Knowledge Management

Time for a learning tune-up?

September 7, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

For many people, it's September, not January, that feels like the start of a new year.

That new school year feeling – well, it's just hard to shake.

Pause for a quick review or tune-up of your learning plan for the year ahead.

Start here:

1. What skills or knowledge do you want to add between now and next September?

2. What skills or knowledge can you let go, if they're now out of date?

Sometimes to make room for new, we have to let go of knowledge we no longer need.

3. Are there things you must learn this year, like it or not?

Sometimes the learning we want to do brings with it prerequisites we're not very excited about. How will you fit that less interesting but necessary learning into your schedule?

Here's what others advise about the important subject of learning and mastery:

The too soft teacher reinforces the learner's natural wish to retreat and stay safe. The teacher must know when to let the learner struggle. Risk brings its own rewards.
Marilyn Ferguson

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.
Dee Hock

What we want to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
G B Shaw

Treat people as if they were what they might be, and you will help them become capable of being.
Goethe

The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up. The next stage is hard work.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.
John Dewey

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, Musings, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes, Strategic Planning

It’s beautiful. Does it work?

August 9, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

I'm replacing a few well-worn, well-loved items. Or trying to.

They're just purses, but this experience is an example of principles covered in the book, "The Design of Everyday Things," written by Donald Norman a few years ago.

The purses I'm trying to replace had a clean, classic design.

Just the right size and shape, nice leather, they didn't have a lot of flourishes, logos and doo-dads.

More than that, though, they WORKED. Perfectly.

Just enough pockets, in all the right places, and all the right sizes for a phone, pens, and a few other oft-needed retrieved and stored items.

Finding a replacement for a few simple purses should be easy, right?

Not so, I discovered.

And, it turns out, this is a more common problem than I suspected. A client has a similar problem, unfortunately. It's just a hassle neither of us needs or wants (I liked shopping at one point. Not anymore).

And because of that, I bought one recently that seemed "perfect enough."

I should have taken it for a test drive.

It was beautiful, elegant, and vaguely intriguing, with a slightly unusual shape. And it was on sale.

The problem with that beautiful purse? For all its surface elegance, it does not WORK. It's a junker, a clunker, in use.

It's too deep, too subterranean in design and yet, too compact to find things easily without unpacking and then repacking it, multiple times a day. (It's a bit like having a tightly-packed grocery bag that has to be completely unloaded just to retrieve one simple thing).

This beautiful-but-it-doesn't-work bag reminds me of something my mother used to say about beautiful buildings.

"This probably won the architects an award, but they clearly didn't have to LIVE in the building they designed!" she would say in exasperation when something created more hassles than it should have, in use.

Do you know the feeling, too?

Think back to the last product or service you bought that fit solidly in the category of, "It's beautiful, but it doesn't WORK."

- Was there a simple design change that might have made all the difference in usability of the product or service?

- Did your experience change your likelihood of recommending that brand to other buyers in the future?

Filed Under: Business Results, Customer Focus, Knowledge Management, Leadership, Process Management

Learning and action and change

August 3, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Learning – real learning – is an
active, fully-engaged experience.

Such learning may be sought, or it may
be brought by work and life experiences. And by virtue of that, such learning
almost inevitably brings about change. And action.

That's because when you’ve really
learned, you almost can’t stay the same.

Here’s what a few others have to say
about the learning and action and change:

The speed of sustainable change is
always less than the speed of learning.

Nigel
Freedman

It is not enough to have a good mind.
The main thing is to use it well.

Rene
Descartes

The Noah Principle: Predicting rain
doesn’t count – building arks counts.

John
Ferguson

The truth of what I say should be told
by what I do.

William
Pollard

Filed Under: Business Results, Knowledge Management, Leadership, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes

Assumptions, assumptions…

July 24, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Assumptions. They're risky to make.

They open up some paths of action, and close off many others.

If you choose to make assumptions, know what they are. Then check to see if you're right. You may very well be surprised.

Here's the advice others offer on the subject of assumptions and the problems they can lead to if they are not valid:

The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
Paul Broca

Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.
John Sales

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
Henry Winkler

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are and the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.
Stephen Covey

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.
William Phelps

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
Igor Stravinsky

The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of them.
John Seely Brown

And if you made assumptions that were wrong and are trying to work your way through the trouble that caused:

Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument.
Zachariah Tutu (Desmond Tutu's father)

Temper is what gets most of us in trouble. Pride is what keeps us there.
Unknown

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Knowledge Management, Leadership, People at Work, People watching, Quotes

Random thoughts about nature, learning, curiosity and courage

July 14, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

"Just because" quotes here, found while researching a few articles and blog posts.

These thoughts may well provoke a few random and interesting thoughts of your own:

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are
endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor,
vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep
inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our
trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk
curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals
the human spirit.
e.e. cummings

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
e.e. cummings

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
e.e. cummings

Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.
Dr. Linus Pauling

My alma mater was books, a good library – I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
Malcolm X

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Ellen Parr

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, Musings, People watching, Quotes

Conducting rapid-cycle user tests

May 27, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Seeking user or reader feedback?

Just give it to someone who's ready to go out the door soon. Pre-arrange it, though, so you don't just spring it on them.

Watch how they read, react, and interact with the product you've created.

Listen to their words.

Try to understand what they're not telling you, as well as what they are.

What I discovered in two recent tests was a bit amusing. And the users' feedback was far more valuable than they knew.

Quick tests and fast-cycle feedback are representative – more than we might guess – of users' work and attention environments in the busy lives that people live now.

Give it a go.

Filed Under: Customer Focus, Knowledge Management, People at Work, Process Management, Serendipity

Concentrating to move forward

May 23, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Scattered thoughts?

A "to-do" list that you dread?

Settle down.

Pick one thing.

Start there.

Let the work guide you.

Focus.

Concentrate.

Move in to move on, move beyond.

Especially if something went wrong.

Figure out why so you don't repeat the past.

Now let it go.

Move into the future, instead.

Here's how others see this advice, as well:

When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.
Michael Leboeuf

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems – not people; to focus your energies on answers – not excuses.
William Arthur Ward

Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.
Denis Waitley

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Ansel Adams

Filed Under: Business Results, Knowledge Management, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes

When “obvious” isn’t

May 20, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

"Do you want to know who wins?," I asked my husband about 3/4 of the way through the American Idol finals.

Twitter had provided me the answer seconds after the East Coast knew the results. Half our family HATES knowing the results before the end. Half of the family thinks it's fun.

And for American Idol context, my husband is an amused, some-time watcher.

I catch it regularly, as I do "The Amazing Race." I like to watch how the competitors handle the pressure:
- In the face of so much great competition, all collected in one place
- Under the bright lights
- On the big stage
- In the rapidly changing environment where, week by week, one of the competitors gets an much-unwanted ticket home

But back to the immediate American Idol moment: did my husband want to know who'd won?

"I think I know," my husband asserted, confidently.

"Who?" I asked.

"The obvious one," he answered.

But the "obvious one" wasn't.

When was the last time in your life when the "obvious" choice was ultimately incorrect?

Was the situation a significant one?

Or was it more like this American Idol circumstance – one in which it was fun to know the answer (for me, at least…not for my husband), and in light of that, to watch the story unfold, bit by bit?

It's important to periodically check your assumptions.

Ask yourself:
1. Do I really have as much information as I think I do?
2. Are my sources of information solid?
3. Have I interpreted the information that I have correctly?
4. Does something need to change, based on what seemed "obvious," but was not?

Filed Under: Business Results, Knowledge Management, Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

Making change

February 4, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

A friend was talking the other day about the wealth of changes underway at her company. As she spoke, I thought about the many changes I've helped companies to make…some at times of a downturn in the economy, others because the company's growth was exploding. In each case, the change was happening faster than the company could adapt to it on their own.

And I thought about the changes I've made in my professional and personal life. Some changes I welcomed or initiated. Others, almost unnoticed, crept quietly in. Still others, clearly uninvited, blasted through the door to stay, like it or not.

Some ways of making change are better than others.

Think about the ways you and your company typically handle it:

Do you face it?

Move toward it – or embrace it, even?

Or do you circle it warily before diving in?

Do you try, with all your might, to run away? (Yes, I've tried this one, too, on occasion. It rarely works).

Think back on a very successful change you've made in the past, whether in your professional or personal life.

What happened to make it work well? What, specifically, did you do to make the process more effective?

- Were you guided by a vision, a theme or team rallying cry that kept you focused through the ups and downs that inevitably accompanied the process?

- Did you use a series of experiments, beta tests, and enhancements to adapt to change in smaller "chunks," allowing you to adapt, bit by bit, to what you discovered along the way?

- Or did you create a solid plan and then focus just on each task at hand, digging in and plowing through each one – like it or not – until success was at hand?

- Or did you completely "wing it?"

Whatever you learned in the past, tap those valuable lessons the next time you're looking for ways to adapt, accelerate or embrace the inevitable process of change.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Knowledge Management, Leadership, People at Work

Creativity, in spite of, because of

January 31, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

When we’re working our way, collectively, through challenging times, does it seem to you as if creativity is a luxury, something that has to go, carved away, unceremoniously, as “non-essential”?

In a word, the answer to that idea is “NO.”

At times like this, creativity can be your saving grace, THE way to make a way that’s better now, and for the long run, too.

And creativity can be at its highest when resources are challenged, limited, constrained.

Here’s what others have had to say about the subject of creativity in the midst of constraint:

Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Know your limits. Also know how to break them.
Geraint Straker

Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest.
Frank Lloyd Wright

In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.
Henri Matisse

Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
José Ortega Y Gasset

What is not constrained is not creative.
Philip Johnson-Laird

All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.
Anne Lamott, about the 1″ picture frame she keeps on her desk as a reminder about how to start getting unstuck when she feels stuck

Filed Under: Business Results, Current Affairs, Knowledge Management, Musings, Quotes, Serendipity