Tag Archive for 'Mark McElroy'

Traveling in circles

Published on 12 April, 2008 in knowledge management, methods and reflection. 1 Comment

I’ve been seeing circles lately, in a positive way.

As I mentioned in earlier posts this month and at the Boston KM Forum KM 2.0 symposium, I’ve been putting some time into reading Joseph Firestone and Mark McElroy‘s knowledge management writing. Highly recommended, although occasionally challenging reading. Seeing their Decision Execution Cycle, in Doing Knowledge Management (29 page PDF, Firestone and McElroy, 2004), and also in On Doing Knowledge Management, (Firestone, 2008), got me to thinking about other circular models that have seen. From page 6 in the first paper:

Firestone McElroy - Decision Execution Cycle

Perhaps the most well known circular model is the similar Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle (PDCA) from Walter Shewhart; frequently credited to W. Edwards Deming, who popularized its use. The American Society for Quality describes the cycle as:

  1. Plan. Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.
  2. Do. Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.
  3. Study. Review the test, analyze the results and identify what you’ve learned.
  4. Act. Take action based on what you learned in the study step: If the change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into wider changes. Use what you learned to plan new improvements, beginning the cycle again.

At the Boston KM Forum symposium, in his presentation, Dan Keldsen referenced another circular model, the Observe-Orient-Detect-Act (OODA) loop from John “40 second” Boyd, United States Air Force, as described by Vicki Bell in her 2003 article: A different battlefield, the same strategy: How the OODA Loop applies to business:

Lastly, Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell propose several circular models in their book Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations. The first is a learning cycle represented as follows (p.21):

Learning to Fly - Learning Cycle #1

The second is double-loop model “relates learning processes, and the capture and transfer of knowledge to day-to-day business.” (p.33):

Learning to Fly - Learning Cycle #2

Now the work is to learn how to intentionally travel in, not just see, these circles.

For Further Reading:

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