Whoa, Nellie! That Thing Looks, Walks and Quacks Just Like a Duck! I Wonder What It Is?

George Ball - January 9, 2002 "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck." - Senator Joseph McCarthy, in a 1952 speech, suggesting a method for identifying communists and communist sympathizers.

A couple of recent news items got me to thinking about this famous and often used quotation, and--believe it or not--how it might help you jump-start your knowledge management efforts.

 

The first item was a December 31, 2001, article from the regular "Web @ Work" feature in the Wall Street Journal. The article described Procter & Gamble Co.'s efforts to roll out new software to allow product marketing managers to share data and work more collaboratively. At the heart of the effort is a new central library for storing and accessing information.

 

"We have bright people who have success stories developing throughout the world, but we lack a systematic way of sharing and reapplying their thinking quickly," the article quotes James Stengel, P&G global marketing officer. "Despite all the data we generate as a company or within a specific brand, we find ourselves sometimes making decisions based on incomplete data because the data isn't where we need it, when we need it."

 

 

Ain't knowledge fun? McCarthy, Joseph Raymond (politician) (1908-1957). American politician who led a campaign against Communist subversion in the early 1950s. McCarthy's charges were often not well substantiated, and the United States Senate voted to censure him for the tactics he used.   McCarthy was born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on November 14, 1908, and educated at Marquette University. He practiced law in Wisconsin until 1939, when he was elected circuit-court judge. During World War II he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, attaining the rank of captain during service in the Pacific theater of operations. In 1946 he was elected on the Republican ticket to the U.S. Senate and was reelected in 1952. McCarthy first attracted national attention in February 1950, with the charge that the Department of State had been infiltrated by Communists. Although his accusation was never substantiated, during the next three years he repeatedly accused various high-ranking officials of subversive activities. In 1953, as chairman of the Senate subcommittee on investigations, McCarthy continued his probe of alleged Communist activities, and in April 1954 he accused the secretary of the army of concealing foreign espionage activities. In rebuttal the secretary stated that members of the subcommittee staff had threatened army officials in efforts to obtain preferential treatment for a former unpaid consultant of the subcommittee who had been drafted.   During the ensuing Senate investigations, which were widely publicized in the press and given nationwide radio and television coverage, McCarthy was cleared of the charges against him but was censured by the Senate for the methods he had used in his investigations and for his abuse of certain senators and Senate committees. His influence both in the Senate and on the national political scene diminished steadily thereafter, although he remained in the Senate until his death in Bethesda, Maryland, May 2, 1957. Source: encarta.msn.com

Compounding the problem is that during the course of a typical P&G project, which can last 18 to 24 months, about 30 to 50 percent of the people working on the project change, the company says.

 

The interesting thing to me is that nowhere in the article was the project described as being about knowledge management, even though the project's goals clearly encompassed all four of the possible objectives of knowledge management:

 

• Innovation--find and nurture new ideas; bring people together in virtual development teams; create forums for brainstorming and collaboration
• Responsiveness--give people access to the information they need, when and where they need it, so they can solve problems more quickly, make better decisions and respond more rapidly to changing market conditions
• Productivity--capture and share best practices and other reusable knowledge assets to reduce errors, shorten cycle times and minimize duplication of effort
• Competency--develop skills and expertise through on-the-job/online training and distributed learning

This makes me wonder: If they don't recognize this effort as being all about knowledge management, what might they miss as they engineer the processes to be enabled by this software, the KM processes of capture, evaluate, synthesize, organize, distribute and apply (CESODA)?

 

On the surface it sounds like they're focused mainly on capture and distribute, but what about evaluate, synthesize, organize and apply?

For example: Do they have experts combing the data and synthesizing and organizing the true best practices in a way that makes them readily applicable in the field on new projects? You don't want people replicating half-baked ideas, or ideas that may be inappropriate (i.e., for different countries and cultures). What about system and process training: Are they adequately training new project teams in how to use the system to maximum advantage? Without good training, neither the capture nor the distribute processes will work well for very long, and you'll ultimately just wind up with a faster, higher-volume process of garbage-in, garbage-out.

 

If the answers to these (and other) questions are yes, then I would recommend that they recognize this effort as true knowledge management and then market it as such, because only then will they get the maximum bang for their buck throughout the organization as other entities learn about effective KM processes, and not just the new software (especially valuable for entities that won't be using or have access to the new software itself).

 

The second news item was the Tostidos Fiesta Bowl football game (January 1, 2002) between the University of Oregon (nicknamed the Ducks) and the University of Colorado (nicknamed the Buffaloes). In a pre-game interview, Buffalo coach Gary Barnett, when asked about how the four-week gap between the Buffaloes' last regular season game and the Fiesta Bowl affected the team's preparation, responded that he thought this team was better prepared for this particular game than any other team and game he had ever coached.

The Ducks then went on to completely dominate the Buffaloes in every aspect of the game, offensive and defensive. The final score was 38-16, and as Keith Jackson would say, "Whoa Nellie, it wasn't even that close." At the end of the game, when asked about the blow-out, Coach Barnett said, "I don't have any explanation." Well, I have one possible explanation: A breakdown in the team's knowledge management processes.

 

 

Ain't knowledge fun? part deux Keith Jackson has been a radio and television sports broadcaster since 1952. His first college football game was Stanford at Washington State (Stanford won, 14-13). Famous for such phrases as "Whoa Nellie, that horse has left the barn," he is widely recognized as being among the best sports play-by-play announcers of all time.   Jackson initially spent 10 years at ABC affiliate KOMO in Seattle in news, sports and production. He moved from KOMO to ABC Radio West as sports director in 1964 and continued freelance work with ABC Sports before working full-time in 1966.   At the close of 1999, Keith Jackson was awarded the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Gold Medal, its highest honor; and named to the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame, the first broadcaster accorded these distinguished honors. Another first for Jackson was the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award from the American Football Coaches Association. He was also named National Sportscaster of the Year five successive times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. He is in the NSSA Hall of Fame, The National Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame and the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame.   Jackson was born and raised on a farm near the Georgia-Alabama state line. He served four years in the U.S. Marines, including time in China. He attended Washington State College with the intent to study police and political science, but graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism, learning his trade in the same studios that produced Edward R. Murrow, among others in the broadcast industry.   Source: espn.go.com

Yes, believe it or not, the successful preparation of a college football team is predicated on solid knowledge management, even if they don't call it that. Scouts will watch their opponents' games live, and films of opponents' games are available through a central repository. The abilities and statistics of an opponent's key players are charted, and every play and tendency is analyzed and documented. Then game plans are prepared, distributed and practiced. In other words, the entire CESODA process--capture, evaluate, synthesize, organize, distribute and apply--is in play.

 

What happened to the Buffaloes is clearly a result of a breakdown in a number of the steps of the end-to-end KM process. Most notably it appears to me that they mis-evaluated the speed of the Duck's offense and the strength of their defense, and as a result synthesized the wrong answers to the problems that they would encounter on the field. I would also like to point out that their KM processes have very unique organize, distribute and apply sub-processes, since these steps must typically be iterated real-time, in the heat of battle, and then of course they want to be capturing new data as a result of the application of the old (for future opponents with similar capabilities and tendencies).

 

Bottom line: KM is at work all over the place--practically anywhere you look--even if it's not being called that. Take the time to understand when and how it's happening in your organization (i.e., wherever you're expending resources in pursuit of one or more of the above KM objectives), and optimize the individual sub-processes, and then let everyone else know what you're doing and how you're doing it. Soon, you will undoubtedly have all your organization's KM ducks happily identified and quacking a merrier tune.

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