Knowledge Management: From Brain to Business (PDF 5.5 - Asian ...

set training standards that are necessarily global. Our forums and workgroups are some of
the tools and methods we use to facilitate the transfer of best practices. Again, all of this
needs to happen at all levels of the organization, informally and formally, because for our
learning culture to strive, we must continuously create and facilitate a learning environment.
We also need to develop and implement knowledge tools and processes or programs that
support this learning environment. One example of a tool or process that we developed is
the After Action Review, which was originally developed by the United States Army.
We use the BAAR (Figure 7) to review as a team an activity, training or event. We review
together what was supposed to happen and then what actually happened, specifically what
went right that needs to be sustained and what did not that needs to be improved. The
BAAR is our reality tool. It helps us to see how effective we are in our planning, our
presentation and whatever we are doing: what was positive, what was negative and what
changes we may want to adopt based on the results. It helps us to think about what we are
doing, how we are doing it and how we can improve. That is why it is a great learning tool.
Figure 7: Buckman After Action Review (BAAR)
One of the key benefits of the BAAR is that it creates an environment whereby people can
focus on the process and not on the individuals; in other words, not putting blame on
individuals but on the process when something is not working well.
As you can see, the learning environment we endeavor to build and the steps we take to
become an effective learning organization are aimed at helping us to enhance internal
knowledge sharing and cross teaching and learning among individuals. This is always
ongoing and occurring every day, every minute and every hour in a networked environment.
I will cover a few more tools and processes that we use a little later.
Relationship between the Customer and the Organization
To compete in today’s economy we have to think about how to tap into the knowledge and
expertise of all the people in the organization as it relates to how we interface with the
customer. This interface traditionally only involves the frontline: our salespeople, our
technical support people, and our customer service people. But ideally, we want to create an
environment that allows everyone—the entire organization—to be involved and engaged on
the frontline, to be “EEFL” or “effectively engaged on the frontline.”
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