Situated knowledge management

Thinking through the links between knowledge management and learning via this post from Jack Vinson, reinforces to me the importance of situated learning, ie, that powerful learning occurs when it takes places directly in the situation the learning will/ should be applied. Thus the continued focus on work-based learning, learning by doing, informal learning, sitting next to Nellie, etc. And what applies to learning can and should apply to knowledge management as KM is more about context, understanding and application than tools and technology

Learning in project teams

I’ve been thinking more about learning in projects and the infrastructure & processes to enable more effective learning and knowledge exchange and development. I see the experience of project working as the building block for ‘deep’ collaborative working. Learning in projects operates broadly on three levels:

Individual: often focused on developing new skills and knowledge but should also include reflecting on new experiences (of being a member of this project team, of dealing with that customer situation).Obvious individual learning is often captured through organisational performance management/ appraisal systems or simply becomes part of the individuals portfolio of competences. But, as Jay Cross and Keith Sawyer recently identified, learning is a social and collaborative activity requiring some form of reflection with and through peers

Team: can be seen as a collaborative and reflective process of:
- exploration: the deliberate search of similar and related experiences & knowledge from within and outside the team. Dialogue here should be open and constructive “yes and …” rather than “yes but …”
- analysis: fact-based analysis, testing potential options. I’ve found using a structured process works best here
- capture: documenting decisions, processes, meetings using photos, recordings, wikis, blogs and (even) reports
- do: test, review, reflect and get things done
Collaborative learning here has a twin function of (a) working through together how project objectives can be best achieved and (b) reflecting together on what the joint experience of the project is identifiable and transferable to other teams/ projects for further testing and so ultimately to co-create model processes, procedures and models that generate organisational learning

Organisational: where new/ emerged capabilities are transfered and absorbed as organisational practices - often incremental changes of continuous improvement.

I’m intending to write further posts on specific tools to build on the learning potential of projects and project teams.

Innovation = Learning, Creativity & Innovation

An interesting post here from Keith Sawyer confirming that (a) innovation occurs through learning and (b) learning is a social/ collaborative process (and so innovation is also a collaborative process).

Thinking about ….. managing a ‘career’

Most of my work has been short/ fixed term contracts and covering a fairly varied range of domains (but generally with a learning slant) - I’ve worked in projects involving higher education (including teaching), management development, community media development, e-learning development, creative industries support, research work, public sector improvement (mmmmmmm interesing), business start-up support. Its not an easy cv to sell as I’ve not been engaged in a tradiitonal career path - something I can post-hoc rationalise thanks to Po Bronson and his What Should I Do With My Life. So I was pleased to come across this post that nicely summarises the problem as not being a generalist and not really being a specialist but having some ‘depth’ in a number of domains - illustrated as a sort of icicle/ comb (this kind of makes sense if you’ve come across the notion of T-shaped people from Ideo before). The problems are: (a) does the ‘icicle’-shaped person represent a ‘desirable’ talent of value in the market place or (b) is it short hand for “nothing of value here”?

Project Management 2.0 Blog: Social Project Management: Another Point of View - link

An interesting post here on PM 2.0 - a more ‘emergent’ approach to managing projects that is more about collaboration and learning - especially in the build, test, rebuild approach.

Managing Complexity: Train Your Brain -link

svprojectmanagement have this article on complexity thinking in projects. The article reflects some of the key questions I come back to about projects and organisations in general, especially the question on a “school of fishes swimming together without a manager. Why don’t they need overhead?”. See managing complexity by nurturing emergence - interesting stuff that needs exploring further from a pragmatic perspective of doing the right things well. What are the implications of self-organising project teams for project management as (a) a profession and (b) a practice?

Democratic workplaces

The WorldBlu list of the most democratic workplaces for 2008 is announced here - thought it might be of interest. Nice to see a good mix of sectors and sizes altho’ the list appears very US centric - a reflection of reality or the method for contructing the list?

Skills 2.0

Following the previous post on a paper on collaborative workplace, this paper from Harold Jarche has an interesting overview on the skills, attitudes and aptitudes for knowledge workers. The paper reflects many of the conclusions from the Anecdote paper (see my post on this paper here) but rather looking at the individual and technology. I particularly like the underpinning ethos of knowledge/ learning professional as actors in an ongoing (and never ending) process of exploratory learning and sense-making.

Collaborative workplaces

An Australian consultancy, Anecdote, have recently published a very interesting paper on Building a Collaborative Workplace with Nancy White. There are some excellent sections, especially on what the authors call community collaboration - essentially communities of practice. The section on team collaboration was less compelling for me as seemed to duplicate generic team building rather than deeper collaboration which for me, has an intrinsic learning element - personal, team and organisation. At a broader level, the paper seems to see collaboration as an approach based on information flows and knowledge exchanges but the paper has less on the how collaboration could (should?) generate new capabilities for an organisation. But I think I need to re-read the paper as there is a lot to digest - good stuff (and an interesting company in general)

Learning & Development evaluation

An interesting post from Clive on Learning: What’s the problem with Kirkpatrick? on the evaluation of training. ROI is an important addition, in my opinion, but I do get the sense that its a discussion L&D is having with itself - line managers & executives appear much less interested in ROI as positive NPV and more interested in Return on Expectations (ROE) as advocated in a report for the CIPD. I would suggest thast adopting the language of expectations management provides a better platform for advocating and describing the benefits of L&D to executives rather than the language of financial ROI.