In the know: 1. 25 practical tools to get your organisation’s mojo back | 2. Stay calibrated to debias decision-making
In the know is a regular roundup of knowledge management (KM) topics of discussion and the articles, events, videos, and podcasts that are grabbing the attention of KM experts across our community.
1. 25 practical tools to get your organisation’s mojo back
RealKM Cooperative’s Stephen Bounds invites your thoughts and feedback on a very valuable new initiative. He writes:
A number of years back, I wrote about the need for a more clinical approach1 to knowledge management, and the dearth of organisational diagnostic tools to unlock a systematic and professional capability for preserving and repairing organisational health.
I haven’t personally seen a lot of progress in this area, and it continues to be something I am passionate about. So this year, I’m challenging myself to put my money where my mouth is.
I have an outline of topics that I intend to turn into a book: 25 practical tools to get your organisation’s mojo back. Rather than disappearing into a den for a couple of years, I have decided that it would be more interesting to write the book in public. To that end, I have set up a Substack2 and am aiming to post 1-2 new items per week. The first two posts are already live:
- Introduction (an expanded version of the above)
- System and organisation essentials
Even though I want the tools to be usable without an academic pedigree, I also want their grounding and justification to be robust and accessible for those who are interested. As such, I expect that posts will be a mix of supporting material and content for the tools themselves.
As I work through each topic, I’m very keen to hear your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to comment on the posts online or reach out directly!
2. Stay calibrated: a practical guide to debiasing decision-making
There is now 50 years of research documenting how cognitive biases distort human judgement and lead to worse decisions. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) contends that behavioural science needs a simple, outcome-focused benchmark that can be used to measure the impact of interventions to debias and improve decision-making. Their new report3 Stay calibrated: a practical guide to debiasing decision-making proposes one: calibration. To be well-calibrated means your confidence in your judgement aligns with accuracy.
The goal of calibration isn’t to eliminate cognitive bias, but to enable good decisions despite it. The BIT report offers:
- A clear framework for understanding and measuring calibration.
- Practical tips for individuals, teams and leaders to achieve it.
- Design principles for building calibration into organisational systems.
Key insights:
- Overconfidence is rampant in many domains from surgery to strategy – people are more sure in their judgement than they should be and this leads to bad outcomes.
- Well-calibrated thinkers are rare but superforecasters, bridge players, and weather forecasters show that it’s possible, and give us hints about what types of environments foster and reward it.
- Calibration is trainable. Like physical fitness, it can be built through habit, feedback and repetition.
References:
