“Dr. Richard,
today’s lecture day…and I have one open spot”.
I had been idly surfing channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon,
when for no particular reason I paused to see what this all about. It was a scene from the American medical
drama television series Grey’s Anatomy stopped me
in my tracks. It seemed like it was
right out of some Knowledge Management lecture, that I was tempted to sit and
watch more. Here are some interesting
insights and thoughts that occurred to me as I watched this episode.
“You brought back lecture day?”
Probably an age-old custom of this hospital which quietly
disappeared as people became too busy to learn.
So, Dr. Richard seems rather incredulous when he is offered a slot to
speak – which incidentally happens to be his “swan song” lecture. Very often, good initiatives that were
intended to create knowledge, promote best practices, and stimulate
collaboration peter off into meaningless ritual – more because of apathy than
because there is nothing to be gained from it.
The very senior management that initiated such good practice within the
organization often end up sabotaging it by pulling out people from such
activity, thereby sending a strong signal that it is after all “not that
important”. Of course the flip side to
it is just that – it becomes a ritual – something to be gotten over and done
with – the inability to inspire people to tell a good story often rings the
death knell for such initiatives.
·
“We are a teaching hospital.
We learn by doing. We can
also…should also learn from others’ experiences. Their mistakes saves you mistakes…their
losses saves you losses…their victories will inspire yours. “
Every organization needs to have
some form of formal learning mechanism; be it classroom led lectures, webinars,
blended learning models or a pot-pourri of other learning technologies, the one
sure-fire way to ensure that the lessons learned from an organization’s
experience need to be shared so that everyone can learn and benefit from it. With a rapidly ageing workforce, especially
in some of the older industries, a lot of knowledge that was gained through the
experience of people who have done the same kind of tasks for over 20 to 30
years seems to be going away. In the
medical field, for example, where doctors could just look at patients and make
an intelligent diagnosis, today’s physicians need the aid of scans and images,
blood samples and what have you, to make a tentative guess of what the probably
symptom could be. How can organizations
preserve that expertise and skill gained from the experience of so many years
of work?
"Eyes forward and pay attention. If you are caught dozing you
get chalk on your face. Ask Dr Yang! my aim is exceptional. If you answer right you get a chocolate! "
Although Dan Pink
may disagree, at least during the initial stages, the carrot and stick approach
often is quite a strong driver to ensure that there is sufficient participation
in such initiatives. While, of course,
as can be seen, chocolates are seen more as a means to make it interactive and
fun, rather than sit back and snooze off without getting caught. The other interesting aspect is that Dr.
Miranda Bailey makes it very interactive by inviting the audience to become
real characters in her story. As the
story unfolds we see other doctors actually trying to guess how the story would
end. Goes without saying that for knowledge
to get strongly embedded a good story that can hold it together is an important
aspect.
"Single most important step in the treatment process…patient
history…thank you. Catch…"
Dr. Miranda Bailey quizzes the audience on what they think
is the most important aspect of diagnosis.
Knowledge is about knowing…and what better way to know than to
understand what has happened. In
business parlance, that would translate to looking at the information available
so we get a measure of the issue on hand.
Quite often, this will also involve going back in time to identify
trends and patterns that could indicate what could potentially be the
problem. This, in essence, is where
experience meets data – where the numbers tell the story which forms on the
basis of experience and skill….more about this another
“…..every test I could think of – negative. I did what I told you all to do when you are
stuck. I hit the books. I hit them hard"
A good knowledge repository is like “sitting on the shoulder
of giants”. In present day context,
knowledge repositories enable two aspects of knowing – it connects people to
people – helps you identify the experts; it also connects people to content –
enables you discover content. When an
organization’s knowledge base is organized well around a well-defined taxonomy,
then discovering content, connecting content to content, and people to content
becomes easy. It makes the prospect of “hitting
the books hard” a pleasurable exercise.
"If you looked further and talked to the patient…your patient
who has been sliced nine ways to Sunday has porphyria…you know the difference
between you and me…I learned."
As organizations get adaptive and responsive, they are
building a knowledge ecosystem that brings in all players in the ecosystem to
collaborate and come up with a solution.
The customer (in this case the patient) is often the one best equipped
to provide you with inputs and insight that could lead to innovation and
process / product improvement. Keeping
the communication lines open and collaborating with the customer is as much if
not a more important aspect of knowledge sharing than any other I can think
"Good Morning! Once upon a time long before I was chief of
surgery, I was a resident…just like you.
You learn from everything in your residency. But you don’t realize how
much you learn from each other. Look around…the biggest influences in your life
are sitting next to you…in this room"
The one who shares knowledge best, is the one who can tell a
story well. And here, we have Dr.
Richard telling a compelling story – and even better – exhorting the doctors to
rely on each other, share ideas and collaborate. The biggest influences in your life, are
after all the people you get to see every day, and spend quite a lot of time
with. If you cannot rely on them to
enhance your skill and experience, who else will be able to do that. The most important lesson in knowledge
sharing is about getting your team and your colleagues to inspire your
victories…and learn from your losses.
This is clearly a message that needs to be driven home strongly in every
organization that intends to
The Hippocratic oath (The declaration of Geneva)
This aspect of knowledge sharing I see whenever I interact
with microfinance and self-help groups.
The self-help groups and joint liability groups develop a strong sense
of sisterhood (more than 90% of borrowers are women)! J And one way they do
this is to wear uniforms and take a pledge at every group meeting. Over time, this helps create a strong sense
of identify and also helps in bonding.
While the Doctor’s oath, is slightly different, it sort of reinforces
the inherent need to practice their profession with conscience and
dignity.
Watching this episode I got the impression that there were
several important lessons one could take away and it touched upon the essence
of Knowledge Management. It also brought
to fore the art of storytelling as a key tool of Knowledge sharing. Do you know
of any other tele serial from which there were some nice knowledge nuggets you
took away?
