Gemba Panta Rei is one of my favourite blogs about Continuous Improvement and Lean. Here is a great recent post that is worth a read:  A Life of Mistakes by Cynical, Unreasonable People

It includes three nice quotes from George Bernard Shaw that you might want to use in discussions about continuous improvement and Lean

• A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
• The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
• The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Worth a read

Jim Trott

If your team is involved in providing services or product to “clients” and you want to learn to continuously improve and to delight those clients, I highly recommend the book, Radical Management by Stephen Denning. This book applies equally well to small teams, micro-business, not-for-profit, and larger corporate entities. It offers a repeatable and scalable approach.

Denning has put into one package a number of the project / program management techniques I use in my consulting practice. He discusses seven basic principles:

• Focus work on delighting the “client”
• Do work through self-organizing teams
• Do work in “client”-driven iterations
• Deliver value to “clients” in each iteration
• Be totally open about impediments to improvement
• Create a context for continuous self-improvement by the team
• Communicate interactively: stories, questions, conversations

And then does a good job of describing the practices under each one and showing how they relate to many different contexts, both commercial and not-for-profit (i.e., it is not just for business J)

He does a great job combining stories, theory, and specific practices.

I put this on my bookshelf right next to Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited (also highly recommended).

Learning to delight more.

Steve Denning writes a great article in Forbes, “How Do You Change an Organizational Culture.” It is worth reading. He begins by noting that

“Changing an organization’s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. That’s because an organization’s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions. The elements fit together as an mutually reinforcing system and combine to prevent any attempt to change it. ”

That’s why single-fix changes, such as the introduction of teams, or Lean, or Agile, or Scrum, or knowledge management, or some new process, may appear to make progress for a while, but eventually the interlocking elements of the organizational culture take over and the change is inexorably drawn back into the existing organizational culture.

My friend calls this the “Organizational Immune System.” Change can happen for a little while but then the cultural systems surround and block off the change. Inertia is one of the hardest forces to overcome. And lots of attempts to change just fail because they don’t take this into account.

After reviewing the experience of the World Bank (one of the most widely noted example of knowledge management in the literature) and its leaders, he offers a few conclusions about what that would-be leader of change should do:

• Do come with a clear vision of where you want the organization to go and promulgate that vision rapidly and forcefully with leadership storytelling.
• Do identify the core stakeholders of the new vision and drive the organization to be continuously and systematically responsive to those stakeholders.
• Do define the role of managers as enablers of self-organizing teams and draw on the full capabilities of the talented staff.
• Do quickly develop and put in place new systems and processes that support and reinforce this vision of the future, drawing on the practices of dynamic linking.
• Do introduce and consistently reinforce the values of radical transparency and continuous improvement.
• Do communicate horizontally in conversations and stories, not through top-down commands.
• Don’t start by reorganizing. First clarify the vision and put in place the management roles and systems that will reinforce the vision.
• Don’t parachute in a new team of top managers. Work with the existing managers and draw on people who share your vision.

It is interesting how much this resembles other writings on effective change. Such as the great book, Engaged Leadership.

“If HP only knew what HP knows.” This is a classic line from knowledge management proponents everywhere. Why doesn’t this work as smoothly as we’d like?

Jack Vinson, who writes one of my favourite blogs, Knowledge Jolt, wrote a posting about his friend and local knowledge management networking colleague, Kate Pugh, who published the new book, Sharing Hidden Know-How. The central thesis of the book is that most modes of “knowledge sharing” in organizations are broken and that the Knowledge Jam should be able to remedy the issues that Kate sees. These issues are that there are knowledge blind spots, knowledge mismatches, and knowledge jails. The blind spots are places where one part of the organization has knowledge that could help another, but no one knows that the other exists. Mismatches are places where a successful connection might have been made, but then the conversion into the new context is not made or not made at the appropriate time. And finally, jails are knowledge stores that are created (documents, repositories) but which no one bothers to use or reference because they make no sense out of context.

The Knowledge Jam idea addresses these three problems with three specific elements: facilitation, conversation and translation. Facilitation helps overcome the blind spots by explicitly getting people talking to one another about specific topics for specific business needs. Conversation helps align the contexts of the people who are trying to learn from one another. And translation is the act of taking the conversation and making explicit plans for using what was learned: don’t simply write up minutes of the discussion, but take what you have developed and commit to putting it to use. It’s hard to say that any one of these are more important, but from my perspective the focus on explicit translation and re-use of the knowledge has been missing from many knowledge sharing initiatives.

Take a read.

I am in the planning stages of a transition in my organization. The change itself is pretty straightforward: introducing a new form that will help teams assess their performance over time and relative to other teams. The form helps the team have a routine intentional, reflective conversation about how they are doing in specific, known good practices. It sounds pretty normal and yet it is still a big change. Most of these teams are used to doing things their own way and naturally are skeptical of the “central office” poking its nose where it is not wanted. It is pretty much like many other KM-related projects I have done.

The challenge for us at the moment is to be sure that leadership is paying attention to the change, to the transition from ending the old ways and starting the new ways, while not making such a big deal about it that we don’t cause problems unintentionally. Clearly, leaders are worried about this.

A friend runs the organizational development arm of a large company here in the Pac Northwest. He turned me on to William Bridge’s excellent book, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Bridges offers a number of interesting articles at William Bridges and Associates Articles.

I’ll share what we are learning as we work through this process. And I’d love to hear your ideas for what works and what to avoid.

 I just posted the story, Will We Learn from Experience, to the resources section of the webiste. It is a case study I use in my training of AAR and of AAR Facilitators. It is a true story and does a nice job describing the AAR process and the challenges of getting results from it. Includes discussion questions.

I recommend it if you are training people in the process.

If you have case studies, I would love to hear them.

Remember my comments about observation? One of the podcasts I pay attention to is the BBC’s Peter Day. He offers a “series of programmes about the whole world of work, public and private, from vast corporations to modest volunteers.”

The 04 April 2010 program, “Who sets our standards?” got me thinking about the importance of standards in stewarding knowledge. This is something you want to embrace in order to succeed in stewarding knowledge.

A “standard” is an agreement between a group of people about good ways to do things. It is a way to preserve what has been learned and make it accessible to other teammates,  organisations, and practitioners. It also becomes a vehicle for improving knowledge and driving innovation because we all have a common reference point for communication, something to critique together. (more…)

The greatest discoveries depend on errors observed.

One of the reasons I believe in the Power of Observation is that when I am working with others, we always make errors. Something doesn’t go right. We are never perfect. 

These errors are gifts of gold given to me for free. They highlight opportunities to do better, if only I can see them and honestly examine what they have to teach me.

This is the scientific method, this is the power of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. You have a plan/expectation, you do it, you check how it went as dispassionately as you can, and you adjust the plan just enough so that you can actually improve and do it again.

This is how I avoid feeling defeated or beating myself up when we make an error. I have come to believe this is how we can grow in what we do. Even more importantly,  it is how our team learns to trust and talk and be more committed to each other and the people we serve.

In this, I am inspired by a footnote in The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by Richard Holmes. Chapter 2 describes William Herschel, an 18th century self-taught astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus because of his disciplined observation of the skies. Early in his career, Herschel thought the moon was inhabited and that the craters were actually architectural forms (an error). Talking about this, Holmes says this,

[this] bears on the whole nature of science history and biography. Michael Hoskin has suggested in his essay ‘On Writing the History of Modern Astronomy’ that most histories of science continue to be ‘uninterrupted chronicles,’which run along ‘handing out medals to those who “got it right” ‘. They ignore the history of error, so central to the scientific process, and fail to illuminate science as a ‘creative human activity’ which involves the whole personality and has a broad social context.

I think that’s tremendously important. The history of error is such an intimate part of science, and it’s so often suppressed in ordinary, conventional science history. You just get to the result. You also ignore things that don’t look right to us now. The history of error is very rich.

We do a disservice to our teams when we only tell the stories of what worked. When we fail to help them embrace errors. Failing to embrace error holds at bay the human – and spiritual – dimension that is vital if we are to discover what is truly valuable.

In your work as a facilitator and stewarding knowledge, nothing is more useful than being able to observe. Lessons and opportunities are constantly flying at us as we work, interact, share, argue, live.  And most of these pass us by unobserved. They are quickly forgotten, replaced by the next thing clamouring for attention. The only help for it is someone who has learned to stop and perceive what is going on in order to see and learn something and bring it to the consideration of others. Such people are gifts to the groups they serve. The better you are as an observer, the more you can help the people you are with.

Ask any good photographer, reporter, cop, doctor, writer, soldier or salesman what makes them good. Right up there with the obvious stuff – knowing about their subject matter, technology, and tools – they might mention the ability to observe what is going on. I say “might” because it has probably become so ingrained and second nature that they are no longer aware they are doing it. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that they have become so finely attuned through years of practiced observation that they can now perceive signs and variations that others don’t even see and they also know what they can successfully filter out.

Learning to observe is becoming a key skill for managers and people who want to share knowledge and improve process. Jon Miller at www.GembaPantaRei.com describes the practice that many companies are using, called the “Gemba Walk.” They do something called “Standing in the circle.” You take a pen and a piece of paper with 30 lines on it, pick a spot, and stand there for 30 minutes looking for 30 things to that happen or than could be improved. Then pick one of the improvements and work to implement that. Then repeat.  It is easy, fun, and interesting and really helps organizations improve. Because someone is taking the time to stop and observe.

People only see what they are prepared to see (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I can’t think of anything that has been more important in my work in faciltiation and knowledge stewardship. I still practice in order to improve. Here are some things I do:

• When I have to do an interview or facilitate a meeting, I prepare a storyboard or script of questions I want to use and when. The value is not so much in the questions themselves as it is in rehearsing and thinking about what I will be doing. It frees me to be able to observe what is going on while having an external guide to keep me on track.
• When I am working with a group of any kind, I think about doing an AAR with them. I might never suggest it, but it helps me see.
• In my groups, we make visible the work we are doing (our “work in process”). That helps us see trends, observe what is going on in our work. 
• When I read magazines or watch TV, I consciously look at how they use cues, messaging, images, and graphic elements in the commercials. Even though it annoys my wife, I talk with her about is going on. Certainly, it diffuses the influence of commercials!
• Taking Matt Brandon’s advice, I will go out with my simple digital camera to shoot specific types of subjects, what I can see.
• I write in my journal. Well, to be honest, I do this on occasion, giving myself a time and place to write what I observe. Sort of like the Stand in the Circle exercise. Writing is a great way to learn to listen.
• I ask questions of everyone. To learn not to be afraid of looking dumb. And to learn what other see.
• I am enjoying reading about design, such as Presentation Zen Design or Fast Company, because they help me see aesthetics, developing my vision.  

I also find it fun to do observational practices with a buddy and then compare notes. 

what we see depends mainly on what we look for (John Lubbock)

What do you do?

If you want to be a good facilitator or an effective servant helping teams to steward knowledge, then grow in your powers of observation. Become more of a professional. You will be richer for it.

If you are interested in communication and understanding trends in interacting with your customers, you will want to follow Seth Godin’s blog.

Seth wrote a great note on “Eight things I wish everyone knew about email.”  Good points include:

Change your settings so that email from you has your name

Change your settings so that the bottom of every email includes a signature that includes your name and your organization.

When you reply to a note, include the text of the note

Don’t use “reply all.” Almost never

Email lives forever and is not private

Use “Out of office” rules when you are not going to be available

It reminds me of other rules I use:

• Use a descriptive subject line 
• Keep it short
• Is email appropriate?
  • Would a phone call be better?
  • Is it private?
• When composing
  • Use color sparingly
  • Use proper punctuation
  • Use emoticons sparingly
• Before you send the note:
  • Use spell check
  • Have someone else read the note (if you are angry)
  • Use BCC for large-group distributions: Don’t reveal others’ email addresses

What rules do you use?