0:05 good afternoon and welcome to this APM
0:06 knowledge Sig webinar about the
0:08 Knowledge Management research project we
0:11 completed earlier this year I'm Judy
0:14 Payne chair of the APM knowledge Sig
0:18 today's speaker Nichola silburn uh and I
0:19 together we led the research project
0:22 that we're going to hear about it's now
0:24 my pleasure to introduce our speaker
0:26 Nicholas silban Nicholas is an
0:29 independent consultant and researcher
0:30 who specializes in information
0:32 management and information systems in the
0:33 the
0:35 workplace he's worked on numerous
0:38 engineering business information systems
0:41 and academic projects in Industries as
0:43 diverse as fluid engineering research
0:46 water utilities and higher
0:49 education Nicholas over to
0:52 you thank you very much indeed Judy for
0:54 that uh
0:57 introduction um over the next 40 minutes
1:00 or so I'm going to discuss the findings
1:03 of the um knowledge Sig uh research
1:07 project into km within project-based
1:09 organizations and there are two main
1:11 objectives for the webinar today the
1:13 first is to provide you with some
1:16 insights into the research project
1:20 itself um and into km within project-based
1:21 project-based
1:24 organizations the second uh principle
1:27 objective is to give you ideas
1:30 on uh and thoughts on good practice that
1:32 you can replicate back in your own
1:35 organization and bad practices that you
1:37 should try and avoid in order to achieve
1:40 those um objectives the webinar is
1:44 structured in four main parts the first
1:45 is to give you a little bit of
1:47 background to the study
1:51 itself the second is to give a brief
1:52 description of how we developed and
1:56 delivered the research project the third
1:58 is then focused on the survey results
2:00 and the key learning points from that
2:03 and then the fourth part of the webinar
2:05 is to bring together the overall good
2:08 bad and ugly observations and learning
2:15 away so why did we do the project well
2:17 there was anecdotal evidence amongst the
2:20 uh kig team and the events that it
2:23 carried out that um Knowledge Management
2:26 was all about having a Lessons Learned
2:28 database as the picture on the left illustrates
2:30 illustrates
2:32 this couldn't be further from the truth
2:35 and lessons databases Lessons Learned
2:39 databases um were often um places where
2:41 Lessons Learned From a project went to
2:44 die and were never seen again so the
2:47 Casey group also then found that it had
2:51 a sort of a headbanging um problem with
2:53 trying to get people to change this
2:56 view so it was time to gather some
2:58 evidence to see how project-based
3:00 organizations were handl in knowledge
3:03 and km in their organizations and to try
3:06 and identify good and bad
3:08 practice so the study
3:11 purpose was first of all to
3:14 identify um the state of km in project-based
3:16 project-based
3:18 organizations the second purpose was to
3:21 find out what could be done to improve
3:23 km within these
3:26 organizations and to do that there were
3:27 three further
3:30 purposes firstly to identify good
3:33 practices that organizations could
3:37 copy identify bad practices that
3:39 organizations should
3:43 avoid and to identify any ugly myths
3:46 that were around and to explode
3:49 them and as I go through the rest of the
3:51 presentation you'll see that little
3:54 figures will crop up from time to time
3:56 to reinforce this so we've got a smiley
3:59 face for good practices a devilish face
4:02 bad practices and a somewhat confused
4:06 frowning face for uh where confusion or myths
4:15 occur the research involved 22
4:19 organizations and over 200 um
4:22 individuals responding to an online
4:24 questionnaire we can see here the list
4:27 of organizations that took part and they
4:29 come from a range of uh Industries
4:33 including public sector third sector
4:35 transport engineering consultancy
4:38 manufacturing and utilities so what did
4:41 we look at well there were two main
4:44 complementary Parts um to the
4:47 research the first main part was to get
4:49 some indication of what people
4:51 understood by knowledge and what they
4:53 thought their organizations understood
4:57 by knowledge and how those organizations
5:00 then approached Knowledge Management
5:03 and to see whether those three items all
5:08 fitted together and to then establish
5:10 whether an organization actually does to manage
5:12 manage
5:15 knowledge the second main
5:18 component built on this foundation and
5:20 looked at knowledge structures within
5:24 organization so um how knowledge was uh
5:27 managed um from an organizational
5:29 perspective um what the level of
5:31 knowledge maturity was in an
5:34 organization against various
5:36 factors how knowledge was used and
5:39 shared across the Project Life
5:41 Cycle um and then what the key
5:43 observations and Improvement actions
5:46 were from um that
5:49 data to look at
5:53 it uh we took a five stage approach the
5:56 first stage was to look at existing
5:58 Frameworks and Concepts about knowledge
6:00 and Knowledge Management
6:03 um and look at their appropriateness and
6:05 to see whether they needed any further
6:07 development in order to achieve our
6:09 goals for the
6:13 project the second stage was to develop
6:16 some data collection instruments one of
6:19 which was uh an online questionnaire
6:23 that all uh participants completed and
6:25 the second was a short questionnaire on
6:28 uh knowledge uh in the organization
6:31 completed by a represent ative from each
6:34 organization the third stage actually
6:37 involveed collecting the
6:40 data the fourth part focused on
6:43 analyzing it um and we used uh
6:45 predominantly Excel for analyzing
6:48 numerical data and simple thematic
6:50 coding for looking at open-ended
6:53 questions to pick out themes from
6:54 comments people
6:58 made data was anonymized um throughout
7:01 the process so organizations had no idea
7:02 of which individuals within the
7:04 organization had
7:07 participated um and the published
7:09 results uh don't indicate which
7:11 organization is
7:15 which the final stage involved producing
7:19 a report for each individual
7:21 organization and that included specific
7:24 results for the organization as well as
7:27 results across all the organizations so
7:29 that um an organization could compare
7:32 itself with everybody else um and the
7:35 reports also included suggestions on
7:38 what the organization needed to do to
7:41 improve its km practices and maturity so
7:54 knowledge suggested that there were
7:57 three views on what knowledge
8:00 was and they were principally structural
8:02 process and
8:04 practice and these three views were
8:07 supported by how knowledge was defined
8:10 what the approach to knowledge was and
8:13 what typical practices were
8:16 exhibited by an
8:19 organization so if we just focus on the
8:21 the structural column for example then
8:24 knowledge will be designed in defined in
8:25 a very simplistic term and that is it's
8:27 a resource that can be captured
8:30 accumulated and shared
8:32 and the approach to knowledge will be to
8:34 go around capture it and then
8:37 disseminate it in a very formal
8:40 way typical practices that you would
8:43 undertake to support that would be the
8:45 lessons learn database um that was
8:48 described at the beginning an electronic
8:50 document and Records management system
8:58 manuals if your view on knowledge and km
9:01 was more Pro process orientated then
9:04 you've got a much more flexible thing
9:06 you see knowledge as a process of
9:10 knowing um you build relationships um
9:12 networks and trust and you encourage
9:15 those and you openly share knowledge and
9:16 in order to achieve that the kind of
9:19 practices you would exhibit would be
9:21 networks and communities making use of
9:24 communications Technologies and things
9:26 like uh social
9:29 software so there's three distinct um
9:33 categories there so if we look um at
9:36 some of the results if we look
9:38 specifically on the leftand side here of
9:40 the individual's perspective on
9:43 knowledge then we can see that just over
9:48 half um Define Knowledge from a process
9:51 perspective so they they see
9:55 it um as more a process of knowing
9:58 rather than a thing but a significant
9:59 proportion a third
10:01 take a structural view so they see
10:03 knowledge as something that can be
10:07 captured um and
10:11 accumulated only a small minority of
10:14 people uh profess the view to have a practice
10:15 practice
10:19 view if we then look at how um the
10:24 organizations are perceived to uh view
10:27 knowledge then um it's quite a
10:29 substantial majority in favor of a sort
10:31 of process view but there's a
10:33 significant proportion 9% are actually
10:35 unclear about what their view of knowledge
10:37 knowledge
10:40 is if we drill down and look at just a
10:42 single organization which had a process
10:46 view of knowledge we find that actually
10:49 the picture is not as clear as that
10:53 because some of the um uh approaches it
10:56 exhibits are not in alignment with its
10:59 process view so here we can see that
11:01 um some of the approaches it takes are
11:04 process approaches so there is a match
11:06 between the organization View and the
11:08 approaches that exhibits but on the
11:11 other hand it also exhibits um a
11:13 significant proportion of structural
11:17 behaviors and is also uh a bit confused
11:19 as well about knowledge or how to support
11:21 support
11:23 knowledge so it's a very mixed picture
11:27 that comes out of this looking at three
11:30 organizations in particular
11:35 this reinforces this message about how
11:38 um the organization actually uh
11:41 practices what it preaches as it were so
11:44 if we look at organization
11:46 2 it had a
11:49 confused picture as to its approach to
11:51 knowledge then if you looked at the supported
11:52 supported
11:55 practices a significant proportion is
11:57 red which means it's a structural
12:03 approach so it has a Lessons Learned um
12:05 database it also exhibits though other
12:08 practices which you would associate more
12:10 clearly with either being processed or
12:12 struct or or
12:15 practice so um for
12:19 example uh it has um a significant
12:23 proportion of of a process approach if
12:27 we look at organizational Organization
12:30 three it's stated
12:33 approach was
12:36 structural but um when you look at the
12:38 actual approaches it undertook so the
12:42 mechanisms it it uh it carried out there
12:46 isn't actually a structural one among
12:49 them or a pure structural one amongst
12:53 them um predominantly it includes uh process
12:54 process
12:57 approaches so things
13:00 like knowledge sharing
13:02 events it also has a significant
13:06 proportion of of approach or practices
13:09 that could be classified as as as
13:12 any um so for example competency
13:14 development Frameworks that encourage
13:17 knowledge sharing by contrast
13:19 organization uh
13:23 10 the stated approach was process but
13:26 its reported practices suggested a
13:29 significant structural element such as
13:30 Lessons Learned
13:35 repository and along a small proportion
13:38 of process and practice such as
13:40 technology mediated
13:42 Communications and this webinar is
13:44 actually a good example of knowledge
13:49 sharing using um technology mediated
13:52 communication so looking at um not
13:54 definitions of knowledge and approaches
13:57 to knowledge and Knowledge Management
14:00 what can we learn from
14:03 this the first um thing is that an
14:06 organization is good if it does what it
14:09 says it does so if an organization
14:12 believes that it has a process view on
14:15 knowledge so knowledge is a process of
14:18 knowing then it should exhibit um
14:23 approaches and practices that support
14:27 that a bad organization is one that
14:30 thinks what they are what they think
14:31 they are doing is not what they are
14:33 actually doing in practice so they might
14:41 organization but the practices and
14:43 approaches they exhibit are actually
14:46 contradictory to
14:49 that so they're not doing what they say
14:50 they're supposed to be
14:54 doing and then the ugly or ugly ones
14:56 tend to be the ones that are very
14:59 confused so they don't really know what
15:03 knowledge is and they're not really um
15:07 exhibiting uh practices that match
15:12 um their uh view the next sort of
15:14 grouping in the research looks at
15:17 organizational structures um for
15:22 km and these focused on four main
15:25 areas the first was the leadership of KM
15:29 so was there a central group or person
15:31 responsible for Knowledge Management in
15:33 the organization and we found this to be
15:36 very patchy both
15:41 across all the 22 organizations and
15:53 organizations we also looked at
15:55 Knowledge Management and where its home
15:57 was within an
16:00 organization now uh the project
16:02 management office would seem to be a
16:05 natural home because of its Central role
16:07 for all things project
16:10 management however few organizations
16:14 with pmos took advantage of
16:17 this a few organizations had a dedicated
16:20 knowledge manager but even in such
16:23 organizations not all respondents from
16:25 an organization were aware of this which
16:33 we also also asked about names for km
16:35 what did people actually call km if they
16:36 called it
16:39 anything and many organizations had
16:43 alternative names and strangely enough
16:50 organization in some organizations km
16:57 km and lastly in this particular section
17:01 of the research we asked people to
17:06 Define what was meant by km oh sorry to
17:08 identify if their organization had a
17:11 definition for what was meant by
17:13 km and we found that in most
17:15 organizations there was no explicitly stated
17:17 stated
17:20 definition where an organization had defined
17:22 defined
17:26 km worryingly not everybody knew about
17:29 it and some definitions
17:33 were standard industry definitions so
17:35 they weren't contextualized for the organization
17:42 concerned so what did we learn from this
17:46 particular part of the
17:48 research well you were a good
17:51 organization if you had clear km
17:54 leadership whether that be a part of the
17:57 organization responsible for km or a
17:59 specific individual
18:02 um identified with
18:05 CM also that the organization had a
18:08 clearly stated organization wide and
18:12 agreed definition of KM so basically
18:14 everybody was singing off the same hym
18:17 sheet bad organizations tended to have
18:20 no clear km leadership and they also had
18:24 no working definition of CM for their
18:27 organization and then there was again a
18:28 group of organizations where there was a
18:29 lot of
18:31 confusion um some people thought they
18:35 had uh a definition some people didn't
18:38 think they had um uh if there was one
18:39 they didn't know what it was and so on
18:43 so again that is something that needs to
18:47 be avoided is confusion the next sort of
18:49 main block of of the
18:52 research looked at the maturity of
18:54 Knowledge Management in the
18:57 organization and here participants were
19:00 asked to look at um the maturity of the
19:03 organization against eight factors so
19:05 strategy knowledge roles time for
19:07 knowledge business
19:09 performance excuse me colleagues
19:11 behaviors and
19:14 technology and to identify the level of
19:16 maturity of their
19:18 organization um based on whether they
19:21 thought it was initial so km was very ad
19:23 hoc in the organization whether it was
19:26 emerging so km was just
19:29 starting whether it was well established
19:32 um whether km was organization wide or
19:33 whether it was embedded in the
19:35 organization so it was the way we do
19:37 things around
19:41 here and we're just going to look at two
19:44 specific um aspects of
19:47 maturity leadership behaviors and time
19:49 for knowledge so if we look at
19:52 leadership behaviors first this is a
19:55 comparison of all 22
19:58 organizations and the bottom of the
20:01 graph is sort of bad and towards the top
20:03 of the graph is
20:06 good so if we look at organization
20:11 4 um people there consider it to be uh
20:13 essentially 100% level five so a very
20:17 mature organization where um leadership
20:19 behaviors are embedded in the
20:21 organization and leaders are exhibiting
20:24 behaviors that suggest that this is the
20:26 way we do things around here when it
20:29 comes to knowledge conversely organization
20:31 organization
20:35 18 um is predominantly at the negative
20:39 end of the scale so there's nothing um
20:43 uh uh mature about it at
20:48 all and organization 22 is very confused
20:50 because here we've got example of all
20:52 five levels of
20:55 maturity so some people think their
20:57 leaders are doing uh well and others
21:03 badly if we then look at time for
21:06 knowledge we can use this to a contrast
21:10 the factors because you'll see here that
21:12 the the colors are predominantly at the
21:15 bad end of the spectrum and we can also
21:19 look at um the individual organizations
21:22 again so number seven appears to allow
21:26 to have uh or appears to allow people to
21:30 have time for knowledge so it's mature
21:32 it understands what knowledge is about
21:36 and it enables people to um Carry Out
21:40 knowledge practices conversely number 11
21:42 is an organization that does not appear
21:45 to encourage time for
21:48 knowledge and again we have a confused
21:52 uh picture with um organization
21:55 60 where some people think they do have
21:59 time and others think they don't
22:01 so what can we
22:04 draw um out of this particular part of
22:07 the research H
22:09 organizations exhibited high levels of
22:12 maturity for more than one factor but at
22:16 least some of them did um exhibit a high
22:18 level of maturity for a factor which is
22:20 encouraging but it also suggests there
22:22 is room for
22:25 improvement some organizations were very
22:30 immature for one factor or more
22:33 um and again this shows that there is uh
22:35 a scope for improve and particularly
22:37 this applied two factors such as
22:40 knowledge roles which we
22:43 uh which is about the clarity of of your
22:45 role when it comes to knowledge time for
22:47 knowledge which we've already touched on
22:51 behaviors of colleagues and Technology
22:53 um they were the most immature uh
22:55 factors so it shows that there's quite a
22:57 lot of work for organizations to do in
22:59 those areas
23:00 a few
23:03 organizations exhibited all five levels of
23:04 of
23:07 maturity on one or more
23:09 factor and this suggests a number of
23:12 things firstly that they might have
23:15 different capabilities within the same
23:17 organization secondly that there could
23:18 be a lack of
23:22 awareness of KM or perhaps different
23:25 views on what constitutes km and how the
23:32 it should be noted though that having a
23:35 lowlevel maturity is not necessarily bad
23:39 providing your knowledge um the fact as
23:43 such and you work towards improving it
23:45 and also the same applies to sort of
23:47 being an ugly or confused organization
23:50 again it's not necessarily bad per se
23:53 but it shows that there is inconsistency
23:55 across your organization and the
23:57 individuals within it and that you need
23:59 to address that in
24:04 consistency the next part uh of the main
24:06 sort of focus of the research looked at
24:09 knowledge and the Project Life
24:13 Cycle and we used here the APM life
24:15 cycle definition of concept definition
24:18 development Handover and closure and benefits
24:24 realization and we looked and we we
24:26 asked people specifically about whether
24:28 they shared knowledge within a project
24:31 team shared knowledge with other project
24:34 teams used existing Knowledge from
24:36 within the project team and used
24:39 existing Knowledge from other projects
24:43 at each stage of this life cycle again
24:44 we found a very
24:47 mixed uh picture and here I've just
24:50 picked out two stages of the life cycle
24:55 and show you the comparison between the
24:57 four methods of using and sharing and
25:00 the two organizations and I've chosen
25:02 the concept stage and the Handover and
25:04 closure stage because they provide a
25:09 nice contrast um in the life cycle if we
25:16 organizations if we look at organization
25:19 18 it suggests a very confused picture
25:21 here because there isn't um a high
25:25 degree of consistency amongst the the uh
25:27 respondents from that
25:30 organization um um in the sense that
25:33 only we we've only got sort of up to 50%
25:36 of people saying that any of these using
25:38 and sharing activities actually take
25:47 cycle um if we then
25:51 look um at organizations at organization
25:55 six there's a very um consistent view
25:58 there that um knowledge is used and
26:01 shared within the team and across
26:05 project teams um across the entire life
26:08 cycle but if you compare that sorry at a
26:10 Handover and closure stage but if you
26:12 compare that with what organization six
26:15 gets up to at the concept stage there
26:17 isn't a there isn't the same level of
26:20 consistency and to sort of contrast that
26:22 we look at organization
26:25 seven um a very high level of agreement
26:28 there of sharing and use the concepts
26:29 stage but by
26:32 contrast um at the Handover and closure
26:39 agreement um and then if we look at organization
26:46 11 um there is no uh surprisingly there
26:48 is no sharing of knowledge with other
26:51 projects or use of Knowledge from other
26:54 projects at the concept stage and there
26:57 is only limited sharing of knowledge and
26:59 use of knowledge knowledge with other
27:02 projects at the Handover stage so this
27:03 seems to be an organization where
27:05 project teams sort of hang on to what
27:07 they know and lastly if we look at organization
27:10 organization
27:13 one um there is no sharing of knowledge
27:16 with projects at the concept stage but by
27:17 by
27:21 contrast um at the Handover
27:24 stage they um are in 100% agreement that
27:26 they share knowledge with other projects
27:28 now sort of drilling down on that
27:31 um it suggest and was confirmed that
27:34 they had a Lessons Learned database so
27:36 they were capturing knowledge and then
27:38 making it available to others in a
27:41 lessons learn database so the key
27:44 learning points from this uh part of the
27:47 the the process were that knowledge is
27:50 with know if if you're good um at doing
27:52 things then knowledge is shared within
27:54 the team and across
27:57 teams at all stages of the Project Life
28:00 Cycle but not many organizations lived
28:05 expectation uh if you had a very low
28:08 level of agreement or your focus of your
28:12 um agreement was not on um sharing
28:17 knowledge uh then it looked like uh you
28:19 predominantly had a Lessons Learned
28:22 database and knowledge was shared at the
28:26 end of The Project Life Cycle and lastly
28:29 it was a if if you were sort of uh an
28:32 ugly uh duckling as it were if knowledge
28:34 sharing was variable within the project
28:37 team and across teams throughout the
28:38 Project Life Cycle if there was a lack of
28:44 consistency um both uh at stages in the
28:46 life cycle and to how and to the extent
28:53 cycle so that's given you an insight
28:56 into the four main sort of chunks of the
28:59 research that was carried out out so
29:08 learn so our key
29:10 observations start off with the fact
29:13 that most individuals seem to understand
29:16 that knowledge is deeper than
29:18 information so they are aware that there
29:20 is a difference between the
29:23 two and most individuals also seem to
29:25 understand that knowledge can't be
29:28 managed using a simple capture and
29:30 disseminate approach like a Lessons Learned
29:40 database the other thing another key
29:43 thing that comes out is that the
29:46 approaches to km that an organization
29:48 exhibits don't always reflect the
29:50 organization or the individual's
29:52 understanding within an organization of
29:59 about and that the practices
30:04 organizations exhibit don't always match
30:07 um what the organizations view is on
30:11 knowledge so organizations do and say different
30:12 different
30:14 things and the most common reason for
30:17 this is probably because of confusion
30:19 between what constitutes knowledge and
30:21 what constitutes
30:24 information and how those terms are defined
30:31 it was also very clear that few
30:33 organizations have a working definition
30:34 of Knowledge
30:37 Management and few organizations have a
30:40 single name for Knowledge Management and
30:43 all this can lead to uh
30:46 confusion um when people move around
30:48 organizations interact with different
30:50 people from the same organization and so
30:53 on there was lots of evidence of
30:55 different practices in different parts
30:58 of the organization
31:02 and those practices in many many cases
31:03 were very
31:08 good um and the we think this is because
31:12 km is often Li Li is often left to
31:15 individual teams to
31:18 implement um because there's no Central
31:22 management of knowledge and km and
31:24 there's no in central individual
31:26 responsible for knowledge and km in the
31:29 organization so it's left to individual
31:32 teams to do their own thing in the in
31:34 the sort of free text element quite a
31:37 few individuals commented that their
31:39 Lessons Learned processes don't actually
31:42 work and this wasn't actually a question
31:45 we asked them um but it was a theme that
31:47 came out over and over again so there
31:51 are processes in place to learn from
31:55 projects um but those processes don't
31:58 work so uh projects don't learn
32:01 and team members don't learn we also
32:05 found overall that K maturity varies a
32:08 lot few organizations are actually
32:11 excellent at km so few organizations km
32:15 is embedded as a way of life um in their
32:17 organization some organizations were
32:19 actually quite open and acknowledged
32:21 that they were beginners in the process
32:24 and looking to learn from taking part in the
32:25 the
32:27 research many organizations were in
32:30 between so they showed varying levels of
32:34 maturity against the eight uh uh factors
32:37 of maturity in many
32:39 organizations people share knowledge
32:42 between projects of the Handover and
32:51 good so out of all these out of all this
32:53 this research and the key observations
32:57 we found and the and the uh data and so
33:01 on what would be the good things to copy
33:04 what would be the things to take
33:08 away firstly develop and Implement a
33:11 working knowledge of sorry a working
33:13 definition of knowledge which is agreed
33:16 by everybody secondly have a matching
33:19 definition of what km is in your
33:22 organization so once you've agreed what
33:24 knowledge is to your organization you
33:28 can then agree how km uh should be
33:34 organization you should also have a
33:38 single name for
33:42 km so that everybody is is singing off
33:45 the same Hy
33:48 sheet you should align your km practices
33:54 knowledge and Knowledge Management
33:56 Management
33:58 so your
34:00 uh technology your
34:03 behaviors and so on should match what
34:06 you actually say knowledge and Knowledge
34:08 Management is to your
34:12 organization they should support your
34:15 definitions you should consider having a
34:18 central having Central responsibility
34:19 for knowledge and Knowledge Management
34:20 in your
34:23 organization um and the project
34:28 management uh office is um an ideal
34:30 uh place because of its Central role in
34:32 project management as a whole and managing
34:33 managing
34:35 projects um and you should make sure
34:37 that knowledge is shared effectively
34:39 across the organization you could also
34:42 consider employing a s a specialist knowledge
34:43 knowledge
34:47 manager who can lead you down this uh
34:50 journey of increasing
34:52 maturity the things you should
34:56 avoid confusion between knowledge and
34:59 information both Knowledge Management
35:02 and information management are valuable
35:04 valuable
35:06 practices and they do
35:08 overlap but they are different and as
35:12 part of your uh definition of knowledge
35:14 and Knowledge Management you will be
35:16 able to uh clearly
35:19 state which which you should be doing
35:21 for what um
35:23 activity so they're both equally
35:25 important to the organization but you do
35:27 need to be aware that they are different
35:30 and avoid confusion between the two and
35:32 you should avoid managing information
35:34 when you set out to manage knowledge so
35:36 if you look at the the Lessons Learned
35:39 database for example um you've got a lot
35:42 of actual information in these databases
35:44 and having a lessons learn database
35:51 information so if you're setting out to
35:53 manage knowledge you need to be clear
35:55 what knowledge is and go about
35:59 supporting it in an appropriate way
36:01 and you should avoid having an
36:04 overreliance on Lessons Learned database
36:07 so you're not capturing knowledge
36:11 storing it and that storage just becomes
36:15 a morum to uh lessons that nobody is
36:22 at and you should also avoid just
36:25 sharing knowledge with other projects
36:31 there are plenty of opportunities to
36:34 learn from other projects as you go
36:36 through each stage of the Project Life
36:39 Cycle and then a couple of uh sort of
36:42 myths to explode one is that knowledge
36:47 is a thing that is written down it isn't
36:49 really so you should avoid
36:54 that um ugly things like inconsistent
36:57 practices um you should practice what
37:00 you preach so if you say uh knowledge is
37:02 this you should carry out the practices
37:04 to support it if they don't then you
37:07 just confuse people and you end up with
37:09 with a mess and lastly on the myths and
37:11 sort of ugly things don't believe
37:14 everything you read about km so what happens
37:20 next well there's the knowledge uh
37:23 specific interest group um within the
37:24 within the
37:26 APM and there are a variety of things
37:28 you can do now now you can visit the
37:30 research project web pages which have
37:35 now gone live and the uh web address um
37:37 is on the slide
37:41 here um and over a period of um the next
37:44 few months we'll be releasing in more
37:48 detail um the findings from the research
37:49 and you will have an opportunity to
37:52 comment and give your views on the
37:54 findings and how they relate to your
37:55 organization so we would encourage you
37:58 to take an Interactive approach to the
38:00 findings as they're published each month
38:02 over the coming
38:06 months i' also encourage you to watch um
38:08 the courageous conversation videos and
38:12 they're available on the um APM YouTube
38:18 stream um if you uh select um the most
38:21 popular um when you when you follow the
38:24 the link on the on the slide um if you
38:27 choose the most popular you'll find that
38:29 there's two or three videos uh produced
38:32 by the APM casig group um and they're in
38:36 the top 20 of the most viewed APM videos
38:40 and then lastly you could join the
38:43 knowledge Sig itself to be kept informed
38:45 and again that's that's
38:49 free actually um Can km be copied from
38:52 one company to another or does it need
38:55 to grow from the inside of a company uh
38:57 Nick is that okay with you if I have a
39:00 little stab answering that one yeah and
39:02 then uh and then I'll ask you if You'
39:04 got anything to add
39:08 um no it can't be copied is the simple
39:12 answer because Knowledge Management and
39:14 it's how successful it is it's very
39:16 dependent on the context on the specific
39:19 situation of a company uh on lots of
39:22 things like the organizational culture
39:24 the sort of work that's being
39:27 done and there is a temptation to just
39:29 go find an organization that is good by
39:31 some measure at Knowledge Management and
39:33 just copy what they do now that might
39:36 work uh but then again it might not now
39:39 that is actually the reason why the
39:42 research project and the uh the things
39:44 to avoid the things to copy and so on
39:46 that Nicks just been through was at a
39:49 very high level so things like know be
39:50 clear about what you need mean by
39:52 knowledge be clear about what you mean
39:54 by Knowledge Management make sure that
39:56 what you actually do in practice matches
39:59 what you say you're trying to do uh we
40:02 did it at that level rather than focus
40:05 on specific methods so unlike a lot of
40:07 things in project management the method
40:09 that you use actually isn't important
40:11 what's important is getting your ducks
40:13 in a row in the first place and actually
40:15 doing what you set out to
40:19 do I I would just reinforce um what you
40:22 said and the the fact that ultimately no
40:26 to organizations are the same so um even
40:29 though you might might have uh two uh engineering
40:31 engineering
40:35 consultancies um they will have uh con contextual
40:36 contextual
40:39 differences um and therefore um you can
40:42 take ideas from one organization to
40:47 another but you do need to um mold them
40:50 and contextualize them to your
40:52 organization and I think one of the one
40:55 of the biggest um issues with various
41:00 facets of of um business um is the fact
41:03 that um organizations try and copy each
41:06 other without realizing that they're
41:08 actually different
41:11 beasts can you give some project
41:14 orientated examples of information versus
41:15 versus
41:18 knowledge uh and again Nick I'll just
41:21 have a quick go at that one uh well Nick
41:24 because Nick gave an example of
41:27 Information Management um and that was
41:29 the use of a Lessons Learned database
41:31 and that is the very basic use of a
41:33 Lessons Learned database where people
41:35 put things in um and people from other
41:37 projects are expected to go and find um
41:40 things that they need to know and to
41:43 learn from it so at that level that is
41:46 very definitely Information Management
41:49 if the Lessons Learned database was a
41:51 little bit more sophisticated than that
41:53 and it had the name and the contact
41:56 details of the person who put the lesson
41:59 in there and somebody was to phone that
42:01 person arrange to meet them have a chat
42:04 with them have a some sort of dialogue
42:06 some sort of two-way conversation with
42:07 them where they could check their
42:10 understanding that then becomes more
42:11 knowledge than
42:14 information so that that's the example
42:17 that I can think of that there is a lot
42:19 of confusion about the definition of
42:21 knowledge and the definition of
42:24 information and to be honest even very
42:28 um knowledgeable specialized people and
42:30 academics disagree about it which is why we
42:31 we
42:35 presented um in this um webinar and also
42:37 in the research project we presented the
42:39 three main different views of what
42:41 knowledge is um and the structural view
42:43 of knowledge this is the capture and
42:45 disseminate view um that is basically
42:47 the same as
42:50 information it might also help you to
42:54 know that in the web pages which Nick um
42:57 there was a link to the research project
42:59 uh web pages which we will also
43:01 circulate separately when we post the
43:03 recording of This webinar so that you be
43:06 sure to see it um there is uh there is a
43:08 lot more information than we could
43:12 include in this webinar um in that uh
43:14 especially about uh knowledge and
43:15 information and the difference between
43:17 them so there's plenty more to go and
43:19 look up but that's a quick answer
43:20 information is stuff that you put in a
43:23 database knowledge is what you might get
43:25 if you have a conversation with the
43:27 person who put that information there
43:30 Nick anything this is your subject isn't
43:33 it anything to add the information
43:37 management bit is um um and I would have
43:41 I would have um again reinforced what
43:44 you said um but you you also need to and
43:45 this this is why we've sort of
43:47 reiterated throughout the presentation
43:50 about you coming up with a definition
43:51 for knowledge and Knowledge Management
43:54 in your own organization um because in
43:57 my research into specific areas of for
43:59 example defining Information
44:02 Management um you could probably find
44:04 that there was 100 people um had
44:07 produced 105 definitions for information
44:09 management and
44:14 information um so that's why ultimately
44:17 you as an organization need to Define
44:18 what you mean by knowledge and Knowledge
44:21 Management um and you need to make sure
44:23 that everybody in the organization knows
44:26 what that def what those definitions are
44:30 but you also so need to be clear that um
44:31 even though you're making your own
44:34 definition the definition is built on
44:37 solid sort of principles of knowledge
44:40 and Knowledge Management so for example
44:43 if your if your definition fell into the
44:46 structural category um then you would
44:49 your knowledge definition would be wrong
44:50 because you'd be looking at information
44:52 management but if it fell into the
44:55 process or practice categories then
44:57 you'd be well on your way how how do we
44:58 know that this is organizational
45:02 maturity and not individual interest I
45:04 think it's to do and I'm I'm drawing
45:06 here on on some other research I did
45:09 that looked at factors influencing people's
45:10 people's
45:13 behaviors um and actually there isn't
45:17 one uh sort of dominant factor and you
45:19 actually find that there's a
45:22 um uh quite a lot of interrelationships
45:26 between um the different factors that
45:30 will affect people's behavior so uh and
45:33 there's also elements of of
45:35 um uh that sort of go down into the
45:38 psychology of individuals and and so on
45:41 so we can only work with um the the data
45:44 we've we've got so it is
45:49 possible that um there are um um sort of
45:52 Behavioral or psychological or whatever
45:56 you like to call it reasons why um
45:59 somebody might um not um share or think
46:02 they don't have enough time to um deal
46:07 with knowledge um that is a possibility
46:09 yes but there's also um you know
46:12 organizations can again looking at the
46:15 time for knowledge thing can be quite um
46:18 explicit open um whatever you like to
46:23 call it about um encouraging people to
46:25 uh share knowledge um it can either be
46:28 done through um uh you know a number of
46:30 organizations cited their competency
46:33 Frameworks for their um employees as a
46:36 means of getting them to uh share
46:38 knowledge or reuse knowledge or have
46:41 conversations with people um that kind
46:45 of thing so um it's not an easy question
46:48 uh to answer and we are aware that um
46:53 you know that there is an element of of
46:57 um uh inter relationship between between
46:58 the different factors and between
47:01 factors that we didn't actually look at
47:03 as could it be that organization 4
47:05 thinks that they are on level five but
47:07 but they actually aren't um I've picked
47:11 that one out because um it is actually a
47:14 subjective thing uh what level an
47:16 organization is on and the reason that
47:19 we asked lots of people from each
47:21 organization to complete our survey was
47:23 so that we could get a range of views
47:25 from not just one person's view from
47:27 each organization
47:31 uh there is in fact a maturity framework
47:32 um which will be published on the web
47:35 pages when we get there uh when we get
47:36 to that part of research because we're
47:39 uh as Nick says we're publishing um the
47:42 different sections of the research in
47:44 monthly installments the idea is to
47:46 build suspense and make you more
47:48 interested I hope it works uh and the
47:50 will the maturity framework will be
47:52 published and that maturity framework
47:55 the best use of it is actually as a tool
47:57 to have a conversation around around
47:59 because it's more important to talk
48:01 about these things than to assign a
48:03 particular level a particular number to
48:05 any of the
48:07 factors which is what Publications does
48:10 the knowledge s have what is your
48:15 opinion of the gold standard book on km
48:19 best practice okay well the um if you
48:21 look at the if you look at the APM web
48:24 website uh Mike and anybody else um
48:26 actually starting with the uh with the
48:29 these research project Pages it's not a
48:30 bad place to start because there are
48:34 lots of Link links from those to um to
48:36 blogs that the knowledge Sig has done
48:39 and also to various articles some
48:41 written by the knowledge Sig and some
48:43 written by other people um as for the uh
48:48 the gold standard book or resource
48:52 um there isn't one there there are there
48:55 are some very practice-based books which
48:58 are often they tend to be too simplistic
49:00 and they don't take into account the
49:02 context and they tend to tell you what
49:05 to do rather than get you to think about
49:06 understanding the principles which is
49:07 the best way to approach Knowledge
49:09 Management and then there are some very
49:12 academic books which are most of them
49:14 are so academic that yeah they're
49:15 they're good if you're interested but
49:18 they don't actually tell you anything uh
49:20 give you any pointers about what to do
49:23 um the not some members of the knowledge
49:24 s team are actually writing a book which
49:27 is going to fill that Gap so uh so watch
49:30 this space I would like to engage with
49:32 my line manager to bring awareness of
49:34 the importance of
49:36 KM could you give me the right way to approach
49:38 approach
49:43 this uh that is a brilliant
49:45 question and then it goes on to say that
49:48 would would this be a a did you think
49:50 that's a statistical approach to prove
49:53 the benefits okay so that's just a lot
49:55 of people when they get when they start
49:58 out in Knowledge Management
50:00 try to demonstrate the benefits of
50:03 Knowledge Management the organizations
50:06 that do it well and and this isn't just
50:08 my subject subjective judgment
50:10 organizations that do it
50:12 well because they've won awards for
50:15 their Knowledge Management they all of
50:16 them that I know of have started
50:18 Knowledge Management by taking a leap of
50:21 faith so the thing that you need to do
50:24 Stuart or anybody else is find somebody
50:26 in your organization who's prepared to
50:28 take a leap of faith otherwise you will
50:33 spend a lot of time trying to quantify
50:35 things that can't really be Quantified
50:37 knowledge is intangible sharing
50:39 knowledge is intangible the benefits of
50:41 Knowledge Management can be tangible but
50:43 they're very unpredictable and it's very
50:44 difficult to uh to know what they're
50:48 going to be uh before you uh before you
50:49 Embark upon your Knowledge Management effort
