Knoco Insights

Is Old Knowledge Supporting Old Assumptions?

2012-01-26T11:40:00.001Z

One of the things I enjoy about my job is the opportunity to read local English language newspapers around the world. I enjoy the different perspective that the newspaper take on the same topic. One that I was reading recently was about how the super powers might take a different approach to building their capabilities. As I read it I was reminded of the story of the Miginot Line.I have actually visited the remains of the Miginot Line and would encourage you do so if you can. It was based on a fairly simple assumption – the enemy will come from the direction in which our guns are pointed because it is impossible to bring an army any other way. Now we know from history that the enemy literally went around the Miginot Line and left it impotent. The same story also applies to the British guns in Singapore during WW2, they assumed that the enemy could only come from the sea. Unfortunately for them, the enemy didn’t agree with that assumption. In both examples the guns were fixed and couldn't be moved to confront the enemy coming from the other direction.My reason for mentioning these examples is that sometimes businesses are based on assumptions. The knowledge that the company values, is that knowledge which they believe supports the assumptions. But sometimes things happen that change the environment and cause the previous assumptions to be no longer valid. Unless the knowledge updated the business will very quickly decline.As we enter into the new year, perhaps it would be appropriate to reflect on the assumptions that your business is based on and the key knowledge that you value. Perhaps that knowledge is out of date and your knowledge management plans need to be updated.
Knoco Ltd

Hidden Gems

2012-01-24T16:26:00.000Z

As part of my New Year resolutions I am trying to ensure that I become less of a hoarder. I am trying to balance ‘that might be useful sometime in the future’ with the ‘do I really need to keep that?’ As part of that campaign the proceedings of the 3rd Annual Conference, Knowledge Management for the Oil, Gas and Power (OGP) Sectors came to my attention.Now I have to say that the proceedings failed the first test; does that look good on the office bookshelf? The book has a pale blue, very plain cover, sort of thing you would find in a university research library. It doesn’t scream, ‘this is a book containing profound wisdom’ at you.But it does contain a paper by me so scores high on the ego charts (only kidding). Even then the title of the paper isn’t exactly inspirational eg In-depth Case Study: Sustainable organisational learning…global reach, local look and feel’.So should I keep it or consign it to the bin?Well I am going to keep it because if found a paper in it about using refinery process control systems to capture and retain ‘process knowledge’. We could have a long discussion about whether is this ‘true knowledge’ or ‘data’ but to be honest it doesn’t really matter what title you use, the key for me is ‘will it help the guys operating the plant do so in a safer, more efficient manner?’Do you have any old conference proceedings sitting on your office shelf that perhaps might contain hidden gems, might be worth a look sometime soon?Knoco Ltd

I Need New Knowledge

2011-11-14T15:12:00.000Z

I need new knowledge so I am going to use the BDAL (Business Driven Action Learning) process.

If you go back to my father’s generation, almost all of my extended family worked in the private sector. The picture today is however very different. Nowadays 76% of my extended family either work directly for the private sector or are in receipt of pension / benefits from the state. So in one generation we have gone from almost zero to almost eighty percent depending on the private sector / state for our income.
Now while I find this turnaround astonishing, remember I come from a traditional manufacturing area, a recent development stunned me and that’s the reason for having to acquire new knowledge.

One member of my extended family, now a young adult, never had the traditional teenager Saturday or part-time jobs. Not for them the rite of passage of the part time jobs in the supermarket or hamburger bar. I didn’t think much about it the time. That person, now a young adult, has decided that they don’t want to work. They have no intention of seeking work according to those who know them better than I do. This isn’t someone who can’t find a job but rather someone who has decided not to work. I don’t understand that.

In some parts of the world not working would not be a choice but in this case the state has given them a two bedroom flat and a weekly living allowance. It isn’t in the best location but essentially having never contributed anything to the economy of the country they are now being provided with accommodation and a living allowance. I don’t understand that.

I need new knowledge so I will use the BDAL process to acquire that knowledge.

I am about to head off to a part of the world where I won’t routinely be able to write a blog. I will write when possible.

Knoco Ltd

What Are You Teaching?

2011-11-04T16:21:00.000Z

I need some space on my bookshelf so decided to move some books and conference proceedings to ‘storage’. While doing that I found this formal definition of Culture in a presentation given by Schein at the Society for Organisational Learning, Monterey, California, Nov 1997.

“Culture is a pattern of shared basic assumptions

Learned by the members of a group

In solving their external problems of survival in the environment and their internal problems of integration

That work well enough to be taught to new group members

As the correct way to perceive, think about, and feel about all aspects of their daily life

Once shared assumptions exist, they function to provide meaning to daily events, make life predictable, and, therefore, reduce anxiety.”

One of the things that jumps out of this definition when I read it is the third line, “that work well enough to be taught to new group members”. This isn’t formal classroom teaching or even elearning but teaching by observing and doing. Remember back to the last time you were the newbie in a company. You looked, listened and observed. You saw how people did things, what they did and equally importantly what they didn’t do. I remember joining one company and was amazed when at lunchtime the people around me started emailing each other to see if they were ready to go to lunch. They could easily have turned to each other and asked but no they emailed each other. I very quickly learned the lesson (or was taught the lesson) that being seen to be busy was more important than actually being busy in that department. Speaking to each other was seen as ‘a waste of time’; working at your computer screen was productive and hence desirable.

What are you teaching the people around you?

Oh by the way, if you haven't been to Monterey, California, treat yourself, it's a delightful place.

Knoco Ltd

KM Plans Superceed Peer Assist

2011-11-03T16:21:00.001Z

I have been conducting knowledge management master classes over the last couple of weeks and in common with previous such events the delegates asked for some advice. A question that I am frequently asked (in several different formats) is;
• What km process makes the biggest impact?
• What km process would you introduce first?
• If you could only do one thing what would it be?

If I was asked this question before about 2009 I answered ‘peer assist’ but since then I have been answering ‘km plan’. Why the change?

For me, peer assist is a wonderful process and one that will change the culture of your company. It allows staff to asking if someone knows a better, faster, safer, innovative way of doing what they are about to do. Details of the process itself can be found here.

My favourite peer assist at which I facilitated the session was one in which the home team were presenting their proposal to start up a production line for high technology components. One of the visitors was paying immense attention to what was being said, so much so that I just had to ask “Something has caught your attention, what is it?” To the amazement of the home team, he said “Nobody has been able to start up a line in that way, if you get it right it will change the industry!” Now to say that got everyone’s attention would be an understatement. I asked him to expand on the statement and he described how one of the machines in the line was very temperamental and very difficult to get to steady state. Each time that machine tripped the whole line went down and the whole process had to start again. I encouraged him to share with the home team what they did to get over this and he described how they put three machines in parallel (one out of the three would operate) which allowed them to get the whole line stabilised. Once the line was stable they removed the other two parallel machines as they weren’t required.
Importing knowledge in this way allowed the home team to reflect on what they were proposing, update their plans before they were locked into a set course of action.

So if this process is so good and it can add such tremendous value to the individuals and the organisation why would I now prefer knowledge management plans?

I guess the reason is that a knowledge management plan is a higher level and encourages the users to think through what knowledge we need and then how do we get it. A km plan template can be downloaded for free which you can use to structure the thoughts of your project or team. For me, the peer assist has become a component or vehicle that can help to deliver the km plan for the organisation.

I haven’t fallen out of love with the peer assist, I just think that the km plan gives you a wider perspective on what knowledge you need and how you will manage it.

Knoco Ltd

I Am Not An Alien

2011-10-14T16:21:00.007+01:00

I am not an alien and I have proof!

In any Hollywood movie where the aliens invade Earth the aliens are always defeated not by bullets, missiles or nuclear weapons but by a virus. We obviously can’t see the virus beating the alien, we just see the alien dropping to its knees (or alien equivalent) before eventually giving in or fleeing the planet.

I was struck down with by a virus this week and survived. So if I survived a virus I can’t be an alien, in pure Sherlock Holmes logic. I feel better now that I know that I am not an alien. I was not destroyed by a virus therefore I am not an alien.
We frequently hear people, especially the more mature amongst the workforce, being encouraged to ‘share their knowledge’. I came across these examples this week of people who shared but perhaps it wasn’t the best idea;

* A robber enters the bank wearing a full face motorcycle helmet, takes the money and escapes but is almost immediately arrested. He ‘shared’ his identity by having his name painted across the front of his helmet.

* A robber breaks into an office and holds the manager at knife point and demands money. The manager explains they don’t have much cash but if he would take a cheque they had plenty of money in the company’s bank account. The robber agreed to take a cheque and when the manager asked “Who should we make the cheque payable to?”, the robber shared his name. He was arrested shortly thereafter.

* A bank was about to be shut down and demolished when bank robber broken in at time. The found the vault empty and lying open. They were amazed at the acoustics of the large empty vault and one of them decided to see what would happen to the acoustics if they closed the vault door. Fortunately one of them remained outside when they close the vault door to check. Several hours later he still couldn’t get the vault door open to release his colleagues and eventually had to call the fire and rescue to release them. Sharing a curiosity about acoustics probably wasn’t a good idea.

Knoco Ltd

Expectation Drives Behavour

2011-10-12T16:21:00.000+01:00

I am sure we all subscribe to the idea that leadership is key when undertaking any change initiative such as knowledge management. An important part of that leadership is setting clear expectations which are more than establishing policies and procedures. It’s also about asking questions; “Who have you learned from?”; ”What is the other project doing?”; “Can we use any of their learning here?”

The idea of setting clear expectations is highlighted in this article from the BBC.

The article describes how our behaviour is driven by what is expected of us.

Perhaps it is a logical conclusion to assume that if you expect people to manage knowledge they will.

However that expectation needs to be part of an overall framework that includes roles, accountabilities and governance.

We Still Lack The Knowledge

2011-10-07T15:12:00.000+01:00

If found it interesting today, the 10th Anniversary of the start of fighting in Afghanistan that the retired US Army General Stanley McChrystal said that they still lacked the knowledge to achieve a successful end.

He didn’t say they lack the manpower or the weapons or the logistical systems or the funding to achieve a successful end but the knowledge.

Knowledge is vital.

Knoco Ltd

Key Man Insurance

2011-09-30T15:12:00.000+01:00

A few years ago it was common for organisations to think in terms of insuring their key assets; physical and human. Insurance cover was put in place for buildings and plant / machinery and for key individuals. In those days they tended to be men and hence this type of cover was referred to as ‘key man insurance’. In these more enlightened times we would refer to it as ‘key person insurance’.

The thought process was very simple; if it’s important and we could lose it or it could get damaged and hence unusable or unproductive we need to insure against that possibility. Let’s assume that the board of directors thought that the head of product development was a key individual, they would then take out insurance cover on that individual. If they became unavailable (die or seriously injured) the insurance company would pay out the insured sum.

The next part is the interesting part for me. The logic of the insurance was that now the company had the money they would go out and find a short term and a longer term replacement for the key person. The HR department would be told ‘we have X dollars, go and hire a short term standing for our head of product development’. I guess the assumption was that they would go to a head hunter who would target head of development in competitor organisations and equipped with the pot of gold would tempt the person to join the company. Or perhaps the assumption was that head of development departments were just hanging about at home with no employment waiting for the telephone to ring.

Now never mind the time delay in recruiting someone (what is the time lag between identifying the need for an additional resource and them sitting at a desk in your organisation?) but the assumption was also made that they would instantly be productive when they arrived at the new organisation.

All of this brings me around to the need to identify the key knowledge that the organisation needs and have it available in such a form that multiple people can access it and use it. Surely this a better form of insurance than just paying out a sum of money if a single person is no longer available to the company.
The need to have the key knowledge identified and have it available to multiple people was highlighted this week in a conversation I had with a sales and business director.

The company that he works for has a villa and boat in a rather nice part of the world so he decided to chill out for a couple of days and make use of them. One evening when he was going back on to the boat, he slipped, the barrier didn’t hold, he fell about six feet, smashed his shoulder against the boat and landed on the dive platform at the rear. By some miracle he didn’t fall into the water or he would have drowned there and then. The thump of him landing on the dive platform was heard by the security guards who came to his rescue, they pulled him up to the jetty (using his destroyed shoulder). He was in shock and told them that he was ok so they left him. He spent the night lying on the jetty and was in a very serious state when people arrived in the morning.

He survived and in time will fully recover but it was a wake up call. He had the ‘strategy’ for business development for his company in his head. Apart from informal discussions with other directors, he was the only one who had any idea of what he was planning.

What ‘insurance’ do you have in place for your key individuals?

Knoco Ltd

Trust Is Vital

2011-09-16T10:35:00.003+01:00

Trust.

If you consult a thesaurus you might find trust defined as ‘faith, belief or confidence’. It is the thing that makes us move from considering something to acting upon it. In some instances the trust level will be very high initially so if someone tells us something or shares advice with us, we accept it at face value and act upon it. Typically the longer you have known that person and the greater the positive track record they have with you, the more likely you are to ‘trust’ their advice and suggestions and act upon it.

Trust is very important. In our training sessions we often use the example of standing in an airport and looking at the departure board when someone you have never met walks up to you and offers advice on which flight to take eg “Don’t take that one, its always delayed, better to use that one”. Most people would agree that because you have no relationship with the person, the trust level will be very low so the probability of you accepting the advice is close to zero unless you find something else that would cause you to accept the advice.

Now when we come to the work place we are can be faced with a situation similar to that above eg someone in another office wants to share advice; another plant wants to share best practice with you; someone has posted in the collaboration area a tip on how to improve productivity etc. Some people will accept the advice (they are in the same company as me so why would they lie to me or give me bad advice) while others will find a reason not to accept the advice (their context is different from mine). Some will be in the middle and will take some sort of action to obtain further details before they are convinced to accept the advice.

In the later case they are topping up their ‘convincer mechanism’, that thing in our brains that makes us comfortable with the decision we have made. It’s a well know sales that people need to find a number of reasons to support their decision to buy. A rule of thumb is that the buyer will need three positive elements supporting their decision to buy before their convincer mechanism flicks to positive and they agree to buy.

But what do you do when the number is higher than three? How do you work with an individual (this is an individual level phenomena) who has a very high convincer mechanism? Outwardly it might appear that they don’t trust people. You present something that has worked at another plant or location. You present 3 pieces of data to support it but that’s not enough. Do they need 7,9,15 or 40 pieces of data before their internal convincer will flick positive and they will accept the advice of others? They probably don’t know themselves.

When we were establishing Knoco as a company I went to visit the director of a very large and very well known company to ask his advice. One of the things he said to me was if he ever asked me a for a discount on our fees always refuse and say the price had been calculated and fixed. His rational was that if I said we could offer 3%, he would think he could get 5%. If I then gave him 5%, he would think that he could then get 5.7%. If I agreed to that he would then think that he could get another 2% on top of what he had already obtained. The bottom line was that he would never be satisfied with the discount he had achieved (he would always think there was just a little more to be squeezed out) and as a result the contract would never be signed.

In this instance the guy was very honest about his behaviour. He understood how his convincer worked, it was based on trust and a belief that he would always be given the best price possible by suppliers. That trust was broken if you gave an indication you hadn’t given him the best price first time around. It’s wouldn’t be possible to regain his trust as his convincer would never flick to positive because would keep looking for that last piece of evidence.

So if you meet someone who doesn’t seem to want to act on the advice of others perhaps it’s just because his convincer mechanism hasn’t received sufficient pieces of positive data to cause his convincer mechanism to flick to the positive.
Alternatively something in their past might have occurred that genuinely causes them not to trust people now.

For a workplace perspective never mind a knowledge management perspective, these are very difficult people to work with.

Social Media Video

2011-09-08T14:16:00.001+01:00

I am not sure why but I can't re-open the blog that I have just posted to include this link to the video that I mention. If you want to see the video click here.

Is Social Media For Us?

2011-09-08T14:08:00.002+01:00

I was watching a video clip on the use of Social Media within a corporate environment and it touched on the need for senior management ‘to trust the workforce’ which reminded me of the very early days of video conferencing.

In the mid 1990’s when we were putting video conferencing offshore as part of the virtual teamworking project one of the most hotly debated items was ‘trusting the workforce’. At that point in time it wasn’t possible to telephone someone on an offshore platform. Calls were routed to the onshore office and then if appropriate to the office on the platform. The video conferencing worked on ISDN lines which meant that if someone onshore got a hold of the telephone number for the video conferencing unit, they would be able to dial it directly, bypassing all the existing control and filtering mechanisms.

The other issue was that the computers that were installed offshore had unlimited access to the world wide web, something that was unheard of at the time. There was great concern that the guys would spend all their time searching for information about their favourite soccer teams and let’s be polite, gentleman’s sites. It was interesting that we would trust people to work in an a hazardous environment with hazardous materials but there was concern about whether they could be trusted to use the web sensibly.

Today this might sound like a trivial exercise as the web is almost universally accessible using a multitude of devices but in the mid 1990’s this was a very serious debate.

The compromise that was reached was that everyone using the technology was told that while there was no intention to track what people were searching for or viewing, would they be embarrassed if their colleagues were told what pages they had viewed. Inappropriate use of the technology was never a problem in reality.

And so it is with the latest technology – social media. With everything new people fall into different camps. There will be those who will install anything new, just because it is new and at the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who will oppose anything new, just because it is new.

If asked whether organisations should have social media, I pose the following question; “What is the business goal you are seeking to deliver?”

For me it isn’t about utilising a new piece of technology but rather being clear on what is the business goal that you are seeking to achieve and will this technology assist you to deliver it? Once you have that clear you can then undertake a traditional risk / benefit analysis to determine whether it is the correct thing to invest in.

One of the things that you should include in the risk / benefits matrix is the impact on internal communications as well as external communications. How will staff be clear on the position of the company on a particular issue if everyone in the company is allowed to Tweet or Yammer?

Technology is a good thing. Social Media is a good thing. Those who are clear on how it will assist them to deliver the desired business goal are likely to be pleased with the investment they make. Those who aren’t are frequently disappointed.

1878 Knowledge Economy Alive in Glasgow

2011-08-31T10:44:00.000+01:00

It’s very tempting to think that the knowledge economy is something new, its not!

If you happen to visit the Riverside Museum in Glasgow you will see an exhibit that illustrates how in 1878, Glasgow was engage in the knowledge economy with Japan. Not next door neighbour England or even one of its European neighbours, but a country the other side of the planet. And it was 1878, more than two hundred years ago.

Japan wanted to import knowledge so two engineers, Henry Dyer and Robert Henry Smith who were working in Tokyo at the time arranged for the knowledge to be transferred to the Japanese. Some 20 Scottish companies were involved in the transfer of their knowledge to the Japanese as part of this knowledge exchange.

In recognition of the extremely high value of the knowledge that was being sharing, they were rewarded with the most precious material available at that time to the Japanese; ceramics. Some 31 crates packed with Japanese art were sent from Yokohama to Glasgow. If you happen to visit Glasgow at some time in the future you will discover that they have perhaps the world’s premier collection of Japanese art outside Japan.

The 1878 exchange of knowledge lead in the 1890’s to the famous ‘Glasgow Boys’ artists, George Henry and Edward Hornel travelling to Japan to paint Japan and it’s people.

So the next time you hear a politician speak about the knowledge economy as if it was some bright new concept, just remind him that the boys from Glasgow were there over two hundred years ago in 1878. Done it, got the tee shirt as they say in some parts of the world.

Knoco Ltd

Value Add To The Organisation

2011-08-22T10:43:00.001+01:00

We are constantly trying to find new ways of sharing our knowledge with others. This is the latest example which give a good overview of knowledge management and the value that it adds to the organisation. For further free resources visit Knoco.

Knoco Ltd

Managing Your Old Knowledge

2011-08-17T15:12:00.007+01:00

Just in case it slipped your memory, yesterday, 16th August was the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. Why do I mention it? Well I found myself reflecting on how the world has changed since I heard the news that Elvis was dead.

There is an urban myth that anyone of my generation in USA or Europe can tell you were they were when they heard that Elvis had died. I heard it on a short wave radio that was struggling to bring in the BBC World Service to the camp in which I was based in the Empty Quarter of the Saudi Arabia desert. Being engineers we all had our favourite trick for improving the reception; one guy said reception was always best when you blew cigar smoke at the receiver while another was convinced that if you stood a bowl of water next to the receiver that improved the reception!

In those days you communicated with friends and family via blue airmail paper / envelopes. It’s hard to imagine in these days of Twitter and Facebook that we would write out our letter with a pen (yes a real pen on real paper), give it to the dispatcher who would put it onto the plane when it landed on its weekly supply run to the camp. Weeks later, yes, weeks later you would get a reply. If you were unlucky letter would get out of synch and you would open the letter hoping to find the answer to something only to read about something totally unconnected.

It’s also interesting to reflect on how my knowledge needs have changed since then and also what I now longer need to know. In those days the critical knowledge was how to survive in desert conditions where it would be extremely hot in the day and freezing cold at night. Each day we ‘must take your salt tablet’, it as a religion, you just wouldn’t not take your daily salt tablet. Everyone took them. Now the advice is not to take them unless individually due to your own needs your doctor prescribes them. We took them by the handful!

Surviving in the desert isn’t my key knowledge need currently, indeed as I write this the West Coast of Scotland has had it’s normally August rainfall in just two days. It’s wet!

Sometimes you need to realise that the knowledge that was so vital isn’t needed anymore but that doesn’t mean you should just assume you will remember it if you ever need it again or even worse do nothing, just assume that everything will be ok. Have a clear strategy on how you are going to handle ‘old knowledge’, you never know you might need some or all of it at some time in the future.

Knoco Ltd

Knoco Global KM Reach

2011-08-05T10:43:00.000+01:00

I took great delight in signing the licence agreement this week to bring another company into the Knoco franchise family. Our family has grown over the years and we now have franchise companies across the globe. This allows us to deliver the Knoco methodology with a local flavour. The diversity of backgrounds of the people and their experience in knowledge management is impressive. As well as serving their local market it also gives them the opportunity to work on KM projects in other parts of the world. This year we have seen someone from Canada working on a project in Abu Dhabi and someone from Indonesia working on a project in Saudi Arabia.

I look forward to other companies joining the Knoco family and the opportunities that it will lead to.

Knoco Ltd

Smartphone’s Can’t Swim

2011-08-01T10:43:00.003+01:00

With all the poise and style of an Olympic high diver my Smartphone leapt from my shirt pocket towards the water below. If it had been a movie or a scene from CSI you would have seen it drop in slow motion, then the camera would pan to my face to get a shot of my eyes bulging out in horror and my mouth wide open as I screamed “Nooooooooooooo”. Next there would be a slow motion shot as it broke the surface of the water and then the waves rippling out from the point of impact.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your point of view, the camera was there and my Smartphone in the blink of any eye travelled the distance from my shirt pocket to the water below.

As soon as I had recovered from the shock I grabbed the Smartphone from the water and removed the cover, the battery and then the SIM card. I dried it with paper towels but it looked terminal.

I let the components dry out at 22 deg C for 24 hours, then installed the SIM card and battery. I then connected the power charger to the mains, switched the mains power on but didn’t switch the Smartphone on at that stage. I left it like that for an hour and then switched the Smartphone on. I let it boot up, shut down and repeated that cycle three times and believe it or not, the Smartphone survived.

I have since learned that if you can immerse your Smartphone in rice it will absorb the moisture or if you are near a Radio Shack they sell a pack to dry out your Smartphone (guess Smartphone getting dropped into the water must be more common than I expected!).

Having restored the Smartphone to life I was shocked to discover three days later that my netbook had gone on strike. The folks at NUNO (National Union of Netbook Operators) decided that my netbook should come out on strike in sympathy with the emotional trauma that my Smartphone had suffered. For no reason that I can understand the blue screen of death appeared on my netbook along with the message ‘files missing’. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t routinely carry the installation discs for my netbook with me on vacation (did I forget to mention that all this happened while I was on vacation) so I was stuffed. I later discovered that it would have made no difference as essentially the netbook was dead.

What have I learned? If you go on vacation, leave the technology behind!

Knoco Ltd

Aligning Technology with People and Process

2011-06-21T16:10:00.002+01:00

A copy of Stephanie Barnes report “Aligning People, Process and Technology in Knowledge Management” arrived for review this week. I know Stephanie so I expected the report to be of a high calibre and I wasn’t disappointed.

We all have our natural inclinations and biases; some people will focus on the people aspects of knowledge management while others will focus on process while yet others will focus on technology. What Stephanie sets out to do with this report is to start from a technology perspective and link up with the process and people dimensions of knowledge management.

The result is a report that is easy to ready and very clearly demonstrates Stephanie’s ability to present technology in a manner in which the non technology expert can understand. Once she has clearly established that foundation she proceeds to illustrate how technology, people and process are dependant on each other.

The other dimension that I liked in this report is the inclusion in the case studies section examples of knowledge management projects that didn’t work and details of why not. We all know that we can learn as much, if not more, from things that didn’t work as from things that did work. The close relationship that Stephanie has with organisations is illustrated by them sharing details of what didn’t work with her.

The report is published by Ark Group and if I had something to say about the report it would be the pricing policy. In my opinion Ark Group have prevented this report from becoming an industry standard by pricing it far too high. It isn’t just me that thinks it’s too expensive, I have been approached by someone who knows I know Stephanie to ask whether their company should purchase a copy. They were concerned about the cost. Yet another contacted me to see if there were three providers of the report (I have just done a search on Amazon.com and couldn't find it) as he had to get three quotes due to the price of the report. So come on Ark Group, let make key documents such as Stephanie’s’ report available at realistic prices.

I also recorded a webinar for IQPC this week. The topic was culture and its impact on organisations but for some reason the title appears on the IQPC web site as “Culture – what is it and how can it benefit data and information management?” Why not have a look, you can find it at here

Knoco Ltd

Society and Culture

2011-06-08T16:10:00.001+01:00

Organisations and their employees don’t operate in a vacuum; they operate within the society that they are located in. Where a company has offices and plants in multiple locations, the local society will impact on each office and plant differently. You have to factor that into any KM strategy or framework that you design.

One way (and not the only way) to get a feel for the local society is to read the local newspaper. Not the international news agencies like the BBC and CNN but the local, home grown, hold it in your hand newspaper.

Look at the stories, what are they telling you about the society and the influence that it might be having on the staff as they walk into the office or plant that morning? This is not an exact science; it is not cause and effect but rather looking for patterns, trends and direction.

For example imagine the local newspaper contained stories about corrupt politicians, audits, prosecutions, jails terms and unacceptable practices. This might lead you to think that staff would be concerned about the influence and power of auditors. Auditors would be feared and as a result procedures would be rigidly adhered to even when staff knew that what they contained wasn’t the most effective or efficient way of doing an activity. Any attempt to get staff to share what they know or to innovate would fail if it didn’t involve updating the procedures at the same time.

Wherever you happen to be in the world have a read of the local newspaper and see what it is telling you about the local environment and the impact that it might be having on local staff. You might just be surprised at what you learn.

Knoco Ltd

Help My Brain Is Leaking!

2011-05-21T13:21:00.001+01:00

I am currently in the Gulf Region (Arabian Gulf not Gulf of Mexico) and went for a walk yesterday. I like to walk as you get a better impression of the area; you hear the sounds, you smell the smells and see those minute things that you miss if you are travelling in an air conditioned car. Sure you get sweaty but believe me it is a richer experience.

I found myself at the international bus terminal. I bought a cup of coffee and sat and people watched. The sights and sounds were incredible. Airports tend to be sanitised places now, security has made them dull, lifeless places but train stations and bus terminals are alive, bustling places. There were people of different sizes, colours, dress, a whole myriad to sights and sounds. If you find yourself near an international bus terminal, treat yourself to a cup of coffee and be amazed.

I was walking back along the road when I realised that my brain had leaked.
Just in front of me was the most amazing four wheel vehicle. It was beautiful. It was a work of art, it gleamed in the sunlight. It had probably never been on a real road (it looked as if it had just come out of the showroom) never mind a desert but what caught my eye was the stainless steel jerry can (petrol or gasoline can) that was on the back door next to the spare wheel. It was polished to a mirror like finish. Then my mind got to thinking.

I was within 2 metres (six feet) of a can filled with petrol (gasoline) which was sitting in direct sunlight when the temperature in the shared was 41 deg C. I must be at risk!

Now being an engineer I knew about effect of sunlight on stainless steel, how it heats the metal and how the heat is then transferred to the liquid inside the container. I knew that the container was sealed so as the liquid inside the container got hotter the liquid would turn to vapour and the pressure would increase inside the container. If the pressure was high enough the container would burst. If the temperature was hot enough the vapour would ignite.

But I couldn’t remember any of the numbers. I couldn’t remember the temperature at which liquid petrol (gasoline) becomes vapour. I couldn’t remember the temperature at which petroleum vapour ignited. My brain once had those details, I had participated in numerous HAZOPS studies while working as an engineer but they had leaked from my brain. My brain was leaking!

I decided the best course of action was to get my leaking brain out of there as fast as possible which isn’t very fast when it is over 41 deg C in the direct sunlight.

When I was safely out of the way my brain came up with something else. Did I really understand the context of what I had seen? I had assumed because the container was on the back door of the vehicle with the spare wheel that it contained petrol and hence a potential hazard to me. It could after all have contained water.

What is your strategy to prevent brains from leaking key knowledge?

Knoco Ltd

Is This Knowledge True?

2011-05-18T16:10:00.001+01:00

I live in Scotland and know that when the leaves fall of the trees that it is autumn (Fall) and the long, dark days and nights of winter are just around the corner. It is a fact, I know this.

I was in Saudi Arabia last week and found the pavements (sidewalks) covered in fallen leaves. Now for me that signals autumn. Leaves on the ground equals autumn, equals winter is just around the corner. It is a fact, I know this.

Now if someone had said to me before I arrive in Saudi Arabia in June (remember it is 40 deg C in the shade) that it was autumn I would have instantly dismissed them and not trusted the knowledge they were trying to share with me. I probably wouldn’t trust any knowledge they tried to share with me in future.

What is missing in the above story is the context or detail. Yes the pavements in Saudi Arabia were covered in leaves and it truly reminded me of autumn in Scotland but on closer inspection I noticed that the leaves all seemed to come from one type of tree. It wasn’t a generic and hence seasonal thing, it was something to do with this specific type of tree. Perhaps it was something in the design of that tree that caused it to shed its leaves when the temperature in the shade reached 40 deg C.

It’s important when transferring knowledge to understand that the receiver needs to be able to validate it for themselves. Thus when if I was told leaves would be on the ground in Saudi Arabia I would compare it against my existing experiences from Scotland and dismiss it as untrue. Whereas if I had been told that one type of tree in Saudi Arabia shed its leaves when the temperature reached 40 deg C and it would give the appearance of autumn in Scotland I would most probably believe them.

If you are considering a knowledge transfer program, keep the above in mind.

Why was I walking in Saudi Arabia in 40 deg C? That’s a whole different blog entry.

Knoco Ltd

Does Your Company Have A Future?

2011-05-05T16:11:00.004+01:00

The following is based on a real life example.

Context
Imagine you are sitting in a training session, it could be an in-house training course or it could be a business school session. The tutor then provides you with the following information and asks you to answer the question at the bottom.

Scenario
You are market leader in your chosen industry. Your company is the benchmark in your industry and universally known within that sector, you are considered the one to beat. Management have set aggressive growth targets and want to double the profitability within two years. However you have recently discovered that 70% of your workforce is over the age of 50 and three of the board directors who have steered the company to this enviable position will retire within two years.

The question
Should the question that this company asks itself be a) what is the value of knowledge management to our company or b) what is the future of our company without knowledge management?

Background
I know that you will think that no company who is in such a dominant position within its chosen industry could allow itself to be in such a precarious position but trust me, that is exactly what one company woke up to find.

The Knoco family
I am currently working with Stephanie from Knoco Canada and Abdulhameed from Knoco Gulf. The depth of understanding of knowledge management, the industry we are working with and the local culture resulted in the client describing the piece of work when it was delivered as ‘brilliant’. The photo shows the three of us enjoying coffee (I am the ugly one in the middle).

Knoco Ltd

Before Action Review (BAR)

2011-04-02T13:21:00.001+01:00

I was teaching a class and we were going over the After Action Review process. During the discussion I mentioned that question 1 – what was supposed to happen, was frequently tied to target setting. For example if the target was install 150 meters of pipe work, then one of the responses to question 1 would be, install 150 meters of pipe work. Then question 2, what actually happened, would review whether the target had been achieved or not. The AAR process is excellent in highlighting differences in perception of what was supposed to happen.

I also mentioned that some organizations had become very aware of this potential for misalignment in understanding of what happened so to avoid that they had introduced the ‘Before Action Review’ or BAR.
The BAR is used to identify what you want to happen before it happens and to ensure alignment between all the parties that will be involved in the activity. So in the example above the BAR would be used to ensure that everyone agreed that what was going to be done would be to install 150 meters of pipe work.

The following day I saw a great example of a situation that could potentially have been avoided if they had conducted a BAR.

I was sitting drinking coffee and the table faced out onto a delightful garden. The world was a pleasant place, good coffee, good book and warm sunshine. Two gardeners arrived and started to remove some small bushes and replace them with a different variety, in simple terms they were replacing green bushes with red bushes. This went on for a while and they were almost finished when some arrived and immediately got upset. I didn’t understand the language but the gestures were enough to let me know he wasn’t a happy bunny! More gestures followed with the gardeners leaning on their shovels then another couple of people arrived. We now had the ‘workmen’ and the ‘suits’ in a ratio of 2:6. The suits were now gesturing amongst themselves. At a rough guess I would suspect the gardeners had dug up the wrong bushes.

I have to say the ‘suits’ gesturing to each other was highly amusing, lots of energy, lots of passion but we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Eventually one of the suits seemed to bring things to a loud and dramatic conclusion, he walked off, the other suits walked off in different directions and the gardeners were left to themselves again. I went back to my coffee and read my book.

If only they had conducted a BAR, they would have been clear on what they were supposed to do before they started doing it.

Knoco Ltd

Remember The Context

2011-03-25T13:20:00.002Z

A colleague and I had just let the restaurant and we were walking down the street back to the hotel. As we approached the pedestrian crossing (frequently called a zebra crossing in the UK due to the black and white stripes painted on the road) the traffic slowed to a halt in anticipation of us stepping onto the crossing. We walked across the road and the traffic started up again.

When we got to the other side my colleague turned to me and said that he would need to learn how to manage the traffic when he got back home. I was slightly puzzled by the remark and asked what he meant. He went on to explain that in the city we were in the traffic was highly disciplined, they obey the speed limits and traffic lights and as we had just seen they even stopped for pedestrian to cross the road. He explained that in his home city it was very different with many drivers jumping red lights and white / black stripes of a pedestrian crossing were just something for drivers to aim at, certainly not something to stop at. Lane discipline was almost unheard of.

This reminded me of just how important context is when transferring lesson or best practice. In one location drivers were highly disciplined and obeyed the road rules while in the other location is was more chaotic. If we had tried to transfer lessons from one to the other without that context it could have resulted in an undesirable outcome or it would have sounded so alien to the receiver that they would instantly dismiss it and never accept learning from that source again.

So if you are trying to share learning, don’t forget the context of the source and the receiver.

Knoco Ltd

Early Example Of A Knowledge Asset

2011-02-03T13:21:00.005Z

I was watching a CNN program on the Challenger Shuttle Disaster anniversary. It transpired that they had a camera crew in the studio filming what was going on in the background to be used in a program on how they make programs. The CNN program was broadcasting the launch of the Challenger Shuttle and the commentary when the disaster happened. They captured in real time the initial reaction in the newsroom and the actions that happened behind the scenes as the horrible truth started to dawn on the broadcasters. One of the things that caught my attention was the use of an early ‘knowledge asset’.

They needed ‘facts and figures’ about NASA and what they would be doing in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Remember that the explosion was broadcast live on television, you could see them to a page in a ring binder, taking out a page, and handing it to someone who put it on the teleprompter and it then being read by the anchor man that was appears on the screens of those around the world who were watching the CNN coverage.

It will be interesting to see if oil refineries around the world start to learn from each other. I was at a presentation recently at which a vendor said they were working will a very large oil company to identify the carbon footprint for each of their refineries world wide as they would have to pay a carbon tax fine in the USA on emissions anywhere in the world. The presentation seemed to be about capturing the data on who was emitting what but very little about how they were going to transfer learning on how to reduce the emissions.

Knoco Ltd

Six Day Weekend

2011-01-10T10:24:00.001Z

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to everyone.

We haven’t reached the middle of January and already I have broken one of my New Year resolutions! I had intended to make my blog page more graphical and insert lots of photos. My colleague, Nick Milton’s blog is excellent in that it contains great content and it also looks good. So why is this blog page still just text? I have no real excuse or justification for continuing with text only. Perhaps I don’t want to spend the time and energy learning how to insert photographs into a blog page. I have recently been using the contents of a photo library in my PowerPoint presentation and the impact is very positive. So while I know it makes a positive impact to include photographs in my presentation, I still haven’t gotten around to doing it with this blog page.

I have spent a very large part of my working life working across time zones, it’s just part of my working environment but recently I have started to experience a variation on that; the three weekend, weekend.

Did you know that there are three weekends depending on where you are located in the world? There is the Thursday/Friday; the Friday/ Saturday and the Saturday/Sunday weekend. Currently I am working across all three of them which seems to mean that my working week has extended to seven day a week. It has been exacerbated by my wrist watch being in for service. It is thirty years old now (who says the Swiss don’t make the best watches in the world) and is currently in for servicing. I don’t mean replacing the battery but rather being oiled, gaskets replaced, balance wheel being recalibrated, all good old fashioned mechanical things. Now having had it on my wrist for over thirty years I knew I would miss it when it went in for servicing (18 weeks!) but what I really, really, really didn’t appreciate how much I would miss the date / day functionality. I look at the watch on my wrist and it just tells me the time; someone recently described it as a single function device! So not only don’t I know what date / day it is but I don’t know where in the world it’s the weekend.

So perhaps the reason that I have failed on my New Year’s resolution is due to not having my faithful wristwatch to tell me the date / day which means I don’t know if it’s the weekend or not which means I don’t know if I should be working or resting or not. Confused? Time for a cup of tea I think.

Knoco Ltd

New Knowledge

2010-12-18T07:16:00.000Z

I travel a lot and to ensure that I don’t lose things in hotel rooms I am very careful that I always put them back in the same place each and every time. If there is a safe I put everything that will fit into it, in the safe. So today it came as a huge, and I mean huge shock to discover that I couldn’t find my ipod.

At first I thought, I must of misplaced it then I thought, no I don’t misplace things. I search every drawer in the room, the safe, my suitcase, my shoes just in case it had fallen in there. I searched under the bed, I looked everywhere. I tried to remember when I had last used and what I had done with it……….I had put it in the safe before I went for breakfast but it wasn’t in the safe.

I am ashamed to admit that I was beginning to think that perhaps the room cleaner had ‘borrowed’ it by mistake. Perhaps they had gotten it mixed up with theirs.
I was past the desperate stage especially given that it had been a present. I was convinced I had put it in the safe but it wasn’t there. I went back to the room safe and emptied it again; this was the fourth time I had done this. Even although I could see it was empty I ran my hand over the interior of the safe, I was getting to the stage of not even trusting my eyesight. Don’t ask me why but I touched the internal roof of the safe. I will never understand why I did it because it would mean that the ipod was defying the laws of gravity. I know that the ipod is a clever device but I am sure defeating the laws of gravity aren’t amongst its ex factory features.

The ipod was stuck to the internal roof of the safe. The ipod was in a leather wallet and the magnetic closing stud had adhered to the roof of the safe. Never in a million years would I have considered that as the reason that I couldn’t find it.
Sometimes knowledge is like that, you think you know everything and you can’t learn anything but as my experience with the missing ipod and our Bird Island both illustrate, there is always room for learning.

Knoco Ltd

Using What You Already Know

2010-10-30T07:16:00.001+01:00

We frequently read that ‘lessons will be learned’ when something goes wrong in the public sector. It doesn’t seem to matter what it is but the same old line, ‘lessons will be learned’ is trotted out. Now while the concept of learning lessons is an excellent one, what interests me is why the lesson needed to be learned in the first place.

Let me give you an example. A great friend of mine recently broke his ankle (it later turned out that it was a ligament strain, but that’s another story). How did it happen, he ran down stairs trying to catch a London Underground train that was sitting at the platform. Now he is an educated person and experienced in using the London Underground and yet he ran down the stairs. He also knew that the next train would be along in 3 minutes, yes 3 minutes. If you want to know how long 3 minutes is try holding your breath, when you can’t hold it any longer that will be about 2 minutes. If you could save 3 minutes what would you use it for? If you wanted to make tea the kettle probably wouldn’t have boiled. So why did he do it?

I think the answer might be the same as in many companies, they get caught up in the task and don’t take time to reflect on what they are about to do. In this case the task was ‘catch the train sitting at the platform’, that was all that mattered, thinking about risk or applying knowledge that was already known (running down stairs is dangerous) wasn’t applicable, completing the task is all.

To highlight this mindset we once described a company as ‘ready, fire, aim’ rather than the more appropriate ‘ready, aim, fire’ which normally produces more acceptable results. So as you enter the new work week are you so focused on the task that you aren’t applying knowledge that you already have and have fallen into the ‘ready, fire, aim’ or ‘let’s run down stairs’ mentality.

Be safe, apply knowledge you already have.

Knoco Ltd

The Smell of Ancient Knowledge

2010-10-03T09:32:00.000+01:00

I am currently working in a client's office that as one of those physical assets that many companies have scrapped.............a library.

What a wonderful resource. I know that some of those who read this blog will immediatley respond that it can all be found online but walking between those shelves just brought back wonderful memories of firstly my visits to the library as a child with my Dad and then in later years hours spent in the University library.

This library even has a 'special collection' of historical books behind a locked door. You can see these very old books through the glass windows and if you speak nicely to them the librarian will let you in. The smell is of ancient knowledge. It is something that everything should experience at least once in their lifetime.

I was in wonderland and then it happened...........there it was sitting on the shelf, a book on calculus. Oh the hours I spent trying to master calculus. I couldn't resist it, I picked up the book and flicked through the pages and guess what, it didn't come flooding back to me. I guess all those hours of learning calculus are now too deeply hidden in the depths of my memory.

What have you done recently that you expect to be able to recall at a future date? If you are going to rely on your memory, just remember me and calculus.

Knoco Ltd

Do industries make repeat mistakes?

2010-10-02T07:17:00.000+01:00

If you ask any company what they want to achieve from knowledge management one of the reason that they will often forward is to avoid repeating past mistakes. Given how common this response is I found myself wondering if industries make repeat mistakes.

I found an interesting paper from International Desalination Association World Congress: SP05-036 which would tend to suggest that the answer is yes, industries do repeat mistakes.

The paper suggests that the history of corrosion failures in Sea Water Reverse Osmosion (SWRO) plants is as old as the history of the technology. SWRO plants are used around the world to convert sea water to fresh drinking water. The paper suggests that it started with a plant commissioned in 1979 where a particular type of high-pressure piping was used. Within a few years the piping should that it was inadequate for the duty.

Plants were commissioned in the 1983, 1986 and 1989 in at least three different geographical locations which all should the same corrosion. When the world’s largest SWRO plant was commissioned in 1989 it again suffered the same fate. Although each of these plants in turn exhibited poor performance, the continual desire to use less costly materials resulted in the continued use of the same material.

Even as recently as 2003 newly commissioned plants were exhibiting the same problems with the same materials. As the paper puts it, “…… implies a certain gambling when specifying this grade for SWRO plants.”

So not only companies make repeat mistakes, it would appear that industries do it as well.

Knoco Ltd

Rapid Onboarding

2010-09-16T07:17:00.006+01:00

At this time of year many young graduates will be starting out on first phase of their chose careers. Behind them are the endless hours of studying and the horrors of examination time. They are now ready to solve world hunger / put someone on Mars / invent a cure for Aids / invent the as yet unthought-of gadget that we must have and will make them a billionaire before they are thirty. The dreams and ambitions of the young know no boundaries or limitations.

On entering the workplace some will be the subject of traditional induction programs. They will sit through safety briefings, briefings on the vision of the organisation, be introduced to senior management, be parade around the office meeting countless faces, most of whom will be instantly forgotten about. They will be told about pensions, where the rest rooms are, where the staff restaurant is and set at a desk. They will be given procedures manual / standing orders manual / company standards and told to make themselves familiar with them. You can almost hear the enthusiasm with which they joined the organisation draining out of their big toe. Of the six hundred pages, which contains the most important things I need to know? How does it really work in practice? Who can I ask about this? For days they flounder until eventually their line manager is able to speak with them again. They are given some routine, menial task ‘to get them started’ and yet more enthusiasm drains from them. Soon they start to long for the weekend and release. Some start to question why they joined this organisation, some start to proactively seek opportunities outside the company. The fortunate ones will breakthrough and become motivated staff who make a contribution to the organisation and develop as individuals. The unfortunate ones become more and more disillusioned with their lot in life and seek fulfilment in out of office activities.

Fortunately not all of our young people will experience the same faith. Some will be lucky enough to join organisations who use processes such as rapid onboarding to provide ‘just in time knowledge’ to the person who has just joined the company. They don’t need to know every standard and operating procedure on day one, what they need to know is how to do the job they have been recruited for, no more, no less. They don’t need to be introduced to everyone in the department, they forget who have been introduced to anyway. If you are at a party and meet twenty people, how many names do you remember afterwards! All the need is to be introduced and paired with the people who they can ask advice from to get the job done and frequently that isn’t their line manager. They become productive on day one, they feel as if they are contributing, they feel good. They have been shown how to use the company knowledge portal, they ask questions, they contribute what they are learning. Motivation remains high, they know they have joined the right company. Rapid onboarding is just in time knowledge, to the person at the pace they need it and can apply it.

What will the young people experience when they join your organisation?

Knoco Ltd

Ancient Knowledge in Use Today

2010-09-09T09:32:00.001+01:00

I was delighted to hear during a recent conversation with Charlotte Barnes that ancient knowledge is being used today. Charlotte was Knowledge Manager on the Gorgon Project and has recently moved into being Principal Proposals Specialist with MWKL, the EPC engineering group.

Charlotte explained how she had just participated in The Knutsford Great Race on her Penny-farthing bike, yes a real live Penny-farthing bike. People had travelled from all over the world to participate in the race. There are some great picture on this site but I think my favourite is of the ‘pace car’ was lead the first two warm up laps before the race began. Close second in terms of pictures has just got to be the picture of the ‘starting gun’. These guys really know how to do things with style.

But technology creeps into everything………..there was an RFID lap counting chip in a carrier on the small wheel. I am sure it makes things easier for the race organisers but somehow it doesn’t fit with my mental image of a Penny-farthing.

As if the use of technology wasn’t shocking enough, one rider even got disqualified for dangerous riding. Is nothing sacred I hear you say!

But this story has a happy ending, Charlotte and her Penny-farthing partner won the team event. A well deserved lap of honour was held in front to six thousand people.
Isn’t this a wonderful example of ancient knowledge being retained and re-used?

Knoco Ltd

Five Question AAR

2010-09-06T07:58:00.000+01:00

The After Action Review (AAR) which was originally developed by the US Army is now used extensively in industry and the public sector as a knowledge gathering process. In most of the text books, the After Action Review is described as a four question process but increasingly we are using a five question version.

The first question is, what was supposed to happen?
The second question is, what actually happened?
The third question is, why was there a difference?
And the forth question is, what have we learned?

But now we like to add another question, what action needs to be taken?

The reason that we now include this fifth question is to start to move the conversation from ‘learning’ to ‘action’. It is designed to encourage the team who have been participating in the After Action Review to take ownership for their learning and then do something with it. It is moving from lessons identified to lessons learned because we did something about it.

If you already use the AAR process, why not try the five question version, we think you will be pleasantly surprised with the impact. If you don’t already use the AAR process, why not give it a go.

Knoco Ltd

Temporary Best Practice

2010-09-02T09:32:00.000+01:00

I can almost feel the reaction to this as I type the words on to the screen. Yes, I believe in Best Practice. Now to go and hide while the replies come storming in. Amongst them will be the concern that BP stifles innovation.

Let me suggest away forward. I would like to suggest that in future instead of BP we refer to TBP.

What is TBP?

TBP stands for Temporary Best Practice.

Let me try to explain how it works.

Imagine you are in a world where you haven’t done anything before. No, lets making it really exciting and suggest that nobody has done it before. Let’s call it edradouring. After you have edradoured for the first time you will have knowledge of how to edradour, it probably wont be perfect but it will be a start. You now have a TBP.

The next time that you are about to edradour, you can review you TBP on edradouring and apply that knowledge. If you chose to share your knowledge of how to edradour, other people could review your TBP and learn from it.

After you have edradoured for the second time, you can include any new knowledge of how to edradour in your TBP.

The essence of TBP is that it is never static, it is never finished, it is always in a state of transition in the cycle of review, apply, update. It never becomes a BP, because it always in a transition from the current version to the next version.

So for all those who don’t like the term Best Practice, how about Temporary Best Practice?

Knoco Ltd

KM for South African Parliament

2010-08-25T07:58:00.002+01:00

We were delighted to receive from the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa a request to submit a proposal for the development of a Sector Knowledge Management Strategic Framework.

The document runs to 78 pages but essentially describes a desire by the Parliament to introduce knowledge management to the Parliament and all of its nine Provincial Legislatures. The aim is to have a common framework that will apply to all. By optimising how knowledge is managed it will strengthen decision making as well as facilitating easy access to information and managing knowledge resources and intellectual property.

The scope of work includes a gap assessment, framework development and implementation planning. Workshops to engage the wide spectrum in the benefits of knowledge management have also to be held.

The lead that the Parliament is taking in this is to be applauded.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Capture and Re-use

2010-08-20T09:33:00.002+01:00

A lot of discussion /questions this week seem to be focused on knowledge capture /retention / harvesting. A lot of people seem to be asking things like ‘how do I do this’ or ‘how do I encourage people who are about to leave the company to share their knowledge’.

Many of the responses are of high quality and read as if they come from someone who has actually been involved in doing work like this rather than someone who has read a book about it. But they focus on the capture and very little about re-use of what has been captured.

In some instances the purpose of why the knowledge is being captured seems to have been lost. There also seems to be potential confusion as to what ‘knowledge sharing’ entails.

I was asked to benchmark on one organisation’s knowledge management processes and was immediately taken by the very high level of senior management support that it had. ‘Knowledge sharing’ was a mantra that was repeated by senior management in speeches, publications, in their day to day interaction with the workforce. It was impressive.

Their knowledge bank was brimming over with high quality material. Their internal KM team had put a lot of effort into marketing the knowledge bank and its existence was well known in the organisation. Almost everyone that I spoke to had submitted material to the knowledge bank and many had ‘knowledge sharing’ written into their personal objectives.

However............................

However the words ‘knowledge sharing’ were being heard as ‘I will share my knowledge with you’, the re-use of what was already there was missing.

Knowledge capture is but one part of the equation, you also need to include the other part, knowledge re-use.

Knoco Ltd

Demographic Cliff

2010-08-20T09:32:00.006+01:00

I was attending a meeting recently and for a reason that I can’t remember I started to do a mental calculation of the average age of the people in the room. It wasn’t a scientific exercise, I had to guess their ages but I ‘calculated’ that it was 52.6 years. Now it could have been that it was only ‘senior’ engineers or ‘senior’ managers that had been invited to the meeting but whatever the background, in that company it would tend to suggest that perhaps there is a potential retirement bubble just about to happen.

Now this experience isn’t an isolated on. I had written an article for Knowledge Management Review magazines on this very topic in 2006 (you can get a copy from the Knoco site) but just this week one of my colleges, Robert Flynn in Western Australia asked if I would work with him to write an article specifically for the local government sector in Western Australia.

Robert used the term Demographic Cliff to describe the imminent retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. I hadn’t come across this term before but for me it wonderfully describes what is about to happen in many organisations not only in local government but in the private sector as well.

In newspaper that was delivered to my hotel room today there is an article that forecasts that Germany’s mean age will rise to 53 and 40 percent of all Germans will be over the age of 60. You may be tempted to think that this is a first world problem but travelling as much as I do, let me assure you it isn’t. Governments and companies around the world are now starting to sit up and take notice of this ‘cliff’. In some ways it is like driving on a country road, you see a sign that indicates a sharp bend ahead. The prudent driver starts to slow down well in advance (that is their plan to deal with the sharp bend) whereas the less prudent driver continues at pace until they can see / feel the bend and then they take action. Is your government prudent and altering its actions in anticipation of reaching the Demographic Cliff or are they pushing ahead at pace assuming they will be able to react when the cliff is reached.

I have written in the past about checklists. If highly trained individuals such as astronauts make use of checklists then surely us lesser mortals can make use of them. There is an excellent book about trying to introduce checklists into surgical theatres so I was really pleased to hear this morning on the TV news that they are making a significant impact in surgical theatres around the world.

One of the really insightful things about the TV news report is that it showed the surgeon using the checklist to have the surgical team introduce themselves to the other team members. I just kind of assumed that they would have already known each other (now you know that your next operation is going to be performed by a group of strangers!) but apparently not.

I also love the language…………..’avoidable adverse event’ Translated that seems to mean something went wrong that was entirely avoidable. Existing knowledge was not re-used and the patient suffered as a result of it. So the next time you come across a situation where existing knowledge isn’t reused, you have an ‘avoidable adverse event’.

The surgeon also said that using checklists helped to build team cohesion as people felt much more comfortable talking out if they saw something that wasn’t right. They didn’t have to say “sorry but you are doing something wrong” but rather comment that they had deviated from the checklist.

So if you think checklists would be applicable in your environment, perhaps it’s time for a rethink, after all the World Health Organisation thinks they are applicable to surgery (and we all know how high a pedestal surgeons are placed on.

I don’t have a link to the TV news report that I heard this morning but you can find out more here.

Knoco Ltd

How to Successfully Hunt Whales

2010-08-11T17:43:00.001+01:00

My ancestors earned their living from the sea and today I was going to follow in their footsteps; I was going whale hunting!

As the trip progressed I watched in fascination as the crew practiced the same skill as my ancestors had all those long years ago. They knew the routes that the whales followed; indeed their charts were marked up with the routes and types of whales. Shallow and deep areas that they frequented were also identified. Sure they now had the benefit of radar and sonar but the knowledge to put us in the approximate area where they expected to find them was the same knowledge as they used all those years ago.

The captain had heard of my background and extended to me the great honour of taking the wheel of the ship as we tracked our prey. It is hard to express in typed words the sense of destiny as I laid my hands on the ships wheel. I could almost hear the voice of my ancestors whispering in my ear, “Steady as you go Tom, watch the compass, watch the horizon for any signs and keep an eye on the weather.” The hunt was on and I was loving it.

And then it happened………………”whale”, rang out. Immediately all eyes were directed to where the crew member was pointing. I just caught sign of it disappearing below the surface but we had one, all that remained now was to get within range.
I asked the skipper if he wanted the wheel with more than half of me hoping that he would say no, you take us in. With a rye smile he said he would take the wheel and I better get ready as we might only get one shot at it.

I rushed outside and helped to get the equipment ready. At a steady pace we closed not on the point of last sighting but where the skipper thought it would resurface. All of a sudden, without any warning the whale broke surface. “Now” was shouted from the wheelhouse and a dozen or more cameras flashed and whirred. The moment was caught on digital cameras for prosperity.

Sure we were using knowledge of how to hunt whales but this time we weren’t intent on killing them but rather capturing their antics on film (for the purists, we were capturing an imagine on a digital camera and not on film). The skipper of the boat was using old knowledge but within a different context. The knowledge of how to track and find whales had been handed down from one generation to another. It had been written down in charts and notebooks. It was still being used and added to even today. But the context had changed and whales were no longer killed for food and that knowledge had not been passed down. New knowledge had been created; how to position a boat to get the best pictures.

Sometime we need to put knowledge behind us knowing that the context in which that knowledge was created and used in no longer in existence. But sometimes knowledge that we don’t think will be of any value in the future can be retained and applied for commercial benefit in a different context.

What knowledge that you currently think has no commercial value could be valuable if applied in a different context?

Knoco Ltd

Lessons Identified

2010-08-10T17:43:00.001+01:00

One of the things we have been advocating for some time is to use the term 'lesson identified' rather than lesson learned. 'Lesson identified' indicates that it is an interim state and that the learn hasn't yet been embedded in the work practices, procedures and standards of the organisation. Until that has happened the 'lesson identified' is an interim step.

It was therefore interesting to read that Deloitte's also think the same thing.

Knoco Ltd

The Three Eras of Knowledge Management

2010-08-10T07:58:00.007+01:00

I first came across Nancy Dixon in the mid 1990's when she was invited to observe the work we were doing as an in-house knowledge management team. Delightful lady. Our paths have interwoven over the years so it was delightful to read her summary on The Three Eras of Knowledge Management. Well worth a read.

Knoco Ltd

A $1 Billion Worth Of Added Value Via KM

2010-07-26T17:42:00.003+01:00

Would you like to add $1 billion worth of added value to your organisation?

Mars, the food and chocolate group, have added $1 billion worth of value to their business by managing their know-how.

Knoco has been working with clients around the world for about eleven years now. During that time we have seen organisations move from ‘what is this knowledge management thing’ to ‘how would we do it in our business’? We work with them to create their strategy, the implementation plan and then the framework that will be rolled out to the whole organisation. Our aim is to transfer our skills to them and help them to deliver sustainable value to their business.

Our clients work in competitive global markets so confidentiality and discretion is important. The recent news from the Mars KM team, a team that we have had a long association with, is that knowledge management has helped to add $1 billion of value to the organisation. This news should be celebrated. Knowledge enabled delivery is the terminology used in Mars to indicate that the business line delivers the value using knowledge.

So if your organisation is being challenged to do more with less or your management is challenging you to take the organisation to a new level of performance, tell them about Mars and how managing their knowledge added $1 billion in value to the organisation.

Mars will be one of the case studies on my forthcoming book,” Knowledge Management for Sales and Marketing”.

Everyone at Knoco is delighted that Mars is now starting to share the successes that they have had in managing knowledge, they really are world class. We look forward to many more years’ association with them.

You can read more about this at my colleague Nick Milton’s blog. The approach that Mars are taking to managing knowledge can be read about at the Knoco web site.

Knoco Ltd

Do I Want Them To Share Their Knowledge

2010-06-30T17:42:00.001+01:00

I found myself wondering recently whether I really wanted someone to share their knowledge with me or whether I was glad I had just found out by accident what they hadn’t told me.

I was driving my car which is just over a year old when the radio stopped working. I pressed button after button but nothing happened. I drove to my destination, parked, did what I had to do and went back to the car. Pressed the key fob to open the door and nothing happened. Pressed it again and still nothing happened. Being of the generation where car doors had locks in them I decided to open the door using the mechanical key.

Now it’s not a Ferrari or Porsche but it does give a reassuring engine sound when it starts up. Normally that is but not that day. There was a dull thunk. Car’s don’t normally go, thunk. I can tell you, thunk in a car is an unnatural sound, it’s a sound you just don’t want to hear. I heard it that day. Thunk.

I called the emergency services and they got the car running. A natural engine sound emitted from it but would it start again if it stopped. So here was the challenge, how could it get the car home without stopping. I didn’t want to risk stopping at traffic lights and the engine dying on me so using Mark 1 Tom Young navigation system I headed off planning a route that would minimise the risk of traffic lights. Excellent example of local, tacit knowledge in action.

Took the car to the local dealer. Initially they thought it might be the engine immobiliser that had a fault but a couple of hours later they telephoned to say that the radio had a fault and as a result had drained the battery. They would need to order a replacement but I could collect the car any time.

The radio is an integral part of the dashboard so I wasn’t surprised they would have to order a replacement in, I expected a day, perhaps two at most. I almost fell off the seat when he said it would take 3 months. The story was that the original manufacturer went bust and the new supplier was filling back orders first and it would take 3 months to get to me. I then found out that there were six other cars of the same type in this local dealership waiting on replacement radios.

Could it be that there was a generic fault with this car but as they didn’t have replacement radios they just waited until you parked your car and found that it wouldn’t start again before they told you there was a fault with the radio? Would I have preferred to drive along unaware of this potential fault, just driving and driving until it eventually failed? Perhaps they were hoping that the new supplier would be able to create an inventory and then they would start recalling the cars? In some ways I felt sorry for the guy in the car dealership, telling people they would be without a radio for three months isn’t what they want to hear.

My colleague, Nick Milton, recent wrote in his blog about peer assists. I have always thought of peer assist as a ‘learning before’ tool so it was very interesting to hear from the Statoil delegate at the Collective Intelligence in Energy Conference that they regard it and use it as a learning during tool. You live and learn as they say. It was a good conference with great presentation from the likes of Scottish Power, Anglo American, EDP (power utility head quartered in Portugal but with global span), BP and ENI. The conversation was excellent and i truly enjoyed chairing the conference.

Knoco Ltd

600 Helping Hands

2010-06-21T17:39:00.002+01:00

I was recently conducting a knowledge harvesting exercise with a project. The project had been very successful and the senior management were keen to understand why so that it could be replicated in other projects. To give you an idea of how successful they were, they had completed the phase of the project in 18 months whereas a similar project had taken 36 months to complete a the phase. No matter the size or complexity of your project, irrespective of what industry you are in or even if you are in a not for profit organisation, being able to do something in half the time is of interest.

The reason that the project was so successful was that they decided not to do something that had already been done by someone else in the company or even someone else outside the company. It became a mantra, “can we learn from someone who has already done this?”

As a result they had 600 lessons from other parts of the organisation or from outside the organisation. As one of the guys put it, “We had 600 helping hands”. Now some of the lessons were very small, very technical in nature whereas others were very high level, strategic in nature. Each of the lessons was assigned an owner and was tracked until it was used by the project.

So if you want to achieve breakthrough performance, look for those helping hands.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Harvesting or IP Rip Off

2010-06-12T17:43:00.001+01:00

Many of the knowledge management forums that I participate in focus on the operational aspects of knowledge management. For example, on one of them there is a lot of discussion about ‘best tools to use in knowledge harvesting’. The unstated assumption is that knowledge harvesting is a good thing to do.

From a company perspective knowledge harvesting makes a lot of sense. It is part of the process to ensure that key knowledge is identified and managed. It isn’t a last minute thing but something that is proactively managed as part of the overall knowledge management activities of the company. Waiting until an announcement has been made that someone is leaving (either voluntarily or not) isn’t the way to go about it. I have already written at length how I think this should be done. You can get it for free from the Knoco web site.

While there is lots of stuff written about how to do knowledge harvesting, it isn’t very often that you read things from the perspective of the person who has the knowledge which made the following that much more interesting.

I was alerted to a thread in a construction forum that gave the participants view of knowledge harvesting. It didn’t make very pretty reading. Was their knowledge being harvested or was their IP being ripped off. The post started with someone expressing concern that their current employer was going to suck their brain for their experience. The concern seemed to be that while the contract required them to participate, they thought that they were going to participate in an informal chat, not a two hour structured interview. They expressed that they didn’t mind sharing the ‘what’ and ‘why’ but not the ‘how’. The fact that the person had only been there for three months seems to be a major contributor to the irritation.

One of the contributors mentions a rather well known organisation (I won’t mention the name as I have no way of verifying what the contributor says) who wanted to hire them not just to do the job but to share their knowledge of how to do the job. They would then create an in-house university based on their knowledge. The contributor seemed to be happy being hired to do a task but not have his knowledge used to create an in-house university.

The posts then change to giving advice to participate in the knowledge harvesting exercise but keep it high level and not provide the details. They suggest as the people weren’t involved in the work they won’t be able to tell if they are getting the appropriate level of detail or not.

Reading the post was an object lesson in how not to manage knowledge and how not to have an engaged workforce.

For all of us involved in knowledge harvesting exercises it is a warning. We need to ensure that there is a balance between the benefit to the company and to the individual.

Knoco Ltd

The Power to Remember

2010-05-28T11:10:00.000+01:00

The lack of corporate memory or how easily companies forget is frequently the topic of blogs and knowledge management papers. What struck me today however is the ability of the Internet not to forget.

One of the things that the BBC News web site includes on its home pages is 'most popular stories now' in terms of read, shared and watched / listened.

What was interesting yesterday and today was that one of the top stories shared and read, if you click on the link it takes you to a BBC web page dated 8 Dec 2006. The story that every one is reading about and sharing is the same story that appeared in Dec 2006.

If you are a senior executive it might be worthwhile checking to see if your knowledge management plan (which identifies the key knowledge that your organisation needs to manage to achieve its business objectives) includes how to manage the Internets memory.

The story that on the BBC that I have used to illustrate the memory that the Internet has should be a wake up call for senior managers. If what appears on the Internet about your company is good and positive, then well done. However if a negative story appears, do you want it re-appearing every couple of years to remind your current and potential customers about that negative aspect of your corporation.

So senior executives and knowledge managers, can I suggest that you dig out your knowledge management plans and just check what you are doing about the Internet memory.

Knoco Ltd

Value of Managing Knowledge

2010-05-26T11:09:00.000+01:00

We are frequently asked if managing knowledge makes business sense. I first started hearing this question in the mid 1990’s and it is still as valid today. If you are making investment decision one of the things that you have to verify before you commit your valuable resources is the return that will generated.

My college Nick Milton has collected a series of stories about the benefits that companies have reported from managing knowledge and I would encourage you to read that but I thought it worthwhile sharing some data that I recently uncovered.
Essentially what it illustrated was that companies that are recognised for managing their knowledge effectively have Return on Revenues average 12.9% -- over four times the Global Fortune 500 median and Return on Assets average 13.9% -- over six times the Global Fortune 500 median.

That seems like a reasonable justification to investing in managing your company’s knowledge.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledgable Nose

2010-05-20T11:10:00.001+01:00

I was up in the mountains of Scotland and we decided to visit one of the local distilleries. During the tour we were told that the Chief Noser was about to retire having decided after training his replacement for 12 years that they were ready to take over. Now I know at one point you had to serve as apprentice to your next role for 2 years before you were considered ready to take the role over but 12 years, isn’t that a bit excessive?

During the tour we learned that the tongue has 5 taste receptors while the nose has 38 (sorry to all medical folks if I have forgotten the exact numbers, but the ratio is in that order). We also learned that blended whisky is created when different whiskies are mixed and then the result is bottled. That is known as blended whisky. When malt from a different barrel is combined with malt from another barrel the process is known as ‘marrying the whisky’. As far as I could make out it was because there was no active stirring or encouragement for the liquids to mix. That is then bottled as single malt.

The process by which the decision is reached on what to do with the whisky from a given barrel is called ‘nosing’, literally the person smells the whisky and decides whether it should be left in the barrel to mature even further as it has good potential to be a classic or whether it is ready for consumption. The tacit knowledge on how select one from the other we were told took a long time to learn and in this case it had taken 12 years to get ready to take over as Chief Noser.

Now I found myself wondering, having done lots of knowledge harvesting over the years, why couldn’t you just sit down with the Chief Noser and capture what he did and didn’t do. Interestingly the company has an open door policy to nosing and anyone irrespective of gender, age, educational level can audition to become a trainee noser.

One of the conclusions that I reached was that it made a good marketing story to say that it has taken 12 years just to decide what to do with the whisky. It illustrated an industry that took the long view with things and didn’t rush things it would be ready when it was ready. So even if it was possible to transfer the knowledge quicker than that, it made a better story for the visitors to say that it had taken 12 years. I had also tasted the efforts of some other organisations that perhaps didn’t have the same tradition of producing whisky and believe me it was inferior. So perhaps in some areas it does take 12 years to share tacit knowledge.

Knoco Ltd

Language in Storytelling

2010-05-17T15:02:00.001+01:00

In some industries and companies there is an ‘official working language’ which is different from the ‘working language’ used by most of the staff. The working language might be Thai, French, German, Norwegian or Arabic to name a few. Frequently the official language is English. It is not uncommon to find quiet a variation in language proficiency across the organisation. This can lead to the dilemma of whether to allow people to share knowledge in their working language or to insist that the must do so in the official language of the company.

Another example of language can be seen in this video clip on Alliancing. I use the term 'retail station' which many of you will relate to as a 'gas station'. I also talk about 'green and yellow stickies' while many of you will know them as 'post-its'. So when you are telling stories to transfer learning, pause for a second and reflect on whether the language or words you are going to use will be understood by your entire audience.

More examples of the use of video in storytelling can be viewed here.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Sharing Using Wikis

2010-05-12T11:10:00.000+01:00

If I was a knowledge manager in a company I would prefer wiki to blogs.
Knoco has grown around the world by franchising and initially we had all our know-how documented in a franchise manual on a DVD. While this contained a huge amount of know-how and experience on how to set up and run a knowledge management consulting company it wasn’t interactive.

As we grew we recognised the need to include what the franchisees were leaning into the franchise manual so we decided to convert the franchise manual into a wiki format.

One of the reasons that I like wikis is that it is easy to identify what you need, for example if I was about to introduce a community of practice and wanted an agenda for a launch event and the slide pack that goes with it, I would go to the ‘Communities of Practice’ section of the wiki, and then into the ‘launch events’ section. Initially you would find our experience of doing these launch events but now because any of the franchisees can upload their experience you will also find hints and tips from around the globe. You would be able to see things that had been done in different locations and hence it would allow you to see any differences in approach due to local culture or perhaps changed due to industry factors.

Using the wiki allows our knowledge base to grow, topic by topic. We can see what areas are ‘hot’ and contain a lot of new learning while in other areas there is less updated material.

The wiki also allows us to track who did what and when. It provides an audit trail of new and amended content. This allows us to follow up on points that we didn’t understand or perhaps where we feel that the new material doesn’t have sufficient context to allow it to be fully understood and hence replicated by another franchisee.

The wiki also issues alerts to new material being added so each of the franchisees can receive an alert that new material has been added and in which area.
Blogs seem to be more suitable for broadcasting and less for collaborating to build something together.

Knoco Ltd

How To Avoid Losing Your Country

2010-05-11T07:16:00.001+01:00

The news is constantly filled with details of how dire the economic situation is in Greece, France, UK, USA etc but this isn’t a new situation but one that again demonstrates the consequences of not learning from lessons identified and then applying them. Let me recall the story of the Darien Adventure.

A banker with the Bank of England came up with the idea of establishing a Scottish colony in Panama (this was in the days before the canal) and transporting by land goods that had arrived from the Pacific and then shipping them to Europe. He sold the idea to the people and very shortly a huge sum of money had been raised from the general population. Five ships were fitted out and set sale to establish the colony.

You have to remember that I wasn’t actually there at the time, it occurred in the seventeenth century but the history books tell us that the two global super powers at the time, England and Spain didn’t like this scheme, we are even told that the English ambassador to Holland even threatened to embargo any merchants who traded with the new venture. But off they went, indeed we are told that of the first cadre of 1200 settlers, only 2 knew where they were headed, the rest had sealed instructions only to be opened once they were at sea.

Once they were there they tried to treat with the natives but found that the natives had no use for the combs and mirrors that they had brought with them. They also found that the wigs they had brought with them to wear weren’t really suitable for conditions in Panama. But worse was to come. The Kings of England and Spain prevented resupply of the new colony or ships trading with it.

Eventually they returned to Scotland, only 300 made it back but they didn’t learn and they then sent another 1300 settles in three ships, this time only a very small number of them survived to return to Scotland.

It we look at this through a knowledge lens we can see that as this was a new venture they should have had the following;

Knowledge plan to identify what knowledge they would need to successfully deliver their venture. For example they needed knowledge on how to trade in a world in which the two major powers were set against stopping them.

Peer assist should have been used where they presented their plan and invited their peers to help them make it better. Perhaps their peers might have been able to tell them at that the natives didn’t want to trade food for mirrors and combs.

BDAL should have been used to find the new knowledge that they would need, for example how to establish a colony in Panama.

AAR should have been done by the colonists to ensure that what they were learning was embedded in their work processes; this was after all a matter of life and death.

A retrospect should have been held when the first set of colonists left so that others might learn before setting out on the second venture. Perhaps they should have created a knowledge asset on how to establish a colony or trading venture.

The people of Scotland had invested all their savings in the venture and it had been lost. The history books tell us that the Scottish economy was in such a bad state that within 7 years it had to agree to the Act of Union, becoming a junior partner to England in the newly created Great Britain.

Learning before you start a new venture is vital, you might lose your company or even your country otherwise.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Management Plan to Avoid Disaster

2010-05-07T20:12:00.001+01:00

I was sent a link to Leaning Your Way to Disaster which is based on the recent activities at Toyota and BP. The blog suggests that leadership must take accountability for the cumulative impact of decisions. For me it also highlights the need to have a knowledge management plan in place to ensure not only you have the knowledge that you need but you also know who will be responsible for managing that knowledge especially when there are a number of relationships involved.

Knoco Ltd

How Easy It Is To Forget

2010-05-05T11:10:00.008+01:00

Much is written and discussed about lesson learned and the corporate memory. There seems to be fairly general agreement that corporate memory can be short term with organisations frequently forgetting what they already know. Indeed one of the presentations as last week’s conference took that as its theme eg use what you already know before asking consultants to help you with something.

Perhaps our ability to ‘forget’ the context within which things were learned extends beyond our business environment. Tomorrow we have a General Election in the UK and while the media seems to be getting itself into a frenzy about it, there are less tangible signs of campaigning around where I live than I can ever remember. During recent days I have been discussing with friends and colleagues, not who they will vote for but will they vote at all. I have to put my hand up at this point and say that I have already voted, I use a postal ballot due to the amount of travelling that I do, but I found a fairly large percentage would probably not bother to vote.

For those that don’t intend voting consider this. After the First World War, in the UK, Parliament agreed that women would be allowed to vote if they were over the age of 30, were a householder or married to a householder or if they held a university degree. Prior to that, women had no vote in the UK.

It wasn’t until 1928 that women were allowed to vote on the same terms as men in the UK.

I wonder just how many of those who probably won’t vote in tomorrow’s elections will reflect on the struggle that a major part of the UK population went through to get the right to vote? If they understood the context behind why they should vote then perhaps they would go and vote.

Knowledge management comes across this challenge all the time. We assume that because one person or group has learned something that everyone else in the organisation will automatically want to hear about it and adopt the learning. But people are busy and getting their attention can be hard. If however they understand the context behind what you want to share with them, then perhaps they will be more inclined to listen to you.

So no matter who you are or where you live, voting is important. Our ancestors went to considerable lengths to get us the right to vote. Who you vote for is entirely up to you, but don’t let those who went before you down by not voting.

ps I have just recieved feedback from someone that I had been coaching. It seems that it had a very positive impact. I think I will go and treat myself to lunch somewhere nice to celebrate. Doesn't it feel good when you can help anothe human being?

Knoco Ltd

Research On The Use Of Wiki's

2010-05-03T20:13:00.000+01:00

I was at the Oil and Gas KM conference in Aberdeen at the end of last week and it was great to see so many familiar faces amongst the new ones. I have to admit however to finding out that it has been eleven years that Chris Collison and I have met face to face. I can still remember Chris as a fresh faced member of the BP team. I am glad that his career has flourished, he is a nice guy.

There were lots of good papers at the conference but one that really stood out for me was the presentation from Shell. The presenter (I haven’t got his name to hand) shared the results of some work that he has been doing with university students and new graduate entries to Shell. There was a lot of good stuff but I found it especially interesting when he shared that 1% of us edit a Wikipedia page and less than 0.2% have created a new Wikipedia page, this is despite almost 100% of the sample groups, including the conference attendees having used Wikipedia. When you then take that into the workplace, if we provide Wiki’s will the use / editing / creating a new page follow the same pattern as the presenter suggested?

If my notes are correct the research seems to indicate that while everyone loves corporate wikis, it is the 35-45 year olds who edit the pages. Perhaps it is because those younger than that don’t think they have sufficient experience to be able to provide useful edits.

The other thing was that the research in the new graduates groups seems to suggest they don’t see the purpose of Twitter. I can’t remember what he said but that as I just wrote down ‘they hate twitter’.

It also indicated the need to get your document management systems up to date and fully functioning as the use of the corporate wiki had increased the use of some documents by 350%. This is because the reader was following the text in the wiki, reading who to contact for additional information plus the link to the needed document was included in the text. They didn’t have to search for the document, they went to the wiki, read the text and then clicked on the link to the required document.

The use that they are putting blogs to is very novel but that’s for another post on another day.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Management in the Public Sector

2010-04-27T20:12:00.001+01:00

The latest edition of the Knoco newsletter is now available and can be obtained here. This edition focuses on knowledge management in the public sector.

Technology is so ingrained in my life that in many respects it is invisible. It works. It works like a biro pen, you pick it up, it does what is supposed to do, no surprises, no shocks, it just does what it is supposed to do.

Sometime however it doesn’t work. That’s what happened to me some time ago. For a reason that I still don’t understand my email account on my desktop stopped remembering my password. At first it was just a minor irritation. I would describe myself as pretty computer literate, so I did what I thought needed to be done but it didn’t solve the situation. When I used my laptop everything worked as intended but whenever I used my desktop, the email account wouldn’t remember my password.

Like a stone in your shoe, the irritation grew until I had to do something about it. I booked a call with Microsoft help. We used remote access to share my desktop screen so that as they asked me to do something they could see the results on the screen. He was thousands of miles away but we acted as if he was sitting next to me. We could even trace where the signals were going as I pressed keys. The whole process was really awesome.

Now I would like to end this entry by saying that the problem has been solved but it hasn’t. There has been talk of handshakes, tokens, servers, keys and all sorts of other techno words but we still haven’t got it solved. The helpdesk guys are really enjoying it, the guy who calls sounds like a really nice guy, as it seems to be challenging their understanding of how things should operate.

I hope to be able to inform you early next week that everything is back to normal and that my desktop is now remembering my password. In the meantime I will be in Aberdeen presenting a paper at the Oil and Gas Knowledge Management conference.

Knoco Ltd

Business Strategy

2010-04-19T20:11:00.001+01:00

My heart goes out to anyone caught up in the travel chaos that the volcanic ash has created. Anyone who has travelled as much as I have will have experienced the agony of delayed / cancelled / just didn’t turn up flights. The endless hours in an airport terminal, perhaps with little or no foreign currency, my heart goes out to you. But please be safe. The desire to do something, anything, can become overwhelming. I can remember on one occasion where I was contemplating driving a huge distance. As I think back on it now it was sheer stupidity but the desire to do something, get to that meeting, was clouding my thinking. I know it is very easy for me to sit here and type “do a risk assessment and understand the potential consequences of what you are about to do” but it is sound advice. Be safe.

I am currently planning a piece of work and as part of the preparation I was reflecting on how two different organisations were approaching their future.

The first organisation is in the public sector (government organisation). Their challenge is that funding will become very tight in future and they are projecting a lack of funds. To meet their obligations they offered staff redundancy packagers including enhanced pension accrual. They also said that anyone who wanted to go, could go. As a result many who were in their early to mid 50’s would be able to take the equivalent of a full pension. They also planned to combine jobs with typically three jobs being combined into one. As a result they were inundated with requests to leave for as one person put it, ‘would you want to do three jobs for the same money or would you like to retire on almost a full pension?’. So in the short term they will meet their objective and save substantial sums of money but have essentially taken out of the organisation anyone who had any leave of experience. They have no knowledge retention strategy or even ad hoc activities, people are just walking out the door.

In the near future they will have people doing the equivalent of three previous jobs with perhaps experience in one of those areas, and even if they do have experience it is likely to be a few years only.

Another organisation (non government owned) had just completed its strategic review and was starting to put in place the plans to deliver that strategy. During the discussions it became obvious that part way through delivery of that strategy they were going to lose a large number of people due to retirement. The initial reaction was that they would need to retain them but they started to question if they would have the expertise that was required as the company moved forward. As a result they started to review what know-how would need to be retained to deliver the strategy.
Stereotypes can be very dangerous and it wouldn’t be right to assume that the actions taken in these two examples is due entirely to one being a government organisation and one not, that would be too simplistic. Cutting to reduced costs can be very easy and can be shown to provide immediate impact. Investing to deliver something in the future requires leadership and confidence that it will in actual fact deliver in the future.

Knoco Ltd

Measuring Impact of Knowledge Management

2010-04-13T20:13:00.006+01:00

I was starting to think about what I would include in my presentation for the KM conference at the end of the month. The focus is on how to unlock the investment that your organisation has made in knowledge management. As I was gathering my thoughts my mind kept drifting back to PETRONAS. They are doing some really good stuff in knowledge management. What they have been doing would make a good case study in my presentation. It wouldn’t surprise me to see them as MAKE award nominees or even finalists in the near future.

I know that some people think that knowledge can’t be managed so how could you possibly measure something that can’t be measured. I however take an alternative line. Not only do I think knowledge can be managed but have seen many examples of it being done so at a practical level. I also think that what is done can be measured. Focusing on the outcomes can be more beneficial than focusing on the inputs. For example does it really matter how many AAR’s have been conducted or web pages viewed? If you have 200 documents uploaded to the shared area this month rather than 100 does that mean that you were twice as effective or efficient this month? Does it mean that twice as much knowledge was shared; I think not.

I like to think more on business outcomes; did we increase market share from 6 to 9%? Did we reduce cost per item from $3.89 to $3.21? For me all knowledge management programs should be totally aligned to the business objectives of the organisation, otherwise why would an organisation invest in it? Why do we do financial management? Perhaps it is to ensure that stakeholders know that their investment is being soundly management and not being misdirected. If we didn’t have to provide that assurance to third parties, would we do financial management? Perhaps yes, perhaps not.

I haven’t finalised what I am going to say in the presentation but perhaps it will be to start with the business outcome that you wish and then build your measurement system to monitor the progress towards that outcome.

You can access Knoco resources here.

Knoco Ltd

Virtual Apprentice

2010-04-09T15:16:00.001+01:00

I was chatting with someone about transferring learning. He knew he wanted to do something but the trouble was he wasn’t sure what it was or how to do it. As we chatted it started to emerge that in his field of work there were two types of learning; one could be described as ‘hard’ and the other ‘context’.

Hard learning was where the advice was instructional eg set the control to 7.9 or add the 200g of the mix to 1 litre of water. Nice clean cut instructions. You don’t need to understand why it is 7.9 and not 3.4, you just set the control to 7.9 and everyone is happy.

The other learning was more based on experience so we started to describe it as context learning. The example he gave me was that when setting the control to 7.9 you actually set it to 8.3, held it there for five seconds then turned it down to 7.9, that way the system was stable at 7.9 and didn’t oscillate. While he thought he could describe the difference between the two types he was struggling to find a way of transferring them.

I suggested he might think about a concept such as Virtual Apprentice. The idea was that when asking the person to document context learning you position it as ‘what would you tell and apprentice if you had them next to you when you were doing that activity’. He liked that idea, he could see how people would related to it and understand what he was looking to try and capture.

To get people to re-use the context learning, I suggested that he ask people to read it before doing the task to see if it had been correctly recorded or to see if they could add additional information for the Virtual Apprentice. This would get over the ‘I already know how to do the job’ problem he was having. By asking them to check to see if the instructions were up to date for an apprentice he felt there was a good chance that they would do it.

It will be interesting to see how he gets on with the concept of the Virtual Apprentice.

Send Me KM Resources But Don't Let My Boss Know

2010-04-05T17:19:00.000+01:00

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that I think the word ‘culture’ is grossly overused. In some instances it is used as code for ‘that is too hard so I wont do it’. I have written frequently that in a company context ‘culture’ is a by-product or result of the expectations that management share with the workforce. If on observing that a company is driven by procedures and standards, I would bet that you will find someone at the top of that organisation who expects people to adhere to the procedures and standards that have been put in place.

I do however freely admit that national and geographical cultures do exist. I am Scottish and very proud of it. That heritage has allowed me to be welcomed around the world although I have to admit that some people find my Glasgow accent challenging, it’s not quite BBC English.

In the cultural context I find it interesting that a very large number of the people from India that visit the Knoco web site and request resources ask for it to be sent to their private email address and not the company one. At first I thought these were students looking for resources to supplement their lecture notes but on investigation I have found that they are senior people in very well known organisations.

So what makes them use their private email address rather than a company one when they are requesting knowledge management resources? When I ask the response i typically get is that they are learning for themselves and developing their own competency hence using the private email address. Now I would have thought that learning something that would then be applied for the benefit of the organisation that you are employed with would warrant the use of the company email but perhaps I am mistaken. I really don’t understand what is happening as it doesn’t seem to happen with other people who request resources from the web site. Sure we sometimes get a request from someone using their private email address but nothing like the level of consistency that appears to happen with people located in India. If anyone can share an insight to this phenomenon I would be delighted to hear from them.

Knoco Ltd

We Don’t Do Lessons Anymore

2010-03-21T17:19:00.001Z

We don’t do lessons anymore.

I am sure you would have been as surprised as I was when I was told that. I was sitting speaking with someone and they were outlining what they did and how they did it. I was truly impressed not only by the experience of the person who was telling me this but also about how they went about it. Then the bombshell, “We don’t do lessons any more”.

Just as well I wasn’t drinking tea that the time as I am sure I would have spilled it. As calmly as I could I enquired if they could share a bit more detail with me. “We don’t do them anymore because nobody liked doing them” was the reply. As we sat and talked some more it transpired the reason that nobody like doing them was that they felt nothing ever happened as a result of lessons sessions. These were very busy people and doing something that didn’t add value or didn’t seem to have a purpose didn’t go down well with them.

As the story unfolded we got to the ‘put them into the database’ part, then the ‘nobody ever looks at the database, part.

I prefer nowadays to think of ‘lessons identified’ and a lesson only being an interim step. My preferred sequence is;
• Activity
• Lesson identified
• Action identified based on the lesson identified
• Someone made accountable for closing out the action
• The action closed out and the learning from the lesson identified incorporated in procedure, standard, work method statement, training programme etc
• Lesson identified achieved
• Staff made aware of the change to the work method etc.
• Updated work method etc routinely used

I suggested the instead of thinking about lessons as the end state that perhaps they should think about them as being an interim step. Time will tell if they decide to change their approach.

Knoco Ltd

Culture - what does lunchtime tell you?

2010-03-13T10:24:00.002Z

Changing the culture is a common objective of a knowledge management program. While this seems a laudable objective before you can change something you need to be clear on what you already have. A common assumption is that a company has one, single, unified culture and that any cultural change program just needs to change this one thing. It is similar to saying that everyone in the company drinks tea, so we want to convert them to coffee drinks.

Culture just isn’t like that.

If you want to see culture in action look at the dining habits of the organisation at lunchtime. Some will bring a sandwich from home, some will have bought the sandwich from a vendor, some will go to a local restaurant and some will go to the staff canteen. Even who they have lunch with will have diversity; some will sit with colleagues they work with; some will use it as time to meet with colleagues in other departments or disciplines; males will sit with males ; females will sit with females ; males will sit with females ; some will sit along national or ethnic or tribal lines. The variety is huge.

Is this culture in action? Perhaps not in the purest sense but it does serve as a reminder that humans are complex and as an organisation is made up of humans, the organisation will also be complex.

Before you can change the culture of an organisation you need to be clear on what you have already. If you are not clear on what you already have, how can you possibly move it towards what you want?

Knoco Ltd

KPI's Drive Knowledge Flow

2010-03-08T12:09:00.000Z

I have worked in performance driven environments all my working life, targets, milestones and deliverables are the things I was brought up on and while I think having targets is a great idea I am now getting a bit concerned about the widespread use of key performance indicators or KPI’s.

Don’t get me wrong I think KPI’s are a great way of making clear to individuals and the wider organisation what it is you want them to achieve and how it will be measured but (don’t you just love the but word) I am getting a bit concerned about the unintended consequences of some of the KPI’s that I have seen in use.

Good KPI’s are ones that are carefully thought through and aligned with the behaviours you want staff to display. I tend to think about KPI’s as guided missiles, you point them in the direction you want and off they go. If you have got it correct it will go where you want it to, get it wrong and it will turn back and get you!

It’s also useful to think about what else is happening in the organisation as the same time. Let’s take the following hypothetical (imaginary) scenario. The company has announced that the new document storage system is available. Nothing wrong with that. Now let’s assume that the management want staff ‘to share their knowledge’. Again nothing wrong with that. Now lets assume that a KPI is put in staff appraisals that reads ‘did you share knowledge with other members of staff?’. Simple yes or no is the measure. Again nothing wrong with that. But how will staff be able to convince their line manager that they have satisfied the KPI? Unless further information is given on how the KPI will be satisfied then they might assume that because there is a new document management system they can upload a document that and hence that will qualify as ‘sharing knowledge with other members of staff’.

The staff have done nothing wrong, they have read the KPI and then in the absence of a clear description of what is required to satisfy the KPI they have created their own. In this simple example you could end up with a lot of documents in the new document storage system but nobody re-using any of them.

If you want to use KPI’s to drive knowledge flow in your organisation, that’s great but can I suggest you think through what the unintended consequences of what you have put in place may be.

‘Systems thinking’ was one of the fundamental skills in the toolkit of the founder members of BP’s knowledge management team. As they were introducing something new (knowledge management) to the organisation it was a useful tool to teach them to think ahead and try to understand what the unintended consequences as intended consequences might be. The next time you are reviewing the results of lessons learned or a retrospect just ask yourself, “was this result of not thinking through what the unintended consequences might be”.

Knoco Ltd

Probably the best way of demonstrating the value of knowledge management in the world

2010-02-28T16:07:00.000Z

Bird Island has played an important role in my life for over ten years. In very many locations around the world for a huge variety of clients I have used it to demonstrate not only that you can manage knowledge but that it produces enormous performance improvements. All of us in Knoco have our favour story about the impact that it has or about running the workshops. I think amongst my favourite was the time when one of our consultants was working in a location where they had to travel in an armoured car with close body protection (armed guards) at all times. During the workshop the close protection staff sat in the room in case their special skills became necessary. The consultant explained to the manager the impact that managing their knowledge could have. It has to be said that the manager who had been educated in a management style that is no longer widely practiced since a certain wall came down didn’t believe him. By the end of the Bird Island exercise the benefits of managing knowledge had become clear to him.

I have copied below the text that was in the February newsletter as it contains the links that will allow you to obtain further information. All of us at Knoco believe that making Bird Island available in this manner will drive forward the performance of many organisations around the world, far more than we could as a company, even taking account of our franchise structure could hope to reach. We look forward in the coming months to sharing with you some of the success stories of those who licence Bird Island and the significant impact that it has.

The power of Bird Island – now available to you!

Engaging people in the value that Knowledge Management can bring is a perennial problem. How can you show people that KM is really valuable? How do you turn sceptics into believers? Simply, you allow them to experience the value that KM can bring, through an interactive and measurable way.

We have been running the Bird island exercise now for over a decade. It is an amazingly simple, yet extremely effective simulation exercise that gives people a real KM experience in two short hours. It demonstrates three separate KM processes, each of which delivers an obvious and measurable performance benefit, and it includes at least two key moments at which "the pennies drop" for people. We have found it to be the most powerful sales tool for engaging people in Knowledge Management we have ever found. It's the nearest thing to "Knowledge Management Proof" that you could hope for.

You can read more about Bird Island in our article “(Probably) the longest running KM experiment in the world”.

So to give our clients and customers better access to this world-class engagement tool, we have decided to licence the exercise to your in-house trainers. We have created an online reference area for licensed facilitators, which includes a set of agendas for Bird Island workshop, full instructions for the exercise, an equipment list, all the handouts you will need, a complete knowledge asset for building Bird Island towers, the set of historical data, the PowerPoint slidesets you will need as a facilitator, and videos from key points in the exercise so you can see how it works in practice. In addition we have a discussion area for Bird Island facilitators, and an image gallery for you to share pictures from your winning teams.

Contact us for more details, or go to the bird island page http://www.knoco.com/bird-island.htm

Knoco Ltd

Human Knowledge Verses Machine Knowledge

2010-02-17T10:24:00.000Z

I spoke to human being this week. It took me a considerable amount of time and effort to actually get to that human being but in the end I spoke to them. Until that point I had been a victim of voice recognition software operated by call centre.

The company in question has a website but it failed to give me the data that I was looking for. After much searching on the web pages I eventually found the telephone contact for the said company. I called the company and of course it was a premium charge number. So the website had not worked and here was I paying a lot of money to speak to company to find out something they should have been able to give me for free.

I have to admit that I have had excellent experiences with call centres and some very, very poor experiences with call centres, but when I discovered that this one used a voice response system my heart sank. I don't know how many people there are in the world with an accent. Am I a minority? I happened to be someone who has an accent in this case a Scottish accent. I don't know which was the worse, paying a premium phone line charge or try to speak to a computer that was ignoring me. In the end I think the computer gave in and after 20 min it connected me to human being. Now I am sure some of you will think it couldn't possibly have been 20 min but please be assured it was 20 minutes. The choice was simple; hang up and start all over again hoping that I got a different computer, one that could understand my accent this time or battle the one that was on the line at the time. I chose to fight the machine and eventually after 20 min the machine give in.

The human that I spoke with had nothing but sympathy for my plight. It transpired that I was not the first one and they did not expect me to the last one who had fought the voice activated system and had not been pleased with the experience. It probably took the human between 1 min and 2 min to entirely answer my original question. If there is anyone out there reading this who has anything to do with call centres or any other activity that requires a human to speak to a computer please, please, please remember that not all the world speaks like a BBC newsreader.
What has this got to do with knowledge management? Well it could be that the company has the knowledge i.e. how do we prevent people contacting us who may be a nuisance. They get them to call a premium charge line directed to a call centre that uses voice activated software. The vast majority of the population will hang up long before they've got to human being and will just write it off as a bad experience. This system avoids them having to employ and train operators to handle the calls from customers.

The last time this happened to me was with the well-known train company that I was trying to purchase tickets from. I failed to successfully navigate their voice activated software system and have never bought tickets from them, indeed I have never even attempted to buy tickets from them since that experience.

I like technology, I enjoy using it but sometimes it is preferable to deal with the human being.

Knoco Ltd

Always Thinking About Safety

2010-02-06T12:29:00.002Z

First an apology. I have been traveling a lot and have gotten out of the habit of writing this blog and material for the web site. I was at a meeting at the end of last week and at the end of the work session someone from the client's knowledge management team stayed behind and then proceeded to thank me for my blog and the material that we had been making available via the web site. They had used it not only during their formal knowledge management studies but also in their role within the knowledge management team. Suddenly all the work of writting case studies and blog became worthwhile.

Those that know me well know that safety is very important to me. I have worked with HSE teams around the world and assessmed how they use knowledge on many occassions. Being safe and ensuring the safety of those around us is part of our personal responsibility but today taught me just how easy it is to slip up. Today I found myself in a potentaily dangerous situation, a situation that I should have been able to avoid.

It was mid afternoon and i was sitting in a hotel room working when there was a power cut. It was still very light in the room so I decided to put my shoes on and go shopping and pick up some of the things that I needed. I was on the third floor and while I knew exactly where the fire escapes were I wondered if there as a public staircase that I could walk down to reception. As I came out of the room I saw one of the staff with a hand held radio and asked them how to walk down the stairs to reception. They said "follow me" which I thought was very helpful and surprise, surprise they took me to a fire exit.

We entered the staircase and it was brighly lit but importantly it was lit by sunlight being let into the stairwell while the door was open. That wasn't immediatley apparent. We started off down the stairs but when the door closed behind us, there was no light. There were no emergency lights in the emergency fire exit stairwell.

At that point I should have insisted we turn back, we were only about 9 or 10 step down into the stair well but for a reason I don't quite understand myself I continued to follow the memebr of staff. I normally carry an emergency torch with me on my keyring but guesss what, it was safely back in the hotel room.

I continue to follow the member of staff down the stairs who was now lighting the way using the light from the display of thier mobile telephone. They even had to hold the mobile telephone up to the wall to try to read what level we had reached.

I am not afraid of the dark but I can reassure you when the mobile telephone when out, it was VERY dark in that stairwell. By now I knew that I couldn't find my way back as it wasn't possible to read the stair level without having a mobile telephone swiched on. I had mine in my pocket but didn't want to risk taking my hand off the hand rail (and losing my orientation on the stairs) so relied on the very dim light several stairs below me.

As we reached the bottom I sensed an object blocking our exit from the stairs. Someone had pushed a hotel porter's luggage cart into the emergency stairwell. We had to navigate our way around it and then open the door into reception.

I am typing this having returned to the hotel after my shopping and can see the emergency tourch that I carry in my luggage sitting next to the bed. I can even see my small emergency tourch lying next to my security pass but where were they when I need them!

This incident reminds me of how while I have access to the best practice in hotel guest safety, I didn't use it. I knew there was a power cut in the hotel hence the lights and elevators would be out of action. It was highly propable that there would be no or reduced lighting somehwere between my room and the street. Why didn't I pay attention to the best practice of hotel guest safety? To be very honest it was becuase I was going to spend a sum of money that I wasn't entirely comfortable spending eg my mind was on trying to justify to myself that it was OK to spend that much money when it should have been on my safety.

When you want to transfer best practice and ensure that someone impliments it, you need to think about what else in happening in their environment at that time, just assuming that they will impliment it because it is best practice might not work.

And in closing, an emergency tourch is only useful if you have it with you when you need it. It might be great to have it on your security pass during office hours but where are you going to carry it once you in a hotel room / out for dinner etc etc.

KM in Humanitarian Aid Response to Haiti Earthquake

2010-01-21T17:20:00.001Z

Tearfund is a Humanitarian Aid organisation whose current head of KM and IM is a charming lady called Astrid. I was recently copied on an email describing their current approach to KM:

“Our Disaster Management Teams are learning all the time so a disaster like this will benefit from the learning from the Tsunami response, the Pakistan earthquake and so on. There will naturally be a learning review and an evaluation done of this and so the wheel keeps turning. As well as the staff on the ground, staff here at Teddington will also review the set up process, and the appeals process in the months to come. Disaster Management Team have a learning system, where they are collecting learning and building good practice around sectoral and organisational issues systematically. The aim is to build this up and then make it publicly viewable as part of our accountability and transparency.”

Tearfund’s current CEO is a big supporter of KM in the organisation – he arrived with it in mind from his previous experience elsewhere.

Tearfund:

- Has learning for continuous performance improvement built into what it does as a matter of routine;
- Has clear management support and expectation that KM will be done;
- Understands the power of an effective Corporate Memory that is owned and maintained;
- Invests in KM for learning because they understand that the return is worth it.

Tearfund's knowledge management system was established by a former member of Knoco. We wish Tearfund well in their current and future efforts.

Knoco Ltd

Laws Of Power

2010-01-21T10:24:00.001Z

I am currently consulting for client who has one of those rare things; a physical library. It’s a wonderful thing. It has shelf upon shelf of books. There are books on all sorts of subjects from calculus to new market entry. They even have a separate section which houses rare books (you can look through the glass and see them sitting on the shelves within their computer controlled environment. I just love this place and its well used.

I was browsing through some of the magazines and happen to notice a book lying on the table. I would guess it was the title that could my attention; Power. At that stage I wasn’t sure what aspect of Power it might refer to. For example it might have been about electrical power, mechanical power or influence power. My curiosity got the better of me and I picked it up.

The book was The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It is a sort of anti virtue book, how to beat everyone you will encounter either in your business or private life. The more I flicked through the book the more I enjoyed reading it. It’s a very interesting read but it does start to pose questions such as; Why are you really reading this?

Much as I enjoyed reading the book it did disturb me. Much of my business life has been dedicated to assisting people to collaborate and share knowledge. This book is a guide to hording and using knowledge for your own benefit.

If you are actively involved in knowledge management its worth having a read of this book as it will give you an insight as to what other people are up to and the tactics they might be employing that will be counter to what you are trying to achieve.

Knoco Ltd

Using All The Available Talent

2010-01-11T17:20:00.002Z

Someone told me this story recently and I listened to it I found myself wondering how often know-how and learning in a company is not shared because of a lack of expectation or management support. As I listened I found myself wonder just how a company could exist when it was only getting a fraction of the potential from its staff. Let me tell you the story as it was told to me.

The person had been head hunted to join an important department in the company. He created his first strategy paper and submitted it to the manager. It came back with many corrections almost to the point of being unreadable. He thought it was a case of a difference of style so made the corrections and resubmitted it. Again it came back with lots of corrections on it. He was standing at the coffee machine looking rather glum when someone in the department asked what was wrong. He shared how he had submitted the strategy paper and it had come back with lots of red on it and even when he updated it, it had yet again come back with lots of red on it. The person listening broke out into a smile, “The first thing you have to learn in this department is that the boss doesn’t think anyone can do the job as well as he can so no matter how good the paper is he will rewrite it and rewrite it until you can’t recognise it and it is almost as if he had written it in the first place. Do what the rest of do, create something that is good enough, submit it and let him work himself to death redrafting it”.

In organisation clever people are hired but do we always listen to them? Or as someone said recently, “we don’t know at which level the good ideas are being squashed”. When I asked about it he suggested that the company couldn’t possibly be hiring people who were obviously smart and yet they were still doing things the way they had always done them.

Knowledge is like any other resource, it needs to be nurtured, if you ignore it, it will wither and die. If you are a line manager or perhaps an executive, what are you doing to ensure that the situation that I recalled above isn’t happening in your organisation and you are allowing staff to operate on two cylinders rather than four.

Knoco Ltd

Health Check for Communities of Practice

2010-01-08T12:10:00.004Z

I have been working with communities of practice this week to conduct health checks on them. In order to do this we used a methodology which is based on key success factors that you would expect to see in any community then for each of those key success factors we measure the level of maturity that the community has reached.

One of the things when doing health checks like this is to ensure that the community fully understand the context of the measurement. For example if you know that it typically takes five years to reach a particular level and the community your are working with has been in existence for less than a year than it will be highly unlikely that they will be at the top end of any of the maturity scales. I say highly unlikely and not impossible because it could be that the community have done a lot of learning before and have been able to accelerate their progress.

Use of collaborative technology is a good example of this. In some organisations the collaborative technology is well embedded in normal business processes so how a community uses it will be rapidly accelerated and you would expect them to score highly in the technology category.

Counter to this is building trust between community members. This takes time. There are processes and activities which can assist to accelerate this but this is essentially trust between community members is one of those things that increases (or decreases) with time. Trust is something that needs to be worked on, leaving it to chance can lead to a less than optimum outcome.

The health check is also designed not only to indicate where the community is currently but also what they need to do should course corrections be required.

So far the results of the community health checks tend to show that these communities are on track. Several interventions have been identified that will ensure that they continue to work towards delivering the goals they have established for themselves.

Knoco Ltd

Managing Old Knowledge

2009-12-31T14:26:00.001Z

The New Year is almost with us here in Scotland but as I type this it has already arrived in Australia. I can watch the video of the fireworks in Sydney, Australia and it brings back wonderful memories of trips to that tremendous city. Not least of those was my wife walking over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She had been looking forward to it for a considerable length of time, indeed I think it was going to be the highlight of her trip to Australia but on the day of the big walk it was raining. She did the walk over the bridge wearing wet weather gear! She described it as a mind blowing experience and one that everyone should everyone should experience.

What have you done with the knowledge you had this time ten years ago?
I was reminded earlier today that it is ten years since the great Y2K computer scare. Do you remember the sense of doom when we thought computers were all going to stop at midnight? Lots of effort was put into understanding what might happen and how to counter act the worse case scenarios. Remember the scenario planning and contingency plans that were developed. What have you don’t with it?
A happy and prosperous New Year to all.

Knoco Ltd

Delivering Value From Your Lessons

2009-12-27T16:08:00.001Z

I spent the last couple of days with my colleague, Nick Milton’s latest book. It is now ready to be sent to the publisher and this was a last chance to go through it before it gets sent to the publisher.

Creating a text book is an iterative process. You write text and then reflect on whether it clearly describes the point you are trying to get across. You produce a diagram to illustrate a model or concept but does it clearly illustrate the point. In some ways putting the book together is like working with a jigsaw puzzle, you have all the pieces but have you put them together in the right way.

The process that I like to use is to read the book ‘cover to cover’. I find somewhere quiet, settle down with a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits. I read it at one sitting if possible. I don’t make any comments on the text but just read it cover to cover. I am trying to see if the whole thing hangs together. Does it work as a work rather than a series of chapters?

I then go back and read it line by line, but this time i annotate the text where required. Sometimes it is just a question of style. I have worked with Nick for about fifteen years now and we each have our own style of explaining things, sometimes even at this late stage I might suggest that a point has to be expanded in order to make it crystal clear to the reader.

Nick’s book is entitled The Lessons Learned handbook, Practical Approaches to Learning from Experience

For those looking for a book that describes how to get value out of lessons learned, this book is for you. I think it is clear, provides real insight as to how to create a system and process that allows an organisation to learn from its experiences. It’s now available to pre order from Amazon.

Knoco Ltd

Structuring The Knowledge

2009-12-18T16:08:00.002Z

I would to thank Mark Gould for reading my blog and writing about it in his. It’s always get to get feedback.

I forgot to mention in previous posts that one of the things we did with the BP Operations Excellence toolbox was to create a hierarchy of ‘advice’. Thus at the top of the page was the most validated, supported advice and at the bottom were the un-validated, personal opinions of any member of the community. At the top was what we titled ‘BP Way’. It would be tempting to write that this was the mandated way of doing something but that would be inaccurate as very few things are mandated in BP, lets rather say that this was the expected way of doing something. As it was the expected way of doing something that was the way that it was normally done. There was a route to suggest innovations (I won’t go into that in this post) and improvements.

Below that were ‘good practices’ from around the group. The icons were colour coded to indicate whether they came from exploration or refining etc as typically people would look refer to the part of the organisation they were currently in (the context was closer) before reviewing what was deemed to be good practice in other parts of the organisation. Again there was a mechanism to keep these up to date.
Below that were examples of practices from around the group.

Below that (not to indicate it was less important) were any communities or networks that people could contact or consult with for advice.

Below that were the questions previously asked on that topic and the responses. In this case it was placed at the bottom to indicate that these were the personal opinions of individuals and that they had not been vetted or verified by subject matter experts.

There is also a ‘question and answer’ to allow the question to be sent to the community.

Compliments of the season to all.

Knoco Ltd

Value Adding Knowledge Management Training

2009-12-07T14:26:00.001Z

I am a great supporter of colleges and universities; they did after all provide the foundation upon which my career has been built.

I was conducting a one day workshop for a mixed audience at the end of which one of the participants made a comment which troubled me.

The first part of the day had been based on Bird Island. As normal the exercise was a huge success and extremely impactful. The second part of the day allowed those present to use our self assessment tool to better understand where their organisation is currently in terms of knowledge management. After that we used the risk calculator to better understand the degree of risk that knowledge management potentially faced in their organisation.

During the wrap up at the end of the workshop attendees were invited to share their thoughts on the day. One attendee mentioned that they thought they had wasted a year of their time studying for a qualification in knowledge management as they had learned more during this session than they had during their formal education.
Now at one level I was very pleased that they had got so much value out of the day but at another I was disturbed that their formal knowledge management education had failed to deliver for them. I can’t share any more details as immediately the session ended someone asked for some advice and by the time I had finished speaking with them the person who had made the comment had left.

All of us involved in the delivery of knowledge management services have a duty to ensure that our experience is transferred to those seek that knowledge.
Of course this could be an isolated incident, unique to one person or one institution but perhaps all of us who are involved in deliver of training and education just need to pause and reflect and verify that we are providing a value adding experience.

Knoco Ltd

Spiky Earth

2009-12-02T14:26:00.000Z

David Gurteen and I have known each other since the birth of knowledge management and while most of our conversations are virtual nowadays it was terrific to catch up with David again during the Intellectual Assets Centre conference in Edinburgh this week. The downside was that the organisers had David running his excellence Knowledge Café at the same time that I was chairing sessions reviewing and contrasting the challenges facing a small organisation and a multinational when it comes to knowledge management. The dialogue we had during the sessions was superb and it was interesting how the perception that there would be nothing in common between the two organisations changed as the dialogue progressed.

Two of the presentations in the morning session were given by economists, one of whom spoke about ‘spiky earth’ and how organisations gather in clusters. I need to do some more research into this because it struck me that there were interesting parallel with communities of interest and these ‘spikes’.

Knoco Ltd

Make The Most Of What You Know

2009-11-30T09:05:00.001Z

Make The Most Of What You Know
Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, UK
1st December
www.ia-centre.org.uk

I will be demonstrating knowledge retention at this event. Hope to see you all there.

Presented by the Intellectual Assets Centre, Scotland’s agency for development of businesses and organisations through effective management of their intangible assets, with support from the European Regional Development Fund, this event boasts an array of high profile speakers ranging from Tim Harford, BBC presenter and Financial Times Undercover Economist, to Ian Brinkley of the Work Foundation and includes presentations from such prestigious companies as Fujitsu, whose Knowledge Business Manager, Graeme Mackay, will explore their in-company approach to the challenges and the benefits of effective knowledge management.

However, this event is far from ‘talk-and-chalk’. David Gurteen founder of the Gurteen Knowledge Community – a global learning network of 14,000 people in 153 countries - will be speaking and running his legendary knowledge cafe, focussing on developing and utilising knowledge sharing strategies, with legal firm Maclay, Murray, Spens facilitating a legal CPDsession with accredited learning for attending legal professionals.

Good Costs, Bad Costs

2009-11-19T14:26:00.000Z

In every operational plant there are activities that you plan for and allocate a budget to their delivery. An example might be the planned replacement of a section of pipe. These can be referred to as ‘good costs’.

There are other activities which are unplanned and unwanted. While there may be a budget to undertake unplanned work like this, it is not money that you want to spend. An example might be to replace a section of a pipe that has failed and is currently causing production downtime due to its failure. These can be referred to as ‘bad costs’.

The challenge is to have a conversation where the word ‘cost’ is included. Operations management want to drive out cost and sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between ‘good costs’ and ‘bad costs’, they just hear the word ‘cost’ and want to irradiate it.

Do you have an alternative terminology that you use to distinguish between expenditure that is planned and adds value to the plant, and reactive, unplanned expenditure that is the result of an unscheduled incident on the plant?
The above came about during a discussion I was having at the Smart Ops conference. We were discussing how the Choke Model had been created in BP as a vehicle to allow a fact based discussion to be conducted on efficiency of various parts of the overall plant process and also allowed learning to be captured and shared. We were also discussing how the Choke Model is now used in many industries to allow similar fact based discussions to occur and knowledge to be shared and re-used. Within BP this has now evolved into Common Process and while it is providing BP with significant insights as to how to improve plant up-time and share the knowledge of how this is being achieved, there is still difficulty discussing ‘costs’. We used the terms ‘good costs’ and ‘bad costs’ as described above, but our thoughts were that perhaps there is another way of engaging management in this discussion. If you know of one, I would be delighted to hear it.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Management and Smart Operations

2009-11-11T14:27:00.001Z

I am just putting the final touches to the presentation I will be giving at the Smart Operations Conference next week in London, UK. The conference organisers, IQPC, have asked me to talk about how organisations can harvest their knowledge and use it to update their standards and procedures leading to best production practices and reduced costs. Of course once the standards and procedures have been updated they then need to be applied.

As I was putting the presentation together I created a mind map that I could use to ensure that I had covered the main points in the presentation. It wasn’t my intention to create a mind map that was exhaustive in nature but rather something that I could use to prompt me once I had drafted the presentation. I thought you might find it interesting to see some of the main points that I covered in the mind map;
• The challenge facing industry and project managers in terms of skills availability, retention and application
• Feedback on research into effectiveness of lessons learned systems
• Some of the barriers that impede the use of standards
• Some of the factors that you need for knowledge harvesting
• Moving beyond lessons learned
• Driving to excellence through standardisation
• Managing lessons
• Situations where new knowledge is created
• Enabling factors such as technology and communities
• Governance, metrics and monitoring

I hope to see you at the conference; the focus will be on applying knowledge to improve operational performance.

Allegedly in historical times if a clan wanted to get rid of someone but didn’t want to kill them they burned their house down. From this the expression, ‘to fire someone’ was born meaning to get rid of them.

Knoco Ltd

Knoco Benefits Mapping Template

2009-11-10T11:51:00.001Z

Being able to articulate the benefits to senior management of utilising knowledge management in your project or organisation can sometimes be a challenge. We have found that creating a benefits map can be of immense value as it allows you to illustrate the benefits that could be achieved.

The purpose of the Benefits Mapping Template is to allow the participants in a benefits workshop to articulate, in the form of a diagram, how knowledge management interventions can yield measurable business results in service of business drivers or goals. We run the workshop with senior business leaders, whose guidance and buy-in are crucial.

This template will allow you to create your own benefits map. It can be requested at here.

As always we would welcome your feedback on the use of our free templates and tools.

Knowledge Management Event, Edinburgh, Scotland

2009-11-05T09:12:00.001Z

If you are going to be in Edinburgh, Scotland, this is worth attending.

It’s all in the know-how!
Scotland’s Supplier Gathering

In today’s business environment knowledge and its effective use can be a critical factor to achieving business success, which is why the Intellectual Assets Centre has developed a major one-day conference to help Scotland’s business professionals identify, capture and exploit this all-important know-how.

Presented by the Intellectual Assets Centre, Scotland’s agency for development of businesses and organisation through effective management of their intangible assets, this event boasts an array of high profile speakers ranging from Tim Harford, BBC presenter and Financial Times Undercover Economist to Ian Brinkley of the Work Foundation. There will also be ‘live business surgeries’ where such prestigious companies as Fujitsu will explore their in-company approach to the challenges and the benefits of effective knowledge management and receive expert advice and direction of KM best practice from Knoco’s Tom Young.

However, this event is far from ‘talk-and-chalk’. David Gurteen founder of the Gurteen Knowledge Community – a global learning network of 14,000 people in 153 countries - will be running his legendary knowledge cafe, focussing on developing and utilising knowledge sharing strategies and legal firm Maclay Murray Spens will be facilitating a legal CPD session with accredited learning for attending legal professionals.

So if you are a professional adviser working in intellectual property, economic development, knowledge and technology transfer, an accountant, lawyer, director, manager, policy maker, academic or student – there will definitely be something of immense value for you!

As Iain Russell, chief executive of the Intellectual Assets Centre puts it; “Know-how or the knowledge and skill required to do something is an important type of intellectual property; even more so in the current economic climate, where organisations everywhere are searching for a competitive edge. This event will focus on how best to capture an organisation’s know-how and transform it into real bottom line benefits”.

If helping businesses develop is your business then this is the one event of the year that you cannot afford to miss! As well as gaining the knowledge, skills and strategies to help business to innovate and flourish through the exploitation of their inherent knowledge and know how, you will have the opportunity to meet with like-minded professionals and build your own network of knowledge-orientated contacts.

To find out how you can become part of Scotland’s knowledge community, simply visit our website: www.ia-centre.org.uk or book your place on the Gathering, simply call our Conference Organiser, Vicki Grant on 0141 434 1500.

Preparing Your Knowledge

2009-11-02T07:41:00.002Z

When I read the coverage about how the last piano manufacturing plant in the UK was closing down and the work being transferred overseas my heart went out to the workforce. They had been manufacturing pianos for almost 100 years but had to be rescued just over 25 years ago but now the end had come. Unemployment is a terrible thing. The factory that will now manufacture the pianos is over four times the size of the factory that is closing.

One of the assignments that we conducted was for an organisation whose business environment was going to be changed by a change in the regulations and the company sought our assistance to prepare for the new working environment.

After we had conducted the assessment to understand what knowledge they and how they used that knowledge we worked with them to identify the new knowledge that they would require in order to be successful once the regulatory framework had been changed. We used processes such as BDAL (business driven action learning) to import the new knowledge that they required.

We also put in place processes to systematically manage the existing knowledge that would still be of value in the new regulatory regime.

This gave them a framework that allowed their key knowledge to be applied. The framework also ensured that learning from the application of that knowledge in the new regulatory was also captured and applied.

The new regulatory environment meant that some of what the previously did was no longer of any value. The knowledge had passed its sell by date, it was still knowledge but it didn’t have any value to them in the new regulatory environment. The knowledge was packaged into ‘knowledge bundles’ and archived.

This organisation did however something very interesting with the knowledge that they no longer required, they tried to sell it. It might not have application in their new environment but that wasn’t to say it might not have value to another organisation. Because they had the knowledge distilled and packaged into knowledge bundles they were able to approach other organisations and engage them in a discussion re a potential sale.

I came across a new term today; narrative engineering. The text in which it appeared was “Narrative engineering is the KM discipline that applies storytelling to the purposes of the organisation.”

Knoco Ltd

It's Like Being Able to Call Him Up And Ask A Question

2009-10-26T07:41:00.001Z

In this post I would like to share with you a discussion that took place with someone who had participated in a knowledge harvest exercise. Some of the details have been changed to protect client confidentiality.

We had been engaged to conduct a number of knowledge harvest interventions and create knowledge assets with the resulting material. Also part of the scope was to transfer our skills in knowledge harvesting to the in-house knowledge management team and provide them with a knowledge harvesting toolkit. Knowledge harvesting is a process whereby the experience and knowledge of one or more individuals is gathered, distilled, packaged and made available to a wider audience. It is used in private, public and third sector organisations, frequently when someone is leaving the organisation and the organisation wishes to retain the knowledge.

We were conducting the end of project retrospect to identify and capture the learning from conducting the knowledge harvests and transferring the skills to the in-house knowledge management team when in response to the question, ‘what could have worked better’, one of the interviewees responded that they thought that the edited transcript of their interview was very poor indeed. There was repetition, the grammar was loose and it just wasn’t the tightly scripted text that he was used to.

This was great feedback as it allowed us to then ask the second part of the retrospect question, ‘what could we do to avoid it next time?’

For me, that’s when the real learning from this interviewee occurred.

The interviewee explained that they were so disappointed by the edited transcript they had been given that they decided to look at how the material from one of the previous interviews had been packaged as a knowledge asset on their intranet. They shared with the group how as they read the knowledge asset on the intranet they could imagine the person sitting in front of them saying those words, in that way, with the same mannerisms. It was interesting that on a survey of people who had also visited the knowledge assets someone else commented “It’s like being able to call him up and ask a question”.

They went on to explain that they suddenly realised that the text they were given to review and edit wasn’t intended to be a tightly scripted report or business case but rather it was intended to replicate how they spoke and shared insights when speaking with people. They finished by saying that once they had got that into their head and how it would come across to the end user, it was like they themselves were talking to them.

At the end of the dialogue we asked them to summarise the learning for the future. There were two main learning points;
• When asking the interviewee to review and edit the text that you want to finally convert into a knowledge asset and load onto the intranet, if possible show them an example of a knowledge asset so that they will understand that the text they have been given is not intended to be a tightly scripted report but rather something that when the end user reads it, they will imagine the person is sitting opposite them share those words with them
• Knowledge harvesting works as a process and helped to identify the key knowledge that they wanted to impart to others

I have been doing knowledge capture and packaging for a long time but this is the first time that an interviewee has so succinctly described the difference between the text that is in a report and the text that appears in a knowledge asset.
So if you are planning knowledge capture and packaging, it might be worth highlighting the difference to any interviewee before you send them the text to review and edit.

Knoco Ltd

Innovation Builds on Best Practice

2009-10-20T16:42:00.002+01:00

In some instances there is good practice, in others it might be best practice while in yet others there might be no practice.

I was reading a blog entry entitled Just Tell Me What Works! It was interesting how it mentioned that on some days you just want to be told what to do and how to do it. There is clearly evidence of this in the huge number of cookery books that are sold each year but it is equally true of industry. If you think of industrial processes, in many instances the goal is consistency or standardisation. We don’t want people to innovate, we want them to produce the product or deliver the service in the standard way. If you have several plants, you want to raise the productivity or quality level across the board, having one plant that is 95% efficient while the vast majority are less than 85% efficient isn’t what most industrial managers are after, they want to raise all of the them to the same level.

A recognised way of doing this is to identify a good example of how to do it and replicate that in other locations. We used the term ‘good practice’ in the BP Operations Excellence programme. After we had identified several ‘good practices’, we developed from them, the ‘best practice’. It was only after the ‘best practice’ was identified (and agreed by the practitioners) that it was rolled out and all plants encouraged to implement that method. After all if there was an agreed ‘best practice’ to do an activity, why would you not want to use it? Learning was captured on an ongoing basis and the ‘best practice’ updated periodically.

Now I hear some mention the words like ‘innovation’ and ‘creativity’. Perhaps you are thinking that the use of best practice will inhibit innovation and creativity. For me this is where context is vital.

In some situations, you don’t want innovation or creativity, you just want it done in a standard, consistant fashion.

If you are running a chemical plant, you don’t want the operator to innovate. If you are manufacturing microchips, you don’t want the technicians to innovate. If you are launching a new product into a target market, you perhaps don’t want innovation but standardisation. If you are decommissioning a nuclear power plant, perhaps you don’t want innovation during the work phase.

Innovation should be built on current best practice. One of the key lessons from the Knoco Bird Island exercise is that if you ask people to do something, they will frequently start based on their own experience. When you illustrate the current best practice that has been achieved by several hundred people before them, they are frequently overwhelmed as to how poor they achievement was compared to what has already been established.

Where appropriate give them the best practice and ask them to innovate from there. For example if by the introduction of AAR’s the time to change filters has been reduced from 240 hours per screen to 75 hours and a best practice created illustrating how this is achieved, innovate from the best practice figure of 75 hours, not the previous figure of 240 hours but only if it is safe to do so. In some instances innovation must be done in test area, ideas thought out, prototypes created and tested before the agreed modification is installed in the main plant.
Innovation is great but let’s lay out the challenge of doing it from what is the best practice level currently. If you haven’t achieved the best practice level of performance, perhaps the goal should be to achieve that level of performance before seeking to innovate.

I liked Shell’s innovative way of tapping into the collective knowledge of the global LinkedIn community to seek innovative ways of making stranded gas commercial. I liked how I was alerted to their request. Natural gas is said to be ‘stranded’ when it is too difficult or uneconomic to produce perhaps because it is located too far away from where it’s needed or because it requires expensive treatment to remove things in the gas. You are interested in reading more about stranded gas click here. Shell are currently seeking bright ideas on how to get stranded gas from where it is to where it is needed. A good example of attempting to unlock previously left behind resources. If you have want to make your mark, this could be a good way of doing it, both in terms of innovation and financial reward.

And finally for this posting;

I was doing some research and came across a web site entitled “40 Fantastic Time-Wasting Web Sites”. Now while I am sure you could easily list more than 40 time wasting web sites, you might be interested to try Stripgenerator that assists you to create your own comic strip. I am going to be on a train tomorrow that has wifi, so I might even try to create a ‘strip blog’ during the journey. Who knows I might be on the very verge of creating the knowledge management equivalent of Dilbert. Just remember that you read about it hear first.

Sign Knowledge

2009-10-20T14:10:00.002+01:00

As I travel I come across warning signs that I sometimes don't understand. Perhaps for that reason I loved this site which has a collection of warning signs from around the world.

Knowledge Cafe and Know-How Capture

2009-10-09T08:06:00.003+01:00

I am looking forward to being one of the interviewers and advisors to the case study companies participating in the Intellectual Assets Centre Supplier Gathering at Our Dynamic Earth on 1st December 2009.

My role will be to help tease out the know-how capture motives and expectations of the case study companies and the extent to which conducting know-how capture activities might add value to the enterprises.

This will be the afternoon session which will give me the opportunity to participate in the Knowledge Café on Knowledge Sharing Strategies being run by David Gurteen in the morning.

Details of the Intellectual Assets Centre can be found here and details of other upcoming events that they organise can be found here. I have attended the "Love Me Tender" course and can highly recommend it.

For those who haven’t visited Dynamic Earth before, it’s well worth a visit. I will probably use the excellent Park and Ride as driving in Edinburgh can be a bit of a challenge. There is one at Edinburgh Airport and one at Hermiston.

Papers on knowledge and know-how capture can be obtained here.

Negative Thinking Adds Value

2009-10-09T07:42:00.006+01:00

I am on vacation next week and really need to finalise the text for my next book which covers knowledge management in sales and marketing. I have been using a mind map to identify what I need to cover and the key points that I want to make. I like how mind maps create a visual imagine of what needs to be included in a book and also the sub topics. The software that I use also lets me move the map and associated text about if I decide at a later date to change the sequence to make it easier for the reader to follow.

I was chatting with my colleague, Nick Milton, and he suggested as a sense check that I had included all the points that I wanted to include that I should look at it from a reverse direction. So instead of putting all the things that I think need to be included in a good knowledge management system for sales and marketing people, I should list all the things that would be MISSING or ABSENT from a good knowledge management system for sales and marketing people. I tend to be a half full type of person so thinking in a half empty way is a bit of a challenge for me but one that I am up for.

So here is the start of my list of things that would prevent knowledge management being successful in a sales and marketing environment or things that you could do to inhibit knowledge being shared and re-used in that environment. I will add to the list as time goes by;

1. Pay them to do it
2. Ensure they have to update the CRM tool immediately they are finished with the client
3. Ensure they share all leads with their peers
4. Ensure that information can only be shared via a secure desktop
5. Mandate it
6. Insist that all knowledge about clients is a corporate asset
7. Don’t give them credit for re-use of their knowledge in new sales
8. Ensure no team bonus are available
9. Focus all performance rewards at the individual level
10. Don’t make it anyone’s responsibility to manage the knowledge of the department

It certainly gives you a different perspective on things if you look at them from a how to ensure you aren’t successful perspective.

Knoco Ltd

Do You Believe This Knowledge?

2009-10-09T07:42:00.005+01:00

I was having a cup of coffee when I picked up a publication that was sitting on the table. I flicked through it until the following caught my eye;

“A cockroach’s favourite food is glue on the back of stamps”

My first reaction was probably, I didn’t know that, followed by, isn’t that interesting. But then as it started to sink in I found myself thinking, how do they know that? In what context did they learn that?

Had they been trying to design a new food for people who keep cockroaches as pets I wondered? I could just imagine the television adverts. Nine out of ten cockroaches who expressed a preference preferred Stampo, made with real stamp glue extract! Feed your cockroach each day with Stamp to give them that health shine to their shell. And in a few years time there would be Stampo with added vitamins.

Or did they acquire this knowledge while trying to invent some new cockroach trap or method of eradicating them? Find the thing that cockroaches can’t resist, use it to lure them into the trap or perhaps eat the poison that will be fatal to them?

The context within which they had made this discovery, found this new knowledge is important. In one context we have happy, thriving cockroaches while in the other we have cockroaches who are no more. Context is important. Do you want happy cockroaches or unhappy cockroaches!

The other thing that spring to mind was, how do they know that? Did they conduct thousand of trails tempting cockroaches with different foods until they found the one that they preferred? If so who funded all of this experimentation. Did they mean that all cockroaches from anywhere in the world would find any glue from any stamp from anywhere in the world to be their favourite food?

Did I trust them? Was there any research or science behind this or was it just something written to occupy people such as me, while they were drinking their coffee?
Now while it might be easy to dismiss this story of me and my coffee break as trivia just reflect on some of the lessons that are in your lessons learned database. How many of them have the context in which the lesson was learned? How many of them contain sufficient detail to allow you to access if there was real learning behind the lesson or that it was just personal opinion?

The next time I meet a cockroach (which I hope will be a very long time from now) I will be sure to ask them if it’s true that their favourite food is the glue on the back of stamps.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Management for the dawn of the Post-Recession

2009-10-06T16:55:00.001+01:00

Implementing Knowledge Management is the theme of the autumn edition of the Knoco newsletter including “Knowledge Management for the dawn of the Post-Recession”. It’s available for at http://www.knoco.com/knowledge-management-news.htm

An Old KM in BP Slideset

2009-09-29T09:13:00.006+01:00

Chris and Geoff have put this slide set into the public domain. It's mainly material that we created in the mid 1990's when we were in the BP Knowledge Management team. Certainly the material from about slide 25 onwards is at least ten years old and probably been superceded.

BP Knowledge Management

View more presentations from whatidiscover.

BP and leading companies in the KM space have moved on considerably since then. For example KM plans, assurance and governance are a routine part of a modern knowledge management framework.

Knowledge Harvesting Is Surprisingly Cathartic

2009-09-29T09:06:00.002+01:00

I thought you might be interested to read the feedback from someone that was involved in a recent knowledge harvest that I conducted;

“It’s actually surprisingly cathartic. I was worried about doing this because you don’t always know what you know. You don’t always realise what you know. And things that you do in your day-to-day work aren’t always written down, they’re not going to be written down. And I thought this was going to be a really painful experience; it hasn’t been. It’s actually been a bit of fun. I’m not certain that I’ve answered all the questions at the level of detail that the questioner would really like to know. So this is probably an overview of what I know and there may be more work for me to do to get that knowledge harvested or as I prefer to say, dredged out of my brain for it to be available to others. But it’s been quite interesting to have to sit and think about these questions and answer them. Because frankly I normally just do it rather than think about how it’s done. And I’ve actually surprised myself on some of the things I’ve realised I know.”

We are going to include it in the Knowledge Harvesting Toolkit as part of the introductory email that is sent to potential participants in the knowledge harvest.

Knowledge Management: L&D's Hidden Asset

2009-09-22T15:08:00.006+01:00

I loved the headline………..Knowledge Management: L&D’s hidden asset. I loved it so much I decided to read the article.

The article appeared at www.trainingzone.co.uk and was written by Mary Clarke and the three bullet points at the top of the page really got my attention. No wonder over 1300 people had read it so far. The three points that were highlighted were;
• Knowledge management is an integral part of an effective L&D in an organisation
• Awareness of the skills gap and knowledge deficit can help both professional development of employees and the organisation as a whole
• Poor or non existant knowledge management can have a detrimental effect on the morale of the workforce as well as an organisation’s bottom line

I agree.

Knowledge management and L&D are bed fellows, they are closely intertwined, or they should be. They reinforce each other and they complement each other. They are not, in my opinion, competitors or if they are, someone in your organisation should be asking very serious questions. Resources within a business are a scarce commodity, when was the last time you heard of anyone who didn’t want more resources or a higher budget! So use them wisely and effectively.

By conducting a skills assessment or knowledge assessment an organisation can identify the current position but perhaps of more value is the understanding it will provide of the skills and knowledge the organisation will need in the future. For many organisations the key knowledge in 2009 has been how to survive until the end of the global recession. This is the business equivalent of having a hole in the hull of the ship and needing to survive until you reach the safety of the port. But once in port you need new knowledge, perhaps how to repair the hole or find someone who can. It’s the same in business, as we move out of recessions companies will need new knowledge, knowledge of how to grow a business and move into new markets.

I blogged earlier about how the MAKE Awards clearly illustrated the link between successful businesses and the use of knowledge management. Clearly they have understood the last bullet point.

Knoco Ltd

KM Pays Dividends

2009-09-16T16:32:00.002+01:00

One of the recurring themes on knowledge management site is return on investment, in other words how do I know that investing money in managing knowledge will pay dividends?

It’s correct that before investing in knowledge management you should consider the return on that investment. Creating a business case for any new business venture is a prudent exercise and one that helps to ensure that the scarce resources of the organisation are used wisely. There are many books published and courses run on how to create a business case, indeed there is now a thriving business in writing business cases.

In case you aren’t aware of it, sites such as elance allow people from around the world to ‘bid’ to undertake creating your business plan. For example, when I looked earlier today when I was thinking about what to write in this blog, I noticed that someone had posted an invitation to tender to write a business plan in connection with a restaurant. When I looked they had received twelve bids from around the globe to do this. We certainly live in a global economy.

So however you decide to do it, identifying the value that you expect the investment to generate is a good idea. If you don’t know what you want, you possibly won’t know when you get it!

In identifying the return that you expect you don’t need to be too specific. The early work we did in BP involved a simple matrix that mapped ‘degree of difficulty’ verses ‘anticipated financial benefit delivered’. I still like this method because it takes into account how difficult it might be to deliver something. Especially when you are getting started you might want to settle for a smaller return but one that is almost certain to be delivered verses a very large return which might not be delivered. It’s about managing risk. Having a number of smaller items that are easy to deliver balanced by a longer term, more difficult to deliver item is a good strategy.

When I was reviewing the 2009 Global MAKE Finalists I couldn’t but help but feel that anyone who questioned the value of managing knowledge should read this list. The list reads like a global who’s who of successful and well known organisations. Perhaps they have discovered the secret to being successful in business? Perhaps their inclusion on the 2009 Global MAKE Finalist list isn’t a coincidence?

Being successful in business didn’t just happen for these companies, it took leadership and a vision of what might be possible. Knowledge management thrives in an organisation where leadership provide the environment that allows individual time to think, to reflect and to learn from others. Unless that environment is in place you may put a lot of effort into introducing knowledge management to the organisation and be disappointed by the results. If you want to test to what the environment in your organisation is like, why not request your copy of the Knoco KM risk evaluation template which will assist you to calculate the risk to successful delivery of your KM implementation. Being informed allows you to design a productive way forward. I look forward to seeing your company appear in future editions of the Global MAKE Finalists.

Knoco Clients in MAKE Awards Finals

2009-09-15T17:16:00.003+01:00

It's great to see so many of Knoco's clients in the MAKE Awards Finals.. They deserve it for all the effort they have put into and continue to put into managing their knowledge and achieving business benefit for their stakeholders. Well done everyone.

Corporate Memory Leaks

2009-09-08T16:32:00.002+01:00

I was reviewing the books that I wanted to read over the next couple of weeks / months and came across Building Expertise – Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement by Ruth Colvin Clark. The other book that I think I will read is Knowledge Management, Organisational Memory and Transfer Behavour; Global Approaches and Advancements (Advances in Knowledge Management Research) by Murray E Jennex.

Corporate memory is something that fascinates me. It never ceases to amaze me how organisations can appear to ‘unlearn’ something that has happened in the past. I was conducting a knowledge management training session and invited a senior executive to address the group before we got started. I expected him to say how important managing knowledge was to the future of the organisation and how the career progression of those in attendance would be affected by their ability to understand and deliver on those expectations. Instead of giving the usual address he invited everyone to take their paper and write down the answers to the questions he was going to ask. I won’t bother repeating the questions as they were very specific to the company in question but essentially he said, “Did X happen in 1995, 2000, 2005 or never?” He posed about five different questions with different dates but I started to note a pattern in the questions.

I noticed that the dates were roughly five years apart.

What he had learned was that it took roughly five years for that organisation to unlearn something!

As we explored it further it became apparent that the cultural norm within this organisation was that you would move jobs roughly every 18 to 24 months. In some instances the movement would be triggered by promotion, in some it would be moving to another area to gain new or additional skills or perhaps it was to fill a resource need on a project. The reasons changed but the cycle was roughly 18 to 24 months.

What he had noticed was that if four people held a post in succession for the normal 2 years, let’s call them A, B, C and D, then if an incident occurred half way through the term of A being in post, then by the time it came for C to leave the post and D take over, typically the incident would have repeated itself with resulting injury, loss of life or loss of production. They had also found that while the incident might not have been exactly the same as before it was so similar as to make no difference.

One of the reasons for this repeating of incidents was that the focus was on determining what had happened, learning lessons. A lesson learned document would be produced and it was assumed that everyone involved would read and apply any recommendations made at the time. Now while A was still in post everyone tended to remember the incident and applied the advice of the lessons learned. However by the time that B took over the role memories were starting to dim and the specifics of what happened where getting lost. By the time C took over the role very few if anyone could remember the incident, it was no longer in the daily conciseness of people, and if asked about it some people could probably remember vaguely something happening.

To avoid this pattern of behaviour continuing in the future a process was put in place that did two things. The first was to go back and look for incidents that had happened in the past and identify what was currently being done to avoid it being repeated at some time in the future. The other thing that was done was to ensure that an action was put on every lesson that was learned and that action remained in place until it could be proven that it had been fully auctioned. So in future whenever they conducted a After Action Review or a Retrospect, any actions which arose would be assigned to a specific individual and target date for implementation of the action set. Outstanding actions were reported to senior management who ‘encouraged those who had not closed out their actions to do so’.

The human brain is great for storing sentiments and big picture memories but rather poor at storing the minute detail that can made the difference between success and failure.

Knoco Ltd

Overselling Knowledge Management

2009-09-02T16:32:00.002+01:00

I have reached the stage in my career where giving something back and helping people who are starting out on their career or perhaps moving their career path in a different direction is very important to me. I am very happy, and often make the offer, to people who are new to knowledge management or perhaps have been recently appointed to the role of knowledge manager, to give me a call and have a chat. This allows them to bounce ideas about, seek a second opinion or just generally share some of the thoughts and challenges that they are experiencing in the role.

I received such a call earlier this week which I thought would be worth while expanding and sharing on in this blog. In essence the person who had relatively recently been appointed as a knowledge manager wanted my advice on how to sell knowledge management to their executive board.

It would have been extremely easy for me to have responded along the lines of ‘don't sell it to them’ but that would have been condescending as this was an issue that was obviously taxing and troubling them.

Let me try to explain why I think you shouldn't try to sell knowledge management to executive boards and senior stakeholders.

In some ways this reflects my experience of marketing and sales. There is one school of thought which says that you can push a sale on to someone by badgering them until they eventually submit and agreed to the sale. This is the super slick salesmen type approach, one to which I do not subscribe. Rather I believe that you should work back the way from what is the identified stakeholder need or if that is not available work with the stakeholder to identify what that need may be. Once you have done that you can then illustrate how what you have to offer can help to satisfy that need. What I'm trying to say is that when you're talking to the executive board or senior stakeholders trying to push the benefits of knowledge management to them might not be the most effective way of communicating or engaging them. Rather attempt to uncover their need or desire for the business. This may be growth of market share, it may be expanding into a new geographical territory or perhaps it is the successful launch of a new product.

If you can identify what that need this then you can start to illustrate how the knowledge management framework or a specific knowledge management processes such as BDAL (Business Driven Action Learning) can help to deliver the desired outcome. By approaching them in this way you're more likely to engage them in a conversation which adds value to them. They will buy into the overall concept and will most likely give you permission to proceed. Trying to push knowledge management onto them could result in a pushback or rejection. I remember in one instance where a senior manager said to me, "Don’t tell me that knowledge management will wash my clothes whiter than white because I don't believe you!" What he was trying to get across was that by promising that knowledge management could solve world famine, make my clothes whiter than white, make me beautiful, make my teeth sparkling white, I guess you get the picture by now, in this experience people associated with knowledge management had been over promising what the results might be and frequently ended up disappointing. All he wanted was a conversation about the challenges facing him in that role and how, if appropriate, the application of knowledge management could help to overcome or perhaps partially overcome some of these challenges.

As we finished our chat on the telephone I suggested that instead of trying to present knowledge management in a way that could be misinterpreted or in a way that could be interpreted as over promising, that they consider a softer marketing type approach being led by what the senior executives needs and desires were and building from them.

Perhaps in a forthcoming blog we may to explore the difference between needs and wants in the context of knowledge management.

Knoco Ltd

Focused Communications in Knowledge Management

2009-08-27T16:32:00.002+01:00

In previous posts I have discussed communications plans and stakeholder management. In this posting I would like to discuss the concept of ‘what is the message I want to convey’ and ‘one message at a time’.

When communicating with fellow humans we have a tendency to want to share with them lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of information, some of which may be relevant to the topic in hand and some not so relevant. We also have a tendency to digress, deviate or drift from the message that we want to convey. The politicians refer to this as ‘coming off message’. I won’t pretend to understand why this happens, it’s just something that I have observed especially when doing knowledge harvest interviews or reviewing interview transcripts post interview.

So if you are planning a communication perhaps it’s worth being aware of this and try to ensure that you focus on one message at a time. At one time I used a text summariser to check the message that I wanted to communicate. I would write the email or document and then have the software read and summarise the content. It was always very interesting to read what the software thought was the message I was trying to get across verses what I thought the message should be. I didn’t slavishly rely on the software to verify that I had correctly phrased the message but it was a very useful second opinion.

The other thing that I have noticed in a lot of the knowledge management articles that I get sent to review is that there is a tendency to push the value of knowledge management to the reader. I know someone who has a very successful business and often says that people buy things that take away an itch or pain not aspirin. What he is trying to convey is that you might have invented aspirin and be trying to advocate its use but unless the person you are communicating with as a need to use it they won’t. If the communication is reserved from, “I have this thing called aspirin, why don’t you try it” to “You’ve got a pain? Try this aspirin, I think it will help” it makes a huge difference to how the message is received. If I have a need and I perceive that what you are offering might help with that need, I will pay a lot more attention to what you are saying.

Perhaps when we are communicating about knowledge management we need to focus more on what the needs of the person we are attempting to communicate with are, rather than trying to push the benefits that knowledge management will give them.

Knoco Ltd

Stakeholder Management in Knowledge Management

2009-08-19T16:32:00.002+01:00

In a previous posting I discussed communications plans and how they are used. In this post I would like to expand on that post and move into the area of stakeholder management and how you communicate with stakeholders. You can download the white paper on communications plans here.

I sometimes think the first step in engaging stakeholders is to start out by thinking of the various steps that you want to move them through. I have found that the eight levels of transformation model to be particularly useful in helping me to visualise the steps that you have to move them through. In the version of the transformation model that I typically use the steps are; first contact, awareness, understanding, acceptance, trial, adoption, embedded in process and eventually embedded in the culture. The pace at which individuals, teams or companies move through these stages varies considerably. For example it's not unusual for a team to move from first contact to trial in six months but it can take five years to go from contact to embedded in the culture as in the case of BP Drilling, highly successful practitioners of knowledge management.

You might consider producing a chart illustrating the pace at which you might want them to move through the various steps.

In order to move them through these various steps you might want to start to think about how you’re going to communicate with them. One of the tools that I like to use is the RACI matrix which stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and inform. Using this matrix I plot the names of the key stakeholders against whether they are responsible or whether I just need to inform them. Let me try to illustrate this by an example.

In the above example we have identified four different stakeholders all of whom have to be communicated with in some way. But we have also identified a critical difference between each of the stakeholders. This table illustrates that while A Johnson is responsible for leading and executing the activity, C Edgeware is the person who is actually accountable and who approves the output of the activity. It also illustrates that D Betterware only has to be informed about the activity. Thus the way in which we communicate both in terms of style and content will be very different in the case of C Edgeware and D Betterware as the latter only has to be informed whereas the form has to approve. The amount of effort that we put into designing the message and how we communicate it will be considerably greater in the case of the person who has to approve versus the person with whom we are only informing.

I will expand on the point made above in a forthcoming Knoco White Paper on stakeholder management. You will be able to download that from the Knoco website in a few days time. It will also have better illustrations.

Knoco Ltd

Communication Strategy for Knowledge Management

2009-08-10T15:01:00.002+01:00

I have just returned from vacation and one of the first appointments that I had in my diary was to present via a webinar some of the experience that I had gained over the years on the topic of successful implementation of knowledge management programs.

In this edition of my blog I would like to share one aspect of that experience, the need for a communications plan.

The introduction of knowledge management to your organisation should be treated as a change management project. In change management two of the most important aspects are Communication, and Stakeholder Management (I will discuss Stakeholder Management in a future posting). Delivering change means getting people to change their attitudes, behaviours and mindsets, and this only happens at an individual level. Communication is key, but communication must be targeted at those key individuals [stakeholders] who will really make a difference. Therefore the team delivering change should have a clear Communication Plan, and clear Stakeholder Management plan, and should follow these closely. Don’t make the mistake of trying to communicate the same message to everyone in the same way, be focused.

The communication plan describes how the team will communicate to the organization during the different stages of introduction of knowledge management. The communication strategy is required to ensure that

• The conditions, attitudes and expectations are created which will facilitate change
• The aims and objectives of the change programme are clearly understood by management and staff
• The message is clear, concise and fit for the audience
• Communications will be set in the context of business delivery and business strategy

Communication therefore needs to be

• Simple, explaining Knowledge Management in understandable ways of your organisations context (not any other organisation)
• Consistent, both in content and in branding
• Reinforced from all levels, and
• Focused on the value to the individual, as well as on the value to the organisation

The communications plan should contain

• A simple and consistent message which describes the vision for Knowledge Management, and the benefits that it will bring.
• This message needs to be endorsed by the very top of the organisation.
• A clear definition is needed of “What’s in it” for the individual staff, for the project managers, and for the company
• A consistent set of communication materials should be prepared
• Managers should be given briefing material for discussion with their teams; and a process put in place for collecting feedback
• The communication roll-out needs to be aligned with the stakeholder analysis
• As soon as any successful pilots or proof-of-concept applications are complete, these should be communicated through internal communication channels
• You should aim to release at least one communication per Quarter, to keep the awareness going.

The strategy and subsequent communications plan will outline the various channels that will used, and distinguish between communication PUSH (where you push information to the audience) and communication PULL (where you request or seek feedback).

Communication is likely to occur in three stages;

• Initially communication will focus on the objectives of the Knowledge Management program and the planned activities.
• Once the piloting stage is reached and internal success stories are generated, the focus of communication will change to publicising the internal successes.
• Once the roll-out phase is reached, communication will change to communicating the expectations on the individuals and teams

For each of these stages, the communication plan will describe what will be communicated, by whom, using what medium, with what frequency, and will also describe the sign-off process for communication materials.

A Communication Plan template might look like the following;

A completed example might look like;

Before you go out and discuss knowledge management with the businesses, and the culture change that it will enable, you have to consider the engagement style that you will use. You need to consider things like;

• How will you demonstrate the potential of knowledge management to the individual and the organization?
• How will you help develop a shared vision?

Using stories and scenarios to paint a picture of the knowledge-enabled future is a very powerful way of helping people understand knowledge management, and understand what it can do for them. Stories could come from other organisations who have already implemented the change; or (more powerfully) from early successes within your own organisation.

A traditional, stand-up, show-and-tell presentation is nowhere near as successful as engaging the audience in dialogue or conversation. A standard engagement presentation might a last couple of hours, of which at least half will be dialogue with the audience.

Create a standard engagement presentation pack and make sure that team members are very familiar with it, and are bought into each component. Regularly review the content of the engagement; retain bits that work, remove bits that don’t.

In the next posting I will review stakeholder engagement and how to map that.

Knoco Ltd

Knowledge Transfer

2009-07-29T10:58:00.002+01:00

Knowledge transfer is something that interests most of us at some time or another. I recently received an invite to create and deliver a workshop for a public audience at the request of a government agency on knowledge transfer. I am sure you will find this video interesting as it highlights the need to understand the context behind the knowledge being transfered.

On Vacation With Limited Access

2009-07-24T11:42:00.001+01:00

I am currently on vacation with very limited access to the internet. Sorry if you were following my blog and were missing the postings.

Key Knowledge and the Great Wall of China

2009-07-16T15:00:00.001+01:00

I had been taught at school that the Great Wall of China was built to keep invaders out but I kept thinking to myself how would that work? If you think about it, no matter how high a wall is, someone can climb over it. Then I decided to view it as a key knowledge issue.

If you imagine you were in charge of China's defense and needed to know the key knowledge to prevent your country being invaded it might be something like this. It might not be how to keep them out but rather how to stop them becoming an effective force once they got in. The key knowledge was that an invading force required horses to be effective (they were the tank or fighter aircraft of their day). So if you could stop horses getting into the country you would prevent invasion and conquest.

Thus the Great Wall of China was not build to stop soldiers getting into the country but to stop horses getting into the country!

Sometimes the key knowledge we need isn't immediately obvious.

Knoco Ltd

KM Webinar Over Subscribed

2009-07-14T15:00:00.002+01:00

Just found out that demand for places on tommorrows webinar on how to impliment knowledge management has been so great that it is now over subscribed. We have scheduled a second webinar for 6th August just to cope with the demand.

Knoco Ltd

I am amazed at the very high level of interests that these webinars are creating. We have repeated the topic of the prevous webinar to a full audience again. The next one, on another topic, is scheduled for mid September 2009.