Speaking For All Mankind

Nancy Dixon (author of one of the best books on communities of practice – CompanyCommand) has a great blog post about how NASA used conversation to capture knowledge gained from currently canceled Constellation program.  She describes how she helped NASA develop a knowledge capture strategy by working with NASA employees and other thought leaders in knowledge management.  Some excellent stuff here and I hope she formalizes the process into a book.

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

“Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?”
The Graduate – 1967

In the late 60s, plastics may have been the growth industry but, according to Mike Loukides at O’Reilly Radar, the ability to work with data is the new growth industry.

“This is an age of Knowledge Economy, where an intelligent organization, whether in the public or private sector, should be a learning organization.”  So writes Khan who argues for the creation of formal communities of practice in the public sector.  The formal communities of practice would be called knowledge groups and would consist of cross-agency teams that work on a shared problem with the goal of producing a body of knowledge to manage the problem. 

Khan starts his argument for knowledge groups by describing the benefits of knowledge and how knowledge is created.  Nothing surprising here and these sections serve as a good review of basic knowledge management concepts.  He then describes how learning organizations learn by using Peter Senge’s framework of the five core competencies.  What I found especially valuable was the description of barriers by public organizations to each of the five competencies:

1)      Shared purpose and vision – public organizations often have conflicting goals that makes creating a shared vision impossible.

2)      Systems approach – public organizations are divided into virtual fiefdoms that compete with each other for resources thus blocking the systems approach to problems.

3)      Personal mastery – Government functions follow routine standardized procedures and individual employees are not recognized for improving their skills.

4)      Mental models – The fiefdom mindset of “us versus them” precludes sharing of mental models for team learning.

5)      Capacity for team leaning – Again, public agency fiefdoms prevent team learning.

Khan further describes the process of organizational unlearning where time and change have rendered existing processes obsolete.  Organizations must unlearn the old process and create a new process in response to the new environment.  Public agencies learn from six major sources – internal resources and experience; citizens and customers; partners, rival, and comparators; top-down direction and review; and critiques, advice, and media.  Even so, agencies tend to ignore outside sources in favor of internal learning sources thus hindering the unlearning process.

Despite these barriers, public organizations do share knowledge in informal groups and through social networking.  Khan argues that these informal structures are constantly at risk of disintegration and he advocates creating formal Knowledge Groups (KG) that can withstand the pressures of being torn apart as members seek their own self-interests.  A KG is created by selecting a professional in a particular field and granting him or her authority from an executive sponsor.  The KG Lead selects relevant subject matter experts and manages stakeholders while setting the vision and direction of the KG.  Khan describes several advantages of the KG:

1)      Governments are more receptive to internally-generated information.

2)      The process of creating and disseminating the information is formalized.

3)      Synergy is created from the diversity of agencies and viewpoints.

4)      The relevant stakeholders are identified and recruited to support the KG.

5)      Avoiding an overdependence on consultants.

I agree with Khan on the importance of knowledge and organizational learning.  His analysis of the barriers that prevent organizational learning in public agencies is also on target but I just don’t agree with the need for a formal Knowledge Group.  There are numerous examples of informal communities of practice and social networks that are robust and provide the same benefits as a formal KG.  Having worked on a top-down KG, I found it to be less valuable for innovation and learning than an informal network.  One just has to look at the example of GovLoop to see the power of a set of informal communities of practice.  So, while the barriers to organizational learning in public agencies are very real they can be overcome without having to create yet another formal organizational layer in government.

Reference:

Khan, I.A. (2010). Knowledge groups: A model for creating synergy across the public sector. Public Organization Review 10. 139-152.

I’m still pondering its uses in project management – from Net-Map ToolBox.

I’ve seen several attempts to merge project management with knowledge management.  It’s a worthy pursuit because the synergy will greatly benefit the organization.  The big question is how to do this successfully.  Chuck Tryon and Suliman Hawamdeh at PM Hut have an interesting spin – include Requirements Management into the mix.

It’s who can deliver the real promise of the Internet – the right answer.  Bob Pritchett explains how Google “destroyed the web” with their innovative approach to search.  “Do no evil” falls prey to the evil of unintended consequences.

Thanks to Pharyngula for the link to this great article from Issac Asimov where he discusses why all knowledge is a working hypothesis.

Jack Vinson describes the real goal of knowledge management.  A much needed reminder after a day of discussing the use of online social networking tools.  It’s great to focus on the public but employees can also benefit from internal social networks.