KMUK12 opening: taking the plunge

Posted on by
How do you set the tone for a two day event (KMUK) with a large gathering of skilled km practitioners many of whom can do such sessions in their sleep? Over a cup of tea at the National Gallery, Victoria Ward and I recalled an exercise Philip Gibson had run a few years back for an EDRM event I’d chaired.

‘Taking the plunge’ is intended to

  • Get people involved
  • Get them to interact with colleagues outside their immediate teams
  • Generate energy at the start of an event

Here’s how (with Philip’s help) I ran it:

I had six large signs, placed conspicuously around the room, reading:

pool side
changing room
diving board
shallow end
deep end
bar

I introduced the exercise with a picture of a swimming pool (actually Pells Pool in Lewes where I live which is the oldest outdoor pool in the country)

image

I then said:

I’d like you all to imagine that you’re at the KMUK swimming pool. Where would you be?

at the pool side – for those still observing rather than being involved

in the changing room – for people who are preparing but not yet ready to take on their km role

on the diving board – for those who are about to ‘take the plunge’

at the shallow end – for those who are ‘testing the waters’ and not too sure if they want to get deeper

at the deep end – for those who are already well and truly ‘immersed in’ their km role

at the bar – for those who are celebrating achievements.

Now please would each of you go to the sign which you feel best represents where you personally have got to with your km role. You have two minutes to do this. Go to the stations which best represents where you think you are now in your role and NOT where your colleagues are going to!

At this point there was a lot of tooing and froing as the delegates decided where they should assemble. Once order was restored I invited them to:

Please take a minute to reflect in silence about why you’re where you are.

And then

I’d like each of you to pair up with someone near you, preferably someone whom you don’t already know well and take a minute or two each to share with them your reasons for being where you are. Let the first person in the pair begin while the second listens.

image

Some of the delegates (including Arthur Shelley and David Gurteen) at ‘the Bar’

After a couple of minutes I asked them to switch and repeat the process. At the end of the first round (which took 6 minutes) I invited them to:

Now pair up with someone else near you whom you don’t already know well and repeat the exercise.

The session concluded after 15 minutes with this

I hope that’s got you thinking about your km role as well as helping you to get to know a few of your colleagues a bit better. I also hope that all of us will get further along through the day ahead. Now please take your seats.

Over the course of the 2 days many of the delegates and speakers referred back to the swimming pool and the individual locations became a good metaphor for discussions.

knowledge retention: a story collectors guide

Posted on by
At the back end of May 2012 I was in Bogota and met a team from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to discuss the timetable for completing the story collectors guide first conceived during the second half of 2011 during Victoria Ward’s trip to Colombia.

CIAT’s mission:

To reduce hunger and poverty, and improve human health in the tropics through research aimed at increasing the eco-efficiency of agriculture

is one Sparknow fully supports so it is a great pleasure for us to be able to help them bring this guide to fruition.

Soon, researchers jetting from country to country will have guidance and ideas on how they might go about noticing and collecting the stories and anecdotes that bring data, events and topics to life at their finger tips to complement traditional field data and observations. The field guide will challenge researchers to use sounds, photos, stories and other materials in order to share experiences and engage others.

Check out CIAT’s blog for an account of the Bogota meeting and plans for the guide’s publication.

Keep watching for further updates.

KMUK 12: Olympics, KM and the Mexican Wave

Posted on by
Ahead of the KMUK conference in London that Professor Jane Mckenzie and I chaired we thought we’d approach some of the speakers for their observations on knowledge management by posing a set of ‘vox pop’ questions.

It being 2012 and with the London Olympics on the horizon we decided to ask:

Using an Olympic analogy how would you describe what you do to others?

Their replies were illuminating. Here is a sample:

I help people prepare for the journey and then support them. Middle distance runners because change is about sustainability. Becoming part of the crowd clapping and applauding. I’d really love to be the Mexican wave.

image

My Olympian role is to facilitate, lead and mentor others to perform better in whatever game they enter for.

I am an Ambassador, generating excitement and enthusiasm for the event. I am a connector bringing people together.

I see myself as the Coxswain in a community of oarsmen. They have to get things moving, but my job is to keep the enthusiasm and the momentum for sharing knowledge going.

I would say the `on-boarding team coordinator` role. Helping team members come on board, ensuring they all the right information they need to adjust well to the Olympic park, including who to talk to if they have problems, offering the right agendas and maps that could be useful, the lessons learnt from past Olympic Games that could help them and of course organising the social events and the best places to eat!

A field hockey player. It’s a fast team sport where you have to pay attention all the time, everyone gets to play in it, and you respect each others roles and capabilities and work together to achieve success from different angles.

Sebastian Coe – My job is winning the business over to KM Going out and getting engagement and then when they are committed handing over to the team to deliver it. We have a team of torch bearers who keep the energy going and raise awareness of what is happening and the central team are there to coach. We also have people in the K and IS team who keep the olympic equipment in tip top condition

One of the respondents also told us that as Olympic Learning Legacy Partners they are responsible for sharing key lessons in transport, technology and the built environment. In the light of the recent issues on London’s tube system, I am looking forward to that presentation.

What strikes me from these responses (drawn from practitioners across three continents) is how accurately they reflect the variety of skills required by someone fulfilling a knowledge management role which is perhaps why so few people today seem to have KM in their job title.

I will be posting more in due course in the run up to the event and responses to questions such as:

What technique have you found most effective for bringing about change in the way people work/respond?

KMUK 12: whose doing what in KM I stories from afar

Posted on by
I’ve been to some events that focused purely on activity from within their host region. For me that’s a mistake and as recent trips to Africa and South America have confirmed there is a much to be learned from the way different people across the globe approach knowledge management.

Which is why I was delighted when Ark asked me to lead the wrap up session on Day One of KMUK entitled ‘Stories from around the world: Knowledge management trends and experiences’.

I have a couple of examples to share from Africa including the Sudapet Book Project and a Rwandan World Cafe and I know Andy Boyd, Brigitte Ireland, Adrienne Monteath-van Dok and Arthur Shelley will likewise be drawing on global experiences for what promises to be an interesting session.

Don’t worry if you can’t be there, Ark have very kindly agreed to take notes and I will publish some of the findings once the event has taken place. For those of you keen to expand your global knowledge two sources I’d recommend:

  • KM4Dev (the community of km people in the development arena) and the KM4Dev Dgroup discussion and
  • Swiss Agency for Development & Corporation’s learning and networking blog which regularly features stories from across the community of nations they support.

‘I cried for an hour…’

Posted on by
The words of a Colombian American who’d been to school in England, whose family are Colombian intellectuals and whose children live and work in the USA. The psychological impact of May’s Bogota bombing on a country rapidly emerging from decades of internecine conflict cannot be underestimated. It is a setback, yet I’d back this country and the people. It is a great place, a fusion of South American and European cultures and its people have a strong work ethic and an insatiable thirst for knowledge which is how I came to be here.

The 5th Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning Summit held over 2 days attracted 200+ many of whom booked late. Colombians I was told leave most decisions such as where to go on holiday until the last minute which places a premium on contingency planning. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the country is emerging from a difficult period personal financial decisions are driven by short-term expediency rather than long term accumulation of wealth. This translates into ‘knowledge is power’ mentality that makes efforts to promote the sharing of knowledge a challenge.

Despite being the sole European and linguistically challenged I nevertheless felt part of a family. My presentation delivered in English with simultaneous translation was given to an audience of bankers, industrialists and government officials. The hour I spent in advance going through the presentation with Carolina the interpreter paid off handsomely and enabled me to run in tandem with Luisa Sucre (an excellent facilitator from Venezuela) a number of interactive sessions that revealed how good South Americans are at dialogue.

I began by asking how many had been in km for more than 5 years – about 1/3rd. How many had km in their title – about 1/5th and how many thought km had been around for more than 10 years – about 2/3rd.  This was a topic they’d clearly thought about even if it had not become an accepted discipline in the organizational hierarchy.

I was also able to garner a dozen varying views on the role of the future knowledge manager in Colombia – more of that in a subsequent posting.  The allotted 2 hours flew by (at least for me); I wished I’d had longer.

The afternoon of Day Two featured a World Café run by Zulma Sofia Patarroyo a very energetic Colombian who used the 3 hour session to surface what the delegates had learned and would take away from the event.  She began by asking each table of four to listen to each other’s learning points and then for the table ‘host’ to remain while the other three found an alternative table.  This continued for a further 2 ½ hours which seemed like an eternity to some but was enthusiastically embraced by most as I was to see evidence of the following day when meeting a delegate who had his ‘takeaways’ on the wall of his office. Jorge Enrique Merchan a graphic artist was on hand to expertly record the activities.

image

My personal takeaways:

—     A very well organized event that covered the little details well and didn’t try and pack too many speakers into the two days

—     The audience was attentive and respectful; it took little prompting to get them to participate in a karaoke style community singing at the start of Day Two led by Maria Helena Magalhaes from Brasil, creating music at the end of Day One with Patricia Molla from Argentina and embracing the World Café concept with abundant enthusiasm; laughter is always near the surface of conversations

—     There is a lot of km style activity going on in South America albeit under other labels especially Organizational Learning; people see its potential value

—     The big issues organizations face are similar to those found everywhere and include knowledge retention and knowledge transfer though here perhaps more than anywhere there is a need for a structured contextual approach in order to gain endorsement across an organization

—     The use of stories to drive change and underpin initiatives is in its infancy

—     A visit to the Botero Museum where much of Fernando Botero Angulo’s work is displayed in a remarkably open manner should be an essential component of any trip to Colombia