Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Intellectual Capital

John Girard
The real question becomes what should we do to ensure this never happens again. One way is to
conduct an After Action Review or AAR, which considers four questions:
1. What was supposed to happen?
2. What happened?
3. What is <strong>the</strong> difference?
4. What should we do to improve?
The US Army designed <strong>the</strong> AAR process more than two decades ago. The premise is simple – how
can we learn from our mistakes to ensure we do not repeat <strong>the</strong> same mistakes. I like to think about it
as a scheme that encourages making “new” mistakes ra<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> same old ones. Of course, for
<strong>the</strong> US Army it is much more serious than avoiding old mistakes because an avoidable mistake may
be dyer – it may involve <strong>the</strong> loss <strong>of</strong> life <strong>of</strong> a brave American soldier and this must be avoided at all
costs.
Today many organizations are benefiting from <strong>the</strong> outstanding work <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> US Army. Today
organizations across <strong>the</strong> US and around <strong>the</strong> world have implemented AARs to ensure <strong>the</strong>y make new
mistakes. AARs are a powerful concept for creating and transferring organizational knowledge;
however, like many management processes <strong>the</strong>y must be implemented with care.
Often it is a good idea to have a trained facilitator help organizations learn <strong>the</strong> craft <strong>of</strong> AARs. Once
AARs become commonplace <strong>the</strong>y should be conducted by internal managers. Remember AARs are
not about assigning or implying blame, but ra<strong>the</strong>r, AARs are about making sure that organizations do
not repeat <strong>the</strong> same mistakes. AAR sessions should be short and positive. Do NOT allow <strong>the</strong>
sessions to turn into a witch-hunt or a figure-pointing exercise. AAR’s are a very good example <strong>of</strong>
what Nonaka termed Externalization. By <strong>the</strong> way, it turns out <strong>the</strong> cause <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Blackout <strong>of</strong> 2003 was
likely due to trees not being trimmed as <strong>the</strong>y should have been.
Many executives crave data, or at least <strong>the</strong>y believe <strong>the</strong>y crave data. Regrettable this constant desire
for data creates an environment in which leaders are drowning in data and let starving for knowledge.
Often <strong>the</strong>re is much more value created by processing data into information or knowledge, which is
generally more useful to decision makers. In this paper, we explored a number <strong>of</strong> examples <strong>of</strong> how
organizations may complete this task. Many <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se tools and techniques are simple ideas that work
in complex environments go some way to enlightening organizational leaders.
5. The future is just a day away
For <strong>the</strong> past two decades, public and private sector executives and managers have struggled to
develop effective ways <strong>of</strong> sharing what <strong>the</strong>ir organizations know. Driven by concerns such as
downsizing, <strong>the</strong> impending retirement <strong>of</strong> baby boomers, terrorism, <strong>the</strong> troubling economy, and a host
<strong>of</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r organizational challenges, many leaders have sought ways to share knowledge with both
internal and external stakeholders. For <strong>the</strong> past decade, much <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir work was built on <strong>the</strong> solid
foundation provided by several seminal works including Working Knowledge (Davenport & Prusak,
1998), If Only We Knew What We Know (O’Dell & Grayson, 1998), and The Knowledge Creating
Company (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
Despite <strong>the</strong> best efforts <strong>of</strong> many innovative leaders, few organizations have achieved <strong>the</strong> desired level
<strong>of</strong> knowledge sharing. This is certainly not due to a lack <strong>of</strong> energy, enthusiasm, or excitement on <strong>the</strong>
part <strong>of</strong> executives, but ra<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> result <strong>of</strong> technology-focused, complicated, and expensive tools,
techniques, and technologies. Equally, a culture based on a need-to-know ra<strong>the</strong>r than one based on a
need-to-share basis prevented <strong>the</strong> transparency necessary to achieve organizational knowledge
goals.
Our review suggests that many first-generation knowledge management projects were based on
collecting and classifying information. The belief seemed to be that if we developed huge, centralized,
IT-based repositories <strong>of</strong> artifacts, <strong>the</strong>n stakeholders would serve <strong>the</strong>mselves. Unfortunately, this
approach never delivered <strong>the</strong> promised user-friendly access but ra<strong>the</strong>r resulted in many very
expensive partial databases <strong>of</strong> little value.
Second-generation knowledge management projects shifted <strong>the</strong> focus to codifying tacit knowledge
and combining explicit knowledge to create new knowledge. This approach seemed plausible in
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