Information Pyramids: Actionable Information

Information Pyramids are a concept that Ron Weisenburger invented in 2002 when he was working with forage and beef cattle researchers in Agriculture Canada and the western provinces in Canada.

This article explains information architecture design for websites that need to guide customers to best information, current best practice and detailed information in a way that does not result in information glut and over-reliance on search. Foragebeef.ca and landuseKN.ca are two websites that are structured on Information pyramids.  

Ron's challenge was that some of the researchers were about to retire. Concerned about keeping really good information visible for ranchers and cow-calf producers in the Canadian western prairies, the researchers wanted a website that summarized the best information they had on different issues on growing grass and hay and raising beef cows and calves.

As the Chief Knowledge Officer for Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, Ron Weisenburger's invention was to propose an information architecture that featured three layers of information on the website.

Layer 1, the top of the information pyramid, is the knowledge nugget or knowledge summary. It is a checklist of issues are immediately relevant to current circumstances. They are the issues a well-informed customer should be paying attention to.  The knowledge summary is actionable information because the community of experts who produce them summarize in a sentence these key actions as:

• What You Should Do
• What You Should Avoid
• What is Coming Over the Horizon

I contend that your value to your organization and your clients is realized when  you regularly produce knowledge summaries that clearly cover these three topics. If you don't, why are you an expert and why would anybody care what you do?

The knowledge summary is a checklist of actionable information

Knowledge summaries are at the core of good advice. And like good advice, they have a "Best Before" date stamp on them. Circumstances change and so should the knowledge summary. You usually don't see knowledge summaries written down (I will say more than I can write down). That makes them even more valuable when they are and when they are regularly updated to stay current with changing circumstances.

Ron Weisenburger's vision was that in the knowledge summary, you could click on a topic you should be paying attention to and get directed to Layer 2, the factsheet that describes "How To" do the current good practice you need to learn more about (or refresh your memory on).

 The factsheet on "How To"

The 3 to 5 page factsheet, that in layman's language explains and illustrates (pictures and graphics are important) what to do step by step, takes a community of experts to develop. It becomes a best practice guide. The most efficient way to develop checklists and factsheets is have someone write the strawdog (it will be about 80% right) and then have the community edit the draft. You will see communities of practitioners (CoPs) do this in wikis. The key is to tailor the factsheet to the level and tools that the target audience uses. With the emergence of mobile devices, shrinking good practice guides down to photos, illustrations and short text makes for in-field guides that reside on the hip and are more accessible than printed guides. Good practices guides are more static than checklists. They tend to have a lifetime of 3 to 5 years before changes in technology or research require updating.



The Details, Layer 3, presents the research articles, manuals, reports and regulatory instructions that are judged most useful by the community of experts. Information pyramids do not cover all the information on a topic, just the most relevant, robustly useful and foundational to the topic. Links from the How To factsheet bring the customer to this level if they need the detailed step by step instruction, the background research that supports the practice or the regulatory details that shape the current good practice.

The Details are the manual, research article, research report or regulatory instructions, standards and codes of practice.

Ron Weisenberger's information pyramid was a revolutionary concept in delivering really good information in a small footprint. The links allow a user to journey down to the material he/she is unfamiliar with. It also provides the opportunity to remind users to pay attention to fundamentals or key learnings they may have forgotten.

A second advantage of information pyramids is that they don't have to deliver all the information on the website. Really good detailed information can reside on other websites (e.g. factsheets or the details (reports, manuals, regulations)) and the information pyramid just links to to that information.

Today, an expert's tweet can be the one sentence line that highlights a currently relevant checklist topic. The blog can be the short introduction to the How To factsheet. And the Details can reside wherever the community of practitioners find access the easiest. Information pyramids are a different twist on the concept of news agregators. The toughest task is getting a community of practitioners to regularly review and update the checklist of currently relevant "Things to Do" today and "Things to Watch Out For".

The concept of information pyramids is introduced at foragebeef.ca
in their section "About Foragebeef.ca". Information pyramids also are a key structural element in the Alberta Land-use Knowledge Network's landuseKN.ca website. The article, "Information Pyramids, Presenting Really Good Information to You" on landuseKN.ca is more detailed on how to construct information pyramids.

At the core of this is a community of practitioners who take on the task of constructing the information pyramid and then weeding and maintaining it. Without their attention, the checklists quickly become out of date. Knowledge requires the active participation of knowledgeable practitioners.

A Conversation about Knowledge Sharing

Conversations can be entertaining or sometimes they are nothing to howl about. You be the judge!


Dr. Kirby Wright teaches a course in Knowledge Management as part of the Master of Arts in Communications and Technology at the University of Alberta. A team of his graduate students approached me for an interview as part of their project in the course. They have created a blog at kmcafe.org. Their blog is well worth a visit for a critical view (in the terms of a critique) of the state and future of knowledge management.

The interview is posted at kmcafe.org. Thanks to Carolyn Dearden for editing the interview down from 40 to 24 minutes. You get the nuggets without the sidetracks I can roam down sometimes.

So, if you are interested in my take on the state of KM, click on "KM Cafe chats with KM Expert Neil MacAlpine".

The Recession, the Knowledge Worker and Human Resources

Even in a recession, like a bad penny, the concept that staff are knowledge workers keeps returning to haunt organizations. In eight months, the search for competent workers has flipped to retaining talent and keeping organizational knowledge intact while downsizing.

And Human Resources (HR) is expected to have the ideas since they understand organizational learning and training.

Unfortunately, most organizations will learn what HR already knows. The techniques and processes that helped new hires learn quickly are also the techniques and processes that help retain organizational knowledge as people leave.

In short knowledge sharing techniques of:

• communities of practice
• mentoring
• lunch and learn sessions
  
• business process maps
• expertise directories of staff
  

are just as useful for retaining organizational knowledge as they are for fast learning by new employees.

What won't work is exit interviews, the mind dump from departing employees.

The Experienced Manager Builds Capacity for Learning in a Down Cycle
Experienced managers recognize the opportunity in a downturn. It is an opportunity to train staff and build capability for new business opportunities once the recession recedes. It looks like you have about a year to get new organizational learning initiatives going.

Communities of Practice are Organizational Learning on Steroids
At the top of HR's list of "things to do" should be communities of practice (CoPs). All the other techniques can happen as supporting activities to CoPs. Communities of practice may be already present in your organization. But they get more robust if a corporate sponsor steps forward to validate them, even if it is only to buy lunch. What really makes them robust is if HR steps forward to provide corporate support for:

• organizing an agenda
• recording minutes
• keeping a team space active.

Without corporate support, most CoPs are like volunteer organizations, flagging after the passionate volunteers burn out.

Starting communities of practice for organization benefit is not wise. Nancy Dixon, author of Common Knowledge, had some critical advice to Farm Credit Canada that is not captured in the conventional guides to CoPs. The HR professionals who started the CoPs found the CoPs were failing. Nancy Dixon pointed out that communities of practice follow a modified Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

• What's in It For Me?
• What's in It For Us?
• What's in It for the Organization?

You need to solicit "What's in It For Me?" anonymously from CoP members to get the topics that will have them show up for the next CoP meeting.

But once communities of practice fill the personal and group learning needs of staff, be prepared. They will also evolve to sharing strategic information. In Farm Credit Canada, the corporate support unit that supported CoPs evolved into a strategic business intelligence unit.

Communities of practice can be HR's role in strategic information management for the organization.

Learning on Steriods, DemoCampEdmonton6

I attended my first DemoCamp, Friday. A group of young IT entrepreneurs taught me about effective knowledge sharing and the power of a passionate community.

Mack D. Male has a very good summary on his blog (MasterMaq) so I won't repeat the details here. I'll just say that Mack is a bit too modest in his evaluation of what was the demo of the night. I was interested in the concepts that might have legs. Mack's concept of aggregating "what's going on", activities in the Edmonton area, would be pretty attractive for websites that are trying to create real presence around a location. Taking the idea further, I think he is onto something if you consider trying to aggregate events around a topic or area of interest.

While what was being demonstrated at DemoCamp was very interesting, from a guy interested in how communities work and share knowledge, the process was what caught my interest.

Each Demonstrator was given 10 minutes to show what their "in-development" software would do. Then there was 5 minutes for questions. With 140 people in the room, the essentials of the concept got a good critique. Then it was on to the next presentation.

5 presentations. Over in just about an hour. Out the door to the SUB bar for the real information sharing. I didn't go to the bar so I know I missed the most important part of the process.

But what impressed me was the tools to share information before the presentations (Twitter was up on the projection screen). Video cameras recorded the demos. And the level of information sharing and honest critiquing.

Short, intense and yet you walked away with enough information to keep your brain churning on the potential of the concepts presented.

As a forum for sparking and furthering innovation, DemoCamp works.

People are canny

They will appear to conform. (Larry Prusak).

The fifth rule of thumb for Knowledge Management is from Larry Prusak, coauthor of "Working Knowledge" (with Tom Davenport). "Working Knowledge" came out in 1998 and is one of the foundational textbooks of Knowledge Management.

This rule of thumb is about change and it is not unique to knowledge management. But because knowledge sharing is part of change processes, you do have to be conscious that people will be canny; they will appear to conform.

So watch the crowd.

This is particularly true with communities of practice. If they operate long enough, they start to be agents of change acting horizontally across the organization. And the inevitable question will arrive: "What the !!*%#@?? are those people doing?"

Which is why communities of practice need to look ahead and be ready to make their case with a Term of Reference that describes how they add value to the organization as well as the fundamental value they bring to individual members and the community of practice.

While change management is very useful in describing the specific project management steps and processes of a change process, coaching knowledge sharing processes and tools is more free form.

So if you are supporting knowledge sharing in an organization, particularly communities of practice, be canny. Managers will appear to be supportive (some, at heart, are not). Some CoP members will seize the opportunity to advance their own causes under the banner of the CoP. The two in combination set the scene for the accusation that "the inmates are running the asylum".

Your role is to sift through the players and determine whether truly they are "willing". If not, be canny yourself and recognize that all appearances aside, they are not partners in knowledge sharing.

Partners meet two criteria:

1. They are willing
2. They are able.