[djmcmath]

Wow, the good ideas just keep on coming. Thanks for contributing, all.

I spent several hours last night looking through the current program with the guy who's "leading the charge" for our staff. It's worse than I had imagined. SUBPAC (Submarine Forces Pacific) doesn't recognize the authority of SUBFOR (Submarine Force, which used to be just SUBLANT), so SUBPAC refuses to integrate their lessons learned into a single consolidated lessons learned. The Navy (as in Big Navy) runs a lessons learned site, complete with manning, resources, and the works -- but they refuse to consolidate, share, or participate in what we're doing. Many of the squadrons maintain databases of lessons learned -- but they're not sharing either. We've got all these little rice bowls, and nobody wants to share.

BSJ, that totally makes sense. The current situation is worse: we're fighting a culture that says "you don't report 'lessons learned' unless something went wrong, and you don't report Bad News unless you absolutely have to." ...As if somehow not admitting that you dorked something up makes it go away, or ensures that nobody else will do it. I don't know how to fix that cultural problem, either. I mean, boats screw stuff up all the time, and boats on the same pier will make the same mistake because they're just not talking to each other. Had they submitted a "lessons learned," the mistake would only happen once -- but the Captain doesn't want to take the "black eye" for having made a mistake, and nobody knows about it, so he doesn't report it. Ouch.


John -- I like the multi-level access concept. I'll brainstorm that with some of the guys around here and see what we can come up with. I like the idea of building a forum with some similarities to the standard online forum. There are several already in existence on one level or another on the secret side of the network. It should be feasible to take some good ideas and incorporate them into what already exists.


Dennis -- Thats profound, and just a little depressing. The current situation, as I understand it, is that civilian corporations assume that Explicit and Embedded knowledge is flowing freely about the organization, and they're just struggling with the best way to get Tacit knowledge around. SUBFOR is still struggling with Explicit and Embedded. I'll look up Larry Pangracs and see what else he's written of value -- it would be useful for me to be able to cite real resources when I take a plan to the Admiral.

Thanks again, all.