The Checklist Manifesto

On 15th January 2008, almost exactly six years ago, US Airways flight 1549 took off from la Guardia Airport, New York. As it climbed over the Husdon River, the Airbus flew through a flock of Canadian geese and simultaneously lost power to both engines. The resulting 'Miracle on the Hudson', as the press named the incident, passed into aviation history.

Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger  was universally hailed as a hero for performing a textbook ditching under terrifying circumstances, with no lives lost. Interestingly, Captain Sullenberger attributes the success to adherence mainly to tried and tested emergency procedures, ie a checklist of the critical things to focus on. Whilst this was dismissed as a hero's reserve, 'The Checklist Manifesto' suggests, without detracting from what was a remarkable achievement, that there is a lot of truth to this. 

The author, surgeon Atul Gawande, puts an eloquent and engaging argument for checklists; not to be ticked, but to stimulate communication. For example, a surgical team introducing themselves at the start of an operation making them a 'team'. This short book is full of convincing anecdotes from aviation, surgery and finance - Gawande suggests convincingly that almost any field can benefit from the application of a carefully considered checklist. 

We live and work in an increasingly complex world, full of distractions, where knowing what to focus on is difficult. When it comes to 'managing knowledge', perhaps checklists have a role to play in freeing-up cognitive capacity, for example tacit knowledge exchange - the kind of stuff that you couldn't and wouldn't put in a checklist.

The Checklist Manifesto is hugely thought-provoking for such an apparently simple concept. Not just for what how much more effective a well considered and tested checklist can make us, but for how we can use them to master complexity and our increasingly information-overloaded lives. 

Next time you get on a plane, think about the flight crew diligently going through their pre-flight checklist, despite having done the same thing hundreds of times. Then take a good look at that card in the seat back pocket. Both checklists have been proven to save your life.

 Photo credit: Wikipedia

WIIIFM and making allowances

The KIN Community of Practice Benchmarking survey empirically confirmed a while back what we already had a hunch about - that your choice of technology is far less important than having a clear purpose and leadership for your online community.

Michael Norton of the LGA has just posted an interesting item on the LGA Knowledge Hub that illustrates that you can get away with all sorts of poor design, if the purpose is clear and users know they are getting something out of it for themselves. They make allowances, whereas they would be moaning and abandon a similar platform that didn't meet their community's needs.

Here is Michael's post:

"I've seen roll outs of different technology including SharePoint , Microsoft Office , CRM, Clarity Project Management etc, etc.   And you always hear the same comments, I don't like it, it's clunky, it’s the wrong colour, it makes my eye hurt (I made the last one up) etc, etc.  

So how do some online communities survive and thrive when the tech they use is sometimes odd, old and clunky.  My only explanation is the purpose and the WIIFM.  Otherwise known as COMMUNITY

Take sites such as Money Saving Expert and Golf GTI Forum.  They are a bit messy and on first look hard to understand.  I have to admit MSE is so much better now.  But what they do have is a strong sense of community, a clear purpose of what it is and what it can do.

So there are examples that show community beats technology.

All you need to ask yourself is, do you have a compelling purpose for your community, that no matter what barriers technology, people or otherwise that get thrown in the way that the community survives and thrives".

(Photo credit: AUSTIN_O)

Curiouser and curiouser

'Bland curiosity' - that is the term that ethnographer Steve Portigal uses for his approach to eliciting
knowledge from interviewees. This phrase might at first seem like a rather weak strategy for getting results, but it struck a chord for me.

Firstly 'curiosity'. I've always thought that this was the paramount quality for anyone involved in facilitating the transfer of knowledge. Whether it is to do with commercial laundry detergent dosing systems or financial governance (both real examples of recent client work), it is vital that you exhibit a genuine curiosity about the topic and the individuals concerned. I love the insights I get to how diverse organisations work.

Why 'bland'? I'm often asked by those on the Knowledge Elicitation and Transfer Skills courses that I run 'how much do you, as a facilitator, need to know about the topic'? The answer is 'just enough'. That is not a flippant response; you need to know enough about the topic in order to ask the right questions and then probe the deep knowledge, but not so much that you can't ask the damn-fool questions. The advantage an external facilitator has, is that they are entitled to ask revealing questions that might be skipped over by an insider.

The Steve Portigal quote comes from his recently published book 'Interviewing Users'. Whilst the title is pretty bland, it actually contains a lot of useful elicitaiton tips based on years of ethnography field work. It is worth bearing in mind that ethnographers generally elicit knowledge for their own (or client's) research purposes. The book doesn't focus on facilitating real-time dialogue between those that have know-how and those who need it.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If kids can do it, why not employees?

Sparktruck is a brilliant way of getting kids to learn about creativity and learning. As founder Eugene Korsunskiy puts it "You do your best work when you are having fun".

Whilst the concept is aimed at schoolchildren and teachers, the ideas and approach of sparking ideas and producing fast prototypes is absolutely appropriate, and badly needed, in solving complex problems that large organisations face. (8 min video)

If having seen the Sparktruck video, you thought this is great for kids, but 'what's it got to do with big organisations', this video from Cisco Systems shows you. It's amazing, and encouraging, that this high-tech engineering organisation utilises techniques that involve string, pins, Blu-tac and cardboard in developing end-user experiences and gets great results. The great thing about Cisco's approach to using Design Thinking for complex problem-solving is that it is:

• Low-cost 
• High-engagement 
• Can quickly show tangible (ie physical) results
• and yes, can even be fun

The video is 14 mins in total. It includes a great example of how Cisco used this technique to improve their 'new hire' experience. If you are interested in Knowledge Transfer for joiners, the excerpt from 9mins 47secs to 11:00mins is inspiring.

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KIN is holding an 'Creativity in Innovation training' Masterclass on 19th November, run by Dr Kamal Birdi of Sheffield University Business School. KIN Members can register for this event here. If your organisation is not a KIN Member, contact gary.colet@mail.wbs.ac.uk or go to www.ki-network.org for more information.

Christmas lights and hand sanitizer - really understanding the problem helps find innovative solutions

Two fascinating videos that illustrate how understanding a problem from a user's perspective can lead to really innovative solutions...

The first addresses the serious problem of hospital-acquired infection. Whilst personal sanitisers are commonplace, the designers of Swipesense realised that measuring their usage was key to making sure they are used properly, ie modifying behaviour. What does a 5 year old kid do when their hands get dirty? They wipe them on their shirt. The device mimics this action and sends a signal to a sensor which collects data. The combination of an intuitive action and knowing that usage is being monitored seems to be enough to have a dramatic improvement in sanitation and perhaps save lives.

The second is a video of an unusual approach to persuading Columbian FARC guerrillas to come out of the jungle and go home to their families. If you ignore the overly-dramatic soundtrack, the results of simply stringing Christmas lights from trees to send a message seem impressive.

What's this to do with organisational learning, collaborative working or applying lessons? As I've often suggested, if we do not appeal to innate behaviour then edicts, policy or technology are going to be ineffective. Here are a couple of examples of 'Design Thinking' that really try to understand the problem (empathy) and come up with novel solutions (ideation).