During a discussion on elephant conservation a friend once commented tongue in cheek, “Wouldn’t be interesting to hear what the elephants had to say in an anecdote circle?” This was one of those crazy and provocative comments that quite often act as a stepping stone to an even better proposition. Right now, we need lots of good propositions because the Asian Elephant population which once numbered in the millions is diminishing at a rate of knots and now numbers less than 30,000.

Elephants actually do have their own sophisticated language but we are not quite at the stage of comprehension. However ….. What if we undertook the next best thing? What if we collected the stories and experiences of the people that know the elephants better than anyone else in the world?  The elephant’s Mahouts.

In most instances an elephant and its Mahout are paired together at a young age and spend the remainder of their lives together. Collectively, the mahouts possess a body of knowledge about elephants that no one in academia or research can ever hope to match. Who better then, to provide experiences and insights that may assist in saving this species, which many are now suggesting may not survive beyond this current generation?

To assist the great many already undertaking elephant conservation work worldwide, Think Quick is now working with A Future with Elephants and has developed and commenced implementation of the Elephant Mahout Insight project (EMI) with a view to collecting the stories and experiences of the elephant mahouts across South East Asia and the rest of the world. Cognitive Edge from Singapore will be partnering us in this project by allowing us access to their unique Sensemaker software which we will use to both capture the narrative from the mahouts and to help build deeper insights and understandings about the elephant and its current, and future place in the world.

The insights gained will be shared with elephant stakeholders across South East Asia in a number of workshops where we hope to co-design new experiments, interventions and projects that will make a difference to the long term survival of the species. One of the most important premises of the EMI project is that we make no claims about our knowledge of elephants and how to save them, but rather we will rely upon the distributed intelligence of those that work with elephants on the ground in Asia. Our skill lies in capturing the narrative, helping stakeholders to make sense of the patterns appearing and assisting assisting them to design new ways forward.

It is important to note also that there are many elephant experts across South East Asia who are, and have already undertaken significant research with mahouts and we hope to incorporate as much of this knowledge as possible into the EMI project.

In addition to the opportunity to gain insight and design new interventions in this conservation effort, the narrative collected will also serve as an ongoing knowledge repository which will be made available to interested parties and researchers globally to aid in future conservation efforts. Of course as the numbers of elephants decline so do mahout numbers and their collective knowledge. So another reason this activity is a priority is it will play an important part in capturing the experiences of mahouts while we still have them amongst us.

This approach to knowledge harvesting offers significant opportunity for any group or organisation that is facing the issue of an aging workforce and the subsequent skills shortages that many retirements will bring.

We believe this is one of the more resonant and extensive knowledge management projects being undertaken in the conservation / sustainability space at the moment and we hope to report on significant progress over the coming year.

Anyone seeking more information or would like to contribute to the project in some way, shape or form is very welcome to contact me.

Follow a Future with Elephants on Facebook & Twitter.

Frank Connolly

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So ends another rather eventful year – an understatement many will say!

I’d like to extend my sincerest thanks to those who have collaborated and worked with me over the course of what was a very challenging but ultimately satisfying 2010.

I look forward to our continuing our relationships, many new relationships, and adding value throughout 2011 and beyond.

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This week I had the pleasure of presenting at the annual ACT KM conference in Canberra.

The two day event was as diverse as one could have hoped with an eclectic array of presentations which is indicative I think of one of two things:

1) KM is running out of relevance and things to say, so is transmuting into different disciplines, or 2) KM is now being considered as so much a part of other business that it is relevant who matter what discipline you are involved in.

My view is certainly the latter, as each of the speakers provided evidence of the absolute necessity of knowledge management approaches in each of their subject matter areas. I found every speaker had something interesting to offer and my failure to mention all of them here is simply a product of my erratic note-taking rather than a lack of acknowledgement to all.

So many good points were made by speakers on Day 1, I felt compelled to incorporate some of their astute observation into my session on day 2. Not only does this pay homage to their efforts but it also serves to make me look a little bit clever by association. I like that.

Amanda Horne spoke of Positive Psychology and made the point that it can take take 3 or more good things happening to turn you around from a single bad occurrence. It is for this reason that we routinely think in the feasibility and benefit space before critical assessment when applying the Six Thinking Hats methodology. Due in part to the predominant brain chemistries in play during each of these functions, it is far easier to move from a positive to a negative state, than from negative to positive – try it.

Patrick Lambe, the Mephistophlian KM Sensai from Singapore discussed the roles of faith, magic and culture in KM and posed some challenging questions about how to move KM forward. (Patrick also inexplicably lost his goatee during the conference dinner.) Arthur Shelley, author and expert on animal behaviour, again stressed the importance of conversations in making sense of the world and Mark Schenk did something totally unexpected and got people telling stories. This was done in a Story slam format that elicited some truly amazing stories from the audience.

Convention and any semblance of order were cast aside on Day 2 when a futuristic hypothetical was conducted featuring a range of luminaries from the year 2050. In this session “What happened to KM – looking back at 2020 from 2050″ the panel were challenged to postulate on the future of the industry and just where we might be 40 years hence. Michelle Lambert of the KM Round Table made a significant contribution to the panel deliberation and had she not not already carved a place in KM history for herself, she certainly has now.

Many thanks to David, Nerida and the rest of the ACTKM committee for the work they put into the two days that were well summed up by Edgar Tan at the end when we expressed his appreciation not only for the diverse content, but also for the humour that the entire group brought to the sessions over the two days.

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Greetings all. Now that I’ve moved on from my whole of government role I’m starting to find time to put together my own blog and this is it. Think Quick!

Actually when I say my own blog, I mean I’ll be the primary driver but I will be working with all of those brilliant people that I have had the pleasure to work with, meet and learn from over the past 10 years (and there’s been quite a few.) Some have started to appear in the Favourite Links at left of screen, and I will progressively add to this list.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be starting to pull together the tools techniques and training we successfully applied and bundle them up into a unique set of offerings. The mix will be eclectic and selected specifically to help make sense of, and act in the increasingly complex and changing world in which we now find ourselves.

The methods on offer will incorporate both the new and contemporary along with a number of the tried and true standards such as the methods developed by Edward de Bono, including Lateral Thinking, The Direct Attention Thinking Tools and the Six Thinking Hats.

Frank Connolly

think.quick@me.com

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