KMTALK ASIA

It was the first time we had Patrick Lambe & Edgar Tan in Saudi Arabia. They missed the previous schedule as getting Saudi visa is not that simple. However, we managed to get the visa this time and we had an enlightening workshop in our organization. 22 of us joined the 3-day workshop, focusing on Project Learning and Knowledge Capture. As usual, Patrick’s workshops are very interactive, lots of team work and tiring!

I wasn’t so confident about the teamwork and interaction during the workshop as the participants came from various backgrounds and they are not doing any sort of KM here.

So my perception was- they will listen, get bored and will be reluctant to participate actively for the exercises. But they proved me wrong. Each and everyone in the workshop participated with full enthusiasm and showed interest to carry on some KM projects in their respective departments.

Lessons learnt from the workshop are- we have to make KM interesting to people. Tell them, just to exercise some KM practices, like capturing key knowledge in projects through AAR, Lessons Learnt, Best Practices capture, Pre-mortem etc. Ask them to use techniques like Concept Mapping, Rich Picture to present ideas to management and also to use them for internal knowledge capture. Use Appreciative Inquiry for counseling, performance reviews, conflict resolution etc. We don’t need to brand them as KM, as sometimes new management terms scare people to participate.

We are going to have the 2nd series of workshop in August and majority participants from the 1st workshop are willing to join.  Hmmm! May be I should try to create a KM buddy group with this people and infuse knowledge sharing culture in this highly bureaucratic organization.