Lisa is my inspiration for knowledge management

Since I first found her many years ago now I haven’t let Lisa out of my sight – she’s my inspiration for knowledge management.

Okay, I have to confess Lisa isn’t a person, she’s the personification of an idea and a mnemonic that easily reminds me of what I need to act on. She stands for Learn, Innovate, Share, Apply. If we can cover those bases in knowledge management then we’re doing a lot right.

Learn

This is about learning from experience and continuous improvement. Our minds learn from experience, data and stimulation in the sense that our mental models of the world are shaped by them. But our minds learn a lot of false bias as well as better understanding. So what matters here is a conscious and mindful habit and process of taking stock – for example an After Action Review or Lessons Learnt process would be part of ‘Learn’. Learn also reminds me everything else that Learn can mean including formal training but also the many other ways individuals and groups can learn.

Innovate

This is about being open to new ideas rather than relying solely on what we’ve always done and how we’ve always done it. Innovation is about turning knowledge into value. There is a lot often said here about the ‘ideation’ aspect of innovation – coming up with the ideas. In my experience that is a tiny part of it and the greater part of innovation is about socialising ideas, testing them, improving them, implementing them and embedding them. It’s often a long slog to bring an idea into use and the real qualities it needs are things like resilience and persistence rather than sudden sparks of genius. Any idea about anything will do – the ideas don’t have to be ‘brand new’, it’s enough if they are ‘new to us’.

Share

The idea of sharing in knowledge is central to knowledge management. But I’ve learned that it has as much to do with being open to input as it has to do with volunteering it.

Apply

It matters to apply knowledge. Sounds obvious, but, in practice, it’s curious how often the knowledge is left on the shelf and the practice is something else. Think of almost any public sector scandal and there’s probably a failure to apply procedures and guidelines that were already established as ‘best practice’ rather than there being a complete lack of knowledge as to what should have been done. So Apply is about using the methods and tools and consulting the most experienced people. A reminder to do this.

Learn, Innovate, Share, Apply – all facets of the same thing and all interwoven with each other. Lisa is one of the lenses or checklists I always use when approaching any knowledge management issue. Working through each aspect brings out issues, ideas and solutions. And it works at every level because knowledge is fractal – ah, that’s for another article!