Atten-tion! How the Army remembers its lessons.
9/16/2002
If any institution needs best practices, it must be the U.S. Army. Its tens of thousands of troops are flung across the globe in extremes of political and geographic environments. Enter the Army's Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) site, a compendium of best practices on everything from avoiding dehydration to manning a checkpoint. What's useful for the business executive here isn't necessarily the content (although some of it is fascinating), but in how the site is used for knowledge management. You'll find recitations of best practices ("Lessons in Planning for a Terrorist Attack on the Super Bowl"), training techniques ("The Simple Rules of Soldiering at High Altitudes"), assorted case studies, and many other documents that the Army uses to keep itself informed. If the CALL system works for the Army, it could very well work for your enterprise as well.