Knowledge Management for Decision Memories

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Institutional decision memories can describe how and why we, as an organization, chose one course of action over another. As Brian Gongol notes:

“If a capital project has an expected service life of 20 to 30 years, it’s entirely possible that people working in an institution in their 20s will be middle or upper-level managers in the same institution by the time the project has to be replaced or upgraded. Unless someone documents the process by which the original decision was made, including notes on the alternatives not taken, the 50-year-old manager who’s been with the institution all along will usually be guided more by 25 years of habits and built-in bias than by a fresh look at the available alternatives. And the situation is likely to be even worse if the 50-year-old manager making the decisions came into the institution recently and doesn’t even have a memory for when the original project was completed in the first place.”

Over time, these memories can be codified and institutionalized. This is Big Knowledge Management, leveraging the power of enterprise software platforms to store decision, process, and event memories. Process and event memories, like project outputs, are relatively easy to capture and codify. But decision memories are often hampered by our tendency to justify decisions after they have been made, and even create elaborate, and often fictional, stories around them. For this reason, it is important to capture decisions as they are being made, not after the fact.

Explaining why other decisions were not made, should also be normal practice. For example, I was working with a client that made decisions on which chemical compound to develop out of a possibility of thousands. There was a cost to initially create any compound, so not all possibilities could be attempted. Decisions were made by a committee on which compound to pursue. However, the decisions on why the other compounds were not developed were never recorded. Several years later, the situation had changed due to improvements in technology and new research findings, and now some of the rejected compounds may have had potential for development. Unfortunately, no records were available to search the rejected compound database and find ones that met the new criteria. Sometimes our decisions not to do something are just as important as our selected course of action, from the perspective of the future. But we never know this in advance.

Recording and sharing our knowledge on a regular basis is what Little Knowledge Management is about, as it focuses on providing ways for groups to try new methods safely. Examples include curation, communities of practice, and mentoring. For complex work, Little KM is critical, as most of the knowledge required is implicit, and not easy to codify. According to the Cynefin framework, in the Complex domain “the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond , and we can sense emergent practice.” Teams working in the complex domain have to make “probes” on a regular basis in order to understand the changing environment. It then becomes essential to develop ways to capture and share the decisions made with each one.

decision memories

Institutional memory, especially the decisions taken over time, has to be part of the workflow of any knowledge worker doing complex work and making decisions. Ewen Le Borgne writes that, “Institutional memory feeds off strong personal knowledge management among individual staff members“. I define PKMastery as a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. PKM is an ongoing process of filtering information from our networks; creating knowledge individually and with our teams, and then discerning with whom and when to share the artifacts of our knowledge. As Roger Schank states, “Comprehension is mapping your stories onto mine.” PKM helps to put your maps out there for others to see.

We have to remember that all of this “knowledge management” is nothing without people engaged in the process. Viola Spolin, creator of the “Theater Games” actor training system, says that, “Information is a weak form of communication.” But, it can be improved, as Gary Schwartz notes, “Story becomes important in the ordering of all this information.” Stories are the glue, holding information together in some semblance of order, for our brains to process into knowledge.

stories are personal

Related Posts

Institutional Memory
The Storytelling Animal
Building Institutional Memory
An Organizational Knowledge Sharing Framework

Creativity, uncertainty, and sense-making

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friday2Friday’s Finds:

@RossDawson – “The democratization of creativity is truly one of the defining themes of our era.”

“Unless I hear differently“- a better approach to getting work done. Always assume positive intent.

“Quite often when executives share the story of their strategy it’s the first time when all are in no doubt what their strategy means. – @ShawnCallahan”

“The more you face uncertainty, the more inefficient your organisation needs to be, because that leaves room for resilience. – @snowded” via @BryanBoyer

context collapse: “an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into a single moment” – via @courasa

@NancyDixon – Collective Sensemaking: How One Organization uses the Oscillation Principle

principles of Collective Sensemaking:

  • Connection before content (Block)

  • Learn in small groups integrate in the large group (Weisbord)

  • Setting aside time for joint reflection

  • Circles connect

  • We learn when we talk (Johnson & Johnson)

  • Intentionally explore differences (Weisbord)

  • Insure cognitive diversity (Page)

  • Create a culture of psychological safety (Edmondson)

  • Design shared experiences (Weick)

 

Networked Professional Development

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It can sometimes be difficult to see oneself as a node in multiple networks, as opposed to a more conventional position within an organizational hierarchy. We have become used to titles, job descriptions, and other institutional trappings. But network thinking can fundamentally change our view of hierarchical relationships.

For example, I once used value network analysis to help a steering group see their community of practice in a new light. For the first time, they saw it mapped as a network. They immediately realized that they were pushing solutions instead of listening to their community. As a result, they decided to change their Charter and develop more network-centric practices. Thinking in terms of networks can enable us see with new eyes.

effective networks are open

Managing in Networks:

Here are some recommendations for organizations moving to more networked and creative work.

  • Abolish the organization chart and replace it with a network diagram (some new tech companies have done this).
  • Move away from counting hours, to a results only work environment.
  • Encourage outside work that doesn’t directly interfere with paid work, as it will strengthen the network.
  • Provide options for workers to come and go and give them ways to stay connected when they’re not employed (like Ericsson’s Stay Connected Facebook group). Build an ecosystem, not a monolith.
  • Organizations should promote connected leadership.

Learning in Networks:

As we learn in digital networks, stock (content) loses significance, while flow (conversation) becomes more important – the challenge becomes how to continuously weave the many bits of information and knowledge that pass by us each day. Conversations help us make sense. But we need diversity in our conversations or we become insular. We cannot predict what will emerge from continuous learning, co-creating & sharing at the individual, organizational and market level, but we do know it will make for more resilient organizations.

Networked Professional Development:

A professional learning network, with its redundant connections, repetition of information and indirect communications, is a much more resilient system than any designed development program can be. Redundancy is also a good principal for supporting social learning diffusion. There is always more than one way to communicate or find something and just because something was blogged, tweeted or posted does not mean it will be understood and eventually internalized as actionable knowledge. The more complex or novel the idea, the more time it will take to be understood.

Programmers often say that you are only as good as your code. Credentials and certifications often act as blinders and stop us from recognizing the complexity of a situation. As Henry Mencken wrote, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

One approach to working smarter starts by organizing to embrace diversity and manage complexity.  Diversity is a key factor in innovation and there are few organizations that do not want to improve innovation.

At the Connected Knowledge Lab, we offer a place and time to develop network skills. Our next event will focus on building a professional network, providing resources and feedback for anyone interested in getting started. Our workshops are designed to give just enough structure, without constraining personal and social learning, all at a reasonable price.

Play, Learn, Work

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In my last post I mentioned Nollind Whachel’s sense-making process:

Connect = producing content
Empower = making sense of content patterns
Inspire = leap of logic, the patterns form a story, you see the bigger picture

Steve Scott combined Nollind’s suggestions and suggested this:

Seek + Connect = Play
Sense + Empower = Learn
Share + Inspire = Work

Both of these align with, and add to, the PKM framework of Seek> Sense > Share. Seeking works best with a playful attitude, exploring new possibilities in diverse networks with many connections in order to enhance serendipity. Sense-making, the most difficult aspect, requires a willingness to try new things, empowering through learning. Sharing is necessary in almost all work contexts today and it is through sharing that we can inspire and be inspired.

rp_PKM-focus-attitude-result-520x415.png

Here are some suggestions for doing this on your own.

Seek playfully to connect:

  • Stray outside your comfort zone (not your usual networks)
  • Try new activities
  • Test out new tools from time to time
  • Don’t worry about doing it “correctly”
  • Note: one PKM workshop participant cautioned, “There is a risk of getting stuck in seeking and not going further into sensing and acting on information.“

Make sense and be empowered through learning:

  • Test out an expression medium, then try another
  • Find out what others have done, some practices are quite old
  • Make time for reflection
  • Put yourself out there
  • It’s fine to fail
  • Keep trying
  • Think of sense-making as a craft that has to be mastered over time

Share to inspire through your work:

  • Model behaviours of those who have shared and helped you
  • Narrate your work
  • Try to add value to what you share

PKM playfully learning

All things to all people

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It was reported that only 2% of social sharing happens on Google Plus (G+). I too, do not share much on G+. I recently posted on G+ that it did not fit in with my professional use of social media, even though discussions are often fun, interesting, and informative. That G+ post I made now has 52 comments, more than any post on this blog has had.

In that post, Jeff Roach described G+ as “a network that looks like Facebook (media rich) but functions more like twitter (streams etc) but is more friendly to conversations and sharing than both of them.” Joachim Stroh suggested that I create a community on G+ but I countered that I preferred to cooperate in the open, not in another social media walled garden:

I think one of the problems today is that many online social networks are trying to be communities of practice. But to be a community of practice, there has to be something to practice. One social network, mine, is enough for me. How I manage the connections is also up to me. In some cases I will follow a blogger, in others I will connect via Google Plus or Twitter, but from my perspective it is one network, with varying types of connections. Jumping into someone else’s bounded social network/community only makes sense if I have an objective. If not, I’ll keep cooperating out in the open.

Nollind Whachel then weighed-in with several thoughtful comments and Joachim Stroh continued to engage. I stood on the sidelines, and a few others added comments, including one commentator unknown to me who felt I was being unprofessional because I did not understand G+. By the way, all of my G+ posts have been public, so anyone can jump in.

Nollind provided a good way to describe the sense-making process in these online social networks:

Connect = producing content
Empower = making sense of content patterns
Inspire = leap of logic, the patterns form a story, you see the bigger picture

Joachim made an interesting subsequent comment:

So, I’m still looking for the connection to go from unstructured to structured content, without doing a lot of curation. It’s not easy if you are doing this on your own (as you describe), it’s almost impossible to do this collectively (without a CM role).

Nollind added an emergent thought, that I think is important, and is partially what this blog post is all about:

Hmm, just had an interesting thought. It actually may be easier to do the writing and sense making within one community and then do the outlining and structuring in another community.

My interest in all of this comes down to PKM, and so far, G+ is a mere extension of my PKM processes. Perhaps it could be more, but I strongly believe in the centrality of my blog, which I own and control. I am not ready to give that to Google or any other third party. Nollind also made an excellent comparison of my PKM framework with his own methodology,

Seek = Connect = Play
Sense = Empower = Learn
Share = Inspire = Work

At this time, G+ provides a nice place for deep discussions with people who probably would not post as much on my blog and would be throttled by Twitter’s 140 character limit. I know that others use it much more, adding tags to make search and retrieval easier, and engaging with communities. G+ does add to my weak & diverse ties and even enables the sharing of complex knowledge. Perhaps G+ is trying to be all things to all people, and for those of us with existing PKM processes, that’s just too much.

social ties collaboration cooperationImage: Social Ties for Cooperation & Collaboration

An organizational knowledge-sharing framework

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There is a lot of knowledge in an organization, some of it easy to codify (capture), and much (most) of it difficult to do so. Understanding how best to commit resources for knowledge-sharing should be in some kind of a decision-making framework that is easy for anyone to understand. This is a first attempt to do that.

[This post is a follow-up from my building institutional memory post].

Brian Gongol made an interesting observation on three categories of institutional memory. Decision memories are probably the most important, and likely the most open to rationalization in hindsight. The good decisions always seem obvious after the fact.

  • event memories, which are things like the construction of new facilities or the arrival of new employees

  • process memories, which note how things are done in order to save time and ensure their reliable repetition in the future

  • decision memories, which explain how the institution chose one path or policy or course of action over another

We can expand these three categories with Ewen La Borgne’s observation on the types of artifacts left by work projects. Outputs are quite explicit, while expertise is mostly implicit knowledge. Networks can be mapped, and are therefore explicit, but interpreting them requires implicit knowledge.

  • Information and outputs produced

  • Expertise (knowledge and know-how)

  • A network of connections

Put all of these together in order of difficulty in codifying memories/artifacts and the following graphic is my working interpretation. Explicit knowledge is easier to codify and more suitable for enterprise-wide initiatives, while implicit knowledge requires personal interpretation and engagement to make sense of it. Note that these six categories only serve as examples and are not a complete spectrum of knowledge representations.

codifying knowledge

So what types of knowledge management (KM) frameworks could help us support the codification of these knowledge artifacts? One way to look at it would be from a perspective discussed by Patti Anklam a few years back. Patti explained the differences between Big KM, Little KM and Personal KM and this distinction could be useful. Big KM is good for knowledge that can be easily codified, and Little KM can provide a structure for teams & groups to try out new things (in a Probe-Sense-Respond way). PKM puts individuals in control of their sense-making, but the organization can benefit from this by making it easier for workers to share knowledge.

structuring knowledge

Finally, there are certain types of tools and and platforms that would be more suitable for sharing of each type of knowledge artifact. I describe only a few in this image, but it gives an idea of how one could structure a full spectrum of knowledge-sharing in order to support institutional memory.

knowledge sharing

From here, one can now ask what types of platforms would help to codify and share the knowledge that is important to any organization. For larger organizations, all three types of KM are most likely necessary. Too often, Big KM is seen as sufficient, but in complex work environments, Little KM and Personal KM are also needed and should work in conjunction with Big KM. These are three important pieces, that should remain loosely joined in order for each to do what it does best.

Some big reads for Friday

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Friday’s Finds:

friday2“Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete. – R.H. Blyth” – via @cyetain

“McLuhan (ca.’75); Academics “have been asleep for 500 years and they don’t like anybody who .. stirs them up” – via @wodekszemberg

You are not an Artisan

The artisan delusion is important because almost everything artisans want to do — all the local-and-sexy work — is actually algorithmically scalable once you filter out the noise. There just isn’t much requisite variety there. Which means it is more vulnerable to being taken over by post-industrial modes of automated production, not less. Because software makes assembly lines more capable, not less.

Dave Pollard: Will the Collapse of Civilization Begin With Global Corporatist Totalitarianism? – via @C4LPT – “while financial, commercial and political collapse are inevitable, social collapse is not”

Corporatist Totalitarianism is the creation of a state that disenfranchises the majority and funnels all decision-making, wealth, power and security to an integrated Corporatist few. They do this ostensibly on the basis that this few know better than the masses how to deal with crises, but in fact they know there just isn’t enough of anything left to go around any more. So, like alphas in an overcrowded rat cage, they deem it appropriate to lie, mislead and deny, and to hoard everything they can steal for themselves and let the rest suffer and starve.

@gleonhard: The coming data wars, the rise of digital totalitarianism and why internet users need to take a stand

Here is my bottom line: the very same data oil that to a very large extend already fuels the $600 Billion advertising industry will fuel something in the neighborhood of a $1 Trillion global data monitoring and surveillance business – and it’s you and me that will make this happen by allowing them to drill into our data i.e. into us.

Building institutional memory, one story at a time

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Institutional memory, which I wrote about recently, is a mixture of explicit and implicit knowledge sharing. It can be as explicit as Harvard Business School’s Institutional Memory site, or as implicit as the feeling one gets from a well-known local legend. A lot depends on what the organization wants to preserve. Is it how-to knowledge, like a trade secret formula, or is it certain practices and norms that define the culture? Or is it both? Each institution has to define this for itself.

Implicit knowledge is difficult to share and is usually complex. We know that this type of knowledge cannot easily be codified. However, it’s often what gives institutions sustainability and even competitive advantage. Finding ways to collect and share both types of knowledge is important for institutional memory. Stories can be an effective medium for these exchanges. The Ritz-Carlton provides an excellent example with Stories that Stay with You. Stories do not have to be exceptional to be effective, and simple anecdotes may be better on a large scale, rather than sweeping epics, or one can wind up in the uncanny valley of business storytelling.

stories.001

Institutional memory is a close cousin of knowledge management. Both can be strengthened with a firm foundation of personal knowledge management (Seek-Sense-Share). While seeking and sense-making are mostly individual activities and people should be allowed to use what’s best for them, the organization can overtly support knowledge sharing. One suggestion is to create more opportunities for “people to have coffee together”. Though it’s not the coffee that’s important, the act of gathering, combined with an environment that encourages capturing and sharing knowledge artifacts, serves to build institutional memory.

IM_coffee.001

Learning mobility

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How would you like a ‘genius bar’ to take care of you at work, instead of having to request a support ticket from IT or get an appointment with HR? It’s something that could easily work with mobile device support and help in implementing an effective BYOD (bring your own device) program.

When it comes to customer support, the genius bar is a revolution in customer care. The idea that you don’t have to make an appointment, don’t have to call in a trouble ticket, don’t have to deal with a traditional support team that is “way backed up” is nothing short of amazing for most people. Yes it requires resources, both human and capital-based. But I can’t imagine a better way to get a grip on what is happening on the mobile user front of an enterprise than by opening up a genius-bar like outlet. – Paul Kapustka, Mobile Enterprise 360

As workers get more mobile, for better and worse, supporting a mobile workforce’s learning and performance needs requires a more flexible approach. Screen size limits what you can do, so it has to be short and focused. It also has to be personalized. Jane Hart describes the role of learning concierge as providing “personal advice directly to workers on how they can address their own workplace learning and performance problems in the way that works best for them“. Mobile devices are perfect for personalization and direct to the end-user delivery.

Mobile delivery and support could be a great opportunity to make training & development departments more relevant. Start with just-in-time service, such as genius bars. Combine technical support with learning and performance support. For instance, the last time I was at an Apple Genius bar, I showed up at opening time and saw many people attending training sessions. These people showed up voluntarily and it looked like they were interested and engaged. Shouldn’t all training sessions be like this?

The future of work is social, cooperative & mobile. This should also be the future of performance and technical support. As I noted in the future of the training department, the main objective should be to enable knowledge to flow in the organization. The primary function of learning & performance professionals in the networked enterprise is connecting and communicating, based on three core processes:

1. Facilitating collaborative work and learning amongst workers, especially as peers.

2. Sensing patterns and helping to develop emergent work and learning practices.

3. Working with management to fund and develop appropriate tools and processes for workers.

Using mobile platforms can support listening and analyzing by staying in direct contact with workers. They can also help the organization stay connected in order to set context and build consensus. Connecting leadership with the work being done, or learning as we go, should be a prime function of learning professionals in the mobile enterprise.

supporting 21c work—

This post is brought to you by Mobile Enterprise 360 Community and Citrix

Note: I retained editorial control and take full responsibility for what is posted. Contract writing is one of the ways I make my living.

The Storytelling Animal

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storytelling-animalIn The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall tells us how stories make us human. The book looks at gender differences in weaving our own stories, the cultural significance of stories, and some of the science and pseudo-science on story, narration and memory. It boils down to a simple formula, says Gottschall.

Story = Character + Predicament + Attempted Extrication

This made me consider how this could be important for institutional memory. Would this be a good formula to try to capture past events from those who have experienced them? It could be, but it might be highly dependent on how much time has passed and how important accuracy is, as we are not very good at remembering, especially critical, or ‘flashbulb’, events. “Memory isn’t an outright fiction; it is merely a fictionalization“, says Gottschall.

“The signature flashbulb event of our age is 9/11, which led to a bonanza of false-memory research. The research shows two things: that people are extremely sure of their 9/11 memories and that upward of 70% of us misremember key aspects of the attacks … In one study, 73 percent of research subjects misremembered watching, horrified, as the first plane plowed into the North Tower on the morning of September 11.

The research shows that our memories get worse over time, but our stories, as we remember them, become much clearer. We have a propensity for self-delusion, something every jury member should always keep in mind. But fiction (story) is much more powerful than non-fiction. Gottschall discusses the power of Wagner’s mythology on Hitler, as well as how the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, influenced the 19th century anti-slavery movement.

“When we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to leave us defenseless.”

Consider the above statement and think about training. Would it not be more effective if content was developed as stories? How about knowledge management? I think stories would be most effective for new hire training. Perhaps we should focus less on instructional design or knowledge repositories. Instead, organizations could engage good story tellers. We hear a lot about the importance of curation in the digital workplace today. The best curators are also story tellers.

I enjoyed this book and learned a fair bit from it, but it is not a book that deals much with how stories can be used for KM or other organizational purposes.