Learning from Others

I was attending a post-KM World conference event on Friday where one of brainstorming activities involved helping an organization (in this case the International Olympic Committee) think through which other organizations it might be able to learn from.  We had an interesting, if somewhat unfocused, small group conversation.  Upon further reflection, I decided to clarify my own thoughts about how organizations can identify others to learn from, even when they think of themselves as rather unique.  Here's the map of my reflections on the subject.

Click on the image to enlarge/open in other tab.

Very similar questions can be asked from different perspectives:

• Are we unique as a project?  What other projects, internally and externally, can we learn from?
• Am I unique as a consultant?  What can I learn from other consultants in my field or beyond my field?

I think of these questions as slightly different from traditional benchmarking.  In particular, I would not want to limit the scope to a particular field of industry for learning.