Appreciative Inquiry and Knowledge Management? No problem.

May 26, 2014 Chris Collison

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to appreciate(!) the connections between my world of KM and organizational learning, and thephilosophical mindset which underpins Appreciative Inquiry.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) pre-dates Knowledge Management. It has been around in its current recognised form since the mid 80s, and was first published as a discipline in 1987 when David Cooperriderand Suresh Srivastva wrote their seminal paper for Research in Organisational Change and Development.

The video below sums it up nicely when he describes the conventional approach to improvement as viewing the organisation a “problem to be solved” –and how over time, a problem-resolution mindset can sap energy, goodwill and enthusiasm from the workforce.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzW22wwh1J4

I’ve heard accusations made that AI is somehow ‘dangerous’ because it artificially views the world through rose-tinted spectacles. My response?

Who are we to say that the lesson-learning, problem-discussing, improvement orientation which strongly influences us doesn’t come with its own pair of KM-branded Reactolite-tinted glasses?

Perhaps we just don’t realise that we’re wearing them (and perhaps that’s why some are so quick to look for the danger in other techniques!). Our default perspective is not necessarily neutral and perfectly balanced, and it's good to take a look our favourite tools and techniques and ask ourselves whether they reinforce a deficit view of the firm.

Having facilitated a number of KM-related workshops using an AI, I can vouch for the positive engagement power of the approach. It’s still rooted in the reality of what we can learn from our own practice, but the conscious focus on what does it look like when we’re at our best gives a different kind of energy to the group, and expands their vision as to what is possible.

The four steps of an Appreciative Inquiry "4D" Summit are surprisingly simple:

1. Discover. (Inquire into what works.)

This is a filtered process of reflection and storytelling to set the context for what is possible, building a "positive core" from the sharing of stories.

2. Dream. (Imagine how good it could be.)

This is a creative vision-building step – constructed by amplifying the reality of the examples from the discovery step. The photo to the left is from a UN KM and AI workshop in Addis Ababa , showing the positive core, and an engaged group creating their dream, stimulated with some inspirational photos of Africa.

3. Design. (Agree how good it should be.)

This is a prioritisation process, finding ways to connect the colourful hot-air balloon of a long-term vision to the ground with some actionable propositions.

4. Destiny. (Commit to what will be.)

Identify specific actions and start to plan for success.

An approach which combines Reflection, Storytelling, Visioning, Prioritisation and Action and generates positive energy for change? Why would I not want to employ that?

So if you’re a knowledge professional who hasn’t considered or explored Appreciative Inquiry, let me commend it to you as a valuable mindset to integrate into your KM toolkit.

Or to put it another way, provided we understand the perspectives and mindsets which can lie behind the techniques we recommend - then we can help our client organisations to maintain a nutritionally balanced diet of savoury lesson-learning, palate-cleansingly neutral sensemaking and sweet appreciative inquiry.

What's not to like?

Scaffolding for sharing knowledge

March 25, 2014 Chris Collison

Last week the Daily Telegraph published an article about the "truth behind British politeness" which revisited the phrases which we British often use, the real meaning, and what (as the Telegraph charmingly puts it) "foreigners" understand. I've seen it printed off and pinned on the walls of several offices over the years - usually within easy view of the telephone. It's a great (and humourous) way to help create understanding, enhance conversations and prevent people talking past each other. I'd even to so far as to say that it's not bad!

The idea of a common language - a frame of reference to support better understanding and more focused conversations is what lies at the heart of the creation and use of self-assessment models. Whilst they are similar in concept to maturity models, the purpose is less to track and measure - and more to create a shared vocabulary to enable more targeted knowledge sharing. I've seen them used to great effect in a wide range of organisations and topics: Engineering, Energy, Operations Maintenance, Safety, Environmental Performance, Supply Chain Management, Collaboration and Health... There are some health-related examples here which grew out of work with the UNAIDS programme, and has been reapplied by the Constellation intoself-assessments for Malaria and Diabetes as well as HIV. (please check the advice page for usage guidance)

I like to think of them as scaffolding for knowledge sharing. It's scaffolding which enables people to climb higher and faster to have richer conversations with deeper understanding.

In each case the self-assessment tool was created by the group who would ultimately use it. That's an important principle. They can recognise their own words - and the results of their discussions - in the practices chosen and the levels and language used to represent each practice. Creating a model together ia a tremendous way to have a group make explicit some of their knowledge, stories, assumptions and unarticulated rules of thumb. It gives a great sense of achievement - having rigourously discussed something they care about and understand deeply - and created an artefact which they can then use. We talk a lot about Communities of Practice - but sometimes communities never work the detail together on what their practice really is, and what good might look like. What a missed opportunity! Building a self-assessment model with members of a community forces a lot of helpful discussion, gives the group a product to be proud of and provides a very easy way for members to self-assess and then share their relative strengths and weaknesses in a knowledge marketplace. it also gives them a framework against which they can store share artefacts and examples (see the AIDS Competence knowledge asset example). Tools like the River Diagram and Stairs Diagram and reciprocal sharing techiques like Offers and Requests help to map out the dimensions of the marketplace ready for knowledge exchange. All of this sounds a lot more purposeful than hoping that needs and responses will serendipitously collide whilst we're talking past each other... So with the greatest of respect, do you hear what I say?

Mapping the KM Landscape

March 10, 2014 Chris Collison

Knowledge Management has become an ever-increasing suite of interconnected tools and techniques - it's easy to feel overwhelmed without a map. Having bounced some early ideas around with Geoff, and spent far too many idle moments at airports fiddling with PowerPoint, I think it's time to stop tweaking and start sharing. So here it is: my rendition of the KM Landscape (click to enlarge).

I wanted to try and show the breadth of techniques and processes, the connections between them, and also some of our neighbouring disciplines and opportunities for boundary collaboration.

It’s far from perfect (I need more than two dimensions to really do the juxtaposition justice) – but hopefully it’ll illustrate some new places to explore.

Let me know if you find any new destinations, landmarks or pub walks to include.

10 characteristics of a great KM Sponsor

February 11, 2014 Chris Collison

I've been thinking recently about the role of sponsorship in enabling knowledge management, and it took me back to some Change Management principles which I learned from ChangeFirst, when I was responsible for Change Management as well as Knowledge Management at Centrica.The ChangeFirst model was based on Darryl Connor's "Managing at the speed of change", but also had much in common with the work of John Kotter. Both excellent reads with similar roots.

Depending on your KM strategy, sponsorship is always important and often absolutely critical to the success of a knowledge change programme - and let's face it, most of our work as practitioners is all about creating change and making it stick. So here's what I learned from my various Change Management gurus about the ten characteristics of effective sponsors.

Think about the leader who sponsors your KM activities as you read then through - or use it as a checklist to help you select the ideal candidate, if you're still looking...

1. Dissatisfaction. You want your Sponsor to be agitated about the current state of knowledge sharing in your organisation. They need to be frustrated at the loss of value, the inefficiency, the corporate stupidity, the missed innovations and the embarrassment of re-invention or repetition. A sponsor who thinks "everything is generally OK, and this KM stuff - well, it's just the icing on the cake!" is going to struggle to defend or promote your work with any authenticity. If they're not already sufficiently fired up, then you might want to find some provocative horror stories to spark things along.

2. Making resources available. It's an obvious one - but there's little point in firing up a sponsor who lacks the wherewithal to help you take action. If they don't have the budget or resource available themselves, can they help you through their contacts and relationships?

3. Understand the impact on people. Particularly true of Knowledge Management sponsors, because KM is fundamentally a people-based approach. How would you rate your sponsor's emotional intelligence? You will need to be able to engage them in discussions about the culture of the organisation and the behaviours of leaders. If that's an uncomfortable area for them, then keep looking!

4. Public Support. Bit of a no-brainer, but naturally you will want a sponsor who is willing and able to speak on behalf of your 'programme' at every opportunity. You may well need to equip them with an 'elevator speech' and some compelling success stories - and remind them of their dissatisfaction.

5. Private Support. Ah yes. The authenticity test. Will your sponsor speak with the same level of passion and heartfelt credibility in a private conversation with their peers - or is it just a mask they wear when they're wheeled out to make positive speeches. You need a believer!

6. Good Networkers. Perhaps this should be at the top. Your sponsor need to be adept at spanning boundaries, spotting synergies and sneaking around the back door of silos. Their network needs to become your network.

7. Tracking performance. This is one of the acid tests of interest and commitment. Is sponsorship of your activity something which is on their agenda, or are you just a medal that they wear to special occasions? Agree what good looks like, agree the immediate steps and agree on the indicators and measures you need to focus on. Get that meeting in their diary at least quarterly. If they're dashboard-oriented, then build one for them, but remember Einstein's classic quote: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

8. Reinforcement when needed. Sometimes you might need to 'send for reinforcements', so select a sponsor who is willing to challenge, knock heads together, unblock the corporate drains and generally provide you with air cover when you want it. You need a fighter as well as a lover.

9. Focus on the future. Ensure that your sponsor gets the big picture - and can communicate it compellingly. What is their personal vision for the organisation five years from now? Does it match yours? Does it line up with your KM strategy and plan. If they have a tendency to get lost in the details of performance targets, then make sure that some of your measures are long term. You don't really want them fussing over how many documents were uploaded into a SharePoint folder this week when there's a demographic knowledge-leaving-the-organisation bubble which threatens to burst 3 years from now. Help them to lift their heads up - and ask them to lift yours too.

10. Behavioural modelling. Your sponsor needs to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk. When you champion knowledge sharing, you lay yourself open to accusations of hypocrisy much more than if you were the sponsor of systems implementation programme. It's behavioural. It's relational. And people notice. You might want to equip them with some simple questions to ask others which help them nail their colours to the mast. Syngenta are good at this, and put a number of "leading questions" on a pocket card to help all of their senior champions to verbalise their commitment:

"Who could you share this with?" "Who did you learn from?" "Who might have done this before?" "Who could you ask for help and advice?"

University College Hospital's After Action Review behavioural programme has taken training to the very top of the hospital tree to ensure that anyone is equipped (and expected) to facilitate an AAR. Would your Sponsor know how to lead a simple period of team reflection? It would certainly increase their impact if you could help them to become the "knowledge conscience" in the boardroom...

So how does your sponsor measure up?
If you can nod gratefully to most of the above as you read it, then count your blessings….

Knowledge and Collaboration - Mixing our Drinks

February 3, 2014 Chris Collison

I have had the privilege of working with over 100 client organisations over past 9 years. (Where did that time go?) In each case they have their own definition of Knowledge Management, often their own label, and usually a specific cocktail of disciplines, processes and tools which they choose to place under the KM "umbrella".

Sometimes the decisions above reflect the specific needs of the organisation, and other times that reflect the focus, background and place in the organisation of any centralised KM resources. Often it's a mixture of both, Rum and Coke? Gin and Tonic? Whiskey and Soda?

Some of the pairings I've seen include "Knowledge and Innovation" (R&D oriented organisations) "Knowledge and Information" (that's a common one in the Public Sector), "Business Improvement & Knowledge" (manufacturing), "Knowledge and Insight" (professional services) and "Knowledge and Learning" (several sectors) and in one oil and gas company: "Knowledge and Collaboration".

Each of these combinations gives an interesting twist to knowledge management, and I'm surprised that I don't see "Knowledge and Collaboration" in combination more often. It's always seemed like an ideal blend to me, as it encourages us to think about the practicalities of changing working practices, motivating people to work together in different forms of partnership (see Collaborative Advantage by Elizabeth Lank), and in ensuring that the right conversations happen between the right people, using the most effective supportive technology whenever the need arises.

And if you need to be reminded of what that looks like when it's not done well, then this brilliant "Real Conference Call" parody by Trip & Tyler will hit the spot.

We've all been there!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ

What lessons can KM learn from Minecraft?

January 27, 2014 Chris Collison

Minecraft is a phenomenon. It has around 40 million paying players worldwide, and probably tens of millions more when you count those using free or pirated versions of the game. Merchandise bearing its logos - hoodies, wallets, necklaces - can be found wherever computer game spin-offs are sold. Its Swedish creator, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, is rapidly becoming the kind of celebrity who needs a bodyguard for public events. If you're not one of the 40 million enthusiasts, Minecraft is a popular online “survival” or “sandbox” game that puts players in a randomly-generated world where theycan create their own structures and contraptions - It's often compared to a kind of infinite virtual Lego set, which can be played in creative mode, alone or socially, or in survival mode, where the players have to defend themselves against attacks from various creatures.

Gaming website G4 describes it in an interesting way, which caught my eye.

"In a way, Minecraft is the exact opposite of most games out there. The focus is on exploration, not accomplishment. You can dig all day and find some gold, but the game isn't going to reward you with anything but some gold. The presentation is secondary to the gameplay itself -- your imagination fills in the blanks as opposed to an army of highly paid texture artists. Minecraft doesn't lead you through the same experience every other gamer has. What you get is yours alone."

Hold that thought, whilst we swap the world of Minecraft for the world of knowledge management.

I'm just finishing an assignment working with one of the largest construction programmes in the UK, advising and helping them with their approach to knowledge and learning. It's one of those times when there is no immediate "customer" for the knowledge - to there is nobody to request a peer assist, hear a set of stories or receive a baton. In this case, it's collect rather than connect.

Here are the steps we're taking together.

We designed some good open questions and a relaxed interviewing approach to elicit stories, examples, the basis for decisions, rules of thumb, documents, references and further contacts.
The interviews were framed a chance to send a "message to the future", which helped gave a forward momentum and practical edge to the advice and examples.
Each interview was recorded and fully transcribed.
The interviewees concluded each session by providing a short video of their message to the future and top recommendations. The most effective ones explained their points on a flipchart whilst on camera.

That gives us a significant resource of half-a million words, hundreds of recommendations, stories and examples, documents and connections to individuals.

The trick now is to avoid the temptation to weave everything together into a single version of the truth, complete with ten commandment top tips and a clearly defined path which leads the learner. Instead, we need to take a leaf (block?) out of Minecraft's book and create a resource for which the focus is on exploration.

That will be the best way to serve a future team with as yet unknown knowledge needs - to help them find some gold.

When knowledge is not enough.

January 14, 2014 Chris Collison

Europe and especially the UK have experienced severe flooding during the past month and the future holds more of the same. As this George Monbiot article from the Guardian sets out – the consequences were predictable and avoidable. It's not a knowledge problem.

The lessons have been learned, understood, researched and validated for decades.

We have known for years that trees play a vital role in drainage, and that land around tree roots will actually drain at 67 times the rate that grass drains – yet we are cutting tree-planting subsidies and increasing land-clearance subsidies, investing money in dredging and re-engineering rivers and building reservoirs. We negotiated a mountain subsidy – rewarding farmers for clearing and farming the top of watersheds – precisely where the compacting effect of animals’ hooves will raise the run-off rate the most. We even fly in the face of the advice we give to the developing world through our own Department for International Development. Do as we say, not as we do? it's the political knowing-doing gap.

So what’s going on? Is really just ignorance, poor advice and misunderstanding? Or is it a conscious decision to yield to lobby groups, hide behind the Common Agricultural Policy and “evidence-based” national policy-creation which kicks the common-sense can down the road for years – well into the next government. The Guardian's Monbiot (with an undisguised political standpoint) takes this perspective and it’s hard to argue against it, although I couldn’t limit culpability to the current administration alone.

One commenter on the article put it succinctly:

What is most infuriating about this is that it has all been common knowledge for at least 4 decades - probably longer. By far the most economic use of low grade upland is for flood control, and the cheapest way to do that is to let nature take its course. And natural flowing rivers are almost always more efficient at preventing flood peaks than any engineered routes. This has been standard textbook stuff since the 1980's at least, and usually acknowledged in official documents (local plans, national planning guidance, etc) since the 1990's. They have been re-wilding rivers across Europe since the 1980's as standard anti-flood practice. It is absolutely nothing new to anyone with even the slightest academic or professional interest in the topic. And yet the sheer force of inertia and vested interests has resulted in billions of pounds/euros/dollars in malinvestment across the developed world.

I have consulted with ten different government departments in past years, and in each case, I have met with intelligent, rational, passionately expert civil servants. There is no shortage of knowledge and insight, no shortage of common sense, and no shortage of commitment to offer the best possible advice to ministers.

It’s not the lack of knowledge, lack of lessons learned, lack of research, lack of expertise, lack of professional advice or the lack of wisdom.

It’s the lack of moral courage to listen and do the right thing which gives politics a disastrous victory over policy.

In cases like this, knowledge serves us best when it is in the hands of the majority as well as the decision-makers - when understanding amongst the voters is raised to a degree whereby the policy-makers dare not take liberties with a better-informed and increasingly incredulous electorate. So thank you George Monbiot for such an excellent, incisive article which deserves a far wider readership.

Here's hoping that knowledge-sharing truly is power.

Making KM Fun and Tangible!

January 13, 2014 Chris Collison

I’ve been looking back on the highlights of the past year, and previous years, and it’s got me reflecting on the power of making KM engaging, fun and tangible in some way. Back in 2010, I wrote about KM Top Trumps, and how I used them with a group of business improvement professionals to help them get to grips with the breadth of KM tools and techniques available. I still use these today with groups.

Two happy memories from the past year:

Social Network Mapping with the UN in Ethiopia.

For several years now I have worked with the United Nations System Staff College on a KM leadership programme. This year saw me out in Ethiopia working with representatives from across the continent. Communities, Networks and Networking featured heavily in one particular module, and having contrasted the sharing and networking habits of birds, bees and sheep, we engaged in a practical Network Analysis exercise which brought the room to its feet, and put smile on every face.

Each participant was given 5 coloured ribbons and asked to give one end to another colleague – the different colours indicated different relationships: for example: – Who have you known the longest? Who would you ask for technical advice? Who would you share an innovative idea with first?

Energy levels rose instantly, accompanied by smiles and laughter.

Once each ribbon had been shared, the group carefully lowered them to the floor and stepped out of the web, replacing themselves with their placenames from the tables.

As a group, we could then stand around the pattern and discuss what it told us about the relationships, collaboration and knowledge flow.

Snakes and Leaders – a creative way to explore the first 100 days of a community of practice.

Syngenta have been a client for a number of years now, and have been looking for new ways to up-skill the core teams of their networks, especially in the early stages of growth.

We worked together to document the ups and downs of network development during the first critical 100 days, and created a familiar-yet-different board game which embedded these critical moments, with one or two additional twists and turns. Creating the game together, and tailoring the rules for different parts of the business caused us to think critically about the non-negotiables and key principles of networks; probably one of the most enjoyable codification exercises I've been involved with. Thank you Syngenta!