Rethinking Knowledge Facilitation - Part 3

Encouraging Mindful Knowledge Facilitation by the Organization

This post discusses how adopting organizational Mindful Knowledge Facilitation (MKF) with organizational agility can reveal previously unseen benefits. 

All organizations, even public sector, are in the business of creating and delivering desired products.  If we expand the definition of the "Product" to include ideas, plans, or initiatives targeting both internal and external clients.  This has become exponentially more complex due to a necessary layer of software or IT services that have become a necessary part of product delivery.   This ever-evolving component underscores the need for agility, flexibility, and change management.

"McKinsey & Company defines organizational agility as an ability for an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous, turbulent environment. "

At the PMI Organizational Agility Conference, Josh Seiden presented Sense & Respond: Principles for the Next Century of Work, which asserts that organizations need to change the principles under which they have traditionally operated.

1. Embrace Continuous Change (not oppose it)
2. Manage with outcomes (not outputs)
3. Create a two-way conversation with the market (listen and respond)
4. Create Team Collaboration (Collaboration improves outcomes)
5. Create Learning Culture (failure is learning)

These principles are complemented by organizational mindful knowledge facilitation. 

1. Embrace Continuous Change/ Disregard Preconceptions

What does it mean for an organization to embrace change?  Start by disregarding those "mindless" preconceptions and old habits that have caused faulty starts and lackluster kickoffs.  If an organization is embracing the changes it encounters, it commends those who see the possibilities the changes bring. 

To embrace organizational change, organizations may do the following:

In regular business operations, allot time for individuals and teams to mindfully reflect on the changes being encountered or anticipated to allow opportunities to be revealed.

Launch an organization-wide mandate encouraging persons and groups to specifically identify opportunities revealed by organizational changes.
 

2. Manage with outcomes/ Notice the Better Result.
   Outcomes are measurable changes in behavior that drives business results.  Mindfulness involves observing  the actions our minds actually take to accomplish actions, taking stock of  the outcomes seen from past knowledge facilitation strategies.  Mindful organizations will notice how successful the gathering, creation, and use of knowledge was and notice positive outcomes resulting from MKF.  Organizations should track positive outcomes (production, morale, etc.) that result from changes in making mindfulness a priority.

To leverage mindful knowledge facilitation for better outcomes, organizations may do the following:
 

Define MKF processes and encourage use.

Track when better outcomes are seen because of MKF.

Publicly recognize better knowledge work. 

3. Team Collaboration & Learning Culture/ Practice Alternative Exploration.
   Mindful organizations will rethink how people and teams facilitate knowledge and incorporate additional time in project schedules for positing alternative gathering, creation, and use of knowledge.

To promote collaborative MKF,  organizations may do the following:

Create an organization-wide collaboration initiative.  Inherently, collaboration utilizes the knowledge of multiple parties, and ultimately results in better outcomes.  To be more mindful, this initiative includes making "listening" and "conversation" a standard way of doing business.  This will breed trust in the organization.

Sponsor a Learning Culture in the basic tenets of the organization.  A learning culture  will encourage innovation, resilience and acceptance of failure.  Benefits are seen when failure is recognized as a valuable way to learn.  Innovative solutions rely on the ability to tolerate failure.

4. Call to Action /Recognition
   The organization's MKF must be publicly recognized  and frequently.  Accompany the above mandates  with visible recognition of people and groups who are practicing MKF.  One strategy to create awareness of mindful knowledge facilitation is to implement the Knowledge Management Awareness Week.  This week is the perfect forum for highlighting positive outcomes from MKF.

To underscore the value of MKF as part of Knowledge Management, organizations may do the following:

Celebrate an annual Knowledge Management Awareness Week to bring visibility to Knowledge Management and the mindful knowledge processes encouraged by the organization.

Include an event during KMAW to visibly recognize early adopters and positive Outcome champions.

In the next century of work, agile organizations that adopt a MKF foundation will be better-prepared to weather the turbulence of the imminent complex changes. 

Rethinking Knowledge Facilitation, Part 2

Encouraging Mindful Knowledge Facilitation by the Individual

To continue on the idea of rethinking how we are obtaining, referencing, discovering, using, and disposing of our knowledge.  This post discusses how we can encourage individuals to make more mindful decisions when taking knowledge actions.

In Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation,  Dr. Mark W. Muesse asserts that many of us go through life not being aware of the present moment.  There are so many conflicting thoughts in our minds that we are often unaware of the practices, processes, and efficient handling of information for strategic benefit.

Muesse calls this "Mindlessness."  Meditation has been shown to allow us to "reprogram our brains to be mindful, be able to observe  the actions our mind actually takes to accomplish actions." While most of us do not have time to meditate during our workday,  it is possible to incorporate some mindfulness in the knowledge facilitation we do. 

I posit that mindless facilitation of our knowledge processes serves to severely short-change the results of our ultimate knowledge actions. Here are the steps you can take to encourage more mindfulness:

1. Disregard preconceptions.  At my organization, a preconception that I came across was, use "anything except SharePoint".  This emotional reaction to a certain tool created an unnecessary barrier imposed on creating a successful knowledge solution.  "Can't we just send an email?" is often the sentiment that is pondered when knowledge workers are asked to use an alternate tool for knowledge sharing. With the amount, depth and breadth of knowledge assets that we must navigate, we are no longer able to just send an email to effectively share knowledge with the appropriate weight and significance.  Receiving email is so commonplace, often important knowledge is overlooked or played down.  We must factor in staff's preconceptions about tools and become better stewards of the knowledge we "push" out.
    
2. Practice Alternative Exploration.  Take time to observe how you are obtaining knowledge.  Are you using the same old method?  "We have done it that way for 20 years! Why should we change?"  Individuals that do not explore new and different ways of doing things do not evolve intellectually.
   Maybe an alternative method will spur an improved or innovative result.  Rather than defaulting to old processes, research other ways to perform the task.  Discuss task with coworkers, collaborate with the community.  Build some additional alternative exploration time into the schedule.  It is likely that taking an extra moment to notice the present before acting will result in a solution that saves time in the long run.

 

3. Notice the Better Result. Often, we do not give ourselves enough  credit when something we do ends up with a better solution.  Find a way to measure your actions.  Years ago, my division was mandated to conduct Level 3 Evaluations for 20% of our courses.  According to the Kirkpatrick Model: Four Levels of Learning Evaluation, level 3 evaluates the change in behavior of students once they returned to the job after training.
   Although many reported subjective assertions, we decided to use a different way to document and justify these efforts by using SharePoint.  We created an email-enabled  SharePoint list for staff  blind-copy the list  on all emails send out by the staff requesting  these evaluations.  Benefits seen: All emails sent by all staff for this effort were captured in the SharePoint list automatically with no extra additional effort by the staff member sending the emails.  Standardizing the Subject line of the emails, the list documented who sent the emails, to whom, for which course the evaluation was sent out for, when, and how many persons received  the survey request, and how many responded.  The data was collected automatically.
   
   Other things to note about the task: How long did the action take last time?  Can you improve the time?  Survey the recipients on the knowledge used.  Was the information referenced useful?  Collect stories from individuals where an alternative path led to a better result.

 

4. Recognition.  When improvements or an increase are realized, make sure that there are public recognitions on that.  How else can you get individuals behind practicing mindfulness?  Publicize the alternative stories that you have .collected.  Mention the person in the newsletter.  Have the CEO make a personal call or mention the name of the individual.  If we are encouraging taking extra time to  facilitate mindful knowledge actions, Individuals will resist this change unless they see the benefits.

How mindful is your staff's knowledge facilitation?  Here is a short survey you can use to find out.

A Mindfulness Knowledge Facilitation Survey:

1. When performing a task, where do you obtain the knowledge to perform the job?
1. Determine the knowledge In my head
2. Look at the person who did it or the process used last time and repeat
3. Both of the above and I also research multiple ways to perform the task.
2. Do you ever use an alternative method rather than the standard process used last time?
1. No, using the same process is the best
2. Yes, but rarely.  New processes take more time to discover and implement
3. Yes, we have found that using alternative methods have led to valuable innovations.

If you selected 2c, take a moment to detail what you did differently and how the result was better.

3. Do you currently have time to be mindful and explore alternative methods for handling tasks?
1. No, time to complete the task must be shortened at all costs.
2. Yes if I make sure the project manager is aware of the need for additional time.
3. Yes, extra time for alternative exploration is always available at my discretion

In the Part 3: Encouraging Organizational Mindful Knowledge Facilitation

Rethinking Knowledge Facilitation: Mindful Knowledge Work

Are you mindful of your knowledge facilitation?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

1. Introduction: It is been shown that the knowledge of an organization inside the files, databases, and heads of the people make up the most valuable assets of the organization.  Yet, when it comes to recognizing the importance of Knowledge Management, there are still difficulties with getting agreement on committing resources.  Why is this?  I assert that the creating, accessing, referring to, enhancing of, replication of and sharing of the knowledge stores is so commonplace and ubiquitous that we do not even realize that we are doing it anymore. 
    
   Getting things done is simply taking the steps to do it.  To get tasks done, we automatically consult our knowledge stores (in our head), the external knowledgebases we know about, and ask others what they know.  Things continue to get done, so everything is fine, right? 
   
   Even though things get completed there are significant gaps where the tasks could have been done better, faster, more comprehensively, shared more widely, done more collaboratively, and fostered more innovation.  By default we do not notice the nuances of our knowledge work where we could capitalize on the efficiency and expediency.  These slivers are where KM could be further embedded into our existing processes, resulting in greater quantifiable and qualitative results.
2. Practicing Mindful Knowledge Facilitation can close the gaps.  MKF is maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of the knowledge being absorbed, used, consulted, and shared while remaining cognizant of potential adjustments to leverage improvements and greater harmony. 
3. Mindful Knowledge Work Campaign
   There needs to be a concentrated effort to reveal the benefits of being mindful of our knowledge work.  We must rethink knowledge facilitation.
1. Communication and Change Management - Launch a public campaign presenting the mindful knowledge facilitation basic guidelines.  Meet with divisions, offices, teams, knowledge nodes, and individuals to discuss and craft the mindful way forward.
2. Create and disseminate Mindful Knowledge Facilitation Guidelines
1. Mindful knowledge access
2. Mindful knowledge enhancement
3. Mindful knowledge sharing
4. Metrics on Improvements expected from mindful knowledge facilitation
4. Regular Knowledge Awareness Events
1. Knowledge Management Awareness Week,  Presentation
   Annually during the 3rd week in September. About the Week:  Several activities (See Agenda on KM Awareness Week Outline) are suggested for each day of the week.  Each KM Leader can host as many or as little as he or she wants.  There is no requirement to host an event during the week, although scheduling an event during the week makes sense. This is a perfect event to launch and bolster MKF.
2. Share Fairs, Knowledge Cafés, Working Out Loud Circles

1. Anticipated Results
1. Individual workers are aware of, ponder benefits of, and explore innovative strategies on their knowledge facilitation.
2. Organizations define better knowledge facilitation, track metrics where benefits are seen, and publicly recognize better knowledge work.
3. Quantifiable performance improvement will follow.

1. Call to action:
1. Implement Mindful Knowledge Facilitation
2. Urge all organizations to implement Knowledge Management Awareness Week during the 3rd week of September.
3. Provide templates and toolkits for organizations to customize and use.
4. Create and maintain a Discussion board to log ideas and results.
5. Track implementations

What benefits can your organization reveal if everyone was practicing Mindful Knowledge Facilitation?