Sugar on your meatballs – you’re fired!

Fans of The Apprentice no doubt enjoy watching the programme and discussing what they would have done (and who should take the blame – i.e. get fired) with their family and friends from the safe confines of the sofa, and to some degree, with the benefit of hindsight. 

As we all know, business life can be fast-paced and complex – and not too dissimilar to some of the tasks set up by Lord Sugar, with the weekly focus on a shortness of time; the need for quick results; a dependency on team work (critical for success) but with the added complexity of a highly competitive environment; and the importance of always having a good elevator speech to hand. 

With my knowledge management hat on the question to ask is ‘what can we learn from the programme, and can we take any of this learning back to our respective workplaces?’  This theme is taken up in the following two articles, written about Episode 6 2012 – the one that, in time, might become known as ‘meatball-gate’.  

The first, a recruiter’s view –  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9228723/The-Apprentice-2012-A-recruiters-verdict-on-the-good-and-bad-candidates-Episode-6.html

…and the second, the thoughts from a personality expert – http://blog.opp.eu.com/2012/04/opprentice-what-load-of-old-meatballs.html

Lessons learned

The following link will take you to an interesting blog post by Nick Milton titled ‘three maturity levels of a lesson learning program’ http://www.nickmilton.com/2012/04/three-maturity-levels-of-lesson.html.  The three stages Nick explains are Reactive capture; Reactive change; Proactive change. 

Nick makes the point that all too many lessons learnt programs get stuck at level 1 – Reactive capture.  This has also been my experience and the reasons for this include:

• Organisations thinking that a lesson documented is a lesson learned
• Organisations associating learning as something that only happens at the end of a project or work activity
• Organisations focusing on the supply side and not thinking enough about the things the organisation needs to get better at and learn more about
• Organisations failing to implement and embed a lesson learning program as a change management activity. 

Learning – the only sustainable competitive advantage?

When facilitating workshops, and running training courses in Knowledge Management, I often ask delegates the question “what did you/we learn?” 

Sometimes the question is met with a stony silence.  The reasons for this are many and varied and include:

• A reluctance to ‘go first’ in an open environment
• Concern that an outward expression of learning equates to an admission of not knowing
• A learning style or preference that requires time to reflect before responding. 

Another reason, and perhaps the key one, is that delegates are often not used to this question being asked in their team, function or organisation – and to be asked the question comes as a bit of a surprise. 

Many organisations aspire to be, or state that they are, learning organisations.  In such organisations I would expect the question “what did you/we learn?” to be common place and part of the culture.  Ensuring that the vision or stated objective of being a learning organisation is more than just words in a strategy document is a key challenge for organisations – and one that starts with a clear and shared understanding of what it means, and the value of being one. 

This theme is taken up in a video ‘the importance of learning in organisations’ posted (in 2008) on YouTube by Harvard Business School.  The video starts with a formal definition.  How would you define a learning organisation and, having watched the video, what did you learn?   

The value of social networks

Much is talked about the value of (being a member of, using, and contributing to) social networks. 

The following blog post by Herve Basset (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hervebasset) and Comprendia (http://comprendia.com/) focuses on the value of social networks for Scientists http://scienceintelligence.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/values-of-social-network-for-scientists-by-comprendia/. 

What is the value of social networks in your profession?

What is counter to your intuition?

Encouraging people in organisations to share their skills, knowledge and experiences with others, and to build on the skills, knowledge and experiences shared by others, is a core aspect of knowledge management activity.  Trust is a key factor/enabler in helping to create an environment and culture where this happens automatically.  This point was highlighted by David Gurteen in a Tweet earlier today in which he quoted Karl-Erik Svieby who said that “trust is the bandwidth of communication” – http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/X0000530E/?open=&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 

Relying on the skills, knowledge and experiences of others – for example via a lesson learnt; an example of good practice; or advice given in a Peer Assist – depends to some extent of how much we trust the individuals/authors concerned.  And as trust can be attributed to relationships, to what extent should we rely on the skills, knowledge and experiences of those with whom we have no relationship? 

For example, when reading or reviewing an example of good practice prepared by an individual or team with which we have little knowledge, and no relationship, we might be encouraged by the ideas shared as we can see and believe them to be true.  They fit in with our mindset, seem logical, and perhaps support our suspicions or match with our own views.  Alternatively, we may not fully trust the ideas because our intuition (or gut) tells us either that this cannot be ‘true’ or that the ideas won’t work (an emotional response) in our situation. 

What might be common sense and intuitive for one individual, might be counter-intuitive for another.  And this has implications for knowledge managers keen to encourage people in their organisations to share skills, knowledge and experience with colleagues. 

The concept and ideas surrounding what it is/means/feels like to be counter-intuitive have been explored recently in a number of programmes and articles.  The following might be of interest if you want to know more.      

1. BBC TV programme Bang Goes the Theory, and a recent edition that showed that the flow of crowds (at events, football games and the forthcoming Olympics) could be improved by strategically placing small barriers close to exits – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lwxj1 
2. A blog post by Gary Colet of the Knowledge and Innovation Network (KIN) titled ‘The big launch – a counter intuitive view’ – http://www.ki-network.org/jm/kblog
3. The Monty Hall problem explained and illustrated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem is an example of a puzzle where the result appears to be odd (counter to our intuition) but demonstrable true.

Knowledge Management Groups on LinkedIn – an update – April 2012

In January and October 2011 I wrote about the growth in the number of knowledge management groups set up on LinkedIn.  The posts included information about some of the groups, their profiles and membership numbers at the time.  Links to blogs in Jan and Oct 2011 can be found via – http://ianwooler.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/knowledge-management-groups-on-linkedin-an-update/.

I’ve updated the information as at April 2012 and ask again, what can be concluded from the following and from a quick review of knowledge management groups currently on LinkedIn? 

• As at 10 April 2012 the number of Groups on LinkedIn with knowledge management in the Group title or description was 494 – up some 17% on the October 2011 figure of 422
• A search for “knowledge management” groups revealed:
• 29 Alumni groups
• 39 Corporate groups
• 22 Conference groups
• 140 Networking groups
• 22 Nonprofit groups
• 221 Professional groups
• 21 Other groups
• Membership numbers have increased in all but one of the groups I referenced in January and October 2011
• Examples where membership numbers have increased significantly include Knowledge Management for Legal Professionals (up 69% on Jan 2011), Knowledge Management Consultants (up 101% on Jan 2011), and Knowledge Management (up 151% on Jan 2011)
• Overall membership of the 9 Groups listed in my blog posts and in the table below has increased 61% on Jan 2011

Name of Group	Membership Jan 2011	Membership Oct 2011	Membership Apr 2012
Knowledge Management Experts	3563	3481	3388
Knowledge Management for Legal Professionals	2996	4217	5075
Knowledge Management	1761	3015	4429
Knowledge Managers	1013	1526	1857
Knowledge Management Best Practices	898	1446	1800
Knowledge Management Consultants	422	672	851
The Brain Trust: Knowledge Management Group	1265	1618	1874
Gurteen Knowledge Community	2116	2854	3192
KM/Knowledge Services	106	252	347
Totals	14140	19081	22813

Do you measure to manage, or manage to measure?

I and a colleague Sandra Ward have just finished a short series of workshops targeted at helping Library and Knowledge professionals calculate and demonstrate value – that is the value they and their products and services add to their organisations, and the value gained by users of these products and services.  The latter ‘value’ being more important than the former. 

An ‘easy to fall into measurement trap’ is to attempt to count and put a value on everything that moves.  This theme has also been covered in a recent blog post by personalkanban – one day’s idea is another day’s waste, and in an article by Simon Caulkin in Professional Manager the numbers game you always lose. 

Ask not what you can measure, but what can measurement do for you?