  Two years ago I blogged about their visions to become University College Learning Hospital, and the efforts that they were making to introduce  After Action Reviews into the culture of the Hospital.  Two years later, they have developed their Learning Hospital – an environment where full simulations  - administrative, board meetings, clinical situations  - could be carried out with actors.

This very real experience is then the basis for staff to conduct after action reviews, to be videoed, review and discuss with their colleagues, together with the Learning Hospital expert staff.  So far, 400 staff have become “AAR Conductors”, carrying out reviews in a variety of situations.

I was struck by the sheer quality of the Learning Hospital and also their innovative marketing approach.  I liked the take-off of “being John Malkovich”,  in which a selection of AAR Conductors had their fifteen minutes of fame.

It's a real credit to Steve Andrews and Professor Aidan Halligan - and I'm not doing them justice in such a short blog.  I'll  write  a more considered piece with them and post it in the future...

Of all the marketing posters though, I loved the IKEA After Action Review instructions the most - perhaps because I could identify with them so well!

Inspired, Steve!   The US Army would be proud of you!

Chimps, Grapes and the cultural power of social learning

Came across this article on the BBC website today.  Interesting to read the interpretation that power of "social learning" in the chimp community is so strong that  the chimps stopped innovating and adapting, and complied with "what they had learned" - however inappropriate and suboptimal that approach was.

Now we can all smile at the chimps with their sticks and grapes - but I can see some parallels here with how culture develops in organisations, and what we learned once about something which works, left unchallenged becomes a barrier to future adaptation. Which in turn, is why I have such a struggle with the term "best practice".

Reminds me of the old apes, the banana and the water spray story.

Here's the BBC article:

Copycat chimps build their own tools after watching video demonstrations.

During a study, the animals were shown footage of a trained chimp combining two components to construct a tool that enabled it to reach a food reward.

When given the same two components, the chimps made their own tools and used them to drag over a tasty treat.

Reporting in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, scientists say this demonstrates what a "potent effect" social learning has in the primates.

Elizabeth Price, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, led the research.

"With video, we can control exactly how much information the animals see, so we can understand exactly how much information they need to work out how to do the task," she explained.

This type of behaviour is very rare in the wild

Elizabeth Price St Andrews University

Dr Price and her colleagues put the chimps into five groups during the test.

One of the groups was shown the whole demonstration - where a chimp was handed a rod and a tube that it slotted together. The demonstrator then used this longer composite tool to retrieve a grape from a platform outside its cage.

The other groups were shown progressively less information - with one group just shown the chimp eating its grape.

The researchers then recreated the set-up for the subjects.

They placed a grape on a platform against the outside of each chimp's cage, and handed the animals a rod and a plastic tube.

"Those chimps that saw the full demonstration learned better how to construct the necessary tool (to reach the food)," Dr Price told BBC News.

"The fact that they can learn how to build a better tool for a particular task is very exciting. This type of behaviour is very rare in the wild, and it's an essential part of human tool use."

Watch and learn

"A handful of the chimps that weren't shown the full demonstration learned how to make the tool on their own," said Dr Price.

Chimpanzees usually modify sticks by stripping them of their leaves

"What was interesting about this group was that, when we presented them with the grape at different distances from the cage, they made the appropriate tool to reach it."

Rather than faithfully copy the demonstration, these animals switched between using the unmodified tube or rod, and using the combined tool, depending on how far away the grape was.

"Those that had been shown the full demonstration, and had socially learned to make the longer tool, continued to make it even when the grape was so close that it was more awkward to use," said Dr Price.

"It could be that social learning is such a strong force for the chimps that they apply a blanket rule of 'go with what you've seen' (rather than work out what's most appropriate for the task)."

The team is now planning to carry out the same test in young children to find out how much they rely on social learning.

What the team still do not know why this type of tool-building is not seen more commonly in the wild.

"We've shown that they're clever enough, so there must be something else at play," said Dr Price.

"It may be that when chimpanzees reach an age at which they are... capable of performing these higher level techniques, they may be too old to have access to sufficiently tolerant demonstrators."

Elvis has left the Forum...

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

Learning in the NHS - from Pilots and F1!

Great to see the National Health Service looking beyond its boundaries for techniques to improve its learning... From bbc.co.uk last week:  The lessons pilots can teach surgeons

Which reminded me of this great story from Great Ormond Street: Ferrari pit stop saves Alexander's life

I wonder what lessons surgeons can teach pilots?

Taking lessons back to school...

I've been thinking recently about "Lessons Learned", and how widely that term is used and abused, both inside and outside KM and Organisational Learning circles.  How often in the press do we see Government departments, Football managers, Chief Police Officers et al utter the immortal words:  "we will be learning the lessons from this..."?

I wonder what this really means.  Is a lesson learned when it is identified by a reflecting practitioner, after a specific experience?  Is it learned when it is codified and made available for others, in specific or abstract form?  Or is a lesson learned when another individual has applied it, and experimented with it?

That was the basis of Kolb's learning cycle...

kolb.jpg

...but I'm not sure that I could point to many examples of organisations where this cycle of organizational learning represents the norm.  Not

really.

The

Centre for Wildfire Lessons

puts it nicely: 

"A lesson is truly learned when we modify our behavior to reflect what we now know."

What I do see a lot of is something more like this.

Let's call it "Collison's Ignorance Spiral"

(I hope the name doesn't catch on!).

cis.jpg

Somehow, the "abstract conceptualisation" bit seems to wear a bit thin - too many motherhood statements in lessons learned reports which fester on electronic shelves.   Now it might be that a deliberate abstract conceptualisation step can be short-circuited completely, through storytelling and the rapid exchanges and collaboration available through social media.  Perhaps abstract conceptualisation is a personal, subconscious step, rather than a clumsy organisationally imposed process. I need to think more about that one. 

But I'm still left with a lingering doubt that

we just aren't very good at designing lessons with a (future) learner in mind

. I've been in a number of lessons learned reviews where the intent of the meeting seems to be catharsis for the team or compliance with the process, rather than learning for the organisation.

So, just for fun - what does a well designed lesson look like in a

school

? 

Let's take a primary school lesson as an example (especially as I have a primary teacher conveniently sitting beside me right now!). I am reliably informed that a well designed lesson will have the following components.

Introduction - explain what you want them to learn; clear objectives. Test past learning, build on the results of past learning. Provide exemplar expectations - what would "good" look like? Be accessible to different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic). Be capable of differentiate to multiple levels of capability. Combination of activity-based learning and theoretical-based learning, individual and group. Have a list of accessible resources. Conclude with a  plenary to summarise and test what has  been learned.

How do the lessons in your organisation measure up to that checklist?  Perhaps I should spend more time in the classroom...

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…

Dubai invests $10bn in a "knowledge-based society"..

Saw this interesting full page advertisement describing one of the largest charitable donations in history in today's Times.  Sounds like a laudable goal...   We know what a learning organisation looks like - but what about a learning Kingdom?

10 Billion Dollars

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the establishment of his foundation with an endowment of 10 billion dollars, focusing on human development in the region. The foundation will facilitate and promote knowledge creation and dissemination, and will nurture future leaders, providing them with equal opportunities with the aim of building a knowledge-based society.

Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation

www.mbrfoundation.ae

More background from bbc.co.uk here