According to Admiral Allen (or at least my rough notes from his keynote this morning) "Change is coming; not a tsunami," but the change will change the landscape. And, change has become constant.
What is true in one instance, is not necessarily true the next. One of the changes coming (or perhaps it has already arrived) is transparency and the ubiquitous of information.
Ever wonder if the Coast Guard has an organizational management and leadership framework? Okay, perhaps you haven't wondered, but the answer is nonetheless a resounding Yes.
The Coast Guard's organizational management and leadership framework is the Criteria for Performance Excellence. Want to check it out? You can send a quick email off to NIST with your name and address, and they'll ship a copy of the Criteria straight-away to you.
So says the CEO of the Sterling Council. I think that’s likely accurate, at least on the macro level. But the face of the Coast Guard is also those four young men who served as the color guard: young, junior petty officers who are dedicated to serve.
I heard that the numbers of attendees this year are down. Last year there were more than 1200 attendees. This year there are some 600 or 700 attendees. I doubt the reason is because of the value of the conference, but more of an indicator of the current state of economy.
Oh, that doesn't bode well...
The theme for this year’s Sterling Conference is “the competitive advantage.” And carrying on the patriotic theme, there’s acknowledgment that the economy is in a slump. When one of the first comments by a speaker is the cost of gas, you know we’re in a recession, even if the economists and pundits and talking heads don’t yet know it.
We are charged to implement one best practice or improvement strategy following the conference. This is, in truth, the crux of knowledge management: inculcate proven practices throughout an organization. And, indeed, if there’s nothing gained for the organization by attending conferences such as this, what’s the use?
Here in Orlando. Warm. Humid. And the start of the Sterling Conference is, indeed, Vegas or Branson-like.
The color guard from Sector Jacksonsville looks pretty sharp, and have to endure standing at post during not only the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem but a medley of patriotic songs sung by Orlando-talent. America the Beautiful.
Complete with video that matches the lyrics. Sea to shining sea. Well, you get the idea. It’s a patriotic love fest.
Here at the 16th Annual Sterling Council Conference. As per usual, wifi issues: not available at the actual conference site. I'll be drafting and then posting later.
Use as a course review.
Or as a renewal session.
Or as an course introduction.
Or as a teaser to get people to come to the course.
Training Center Yorktown's Performance Technology Center (PTC) will host its Eighth Annual Human Performance Technology (HPT) Workshop 3-5 September, 2008 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
I still have a slew of notes from last week to transcribe into posts here, but I wanted to highlight an article I saw over in World Politics Review, a foreign policy and national security daily, Internet Connects Future Army Leaders with Virtual 'Front Porch' by David Axe.
If I thought the State Department had skinned some of the KM cat, then it's for certain the Army is skinning the rest of it.
Here's the lede:
It was a decades-old Army tradition that junior officers would eat lunch together every day in Army-run dining halls. There they would trade ideas they'd picked up in their training. But in the last decade, to save money, contractors such as Kellogg, Brown and Root have replaced the old dining halls with civilian-style cafeterias, some boasting big-screen TVs. The officers stopped gathering . . . and stopped talking. That had the effect of isolating young leaders, preventing them from getting answers to life-and-death questions -- and from sharing their own answers they might have learned the hard way.This is all about knowledge management, and how to suck that tacit knowledge out of one brain and transplant it into another.
Although they would never agree with the term, today [Lieutenant Colonels Tony] Burgess and [Pete] Kilner function as insurgents in the heart of the Army's intellectual citadel. To supplement a meager budget, they raise their own money by publishing books. Instead of just publishing forums, they have quietly taken on new projects, including interactive, video-based ethics training for cadets. Though their methods are unconventional, they stress that their values are strictly in line with the larger Army's. "If our values weren't in line with the institution's, we'd have been crushed -- and rightly so," Kilner said.Encouraging ways to share knowledge... why, there's a novel idea.
That the Army hasn't crushed the forums speaks to the service's comparative progressiveness when it comes to the Internet. The Air Force, a lead agency for "cyberwarfare," has taken a defensive stance, even blocking access on its official networks to many popular websites. One Coast Guard admiral in March blamed the Internet for unfairly spreading bad news about that service's shipbuilding programs. The Navy, too, has struggled with the democratic nature of sites authored by sailors. A blog published aboard the U.S.S. Russell destroyer several times has run afoul of the Navy public affairs apparatus.
West Point cadets, who grew up with computers as constant companions, stress that forums really aren't as new and strange as some in the military seem to believe. "Everybody tells stories. Everybody learns from stories," said Cole Moses, a senior who this year will enter the Army as an infantry officer. "This just makes it easier."
Yesterday, the morning kick-off keynote speech was from Jeremy Gutsche, founder of TrendHunter.com, a young, upstart, trend-spotting entrepreneur.
Here's his basic Unlocking Cool ppt. Watch it, and know that you might be getting some of the info, you're not getting to see the knowledge residing in Mr. Gutsche.
Absolutely amazing.
Here's another term from the Japanese: Ba.
What is ba? Ba is "shared context in motion," or "time and space in which we create knowledge."
Check out Naoki Ogiwara's presentation, Three 'Ba' Based Japanese KM Approaches--How Successful Japanese KM Companies Share Context to Create Their Unique Value.
There were so many good break-out sessions, I didn't get the chance to attend them all. One that I missed was with Carol Csanda from State Farm Insurance: The Effectiveness of Communities of Practice; From Anecdotes to Evidence. There were a couple of nuggets in the handout I thought were worth mentioning here.
First, I was struck by State Farm's definition of a "knoweldge community." They define a knowledge community as
A community is a group of people with a common interest in a topic and a commitment to share and a apply their knowledge for business benefit.Recognized knowledge communities have three characteristics:
With the APQC KM Conference put to bed, I guess I can't say that future posts about the conference are live. But, there are more posts to come. The week was overwhelming with information; the object now is to turn some of that information into action.
Aside from the KMEdge blog, there is at least one other person who has been live blogging. Dale Arseneault, a KM professional from that country to the north of us, posted on his blog Reflections on Knowledge Management and Organizational Innovation an insightful post, Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management, about his learnings from one of the pre-conference workshops here in Chicago.
Over at AN UNOFFICIAL COAST GUARD BLOG, Kennebec Captain commented on my post Cross-posted: Department of State blows away the Coast Guard when it comes to using social networking tools for KM. Wrote the Kennebec Captain:
Wikis and blogs used as you described are powerful tool that likely greatly improve effectiveness and efficiency. The Coast Guard however is a military organization that is highly hierarchical and the culture of the officer corps has a strong focus on the careerist standard. My guess is that wikis would be largely ineffective in such and environment.This raises a very pertinent question: How does an organization change its cutlure so that knowledge management, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing can take place.
Stand by for heavy rolls.
This afternoon, members of the Department of State's Office of eDiplomacy presented a superb presentation about the use of social network/Web 2.0 tools for knowledge management: Making It Happen: KM at the Working Level (and up).
They put the Coast Guard to shame, at least when it comes to using IT tools for knowledge management.
First, a couple of stats about the Department of State. 57,000 employees. 268 locations. Big bureaucracy.
Their knowledge management goal: Enable employees to access and contribute knowledge anywhere, anytime.
They modeled their efforts on common elements of successful knowledge management efforts:
Here's question for you: Does knowledge exist outside of living things?
Data can exist on paper or in a computer.
Some people have suggested there is a growing de-physicalization of knowledge; I'd suggest, however, that this isn't knowledge but merely data or, perhaps, information.
"Knowledge," says Larry Prusak, "is within people."
True knowledge is not outside the physical world.
I'm reminded of MIT's effort to put all their course materials, including lectures, online for everyone to see. The lectures, the stuff online, isn't knowledge, it is merely information. This is why we still pay to attend face-to-face colleges and universities. True learning, true gaining knowledge, isn't about watching a computer screen. Knowledge happens when you get a chance to integrate what you know and make it useful.
What think you, gentle reader?
I had an interesting conversation with a few KM professionals here at the conference about where a Chief Knowledge Officer might fall within the organizational line diagram.
The Coast Guard's CKO is in CG-6. I think.
When the CKO is home in the information technology world, then the CKO has a technology focus. And knowledge management is not all about IT. Sure, there's an IT component in KM, but that's not all there is to KM.
In some organizations, the CKO is the HR world; CG-1 for the Coast Guard.
In other organizations, the CKO is in the performance management realm; that would put it in CG-0931.
Hmmm...
Well, gentle reader, where do you think the CKO ought to reside within the Coast Guard organization?
Here's a little something Carla O'Dell shared with us today: a KM Maturity Model. When Dr. O'Dell presented it, the model was pretty; this will be pretty plain.
I've written before about the Coast Guard's Commandant's Performance Excellence Criteria (CPEC) before. The CPEC is actually the world renowned Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The Criteria is the Coast Guard's organizational leadership and organizational management framework, and it includes a knowledge management component.
The Criteria asks,
How do you manage your information, information technology, and organizational knowledge?The Criteria demands organizations to
Describe how the organization builds and manages its knowledge assets.Knowledge assets is defined by the Criteria (p. 57) as
The term “knowledge assets” refers to the accumulated intellectual resources of your organization. It is the knowledge possessed by your organization and its workforce in the form of information, ideas, learning, understanding, memory, insights, cognitive and technical skills, and capabilities. Your workforce, software, patents, databases, documents, guides, policies and procedures, and technical drawings are repositories of your organization’s knowledge assets. Knowledge assets are held not only by an organization but reside within its customers, suppliers, and partners, as well..The Criteria requires the organization to
Knowledge assets are the “know-how” that your organization has available to use, to invest, and to grow. Building and managing its knowledge assets are key components for your organization to create value for your stakeholders and to help sustain a competitive advantage
The focus of an organization’s knowledge management is on the knowledge that people need to do their work; improve processes, products, and services; keep current with changing business needs and directions; and develop innovative solutions that add value for the customer and the organization.Oh, the Criteria's not asking too much, is it?
So says Larry Prusak.
His point is this: For 400 years, there was a monopoly on useful knowledge -- science and technology. Monopoly held by Western Europe, North America, and Japan.
According to Mr. Pursak, these monopolies are no more. Just think of China, India, Brazil. More and more, useful knowledge is becoming ubiqutous.
Mr. Pursak suggests that this is just one half of a monolithic revolution which is as huge and shattering as the Industrial Revolution.
The other half of the revolution is the plumetting cost of information transactions, making information even more available.
Now, having said that, there is a difference between information and knowledge. Information doesn't require people. Knowledge does, however.
Everyone has access to information; the value of information is sinking. Knowledge, applying meaning to information and truly understanding information, is increasing in value. Knowledge is expensive.
Great quote from Larry Prusak: PowerPoint is the enemy of learning.
More in response to Carla O'Dell... Baby Boomers are truly experiencing data overload. Younger generations seem to be able to manage data flow easier. Boomers have a difficult time turning all the data into knowledge... not that Gen-X etc. have it solved, but they seem to have an easier time of it.
From Carla O'Dell, three forces impacting knowledge management:
During Carla O'Dell's keynote presentation, she offered an interesting statistic from an annual survey from Bain & Company about KM usage and satisfaction.
Over the last ten years, organizations using formal knowledge management systems or programs has risen from around 25% to around 70%. On the other hand, satisfaction has remained fairly constant. The slide is gone, but I think the figure was around 3.5 or so on a 5-point scale.
Interesting that satisfaction is mostly flat-lined. Increasing expectations, perhaps?
Carla noted that most executives surveyed say they plan to continue with KM processes and systems and even plan to increase investments in the processes and systems.
While the first portion of the week here at the APQC Knowledge Management Conference was small and focused (topical training & learning experiences), the full conference starts today. More people. More buzz. More to follow.
There's no sleep at I continue to have this recurring nightmare. The APQC knowledge management expert is in the front of the room, and she keeps saying,
Sometimes, you just have to use the IT provided. You don't always get what you want. You don't even always get what you need. You get what you're given, and you have to use what you have.I'm reminded of Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, You Can't Always Get What You Want, and the opening scene to The Big Chill.
Well, this is what the good folks at APQC suggest in a slide titled IT Tools for Communities of Practice. I'm going to list them here, without comment. Comments will come later.
The good folks at APQC provide us with four critical success factors for communities of practice. This is straight from a ppt:
... but it's not the be all and end all for knowledge management.
Certainly, information technology has a place in knowledge management and, specifically, for communities of practice.
IT should support the business needs of communities of practice.
IT should provide systems for publishing, capturing, and evaluating knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned.
It's not about the tool, but rather the content housed within the tool
A warning.
Take heed.
Communities of practice are not a silver bullet for every process and every learning problem and every organizational failure and every performance challenge.
Communities of practice are a new organizational form. They live in the white space of the organization; they don't show up on the organizational line diagrams.
They span boundaries.
They serve as a channel for knowledge to flow from one person to another.
They strengthen the social fabric of the larger organization.
They serve as a focal point for the creation and use of knowledge.
They solve the problem of getting knowledge to those who need it.
Earlier this week, I defined knowledge as
Information in action. That is to say that knowledge is information which people use to make decisions or add value. Knowledge includes the rules and contexts of the information's use.There are three types of knowledge (beyond the two-types distinction) we are concerned about:
The communities of practice methodology involves two key components, both of which are necessary for success: high touch and high tech.
There needs to be a face to face component (helps actually build community and strengthen the fabric of the community) and there needs to be a technological component which allows for virtual community, both synchronous and asynchronous.
I think the key question for the Coast Guard as we look at communities of practice is this: How can we support and nurture communities of practice?
Another key issue is this: How can we unstick the stuck knowledge?
Communities of Practice. This seems to be a great way to help manage knowledge, to implement a knowledge management component. I've already mentioned we have a number of these in the Coast Guard, be they formal or informal, supported or not supported. I think what makes a KM community of practice difference is that is deliberate in nature and exists for the purpose of transfering knowledge, moving knowledge from one brain to another.
A key component of KM communities of practice is that it is, above all else, fairly high touch. That is to say that it is not, in and of itself, a technology based thing.
Years back I created a group in Hampton Roads to help nurture and sustain meeting facilitators and meeting managers. This was, looking back, clearly a community of practice. We gathered guarterly to discuss tools, successes, failures, opportunities. To share. We used a bang list on the GAL. We attempted to have a poor-man's document repository.
Time to reinvigorate, as the need is still there. Now, I have a few more tools, and can use proven practices from elsewhere.
Tomorrow morning, APQC is going to unveil a new knowledge management blog, KM Edge. the good news is that the site is online today (in beta), and a quick stumble about the site shows that this is going to be an excellent resource.
Coasties, you ought to know that Coast Guard forks over nearly ten grand a year to be a member organization of the APQC. This is one that's well worth the coin. For one thing, there's direct benefit for you. While the blog is in the open, APQC has a slew of stuff -- including benchmarking information and hard core white papers -- available for download (for free) for employees of member organizations. You merely need to visit the APQC website and click the free registration button in the upper right corner. You'll need to register with your uscg.mil email address to get the benefits of membership. Worth your time.
There's been plenty of acknowledgement over the last many months that the Coast Guard's marine safety program is facing some severe challenges. Earlier this week, Thomas Jackson posted a provokative post at his Coast Guard Report: Did Coast Guard make Marine Safety any Safer with ALCOAST 194?
It's very easy to see the link between knowledge management and our current woes in marine safety. ALCOAST 194 merely hightlights the situation the Coast Guard finds itself in: we've lost our marine safety knowledge.
The ALCOAST notes,
THERE HAS BEEN AN OVERALL DECREASE IN THE EXPERIENCE OF COAST GUARD MARINE CASUALTY INVESTIGATING OFFICERS (IO).and
IN AN EFFORT TO STRENGTHEN THE MARINE CASUALTY INVESTIGATION PROGRAM, COMDT (CG-545) IS DEVELOPING AN ACTION PLAN THAT WILL ENSURE IO BILLETS ARE STAFFED WITH A CORPS OF WELL TRAINED, CERTIFIED AND EXPERIENCED MARINE CASUALTY INVESTIGATING OFFICERS.Reads to me like this is, in part, a knowledge management situation. Knowledge management can help the marine safety program, although it is still likely to take several years to get the Coast Guard to where it needs to be.
This blog, Coast Guard Performance Excellence, is actually a tool in support of a community of practice.
Knowledge management: a systematic approach to help information and knowledge flow
How do we get people to contribute to communities of practice? You know, how do we encourage people to blog and share stuff, even stuff that might not be at 100%.
One barrier to getting people to contribute is that often they believe that what they write is cast in stone. "If I post a blog post, and I'm wrong, I'm screwed," they think. A conference attendee noted that at her government organization, when a person speaks, it "becomes the defacto truth."
Too bad. A fear like that would kill all sharing, all musing. It's directly related to a comment I made in a post over at AN UNOFFICIAL COAST GUARD BLOG, the post about flag officers feeling they can no longer think aloud.
Share. Comment. Move that knowledge.
And, if you're wrong, just admit it and move on. If the situation has changed, just come back and let people know.
One of the things have noticed in the Coast Guard is we have a severe "not invented here" complex. We hate to use things not developed by ourselves.
This is, I believe, one of the things that has slowed down the deployment of the Performance Excellence Criteria. We reward our military senior leaders for inventing things, for implementing things, for developing things. Sustaining good things doesn't get rewarded. Copying someone else's good work doesn't get rewarded.
Coasties, for some reason, don't believe in proven practices, at least in implementing someone else's proven practice.
Knowledge management, however, is all about proven practices. Well, okay, it's not all about it, but proven practices is important in implementing a successful knowledge management system.
One question posed today is important for us to consider: How will you recognize great sharing and re-use behavior?
I'm particularly intrigued by how we recognize and encourage the re-use of proven practices.
Onoe idea I heard today: An organization recognizes people who contribute proven practices by giving them a plaque. A green plaque. Recognition; good. If you re-use a proven practice, you get recognized also. With a white plaque. And, when senior leaders walk about, they rave about the white plaques.
White plaques have more value, as it shows a transmission of a proven practice.
The knowledge isn't stuck.
How can we create a culture which is responsive to change?
This is a key goal of the Commandant's. Knowledge management ought to help with this, and the methodology of communities of practice is a huge part of this as it mixes the hard site (or content) with the soft side (people).
One of the things Admiral Allen has talked about in his modernization stump talk is the need not for us to manage change, but to become a change centric organization... that is to say, we need to become an organization which embraces change and can do so no matter the currents.
As the poplularists would tell us, change is here to stay. We live in a whitewater world.
Cliches, true, but alos true.
One of the business cases for knowledge management is that it makes the organization smarter. Knowlege management makes it so that tacit knowledge become explicit; knowledge management makes it so you can see the world that was envisioned in the 7th District years ago: What if everyone knew everything? That was their university Knowledge management helps an organization move through change.
Here's something I've never experienced at all. Sometimes, you can have too much visibility.
One of the tools which is often used in knowledge management is blogs and wikis. And, sometimes, if you press out ahead in using these sorts of tools, it can generate huge numbers of questions and concerns from senior leaders and stakeholders.... questions which, according to the good folks here, can't yet be answered.
Pilot programs need to balance visibility... too much visibility, and the walls come tumbling down... too little, and the pilot fails for lack of exposure.
The question here: What's the right amount of visibility?
Having severe computer problems... live blogging to be periodic, at best. I'll be keeping the posts the old fashioned way, and post when I have resolved the issues.
Well, if you're a Coastie and you're reading this, you likely belong to a community of practice.
I think we have communities of practice within the Coast Guard. Some are formal, such as the performance consultants out of CG-1 and the organizational performance consultants from CG-09. Each of these communities of practice use CG Central; each gets together each year to share knowledge.
The Gold Badge network.
There are some informal communities of practice. The MK Shop is an example of an informal (and unofficial) community of practice.
Rating study groups at units.
Cutter commanding officers.
The list goes on.
What we seem to be lacking is good ways to actually share knowledge, to get that tacit knowledge out of the heads of the people who have it and into the heads of those who don't.
Community: a group of people who have common interests.
Practice: frequent or customary action; the exercise of a profession.
Communities are about connection. Communities are about people.
Communities of practice are groups of people who come together to share and to learn from one anotyher face-to-face adn virtually.
I love the two by two matrix. Had I more time, I'd actually draw this one here; but I don't have the capacity, so... You'll have to just imagine this one.
One axis is knowledge transfer; at the low end is explicit knowledge; at the high end is tacit.
The other axis is human interaction which runs from low to high.
Urgh; this isn't going to make sense.
How's this: there's a number of approaches for manging knowledge, and they each have a range of the human touch and a range of what sort of knowledge can be transferred.
Self Service is primarily technology focused. I'd put CG Central here: deals with explicit knowledge and is low in terms of human interaction. The APQC puts portals, repositories, CRM systems, email, discussion boards, expertise locator systems, taxonomy & classification systems, and search engines.
A little higher on the human interaction axis, and a little further up the explicit/tacit scale, is process-based knowledge management: knowledge management which is built-in to business processes. Examples of these types of approaches include after action reviews, lessons learned, and project milestone reviews. You'll note these are "systematic tools which gather process specific knowledge and reapply that knowledge to relevant situations.
Continuing up the human interaction axis toward higher touch, and moving more toward transferring tacit knowledge is what the good folks at APQC call network-based knowledge management. The primary approach which falls under this approach is communities of practice. It also includes team meetings and virtual collaboration. This is groups that share and learn. These groups are held together by common interests. These sorts of groups solve business problems.
The highest human touch also allows for transfer of the highest level of tacit knowledge. APQC calls this facilitated best practice transfer.
I'm not so sure what this last one looks like.
The focus for today and tomorrow is communities of practice.
There lots of approaches to knowledge management, but successful approaches are enabled by four components:
People. I know, that's pretty broad. This component includes leadership, knowledge management roles, subject matter experts, and governance.
Processes. These include approaches, change management, measurements & metrics.
Content. Includes managing the content. Taxonomies. Validating the content.
Technology. This is a biggee, and includes virtual collaboration tools, methods of locating experts, search, and tags.
Organizations want to move knowledge, from one person to another. One of the problems is that "knowledge is sticky." That is to say, knowledge generally doesn't want to move, and without a systemztic process and a supportive organizational environment.
There are two types of knowledge within organization (and, no, this isn't one of those "there are two types of people in the world" set-ups): explicit and tacit.
According to the good folks here at APQC, explicit knowledge is all the stuff that's written down. You know: standard operating proceedures, job aids, instructions, written policies, handbooks. The claim is that the explicit knowledge is only about 20% of the knowledge within an organization.
The other 80% is tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is all the stuff that is in people's heads. It only comes to the surface when needed, or "in response to a situation or action."
While explicit knowledge is easy to replicate, tacit knowledge is hard to transfer from person to person, and it gives the organization which has that tacit knowledge locked up in a person's brain a competitive advantage.
Explicit knowledge contributes to efficiency, while tacit knowledge leads to competency. Tacit knowledge is hard to articulate and even harder to steal.
To be successful, organizations must somehow capture that tacit knowledge. They must suck it out of the brains it's in and transplant it to the brains of other workers.
That is the key to knowledge management.
