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Executive Interviews: Interview with Colonel Steven Mains on Knowledge Management
July 2008
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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. 
Generally people like to share their
success stories and they take pride
when these success stories are converted
into best practices and are
emulated. However, the same very
peoplemay not like to share their failures
for the fear of ignominy, loss of
credibility, etc. But failures do offer
important lessons and therefore, how
do you get people to share their failures
so that failures are dissected and
lessons are learnt?
I'm not sure that people like to share
success stories as much as we might
expect. In my experience, people are
more focused on getting to the next
challenge than telling others how
they did X, Y or Z.
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They often don't
realize that others have not figured
out what they have learnt or they are
afraid of sharing because they want to
maintain a competitive advantage inside
the company. We do try to make
people "heroes" by sharing their successes
in order to gain buy in fromthe
organization for our efforts. We share
challenges by taking the approach
that if an organization was unable to
accomplish a task to the desired standard,
it was because the Army did
not provide them the required training,
personnel, or materiel. With this
approach, commanders often tell us they thank God thatwe came to document
the needs about which they
have been telling their commanders.
They know the challenges better than
anyone because they live it every day.
When we can document challenges
across many organizations, it makes
an impact on the Army leadership. It
isn't just a single commander whining
about something, it is a number of
commanders sending a message to
the leadership.
In an increasingly globalized world,
global corporations are locating in and
operating out of multiple locales.
How do you think such companies
should foster knowledge collaboration,
especially when the knowledge
gained is country and culture specific?
Collaboration has to be regular and
systematic to be effective in an organization.
The context in which knowledge
is gained is important, of course,
and that always has to be considered.
There are some lessons that are universal
how to build a better component,
and many that rely on cultural
or local context to be successful.
When we capture lessons we put
great effort into documenting the conditions
under which they were successful.
This allows others to quickly
evaluate whether they want to adopt
it. We try to leave that decision up to
the lowest level manager we can so
that the organization is as nimble as
possible. Sometimes a manager will
make the wrong decision or the lesson
will turn out not to be transferable.
That's a lesson too and, if we
are honestly trying to learn, the experiment
has to be underwritten by
the management. Too many bad decisions
and the manager has to go, of
course, but we cannot operate in a zero defect
environment. If we do, no one
will do anything and we can guarantee
that inaction will be the wrong action. Theres an often repeated apprehension
that, No doubt there are
enormous benefits if KM initiatives
are envisaged and executed effectively.
But the problem is, it is prohibitively
expensive. Do you agree
with this? If yes, how should, those
companies keen on benefiting from
KM programs, go about overcoming
this impediment?
There is a cost in implementing a program,
but there is a cost in not implementing
one. My recommendation to
an organization contemplating a
knowledgemanagement programis to
define some basic goals and start
small in a way that targets those goals
directly. Implement all three "legs of
the stool"people, processes and
technology because leaving one out
for fiscal reasons dooms the project.
Set a fixed period of time for the experiment
and stick to it. If the program
shows promise it can be expanded.
The worst thing that someone
could do is to start with a huge
"enterprise solution" to knowledge
which will fail almost by definition.
There are just too many unknowns at
the beginning of the project. Start
with basic goals, one of which has to
be extensibility, so that things can be
added and grown later as more is
learned. Support the successes and
trash the failures. Use the system
yourself at the highest levels so you
know what it really does and does
not do. Only then will a systemreally
develop benefits for the company. Who would decide what should be
shared and what should not be
shared? After all, there can be confidential,
out of public domain information.
Information sharing is a key issue, in
the military and in business. I always
lean more to the sharing than the hiding
side. My view is that if we all
know the information, we can operate
at a level higher than our competitors
who will never be able to piece a
full picture. If we restrict our own
knowledge we put shackles on ourselves,
most times unnecessarily.There will always be some information
that needs to be safeguarded. The
decision should be with the originator
of the information because he usually
is the one that has the most invested
in the value of that information.
In other words, if a business
unit develops information on amanufacturing
process, they have the most
to lose if a competitor learns the process
because it involves their competitive
advantage. They also know
whether information is common
knowledge in the industry or
whether it is novel. What looks novel
from the board room is actually fairly
routine on the shop floor. Or the turnover
of people has rendered safeguarding
it insufficient to justify the
cost. Thats not a decision that can be
made at higher echelons. Keep it
simple. Make decisions at as low a
level as possible.
1.
Knowledge Management Case Studies
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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