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Make a List, Check it Twice
A checklist is one of the simplest tools for Knowledge Management, being a way to capture a sequence of tasks in a
predetermined order. Some might argue it's so simple, it's not worth serious consideration. A former fighter pilot of our acquaintance would disagree. He'd never consider a mission without the preflight
list.
You'll also find checklist advocates at The New England Journal of Medicine. An article published in its on-line edition describes a study in which surgical teams at eight hospitals adopted a simple, 19-item checklist. One year after making the list part of their SOP (so to speak), the average patient death rate fell more than 40%, and the rate of complications fell by a little more than 30%. The nature of the list is interesting, too. It included obvious things (like a requirement for the nursing staff to confirm that all necessary equipment was in place), as well as subtle things (such as a requirement for all present to introduce themselves and state their role in the procedure). Earlier studies have shown that communications breakdowns are fairly common in operating rooms, and junior staff are sometimes reluctant to speak up.
The improved outcomes can't be attributed to any one item, but stem from a combination of factors. One of them might also be a generally heightened awareness of patient safety, caused by the
study itself. If you're trying to share some kind of "know how," though, consider the value of a good list.
Knowledge Now!
The US Air Force is expanding the social networking capabilities of its Web-based knowledge sharing and
collaboration system. Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN) was launched in 2002 and is open to anyone with a .mil email address. It has some 300,000 registered users from various branches of the service, generating about 170,000 searches and 10 million page views per month. The basic content is built from user postings and organized according to Communities of Practice, which could be anything from F-18 tactics to procurement regulations. Users can search for existing information, or ask questions of other users in discussion forums.
The new social search features from Vivisimo let users tag, rate and comment on results, so the community's collective insights can be fed back into the index. That improves the results for the next user and helps AFKN achieve the objectives of any knowledge base: faster, more relevant results and a richer bed of content. The tags and ratings reflect the interaction of hundreds of thousands of people and provide a way for the system to grow smarter over time. You can read more here.
Academic Earth
Knowledge Management has always been closely aligned with Organizational Learning, but it also has some
overlap with individual learning and empowerment. There's something pretty interesting happening in the latter category at the website called Academic Earth.
Founded by social entrepreneur Richard Ludlow, Academic Earth is working to centralize on-line education resources by
presenting video lectures from some of the world's greatest scholars. Its goal is a simple but lofty one: to give everyone with an Internet connection access to a world-class education. It imagines
itself as the foundation for a user-friendly educational "ecosystem" that will inspire user contributions and make its content increasingly valuable.
The courses and lectures come from
institutions like Berkeley, Harvard and MIT, and cover subjects from Astronomy to Religion. Have you been thinking it might be time to brush up on your Classical Mechanics? Or maybe you're interested in An Introduction to Copyright Law. How about a lecture from the department of Entrepreneurship, about using everyday ingenuity in problem solving. Top-flight lectures, available on demand, for free. How cool is that?
TeamViewer
Within your particular circle, are you considered computer savvy? That's a relative concept, of course, but we
assume lots of our readers are technically inclined, since so much of our content has to do with the intersection of technology and process. It's not too big a stretch, then, to imagine that some of you
are on the receiving end of technical questions from family and friends. If so, you know the frustration of trying to help people sort out a problem on the telephone, when you really need to look over
their shoulder.
Professional technical support groups have been using remote control tools for years. The installation of some new wireless printers at Knowledge Street would have been a much
bigger pain without Lexmark's remote-control configuration assistance.
That same capability is available to anyone, too, with a product called TeamViewer.
One component is installed on the helper's workstation, and the other is launched by the helpee from the TeamViewer website. There are versions for both Mac and Windows, and it's free for noncommercial
users. You may never need it, but it's nice knowing it's out there. (Thanks to Knowledge Street Associate Mercedes Benz for the recommendation.)
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