| 10/11/08 | | Ask a gardner what she knows, in a garden |
Remembering experiences is heavily dependent on surroundings. I’m currently helping an energy company learn the lessons from retiring employees. I’m videoing their experiences with the view to facilitating sessions using the footage; it’s not really about capturing knowledge, just sparking new conversation based on what’s captured. My last subject was the company’s network controller. He’d been in the role for 10 years and I interviewed him in his office, which was right next to the control room. The control room looks like a mini version of the one from the movie The China Syndrome. His office has a window looking into the control room and it is festooned with charts and whiteboard diagrams. Everywhere you look are computer screens. He has a large table in the middle of his office, which has been the site of many disaster response war rooms. He was brimming with stories.
The network controller was retiring two weeks after my interview and I asked whether I could interview him again at his home. He was happy to help. A month later we met in his lounge room and the response was noticeably different. The stories weren’t as rich. It was harder for him to recall the events. The surroundings didn’t contain the memories and prompters to help him remember what he knew. Surroundings make a big difference to what people can recall.
This pattern repeated itself yesterday, but in a positive way. I had lunch with Patrick Lambe in Singapore and after dim sum (and a durian fruit dessert) we jumped in a cab and visited one of Singapore's best book stores, Kinokuniya. We wandered around the store chatting and the book covers that grabbed our attention sparked new threads in our conversation. Really enjoyable albeit an expensive outing. Here are the books I bought:
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius
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| 4/11/08 | | Knowledge strategy: little things making a difference |
The actKM conference was held in Canberra in mid October. One of the presenters was Jane Chrystal from the Central West Catchment Management Authority who were one of the pilot sites for the Regional Knowledge Resource Kit (RKRK) project. The RKRK project developed a process and supporting resources for the various Natural Resource Management regions to develop their own knowledge strategies.
Jane mentioned that one of the actions from their knowledge strategy has had a big impact. This simple action was for all staff to write a clear description in the subject line of their emails. Adopting this practice has helped staff deal with information overload by being able to quickly identify emails that they need to deal with, and which ones can be simply deleted. I recall when we were working with Jane and her team that another 'small' initiative was to encourage people to travel together as much as possible when driving around the region - the idea being that car trips are an ideal time to have conversations, build relationships and share knowledge.
Congratulations to Nerida Hart and the Knowledge for Regional NRM team from Land & Water Australia on receiving the actKM Platinum Award for their achievements in developing the RKRK and related activities. Anecdote is proud to have had a major role in supporting the RKRK project and we really enjoyed working with Nerida and her team on this project.
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| 6/10/08 | | MLA London knowledge transfer project |
MLA stands for Museums and Libraries Association and my friend Victoria Ward has recently finished a tremendous project using narrative techniques to help MLA London understand and enhance the way in which Museums and Libraries are used in London. The bonanza for narrative and knowledge practitioners is that the MLA and Sparknow (Victoria's company) have shared their findings, method and initial pilot descriptions for everyone to download.
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| 30/09/08 | | Brain rules |
I'm reading John Medina's Brain Rules and thoroughly enjoying it. Here's a snippet illustrating his humorous style while making an important point.
Any learning environment that deals with only the database instincts [our ability to memorise things] or only the improvisatory instincts [our ability to imagine things] ignores one half of our ability. It is doomed to fail. It makes me think of jazz guitarists: They're not going to make it if they know a lot about music theory but don't know how to jam in a live concert. Some schools and workplaces emphasize a stable, rote-learning database. They ignore the the improvisatory instincts drilled unto us for millions of years. Creativity suffers. Others emphasize usage of a database, without installing a fund of knowledge in the first place. They ignore our need to obtain deep understanding of a subject, which includes memorizing and storing a richly structured database. You get people who are great improvisers but don't have depth of knowledge. You may know someone like this where you work. They may look like jazz musicians and have the appearance of jamming, but in the end they know nothing. They're playing intellectual air guitar.
Apart from a great last sentence, this paragraph is a warning against the pendulum swinging between rote and improvisation. I suspect we are at the impro end at the moment and at risk of being guitar heros.
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| 9/09/08 | | Storytelling as a study technique |
A few posts ago I described one of the reasons why stories are memorable: they evoke emotion.
But stories are also memoriable because they create a framework for us to hang ideas, facts and concepts from.
Thanks to Daryl Cook and the magic of delicious I read this post on how to use storytelling to remember your what you have just learned in a lecture.
- After each class, tell a “story” about the material covered—a five minute summary of the concepts that drove the lecture.
- Don’t bother writing it down. Instead, just say it to yourself while walking to your next class. Treat it like you’re a literary agent or movie producer pitching the lecture at an important meeting.
- Cover the big picture flow of ideas, not the small details. Answer the question “why was this lecture important?”, not all the information it contained. Play up the flashy or unexpected.
Read the rest of Cal's post for good examples and the full reasoning.
This is also relevant for those of us in the workplace who attend conferences, seminars or just have to bone up on a new topic for, say, a new job.
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| 18/07/08 | | Unfinished business enhances mindfulness |
The story goes that Bluma Zeigarnik was sitting in a cafe in Vienna (as all good psychologists do) and noticed that the waiters were able to remember long and complicated orders up to the point where the orders were delivered to the table and placed in front of the correct patron. After this point the order was completely forgotten. This simple observation triggered a series of experiments where Bluma found that if something is left incomplete it creates a psychic tension which makes a person more mindful and open to learning. It's now called the Zeigarnik Effect. Or perhaps more simply, suspense.
I heard a story-based example of the Zeigarnik effect this week. A presenter started their talk with a story and stopped just as it was getting interesting, creating psychic tension and probably some considerable annoyance. He then proceeded with the rest of his talk and completed the story at the end of the presentation. People were on the edge of their seats throughout I'm told. I've gotta give this a go.
This effect reminds me that you can use this desire for completion in other ways:
If you want to come up with a list of ideas write, "There are five things to consider:" and jot down 5 dots points (just the dots) and you will be surprised how easy it is to come up with the 5 ideas.
Thanks to Jay Cross for introducing me to this phenomenon.
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| 14/07/08 | | What's real work at your work? |
Last week I ran a half day workshop to get a group thinking about their knowledge strategy. We got into a conversation about what things constrain knowledge-related practices such as peer assists, after action reviews, decision games etc., and one of the participants hit the nail on the head, "we have our real work and then everything else is an add on."
So if knowledge practices are not defined as 'real work' then you will face an uphill battle.
How might you turn things around? Here's an approach using Patterson et al's Influencer model.
Identify the vital behaviours you want to encourage. Search for these behaviours by seeking out people and groups who are already great at incorporating knowledge-related practices and observe them, collect stories about how they get things done. Compare these observations with groups who are poor at implementing knowledge-related behaviours.
A vital behaviour might be: Managers ask how the after action review went and what was learned from the process.
So now you need to encourage this behaviour (and probably 2 or 3 others, not 8 or 10 others). The Influencer model suggests 6 sources of influence to draw on. There are two basic questions that must be answered in the positive for someone to change: Is it worth it? and Can I do it? These two questions are reflected in the two columns in this diagram, motivation and ability.
1. Make the undesirable desirable. This is all about tapping into people's intrinsic motivators. For example, in this case you might focus on what it means to be a professional and the upmost importance of learning.
2. Surpass your limits. You can't expect people to adopt new practices without building new skills. This source of influence is about helping people build their abilities. It's about giving opportunities to try things out, engage in deliberate practice and obtain fast and effective feedback.
3. Harness peer pressure. If people you respect are doing it then it's more likely you will do it. Find the opinion leaders and get them on board first. The rest will follow.
4. Find strength in numbers. Actively build your social networks so you can tap into them when needed.
5. Design rewards and demand accountability. Use rewards carefully and only after the other sources of influence have been exercised. Link the extrinsic rewards to the vital behaviours rather than outcomes.
6. Change the environment. Physical spaces affect the way we work. Give people visual cues, create places to work, use the physical environment to reinforce the behaviours you desire.
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| 2/07/08 | | Immediate feedback in the moment |
The best way to learn a practical skill is to receive immediate, helpful feedback while you are performing the task. I was reminded of this fact this morning at our junior basketball competition. Next to each referee was an apprentice referee in a green shirt, whistle in mouth ready to make the call. They get six weeks of working with an experienced ref but only get their stripes when they can demonstrate their ability to confidently and accurately blow their whistle and do what a ref needs to do.
So why don't we employ a similar approach in the workplace? Managing staff, conducting performance reviews, facilitating sales meetings, leading teams, co-ordinating communities of practice, and I'm sure you can think of a heap of others, are practical skills you need to learn which you just can't read from a book.
I suspect workplace cultures make these types of apprenticeship initiatives embarrassing. "I've been employed to do this job and I can't let anyone know I have a lot to learn. Plus I don't want to bother anyone else." Organisations that make an apprenticeship approach just part of the norm are going reap the rewards.
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| 7/06/08 | | Your brain and presentations |
Garr Reynolds is the presentation guru and he's developed a series of book reviews done in an engaging and informative way using, you guessed it, presentations (search slideshare for Garr's presentations). Here's one on, Brain Rules.
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| 26/05/08 | | Lost knowledge? |
The building in the left foreground of the image is the historic Hyde Park Barracks Museum in Sydney. The building at the back behind the tree is an extension to the equally historic NSW Lands Department building (right of shot). Apparently there was great care taken and no expense spared to ensure that the brickwork of the extension was an exact match for the brickwork on the Hyde Park Barracks building. "Not very successful" I hear you cry! The story goes that after the extension was completed some bright spark decided to steam clean the brickwork on Hyde Park Barracks, revealing the true colour of the brickwork and leaving the unsightly mismatch shown in the photo.
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| 11/05/08 | | The difference between knowledge and information |
"Not that old chestnut" I hear you cry.
We have written a whitepaper on this subject and blogged on it a few times. It keeps the KM list serves across the planet pre-occupied for a few months each year.
I recently had coffee with a client to get an update on the implementation of the knowledge strategy we did for them a while back. The client described good progress in many areas but highlighted one of the things holding them back was the continuing confusion/uncertainty about the difference between information management and knowledge management. This was despite an extensive education campaign to get a consistent 'language' in place across the organisation on order to minimise the roadblocks to implementation.
This reinforced to me that we should just stop 'pushing the proverbial up a hill' on this one. My suggestion to the client was to stop talking about knowledge management. It is much easier to grasp concepts like 'better information management' on the one hand, and 'improved collaboration and learning' on the other. This conception makes it much clearer that there is a big 'people' and 'process/practice' component to the task.
Knowledge strategy = Information Management + [Collaboration and Learning]
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| 11/04/08 | | Why should we care about mystery stories? |
Robert Cialdini discovered a secret to learning in 2005. As a world-leading psychologist he was surprised he didn’t already know this secret but now swears by it. He was researching a new psychology book he wanted to write for a general audience and wanted to know the characteristics of effective science writing for an informed public readership. Most of his review confirmed what he already knew: must have a clear and focussed point, well written, concrete examples. The big surprise for Robert was that the best examples where written in the format of a mystery story.
Robert’s laboratory is his classroom so he tried out the approach there. A typical lecture, before using the mystery story format, would end with his students starting to pack up five minutes before the lecture’s scheduled finishing time. When he presented the same information as a mystery story, and he was yet to reveal the who’d dunnit, the students remained totally engaged and didn’t move, even after the lecture was supposed to have finished. It was like magic.
So here is the structure Cialdini discovered in his review and then wrote up in volume 24 of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
- Pose the mystery
- Deepen the mystery
- Home in on the proper explanation by considering (and offering evidence against) alternative explanations
- Provide a clue to the proper explanation
- Resolve the mystery
- Draw the implications for the phenomenon under study
To test this out I wrote a blog post using the mystery format called ‘What is happening to Melbourne's trains?’ I would be grateful to receive your feedback. Just leave comments on the blog post.
Cialdini, R. B. (2005). “What’s The Best Secret Device for Engaging Student Interest? The Answer Is In The Title.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24(1): 22-29.
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| 10/04/08 | | The Mistake Bank |
John Caddell has an interesting project he's just started called The Mistake Bank. It's a place to tell stories of some of your biggest stuff ups with the idea we learn best from our mistakes.
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| 10/04/08 | | An expansion of People, Process and Technology |
"We have to consider people, process and technology." It's a phrase I hear quite often, especially among IT folk. Sometimes they say, "people, process, technology and content." These are the things to consider when implementing a system. There are a myriad of variations. Yesterday I was told by an experienced consultant that they always consider policy when thinking about process. "People, process and technology" has entered our business thinking much like proverbs such as "a stitch in time saves nine." They create the framework for our thinking and both guide and constrain our actions.
I'd like to focus on the Process element of this business proverb and would like to suggest that this word creates a limited and inadequate response when thinking about what happens to make a system work. The word 'process' suggests all those things you can describe and write down, especially using boxes and arrows. Yet we know professional practice and even expert craft is required to get things done. So here is my suggestion. When we use the PPT (all business proverbs should have an acronym—my little joke) let's expand 'Process' and include Practice and Craft. Here is a short-hand way of thinking about it.
- Process is what you are told to do
- Practice is what everyone does
- Craft is striving for utmost quality with years of experience under your belt
And the ways to understand these three modes also differs but it's hard to categorise except to say that many processes can be analysed, many practices can be observed and illustrated with stories and craft can be observed, experienced and appreciated but takes years to learn.
I'm certain better systems will emerge if we take this wider view of process.
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| 25/03/08 | | Making sense of history |
I am reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I enjoyed his description of how history is extremely opaque; how "you see what comes out, not the script that produces events." He describes three ailments the human mind suffers when it comes into contact with history (he calls them the 'triplet of opacity'):
- The Illusion of Understanding. This relates to the pathology of thinking that the world we live in is more understandable, more explainable and therefore more predictable than it actually is. It also relates to our tendency to reflect and conclude that events had a specific cause and that events could have been averted by removing that specific cause.
- Retrospective Distortion. How we assess matters after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror. Taleb describes his impression that our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of anything, capable of mounting explanations for all sorts of phenomena and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability. History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture with few vibrations in between. Yet we believe in predictable, incremental progression. This is a slightly different take from Dave Snowden's description of 'retrospective coherence' where cause and effect in complex situations only becomes visible in hindsight.
- Overvaluation of Factual Information. Taleb also calls this 'the curse of learning', referring to the "handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories-when they "Platonify."" In many cases, particularly regarding complex issues, experts are no better at knowing what is going to happen than cab drivers. The difference is that the experts think they know better what is going to happen. Taleb also describes how gathering more and more facts, details and information doesn't help us predict what is going to happen.
Not surprisingly, we see these 'ailments' all the time. The trick is balancing our tendency to 'Platonify' with the need to make sense and become aware of the inherent unpredictability of our organisational environments. A bit more inquiry and listening, a little less arrogance (believing we know best). Continuing to see good data..and supplementing it with the willingness to try things and see what happens.
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| 19/03/08 | | Grasping the truth requires more than science |
I've just started to read Otto Scharmer's book, Theory U, and this passage grabbed my attention.
Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle. arguably the greatest pioneer and innovator of Western inquiry and thought, wrote on Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics that there are five different ways, faculties, or capacities in the human soul to grasp the truth. Only one of them is science (episteme). Science (episteme), according to Aristotle, is limited to the things that cannot be otherwise than they are (in other words, things that are determined by necessity). By contrast, the other four ways and capacities of grasping the truth apply to all other contexts or reality and life. They are: art or producing (techne), practical wisdom (phronesis), theoretical wisdom (sophia), and intuition or the capacity to grasp first principles or sources (nous).
To date the primary focus has been on episteme and we are only beginning to see leaders valuing the other approaches in a systematic way.
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| 24/02/08 | | Knowledge management lessons |
As the co-ordinator of the SIKMLeaders community of practice, Stan Garfield asked the community members this question:
"If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?"
Here's my answer.
All KM is change managementView every knowledge management initiative as a change initiative, which means helping the leadership group to imagine what it will be like when it's done and after imagining it, they want it. It also means getting the employees engaged in working out how it's going to work and then getting people to volunteer to work on it. It will also involve a recognition that most KM initiatives are affected by culture (actually, what isn't) and culture is never completed, done, ticked off the list of things to do. Consequently, a continuous improvement approach is needed.
Link to what matters
Make sure that the the most powerful people in the organisation understand and believe the answer to, "so what?" Always link the KM initiative to what people care about. Mostly that's the business strategy but there have been times when I've worked with organisations without a clear business strategy, so a linkage there wasn't going to help. Find out what matters and if the KM initiatives doesn't make a difference, dump it rather than try and make it fit. A poor fitting KM initiative will eventually unravel anyway so it's better to dump it early than to forced to dump it when heaps of resources have been spent and it's barely limping along.
Collect stories early and often
It's often hard to quantify the value of KM initiatives. So whenever you hear a real live experience, no matter how small, take a note of what happened and tell others. We're helping an engineering firm start a community of practice for its draftspeople. At the first teleconference a woman in Newcastle recounted how she was creating a library of screws for a particular type of aircraft. A fellow in Adelaide piped up saying they already have a library of screws and it also includes auto-placement. You could hear the excitement in the woman's voice on hearing this work had already been done, "and it even has auto-placement." The couple joined forces and updated the library and made it available to the whole community.
This is a small story but one senior leadership heard from the very beginning of the community's development and they could retell to other leaders in the company while finishing their anecdote with, "and this is just one thing the community is doing." While the business benefits must be articulated, the stories gave the community time to establish themselves.
| 28/01/08 | | Learning how to learn |
After listening to a podcast recently -- an interesting conversation between Dave Pollard and Chris Corrigan -- I am now even more convinced of the importance that we know HOW to learn. (To be honest I probably didn't need all that much convincing!).
This skill will be so important in the future due to the exponential growth of information and the sheer volume of knowledge. We just don't have the capacity to absorb it all.
It's not particular knowledge you need, it's just the ability to know how to learn. Because we're not going to know what's going to be needed in the future. You need to be able to learn and adapt to new environments and new knowledge.
This reminds me of the story about a university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about wanting to learn Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's overfill! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "You are like this cup," said the master.
The ability to be open -- to first unlearn what we already know to allow us to accept new knowledge is perhaps the first step. What other competencies or skills are required to learn how to learn?
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| 22/01/08 | | The role of a story in lessons learning |
Chris Collison is pondering the usefulness of the Kolb learning cycle as the basis for many of the lessons learning activities organisations conduct. I agree with Chris' observation that most organisations don't build in reflection and therefore are unable to reformulate what they have learned to change behaviour. And like Chris I'm not sure of the effectiveness of write-ups to achieve this last point. In fact I think we create our abstract conceptualisations (Kolb's language) by telling ourselves and others a story of what happen. Ironically the abstract comes from the specific of a story. Something like this happened to me just last week.
I got a friendly email from someone who has been a long-time subscriber to our newsletter. After mentioning that she had gained many useful tips and ideas from it she went on to say that she had only just realised we provided consulting services. I was nearly knocked off my chair—were we that poor at telling people what we do?. So I rang Mark and told him the story. He was gobsmacked. We obviously weren't letting people know in our newsletter we provided consulting services. What shall we do? Our first idea was to put a line at the top of our newsletter that said, in effect, 'we provide consulting services.' Actually we wordsmithed it a bit more than that. Then I called up our graphic designer, Kerenza, and told her the story and shared our plan for the oneliner. 'Ahhrg, that oneliner is awful,' she said. 'Before you were sending useful tips and information to me, now you are selling to me.' It was immediately clear that the one-liner approach was wrong and Kerenza and I came up with a new way forward.
So on reflection it was the story of the original email, told a number of times to different people that created new conversations that helped me learn about our brand, how we communicate to our newsletter subscribers and how we keep what we do authentic, fun and useful. And it changed my behaviour. To me, that's learning.
[thanks to Patrick Lambe for putting me on to Chris' post]
| 10/01/08 | | The Beams of New College, Oxford |
Another find from the filing cabinet clean up. This time an anecdote from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn.
This story was recorded by Brand from the anthropologist Gregory Bateson.
New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was founded around the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top. These might be two feet square and forty-five feet long.
A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because they had no idea where they would get beams of that calibre nowadays.
One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some oak on College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked about oaks. And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wonderin' when you'd be askin'."
Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks has been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall."
| 3/01/08 | | My friends confirm my huntch that knowledge work is dead |
Yesterday I arrived home from a relaxing trip to Jervis Bay to enjoy Christmas with my family (sans computer). So today I couldn't help myself to have a peek at Google Reader to see what was happening on the blogosphere when I noticed my little post about knowledge work has raised the hackles of two friends, Dave Snowden and Matthew Hodgson.
So let me respond in the relax way I'm feeling at the moment without a point by point refutation because most of what they say is right on. The main problem we face in this dialogue is the limitation of the written word and what can be said in three paragraphs (my original post length). Imagine the terrific conversation we could have which, if we weren't in the mode of one-upmanship and scoring points, we could increase our pool of meaning (a phrase I've recently learnt from a fabulous book, Crucial Conversations). Sadly, the three of us rarely get the opportunity to sit and talk.
Matt says I miss the point about knowledge workers because the phrase is still useful for communication. Matt seems to saying there is something else that this phrase can be used for other than communication but in my book the term 'knowledge worker' can only be used to communicate and the communication is misleading. As soon as you say someone is a knowledge worker and someone is not you create a false dichotomy. It's easy to make the distinctions at the edges but try making them in the middle of the distribution and you find that you are making stuff up. Matt also says he knows what the term 'knowledge worker' means but at the same time wont tell us because a definition will be messy and do little to progress the objective of helping organisations make the most of people's knowledge.
Both Dave and Matt latched on to the point I made about technology and how it is becoming ubiquitous and even those jobs which Drucker might have excluded from 'knowledge worker' status are now being affected. This observation became even more apparent to me last year as I travelled around regional Australia talking to farmers, pastoralists, conversations and natural resource managers and it became clear that in our global economy everyone is forcing people to up-skill and use whatever technology available to gain or maintain a competitive edge. But technology is just one factor—a point I make in the original post but ignored by Matt and Dave. Increasing speed, increasing complexity, abundance of products and services, rampant consumerism and out-sourcing are just some of the other factors forcing everyone in the first world to be a knowledge worker.
Dave thinks I have fallen foul in three areas: The confusion of knowledge artifact use, with knowledge work; Failure to understand the impact of time & experience in knowledge capability; Ethical naiveté or the moral red herring. I'll dismiss the first two points because I can't believe Dave really things I don't understand these distinctions. It's the third point that requires a response while I know it's Dave's style to stir the pot but he also has the habit of muddying the waters with his own sophisticated arguments.
My position on knowledge work is actually a practical one, not one bound in idealism. If you avoid categorising your staff as 'knowledge workers' or 'not knowledge workers' you move to a more practical conversation about what knowledge our people use and how can we help them create, share and use it better (yes, I know this statement suggests that knowledge is a thing and ignores knowledge as a flow, but the wording gets quite difficult when you need to cover off on every statement). It's quite a useful approach Dave.
| 17/12/07 | | A faulty knowledge transfer metaphor |
The conduit metaphor is a common way for people to imagine how information is passed from one person to another. This metaphor paints a picture of information passing as a message to a receiver and the receiver picks it up and pops it in their mind. I have even seen a keynote speech recently where the speaker made the additional point that the receiver needs to be pointing their antenna in the right direction to pick up the signal.
I have been aware for sometime that this metaphor is unreliable at best and I was recently reminded of this fact reading Steven Pinker's latest book, The Stuff of Thought.
Another misleading conceptual formula is the conduit metaphor, in which to know is to have something and to communicate is to send it in a package. Again, it has a kernel of truth; if information were never transmitted with some fidelity from mind to mind, knowledge could never accumulate in a society, and language itself would be useless. But cognitive science has repeatedly shown ways in which the metaphor falls short. ... language understanding is more than just extracting literal meaning, as George Costanza learned too late when he realized that coffee doesn't necessarily mean coffee [his girlfriend asks him up for coffee and he says no because it keeps him up at night]. And once a meaning is extracted and stored in memory, it does not sit there like a knickknack on a shelf; memory research confirms Twain's observation that people tend to remember things whether they happened or not. Traditional education was dominated by a version of the conduit metaphor sometimes called the savings-and-loans model: the teacher dispenses nuggets of information to the pupils, who try to retain them in their mind long enough to give them back on an exam.
But now I'm stumped. Is there a better metaphor or analogy for illustrating how we transfer our knowledge? Until we have one, the conduit metaphor will reign supreme and organisations will continue to waste money training staff by employing the expert to lecture students.
Some of the references Pinker makes include:
Blakemore, S. J., and U. Frith. The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005.
Schacter, D. L. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
| 7/12/07 | | The fine art of (not) lecturing |
I just read a great article over at the thestar.com about Nobel laureate Carl Wieman who wants professors to rethink how they teach.
His message? In a nutshell: reduce the load; stimulate the brain.
A lot of what he recommends is not just applicable to teaching science, it's also relevant to anyone who presents information to others or works with groups (meetings, presentations, workshops, training etc).
Basically, we need to up the interaction quotient folks!.
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| 3/11/07 | | Our need for the knowledge worker is over |
The term 'knowledge worker' is now a meaningless concept in developed countries because the shift Drucker started to notice in the '50s from jobs requiring manual work to jobs requiring knowledge work is now complete. Today all work is knowledge work because even the most manual of activities such as farmer digging post holes for a fence requires pre-planning using their spatial information system, the use of GPS to position the hole and entry of data when it's done. The ubiquity of technology is one major factor that makes everyone a knowledge worker.
Sadly, when we use the term 'knowledge worker' today we are often unfairly saying one type of job is superior that another. It's an dark undercurrent and tacitly becomes a basis for discrimination. "Our salespeople are knowledge workers but our gas fitters are not." I suspect this feeling of superiority comes from the erroneous data-information-knowledge model where knowledge (and even more ridiculously, wisdom) sits at the pinnacle of the pyramid. See here for an alternative model for thinking about data, information and knowledge.
Have you ever seen anyone in recent years define what they mean by knowledge workers and knowledge work? They tie themselves in knots and confuse their readers. The people who write about knowledge workers see themselves as a knowledge worker and wish so very hard that the term is true and useful. But alas it's not and the sooner we realise this the better so we can get back to asking more useful questions like, "How does knowledge help us to work better?"
| 31/10/07 | | Knowledge sharing principles |
I'm currently helping a client develop their knowledge strategy. We've decided to include knowledge sharing principles. I believe principles should be clear, unambiguous and emphatic and everyone should know whether they are adhering to the principles or not. More importantly the organisation should decide together what should happen when the principles are transgressed. Are there any biggies I've missed? I probably should keep it to 7 or so.
- We will share what we know with our colleagues.
- We will take time to help our colleagues learn
- We will encourage open and rigorous dialogue, discuss and exploring assumptions, and speak our mind respectfully.
- We shall see if what we are about to embark on has been done before rather than create things from scratch.
- We will borrow ideas shamelessly (with attribution) and not suffer the ‘not invented here’ syndrome.
- We will take time to learn from our successes and failures.
- We will promote cooperation, trust and active participation in project teams, task forces and networks.
- We shall actively look outside our discipline in search of ideas, concepts and approaches that can be adapted and applied to meet our goals.
- We will recognise others for their intellectual effort and willingly share the kudos.
| 23/10/07 | | Making information find us |
I really enjoyed watching this video about the web challenging our most basic assumptions about 'finding' information.
Technorati Tags: findability
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| 21/10/07 | | Why don't they just follow the procedure? |
On 29-30 August, a USAF B-52 bomber mistakenly armed with six nuclear tipped cruise missiles, flew from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The incident has sparked enormous media attention and it is the first time the US military has publicly commented on the whereabouts of nuclear weapons.
The Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations announced the results of a six-week inquiry into the incident yesterday, the results of which pretty much conclude that the procedures were correct but the personnel simply didn't follow them. The incident was evidently not a one-off: "there has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards." The airmen replaced the schedule with their own "informal" system, he said, though he didn't say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it their own way. Apparently, up to 70 people will be disciplined over the incident; a wing will be removed from wartime status and the base commander has been relieved of his command.
My 20 year career in the Australian Air Force, and consulting back to Defence since, makes me pretty familiar with the rigorous documentation of policy and procedure in the military.... and with the way these procedures are often used. I remember the mantra "policies are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools" and how this was embedded into many of the stories told in the bar and on the flight line. What was also evident was the enormous amount of experience, knowledge and understanding of context that enabled the tailoring of procedures to be done effectively and with due regard to the circumstances. The 'people' bit was always much more important than the 'process' bit.
If we wanted a procedure to be followed precisely there was a lot of work up front ensuring the necessary understanding (knowledge, context) was provided and a lot of resources monitoring compliance. As the drive for military 'efficiency' bit in the late part of my career the extent to which the basics were done dropped dramatically. In the Australian Defence Force this was exemplified by the annual audit of Defence accounts being qualified (a very bad thing) for years on end due to a decade of neglecting the simple act of stocktaking. It was like the organisation just started to assume it would get done 'because everyone knows its important' and yet it behaved in a way that gave no indication that it was, in fact, important. Hmmm, sound familiar?
So, in the case of the recent 'nukes across the US' incident, I would love the opportunity to do some narrative-based research (probably using anecdote circles) to find out what was really going on. Of course, if the objective was to determine blame we would not get much better information than provided by an investigation. But if the objective was to understand the context and behaviors relating to the incident the insights could be incredibly valuable. And with something important (and I guess nuclear safety would fall in that category) we should be using the full range of investigative/evaluation approaches available to us rather than relying solely on traditional, linear ones based on the scientific method and focused on who was at fault.
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| 17/10/07 | | Factors affecting your knowledge environment |
One of the aims of a knowledge strategy is to design a set of activities to enhance an organisation’s knowledge environment. The knowledge environment includes all the factors, both within and outside an organisation, which might affect the creation, sharing and use of knowledge. The list of factors is potentially limitless but experience has shown that many of the important factors can be clumped together under 7 headings.
1. Support - what support does knowledge management have within the organisation? Do the executives believe it's valuable? Are resources set aside for knowledge management? Are roles established to support knowledge management initiatives? Is there a clear link between the business strategy and the knowledge strategy (better still, does the organisation have a knowledge focussed business strategy?)?
2. Technology - what technology is available to support the creation, sharing and use of knowledge? How well is this technology used? What technology should be introduced? Are the practices to use the technology well developed?
3. Organisation and people - How are people organised? What structures exists? What characterises the organisational culture? What types of people are employed? How much churn is there? Is knowledge management a recognised and desirable competency?
4. Routines, rituals and recognition - Are their processes and systems in place that regularly connect people, engage them in conversation and help share what people know? Is it normal to conduct after action reviews, peer assists and lesson learning sessions throughout the life of projects? Does the organisation celebrate good knowledge behaviours?
5. Information - Are information principles well known and followed? Is information well managed, findable, accessible and meaningful?
6. External - What drivers outside the organisation might affect how knowledge will be created, sourced, shared and used?
7. Spaces - How are people and workplaces arranged? Are there physical barriers to knowledge flow? Are their places to collaborate, think, focus and socialise?
Are there other questions you think should be asked?
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| 12/10/07 | | Space and tools impacts thinking |
We've been running a series of knowledge strategy projects for natural resource management regions across Australia. The activities culminate for each region in a two day workshop where participants design a set of projects and interventions to improve their knowledge environment.
To guide people through a process of designing their projects we divide up a sheet of butcher's paper (also called flip-chart paper) into steps for small teams to work on to help them plan their project. I've noticed that the way we divide up this paper and the tools we provide seems to have a big impact. This is not evidence nor proof, just an observation.
Here is an example of one way I've divided up the paper and what the small group of participants wrote.
Now here is another example where I provided a much larger space for brainstorming (a separate page) and suggested they use post-it notes to capture their brainstorming ideas. We also gave them finer tipped felt pens.
Their 'Organise' section spilled over into another sheet of butcher's paper plus there was yet another sheet dedicated to brainstorming. This change toward more detail seems to hold for all the groups in the workshop.
It seems people will fill the space you provide and as a result the second group engaged in a more rigourous and deliberate thinking. Mind you, it could have just been the people in the room.
Technorati Tags: facilitation
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| 2/10/07 | | How not to organise information |
I've recently been telling everyone about a presentation I saw on You Tube by David Weinberger called Everything is Miscellaneous. David's argument is that in the past we organised our information into neat categories and then we had one category called miscellaneous to cope with those things that didn't fit. Now with the explosion of information most of information is in the misc category.
This 45 minute presentation by David, and follow on debate, raises some important questions about how we are locked into a physical world's way of organising, the role of social networks and implicit knowledge, and the importance of findability. Don't be put off by the electronic introductions.
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| 27/09/07 | | Intranets 2.0 |
Last week I was lucky enough to go along to the Intranets '07 forum in Sydney and had the opportunity to see what a number of organisations in Australia are doing in this space.
One thing that really struck me is that most organisations seem to view wiki's and blogs (and all things 2.0), to be a natural extension to their Intranet projects. The pressures to adopt the latest trends are certainly there, and doing something inside the firewalls seems to be on people's agendas, so it makes perfect sense to use the teams and infrastructure that are already in place.
However, I'm not sure that they know what they're getting themselves into. Adopting these new collaborative and social tools will require a paradigm shift from the current thinking. Let me explain ...
In my notes, I wrote that there seemed to be a real dichotomy in the language being used. On the one hand speakers when describing their Intranets were talking about standards, compliance, custodians, approval, reviews, structured, efficiency, control, and 'single source of truth'. Yet on the other hand, they mused that intranets were about 'people, people, people' and that they were trying to improve collaboration, increase knowledge sharing and foster networks.
I put this down to what appears to be a lack of or poor understanding about the differences between information and knowledge. It seems that many organisations still have a mindset that knowledge management is about trying to codify explicit knowledge - finding it and sticking it in a database, which will in-turn improve sharing and collaboration. However, in doing so, they are ignoring tacit knowledge and the social aspects of learning. Organisations face big challenges to bridge this nexus, and to do so they will need to also consider the 'human' aspects of social software - that it is enabling, empowering, emergent, organic, action-oriented and open. I'll end with a quote, which I think sums it up pretty well ...
" ... viewing knowledge as a duality means that both perspectives are needed and both must be taken into account in any attempt to manage knowledge." 1
References
1. Hildreth, P.J. & Kimble, C. (2002). "The duality of knowledge"Information Research, 8(1), paper no. 142 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/8-1/paper142.html]
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| 24/09/07 | | Social search - getting your community and colleagues to help improve findability |
Why does Google work? Because on the internet people link between sites. Popular sites are popular probably because they are relevant and more people link to these sites. As a result Google ranks them higher than others and hey presto when you Google the most highly ranked sites are at the top.
What happens on an intranet? Pages and pages of material is published and by comparison to the internet there is no linking. And as a result it's hard to work out what is useful and what's not. How many of you have searched for the “car booking” procedure for your department to find a myriad of other gumf totally unrelated to what you need? I have. And it's a pain.
That's why social search is going to be important. I've been playing around with social search for a while using Eurekster's Swickis. Here's one I've created for people interested in business narrative.
Grab this swicki from eurekster.com
The idea is that whenever you do a business narrative related search and you find a hit that is a good one, you vote for it. Over time its ability to server the business narrative community improves. I've added it to the bottom of our blog and you can easily add it to yours as well.
Imagine using this type of tool on your intranet where over time you good efforts make the search engine work for you rather than something you have to battle with. In fact we will be relying more and more on our colleagues and community members to keep abreast of the tsunami of information coming our way. This is one was to do it.
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| 21/09/07 | | What's in a knowledge environment? |
In 2002 I wrote a paper called Crafting a Knowledge Strategy. Its basic premise was that a knowledge strategy should be designed for emergence: it should both encourage and cope with unpredictable things happening.
Part of the framework included something I called the knowledge environment, a container of sorts that enabled knowledge to be created, shared, lost and used. Every organisation has a knowledge environment and the role of the knowledge strategy is to work with what's there while incrementally improving it.
So what should you (ideally people within the organisation with some guidance from people like me) examine in a knowledge environment in order to make improvements? Mnemonics helps you remember lists so this is what we came up with.
Space—physical space has a significant impact on how knowledge flows
Technology—what's there to support knowledge work?
Organisation and People—organisational structures, roles, HR processes, rewards and recognition
Routines and Rituals—important business processes, rituals people talk about
Information—can you find the good stuff?
External—external factors affecting knowledge, job markets, industry trends, competitors, clients
Support—is KM supported by the executive? what are the tangible support structures
What have we missed?
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| 27/08/07 | | Tacit Knowledge Retention with Communities of Practice |
Last year I wrote this short paper arguing that communities of practice were an effective strategy to transfer tacit knowledge. This week we gave the old look and feel a makeover and updated the pdf.
This paper therefore provides guidance on how to identify and foster such communities of practice in your organisation. It explains why communities of practice are effective in managing tacit knowledge, describes how to ‘map’ communities, and provides suggestions for garnering management support. Finally, the paper describes three common traps to avoid.
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| 23/08/07 | | A short history of Anecdote |
On the weekend I created this presentation about how we got started and I describe some of the projects we've done.
There are five parts. Here are the other links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOAtwhgSTf8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYuwumeWn_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweLmKlTbnI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd7WVri5aCI
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| 23/08/07 | | Genius everyday |
I've been keeping my eyes open for something entertaining to read on a long plane journey. I'm a fast reader and easily bored so the usual fare at airports barely lasts until I am flying over the West Australian coast. That leaves about another 20 hours of flying time to fill. So wandering past the Socrates store in Eastland last Sunday afternoon the cover on this book in the window display caught my eye. After a quick browse through the pages I decided I had found my travel companion.
I don't mind admitting I am an absolute Leonardo-phile. And I am not deluding myself into thinking any book can turn me into a Da Vinci equivalent. Since I took up scrapbooking in earnest in 2002 I have expanded my creative endeavours into book-making and mixed media art. But I have been continually frustrated by that little voice that tells me I can't draw and and I can't paint. I know when I was teaching, I never met a prep class child who could not draw, paint, sing or dance. Seek out a four or five year old of your acquaintance and ask them. Not only can they do it but they are more than willing to demonstrate it to you right there and then. And look at you oddly for asking such a silly question.
No, this is more about studying Da Vinci and learning from his work in order to utilise our potential to the best of our ability. And Leonardo's 500 year old techniques still work. Finding metaphors in nature was one of his favourites. Velcro was invented by someone who took a close look at a burr hooked to his trousers after a walk outdoors. The ease with which you can "open" a banana inspired the inventors of the ring pull tab on aluminum cans.
The book is centred around the seven fundamental principles (named in Italian) that Michael Gelb has drawn from his study of the man and his work. I'm struck by how they reflect much of what we at Anecdote believe and do.
- Curiosita - an insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning
- Dimonstrazione - a commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes
- Sensazione- the continual refinement of the senses as the means to enliven experience
- Sfumato (literally "going up in smoke") - a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty
- Arte/Scienza - - the development of balance between science and art, logic and imagination. Whole-brain thinking
- Corporalita - the cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness and poise
- Connessione - a recognition and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.
Leonardo had the ability to see and live with paradox. Relentless hard work was not the solution. Taking time with a problem, sleeping on it and letting the solution incubate gave better results. As Michael Gelb points out - the ability to trust your gut when dealing with ambiguity is still critical even in the age of information overload.
I'm looking forward to reading more about these principles and the examples that Gelb provides, following along with, and doing the activities. I may even return from my holiday able to draw.
| 14/08/07 | | What do we mean by tacit knowledge? |
Most of our work here at Anecdote involves working with tacit knowledge. But it is clear that there is a broad understanding about what's meant by the phrase. In the knowledge management world there are two camps: one that believes tacit knowledge can be captured, translated, converted; and the other that highlights its ineffable characteristics. I must admit I was for a long time firmly ensconced in the latter category and our white paper on “How we talk about knowledge management” reflects this view. But I realise now it is simply impractical to adopt an either/or perspective and so I would like to propose a way forward that focusses on why knowledge is tacit (remaining unspoken, unsaid, implied, unexpressed) and then based on these reasons we can start thinking about the appropriate approach to capturing or transferring tacit knowledge.
I think the iceberg metaphor is useful. Below the waterline lies an organisation's tacit knowledge. Near the water surface lies tacit knowledge that's easier to work with but as we go deeper the nature of the tacit knowledge changes, it becomes murkier and harder to see and grasp. As we increase in depth we can think of the different reasons why our knowledge is unspoken.
Hasn't been recorded. Most organisations put their efforts in in dealing with this type of tacit knowledge. Probably because it's easy. “Let's find out what we know and then document it.” As a result wikis are popping up everywhere. Creating more explicit knowledge then creates a new problem of findability And as Peter Morville says, “what we find changes who we become.”
Will never be recorded. There are some things you know, that you could quite easily tell someone else, that you would never want to write down or be widely known. Imagine a diplomat who has an intimate knowledge of their counterpart's peccadillos in an allied government. Perhaps not the type of thing that would be written down. More benign examples include stuff ups and when people are breaking the rules for the right reasons (or even for the wrong reasons).
Too many resources required to record. Sometimes it just takes too much time and effort to write down what you know. For one thing, when you write it down you have to assume a broad audience (not like a conversation where you are assessing whether the person you are taking to is getting it), which makes the task even harder. Imagine Einstein walking in the room and someone without advanced physics knowledge asking him to explain the general theory of relativity. It would be impossible for Einstein to provide a comprehensive answer because his knowledge requires stimulation in order to be forthcoming. Dave Snowden encapsulates this idea in his aphorism, “you only know what you know when you need to know it.”
Everyone knows it (taken for granted). Now we are getting into the type of tacit knowledge that's more difficult to identify. This knowledge often represents the core values and beliefs in an organisation. It can manifest as metaphors. For example, I visited a investment bank in Sydney and their language revolved around gambling: “We can take a bet on that.” “Let's roll the dice and see what happens.” “Everyone was poker faced.” Another organisation was fixated with traffic metaphors: “It's a real roadblock.” “We got the green light.” “We have a clear roadmap now.” No one noticed how they were using these metaphors yet it guided their actions every day. I guess we call these things 'culture.'
Individuals don't know but groups do. Have you ever read Cognition in the Wild? It tells the story of the bridge crew of the aircraft carrier USS Palau and how together they can dock this enormous ship yet no single individual could describe how it is done. Many teams have this underrated and generally unrecognised this group-based ability.
Can't be recorded. Much of our tacit knowledge falls into this category. The effects of this type of tacit knowledge (some would say the only true tacit knowledge) are displayed in our action and therefore it's impossible to capture or convert it. The approach here is to become mindful and reflect of what is displayed—conversations, coaching, shadowing. Sure, we can video tape people undertaking tasks but time and time again practitioners have discovered there are qualities that are not captured and the task cannot be completed successfully. My favourite example is those white-coated gentlemen in France who test whether those humungous wheels of cheese have ripened. Using a little hammer they tap each one and know instantly which ones are ready to eat. How do they know? Is it the sounds, the bounciness, the smell? I recall a group of scientists set about to measure all these characteristics in order to create an automatic cheese ripeness testing machine but as hard as they might try they paled in comparison to the experience of the practised cheesemaker.
Technorati Tags: tacit knowledge