Show report
Techlearn
Pick of the Keynotes: Steve Kerr
Steve Kerr is an academic who worked for Jack Welch at GE
and is now the CLO at Goldman Sachs. His insights were focused
around knowledge management and learning. It was refreshing
to hear an academic turn practitioner sweep away the abstract
theory to concentrate on actual practice.
He started with a simple point - knowledge is a noun,
learning is a verb. At the individual level, ability x
motivation = performance. What causes people not to share?
Why do people who are competent and ethical, not share? The
barriers are hoarding, boasting, the NIH (not invented here)
syndrome, and so on.
You have to make knowledge sharing scalable and portable.
It's all about process, scalable process, and replicable process.
Make knowledge and learning portable. Don't think that because
you can't change everything you can't change something. The
trick is to have a 999 service, a low level staff member or
system that routes you to shared knowledge and learning. When
you dial 999 a person asks you what the problem is and routes
you to the solution, whether it's the police, a fire engine
or an ambulance. You don't get highly paid professionals routing
the requests.
In GE, hoarding was an integrity issue. Take the following
analogy. If I found out that you were hoarding company money
in your personal bank account, you'd get sacked. Yet, hoarding
knowledge is not seen in the same light. It should be. The
worst crime in GE was not to share ideas and knowledge.
Make information useful. Get decision making down to the
lowest level. He has implemented a RAMP programme, where RAMP
= WASTE:
| Reports |
DON'T produce reports that don't get read |
| Approvals |
DON'T sign-off if you've never reversed a decision |
| Meetings |
DON'T hold meetings where no decisions are made |
| Measures |
DON'T measure inputs, measure outputs and successes |
| Practises |
DON'T hold on to old practices, create the new |
People don't move information around because they don't want
to. You need a system and culture that makes knowledge flow.
This is largely down to good, simple processes.
On the measurement of learning his message was simple. 'Kirkpatrick
is a dead-end, a waste of time'. Measure end-points and outputs
i.e. business impact and successes:
'It doesn't matter if they liked the experience, as this
tells you nothing about learning (Level 1)
'…Or that they've learnt the knowledge, as this tells you
nothing about output (Level 2).
'…That their behaviour has changed is getting more useful
(Level 3) - but nobody does it.
'Level 4 is the only real measure.'
However, he was keener on specific qualitative and quantitative
measures within businesses.
Next>>
Pick of the Keynotes
Eliot Masie
Peter Senge
Dave Hopla
|
