Lessons Learned - The Loch Ness monster of KM
|
| ||||||||
Contents
Original Message
From: Johannes Schunter, posted on 2013/07/18
Hi all,
Whenever I talk to managers and executives, often the most important thing they want to get out of Knowledge Management is "capturing lessons learned". This often goes along with a request to "create a database of lessons learned" where experiences can be systematically archived and searched to inform future initiatives. However, since I have become a member of KM4Dev 7 years ago, I have yet to come across an example of an organization where this was actually done successfully in a systematic way. Where lessons got collected, aggregated, shared and - most importantly - applied. It always felt to me like lessons learned were a phantom that everyone was chasing after, but nobody has ever seen.
The reason for this, I am convinced, is that knowledge sharing only works where experience is shared within a specific context, where the experience can be attributed to the person who has learned the lesson, and where the knowledge sharing is happening just in time (when the input is needed), not just in case. This is happening in Communities of Practices and social networks, but not in databases of documents.
My problem is that I often have a hard time coming up with evidence for this. Would you know of any good paper, research article or other evidence that looks at this in a comprehensive way and provides some insight whether collecting lessons learned documents in a database is (or is not) smart KM?
Of course, if you happen to have evidence of where this is actually working, I'd be happy to hear about that too. No one would be happier than me to be shown that this can actually work.
Looking forward to your insights!
Johannes
Contributors
All replies in full are available in the discussion page. Contributions received with thanks from:
Johannes Schunter
Sophie Treinen
Eric Mullerbeck
Nadia von Holzen
Josef Hofer-Alfeis
Jaap Pels
Charles Dhewa
Davide Piga
Ian Thorpe
Eva Schiffer
Pete Cranston
Robin Van Kippersluis
Neil Pakenham-Walsh
Paul Mundy
Stephen Bounds
Rinko Kinoshita
Matt Moore
Ewen Le Borgne
Philipp Grunewald
Nancy White
Related Discussions
- How to collect and present Lessons Learnt (2 December 2011)
- A rigorous approach to lesson learning (6 August 2010)
- Sharing Lessons and Worst Practices (30 January 2009)
- Does sector learning lead to enhanced capacity and performance? (5 January 2009)
Summary of Contributions
Preliminary Considerations
ccccccc
- ddddddddd
- eeeeeeeee
- fffffffff
= Sources
- Sophie Trainen stated that FAO has "set up several repositories to archive different types of documents. For her, learning lessons is part of the process of good KM, but need to know what the process will lead to. If the process leads to the documentation, sharing and appropriation of good practices, the final products (good practice fact sheet, video, audio programme, theatre play, etc.) need to be archived somewhere. What is crucial is to use good metadata so that you can use and reuse the same document and have it appear on several websites.
- Eric Mullerbeck has not heard of any working Lessons Learned databases. However, he pointed out that if such databases are set up, we might want to ensure that the databases are not 'pull only' so that they don't depend on people going to the database to try and hunt down relevant lessons. Instead they should have 'push' features like RSS linked to specific and well-defined topics, that will automatically push the LL documents to the persons who have interest in those topics.
- Nadia von Holzen referred to a previous KM4Dev discussion on Knowledge banks and emphasized that "we cannot treat knowledge or insights as a commodity we can put in a bank. Knowledge is mysterious. A special stuff, knowledge is fluid, gas-like or steam-like: you can't arrange it successfully in a bank. Information is storable but not knowledge. To make knowledge storable you loose its characteristics, its quality."
- Josef Hofer-Alfeis agreed that LL sharing is seldomly done effectively. He referred to one good example from Continental Cooperation in Germany, which is a LL database accompanied with
a lot of complementary organizational, cultural and other KM measures. He links to a graphic illustration of their success factors, showing that the database is only a minor part in their approach.
Presentation
Publications
- AAAAAAAAAAAAAA. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
