Adjusted Plus/Minus Statistic for KM
I am not a sports fan, but I happened to hear an anecdote from Stephan Fatsos on public radio yesterday that started me thinking about ways to apply a modern statistic tracked in basketball to KM. The stat is called “adjusted plus/minus”, and it is a metric for tracking how well a team performs when an individual player is on the field or off the field. Obviously, it’s better for the player to have a high plus, because it shows how much positive impact they have on the performance of the whole team.
Kevin Durant is a forward with the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team. Last year the team played worse as a team when Durant was on the floor. He worked to change his play so that he focused less on individual effort and more on helping the team to win. This year, the team is giving up 11.5 fewer points for every 100 possessions, and scoring almost 14 points more when he’s on the floor. The team is also in positive territory for wins/losses in 2009, unlike last year.
What intrigued me about this story was how it might be relevant for KM. It’s rare to be able to say one person is responsible for success in a group effort, however, it’s usually obvious that certain people contribute more to success than others. Perhaps there is a way that the KM contributions of individual or key participants could be measured using an “adjusted plus/minus” rating for when they are active vs. not. Some people do have the ability to lift the participation in and effectiveness of an overall effort just by participating. This might be a way we could assess overall KM effectiveness, as well as reward the people who may not be the “big names” but are important contributors and tend to stay in the background.
Stephen Bounds in Canberra, Australia pointed to a similar story in the New York Times about Shane Battier, who was undervalued for years as a player because he didn’t excel in individual performance statistics. It turned out that he plays a vital role during games by always making plays that benefit the team. While the team can’t win games by having only Battiers, in a team environment his presence is vital to success.
Perhaps there is a way to create such a metric for KM efforts. What could we measure? Has anyone tried anything similar to this?
Update December 18: Dave Snowden rightly pointed out that “Within that type of system (ed: American football or sports in general) most things can be measured. On the other hand, most “life games” are less restricted, more fluid, more complex in nature. It is the interaction between multiple people (not one person and the team) that counts. Its also a co-evolutionary system; as things move forwards, possibilities close off or open up, we can never reset, there will not be another game next week, we can’t blow a whistle, call a time out and bring on a different team.” After some reflection, I completely agree. It would be nice to be able to find a subjective way to evaluate the success or effectiveness of KM in an organization, but there is still no silver bullet…and may never be one.
