Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 51, by Joe Podolsky:
From: joe_podolsky@hp.com
Date: 18 March 1996
Subject: Learning for Learning's Sake - NOT!
I occasionally log on to a listserv on the Internet dedicated to organizational learning. It's a chance to "listen-in" on conversations between very bright people who generate about 20 messages per day. Most of the ideas fall into the category of brilliant but not easy to apply; they assume that learning is a value akin to goodness and, therefore, needs no further justification.
Fortunately, I've already been down this road in the 1980's with HP's quality process. Early on, we accepted the "do quality and profits will follow" philosophy. And then, a few years later, some senior managers noisily pointed out that the correlation, based on the Quality Maturity System tool that we used to measure quality, was vague at best. There were divisions that got super scores on their QMS reviews but were suffering financially, and then there were divisions that were growing and prospering but suffered poor QMS scores. HP's quality community, to its credit, accepted this feedback as a continuous improvement opportunity. QMS now recognizes results as necessary but not sufficient for a good score, and QMS as a management tool has flourished.
I'm afraid that the learning organization community hasn't had their wake-up call yet. But a short article in the April:May 1996 issue of _Fast Company_ might at least set the alarm.
The article is titled "Strategy As If Knowledge Mattered," and is by two McKinsey & Company directors, Brook Manville and Nathaniel Foote. Their consulting experience has led them to five pragmatic operating principles.
"1. Knowledge-based strategies begin with strategy, not knowledge. The new form of intellectual capital is meaningless without the old-fashioned objectives of serving customers and beating competitors. If a company does not have its fundamentals in place, all the corporate learning, information technology, or knowledge databases are merely costly diversions...
"2. Knowledge-based strategies aren't strategies unless you can link them to traditional measures of performance ... if knowledge can't be connected to measurable improvements in performance - including improvements to the bottom line - then the knowledge revolution will be short-lived, and deservedly so..." The authors list some examples of strategy-linked knowledge applications such as using information sharing in concurrent design to dramatically shorten time to market, or by using insights gained from historic patterns to focus and improve sales efforts. "The point of a knowledge-based strategy is not to save the world; it's to make money...
"3. Executing a knowledge-based strategy is not about managing knowledge; it's about nurturing people with knowledge...The trick is to...tap the (tacit) knowledge locked in people's experience...In contrast, most companies have elaborate systems to capture and share their 'explicit knowledge'...This kind of knowledge never translates into a winning strategy...
"4. Organizations leverage knowledge through networks of people who collaborate - not through networks of technology that interconnect...Interconnectivity begins with people who want to connect. After that, tools and technology can make the connection...The key to this "worknet" is that its members have compelling reasons to share their knowledge when asked...
"5. People networks leverage knowledge through organizational 'pull' rather than centralized information 'push'...The 'pull-not-push' principle suggests that problems need to be framed and articulated specifically. For this reason, knowledge-based strategies should emphasize on-the-job learning rather than traditional training, 'just-in-time' learning which takes place in the moment of actual need..."
All these principles, but especially the last one, demands of us IT people flexibility and rapid responsiveness, which is still one more reason to focus evolutionary development rather than on meeting the needs of "complete" specifications.
Likewise, we may want to populate our data warehouses in an evolutionary manner. At the very least, we should probably keep track of how often specific data are accessed so we can concentrate our system improvement efforts on what matters most to our customers, regardless of what we, in our technical wisdom, think they should think is important.
I think that knowledge is important, crucial, in fact. But it has always been thus and always will be. Knowledge is what changed stones into tools, ore into bridges, and sand into microcircuits. The key is the ability to use knowledge to turn something ordinary into something of value. And, while value can be measured in different ways in different settings, in business we measure with money. To justify investments in "knowledge," we must build the chain that shows "results" come out at the other end, results stated in terms of money.
HP is generally considered a learning company, but do you feel that your local piece of HP follows these operating principles? Can you share with us any examples that illustrate the truth of these principles, or, better yet, can you give us some examples of where they have failed? Do you have other principles about knowledge and learning that you can share with us?
Regards,
Joe
^Z