People: Adding Texture to Data
I am not pleading for “air traffic controllers” to watch radar screens
of sales and to issue edicts for change. All the data do is to highlight
a point of investigation. It was critical for the manager at
Wal-Mart’s headquarters to be able to talk to the person in the
store who had decided to cut open the box. Small changes often
make big differences. That store would rarely regard what one of
its employee’s did as being significant. From the store’s perspective,
it was just a matter of opening the box. However, in the inter-
view process, headquarters can start to see a “best or better” prac-
tice that might be sharable across the enterprise. The headquarters
staff members have to view themselves as football coaches sitting
in the bleachers. They can use information and dialogue to reveal
the texture and details, which is where knowledge is most often
located.
Encouraging Local Initiative and Innovation
If the local store did not feel that it had “permission” to slice open
one box and put it on display, since it was not ordered to do so by
headquarters, a solution would not have been found as rapidly. For
innovation to come from all points on the learning network, there
needs to be a culture that encourages a degree of innovation and
also that creates opportunities to share these small changes openly
as part of a “let’s find ways of improving things” attitude.
Learning Authored Rapidly
My colleagues in the e-learning world often think that learning has
to be polished and highly produced to be acceptable in a corporate
culture. Bluntly, the accuracy of the content and the speed of
dissemination are the top two qualities. A quick fax would work if
it were received and read immediately by someone in every store.
However, learning networks are being built that will allow richer
and more rapid dissemination than the fax solution.
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