Learning to Fly (Book 19 of 30)

Title: Learning to Fly:  Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations
Authors: Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell

Before 2016 and the publication of The Knowledge Manager's Handbook, (see previous post, Book 17 of 30)) I would have said Learning to Fly is the book to give as a practical how-to handbook on Knowledge Management.  My copy is an "updated edition with free CD-ROM", which tells you something about its age. Published initially in 2001, I see it as the first comprehensive how-to handbook.

Between Nick Milton, Patrick Lambe and Chris Collison, you probably have the three best known KM consultants combining many, many years of hands-on experience.  Although, perhaps they are better known in a general sense precisely because they've written books and are very active on social media.  I think of them as generalists.  There are others in the field who have either less global name recognition or who work in narrower niches within KM. Now that I think of it, two women come to mind and they've also written books (Nancy Dixon and Katrina Pugh).  It's also quite possible that my perception is heavily biased by who I follow or don't follow on social media.

One of the stronger concepts or terms I've relied on that probably came from this book is "learning before, during and after."  I haven't necessarily used that phrase but I like the emphasis on learning (rather than managing knowledge), and since I've worked mostly in project-based environment, the before, during and after framework worked well.  We learn from prior projects to plan our new project well, we learn during the project to make course corrections as necessary, we reflect after we're done to not repeat mistakes and to allow others not to repeat our mistakes.  This is oversimplified but it really helps projects get a sense that you don't just collect lessons learned at the end of the project before moving on to the next task.

Over the years, I've learned that a group reflection conversation (AAR or whatever else you want to call it) takes on different characteristics depending on where the group or team is in terms of the project life cycle.  Newly formed teams have different conversations from teams that have worked together for years.

TO DO:

• If I'm going to be a successful consultant, I should write a book.... (Not so fast... do I actually have anything unique and valuable to say?). Not right now.  It's brewing.  It needs to percolate. It needs active percolation.  My semi-sabbatical year should help.  No pressure.
• Write down some insights about how the timing of a group reflection activity along the project life cycle affects the nature of the conversation and perhaps should affect the facilitation.
• Do a review of who I follow on various social media as KM experts and who I consider a KM expert but don't follow.  Adjust as needed.

The Knowledge Manager's Handbook (Book 18 of 30)

Title: The Knowledge Manager's Handbook: A step-by-step guide to embedding effective knowledge management in your organization
Authors: Nick Milton & Patrick Lambe

This is the best down-to-earth, practical, experience-based handbook on Knowledge Management I have seen AND it is recent (2016) [at the time of writing this post]. The authors leverage probably more than 20 years of experience each, supporting organizations with KM.  When I first read the book, I inserted many yellow sticky notes with comments about my own experience with many of the practices, methods, tools and tips discussed.

This past year, as I spent a lot of time thinking about helping a successor take over my position as a Knowledge Manager, I came to the conclusion that if I could only recommend one book to my successor, this would be the book.  I'm not suggesting it is the best book ever written on Knowledge Management, but as the title clearly indicates, it is the best book targeting knowledge managers.  Most organizations will not have a community of knowledge managers who can support each other.  Whether you are somewhat isolated from your professional peers, or you've ascended to a Knowledge Manager position without the necessary background and experience to do the job from day 1, this book is a tremendous help.

It also reminds me of KM Approaches, Methods and Tools (a Patrick Lambe book, with a different co-author).  It covers a wide range of KM applications.  You still have to be able to analyze your organization's unique structure and culture to develop a strategy tailored to your organization's needs and existing capabilities and resources.

As a side note, I've also been going in circles with Nick Milton about the need to do a better job of embedding KM.  I posted something in response to one of his blog posts earlier this week and found myself in a deja vu loop.  I have a weird feeling he posted something similar perhaps a year ago and I responded with the same comment..... to which he responded with the same response.  He is right, of course, and I am stuck in a little loop about this embedding problem.  I still think we need to do more in that regard. I'd like KM to be so embedded a separate KM function is unnecessary.  Nick argues that just because finance and safety are everyone's responsibility and embedded in every job doesn't mean we don't need a separate finance or safety function.  It's just not 100% clear to me that the analogy is valid. In addition, in small organizations, it is very difficult to establish KM as a separate function and perhaps easier (hypothesis here) to fully embed KM within existing processes.


TO DO

• Cogitate further about embedding KM in small organizations and what the implications are in terms of where KM should reside (report to) or which existing function can take it on as their responsibility.

The Knowledge Activist's Handbook (Book 11 of 30)

Title:  The Knowledge Activist's Handbook
Author:  Victor Newman

"Being a knowledge activist means choosing to think about knowledge, how we use it and how it works, with a definite attitude. And doing something about it.  The role of the knowledge activist is to be unreasonable, to identify and combine those small grains of truth with the potential to create a pearl." (Inside Jacket)

That's me.  I'm definitely, 100% a knowledge activist.  This resonates with me.  What does it mean when something "resonates"?  It's so close to how I think about the subject that I could have said it.  It articulates a thought that I can immediately absorb and make mine.  It makes me want to say "That's exactly right!  Well said, Mr. Newman!"

It's also probably a manifestation of confirmation bias.  Reading something that resonates with me is a psychological boost.  Doesn't it make you feel good to find people who totally agree with your point of view? Doesn't it confirm that your thinking is right?  You're on the right track... keep going on that path.

What did I like about this book?
I like this book because it resonates with me as already mentioned above.  I also like it because it's written very clearly from a personal experience perspective.  Give me two books on KM, one written by an academic and one written by a practitioner and it's likely I will prefer the one written by the practitioner (another source of bias, notwithstanding the Ph.D after my own name).  In light of recent re-readings, this may not be based on any evidence.  I like Dr. Leonard's books and she's definitely an academic. What I probably meant just above is that I connect more readily to first-person, practical, hands-on, experience-based advice and analysis than to theoretical frameworks.  Perhaps it's just the lazy path that gets the least resistance. Perhaps it's something else.  There is something here worth exploring a little deeper because I like analytical frameworks.  I just don't seem to connect well to overly theoretical/abstract frameworks (and questions like "what is knowledge?").

"Small grains of truth with the potential to create a pearl."
That's perhaps what I'm attempting to do with this 30 days/30 books challenge.  Can 30 days of little insights gathered from KM books add up to a single little valuable pearl?  There is nothing more intrinsically rewarding than a burst of insight or even a poorly articulated question that just pops up and percolates for a while.

TO DO

• Seek out KM literature I don't resonate with (something about how AI will revolutionalize KM would probably be easy to find at the moment and will definitely NOT resonate).
• Put this book on the "Re-read slowly" list.
• Let the practitioner/academic, how-to/abstract dichotomy percolate for a while.  Seek some insight about where I stand.  Where is the person who is highly focused on the practical, the implementable, yet sees the bigger picture, has a strong analytical framework to work with?