Ebbinghaus or the Curves on why we just keep forgetting

Recently I came across the Ebbinghaus Curve aka the Forgetting Curve - interesting because my boss oftens laments  about how people can be trained in an improved SOP or new process, and then after a year or so they seem to have forgotten, and there is a risk of quality issues.

And to be honest, if someone catalogs a complex list of instructions on how to drive to a distant location, I find it often just doesn't gel with me. I much prefer simple written instructions, with the added visual component of a street directory. So far I haven't done much with GPS systems either to be honest.

So I've been intrigued by Nick Milton of Knoco Stories, who for years has been running a training program called the Bird Island Exercise, which is all about remembering & forgetting. Recently I re-discovered one of Nick's posts on his Bird Island Exercise from a year ago - where he shared the following insights :

"This result reinforces recognition of the frailty of human memory as a long term knowledge store, and therefore the need to support that memory through some sort of capturing and recording. Even 6 months is too long to leave knowledge in memory alone. We need to be capturing it as we go, even as an aide memoire, otherwise we lose it.


And when we come to use it again, we find we retain just enough to be dangerous."

Nick Milton also shared more on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in his The Gorilla Illusions post - by the way have you ever heard of the Invisible Gorilla Experiment ?

I also liked Nick's post on The Self Aware Organisation - it seems to resonate with many of the concepts in Professor James Reason's High Performance Organizations.

And around the same time of Nick's Remembering & Forgetting post, Harold Jarche also shared his thoughts on Ebbinghaus & the Forgetting Curve - Learning & Forgetting - on how much we remember after training & memorisation - and how quickly we can lose it.

Professor James Reason has also had some interesting thoughts on Human Errors - which seem to accord with the Forgetting Curve as shared in my organization's OHS awareness sessions. 

Some of these ideas are also echoed in a preso by ACTKM's David Williams "How do you get people to read and understand stuff?" - it's on Slideshare - which holds some very interesting preso's on Knowledge Management which are freely  available for download. David's thoughts are salient when one considers the increasing volume, length & complexity of SOP's - Standards Operating Procedures - as they try to cover every possible scenario. 


Then Benedict Carey (NYT) reviewed ideas that turn traditional thought on studying, learning & retention on its head.


I have to review my organization's procedure for writing standard procedures - so there could be some good inspiration in there, for what is arguably quite a dry subject, but nonetheless very crucial. 


I've always liked the Gunning Fog approach to understandability of one's writing - some find it too geeky with its equation for simplicity/complexity of writing.

I find it interesting because of the strong focus on Corporate "Storytelling" in Knowledge Management circles in Australia in recent years as opposed to CMS - Content Management Systems.  In fact CMS can really support SME's (Subject Matter Experts) to effectively manage their  PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) systems - for more effective recall & Knowledge Sharing, and so to share via tools such as Corporate "Storytelling". My organization's SSO's (Significant Safety Occurrence shared stories & learnings) are in fact a good example of embedded Corporate Storytelling in my opinion.

See my Diigo Shared Bookmarks & Google Reader RSS feed items for more Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve links.

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

ACTKM10 KMLF TEDXCanberra - so many cracking ideas this week like Positive Deviance

David Gurteen on Positive Deviance at #ACTKM10 was the start of my rich week of new ideas &.new contacts. David was the opening ACTKM 2010 Keynote Speaker on Monday, October 18 2010.

My notes on my learnings from David's preso ...

David shared how he came to discover the work of Ricard Pascale & the Sternims on PD, & his initial thoughts on its importance in making positive changes stick.I had heard that David would be sharing his exploration of a new field (for him), and was intrigued to realise so much had been published already on PD. However David indicated that he believed that PD has been applied in the private sector, but so far with nowhere near the success as in international development and health.

PD Case study on international development community - malnutrition in Vietnam : found the PD and used them to tell their stories to change attitudes in the community

· Successful in changing cultural attitudes

· Need to have agree that there is a problem

· Other cases – female circumcision in Egypt / infant mortality put baby on blanket on ground whereas others would leave baby on cold ground as relatives came to inspect new baby

PD has not been so successful in the business world as it cannot be used in all circumstances especially as it was considered “not invented here” – who is there, in the shared community, who will listen to you : differences between enforcement & engagement - – is there a case for undercover PD in business context ? People resist being given the solution examples :

• Merck – ( I need to follow up info on this)
• Goldman Sachs – (also need to follow up)
• USA health system – PD starting to be used as a tool for Infection Control

Key themes & principles of PD according to DG :

1. Avoid grandiose aims & solutions
2. Start with the problem- real tangible intractable problems not aspirational goals

1. • Deal with evolutionary approaches
   • The community defines & frames the problem

1. Involve everyone – self organizing – knowhow is not concentrated in leadership
2. Don’t coerce people – involve people who want to work on problem – can opt in or opt out
3. If the problem is repeated in another community then start from scratch again – ie people discover the solution for themselves : people resist be given the solution
4. Seek sustainable solutions
5. Only facilitate – teach & support the process – light touch – they are not the experts in the problem or the solution- do not contribute directly to defining the problem or the solution – do not be controlling
6. Ownership of the problem & the solution
7. Avoid best practice – can trigger Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome – there is no silver bullet

Quotes

· Learning is shaped by social context – aim to use implicit knowledge – intuition not explicit knowledge- we are walking on a trampoline : unintended consequences – don’t suppress variation- information has a social life despite faith in “communication” and “knowledge transfer” – unless new insights are embedded in the social system they evaporate – flies in face of lean manufacturing

· People may not have knowledge around a topic to take advantage of the transferred knowledge because of the cognitive valley.

· It is practice that advances knowledge ( not theorising )

· It is easier your way to think your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting – active learning

Tweets generated during David's PD preso ....

David's Preso Abstract:

Positive Deviance (PD) is an approach to behavioural and social change based on the observation that in every community there are individuals or groups of people (so called Positive Deviants) whose behaviours and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers even though they have access to the same resources and face similar challenges.

In the international development and health sectors, PD has been used to address issues as diverse as childhood malnutrition, neo-natal mortality, girl trafficking, school drop-out, female genital mutilation (FGM), MRSA infections in hospitals and HIV/AIDS.

There seems to me to be a number reasons for this but the main one is that the PD approach is totally facilitative. The community not only identifies the problem they wish to tackle but are then fully responsible for the inquiry that takes place and the development and execution of the solution.

This is not how things normally work in business organizations. We are still caught up in the paradigm of “telling people what to do” and “doing things to people” rather than helping them figure it out for themselves.

In this talk, David will take a look at some of the principals that underlie Positive Deviance and what he thinks KM practitioners can learn from the approach.

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

130 Years of KM Forensics, Governance & Metrics ...

130 Years of KM Forensics, Governance & Metrics - and 1000's of lives saved! In browsing Flickr photos, I came across an industrial archaeology plaque, commemorating the original Manchester site of British Engine Insurance, an organization committed to avoiding industrial explosions. And, ironic, in 1996, that this Manchester head office, itself was destroyed in an IRA bombing. Judith, a blogger from the UK, wrote to me that all its systems and records were also destroyed, effectively ending this organization as it was taken over by Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group plc. Sadly ironic that there was no IT & KM disaster recovery systems that could save it.

November 12 2008 marks the 130th anniversary of the formation of the British Engine Insurance Ltd, originally known as the "The Engine and Boiler Insurance Company" - set up by RB Langridge. And from its origin in 1878, its Chief Engineer, M Langridge submitted an annual technical report (Knowledge Base ?) to the board (one of Arthur Shelley's elevator conversations ?) - covering "post mortems of dead equipment" ... aiming to improve safety, efficiency & equipment reliability. It all resonates with the thoughts of Professor James Reason - advocate of the mindful and High Performance Organization.

British Engine Insurance had been a pioneer in Knowledge Management, passionately committed in the 1870's, to preventing explosions killing dozens of people each year ... just as many do today to prevent explosions

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130 Years of KM Forensics, Governance & Metrics: Part 1

130 Years of KM Forensics, Governance & Metrics - and 1000's of lives saved! In browsing Flickr photos, I came across an industrial archaeology plaque, commemorating the original Manchester site of British Engine Insurance, an organization committed to avoiding industrial explosions. And, ironic, in 1996, that this Manchester head office, itself was destroyed in an IRA bombing, and with no backup administration/IT systems elsewhere, the business was effectively destroyed.

November 12 2008 marks the 130th anniversary of the formation of the British Engine Insurance Ltd (now part Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group plc), originally known as the "The Engine and Boiler Insurance Company" - set up by RB Langridge. And from its origin in 1878, its Chief Engineer, M Langridge submitted an annual technical report (Knowledge Base ?) to the board (one of Arthur Shelley's elevator conversations ?) - covering "post mortems of dead equipment" ... aiming to improve safety, efficiency & equipment reliability. It all resonates with the thoughts of Professor James Reason - advocate of the mindful and High Performance Organization.

British Engine Insurance had been a pioneer in Knowledge Management, passionately committed in the 1870's, to preventing explosions killing dozens of people each year - helping to achieve cultural change in "boilermen" & asset owners/managers alike. They used visual inspection & the KM tools of the day ... maybe not all the highly technical NDE (NonDestructive Engineering/Inspection - similar to medical techniques of ultrasound, X-ray, CT Scan) instruments nor the databases, document management systems, emails, internet, communities of practice, wikis, blogs, Web 2.0 etc ... but they willingly & enthusiastically captured knowledge - then shared it very widely .. being exploited for decades .... as an embryonic beginning of the governance engineering culture in much of today's power industry.

Professionally, my great passions are forensic engineering aka failure analysis, knowledge, quality & safety management - avoiding reinventing the wheel .... in mid 1981... I was a young metallurgist and permitted to join the Failure Analysis Metallurgical team, then led passionately by David Barnett (now AINDT CEO - An immigrant from the UK, Dave has now served Australian industry for 45 years). Dave has always been a devout follower of the "British Engine Insurance" Technical Reports. In our field, these Technical Reports had broken new ground in establishing a culture of knowledge capture, management & sharing - way back in 1879. Although I was initially perplexed back in 1981, as to how an insurance company could possibly do failure investigations ... I learnt.

Problems had emerged with boilers exploding as early as 1815, and even in the 1850's, a few engineers began to recognise it was essential to do regular inspection of equipment to prevent catastrophic, & often fatal, explosions. RB Langridge was a key figure in the Manchester Steam Users Association, the first boiler inspection company- set up in 1854 ...he had strong views on regular equipment inspection programmes - and he was prepared to stand by them - he even resigned in 1859 when his vision of linking insurance cover to regular condition monitoring inspections was not accepted.

In 1878 RB Langridge argued to his employers, The Steam Boiler Assurance Company, that steam engines should be brought into the inspection scheme. He firmly believed that "accidents resulting from the disruption of the very large flywheels of the engines of the day could be as violent and explosive as boiler explosions and could similarly be reduced by routine inspection." So, his views falling on deaf ears, he resigned again, and formed the "The Engine and Boiler Insurance CO. Ltd"... and in 1932 the firm merged with the old MSUA - enlarging British Engine Insurance Ltd. In the meantime all sorts of fanciful theories for causes of the explosions began to flourish, one being "the spheroidisation of water".

Note - in the 1860-70's, up to 60 people pa would be killed in boiler explosions in the UK, with 31 explosions in 1880. In 1879, M Langridge classified the causes of the breakdown of engines (& the root causes seem remarkably unchanged !) in the first annual technical report to the Board (Elevator conversation & Knowledge Base ? ) as follows ......
- 49% - due to accidental causes - eg some twine was dropped into the casing
- 14% - due to negligence of attendants eg brass had worn through - but it hadn't been checked for a very long time
- 23% - due to old defects, flaws and wear - many cases of pre-existing cracks preceding final fracture were cited
- 14% - due to weakness and faulty construction - eg incorrect fitting

Further he identified what would be known decades later as fatigue & the role of residual stress in fracture ..."it should be remembered that under variable strains of a certain intensity, especially when alternately tensile and compressive, the strength of metals gradually decreases, until ultimately rupture takes place with a comparatively light load; and also, that iron or steel, when in a high state of strain, will give way under a slight jar which would not otherwise affect it." I have always believed that it takes special traits to make good inspectors - attention to detail, crawl around in arduous conditions & to get it all documented in a meaningful way. These factors remain crucial in engineering to this day, eg planes, oil rigs, gas pipelines.

Effective KM was to be a crucial component in the changes necessary to stop the industry killing its own


............................ more

(Reference - British Engine Technical Report 1978 Volume XIII - 1878-1978 100Years of Service to Industry.)

130 Years of KM Forensics, Governance & Metrics - Part 2

Up to 60 people killed p.a. in boiler explosions in the UK in the 1860-70’s, with 31 explosions in 1880. The UK Parliament became agitated - so 1882 & 1890 saw the UK pass the Boiler Explosions Acts. It was necessary for industry to be regulated into a governance culture. Just preceding the 1882 Act, the British Engine’s 1st Technical Report, of 1879 was born … a key first step in the industry's KM.

Before the 1882 Act, only 20,000 of 110, 000 boilers in the country were being inspected - explosions were attributed to "age, corrosion & wastage". In some ways the reticence to inspect was not surprising - the costs & it does involve quite a lot to take a boiler down for inspection and then bring it back online – not just a matter of flicking a switch. After the 1882 Act, the bar charts showed an amazing plummet in explosions and deaths. And they dropped again after the introduction of the 1901 Factory & Workshop Act. Those outcomes are step change metrics that many organizations would be thrilled in achieving. In Germany, by 1900, Munich Re was beginning to consider industrial equipment insurance issues.

However it was not just about inspecting susceptible equipment – KM was vital. M Langridge was passionate about documenting & passing on the lessons to the next generation, as stated in his 1906 report ... "Many of the experiences set forth in the following pages are no more than old acquaintances dressed in new clothes, familar pictures with fresh backgrounds and the paragraphs in which they are described but new presentments of ancient histories. But in ephemeral literature repetition is not to be despised so long as the mistakes and difficulties dealt with continue to be made and felt; so long as there are young ones growing up to make the like mistakes and suffer the same troubles as their elders, unless warned by the records of the experience of the past. And particularly is this true when the experiences gathered are of a kind that comparatively few have opportunities of gathering."

And in his 1908 report, Langridge again reiterated the KM message ... "The old causes of accidents remain. The familiar consequences follow, and history repeats itself in the Company's little world no less than in the march of nations.... Nor is it well entirely to ignore the old, for what is old to some is new to others. Those who have learnt the lessons of experience pass away, and others who have yet to learn take up the work. They find to their cost that much of the old is new. ... There are two kinds of things men's eyes and minds ignore - those they have never seen and those which speaking vulgarly, are always in front of their noses. To inform them of the one and remind them of the other is fitting work for the instructed scribe..."

However success could not allow complacency. And in 1917-27 explosions of caustic cracking due to failing boiler rivets appeared - failing from a combined corrosion and straining beyond yield point. 1928 saw the onset of failures due to welding - in the absence of advice on proper design, permissible stress levels, construction methods or inspection requirements ... problems with lack of fusion in welding were reported. Ultimately changes were called for - including pressure testing. (Note - From 1946-1964, the reports were written by the Research Engineer, GA Cottrell - an icon in the field of metallurgy for many students of the 1970-90’s).

This legacy of boiler inspection in the UK, which was carried through generations of families, continues via the SaFed. It has now been extended to a much wider range of assets - oil rigs, turbines, plants in chemical, iron& steel industries.

And all around the world - the boiler inspectors, together with other specialists in inspection - NDE, lifting, condition monitoring, structural condition & those in failure investigation - forensic engineering specialists, such as Neil Barnett, (20 years experienced, carved out his own niche & firmly stepped outside Dave's shadow) ... are all supporting today's asset owners, managers, shop floor operators & maintainers. Together .... all dedicated to preventing equipment problems, improving safety & documenting what they find into today's knowledge bases & sharing it across networks & Communities of Practice (COP's).

The language of the old British Engine Technical Reports may be archaic and quaint ... but their KM & Governance messages remains constant ... checking, sharing and learning ... to save people's lives....

(Reference - British Engine Technical Report 1978 Volume XIII - 1878-1978 100Years of Service to Industry.)