Results tagged “knowledge retention” from KM Edge: Where the best in Knowledge Management come together

At this time of year, we are often inspired to reflect on what has occurred over the past twelve months. But I'm not particularly interested in reliving my past unless we're talking Disco, and I don't know why that didn't last. So, with an eye to the future, I'm spending time thinking about how to solve a problem for all time: How much knowledge (or information or data) is too much? I think the ultimate answer lies in "sense-making," but that's too big of a topic for me to think about right now, so I'm going to stay with much simpler examples to illustrate potential solutions.

This is not merely an academic exercise or thought experiment--it's a real problem that many organizations experience, but don't know how to address. In fact, I'm working with one such organization right now, and this problem has the organization at a crossroads regarding what to do about it. And while I don't have the complete solution yet myself, I do know what side of the fence I fall on and what type of solution I would prefer to see. That'll be the basis of my argument. Supporting evidence and even counterpoints are definitely welcome here.

During APQC's next knowledge management community call, we will be doing something a bit different and offering an in-depth look at a KM process tool: the Critical Capabilities Retention (CCR) system at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR). CRR is an internally built tool tied to the human resources database that is used to capture, share, and leverage knowledge. This knowledge management process tool augments existing management and HR processes by providing systematic methods to map, evaluate, and manage people skills; identify current critical skill gap risks; and capture risk mitigation plans.

Join us this Thursday, March 19, at 10:30 a.m. central time to learn more about Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's CRR system. The one-hour call will feature guest facilitator Lindsey Bond, PWR's deputy chief knowledge officer.

An old guy takes a young guy to a local bar to meet some of the old guy's friends. After the usual introductions, everyone sits around the table to enjoy an evening of socializing. After a bit, one of the old guy's friends shouts out, "15!" and everyone but the young guy bursts into simultaneous laughter. The young guy is puzzled by this, but doesn't say anything for the moment. Shortly, a different friend of the old guy says, "12!" and, again, the guys at the table are rollicking in laughs.

After a third friend says, "6!" and tears are streaming down everyone's faces from the merriment, the young guy can't take this odd behavior anymore. He turns to the old guy and asks him what's going on. The old guy leans over to the young guy and explains that these fellows have been together so long, and repeated the same jokes so many times, that they've decided to cut down the time it takes to tell the jokes and instead just refer to them by number.

I recently had the privilege of speaking at the second annual Southern California KM Forum. I met many great people there and learned a lot about their various KM programs and activities. One presentation in particular sticks out in my mind. Given by Charlotte Linde from the NASA Ames Research Center, it asked the question: How long should knowledge last? One month? One year? Five years? Ten years?

Charlotte illustrated her question with the example of NASA's new mission to return to the moon (Constellation). No one realized after the last mission in 1972 (Apollo 17) that it would be 35+ years before we returned again. Much of the knowledge of that mission has not been lost, per se, but mislaid. Some of it is in documents in boxes in people's garages. Some only resides in the brains of the individuals who worked on the mission. Some is recorded on videotapes or saved in programming code that we no longer have the technology to read or decode.