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Knowledge Management: How Pachelbel’s Canon demonstrates the review cycle.

Harmony. Routine. Since knowledge acquisition is never ending you must engage in the knowledge review cycle. But at the same time, you’re also reviewing existing knowledge because it’s due for review. You integrate the new information into your routine. You can do it in a harmonious way.

Pachelbel’s Canon introduces a new melodic passage exactly every 2 measures, and each new melodic passage harmonizes with the existing repeating melodic passages. Just as one cycle of review on one project is occurring, you initiate another cycle of review on another project, but it’s much easier to do it in a rhythm and do it in synchronicity. Notice the timing. Time it right and you have beautiful harmony. Time it wrong and you have discord.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw in some math. Frequency is the word here: 440 Hertz. 880 Hertz. An octave of tones perfectly separates these two frequencies. Combining several tones of incompatible frequencies sounds like discord no matter what the timing — unless discord is music to your ears… do you like abstract music!? Combining several tones of compatible frequencies of the with bad timing can also be interpreted as discord. When you combine compatible frequencies with strategic timing, you can compose a beautiful symphony. The same is true of knowledge.

You are constantly having to intake knowledge and then also having to maintain it and purging obsolete knowledge.

It’s much easier if you can establish a rhythm of updating existing knowledge while at the same time also cleaning up the new data that comes in. That existing knowledge may have existed for 1 cycle, 10 cycles, who knows. But as long as the knowledge had some purposeful value it had to stick around. Or maybe it didn’t; if you’re just getting started then you probably have garbage in addition to quality knowledge. You’re always having to clean up garbage in the beginning.

harmony, rhythm, orchestral synchronicity
Rehearsing before the performance – Photo by Manuel Nägeli on Unsplash

But for a system of knowledge to work, ultimately it will not be about the individual. It will be about the team. I used to play in a music band in high school. I had to practice my score for a song individually to become proficient in the timing, the timbre and the nuances. And so did everyone else. You could be great at your individual role, but you can’t be an orchestra.

Even that still isn’t enough. The individual members of the band come together and practice their scores but without a guide to coordinate the timing all you’ll hear is a bunch of noise and random notes. If you ever attended a symphony orchestra concert you hear the musicians rehearsing with their respective scores, warming up for the synchronized performance. It’s just random… meh. You came to the concert for the big listening experience, to transport your imagination to another universe, temporarily escaping from the chaos of reality.

Knowledge is supposed to be evergreen. Agile is supposed to be constantly adjusting to changing reality. They look like the are in opposition. But here’s the reality. They are collaborating forces. Sure, there’s this ideal of unchanging perfection, but your journey towards it is always something you have to course correct along the way. Knowledge management involves a never-ending quest of improvement.

You’re not going to get everything right on the first pass.

I sure didn’t. It probably took me 5 times going over the same 20% of my IT team’s data dump for items that I considered to be knowledge candidates before I decided I’ve done all I could for that pile to meet quality standards. Of course, that still doesn’t account for the documentation where I lacked expertise to judge it for completeness and accuracy. I didn’t know if there were important points missing from them. I didn’t know if there was some important update that needed to be made on them.

And what if I had multiple copies of the documentation where each was slightly different and I had no way of knowing which pieces of each document were accurate?

Unfortunately none of the real experts were going to address it because (cough) other office priorities (cough). Or worse, did we lose those experts due to attrition? And I set it all aside and come back to it next week to make another startling discovery. I forgot one. And never mind, another week’s worth of information comes to the dump that I now have to waddle through. 

Pachelbel got it right with strategic layering of melodies and harmonies, but I’m sure he’s messed up more than a few times before getting there.

metaphor of review cycles
The wave form – Photo by samsommer on Unsplash

Who was it that said, “culture eats strategy for lunch?” Many corporate leaders sure didn’t walk the talk. They said they were agile. I didn’t see it. My coworkers didn’t see it. I didn’t see self-sufficient autonomous leadership among team members. I saw hesitation and CYA-ing. You couldn’t just try something and course correct. You had to plan it out to stupid levels of detail, then get the approval. (And no, I don’t plan out to stupid levels of detail.) Trying to use agile concepts on a waterfall mentality only brings the worst of both, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, except everyone else sees it. Or was it the Emperor’s clothes?

So maybe it’s time for you to re-examine your culture.

  • Where can you ask questions?
  • Where can you find the right people who have the knowledge to solve the problems that you encounter?
  • And are they aligned with the greater mission of your business?
  • If something isn’t working, are you willing to give and receive feedback for it?

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