Friday, March 30, 2007

Weekend Ideas

Have a casual idea that I want to put up here for your consumption. If you believe you’re really brave enough to consume such impractical-sounding ideas, lap it up and let me know what you think.

Assume we are talking about an organization where everyone has at least a small white board for themselves. What if we introduce a practice – let’s call it “tell me what you learned” - wherein employees are asked to write down 2-3 things that they learned that particular week, on every Friday morning. The writing has to be big, bold and visible. (A marker of a particular colour could be recommended for this purpose.) And there’s no compulsion to participate. If the employee has really something significant that he/she learned and really wants to share it, he/she does so. For example, if someone learns about how to identify areas for Best Practices Sharing, she could write this on her board – Best Practices-Identification of Areas. People, who find the topic interesting and want to learn more about it, can just walk in and ask for a few minutes and discuss the topic with the ‘sharer’.

In a given block/building, the person who seems to be sharing good stuff every Friday would be quite evident. Such people from each block/building could get some additional recognition and be referred to as “This month’s learning guru” on a common office notice board. This may or may not work based on the organizational culture…but without such practices, informal learning would be left to networking events and chance.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's an interesting idea, worth a try I'd say. I expect there would be a few participants, the people who do that kind of thing naturally. It will likely not reach a significant degree of popularity, except in small working groups where the group culture can easily make it a behavoural norm. I've tried similar things in the past - challenges for people to post their personal mission statemements, inspirational quotes, and even a flip chart with their personal contact networks drawn by hand - all with marginal results. Why? People are motivated by different things - a desire to contributed to the "grater good" philantrophy, personal gain, coersion, pain avoidence. And sometimes, despite best intentions, there are more pressing priorities and needs on a professional or personal level. But I'm not trying to be gloomy here. In complex organizations, sometimes you can predict the positive impact of a simple initiative...

Nimmy said...

Hey Dave!
Thanks so much for responding to my post/idea. It makes so much of a difference to hear another perspective - be it complementary, supplementary or opposite. :)
Meanwhile, I looked up your blog and 'am going to add it to my blog-feeds right away! :) Hoping to learn from you and see you on my blog again....

Nimmy said...

Oops, Dale....not Dave! I've got used to seeing so many 'Dave's in the world of KM that.... :)

Anonymous said...

Don't worry Nimmy, I'm used to being confused with a Dave.. as a matter of fact, when I met my wife fifteen years ago, for a while I had to wear a golf shirt with my name on it so her parents wouldn't call me by her ex-husband's name.. you guess it.. "Dave"..

;-)

Nimmy said...

Is this what is called D(av)eja vu? :D