Just a quick note to update everyone, my chapter on creativity and innovation and their link to knowledge management has now been published in the book KM Matters, edited by John and Joann Girard.
Just in case you missed it in my social media activities, the World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development has published my article about Knoco’s Bird Island. The article is called, “Serious game: Knoco’s Bird Island, making the point for KM” and will be published this spring, but is already available online, https://linkis.com/emeraldinsight.com/ijdJ4
If you have any questions about it, would like to participate in one of the upcoming sessions or have something specially set-up for your organization, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I just recently received an email about disaster preparedness, it contained a scan of a document that the person who sent it to me had received. What does this have to do with KM?
Nothing and everything.
The point the person who sent me the scanned document was making was that he had received this document in the middle of summer, while people were away on vacation, it was poorly produced, there didn’t seem to be an electronic version available, and he believed that if any of these floods, fires, earthquakes etc. ever happened (or maybe that should be when they happen), he wouldn’t be able to remember the information in the document (which was about 10 pages long), and if he remembered that he had received this document, he wouldn’t be able to find it again.
Again, so what you say? What does this have to do with KM or learning or information or anything at all?
Well, if we are doing knowledge management, or learning management or information management we need to be concerned about how knowledge/information gets transferred and shared. How do the users want to receive it? What is their environment like? What circumstances will they be using this information/knowledge in? Who is going to be using this knowledge/information.
If we don’t design our systems and processes with the users in mind, all of the users, not just some of the users, they won’t use the knowledge/information and then what good is all the effort we put into implementing our KM/Learning/Information program?
Yes, I still get this question or some variation on it, even though there are lots of case studies and examples of knowledge management activities having a significant impact on the results of an organization.
The quickest and often the easiest way of winning over sceptics is by having the opportunity to do Knoco’s Bird Island workshop (https://www.knoco.com/bird-island.htm), I have seen more “light bulbs” come on for people in doing this 2-hour workshop than I ever would have believed.
I don’t want to give away any of the surprise, but by using three different KM processes (After Action Reviews, Peer Assists, and Best Practice sharing) results of the activity go from abysmal to unbelievable, increasing an average of 260%.
Even if you want to continue to be sceptical of the results that making better use of your organization’s knowledge can have and you think you can only attain a fraction of this, 10% of the result demonstrated in the workshop is still 26%. Isn’t that worth at least giving it a try?
Some of you, who know me, will know that I started out my career in accounting; I have an undergraduate degree in accounting and was going to be a Chartered Accountant.
This is also how I got my start in KM, although it wasn’t called KM then, it was just how you worked—checklists and reusing last year’s files, talking to the staff who had worked on the audit/tax last year. If you had worked on the engagement the year before you were expected to be quicker in the subsequent year(s) because you were familiar with the client and the file.
15+ years into my knowledge management career, I still run into organizations that think that in order to help them better manage their knowledge that I have to be a specialist in whatever their content is, e.g. if it’s a law firm, I have to be a lawyer, if it’s a manufacturer I have to be an engineer, if it’s a hospital I have to be a doctor or a nurse or some other medical professional.
This isn’t always true, there are lots of organizations that understand that KM is a series of processes and activities, largely independent of the content. Organizations that understand having a depth of experience in how to get people to participate in knowledge sharing activities is more important than knowing the knowledge that they are actually supposed to be sharing.
Accounting is accounting is accounting. Yes, there might be some differences from industry to industry or sector, but in the end you are still trying to keep track of the financial resources of the organization, using generally accepted accounting principles.
Knowledge Management is no different. You are just trying to help facilitate the knowledge lifecycle from creation to sharing and management to disposal using a set of generally accepted knowledge management processes.
In both cases it’s important to understand the processes and principles, not the content.
Why do I need a knowledge management strategy? Why can’t I just implement some technology and be done with it? Why can’t I just implement Communities of Practice or Lessons Learned and be done with it?
I hear this sometimes from managers who want a quick fix, who are under a lot of pressure from time and resources (money and people).
The answer is, you can. I have worked with many organizations that have done just that, jumped in with both feet and “just done something”. I am usually there to fix it. Fix the technology because no one understood what it really needed to do to support knowledge work within the organization; fix the process because no one understands it and it’s not aligned with the rest of the activities in the organization and it’s created extra work for already over-worked staff.
Why do you need a strategy?
Would you jump in the car and set out on a journey of 5000km/3000miles without having some idea of where you were going and how you going to get there? Making sure that you had selected the right vehicle to get you there in time and a map to help direct you along the way?
A KM strategy does just that. It helps you figure out where you’re going, and the things you need to do along the way, the processes you need to support you and that need to be supported.
That’s not to say that you won’t make adjustments along the way, just like a friend of mine who drove from Toronto to Vancouver in September 2015, who ended up “detouring” through the United States, so that she could see some different sites, but she still knew where she was going and when she had to be there by—she made it with time to spare.
Isn’t that what you want from your KM strategy? To know where you’re going and how you want to get there, to meet the goals and objectives of the organization?
Why would you put a toaster over in the car for your trip, when you really needed a camp stove?
Why would you choose one technology because “everyone else is” when another technology is cheaper and better meets the needs of the organization because it requires less customization than the more popular software?
Isn’t it time you created (or updated) your KM strategy?
Knowledge management and creativity would seem to be two completely different ideas and disciplines, but in fact they can and do enable and enrich each other and in the process of doing that enhance innovation.
Knowledge management is defined as: the process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge. It refers to a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
Creativity is defined as: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts. Another definition says that creativity is the reorganization of experience into new configurations: a function of knowledge, imagination, and evaluation.
Innovation is defined as: a new idea, more effective device or process, it can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. The term innovation can be defined as something original and more effective and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
According to “inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity,” by Tina Seelig, creativity can be learned.
Nonaka discusses the idea of “ba” in his book, “The Knowledge Creating Company,” as well as other published articles; “ba” is the idea of making space for (knowledge) creation. This idea of space is through the use of physical and/or virtual space, and includes the idea of (emergent) relationships and mental/intellectual/emotional space (reflection, and just being).
Connection between creativity and knowledge management
Knowledge management is the set of tools that underlies any knowledge-based activity; everything is knowledge-based. The question is how to facilitate, enhance, and improve efficiency and effectiveness of any process/activity through the use of knowledge management activities.
Improved efficiency and effectiveness comes from finding new, creative, innovative solutions. How do we do this?
Two books can give us insights on solving this problem. The first is in the process of being written, the other was published in 2000. The book that is in the process of being written is by Ger Driesen and is about what we can learn about learning from Vincent Van Gogh; the second was written by Michael J. Gelb and is entitled, “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day.”
From Van Gogh we learn:
Think inside the box (apply scarcity/constraints)
Practice/study
Reflect
Understand your own story/motivation
When you master a level change the rules
Value solitude, not loneliness
Circumstances: join them or beat them
From Leonard da Vinci we learn:
Curiosity
Independent thinking/diversity
Sharpen your senses (listen/mindfulness, appreciate beauty)
Embrace uncertainty
Balance logic and imagination
Balance body and mind
Make new connections
To do these things we need to have the space, or as Nonaka identified, the Ba for knowledge creation.
Using these activities as well as specific knowledge management activities to aid in innovation helps us to move between the organized knowledge and the unorganized knowledge that exists. The KM activities that aid in innovation are:
Business driven action learning (learn through doing)
Coaching and mentoring
Communities of practice
External assessment and benchmarking
Knowledge capture from projects
Knowledge exchange
Knowledge harvesting from individuals
Lessons learned
Peer assists
Project learning
Organizational Learning, Training
Organized knowledge includes things that have been documented, in books, journals, repositories, libraries, databases, and slide decks, that we know/have access to. Whereas unorganized knowledge is knowledge that hasn’t been discovered yet either because the experiments haven’t been preformed or it resides in the heads of people we haven’t met yet.
What allows us to pass back and forth between organized and unorganized is the use of critical thinking. Critical thinking allows us to question what we know and to ask questions to discover new knowledge, but it also allows us to take the new knowledge and organize it into new or existing models. Critical thinking allows us to apply “the rules” but it also allows us to question and break “the rules” in order to make new discoveries and learn.
Additionally, we can use creativity and innovation to enhance knowledge management; we do this by applying critical thinking to our knowledge management activities. For example, instead of just looking at other similar projects that have been done within our organization or industry and learning from them, we can think critically about other industries that might have had a similar strategic issue and how they solved it. A nuclear power plant may learn how to resolve a training issue from the automotive industry or from an NGO who also struggled with just-in-time training delivery. Alternatively, what results have we discovered in participating in a Community of Practice, in a Peer Assist, or After Action Review how does this impact what we already thought we knew?
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment. It underlies all of knowledge management; it is what pushes us to learn. Asking “why” 5 times will help us get to the root of a problem or understanding our assumptions and asking, “what if that’s not true?” can also help use to see things differently, to look at things from a different perspective. Without the ability to think/reflect on and to question our experiences the whole foundation of knowledge management crumbles.
Critical thinking encourages us to keep an open mind and gather information and evidence before coming to a conclusion.
Creative Pursuits
There are three main types of creative domains:
Art (ah!) as in beauty
Discovery (aha!) as in enlightenment
Humor (haha!) as in joyful pleasure
Art as in beauty ties into one of the items that we can learn from Leonardo da Vinci, about sharpening your senses, which is really about paying attention, listening, and observing the world around you. Art (painting, sculpture, music, literature, and dance) in this case helps to think about and observe, to ask questions about what you are seeing. In the case where you get involved in the creation of art, it magnifies this effect and can have a more significant impact on the outcome.
Making time to be creative in day-to-day life opens up possibilities, it can help you look at things differently.
Graphical Depiction
The figure below illustrates how all of these ideas fit together.
How Creativity and KM fit together. (c) Stephanie Barnes, Missing Puzzle Piece Consulting
Competitive Advantage
With the pace of change today it is imperative to be constantly improving and innovating in order to stay ahead of the competition and in the case of nuclear energy the competition isn’t just other nuclear energy producers, it is alternative energy generation methods. Creativity can help because it aids in looking at the problem/challenge differently and encourages using solutions that may have been developed in other organizations/industries.
Last week (January 28-29, 2015) I was in Amsterdam for KM Legal Europe, I provided some thoughts on that in my previous blog. Also in that blog post I mentioned that the subject of where KM fits with Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma came up. We had a discussion about it, but we ran out of time and I’m not sure that we really came to any conclusions.
First lets start off with some general definitions/explanations.
While Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma are all different activities and initiatives, and there are books and courses on each of them separately for the purposes of this blog post I am going to group them all together because for the purposes of this discussion their touch-point with KM is the same. So what are they? They are activities that have the objective of aligning organizational processes with the needs and objectives of the organization. They seek to remove inefficiencies and streamline work processes; they aim for standardization and the reduction of variability.
Knowledge Management, on the other hand, is about learning and sharing, and making sure people have the knowledge they need to do their jobs.
On the face of it, it doesn’t seem that there is much in common, but as they say, “the devil is in the details.”
Let me ask you this, “why do we learn?” and “what are we hoping to accomplish by learning?” Some organizations will say to be more efficient and effective, provide better customer/client service, to be better at what we do, whether that is provide a product, service, economic development, or something else. Hmmm…don’t those sound similar to what Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma are all about?
There are many ways to learn, Stan Garfield compiled a list of 80+ activities that can be considered KM activities. Where does learning overlap with Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma? In my mind, it’s in the Lessons Learned processes and activities. In Lessons Learned we are trying to understand what worked, what didn’t work, what we should do differently next time and what we need to do to make sure “next time” is better than the last time. That sounds like Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma to me.
Now in Continuous Improvement, Process Re-engineering, and Six-Sigma we may actually create the redesigned process. Whereas in Lessons Learned we may recognize that the process needs to be redesigned or a checklist created or some other such outcome and kick-off a sub-process that does the creation. But the Lessons Learned process does do a check and ensure that the outcome was completed and implemented, thus closing the loop on the whole cycle.
I know I have over simplified this, but I do believe the two sets of activities are very closely linked, and I wanted to get across that it’s just a change in perspective that’s needed.
KM isn’t something separate from everything else, it’s a key component of everything and recognizing that makes the implementation that much more complete.
It will officially be published in mid-January, so if you buy it before that, you get 40% of the regular price.
I did a workshop based on the book at KM World, on Nov 4th, that was well received, as well as a couple of book signings–it was great to talk to everyone about the book and how it can help them regardless of whether they are just starting with KM or at a point where they are re-evaluating their strategy after implementing KM for a few years.
