'So, you mean my entire career is actually one long exit interview?'

'So, you mean my entire career is actually one long exit interview?' 
This came up recently in connection with knowledge risk assessment - planning remedial know-how transfer for departing individuals who have unique knowledge. This nicely sums up how we should approach knowledge sharing, rather than the knowhow smash-and-grab that often happens when someone critical leaves.

'Lessons must be learned'

'Lessons must be learned'. How many times have you heard that on the news? Deepwater Horizon, Columbine High School, Leicester City winning the soccer Premiership League Cup  - there is no shortage of lessons learned, but a tragedy and waste that so little of that learning is applied. 

Hang on, 'Leicester City winning the League Cup'? It may seem strange to mention this together with high profile failures, but what they have in common is the potential to effect change. I suspect that Leicester's success, in the context of 5000-1 odds, owes much to them applying what Sky's Tour de France team had pioneered. Sky's cumulative micro-improvement policy had never been done before on that scale, but is now acknowledged as a game-changer (as Leicester proved), and not just in sport. Wouldn't it be great if we heard the mantra 'lessons must be learned' in connection with successes.

The reasons for lessons being identified, but not applied, are a combination of behavioural economics and poor business processes. All can be fixed, but not simply by spouting 'lessons must be learned'. What needs fixing?

1. Blame! 

'The Blame Game' is a fascinating 30 minute BBC Radio 4 programme with former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, on how counter-productive a blame culture is in applying lessons. The contrast between the airline safety industry's and government in this regard is stark, but this programme shows how a blame culture can be changed. 

2. Tolerance of failure.

One of my favourite quotations is (allegedly) from Einstein; 'Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new'. There is often a marked dissonance between an organisation's desire for innovation and their tolerance for failure. See HBR article on the Failure-Tolerant Leader. Truly innovative organisations such as  Tesla or Google look at failure as an inevitable consequence of innovation (Google+, Google Glass, Wave?). The key is to look for what can be taken from the experience and not to make the same mistake twice. If your organisation has an innovation strategy or framework, does it include a defined tolerance for, or expectation of failure? If not, why not, and is it really going to learn from the inevitable failures along the way?

3. What's changed? '

'Capturing' (by which we usually mean documenting) the outcome of a poor activity or project, in no way means it won't happen again. Same as basking in a success doesn't mean it will be repeated. Unless... something fundamental that universally defines how the work is done, changes for good. A while back I did some work for a large engineering company that had suffered an extremely high-profile and costly disaster. This was mainly a result of failing to change their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) following a series of apparently disconnected previous incidents. To their credit, there was a safety-first culture and the SOPs had always been rigorously adhered-to by operators. None of the minor incidents had resulted in loss of life or plant, and every one of these incidents was 'captured'.  The problem was that their SOPs were not subsequently changed and calamity resulted. For every 'lesson learned' you have to ask the question - what's changed? What's your organisation's equivalent to the SOP and how confident are you in the linkage between operational reporting and change?

4. Leadership

What do leaders mean when they talk of 'being a learning organisation'? When it comes to 'learning lessons' there are some extremely practical things those giving direction can do, other than repeat the mantra 'lessons must be learned'. Next time there is a review of a major project, they have a responsibility to ensure the ball is played, not the man; what happened and why, not who did what.  They must be open and deliberate about their tolerance for failure and act accordingly. As IBM's Thomas J Watson said "The fastest way to succeed, is to double your failure rate.”  

Lastly, let's not forget that 'lessons' can be drawn and improvements made from positive experiences as well as failures. As Jack Welch asked whenever presented with a successful project "...and who have you shared that with".

BBC Analysis 'Corporate Amnesia'

The recent BBC Radio 4 'Analysis' programme 'Corporate Amnesia' is a great 30 minute listen, and not just for the lovely ironic clip from 'Yes Minister'.

The programme looks at how organisations can recognise and avoid knowledge and expertise loss, including an interesting case study HM Treasury. HMT suffered extensive turnover and were haemorrhaging know-how after the banking crisis. Working with Kings College London, they have implemented a programme of 2 way knowledge exchanges, including very senior civil servants and experts. How to facilitate knowledge exchanges between senior, experienced staff and newer staff with a fresh perspectives is explored. There is a great interview with workers in a textile factory in northern England and why they share know-how in the cutting room. Encouraging their staff to say 'I don't know' is a good example of fostering collaborative culture. We also learn to make a distinction between useful knowledge and ideology, opinion and vested interest. Margaret Heffernan, author of 'Willful Blindness' talks powerfully about the need to learning from mistakes and why it doesn't often happen, citing the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. Apparently the main contractor on the Macondo platform erected a stone memorial that is blank. No information, names or dates; almost a memorial to corporate amnesia.

BBC iPlayer (regional restrictions may apply): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0741nql

Or: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j863nur4woioov4/BBC%20Radio%204%20Analysis-20160321-CorporateAmnesia.mp3?dl=0

Behavioural economics - beyond nudge

This is an excellent report from behavioraleconomics.com if you are interested in influencing knowledge sharing practice.

http://www.behavioraleconomics.com/BEGuide2015.pdf

Even if you don't read the whole report, the introduction, by Dan Ariely (subtitled Behavioral Economics - an Exercise in Design and Humility) is worthwhile.

Where's the fun in knowledge management?

I've often thought that humour is a vastly under-utilised management tool. Of all the ways we communicate, having fun is often, as my kids say, well 'the funnest'. Oh, the irony that when I looked into studies of humour in the workplace, they are as dry as dust (if you really must look, citations are at the end). 

Storytelling is a well established organisational learning tool. Anecdote do a brilliant job of training managers in the art of narrative in the corporate world. Funny stories are always the most memorable.

In the Knowledge and Innovation Network workshops, we always include a high degree of 'purposeful socialisation', the planning of which is transparent to participants. The purpose is to connect people and get them to get to know one another. We are a pretty competitive lot, so we play to that, and include 'serious gaming' over dinner. A free bar before dinner is always a great knowledge lubricant. If you can put some of your knowledge management budget behind the bar, it is money well spent.

Another favourite of mine is 'destructive brainstorming'. Rather than figuring out how to develop something that's going to be successful, get 2 teams to independently brainstorm everything that's going to make it fail. Great fun! You can get some real energy going. You then get them to swap lists and figure out mitigations.

How much more effective if we incorporated fun into our other knowledge interventions? What are your favourites?

As for using humour in organisational learning...

 Top 10 Reasons why we don't need Knowledge Management*

10. The corporate expertise 'Yellow Pages' is bang up to date, isn't it? Anyway, why would I admit 'I don't know' to someone else?

9. Organizing to share know-how isn't compatible with our culture and anyway the last thing we need around this place is change.

8. All our projects are easy, and  we learned all about the mistakes last time around.

7. We aren't smart enough to implement a knowledge sharing platform without stifling creativity and offending our technical geniuses (who want us to use Office 2010)

6. We might have to understand where our knowledge is at risk and get involved, and that is such a bother.

5.  Knowledge management requires integrity and courage, so someone senior would have to actually admit we aren't actually 'a learning organisation'.

4. Our bosses won't provide the support needed for knowledge management; they want us to get better results through magic.

3. We learn for this  about operational excellence from our whiz-bang successes (who wants to apply lessons from those nasty operational failures, let alone mention them)

2.I know there is a well-developed body of knowledge, but I can't find it under this mess on my desk.

1. We figure it's more profitable to have 30% redundancy in our operations than to spend 10% on exploiting our know-how to improve them.

* With thanks to http://www.hyperthot.com/proj_2.htm, and David Letterman, the inspiration behind this list

OK, if you really must look at some research into the use of humour in organizational management:

• Duncan and Feisal, 1985. 'No laughing matter: Patterns of Humor in the Workplace'
• Collinson, 2002. Lancaster Business School, Journal of Management Studies. 'Managing Humour'
• Romero and Pescosolido, 2008. Journal of Human Relations. 'Humor and Group Effectivness'