Executive Interviews: Interview with Colonel Steven Mains on Knowledge Management
July 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Colonel Steven Mains
Colonel Steven Mains serves as the Director of the Center for Army Lessons Learned, part of the US Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas.

staffs to find solutions. By doing that, if others have developed solutions we can share them directly. If a problem is new, we can alert the appropriate agencies to the problem and get them to work on solving it. We help the Army leadership track these problems to resolution, so we really are involved in learning from end to end. One initiative we have started in the last 18 months to enhance our ability to identify and really learn lessons is the Lessons Learned Integration Network, or L2I as we call it. Under L2I, we have placed CALL analysts in every Army school and military unit at Division level (so, in organizations of about 20,000 people that include all types of skills from combat units to supply and transportation as well as planning and operations functions). We link these analysts together in a network that allows them to quickly put lessons into a database and get tailored alerts when anyone else adds a lesson that they have said they would be interested in. This helps them tailor their input to the unit or school and make sense of the huge amount of data that is out there. No one in the Army or I would say in business as well is hurting for lack of data. What we need is ways to make sense of the abundance that is available. By building this network, we say that we have placed the Soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq just "two handshakes" away from the instructors, trainers and doctrine writers located back in the US. Instead of instructors teaching new Soldiers about how things were when they were deployed abroad, they can talk about what was happening yesterday. We have documented lessons moving just that fast between actual operations and our training centers.

• What is the importance of KM initiatives? Can you give us, apart from the L2I initiative, any successful illustrations of KM practices improving organizational performance?
  L2I has become our "face" out in operational units and in our schools, which has closed the distance between those conducting operations, those training to conduct operations and those that are teaching new Soldiers. We have long collected lessons and produced products focused on those lessons.We get emails and calls all the time from Soldiers who say that they read our handbooks, performed their operations the way we said others had found successful, and that they were successful. We have a very large database of lessons that people can search for on their particular area, or by themission they will perform. Lets say that there is a suboceanic earthquake that causes a tsunami as we saw back in 2004. A unit that is alerted to help in relief operations can call up the orders and lessons from the 2004 operation and use them as a basis for the new operation. We operate 24/7 so anyone in the Army can access us anytime. We also provide a research service so if operations are occurring quickly, as in the tsunami example, where time is critical to get to the affected area, we will search our database and provide tailored reports to the users so that they can worry about moving their unit and incorporating lessons we find and let us worry about doing the research.

• You have observed in one of your articles ("Freeing Ideas From Their Silos", strategy+business) that, "Most companies are awash in insights and ideas that emerge from specific situations but that could apply broadly across the organization to solve problems, promote efficiency, and even generate revenue. The trouble is that these valuable ideas get stuck in the silos of their organization and are never used to their full potential". Why do you think it happens that way?
  We are all goal oriented whether we are in the military or successful in business. We are "hardwired" to overcome challenges and move on to knock out the next. Unfortunately, we do not necessarily take the time to think about whether what we learned would be useful to others in our same organization. SLA Marshall, in his WWII book, Men Against Fire, said the hardest thing to do is to get a good idea out of one unit and into another. In business world, there is a profit motive away higher levelmanagers to capture and share the lessons across the lower levels, but at the manager's own level, he sees value inmoving on to his next challenge, not necessarily sharing knowledge with his peer organizations. It takes a change in mindset from competition to cooperation. What may not benefit me directly today (sharing with my peerlevel organizations) could be of value later (when they reciprocate).

• What do you think are the CSFs for any KMinitiative? Do they change across the industries and regions?
  The Critical Success Factor is the buy in of the organization. There has to be an emphasis on learning from bottomto top in an organization or the system will break down. If the boss does not believe in learning from his mistakes and sharing knowledge, no one below him will. The managers have to lead organizations and set the example for their lower level managers and floor workers. They have to "sell" their managers on cooperation and sharing knowledge. If they do not do these things, the money spent on the databases, networks and people is wasted.

1. Knowledge Management Case Studies
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes