Storytelling, Project Knowledge & Knowledge Management

Storytelling, Project Knowledge & Knowledge Management - Presentation Transcript

Storytelling for Knowledge Management in Projects November 5 2009 Eric D. Brown

STORIES - WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR*? Sharing Knowledge Sharing Values Developing Trust & Commitment Generating Emotional Connection Learning * D. Sole and D. G. Wilson, "Storytelling in Organizations: The power and traps of using stories to share knowledge in organizations," Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2002.

WHAT IS A GOOD STORY? A good story contains: A Setting A Character or Characters A Plot A Backstory Some level of Detail

STORYTELLING Stories must have context and focus. Stories must be memorable to be effective. Stories make knowledge more memorable via vivid imagery elaboration episodic memory

FAIRY TALES Example: Little Red Riding Hood world is dangerous not everything is as it appears

MODERN FAIRY TALES One Minute Manager by Blanchard and Johnson (1994). Book starts with the following sentences: Once there was a bright young man who was looking for an effective manager. He wanted to work for one. He wanted to become one.

LEARNING VIA STORIES Stories make knowledge more memorable via the ‘availability heuristic’ Something that is vivid and memorable will be learned easier Reverse availability heuristic: Make things vague, abstract or uncomfortable if you don’t want them remembered or used.

LET’S PLAY A GAME

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC Bears are dangerous. They attack and kill people. Moose are cute. They are slow and stay in the woods Vivid imagery will usually win out

STATISTICALLY, A HIKER IS MORE LIKELY TO DIE FROM A MOOSE THAN A GRIZZLY BEAR

MOOSE vs ME!

STORYTELLING Storytelling is suggested as a means to build a shared knowledge-base for organizations Storytelling can be used to Build a shared understanding Make sense of past actions Provide for future vision

PROJECT KNOWLEDGE

KM IN PROJECTS Disterer (2002) traditional PM is overly concerned with efﬁciency and effectiveness of project team members knowledge needs of future projects isn’t within the context of the current project requirements;

KM IN PROJECTS Owen, Burstein & Mitchell (2004) - “knowledge gained in a project needs to be transferred to an organization’s memory for reuse in other projects” Kasvi, Vartiainen, & Hailikari (2003) - knowledge management practices were “weak and unsystematic” in project teams

KM IN PROJECTS Leseure & Brookes (2004) - Knowledge is generated within one project and then lost. Failure to transfer this knowledge… leads to wasted activity and impaired project performance”

KNOWLEDGE TYPES IN PROJECTS Reich (2007) - Four types of knowledge in projects: Process Knowledge Domain Knowledge Institutional Knowledge Cultural Knowledge

PROJECT KNOWLEDGE Behavioral Technical Knowledge Knowledge Cultural Domain Knowledge Knowledge Institutional Process Knowledge Knowledge

STORYTELLING MODEL

STORIES & KM So...we know that we want to create stories with vivid imagery, a plot, characters and a reason for people to read. We also know what types of knowledge we want to share / capture in projects. Now what?

MAIN QUESTIONS How can we share knowledge across teams while minimizing impact on team member’s time? Can we use stories to share knowledge across project teams (and organizations)? What types of project knowledge best ﬁts the storytelling method?

STORYTELLING MODEL Step 5 - Documenting the Story Step 1 - Capture the Story New Team Member Step 2 - Craft Questions the Story Step 3 - Telling Project Weekly the Story Learning Journals Journal Project Learning Previous History Weekly Learning Meetings Histories Step 4 - Internalizing the Story

CAPTURE MECHANISMS First step - how can we capture knowledge? Lots of tools but what’s the best way? Why not use the tools people are already used to using? Email, IM, Blogs, Wikis, Twitter & other Social Media Weekly Journals

CRAFT THE STORY Step 2 - Story crafting using snippets of information from users, how can we build a story? Plot. Backstory. Characters. requires a very experiences story-crafter / story- teller

TELLING THE STORY Step 3 - Storytelling How do we tell the story? provide stories as electronic versions for people to read and search for?

INTERNALIZING THE STORY Step 4 - Internalization How can we ensure the user has taken the right knowledge from the story and internalized it? Require journal entry about ‘what i’ve learned since last time’?

DOCUMENTING THE STORY Step 5 - Documentation Entire process is electronic. Stories, user snippets and project info is searchable and hold metadata (tags, keywords, etc) all information & knowledge is available to any other project

NEXT STEPS Validation - Quick case study run with good outcomes How to validate moving forward? How to capture information? How to build stories effectively?

FURTHER RESEARCH Additional avenues for further research: Research into best methods for capturing stories. What types of questions are best for gathering project knowledge? How do we get people interested in sharing stories? How does KM ﬁt into the formal world of PM?

THANK YOU