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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. 
Of all the types of organizational
settings, an army is a completely different
organizational setup requiring
and exacting secrecy and confidentiality.
In such an organizational setting
how do you ensure knowledge collaboration?
There are risks after all.
What kind of checks and balances, if
at all, should be there?
Most of what we do requires surprisingly
little security. Our doctrine is
completely unclassified because it is
only a toolbox that a craftsman uses to
build his creation. Buying (or stealing)
an expensive toolkit does not
make me a master carpenter. I need to
train to use it. I need to think deeply
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about my craft. I need to discuss it
with peers and experiment with
ideas. If we made the tools classified,
few could access and practice with
them, to our detriment. There are real
secrets, of course. When and where
the attack will occur is the classic example.
One minute after the attack
kicks off, however, the secrecy is irrelevant
because the enemy knows we
are there. We need to be ready to
move things down the classification ladder quickly to share knowledge for
the benefit of all our forces. And I
would say that lesson relates to business
as well. Substitute attack with
the word acquisition and you see
what I mean.
Have you found any patterns in
large organizations with respect to
their KM approaches? What would
you say have been same of the key developments
in KM discipline in the
last 20 to 30 years? How would you assess
the current state of the practice of
KM?
I admit I am very critical of most KM
efforts. I think our field has oversold
KM as some kind of silver bullet or
cure all, to our own detriment. Many
have sold KM as a way to cut people
costs, when in fact, it will not save
people at all. There has to be people
in the loop to make it work. And I
have never seen a KMproject technology
was simply laid onto the old
structure that it succeeded. That just
adds more work onto the existing employees.
After the initial excitement
over the new technology dies out, everyone
goes back to what they were
doing before.What KMwill do, if it is
done right, is make the company better.
We have to remain focused on the
idea that it isnt what the organization
costs, but what it makes that counts.
KM, of which lessons learned is a
part, is all about increasing the bottom
line however that is measured, in
my business, it is missions accomplished
and lives saved, but it is
equally true in any business. The increase
in productivity has to outweigh
the implementation costs and I
think good KM can do that. There are
no silver bullets and if someone offers
you one, donot walk, run.
1.
Knowledge Management Case Studies
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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The Interview was conducted by Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary, Consulting Editor, Effective
Executive and Dean, IBSCDC, Hyderabad. This Interview was originally published in Effective Executive, IUP, July 2008. Copyright © July 2008, IBSCDC
No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or distributed, stored in a retrieval
system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or medium electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the permission of IBSCDC. |
