How the BBC learned from their Olympic coverage

Favorite Here is a case study of one organisation – the BBC – learning from experience.  The  Olympics is was a massive event, on a scale that is unprecedented in peacetime. It’s the biggest project a country will ever undertake, other than a war. I have already blogged about the

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Shared by Nick Milton January 23, 2018

The heart and soul of a Community of Practice

Favorite What makes a group of people into a Community of Practice? Recently I read a document which asserted that the employees within an organisation are naturally a community of practice, because they all work together in service of the same organisational goal. That immediately struck me as wrong, but why

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Shared by Nick Milton January 22, 2018

Is Learning from Failure the worst way to learn?

Favorite Is learning from failure the best way to learn, or the worst? Classic Learning by Alan Levine on Flickr I was driven to reflect on this when I read the following quote from Clay Shirkey; “Learning from experience is the worst possible way to learn something. Learning from experience

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Shared by Nick Milton January 19, 2018

What did Jack Welch say about KM?

Favorite It’s always interesting to see what CEOs say about KM. Here’s Jack Welch. Jack Welch, the famous CEO of General Electric, did an excellent job of summarising the business vision for Knowledge Management, when he made this statement in the GE 1996 annual report. “Our behaviour is driven by

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Shared by Nick Milton January 18, 2018

The new ISO KM Standard explained

Favorite The video webinar below is from Judy Payne, one of my co-members on the committee to develop the new ISO KM standard. Judy delivered this last week for the Association of Project Managers, and explains the history of the standard, the thinking behind it, and some of the key

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Shared by Nick Milton January 17, 2018

What is a knowledge product?

Favorite The concept of a Knowledge Product is a common one in the development sector, and is used as a label for many types of document.  But what makes a product a “knowledge product”? Many organisations working in the development sector create what they call “Knowledge Products”. The African Development

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Shared by Nick Milton January 16, 2018

5 reasons why organisations don’t learn lessons.

Favorite If lesson learning is so simple, why do organisations so often fail to learn the big lessons? We seem to be able to learn the little lessons, like improving small aspects of projects, but the big lessons seem to be relearned time and time again. Why is this? Some

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Shared by Nick Milton January 15, 2018

The 11 steps of FEMA’s lesson capture process

Favorite The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a pretty good process for capturing and distributing lessons. Here are the 11 steps. Every Emergency Services organisation pays close attention to Lesson-Learning  (see for the approach taken by the Wildland Fire Service). They know that effective attention to learning from lessons can

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Shared by Nick Milton January 12, 2018

How well distributed is your KM budget?

Favorite There are 4 legs on the Knowledge Management table. Are you investing evenly in each of them? Knowledge Management  requires equal attention to the four key enablers of People, Process, Technology and Governance. The test of whether you truly are paying equal attention is whether your KM program investments

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Shared by Nick Milton January 11, 2018

What Enterprise Social Networks can tell us about KM adoption

Favorite Many Enterprise Social Network adoptions have stalled. What lessons can we draw for Knowledge Management? Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) technologies such as Yammer, Slack and Facebook for Business are often introduced on the same premise as Knowledge Management – that these technologies will allow staff to share knowledge, collaborate,

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Shared by Nick Milton January 10, 2018