I made it in from the airport just in time to see Dave Snowden instructing the attendees to create their own heaven and hell in the world of knowledge management. The room was setup with small groups surrounding several tables, and each group was constructing timelines and with color coordinated post-it notes.
The blog on kmworld.com shows some photos of the event and offers a description of the process - http://kmworldblog.com/2008/09/learning-from-worst-practices/
Each group defined it's heaven and hell and then found the timeline that got there, in reverse order. By going in reverse it makes it harder to lie to yourself. It is possible that one group's heaven could be another group's hell.
Dave Snowden had many great stories and observations. According to Dave, "organizations are largely determined by fear of their past common failures."
Instead of building best practice databases consider building "worst practice" databases. People like reading stories of failure more than success, or at least are more interested focusing on problems than seeing how to do things right. If people learn to recognize what is wrong, they can avoid it, and are more likely to do so than to copy someone doing things right. He told a story about having a company focus on wrong ways to carry coffee, including a propaganda campaign showing burns and the creation of coffee wardens, that ended up lowering accidents with the carrying of industrial chemicals.
In the end, negative stories get more attending and carry more learning.
When telling stories you should suck the listeners in before you get to the message. If you are told the message first, you will try to discount the message while hearing the story. If you're involved in the story, you will accept the message.
Dave closed the session by urging km professionals to be a part of the solution and not a part of the bureaucratic problem.
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