When answers aren't clever...

Naguib Mahfouz was a Nobel prizewinning Egyptian author who published over 50 novels, and died a few years ago, aged 95.  I have to confess right now that I haven’t read any of his work - but I often cite one of his quotations, and use it in my "Quotations Gallery" icebreaker exercise:

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”

I think that nicely articulates some of the problems we see in discussion forums and other knowledge exchanges, and one of the reasons that communities of practice are sometimes difficult to get started. We can coach and  encourage people to be wise – to be willing to ask questions and request help and advice – that’s a healthy and valuable stimulus for discussions within a community. However, often the person reading their requests can feel that they need to provide “clever answers”. All too often, that’s where it stops.

I was talking with a knowledge manager last week who has been supporting communities in her organisation for several years, and has had particular success with her on-line discussion forums.  I often find myself working with organisations who are struggling to sustain momentum with this kind of thing, so I was interested to see what was different in her approach.  She talked me though the way the forum worked.

“and this is our Q&R section..”, she commented, clicking deftly through the tabs in the software.

“Q&R?  What’s that?”. I stopped her.

“Q&R?  Why, it’s questions and responses.  We used to call it “questions and answers”, but we found that it inhibited people who didn’t feel that they had a complete answer, but were willing to offer some kind of a response.”

I think that’s a great insight.  When we use the word “answer”, we raise the stakes for anyone thinking about making a contribution. But if I’m just being asked for a response, and the requester will make a decision on how to interpret and apply it... well, that’s a far less threatening proposition, for the person answering and the person asking.

ConocoPhillips, another company whose KM activities I admire, structure their discussion forums under the banner of “Ask and Discuss”.  You want me to join in a discussion?  That sounds fine!

I blogged earlier about a technique called “Speed Consulting”, which applies time pressure to a problem-solving meeting so that sharing “consultants” only have time to offer imperfect suggestions – rather than perfect solutions. It’s the same principle.

So let’s leave it to the people who ask the questions, to derive their own answers from our responses and inputs into the discussion.  After all, as Naguib would say, they’re the wise ones.

To be published in the next edition of Inside Knowledge

 

No marks for clever answers... (but I bet the examiner smiled!)

BP Oil Spill, Knowledge Management and HBR

Tom Davenport posted an interesting blog in the HBR site this week, entitled: If Only BP Knew Now What it Knew Then where he asserted a relationship between the BP Oil spill, and the reduction of its knowledge management programme.

It's something which Geoff and I have receive many questions on, so I thought it might be helpful to cross-post our responses to Tom's blog here:~

Chris Collison

As the other author of “Learning to Fly”, let me add to what Geoff has written, which I agree wholeheartedly with.

It’s been desperately, desperately sad to see the unnecessary loss of life. Tragic to see the environmental impact. Shocking to see the commercial impact. Disturbing, yet understandable, to see the media, political and public reaction.

Being good at knowledge management doesn’t make you immune from making a poor decision, but being put on a pedestal for long enough can give you vertigo. I’m sure Toyota, another veteran of Knowledge Management would agree. As Larry wrote – all that any of us can do is work to improve the odds. I believe that BP’s knowledge management and organisational learning efforts have diminished in recent years, and what was once an almost instinctive culture of learning and sharing between peers has become diluted. I think Tom’s allowing himself some poetic licence in his use of the word ‘relic’, but I don’t disagree with the thrust of his argument. Like Geoff, I’ve been away from BP for too long to offer an informed view as to how much sharing and learning was going on around its operations at the time of the events in Tom’s post.

Clearly something went very wrong.

Hopefully we will learn the what, why, when, how and who of what went wrong over the coming months or years of review and inquiry. Perhaps we’ll find that there are positive knowledge-sharing and collaboration stories which also emerge, showing how competitors, partners and individuals joined with BP to work to remedy the situation. Possibly we’ll discover will be some Apollo 13 paragraphs within this Challenger story? After the final traces of crude have been dispersed, the food-chain has purged itself of the pollutant effects, the rightful compensation paid and livelihoods restored – what will the legacy of learning be for the oil industry? I really hope that the genuine learning is surfaced and shared, and isn’t drowned out by the noise of the legal machinery.

TS Elliot famously wrote: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" Perhaps today he would have added: “Where is the learning we have lost in litigation.”

Now that might make another interesting article, Tom.

Geoff Parcell

I am one of the authors of “Learning to Fly” and I have been watching the response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with a mixture of anguish, sadness and concern. It is almost 9 years since the first edition of “Learning to Fly” was published, and more than 5 years since I left employment with BP, following a period of secondment to the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS. I don’t feel in a position to judge whose fault it was, whether the response was adequate, or whether sharing and learning was adequate within BP. I’ll leave that to others.

However there are three main themes on the topic of knowledge management that seem relevant to this story:

1. What knowledge and information are we basing our views on? 2. What sort of environment has been created for collaborating and learning? 3. How well have the risks been managed?

Let’s deal with these in turn.

1. Most of the information we have to base our views on are directly from the media - television, the internet and the press. My Member of Parliament in the UK, David Heath, recently wrote a press article on the future of political reporting.

“I am very worried about the standards of political and other reporting. If we need new politics, then perhaps we need a new journalism too.

Much that is written in the national newspapers is sloppy and under-researched. A lot of it comes from press releases and chats over lunch rather than looking for facts. As a result, much of it is drivel. On top of that you have a layer of unconcealed prurience masquerading as incisive investigation, concentrating on celebrity and trivia over substance, and the whole edifice looks remarkably shallow.”

I have some sympathy with this point of view. The press has moved from reporting news events to providing instant analysis and answers, assigning blame, searching out the high numbers (of casualties, demonstrators or barrels of oil spilt.) Accuracy is not the aim, finding the highest number someone is prepared to state is. In addition, the internet reinforces extreme views by replication, which has the effect of seeming more convincing even though there is no more information.

At the same time BP is providing its own information - video feeds of the well head, video explanations of each attempt to cap the well and stop the flow. Some think there is a bias to that information.

We make our judgements based on the information provided, coupled with our own knowledge, biases and values.

2. One of the biggest barriers to learning the lessons from mistakes is the litigious society we have created. Learning and sharing takes place in a trusting environment. So many incidents - from train crashes, to fires, to conflict situations, to explosions -are subject to litigation that people are afraid to open their mouths. Even for minor car crashes our insurance companies instruct us not to admit liability even when our instinct is to explain our actions and assumptions to others involved. There are few reports of collaboration for this response. BP did acknowledge cooperation between various government agencies and itself. Other oil companies have provided knowledge, experts, equipment and advice to support. I’d have liked to have seen much more cooperation especially with the US government to fix the problem and clean up first, then learn the lessons, and only then address the issue of who pays and who if any is negligent. What I saw and read was a mix of assigning blame, politicking and maintaining reputation; hardly the environment conducive to listening and learning from each other. What are the chances of really learning the lessons so that we can prevent something like this occurring again?

3. We need to manage the risks and for that we need knowledge. As individuals we rarely avoid risks altogether else we’d never get out of bed. We all handle risks not avoid them. When we assess the risk we judge the probability of occurrence, the impact if it happens and the amount of control of influence we have to mitigate the risk. It does come down to judgement and that judgement comes down to having the relevant knowledge.

Malcolm Gladwell in “Blink” shows examples where only a small amount of knowledge is required to make a decision. People who are risk averse often seek more and more knowledge rather than make a judgement. We need less knowledge than we think to make a decision, rather we need the right balance of knowledge and judgement according to our tolerance to risk. What concerned me was not that BP took risks but the response plan to mitigate the risk did not seem to be operational.

The basic principles of Knowledge Management outlined in “Learning to Fly” are as relevant as ever and are being applied within and between many organizations around the world. It is the application of the techniques that matters and the actions taken once you have the knowledge.

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"....

So, what is Knowledge Management?

Having been working in this field for over 15 years now, I've finally got around to recording a short video which describes what's "under the umbrella" of  knowledge management!  David Gurteen has been asking people this question for years and recording their responses, but never seems to have his camera when we meet....  (at least, that's what he tells me!)It's harder than I thought - KM is such a "broad church" now, so I've done my best  to be reasonably succinct.  There are still bits which I missed, like the contribution it makes to ideas generation and innovation - but perhaps I'll leave that for another video, another time!

Here's the transcript:

Knowledge Management is a set of tools, techniques, methods, ways of working, even behaviours - that are all designed to help an organisation to be more effective.  Simple as that.

So how then does knowledge management differ from other toolkits or management movements like SixSigma or Lean?

To me the difference is that Knowledge Management focuses on the know-how and the know who – how do you put that to work more effectively in an organisation. How do you share the key points, rules of thumb? How do you ensure that the right contacts are made such that people have the conversations they need to have at the beginning of  a project, before everyone gets into action? So for that reason Knowledge management is quite a broad church of techniques and approaches (for me, that’s what makes it so interesting!).

So you could  find yourself looking at tools which help you to identify and support the networks or communities ofpractice in an organisation, ways of mapping how people are connected, ways of improvingthose connections - looking at who talks to whom, who trusts whom, and how you can optimise that.

You could equally look at how good an organisation is at learning – learning before activities, learning after activities.  How do you ensure that the lessons you capture after a project are meaningful and full of recommendations and useful actions points for somebody.

It could be about how you encourage a team to learn continuously, rather than waiting until the end of major project before they take the time to pause and reflect.

It could equally well be about how we capture knowledge such that the value can be multiplied.   How do you take a nugget or insight and capture it in such a way that people are intrigued, interested, want to read more and want to get in touch with the person who wrote it. How do you package that up in a way which doesn’t destroy all of the emotion, the context, but seems to carry it with it . Much more use of multimedia, much more use of connections to some of the social media tools, so that you’re only ever one click away from a conversation.  Finally it has a lot to do with the way we behave, the way in which we work, the culture which we establish and support or nurture, or come against as leaders in organisations. How do you come against a “Not-invented-here” culture? How do you support and make it safe for people to share their experiences and learn from those, to share their failures as well as successes?

Knowledge management encompasses all of these things, behaviours, technologies, processes. learning, networks - and for me, that’s what makes it such an exciting discipline.

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...

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.”

No More Consultants. We know more than we think.

At last!  After over a year of blood sweat and tears, a small forest of paper,  a well-used box.net collaboration space and far too many late night emails, Geoff Parcell and I have written another book together. To the alarm of my wife and children, not to mention my mortgage lender,  this one is entitled "No More Consultants.  We know more than we think."

So are we really saying that there is no need for consultants?

Jon Theuerkauf, MD at Credit Suisse answers that question perfectly for me in his endorsement on the back of the book:

"Look, of course we need outside input, if not we might as be staring at our belly-buttons.  The point that is being made in No More Consultants is companies spend pennies in mining their own internal knowledge and expertise compared to the multi-millions spent on going outside first!  How does that make any sense or cents?"

And that's exactly it.   We really do know more than we think.  But we don't think enough.  Geoff and I wrote the book to guide organisations towards making smarter, more purposeful, more targeted use of consultants.  After all, nobody ever got fired for hiring <<insert your favourite management consultancy here>>.   That might be true - but a whole lot of your staff might have become disenfranchised.  The same staff, who (after the glossy PowerPoint presentation has been delivered, and that large invoice has been submitted) will be expected to help implement the recommendations.  Recommendations which perhaps they could have come up with themselves.

If only they'd been asked.

As Jon so neatly puts it.  How does that make any sense or cents?

Hope you enjoy the video. And the book. 

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!

A minor case of Corporate Amnesia. US forgets how to make Trident missiles...

Came across this story via Twitter (@davidgurteen) RT KerrieAnnes Blog, via Slashdot...

I wonder how many other fogbanks we'll look back on in a few years time, as a consequence of the current financial crisis?  Still, I guess all that investment in re-learning and re-inventing will provide the global economy with a much needed boost...

US FORGETS HOW TO MAKE TRIDENT MISSILES.

I was incredulous and had always assumed  that military types save lots of records ... in the last year we had been issued with my father's World War II Australian Army service records. And thinking back to TV shows like Cold Case and documentaries on the 1919 Influenza Pandemic tends to lull you into a belief that the USA has enormous records repositories with nothing thrown away.

The story was released to Slashdot by Hugh Pickens on March 9 2009 and within a day was  relayed across over 500 web pages globally presumably via RSS feeds and blog following.  The situation is astonishing - and indicates the cost of not maintaining good archives ... it was hard to believe - but then more conventional news sites were also running the story, including Fox News on March 9 2009 . Within 3 days the 500 web pages had to grown to over 1500 covering the story. In fact initially the story seemed to be just a beat-up & re-run of a  New Scientist story covered a year earlier in its March 8 2008 issue and the UK's Guardian also on March 6 2008. However those aspects did not seem to feature in the US Congressional Defense FY 2009 Expenditure Hearings transcripts.

Hugh Pickens  wrote "The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the aging W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles to prolong their life and ensure they are safe and reliable but plans have been put on hold because US scientists have forgotten how to manufacture a mysterious but very hazardous component of the warhead codenamed Fogbank.

 'NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency,' says the report by a US congressional committee.

Fogbank is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of the thermonuclear bomb on the Trident Missile and US officials say that manufacturing Fogbank requires a solvent cleaning agent which is 'extremely flammable' and 'explosive,' and that the process involves dealing with 'toxic materials' hazardous to workers. '

This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them,' says John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, adding that 'perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept.' Thomas D'Agostino, administrator or the US National Nuclear Security Administration, told a congressional committee that the administration was spending 'a lot of money' trying to make 'Fogbank' at Y-12, but 'we're not out of the woods yet.'"

And it might have all seemed like  a conspiracy story by the Anti-Nuclear Fraternity ... however in fact it is all officially reported in a March 2009 US GAO (Government Accountability Office) Report - viz

"At the beginning of the W76 life extension program in 2000, NNSA identified key technical challenges that would potentially cause schedule delays or cost overruns. One of the highest risks was manufacturing Fogbank because it is difficult to manufacture. In addition, NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency. Finally, NNSA had to build a new facility at the Y-12 plant because the facilities that produced Fogbank ceased operation in the 1990s and had since been dismantled, except for a pilot plant used to produce small quantities of Fogbank for test purposes.

 To address these concerns, NNSA developed a risk management strategy for Fogbank with three key components:

(1) building a new Fogbank production facility early enough to allow time to re-learn the manufacturing process and resolve any problems before starting full production;

(2) using the existing pilot plant to test the Fogbank manufacturing process while the new facility was under construction; and

(3) developing an alternate material that was easier to produce than Fogbank.

However, NNSA failed to effectively implement these three key components. As a result, it had little time to address unexpected technical challenges and no guaranteed source of funding to support risk mitigation activities."

Interestingly, some sort of solution must have been found as one refurbished W76 has just gone back into the stockpile, according National Nuclear Security Administration's February 23 2009 media release. 

Ultimately a new facility was built at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to begin production of Fogbank once again, but was delayed by poor planning, cost overruns and a failed effort to find an alternative to Fogbank, and so the project overran by a crucial year costing at least an extra $US69 million  according to the GAO report.