Knowledge Harvests!

Knowledge Harvests - what a great term! Authors Katrina Pugh and Nancy Dixon define a “knowledge harvest as a systematic, facilitated gathering and circulation of knowledge”. I stumbled upon their article on the topic in the May edition of HBR (Harvard Business Review). It was in the Forethought section of the magazine which looks at ideas and trends on the business horizon. Let me recap my now limited understanding of a knowledge harvest and then offer some thoughts on its challenge to us as we seek to leverage E2.0.

From their short article, I believe that a knowledge harvest is a simple but purposeful and interactive approach to a postmortem analysis or debriefing. The basic idea is that the intentional review of a business occurrence or process will yield helpful information or insights for the future; hence - a knowledge harvest!

However, there is a twist. The authors say that the first step in the process is to recruit a set of “knowledge seekers” who want to learn from the harvest. They go on to characterize these people.

Because seekers are self-interested, they ask tough, exploratory questions of knowledge originators, extracting important nuances – not only about how a project was executed but also about how costs built up, how knowledge might be applied elsewhere, what worked and what didn’t, and so on.

A knowledge facilitator leads these seekers through a process of interacting with the knowledge originators to derive key information and valued insights. The knowledge facilitator then works with the seeker to package the content and distribute it around the company.
My question is whether or not our E2.0 applications are focused enough on these knowledge seekers. Do we have people who are clearly articulating what they need to know in order to do their jobs better? Do our apps help to connect these knowledge seekers with the appropriate knowledge originators within the business? I have a feeling that a lot of our Web 2.0 content is produced by knowledge facilitators who are doing screen scrapes from knowledge originators with no idea whatsoever of the needs of knowledge seekers! What do you think?

I do believe that we have the tools and technologies but I’m not sure that we have them working together to support this interesting approach of a knowledge harvest.

Centre Pompidou as an E2.o Analogy!

I'll begin with my conclusion. The transparency enabled by E2.o could unleash a thrust of unstoppable execution within our organizations. Do we dare? Can we handle it? Let me share my thoughts.

In the recent April 2008 HBR piece by David Collins and Michael Rukstad titled, Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?, the authors offer the following visualization of the importance of having a clearly articulated strategy:

Think of a major business as a mound of 10,000 iron filings, each one representing an employee. If you scoop up that many filings and drop them onto a piece of paper, they’ll be pointing in every direction. It will be a big mess: 10,000 smart people working hard and making what they think are the right decisions for the company—but with the net result of confusion…

If you pass a magnet over those filings, what happens? They line up. Similarly, a well-understood statement of strategy aligns behavior within the business. It allows everyone in the organization to make individual choices that reinforce one another, rendering those 10,000 employees exponentially more effective.

The article goes on to delineate the elements of a clear strategy and outlines both the analysis and supporting documents that should be shared throughout one’s organization to take advantage of that strategy (you should also check out Dave Norton and Bob Kaplan's Strategy Map). Collins and Rukstad then make some observations that scream E2.o. However, I believe that there is an oversight (my opinion!) that pulls up shy of the true opportunity that we have. The article reads:

The process of developing the strategy and then crafting the statement that captures its essence in a readily communicable manner should involve employees in all parts of the company and at all levels of the hierarchy. The wording of the strategy statement should be worked through in painstaking detail. In fact, that can be the most powerful part of the strategy development process. It is usually in heated discussions over the choice of a single word that a strategy is crystallized and executives truly understand what it will involve.

The authors begin the preceeding vignette talking about employees in all parts of the company helping to develop the strategy and, then, they end the same paragraph with only "the executives being involved in the heated discussions" that allow them [executives] to truly internalize what the strategy will involve? Is there no way that we can allow the heated discussions to be transparent throughout the organization?

Imagine if we could have the good, the bad, and the ugly of the strategy dialog open to the organization - like the Centre Pompidou in Paris – where all of the supporting structure and systems, such as the escalators, are exposed to the outside world.

Color-coded ducts are attached to the building's west façade... blue for air, green for fluids, yellow for electricity cables and red for movement and flow. The transparency of the west main façade allows people to see what is going on inside the centre from the piazza, a vast esplanade that the architects conceived of as an area of continuity, linking the city and the centre. [quote link - Centre Pompidou website, picture link - Wikipedia]

I can only dream of being in an organization that is designed to run itself with the transparency and intentionality to always “link the city and the centre”. I believe that a liberal use of E2.o applied to the strategy development process could lead to a profound mobilization of the human capital within our organizations. But I understand the fears that run wild within our corporations -> our competitiors will get our information!

As Andrew McAfee concludes at the end of a post in 2006 on E2.o Insecurities,

Imagine two competitors, one of which has the guiding principle "keep security risks and discoverability to a minimum," the other of which is guided by the rule "make it as easy as possible for people to collaborate and access each others' expertise." Both put in technology infrastructures appropriate for their guiding principles. Take all IT, legal, and leak-related costs into account. Which of these two comes out ahead over time? I know which one I'm betting on.

In conclusion, the transparency enabled by E2.o could unleash a thrust of unstoppable execution within our organizations. Do you agree?

What do you think? Have you seen any real-life successes in "open strategy" dialog, please tell us.