The map is not the territory

In a recent discussion about NLP (remember that? wasn't that a thing big back in the nineties, although I've noticed it is still quite something in sales and customer contact ('agent', arghh) training) I had recently, I became aware of the similarities with expertise mapping that was popular in the eighties, but now is back again as one of the solutions to capture knowledge of scarce (and often ageing) experts in organisations. Mapping expertise is basically about trying to understand the models that an expert is using to solve problems. These models may be as varied as for example maps of people that can be contacted to provide help, logical structures such as cause-effect links to help refine the problem or decision trees to actually solve the problem itself.

An expertise mapper is like a neurolinguistic programmer, who stops his work after the 'modelling phase', without the ambition to reprogram...

Of course, the map is never the territory (to quote somebody who is also quoted a lot in the NLP world), but we must assume that experts have developed better maps than us normal earthlings, so the effort may be worthwhile.

Knowledge auditing from a risk perspective

Many clients ask us to help undertake knowledge audits (with a focus on critical analysis of the organisation's knowledge portfolio) or knowledge management audits, with a focus on analysing knowledge management processes). In any case, I have learned that a risk-based approach helps to better appreciate an organisation's dependencies on its knowledge assets (either human or artefacts). Asking questions such as: 'what will happen to us if we leave things as is in this particular knowledge area?', 'what are the costs if our experts in this knowledge area leave our organisation?'

You might think that such a risk-based approach results in overly 'protective' knowledge management strategies and implementations, focusing on more capture and securing of knowledge assets.

However, processes of knowledge generation and renewal to create new business opportunities could be seen as equally important from a risk perspective: not paying attention to opportunities is a risk as well!

Therefore, auditing activities should preferably analyse risks and opportunities relating to current levels of knowledge quality, knowledge capture and knowledge sharing in key knowledge areas.

Risks may vary as much as opportunities may differ: on the negative side you may find that your main experts become overburdened, that the speed of acquiring new competences is too slow, that lessons learned are not captured so that costly mistakes are repeated. On the positive side, you may discover that you hold some important IP that could be exploited in a new context and you may conclude that if you would link up some teams in your organisation, time-to-delivery could improve substantially.

Once you get a handle on risks and opportunities such as these, your knowledge management action plan has found its foundation and you can start to set goals for each of your key knowledge areas.

Big red thing

Flying back from Zagreb via Munich on wednesday evening last week, I was looking out of the window of the aircraft and noticed a big red object shining in the dark. It took me some time to realise it was the Allianz Arena, radiating that there was a Bayern Munchen home game going on while we passed it in the sky. Beautiful sight and amazing architecture!

Why Zagreb? I was addressing an audience there in friendly Croatia....this time I delivered a talk on implementing learning cycles in business processes.

Back on the blog, addressing the world ;-)

After a long period of absence, a sign of life. After a month's holiday in France in August, returned to business and immediately got flooded in all sorts of projects (as usual). Work took me as far as Bangkok, where I worked with a group of very friendly and hospitable Thai, delivering a course in knowledge auditing and knowledge mapping. Some action pics were taken during a public seminar over there on Oct 20, small me on stage in the distance..: