actKM Day 2 (and that's 50)

Wow! My 50th post!

As you are probably aware I am not the most frequent of bloggers so to get to 50 is a bit of a milestone for me.

After recovering from an evening of fun a frivolity (actKM Collaboration Cabaret) it was back to the uncomfortable chairs for another day of sharing and learning.

Day two was another great day at the 2008 actKM Conference with highlights including:

• Serena Joyner wrapping up the actKM Collaboration Cabaret. A great effort at pre-conference collaboration mixed with social activities at the event. We have to do this again next year.
• Laurie Lock Lee gave an insight and example activity of Value Network Analysis. I had read up on this a while back but had never attempted one. Good props and interesting exercise tp help produce a Partnership Scorecard. Thanks Laurie.
• Matthew Hodgson shared his perspective of the evolution of KM.
• I got up and danced around (presentation).
• Dave Snowden shared some interesting perspectives on narrative and storytelling and shared some of his current projects. Always a delight to hear Dave's stories. The man can talk.
• The day was finished off with a Reverse Brainstorming Activity facilitated by David Gurteen. A good fun exercise although I am not too sure about the whistle. Every time it was blown I looked around to see who had been fouled.

It all ended too quickly and I eagerly anticipate the next opportunity to get together with my peers again. Thanks to all those who attended. It was great to get aquainted and to reaquaint. Well done to the organisers. You guys dun real good!!

I was just uploading my slides from yesterday's workshop when I came across this wonderful little Presentation Pack widget they provide (funnily enought it's called the Egowidget) that allows you to package up the presentations you have on slideshare and present them in your blog.

| Get your Presentation Pack

Fun for the whole family.

Cory

actKM Conference

In a couple of weeks I will be making my way down to Canberra for my first actKM Conference.

I was unlucky not to go last year and kicking myself because it got some rave reviews.

This year they asked if I would like to do something at the conference and I suggested I would like to run a Peer Assist on doing After Action Reviews. This will provide people with a "2 for 1" in using a technique to research another technique.

As a lead up I have circulated a request to submit your experiences in implementing/planning/running/participating in AARs. Feel free to share as many of your war stories as you like.

You can also collaborate on the conferences Ning site.

I hope to see you there.

Thanks

Cory

'True' Learnings

Following on from last post I will continue on with the second point I made in presenting feedback to a number of Project Managers in an Enterprise PMO upon studying a number of their post implementation reviews.

Last post we talked about Blind Optimism and how despite PMs having the worst project in the world, they tend to be blindly optimistic about the outcome of the next.

This time I want to talk about the identification of 'true' learnings.

what I had discovered from studying a number of Post Implementation Review reports is that where challenges were faced during the delivery of a project, the workaround that got them over the line was highlighted.

Now this knowledge has value and can provide someone who finds themselves in a similar situation, a description of the experience and decision to hopefully improve their chances of success.

What was glaringly omitted is what I termed the True Learning. I described the true learning being the actual root cause of the challenge faced. By describing this you can give the gift of foresight to a PM by allowing them to be aware of the root cause and pre-cursors to the challenge in order to mitigate the risk of it occurring.

We have introduced After Action Review (AAR) questions and the 5 Whys technique to help people identify these root causes. But it is not just enough to identify them. We need to ensure they are shared and available for people who are no longer Blindly Optimistic.