Knowledge Communication Problems
Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which you needed to get to the bottom of something and then convey the results to a person or group of people? Did everything go as planned? Did "they" get it, or not?
If not, next time you may want to use the following checklist (including some problems to be aware of when checking them off):
CHECK
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BE CAUTIOUS OF
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| Do I have the right expert(ise) to analyze this? |
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| Did I articulate clearly what I need to know? |
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| Did I elicit the right insights? |
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| Did I (you and your expert) optimize our mutual understanding |
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| Did we assign the right actions? |
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This checklist will certainly not solve all your knowledge communication problems but will at least make you aware of some of the issues, problems and challenges you may face!
Prophet syndrome: managers have a preference for outside experts. [Menon & Pfeffer, 2003]
Ingroup-outgroup: managers prefer to consult with like-minded peers rather than other professional groups [Blau, 1977]
ASK (anomalous state of knowledge): Managers often do not have the terminology to articulate their needs to experts [Belkin,1980 ]
Big picture problem: managers and experts deviate from the main issue and get lost in details. [Harkins, 1999]
Common ground: managers and experts are not aware of their differing background knowledge. [Clark and Schäfer, 1989, Olson & Olson, 2000 ]
Paralysis by analysis: experts have difficulties in concluding their analysis and proposing solutions [Langley, A. (1995) ,Lenz, R. T., Lyles, M. A., 1985, ]
Information Overload: experts are inundated with detail information and loose sight of the main objectives of their assignment [O’Reilly, 1980].
Hidden Profile: managers and experts only focus on their already identified mutual knowledge and neglect new insights. [Stasser & Titus, 2003]
Cassandra Syndrome: the managers ignore the experts’ warning and advice, but later on blame the expert if losses occur. [Mikalachki, 1983]
Groupthink: managers and/or experts ignore evidence or do not use available knowledge fully in order to preserve group cohesion. [Janis, 1982]
Expert paradox: the experts are not able to convey what they know to managers because they cannot articulate it in terms that management can understand. [Johnson, 1983]
Knowing-Doing Gap: managers and experts know what to do, but cannot execute it due to internal competition or wrong incentives [Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000]
Critical Chain - Theory of Constraints Checklist
Critical Chain - Theory of Constraints Checklist
- Do/id you use deterministic CPM models with buffers to deal with any uncertainties?
- Do/did you place a project buffer after last task to protect the customer’s completion schedule?
- Do/did you xxploit constraining resources (make certain that resources are fully utilized)?
- Do/did you avoid wasting time slack time by encouraging early task completions?
- Do/did carefully monitor the status of the buffer(s) and communicate this status to other project team members on a regular basis?
Benchmarking Checklist
Benchmarking Checklist
- PLANNING
- What is to be benchmarked?
- What other organizations can be used for meaningful comparison with your own?
- What data collection method will you use?
- ANALYSIS
- What is the current performance gap you are trying to eliminate?
- What are your performance goals and what is your desired future state?
- INTEGRATION
- How are you going to communicate your benchmark findings?
- Have you established functional goals?
- Do you have buy-in from necessary stakeholders for these goals?
- ACTION
- Have you developed specific action plans?
- How will you implement these action plans and monitor progress towards bridging the identified performance gap?
- Following your action plans, have you re-measured and established a new benchmark?
- MATURITY
- Has a leadership position been attained relative to other comparable organizations?
- Have the achieved practices from your action plans been integrated into processes?
DMAIC Project Methodology Checklist
Using the DMAIC Methodology Checklist
- Mark all that apply.
- DEFINE
- Have you defined the project scope, objective, and schedule?
- Have you defined the project team members?
- Have you defined the stakeholders?
- Have you gained authorization from the necessary project executive sponsors?
- Have you assembled and trained the project team at a high level?
- MEASURE
- Have you determined the measurement process?
- Have you defined relevant and obtainable metrics?
- Have you established a current state baseline for your measurement?
- Have you evaluated your measurement system?
- ANALYSE
- Have you captured the process drivers?
- Have you benchmarked against best in class?
- Have you analysed sources of variation?
- Have you analysed the value stream?
- IMPROVE
- Have you evaluated risks and potential failure modes?
- Have you optimized process settings and configurations?
- Have you defined a new process?
- Have you defined and prioritized improvement opportunities?
- CONTROL
- Have you realised the deliverables for the project and had them approved by the project sponsors?
- Have you documented lessons learned?
- Have you developed and implemented a control plan?
- Have you validated the new process and established a basis for ongoing monitoring?