The red arrows flying team is challenging in many ways not least of which is that a third of the pilots change on a regular basis and yet they clearly have to maintain a high level of effective teamwork at all times. As three members leave the team and three new members join, the entire team re-adjusts to the capability of the new team and re-designs their displays for those members. Their planning and briefing process includes discussion about all the things that could possibly go wrong and how they would deal with each of these; making “high pressure decisions in a low pressure environment”.

After the planning, briefing and execution they conduct an incredibly honest and objective de-brief. This is really the key to effective team learning for them, as they actively self and peer critique each performance in a very objective way. Rank is irrelevant in this process and they even try to refer to each other by call sign to de-personalise the critique further. The video that Justin showed began with the team leader outlining his mistakes which then led onto others admitting their errors, how they came about and how they were going to deal with them next time. This sounds very much like Shon’s reflection-on-action but described in a much more concrete and easily understandable way.

This Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief cycle, (much like Kolb’s learning cycle), allows them to actively learn from their processes rather than just learning “by osmosis“ and enables them to pick up and deal with mistakes that would otherwise be repeated over and over.

So what can academia learn from this? Well, it seems to relate pretty directly to what vets do and therefore what we need to prepare our students for: working as part of a team that is continually changing, in high pressure environments where mistakes can be devastating, and where thinking through everything that can possibly go wrong beforehand and critiquing performance honestly and objectively afterwards would create the best opportunity to develop a really excellent veterinary practice.

I’ll give the last ‘word’ to Justin: ”The mind is like a parachute – both work best when they are open.“

Andy was outlining how Shell had invested in two main areas for knowledge management and information sharing within the company. One was the knowledge base – collating, digitising and indexing their existing paper documents into a searchable archive. The other was to set up a facility using the (primitive) email system they had in those (olden) days to allow someone in the company to ask a question that was troubling them. Their question was sent into a specific individual who then sent it out to everyone else in the company and any response was then re-routed back to the questioner. (You will gather that this was before the days of email lists and online discussion groups).

The knowledge-base took 80% of the budget and the email question-reply system cost 20%. The somewhat surprising finding was that 15% of the value for the company was in the knowledge-base and 85% was in the email system (as Andy said – it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out where to focus). Why is the value of the knowledge-base so low? In turns out that people couldn’t find the answer to their specific question there whereas there was often someone in the company who had faced a similar but not identical issue. Very rarely did exactly the same problem or question arise twice and so the documents in the knowledge base didn’t quite cut it. However, because the email system incorporated the human element, a response might go along the lines of ”We had a similar problem to yours – we tackled it by…. you could try …“. This kind of response was often just what the questioner needed to solve their problem.

I stood by my filing cabinet wondering if Andy Boyd was still at Shell and whether the new version of this email system they introduced (online discussion groups) was still up and running or had moved on. I was able to answer the first part of my question by searching that now ubiquitous online database called the world-wide-web. Andy, now Knowledge Manager at Shell Global, has a blog and uses twitter. I could also download one of his presentations on Knowledge Management at Shell.

The answer to what Shell were doing now in this area was not completely clear from this search but as I flicked through the presentation I became aware of a series of muffled thuds. What on earth is that noise? Oh blimey – my tutee has been trying to get my attention by banging on the locked sliding doors downstairs. ”I hope you haven’t been there long?“ I offer humbly. ”Just a few minutes..“ she replies ”…I had considered throwing a snowball at your window, but thought I’d better not.“ I offered my apologies and suggest we get going as we are already late – I was a bit surprised that she hadn’t turned up on time.

The moral of the story – searching through an archive may not be the best way to find the answer to some questions, but it can sure pass the time.

This morning I awoke at 4.50am with several thoughts buzzing through my head and the quadrants seemed to be a very useful concept for those struggling with work overload (me):

Covey talks about 4 quadrants with tasks that are important and/or urgent (I = Important & Urgent, II = Important but not Urgent, III=Not important but Urgent, and IV = Not important and not Urgent). We tend to spend a lot of time in I and III with the odd excursion into IV (the fun stuff) at the expense of II. The problem is that II is what makes people highly effective – the non-urgent but important tasks of planning, prioritising, communicating, reflecting, blogging etc. Alik Levin’s blog sums this up nicely.

Of course you have to know where you are heading (your goals) to know what is important and not, and you have to be proactive too, otherwise everyone else’s priorities will find their way into your to-do list via email before you can set up your “I’m out of the office” response…