 Good day everyone and thank you for joining us for this Brightline initiative session on three steps to enhance your Enterprises learning with emerging technologies. I appreciate your joining my colleagues and myself for today's session And we hope that and expect that you're going to be engaged with us in this really interesting conversation My name is Steve Townsend and I'm the networks facilitator for PMI I've been with PMI for 20 years now in a variety of different capacities for the past 10 years primarily focused on Thought leadership and content. I also want to introduce dr. Ed Hoffman who has retired from NASA as executive working on he was actually the chief knowledge officer for NASA appointed in 2011 and held responsibility for system-wide strategy integration and deployment of knowledge service He's a strategic advisor with PMI focused on integrated systems for talent management Knowledge engagement and learning strategies We're also joined by Larry Prusak who is the co-author of several of the most successful Management books on knowledge including working knowledge how organizations manage what they know and what's the big idea? Creating capitalizing on the best management thinking Larry was founder of the Ernst and Young Center for business innovation and founder and director of the IBM Institute for knowledge management Collectively the three of us are representing PMI as knowledge initiative which started last year as a way of building connections Among people so that we can share and exchange knowledge to help improve not only project delivery But also to drive the future of work For today's session, we have three objectives that we're going to cover One is to talk about how small-scale application of emerging technologies is helping us to experiment and learn How that learning produces knowledge and how that knowledge? Requires change to enable that knowledge to be used effectively to help us build our capability and our transformation capabilities I Am going to turn it over to my colleague Ed now to tell you a little bit more about our knowledge initiative it to you Alrighty, thank you very much Steve and hello everybody. It is really good to be here So what are we talking about when we're talking about a knowledge initiative? the project management Institute established what's called the global knowledge initiative and Go down to the basic purpose of what an organization or a team does is trying to be successful in getting done the mission the strategy that it has and We're living in a time of technology of digital of AI of people working all over the world of dealing with all these different Challenges to me a knowledge initiative. It's about a strategy That's hopefully coordinated for finding and using the expertise and the assets that we have So at NASA we had we lived off of programs and projects When we had things going well, we wanted to learn what was working When we had things that failed we wanted to understand what was happening into adjust So in the current environment our work revolves around ideas being able to be innovative It demands learning almost every year every month new capabilities that we need The knowledge initiative that we have is to look and help organizations and teams respond to the different critical issues Finding the knowledge that they have that's available discussing what's most essential for success and Then promoting ways to create new knowledge to share it across the system and to actually implement it and use it in a coordinated way, so it's basically a practical response to the challenges of how do we stay relevant and successful By using technology using data and mostly using people Thank you, Ed A key part of today's session is to provoke our thinking. So as Ed mentioned Our knowledge initiative is focused on the future of work So what we would like to share with you are some perspectives Related to the future of work and we are looking to you to engage with us with your thoughts Your ideas your questions and the challenges that you're facing in that particular space so i'm going to start us off by posing a A little bit of a provocative statement and that is that organizations are exploring how ai capabilities can help them improve project performance and more importantly to free project leaders for other value adding work So what does this mean for our skills as ai transforms the future of work? Larry tell us a little bit about what you're thinking about knowledge Well for one thing i'll answer your question first Ai will free up our knowledge much more than other technologies Knowledge is a soft technology. It's very disruptive, but it's soft. It's an intangible if you can't touch its feel it smell it You can see its outcome ai is terrific at reckoning at doing addition at spectacular feats like beating go masters Or seeing connections that are unknown to anyone else. It's helping very much with the kovid crisis But it is not knowledge It enhances the value of knowledge because it does things no human being could do But that still leaves open to us What knowledge does that ai can't do and i don't think ever will but certainly not in the near future which is judgment practical wisdom rich deep understanding context understanding cultural values There are a whole sweep of things that companies live and die by that can't be done by any machine that is still based on logic and rules That are programmed by a human being Is a famous technology essay, uh, excuse me philosophy essay called the view from nowhere And the author tom naco points out there is no view from nowhere. There's only a view from a person So i think ai frees up a lot of the knowledge capabilities of organizations, but it doesn't substitute for them That's the key issue. We want to say there's no substitute for human knowledge There are great tools and enhancers, but no substitute Thank you larry and ed. How about on change? Yeah, I think uh, you know, I spent most of my career at nasa organizations projects and uh You know, uh, fundamentally. I was pulled at the uh, Washington the headquarters level after uh, one of our disasters after the challenger's space shuttle Disaster and I guess in in in 86 And fundamentally you get pulled over there and the question is okay. How do we learn differently? How do we develop new project leaders capabilities? How do we uh, make sure that we're sharing what happened? Why things went wrong? How do we learn from what's most effective? So it became very clear to me that my challenge wasn't the technology or the discipline expertise We knew the things that needed to be done My problem was that I was located in washington And my workforce that I was trying to impact with this change of capabilities of learning of certification were spread across nine centers field centers And not one person there had to care about anything that I said I would go to the different centers saying we're starting a learning initiative. We're starting the nasa academy for program and projects And they would say oh, that's nice. Let me know how that goes And they didn't see any Why did they need to support these things? So change really is the foundation I think in many ways for how the learning has digitalization How artificial intelligence goes across an organization And uh, to me it's probably the most complex thing Because it goes against probably 100 years of how organizations have worked uh in the past When I started at nasa wasn't that long ago But the notion was is that you had leaders you had managers They told you what to do either did it or you left and I was informed of that when I first started It's a totally different world now. Uh, it's a world where we're constantly having to change new capabilities The dynamics of the world. They're changing new technologies new approaches new ideas new initiatives transformation is the Is all over the place and how do you bring that across an organization? and I'll close this part of change. What I found that early is that most change is managed wrong Most change was managed wrong. So my my education really was as a change Asian I went to columbia university. I got my degree in organization development To study in the management of change And I learned all these models and I learned all these processes and I learned to take people through phases I learned different tools And then I found out I would deal with people and they would say we don't have to listen to you literally they would say Why do we need to listen to you? and What I would say is that the tools and the technologies today And the different ways of supporting change are are important the models that we have But the essential solution is people It's the ability for people to decide they either want to support to change or they or they don't they want to work against it And that's why I think they say something like 70 percent of changes Uh, large percent of projects don't succeed And that's My experience is that we don't connect with the human element and we avoid emotions Which is the essential aspect of how change and ideas permeate an organization in the society Yeah, I think that's a great observation and as I do presentations. I have a slide which uh Has a bunch of people uh in a line kind of conversing with each other and it says that 70 to 80 of the challenges we have on our projects relate to people But 90 of what we're taught is about process is about tools is about artifacts. So We really need to remember that that projects are really about Bringing that collective intelligence to bear so that we can solve Difficult and challenging projects and produce something that's going to be of value So definitely agree with that and I just want to provide a little bit of background and context around this concept of how organizations are using AI and these disruptive technologies and then to put it in our current contemporary context to kind of set the stage for The opportunities for project leaders in this space or as we say at PMI for change makers because you don't have to be a Formal project manager to try and get new things done to try and bring a group of people together So this is really applicable for any change maker. So A few months ago. We had a strategic dialogue session with members of our global executive council So these are about 90 organizations from around the world that are fairly sophisticated in their project program and portfolio management capabilities and The individuals who sit on the council are responsible for helping to build and evolve that that capability within their organization So we were having a conversation around how project management can be impacted by the use of Artificial intelligence and data science and other disruptive technologies And one of the elements I shared with them in the presentation was how some organizations are using Small experiments to practice and learn and and get used to using the technologies to see how they work in practice And a couple of examples that I gave the council members really felt Illuminated both the opportunities and the challenges that they face. So one example was related to the federal university in Sao Paulo, Brazil where This one research institute within the university Had multiple projects and they found that their project scheduling Was not as adept as it could be. So someone had the idea of hey, we're researchers Why don't we see what the impact is of using? A artificial intelligence algorithm to develop a project schedule and why don't we do a comparison with Taking our best scheduler and having them also design a schedule on the same project And so they used the technology they developed the algorithm They practiced with that they refined it over time and then when they were ready to do the experiment They had all of the project elements identified And they fed that into their computer and at the same time they had one of their schedulers Use a work breakdown structure to actually develop The actual schedule for the for the project and what they found when they actually executed the project and monitored how well both the AI bot and the Scheduler had done the AI bot actually Was much more accurate in its predictions of how long it would take to produce the work And as they started to explore some of the reasons why that was the case They found a couple of things that were important number one is they found that the AI bot was programmed to look at How schedules had performed on other projects? so it was able to consolidate data and information from a variety of other sources and look at How the workflowed over time and where some of the issues and gaps occurred And so it was able to use big data and consolidate that in a way that it was able to analyze and develop A more realistic schedule, but more importantly The artificial intelligence component was able to weed out any optimism bias that an individual would bring An individual or the project team would bring into the process Which was really key because The AI was using objective information To try and develop the schedule whereas the scheduler was using their best estimate In engagement with others on how long do you think this work is going to take? so the key thing about this particular project and the research that came out of it was that AI can help take on Some non-value adding tasks that actually help the project perform better But that people aspect is always critical And in the second example that we talked about we used the example of alibaba in china Now alibaba is kind of the google for china And so you have people using this search engine to find information to access services, etc And the folks at alibaba realized that they were collecting a lot of data On questions that people had on things that they were looking for etc And as they started to mine the data they started to notice particular trends that represent it The opportunity to develop new products that would better meet the needs of customers And so here's where you have the human intervention So you have the data system telling you here's some things to look out for But then you have the people element on how do we actually use this data to bring about something that is going to Be transformative and help deliver value to people and so alibaba reached out to particular companies like lego toy manufacturer like eminem maris candy maker with their big data and their ideas and together they negotiated How can we use this data to help you deliver a new product? And how can we work together to get that product out to the market to the people who are really interested In that particular product or service and so working together They were able to accelerate delivering new products to market and once the products hit the market They actually had a much more significant success rate than traditional project products Because they were able to then target the product to the market that was looking for it So those are examples of how companies are using artificial intelligence data science and other technologies to think differently about One how do we do our work? How do we organize our work? But at the same time, how do we use this information to help us in that next phase of innovation to help enhance or accelerate the ability to deliver value to our customers Now since we did that session, we've been talking about other elements of Exploration that PMI can enable related to the use of these technologies And I was doing a presentation for a government agency in the uk Last week and and my colleague ed has also been having some engagement there and that in that engagement prompted me to think about something that COVID-19 has actually resulted in a Significant shift that I think is going to be relevant for the use of artificial intelligence in these disruptive technologies Because COVID-19 Shifted the way in which we work and it also shifted our reliance on different skills So we now have project teams that are sheltered in place. So you have individuals working from their homes Very few people are going into the office these days And so they're having to use these digital technologies and platforms to coordinate their work Now one would think in that kind of environment that individuals would be focused on you know, how How do these technologies enable us to manage risk better? How are these technologies helping our project? Our underlying project performance, etc. How are we tracking how we're doing? But in most cases from the leading corporations to the national governments The focus has shifted away from technical project management and more towards interpersonal behaviors because now we're having to check on each other and make sure that Not only are we doing the work, but how do we feel about the work? Are we feeling isolated? Are we feeling that we're still part of this? Connected team. How are we influencing each other? How has that been changed as a result of Now everything being done in a virtual workspace. So we're seeing More and more requests coming in from our organizational stakeholders Can you do less technical PM training and can you do more around these soft skills as well as How do we learn from experience? So how do we take the experience that we have in working face to face and change and adapt them for More virtual environments. So with that, I'm actually going to pass it over to larry To expound a little bit on the concept of knowledge and how knowledge plays a role here Okay, thank you, steven. Very interesting both of you About 10 years ago I was working for a firm that loved public publicity And I got a call from a reporter from the wall street journal and said gee you're doing a lot of work with knowledge Can you explain to me the differences between knowledge and data and wisdom and these other things? I said well, how much time do you have? And now now give me just in two sentences or so And I said well and much to my own amazement. I came up with An answer that became a meme. It went around the network. I'm going to share it with you because I think it works fairly well Let's say like steven you're preparing a wonderful meal. Steven's a great You're preparing a wonderful meal for some people you really like a lot The recipe in the recipe book the letters in the recipe the actual letters Or what data is Little bits that one put together makes sense, but data letters are data and they use that way The recipe itself is information Information is a message. It has a sender. It has a receiver You can't interact with it. I mean you can respond to someone sending you some information, but it's flat The flat thing you can't run anything without information, but it's not sufficient Knowledge is knowing how to cook flat out knowing how to cook It takes a few years if not more than a few to really become a good cook I can personally attest since I'm home a lot now and I have no other excuses I make some That my family eats And I hadn't really cooked much in my previous many decades. So I'm learning how to cook I still would not call myself a very wonderful cook, but I'm learning by doing Knowledge is learning by participation by act. It's an action verb. We just English didn't develop that way, but it is So knowledge is knowing how to cook Wisdom is marrying a good cook Case closed so People today are confusing Intelligence with knowledge Knowledge takes time to develop It's a difficult word again even in this space. It's a difficult word to define it has many meanings and many cultures But basically It's a collection of attributes that allows you to do something that someone without the knowledge wouldn't have And it's experiential more than it's anything else You can read 40 books on france And if you've never gone to france, you really don't have knowledge of france You can read many books on how organizations work and I know many professors in business schools do this They teach about organizational behavior, but they've never worked in any organization But a university and ed and I can happily attest universities are one of a kind Whatever they are they're different than commercial organizations or government agencies So it's a very different sort of animal than other things It's a different type of attribute on the other hand It's the basis of a competency both of you mentioned the word competency Which is a very good word Organizations are structured to do things. They have the ability to make something to design something to figure out a problem for you But it's a competency. They have The micro foundations of a competency are knowledge and coordination That's what organizations do. They coordinate people who have knowledge on how to do Mechanical engineering how to do all the project management. We've been talking about So if you don't follow the human dimension of knowledge with competencies, you can't base them on technology or rules What ai does is follow rules, which again All in favor of I think it's a spectacular An interesting subject, but it follows algorithm that algorithm is just a different name for a rule Knowledge doesn't do that people get intuitive leaps. They get inferences They get hunches all of this is based on experience and maybe somewhat what you read and learn It's a different thing The word intelligence generally means how well you adapt to your environment It really it's generally used that way it it emphasizes speed quick understanding and action It's a common word. We we all use it. It's like a cousin of knowledge But you can have intelligence without knowledge and you can have knowledge without intelligence believe I live near Cambridge, Massachusetts Very many people they have knowledge without intelligence, but we won't I'm sure you've all seen examples of this, but it's still a very useful word But it's a different thing. You can't expect intelligence to also stand for the things I mentioned before judgment You can't have knowledge without judgment. It just doesn't exist It's it's a misnomer intelligence doesn't imply judgment. It doesn't imply practical wisdom How all these actions affect others? affect society affect the organization Effect how people live it can't do that. It doesn't have empathy. It's not made that way. Maybe these things will all change but not soon Now what do organizations do I hear some of you think well, what are organizations do about knowledge? What are you guys trying to promote in the knowledge initiative and p.i? and basically there are really three things that i'm really Speaking in a very schematic way The first one is knowledge development No organization can any longer know what it really needs to know the world got too complex 40 percent of the global workforce have entered the global economy in the last 20 years india and china and vietnam and some other things All of these firms in those countries produce things have new ideas have at universities that are burgeoning You can't know enough. You have to therefore Borrow steal read create strategic alliances create knowledge networks But you have to look outside the organization NASA used to do everything themselves They finally when they built the space station and many other things work with other countries and other firms It can speak about this in all sorts of ways for good reason I've worked for other organizations that also thought they were the best and the brightest But no you can't be that anymore the world changed so radically. There's so much new knowledge being produced So knowledge development is not just funding an r&d department, which is of course very useful It's searching. It's learning how to share. It's learning how to be collaborative Those things can be taught It can be taught and you can understand the value of them. Although it's not a common activity. It should be The second thing that organizations do with knowledge is they embed it and embody it in the processes and routines of an organization It's not enough to have a great new idea And you sell that idea to your colleagues. You sell it knowledge is Ideas don't win in organizations because of their virtue. They win because they're well sold by people who have a good reputation But once you do that You want the knowledge to really be actually you want it to turn into intelligence So you have to embed it in the routines the programs the projects and the processes of the organization If it's a new technology or new soft technology a new hard technology It needs to be embedded and embodied in people through training and various activities organizations do And the last thing which is the hardest thing to do is what's called knowledge transfer Many of you in this audience. I'm sure work for firms that have global operations And it's very hard to transfer knowledge. It's not unless you can do Vulcan mind scans, you know, you can hold on to the thing Oh, I know what you know The knowledge has to be adapted You have to move the knowledge change it have it adapted by another culture by countries and that are very different than ours And by transferring it you have to turn it into information unless you go and teach it live, which people begin to do It's a tricky and difficult skill. I must say I've seen it Many organizations some really get it right the larger ones the larger firms that global operations are getting very good at this But they've studied it these things are not natural things. You can't just send A document to someone in Indonesia and you're in washington They may not make make sense to them. You have to adapt it You need to adapt it before you send it and the user needs to adapt it to their needs So those are the three main activities firms do development retention And transfer some of them do all three some focus on one some focus on the other a firm like mcdonald's focuses on Retention here's how you make the hamburgers. Here's how you run the franchise and it works intel does the same thing Some firms work purely on development a lot of consulting firms firms that sell advice a lot of the investment banks And any large firm any global firm has to develop knowledge sharing knowledge transfer techniques So the intelligence tools we're talking about which again are really fascinating and how they work Are still based on rules These activities that we're talking about can't be performed by machines These machines mirror the programmers the people who write the program which is again the only way you could do it The view from nowhere that there is no such thing We are stuck with ourselves And our advancement depends on knowledge and intelligence Are humans attributes For the foreseeable future that's all there is folks All right. Thank you larry very provocative very insightful as well Ed tell us a little bit about how all of this fits with change Yeah, no, I think it's perfect examples. And of course I've worked with larry for 20 years Changing and and impacting nasa. Let me start a quick story. I think that that kind of gives the example One of the things that we recognized while we were at nasa is that about 80 percent Of the projects and the missions taking place were international collaborations Which a large part of the work is done by different different countries And so one of the ideas was let's set up an international project management community Of all the different countries and nations working and it would just be to share knowledge So I presented that I talked to it. There was a real positive reaction There were some skepticism as some countries said, you know Why is nasa willing to share knowledge? And this is kind of a different approach, but it was it was going well And then we got uh, we slowed down. We had one of the senior leaders from a key partner in japan Was skeptical and things were slowing down a little bit I was getting ready to go on an international trip for something else not related to that And a close friend of mine. Uh, it was louis peach said ed If you're smart stop off in tokyo I said louis I'm not going anywhere near tokyo. Why am I going to he says if you're smart Stop off in tokyo and meet this person. Maybe have dinner if you can I said, this is guy. I got to justify to the government travel folks. Why they're gonna think I'm having fun in tokyo They're not, you know, anyway, I did what he said it added a lot of hours for this one day And I went in and I had 15 minutes with the senior well respected leader who everyone looked at in in the organization And about five minutes in he said You're here just to meet with me I said, yeah, I'm on the way to but yes, I'm stopping and he said, uh That's very respectful And I really appreciate this. It kind of stuns me. I don't think I've ever experienced out before From someone at at nasa united states. He said you will have the total support of my team And uh, basically we had that we basically came together and uh That to me is I think part of what larry's talking about the logic of of that change was we had our things laid out We had good ideas. We had spaces to come together. We had things laid out But the actual agreement to say Me and my team will totally support you came from that 15 minutes of of sitting down over tea and coffee And talking and that sense of respect and openness To me that's that's the part that is is the human aspect of change That in my experience to this day most organizations and teams They would talk about but they ignore they're not going to let that person fly that extra day to tokyo Even though it's going to have so much more value and benefit And so to me that's what I react on. I hear larry's notion of the development time the retention time the transfer It's inherently human and that's the only way it works All right. Well, we will jump into questions. We actually have about four questions here And we're going to start with one that says we keep saying ai But it sounds a lot like machine learning from past experience Is this the case or is there an ai that can analyze your projects available to us? So I'll take that one and I think on the first part The way that I'm reading the literature related to ai ai is a combination of machine learning But also data analytics particularly big data analytics. So it's the combination of the two together So that it produces options and potential solutions for project teams and project leaders to consider now on the second part Is ai actually applicable to projects As part of our as part of the outcome of our conversation with our global executive council PMI is sponsoring the formation of an ai knowledge network So that we bring together people in the project delivery community We bring in researchers and we bring in thought leaders that are exploring these issues to see if we can support in some way Not only the acceleration of ai and its application in projects But also it have the community that can share an exchange knowledge to help make that happen and to give you an example We will probably be reaching out to folks at price waterhouse coopers who produced a study last year that indicates in about three to five years There will be an autonomous project predictability analytics capability that will allow ai to actually manage small projects So if that's going to happen in the next three to five years We want to make sure that PMI is a part of that and so this knowledge network will help us Ensure that we're a part of that solution. So yes, there is that opportunity And PMI is trying to be on the forefront of making sure we can leverage that for the future of work Second question and this is perfect for you two gentlemen. How can we encourage knowledge sharing across an organization? What can we put in place to encourage knowledge sharing such as knowledge sharing workshops any other initiative? And to what extent would this become too bureaucratized? Let's do that that second part first. Let's talk about bureaucratization because we've talked a lot about organizations kind of going overboard on knowledge management capabilities So tackle that first. Who'd like to go first? All right, larry. I'm going to speak with ed's voice here We had this problem when ed was appointed chief knowledge officer And ed and I tried to work out. Well, how would we organize the whole effort of managing Or to somehow working with the knowledge that nasa has or needs? And how would we organize this office edge in washington? A lot of the centers They're not suspicious of washington, but they weren't exactly embracing it and they weren't embracing ed And we came up with a number of models that I think were quite Quite useful and one that really worked was a federal model Don't manage knowledge from a centralized position Manage it somewhat like the u.s. Manages itself through states. We have a federal model. There were 13 centers I don't know if that number is still right and each center had their own chief knowledge officer They knew what knowledge knowledge is profoundly local It's a local phenomenon people on the ground working there know what the knowledge is what they need And this way ed could coordinate those centers In such a way he can speak for them in washington, but he's not managing it I would say that's one way to avoid avoid that bureaucratization the first Knowledge project they ever worked in organization was for the world bank and they put in place a knowledge office And they tried to manage the knowledge of all the world bank employees who were spreading every bloody country you could think of And this is a crazy utopian fantasy if you think about it And it was a terrible failure everyone just it all blew up and it gave the subject the bad name You can't bureaucratize it. You can't centralize you have to work In a somewhat of a spider web federal model Manage the people who are really on on the ground as the army called it ground truth manage them Sorry ed. I took all your No, not at all I'm gonna use actually I'm gonna use your voice And say T T e a t This is actually a larry talks about this. This is work done by nonaka and it's also interesting that knowledge is it's so important It's it's approached different ways There's an eastern approach to knowledge is a western approach to knowledge Despite the fact that I spent my life in the west I prefer the eastern approach which is about conversation which is about coming together And the notion of t is really about eating and drinking coming together so that we're talking You want to create places and spaces? Where your people can talk together tell the truth disagree um Policy and standards are fine. You are essential. It's a part of the fabric of knowledge But it becomes a problem when people can't disagree and say hey that policy we have is we got to get rid of it It's not working. Tell me the story why and so t uh teach at columbia university Uh many of the best times are when we get together over dinner And because then people can get comfortable they can be human So eating and drinking and coming together Conversation one of our colleagues, uh, nancy dixon who's part of this podcast club coming up likes to say connection before content And it's so right we have to take the time to allow us to connect with each other to be social and uh, so so t Is is the way to promote the sharing of knowledge Yeah, and I think uh ed you and I learned from uh some workshops that we've done recently with some government groups that There's often a bias towards doing the work and not enough about Who we are and how are we going to work together and using our connective knowledge to develop our plans and to build in that element of Adaptability so that there's not only shared ownership at the beginning, but they're shared accountability In being able to move things forward and uh, we did a workshop recently For a government body and they came back to us and said, you know, it was really Kind of kind of a dull moment that you brought us together with other people in the government and we got incredible insight and how silly of us to Think that we're an isolated island and not realize that we have, you know Other people that we can reach out to who are in similar situations that we are who've dealt with similar Types of issues and challenges and why aren't we leveraging that knowledge when it's uh, as larry said it's local It's accessible. Uh, we can get together. We can have that tea in that cup. Well outside of covet time They have that tea and that conversation and uh and get engaged with each other. So You know, we're also seeing in that in this midst of uh, of not only covet but also As organizations look to change their ways of working. How do we re-envision? communities of practice so that instead of kind of stayed Efforts to push out information We actually bring people together to talk about how do you apply? information and knowledge in different contexts because as I'm learning how to Use agile tools and techniques in my work I'm gaining experience and I'm gaining knowledge and I'm gaining new capabilities That I can share with my colleagues to help them think about well Maybe your project is being managed in a more predictive way But maybe there are elements for which agile tools and capabilities might make better sense But if you if you're not learning from my experience and if I'm not sharing my knowledge with you Then we're continuing to I to operate in in isolated silos. So To larry's point about knowledge being social if we're not sharing it if we're not bringing it to our team environment It's not really uh, not really being used in the right way Wouldn't you agree? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Steve. There's a great metaphor People often look for resources the heaths wrote a really nice book on change called switch And they refer to this notion. I got it. I think initially from jonathan hate Who talked about the notion of the rider and the elephant? And the rider represents the individual who's got the logic the ideas the strategy for where the direction of this change But the rider is on top of this elephant And the elephant represents the total emotions Um, we spend a lot of our time thinking about the logic The and and we should uh the rationality the steps involved the strategy But if we ignore the elephant basically the elephant drives it the elephant represents the emotions And one of the reasons why we Ignored is we're afraid I think of of emotions. So that's a different subject, but it's a good. It's a nice book Uh, but the the metaphor that I love is the rider and the elephant you need both Uh, but the the elephant is the emotions. The rider is the the logic the strategy Very cool larry. We actually have a question for you. What happened at the world bank? What happened with that initiative at the world bank? The seller who ran that left and made a very fine career for himself talking about The world bank although he didn't perform much. I won't say his name. That doesn't seem fair But he's a well-known person They kept trying and they're still trying the problem the main problem with the world bank And I'm happy to say is that they have a different leader Every four every time there's a new president they only lead for I think four years And often we have a different president who appoints that person and they want to put their imprint on the bank So they change the knowledge management strategy. So to speak they want to do it this way that way So there's no consistent no consistency In what we're going to do about knowledge the bank is full of knowledge very knowledgeable people They work their tails off trying to reduce poverty. I have a lot of respect for them I work there as a consultant for maybe 15 20 years But nothing was built in permanently. I still think that's true although Ed and I both teach at columbia We have students who work in the knowledge department at the world bank And there's still a lot of problems there because of the turnover of senior management when a new director comes in he or she They get rid of people they bring in new people and they say what is this knowledge stuff? So it creates a problem. They're not one of the leading firms in managing knowledge because of that Very cool Someone raised the point of they like that concept of creating places where people can come together And they ask how can I help grow my skill set in this area? I think one thing you should do is Look up and read all your can about the Japanese word by b a a It's an interesting word. Try to you could find stuff about it on the web Bob means spaces where meaning is developed among groups of people And uh, you could learn a lot as Ed points out the Japanese very clever in many ways You can learn a lot by creating spaces Where people can come together and maybe discuss new meanings discuss new ways of thinking share what you're thinking Space is a deeply neglected subject when we talk about knowledge and how organizations work people yearn for it Covid non-covid They really want to have spaces where they could talk to their peers I mean, let me also comment. It's interesting in China. They have the term guanxi. Yeah, right same thing She is about the relationship the importance of that Uh, one of the things we used to do larry remembers at nasa. We would just create Uh, we'd call them training program. They were never training programs. They were sharing forums knowledge forums And we would ask a few project folks to talk about a project they were working on And we would say tell us about the problems you're dealing with tell us about the successful the innovations and 10 15 no slides Just talk tell the story of that aspect of that And they would do that and then for the next hour or so In in in the room people would talk about oh, I uh, that's an interesting idea Why don't we do more about that or I heard about this problem? This is how I would approach it or I don't believe your story. They would say I don't believe it But they would get into this discussion. That was one of the most successful things we did So, uh, in terms of building the skills, there's a lot of very nice, uh, material on stories the use of stories and organizations I would I would look at that and how do we start sharing stories or facilitating that? Uh, second thing is facilitation skills Uh, really facilitation is to allow others to talk and to share And then to keep the conversation going and the other thing I'll plug is, uh In in in terms of what Steve and I and a lot of we've been talking about this knowledge initiative We're starting it with networks networks around the future of work networks around AI which is People coming together to practice and to share their knowledge the wisdom and the expert theories So be a part of that see how it goes and see if you can take those things to your organization And it's interesting as I've been reading a lot of the literature around what happens to project leaders When AI starts to take over some of the core functions is kind of the same thing that i'm reading When I read about covet and how covet changed behaviors and leading teams that There's a need for greater empathy. So how do we have a deeper understanding of what our team members And our customers need so that we can deliver better solutions How do we leverage creativity? So how do we identify opportunities based on insights? That our customers that our team members can't envision or articulate at any given point in time How do we keep people motivated? How do we coach and help our team members so that they can give their best effort? How do we enable knowledge sharing? So how do we we're seeing a lot more? In terms of our knowledge initiative. We're getting a lot more requests for can you come and share? With our community of practice or our internal group on how we can do this better So people are looking for information To help them improve and adapt in real time and then related to change How do we use tools and capabilities to help individuals adapt to these new ways of working and? Engaging and delivering value. So it's not just about the technology. It's how do we? How do we work with each other so that we can move from our current state? To this desired future state where together we perform stronger And with that unfortunately, we are nearing the end of our session So i'm going to ask ed to do a summary of our session today Yeah, thank you. Steve. I feel like we've gotten started. I feel we can go for another few hours We can get together when we can someplace where we can talk and eat and drink a few things I think certainly come out a starting point is people Larry said knowledge Artificial intelligence is about ideas. It's about implementation profoundly social. It's about people So ask people for help pull them into things listen to their ideas But make sure they have a platform for their thoughts and their ideas to be heard and to You know to to be used A second thing I think that really came out a lot is the notion There's an opportunity COVID-19 has changed everything So organizations and teams and leaders are thinking about where do we go in the future? We've had major changes around the ability to work remotely the use of tools and technologies and apps And also an appreciation for the human element like never before So we should be exploring this whole notion of what do we want our teams and organizations to look like And be a part of pushing that process I think organizations my experience are most open to change When they have to be because there's a threat. There's a need. There's an issue We're in that period over over a period of time uh, I guess I would say the final thing of Is what this discussion others have had is the importance of learning about learning Never before in our history have we been at a point where learning just is constant right and We have dynamic capabilities that are changing by technologies by new apps by tools by new ideas by new leaders We're expected to change almost yearly with new approaches We have to get knowledgeable about learning. How do we learn? How do we share? How do we promote it at the individual level? At the team level and the organizational and societal level so developing learning capabilities I think is the third message that I've heard All right, larry take us home Well it's hard to really I think Ed summed it up very well I think if I had to basically sum up the thing we're talking about people are more important than anything else In fact Ed and I and a colleague Matt Kohut wrote a book recently which we published later in the year by MIT called humanizing project management that even in thing activities that previously had been seen as Best done by Gantt charts or some sort of rigid logical sequence Really would benefit greatly by using human tools soft technologies a la culture and knowledge And teamwork things along that line. I think that's really what we're saying here the three of us We all have different sort of work backgrounds though. Ed and I somewhat similar But if you ask a lot of people who've been studying work Studying how things are working especially kovat. You're right. It's a very interesting experiment god It's an awful thing But it gave us some interesting ideas that people really are the most valuable resource firms have been saying this forever But they never really practiced it until quite recently I have to say and I think that's what we're saying, you know Use the people find tools and ways to use people in a humane way It's the most it's the most expensive thing you have I mean if you think about you spend more on salaries than you do on any capital goods And very rarely do you use the capabilities of these people? And they don't because and they don't often have the infrastructure to contribute Which is what we're really talking about. So I thought it was a wonderful discussion guys. Thank you very much And thank you larry and uh, we actually have a comment someone loves your outfit and ask are you in the middle of snow? I'm in the middle of putting a new heating system for my basement And it still gets quite cold. I have a basement office. I'm very fond of it. It's lovely woodwork I'm happy with it, but it's hard to heat. I have to get a whole new heater for the system down here and god has removed My natural warmth for my head Thank you Well, everybody on behalf of the knowledge initiative and the bright line initiative We thank you for joining us for today's conversation around How to enhance your enterprises learning with emerging technology with my colleagues ed Hoffman and larry prusak We appreciate you joining us today. We also want to invite you to join us for our center stage podcast Which you can access through our project management Or pmi.org website Just type in and search for center stage and you will have a collection Of a variety of different podcasts on everything from artificial intelligence to resilient leadership To how do we actually unlearn? behaviors and processes etc That can actually hold us back in today's environment So visit us at pmi.org and look for center stage podcasts We also invite you if you're interested to join us for our center stage podcast club Which is a live moderated session which gives you an opportunity to interact with some of the Guests that we have in our center stage podcasts and coming up will be madeline blair and nancy dixon On resilient leadership For our next podcast which is scheduled for march the 13th So if you're interested in that, please visit project management.com and look for the podcast club And you can register for that activity and event And as I mentioned we look forward to coming back and sharing additional information With the bright line initiative audience on different aspects of the future of work So with that I will say that we are a wrap today Thank you all for participating and for your questions and engagement with us And we hope that you have an awesome day of learning. Take care everybody and have a good one