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.

I'm happy to report that, although the recession may have hit bottom and the economy is still shaky, you couldn't tell that by the number of people and transactions going on at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. For the third (or fourth, I can't remember) year in a row, the Con sold out. That means that more than 125,000 individual badges were sold for the 4.5-day event. Wow!  

Want to know what 125,000 people looks like? Check out this picture. I'm somewhere...way in the back... 

Actually, I was probably in line at the Hasbro booth waiting to purchase one of their exclusive Con toys. Yes, I'm that big a geek! (In my defense, I purchased the item for my niece.)

We reached the tipping point! After years of defining the knowledge transfer and learning (KT&L) program at Catholic Health Initiatives, documenting successes, and proving impact, KT&L has become recognized as a strategic capability and is now directly applied to organizational priorities.

The KT&L team developed core capabilities that are now applied to organizational priorities, resulting in accelerated performance improvement, time and cost savings, the transfer of expertise, and increased connectivity among people. These capabilities address the need for both explicit and tacit knowledge sharing.

In a March 2, 2006 post on 43 Folders (a site focused on personal productivity that was dormant for a while and has only recently picked up activity), site owner Merlin Mann made the observation that "focus is cash in the economics of attention." He was commenting on a post by Annalee Newitz on her Web site about a study that concluded that attention overload leads to bad decisions (no kidding!). The really interesting thing about the study, as Newitz pointed out, was that "subjects who made incorrect decisions under 'noisy' conditions tended to have extremely high confidence that their decisions were right."

I have long been an opponent of multi-hour PowerPoint presentations because (a) they are used by speakers to attempt to control your attention and deliver information at their pace, and (b) they tend to waste time in delivering background information and short-sheet the time that should be spent working collaboratively on really tough problems. If you are going to trap me in a room for more than 30 minutes to read slides to me, I am going to get out my Blackberry in less than 10 minutes unless (a) you are speaking only to me or briefing me per my request* or (b) you have given me the slides in advance so I can read all the background material and we can "cut" to the conclusions and recommendations slides after I get my preliminary questions answered (to make sure I understand the main issue).

Organizations are facing ever-increasing challenges brought on by marketplace pressures and other factors.  Many organizations are now looking to knowledge management to address these challenges. Such initiatives often begin with the development of a KM strategy. What should organizations consider when developing a KM strategy?  Are there specific steps to follow?  If so, can a framework be developed that others can adopt?

The MITRE Corporation--a nonprofit organization working in the public interest in the domains of national security, aviation, and tax administration--has embraced knowledge sharing and integrated it into its corporate culture.  Our KM strategy (illustrated below) aims to enhance mission outcomes by leveraging internal and external expertise and assets, supporting the exchange of knowledge among individuals and groups, supporting knowledge reuse through capturing and sharing knowledge assets, and transferring knowledge explicitly captured in knowledge assets back to people.

If you have long-time, successful employees, at some point along the way you will need them to train coworkers on the job.  Experienced workers transfer knowledge to ramp up new employees, to cross-train existing employees who are changing roles, and to prepare for their own departures when they retire.  This training must include more than the steps involved in doing the work.  It has to incorporate the "secret sauce" that makes the trains run on time. Wisdom.

Managers often lament that it's too hard for their veteran employees to share with others the wisdom they've accumulated. This type of tacit knowledge is too amorphous and too dependent on years of experience to be teachable.  After all, how can a veteran project manager say what he's looking for as he "takes care" of his team or a long-serving nurse explain how she just "knows" when a patient is in trouble?  How can the research scientist describe 35 years of testing methodology or the maintenance technician describe how he can "hear" a problem deep in the bowels of the plant?  How can anyone impart all those years of trial-and-error experience to someone else?  The answer is that it might not be easy--but we need to do better than simply wringing our hands and admitting defeat.

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.

We've probably all heard this comment before: "It's not rocket science!" But, what if it were rocket science? What if the knowledge you needed was essential to sending a person to the moon or keeping a satellite orbiting the earth? Well, NASA deals with this and other kinds of specialized knowledge every minute of every day. In 2008, in response to a need to improve knowledge sharing across all aspects the organization's workforce (e.g., NASA employees and contractors) and geographically (NASA has 11 centers across the United States), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory conducted a small pilot (NASAsphere) involving enterprise social networking software to create an online social network for its dispersed knowledge workers. The purpose was to understand how NASA knowledge workers would use and apply online social networking in the NASA environment.

Savvy companies have been engaged in the management of knowledge for 20 years. More recently, communities of practice have become the platform for knowledge sharing. Many have been successful, but others have not generated the kind of enthusiasm needed.

Meanwhile, people are rushing to social networks in droves, pouring out their hearts and souls among friends and strangers, proving that people are eager to share. What can we learn from the network craze? And how can we tap this energy to do a better job of enabling knowledge work?

These issues will be the focus of APQC's next knowledge management community call, hosted by Jerry Ash, publisher of Smart People Magazine. The one-hour call will occur this Thursday, February 19, at 10:30 a.m. central time. Click here to register.

But not for the reasons posited by Edward Tufte. In his article "PowerPoint is Evil," Tufte's principal concern relates to the use of slideware for data reduction. His preference is for voluminous tables of statistical data, allowing the reader to interpret the entire set for himself. Eschewing the value of data reduction--in the form of graphs, in this case--Tufte goes so far as to say that the use of templated graphs leads to "an analytical disaster."

For some time, a seemingly universal mantra implored exactly the opposite.  The belief was that simply providing a technology infrastructure would not result in effective knowledge sharing. In fact, "If you build it, they will not necessarily come" is one of APQC's most basic KM lessons learned. However, in recent years, this topic seems to have resurfaced as an issue for debate. Maybe a corollary question is even more direct: Is the day of the knowledge manager over? Do we still need legions of people whose jobs are specifically focused on moving knowledge around an organization? Or has Web 2.0 obviated the need for this intermediate step of vetting, publishing, moderating, and archiving?

Back in July of this year, my colleague and mentor Jim Lee blogged on the topic, "In KM, What's Old Is New Again." In his post, he mentioned lessons learned and the fact that another mutual friend of ours once commented that "lessons learned" are frequently nothing more than "lessons captured." I was reminded of the topic again during a recent episode of "The Amazing Race" on CBS. I admit, I'm a huge fan of the show and watch it regularly every Sunday evening (after football, of course--I am, after all, from Texas). In one of the early episodes this season, one team lost a leg of the race because they hadn't read their instructions ("clues") carefully enough. They vowed that they would read each clue more carefully from then on in order to prevent that mistake from happening again and to improve their odds of winning the race (first prize is $1 million). However, in the very next episode, they repeated their mistake--not reading the clue thoroughly--and lost to another team again. And they continued to repeat that pattern right up until they were eliminated in the episode that aired on November 9.

Last week, APQC had the pleasure to host Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Blanton as a guest facilitator of our monthly KM community call. The central question that Dr. Blanton raised during the call was: How do you know when you've reached the limits of effectiveness of explicit knowledge? While the idea of codifying tacit knowledge is a basic tenet of knowledge management, would it be a good thing if all knowledge became explicit (even if that were possible)? Dr. Blanton suggests no--that even the crush of existing explicit/documented knowledge has reached diminishing returns and, in fact, become detrimental to sharing and absorbing knowledge in practical terms.

I was asked last week, "Is the current subprime credit mess evidence of a massive knowledge-sharing failure?" "Would better knowledge management have helped?"

My answer to both questions was "no". This collapse isn't a failure of knowledge to flow or best practices to transfer.  Knowledge of investment "opportunities" and cheap credit flowed like wine. Credit (the plastic version) or buying a piece of the American dream (the condo version) was easy; lenders could offload debt to others, get their money, and do it all over again.  Those "best practices" transferred quickly.  Shareholders--people like you and me-- rewarded the companies making the biggest short-term profits by buying their stock and firing the CEOs who didn't go along.

A few months ago, I posted about Creating an Effective Mentorship Program. Now I'd like to share a PowerPoint presentation about mentoring that was created by one of the officers I mentor.

The presentation is very well done and deals with mentoring from all perspectives, including that of the mentor, the individual being mentored, and the organizational leadership. The material in the presentation is based on two very good sources: "Follow My Lead" by Evan H. Offstein and Jason M. Morwick of the American Society for Quality (September 2004), and The Elements of Mentoring by W. Brad Johnson and Charles R. Ridley (2004).

Returning from the funeral of a beloved--and elderly--great aunt has caused me to pause and reflect on how time flies. I started out my life as part of the fifth "living generation" of my family. All of a sudden, I'm second in line in a group of living generations. As I've gone through each passing of a generation, I've taken time to reflect on what I know about my family history. However, a lot of my realizations have related to what I don't know.

Looking back, my biggest regret is that I didn't ask the questions I should have--and now it's too late. I've come to realize that I didn't ask those questions primarily because of timing. (I'm reminded of the Leonard Martin quote, "Timing in life is everything.") Either I didn't know how to ask them, or what I want to know now wasn't as important to me earlier in my life when I could have asked, or I thought someone else in my family would know.

Every year in July, tens of thousands of people flock to San Diego like the sparrows to San Juan Capistrano and for one purpose--to attend the annual four-day San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic book and pop culture event of its kind in the United States. The Con features panel discussions about old/current/new movies and TV shows, screenings of the same, portfolio reviews for aspiring artists, and exhibitors that include everyone from the local comic book store owner to Disney, Cartoon Network, Sega, Hasbro, Marvel, DC, Warner Bros., and Random House Publishing. This year it was predicted that attendance would exceed 125,000 people--and it did. Attendees come from around the world and include movie stars (Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, and Samuel L. Jackson were there, among others), TV stars, artists, authors, and fans galore. I am one of those thousands. (I was assimilated many years ago when I met the man who would become my husband.) I look forward to this event every year. Just ask my coworkers, they will tell you!

While cleaning out some old digital folders, I found some PowerPoints from a decade ago (yes, they never die) offering advice that I no longer think is valid.  The old rules around knowledge sharing are being rewritten. Here are three--I'll bet you would add more.

Old Rule #1: People only share knowledge with people they know.

All you have to do is look at consumer reviews and personal blogs on the Internet to know that isn't true anymore. People work on virtual teams with people they have never met, coming from completely different cultures and generations.  But it still holds true that you need to create a common process and language or you can't get the work done. Everyone has to have the same playbook--and read it the same way.  Fluor, Air Products and Chemicals, and other global firms have been able to supply coherent project engineering only by having a standardized set of shared best practices.  In Fluor, these practices are maintained and updated by a global community of practice (headed by the organization's best people) for every engineering discipline. Which brings me to the next rule...

Today this might seem like a natural fit, but when APQC conducted its first study on expert locator systems in 2003, the intent behind such systems was more limited in scope and purpose: to link people to information about other people, to identify people with expertise and link them to those with questions or problems, and to locate potential staff for projects requiring specific expertise. And social networking was a small blip on the technology radar, not the explosive presence it is today.

Over the past few months, a lot has been written about how the Internet and other technologies are affecting the way in which we read, think, and learn. One article that has generated particular attention is Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Carr argues that, for most people, the Web is becoming the primary channel through which information is absorbed and processed. Although "having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information" provides many advantages, there is a tradeoff:

...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I've talked with a lot of people recently about the KM opportunities and challenges facing their organizations. One theme that emerged from these conversations is the pervasive struggle to promote knowledge sharing among various generations of employees. Repeatedly, I heard how the "younger" professionals, especially Gen Y and the Millennials, are difficult to engage--they work and learn differently, they don't value what's come before them, and so on. (Note: These are blanket generalizations. I realize that not all young professionals behave this way.)

Here's an excerpt from Jerry's Editor's letter:

Dale Arseneault is manager of knowledge services at Bank of Canada and writes the blog Reflections on Knowledge Management and Organizational Innovation. On January 15, he posted an entry titled "Best Practice Knowledge Transfer--Practical Ideas," in which he shares 11 ideas about knowledge transfer that he captured from a presentation by Kent Greenes. Click here to read Dale's post. 

Note: If you want to learn more about best practices in knowledge retention and transfer, I recommend checking out APQC's free article on Overcoming Knowledge Loss or our 2008 best practices report Retaining Today's Knowledge for Tomorrow's Work Force.