I'm now a full week into my new job. I'm still in the process of defining my role and describing what I will be doing but here's a first attempt: I work with the Chief Knowledge Officer and other OCKO (Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer) team members at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to "maintain and expand knowledge management practices within Goddard." There is a set of six knowledge management practices that the OCKO focuses on so that the mandate of the office is relatively well defined.
My initial transition acceleration plan is a 100-day plan which involved a combination of learning and doing.
Learning
- Who is who? Who does what?
- How do I go about doing X, Y, and Z?
- What does Goddard do? (history, current, future)
- What does the OCKO do? (history, current, future)
Doing
I don't have a detailed workplan yet. I didn't expect to have one drawn out by the end of the first week. However, I already have a much better sense of what needs to be done and what the existing team has been doing.
My first inter-related steps include the following:
1) Practicing my "story": What am I doing here? How do I contribute? How do I fit in?; and
2) Getting invited to accompany team members to any meetings I can in order to be introduced to as many people as possible and immediately start building my own network based on the team's existing relationships.
I have a specific idea for a more substantive 100-day project. It hasn't been flushed out yet but from my perspective it would be very useful to undertake a rapid knowledge management audit. I don't want to be doing an extensive audit of knowledge but rather develop an inventory of ongoing knowledge management related activities. For example, there is a main library and then project-specific libraries. There are multiple training and related capacity building events developed across the Center. How can the activities of the Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer complement and leverage ongoing knowledge management related activities sponsored by various parts of the organization?
Week 1 lesson learned: It's fine for me to get a clearer understanding of what my role is going to be but it's as important for other members of the team to share the same understanding.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
From Exit Interview to Transition Acceleration Plan
In my last couple of weeks at AED I was trying to think about what I could do to make the job of my successor as easy as possible and in the process, wondering about organizational memory and what happens more generally when people leave an organization. The reverse, what happens when people enter a new organization and need to be brought up to speed is also of interest to me at the moment since I will be transitioning into a position in a new organization.
I see huge potential both for knowledge loss and new learning opportunities. The losses seem to be concentrated with the organization left behind and the new opportunities primarily with the departing employee. Clearly, it takes a while for a new employee to be fully on-board and able to contribute, so there is an investment on the part of the hiring organization. At the same time, the new employee is potentially a source of very valuable knowledge. The new employee's questions, reflections, and analysis of the new situation they are thrown into can provide clues related to the organization's operations that are invisible to those working within it and can provide clues related to how the organization is perceived by outsiders. In other words, could a fresh pair of eyes be useful to the new employer? If so, how can this be leveraged efficiently?
Exit Interview
A traditional exit interview is conducted by the human resources department and is focused on issues related to employee satisfaction and supervisors. Sometimes, it also provides an opportunity for the employee to reflect on the job and offer helpful advice. The objective of such interviews is clearly to help identify potential problems and reduce employeed turnover. However, it has very little to do with trying to retain the employee's knowledge. For these types of exit interviews, it doesn't really matter if they are conducted on the last day of employment.
For long-time employees going into retirement, there are other approaches which can ensure that as much as possible of the retiring employee's knowledge is retained within the organization. That doesn't address the knowledge loss resulting from the changing nature of the workforce and the fact that younger generations don't expect to be working for the same employer for more than a few years and therefore may have more self-centered learning and knowledge strategies of their own.
My questions during my last couple of weeks of employment centered around relatively short-term issues:
- How will my successor and former colleagues find my files?
- What files do I leave and what do I take with me?
- For those projects that need to go on without me, how can I make it easy for those taking over to do so without wasting time and energy reinventing the wheel?
- How do I transfer important communication trails (emails) so that they do not disappear with my email account? Who do I transfer them to?
In the end, I didn't have much guidance on any of these issues and I made up my own answers.
Transition Acceleration Plan
Now that this exiting process is completed, I can start focusing on what happens when entering a new organization. It's probably impossible not to start thinking about that earlier -- at least once you've officially accepted a job. Based on past experience, I can say that getting to understand how things work, how things are done within an organization, can be a lengthy process. My goal in the coming months is going to figure out how to accelerate the process. Ideally, I would want to minimize the transition period -- the period of time during which I am absorbing knowledge -- being a sponge -- and contributing very little value. Perhaps I'll call it my transition acceleration plan. And perhaps a pair of fresh eyes can contribute value early on precisely because I don't know how things are done and I should be asking questions.
Some of these reflections were inspired by my recent reading of"Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory," by Peter Stoyko and Yulin Fang for the Canada Public School Service (2007).
I see huge potential both for knowledge loss and new learning opportunities. The losses seem to be concentrated with the organization left behind and the new opportunities primarily with the departing employee. Clearly, it takes a while for a new employee to be fully on-board and able to contribute, so there is an investment on the part of the hiring organization. At the same time, the new employee is potentially a source of very valuable knowledge. The new employee's questions, reflections, and analysis of the new situation they are thrown into can provide clues related to the organization's operations that are invisible to those working within it and can provide clues related to how the organization is perceived by outsiders. In other words, could a fresh pair of eyes be useful to the new employer? If so, how can this be leveraged efficiently?
Exit Interview
A traditional exit interview is conducted by the human resources department and is focused on issues related to employee satisfaction and supervisors. Sometimes, it also provides an opportunity for the employee to reflect on the job and offer helpful advice. The objective of such interviews is clearly to help identify potential problems and reduce employeed turnover. However, it has very little to do with trying to retain the employee's knowledge. For these types of exit interviews, it doesn't really matter if they are conducted on the last day of employment.
For long-time employees going into retirement, there are other approaches which can ensure that as much as possible of the retiring employee's knowledge is retained within the organization. That doesn't address the knowledge loss resulting from the changing nature of the workforce and the fact that younger generations don't expect to be working for the same employer for more than a few years and therefore may have more self-centered learning and knowledge strategies of their own.
My questions during my last couple of weeks of employment centered around relatively short-term issues:
- How will my successor and former colleagues find my files?
- What files do I leave and what do I take with me?
- For those projects that need to go on without me, how can I make it easy for those taking over to do so without wasting time and energy reinventing the wheel?
- How do I transfer important communication trails (emails) so that they do not disappear with my email account? Who do I transfer them to?
In the end, I didn't have much guidance on any of these issues and I made up my own answers.
Transition Acceleration Plan
Now that this exiting process is completed, I can start focusing on what happens when entering a new organization. It's probably impossible not to start thinking about that earlier -- at least once you've officially accepted a job. Based on past experience, I can say that getting to understand how things work, how things are done within an organization, can be a lengthy process. My goal in the coming months is going to figure out how to accelerate the process. Ideally, I would want to minimize the transition period -- the period of time during which I am absorbing knowledge -- being a sponge -- and contributing very little value. Perhaps I'll call it my transition acceleration plan. And perhaps a pair of fresh eyes can contribute value early on precisely because I don't know how things are done and I should be asking questions.
Some of these reflections were inspired by my recent reading of"Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory," by Peter Stoyko and Yulin Fang for the Canada Public School Service (2007).
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Moving on....
Yesterday was my last day working at AED. I worked with AED for a little less than four years.
* rewarding -- most of the time :)-- as in "Wow... I can see how that has an impact on development."
* a great learning experience -- as in "That worked well, let's make sure to do it again this way," or "That flopped... let's not do it again," and "How did I not see that before...".
* challenging -- as in "that really pushed me to learn or do something I didn't know I could do" and "What on earth are we doing? This doesn't make any sense to me....".
In the process of reflecting on these past few years and looking ahead, I want to be able to remember as much as possible of the work I did, the relationships, the people. Below is a little collage representing the last few years at AED. Some of it would have meaning only to me but that's the idea.... The next time I have to go to an interview and I have to explain what I did at AED, I'd rather look at this collage to bring up memories than look at a few lines on my CV.
* rewarding -- most of the time :)-- as in "Wow... I can see how that has an impact on development."
* a great learning experience -- as in "That worked well, let's make sure to do it again this way," or "That flopped... let's not do it again," and "How did I not see that before...".
* challenging -- as in "that really pushed me to learn or do something I didn't know I could do" and "What on earth are we doing? This doesn't make any sense to me....".
In the process of reflecting on these past few years and looking ahead, I want to be able to remember as much as possible of the work I did, the relationships, the people. Below is a little collage representing the last few years at AED. Some of it would have meaning only to me but that's the idea.... The next time I have to go to an interview and I have to explain what I did at AED, I'd rather look at this collage to bring up memories than look at a few lines on my CV.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
e-Agriculture
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation invite applications from e-agriculture.org members to participate in a free four-day Online e-learning Course:
NETWORKING IN SUPPORT OF DEVELOPMENT
****************
I have been a fan of online learning for a long time, to the point of developing my own online courses and having a lot of fun running them on my own. To be fair, the sessions were not truly online. If we're now in the web 2.0 era, I think my course was web -1. We used a CD-ROM for content and an email discussion list for communications. I suspect that there are still quite a few people in developing countries who would appreciate this low tech approach. At the same time, I doubt anyone would dare to offer something this backward in the web 2.0 era...:) that would be akin to offering an old fashioned snail mail distance learning course.
So, each time I come across a new online course intended for participants in developing countries and focusing on development issues, my eyes open slightly wider and I check it out. Are they offering it for free? Do they say how much time the participants will need to spend online per day? Do they mix participants from all regions? Do they include participants in the US, Europe, Australia, etc...? Do they have specific technical requirements, a specific browser, etc...? How long is the course? Four days? Did they select such a short period based on past experience with longer courses? Is that the online course attention span these days?
I hope to get the opportunity to facilitate an online course again, or at least facilitate some kind of online knowledge sharing community. It's been a wonderful experience in the past.... and with the technologies evolving so quickly, I'm sure it would be an interesting learning experience again.
NETWORKING IN SUPPORT OF DEVELOPMENT
****************
I have been a fan of online learning for a long time, to the point of developing my own online courses and having a lot of fun running them on my own. To be fair, the sessions were not truly online. If we're now in the web 2.0 era, I think my course was web -1. We used a CD-ROM for content and an email discussion list for communications. I suspect that there are still quite a few people in developing countries who would appreciate this low tech approach. At the same time, I doubt anyone would dare to offer something this backward in the web 2.0 era...:) that would be akin to offering an old fashioned snail mail distance learning course.
So, each time I come across a new online course intended for participants in developing countries and focusing on development issues, my eyes open slightly wider and I check it out. Are they offering it for free? Do they say how much time the participants will need to spend online per day? Do they mix participants from all regions? Do they include participants in the US, Europe, Australia, etc...? Do they have specific technical requirements, a specific browser, etc...? How long is the course? Four days? Did they select such a short period based on past experience with longer courses? Is that the online course attention span these days?
I hope to get the opportunity to facilitate an online course again, or at least facilitate some kind of online knowledge sharing community. It's been a wonderful experience in the past.... and with the technologies evolving so quickly, I'm sure it would be an interesting learning experience again.
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