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.

Knowledge Management Essentials: Beginnings

I've been asked to speak at the "Knowledge Management in Public Health" conference, Hamilton, Ontario, Nov. 3, 4. Sponsored by the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools, the conference intends to bring together leaders and change agents in knowledge management and public health. Here's the link to the NCCMT website for information about the conference. Here's the irony. Trained in physics, a practicing engineer, regarded as primarily as a semi-IT person in my organization for collaboration tools and software, I'm speaking in the "culture" stream. How does "culture", knowledge management and I have a good fit? You have to know that I became an engineer so that I could work with people. In 1975, as a farm boy graduating with a physics degree, I went with CUSO to east central Africa, Malawi, to teach high school. I taught lots of geography, mathematics and a bit of science. I also learned lots about third world development, which is mostly rural development and realized that was primarily agricultural development. Yes, roads, schools, hospitals are all important and essential. But economic development was at the core (to provide a tax base to support these other infrastructures) and farmers were the key. Farmers are great for driving an economy. Give them a bit of money and they spend it. I came back to Canada convinced that agricultural development was critical. When a country ignores its agricultural economy, it is on the road to ruin. This includes Canada. So I became an agricultural engineer as the easiest way to leverage my physics degree towards agriculture. As I started to practice agricultural engineering with farmers as clients, I discovered that my exposure to third world development and high school teaching was formative. I was talking to farmers about changing their practices and I was dealing with adult learners, who mostly learn by doing. Change and adult learners. Agricultural land grant universities in the USA and the provincial departments of agriculture in Canada have a rich tradition in developing the theories and practices of adult education, innovation and community development in a practice called "extension". "Extension" and I hit it off. From the viewpoint of practitioners of agricultural extension, knowledge management is just one component of support for adult learning and helping change happen. Successful extension helps with fast learning. The "fast" in fast learning is predicated on acceptance of change. So understanding how people learn fast (the coaching that prepares and supports change by an adult learner) is key to knowledge management. Understanding how you can coach, advocate and influence change in behaviour leads you to the "culture" side of knowledge management. So as an "extension" practitioner, I have spent lots of time thinking about culture and behaviour in knowledge management. What will follow in subsequent blogs is a summary of some of the key points from of my presentation on KM Essentials.

Photo Radar and Adult Learning

This is a public service announcement. Photo radar is out there and it will get you. Traffic tickets are a consequence of not learning.

For those Albertans reading this, the warning is personal. The Town of Devon has reinstated photo radar on Highway 60. For those of us who take the west bypass around the City of Edmonton and travel past Devon, BEWARE. Last year, Devon collected over a million dollars from photo radar.

This is also a story about how adults learn. Last year, as a Devon resident, I contributed significantly to the photo radar fund. My story about how I learned from photo radar illustrates the steps in adult learning.

There are some fundamentals that apply to our work. If you work with partners on growth opportunities, do research, develop information products, deliver programs to clients, develop policy information, you are dealing with adults who are learning. Here are the steps as they learn.

How I Learned from Photo Radar:
Awareness: How many time do I have to see the speed limit sign before I see the speed limit sign?

Seven, 7, IIII II, VII, 7, 7, 7. By the way, the speed limit is 70 km/hr.

Recognition: The first photo radar ticket arrives. I am aware and this is important. The innovator in our household, my wife, tells her story about how she uses cruise control and has no traffic tickets.
Internalization: The second photo radar ticket arrives. This is important; this applies to me and I need to change. My Executive Coach, my wife, points out that the family budget is on a sharp nose dive. She tells me a success story about how innovators use cruise control and consequently avoid traffic tickets.
Testing the Practice: Let's try it out. I try cruise control (occasionally). My Executive Coach, my wife, reminds me regularly (every time) when I pull out of the garage.
Practice Adoption: Practice change starts. I regularly (but not always) turn on the cruise control when I pull out of the garage. My Executive Coach, my wife, gives me a look (gentle nagging) when I don't turn on the cruise control.
Yep! It Works: The practice change has taken. My neighbour complains about photo radar tickets. I tell him my story about how I avoid photo radar tickets by using cruise control. I occasionally get the "look" from My Executive Coach, my wife, when I pull out of the garage. I also get praise from My Executive Coach every time we pass a grim-faced driver pulled over in front of a police car with flashing lights.

Why This Story? In our organizations we will hear words like initiatives, growth, industry consultations, practice change, marketing, development and program review. These words all require Change. Change requires Learning. The people we see as clients in these activities are adults. We are dealing with adult learners. In these activities, we are very often coaches to our clients (acting in the same way as my Executive Coach, my wife).
We ourselves are adult learners. You are asked to solve new problems regularly at work. To do that well, you need to learn ...., quickly.

Knowledge management is about helping staff to learn fast.

Elaboration on the Fundamentals:
Awareness: If you haven't said it seven times, or put your message in 7 different places for your clients to see, they haven't seen or heard your message yet. Just about the time you get tired of saying it, your clients start to see or hear your message. Don't quit. Say it once and you are speaking to an audience of one.
Recognition: It takes a success story (or a disaster story; guess which is more riveting?), told by someone credible (usually not the coach, usually a successful entrepreneur), for your adult learner to start to pay attention. The story has to speak to the element, "what's in it for me?", before the adult learner starts to engage.
The Recognition Stage and Denial: What was my reaction to the first photo radar ticket? ...... *&@%!! photo radar ...... Denial. The meaning of Denial ......... (Don't Even Know I am Lying (to myself)). The coach's role is to keep asking the tough questions: "Is this important? Is this going to go away? Can you afford to ignore this?" Coach for honest answers.
Internalization: Get this to happen and you have gotten to first base. Internalization takes place after the demonstration; the workshop, the meeting. You, the coach, need to follow-up with more than "What did you think of our meeting?" to get clients to do the imaging to see themselves making the change. Good coaches at this point 'gently nag" to repeat the reasons for change, remind the client about the success story (or disaster story), and encourage the client to set a deadline to make a decision about the change.
Measuring Success: Want to know the effect of your program, your initiative, the industry's development? Survey your clients to find their level of behaviour change. Each of these adult learning steps has an associated behaviour change. You can measure how far you have gotten by asking (surveying) your clients on what their behaviour change is relative to what is being learned.

Much of what we do involves communications for adult learning. Be very clear at the start of your project what outcome you are trying to achieve. And then choose the right communication strategy.

Number One Lesson in Adult Learning: You can't get "Practice Adoption" without the previous steps.
Adult Learners Need Coaches: Adults learners do not commit, change and continue to practice the change without a coach. Change is never a journey of one. I needed a coach. So do your clients. Do you know how to coach? For the kinds of changes we are trying to influence, we have to be very good coaches. Go for training. Keep training. Keep learning.

The Role of the Coach: A project management coach with whom I worked closely said that "Coaching is about helping your client see the possibilities". It is also about being a gentle nag. My Executive Coach reminded me (regularly) throughout the steps of "Testing the Practice", "Practice Adoption" and "Yep, It Works" to commit, to try, to keep doing, to not quit. Positive images helps; so does praise. You do not coerce change. And there are those who will not. Work with the willing (always). The coach's best revenge: Observe those who resist change carefully; they will supply you with engaging stories of disaster .... or they will show you another way.

Learning Styles:
Know your customers’ learning style(s). Educational background and the way they work are important factors. We each have preferred learning styles:
Learn by doing: Active, influence through action, get things done, take risks.
Learn by feeling or talking: Concrete, learn from specific experiences, relating to people, talking out what they are learning
Learning by watching and reflecting: Reflective, observe before forming judgments, looking for the meaning
Learn by thinking and analysing: Abstract, logical, look for models, planning
Ask your clients how they like to learn. Tailor your communications and coaching to their learning style.

Fast Learning:
There is a model of change leadership that can be summarized as fast learning:
State what you are committed to,
Act,
Learn (Sense and Respond).
This is the leadership process for change and crisis management. People’s reactions to this learning process will depend on what learning style they are ingrained with. Learners who learn by doing will be supportive. Feeling learners will look for consultation. Learners who learn by reflecting will be terrified. Logical learners will look for patterns (there are none).

There is a caution about expecting your adult learners all to be willing to welcome the fast learning style. My analogy is diving off the high board for the first time:
Commit (climb the ladder)
Act (Dive)
Learn (How was the dive and what to change).

I am an engineer. I am analytical. My first experience diving off the high board was to carefully watch other divers and visualize the steps, the bounce, the rotation of the hips and the entry. Then I climbed the ladder and realized the fallacy of my model. Only a fool bent on self destruction hurls himself headfirst to the water 3 metres below. Only the embarrassment of retreating back and down the ladder sent me over the edge. So be cautious about expecting people all to welcome and behave as fast learners. To some it will feel like coercing change.

You are a coach. The people we work with are adult learners.