Creating an Environment for Lessons Learning through Knowledge Management: NASA Case

Leading organizations are discovering that actively managing knowledge creates value by increasing productivity and fostering innovation. Likewise, NASAs paramount concern should be about capturing and sharing organizational knowledge and using it to perform its basic mission of exploring space faster, better, and cheaper. Although NASA has recently taken action to improve the way in which the agency captures, organizes, and shares knowledge, these efforts do not fully address the fundamental weaknesses in lessons learning identified by our survey: namely, cultural resistance to sharing knowledge and the lack of an effective strategic framework and management attention for overcoming such resistance. NASA has made a reasonable start by developing a strategic plan for knowledge management, but the agency has not made a good business case for how it will implement and use knowledge management within the organization. In addition, while successful industry and government organizations have made a firm commitment to making knowledge management practices work, NASA has not provided the leadership, support, and resources needed for effective knowledge management to take place. Furthermore, knowledge management organizations have employed incentives, processes, and systems designed to address cultural barriers to continuous lessons learning and knowledge sharing. For example, organizations that value knowledge sharing have encouraged employees to spend time sharing knowledge, helped facilitate communities of practice based around common interests, and provided rewards when knowledge has been shared and applied. NASA has not done so on an agency-wide basis.

RECOMMENDATIONS NASA needs to strengthen its lessons learning in the context of its overall efforts to develop and implement an effective knowledge management program. Improvement of NASAs lessons learning processes and systems can help to ensure that knowledge is gained from past experiences and applied to future missions. We recommend that the NASA administrator strengthen the agencys lessons learning processes and systems by:

* articulating the relationship between lessons learning and knowledge management through an implementation plan for knowledge management; * designating a lessons learned manager to lead and coordinate all agency lessons learning efforts; * establishing functional and technical linkages among the various center level and program-level lessons learning systems; * developing ways to broaden and implement mentoring and storytelling as additional mechanisms for lessons learning; * identifying incentives to encourage more collection and sharing of lessons among employees and teams, such as links to performance evaluations and awards; * enhancing Lessons Learned Information System (LLIS) by coding information and developing an easier search capability to allow users to identify relevant lessons, including more positive lessons, providing a means to disseminate key lessons to users; and soliciting user input on an ongoing basis; and * tracking and reporting on the effectiveness of the agencys lessons learning efforts using objective performance metrics.

QUESTIONS: 1. Explain that how successful industry made a firm commitment to making knowledge management practices work. Do you think it was not applicable in NASA? 2. Based on all the recommendations above, which one is most applicable in agencys lessons learning processes? Justify.