No, not a reference to Flight Simulator or Windows with Wings, but here I am talking about the benefits of sharing knowledge and learning's. Flying would be very difficult and painful if pilots didn't learn from someone who had done it all before – and that is the point – sharing the solution of problems rather than re-inventing them. This is brought out very well in the recent update of the well known knowledge management book Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management From Leading and Learning Organizations by Chris Collison, Geoff Parcell, Capstone Publishing Ltd, November, 2004. These guys have spent a long time with BP and other organisations looking at how to take the much doubted idea of KM and making it useful and pragmatic. They point out that it is not rocket science and is not a question of just slapping in technology, but is more a question of getting good learning practices embedded in an organisation so that lessons and ideas are shared. This is a well-written and very clear book with many good ideas and well worth a read.
This update of their earlier book has many more practical hints and stories. Learning before, during and after a project is emphasised as well as making sure you tap the right people. BP have their own tool, "BP Connect", but Microsoft's "SharePoint Portal Server" with it's concept of "My Sites" and User Profiles also supports the same concept of a person advertising their own expertise and having it made available to the company as a whole. In this way, finding the right person becomes much easier.
Communities, especially Communities of Practice are also discussed as useful tools in spreading knowledge. This is an area Conchango would strongly agree with through considerable experience and is something we use in-house as a way of keeping each other abreast of new developments and approaches.
A key message from it is to make sure that you learn from those who have already solved a problem before you start to tackle it yourself. Of course being a consultant I would advocate this approach because in a way that is a key benefit of using a consultancy – i.e. to gain from the fact that consultants have seen similar things done else where and can pass this on, for a fee of course!