Knowledge Matters™

The United States Air Force lost a B2 Stealth Bomber valued at $US 1.4 billion because of a failure to transfer knowledge between pilots and maintenance technicians. The bomber crashed earlier this year at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. Apparently water distorted pre-flight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, making the aircraft's control computer force the B-2 to pitch up on takeoff, resulting in a stall and subsequent crash.

The official accident investigation found that the crash probably could have been avoided if knowledge of a technique to evaporate the moisture had been disseminated throughout the B-2 command. This technique was: ...

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I recently came across this blog-post by Marc Aafjes on what he calls the Shadow Organisation. Marc says:

"By connecting various participants across the company around the execution of our knowledge strategy we're cultivating a meta network - the shadow organisation - that enables the company to enhance the value we derive from the knowledge we have. Framing knowledge management in economic terms, the shadow organisation in effect is ‘making the market for knowledge' by connecting otherwise disparate parts of the company around knowledge needs. This shadow organisation consists of the change agents that help us execute the knowledge strategy and embed sustainable change in all parts of the company".

Now what Marc is doing is by no means new - he's weaving a network to build a community of practice! What he has done is come up with a clever name that markets his network weaving initiative. ...

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Coming up with good business performance indicators is not easy, and too often we get it wrong. I use a simple question to help me decide if the indictor is relevant - "Is the indicator a measure of how many children had a bath, or is it a measure of how many children had a bath and came out clean!?" I suggest you probably want a mix, but with a definite bias to "had a bath and came out clean"!

Coming up with business performance indicators for a knowledge management initiative is particularly difficult, but it is key to knowledge productivity™. Frankly it's too easy to report activity rates - how many children had a bath - because these are tangible and relatively easy to measure. Measuring and reporting the true impact of the initiative on the organisation - had a bath and came out clean - is much more difficult; if only because the impact will be variable, and not everyone will agree the strength of the outcome. ...

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A simple model which I find useful is the “Six Knows Knowledge Model ” shown below. The model has its origins in the Rudyard Kipling poem “I Keep Six Honest Serving-Men ” , but no doubt I will be challenged on this assertion! That said it is a model that serves me well, except I would add ‘know how much’ as a node.

Now Dan Roam , quite independently of me, has enhanced the usefulness of the model by introducing a visual thinking element to it - he's also picked up on the how much dimension. Have a look at this presentation , but in particular slide seven (the preceding slides give some background and explanation). What I really like is the ability to add some discipline and consistency to my mind-mapping and rich pictures. ...

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On Thursday the 12th of June Patrick Byrne and I will be once again present "Understanding the Complexity of Program Management ". This time the presentation is to the Sydney Chapter of the Project Management Institute. The presentation shows how HolisTech® Pty Ltd's Project Knowledge Model and Knowledge Matters™ Business Network Analysis™ (BNA™) techniques can be used as a diagnostic methodology to inform project and program managers. Using real data the presentation shows how the method can be used to understand the alignment of outcomes, achieve requirements consistency, and understand the "stakeholder weave".

To give you a flavour of the presentation content have a look at the following blog-posts: ...

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