ark group workshop introduction to knowledge management 10 may 2010

Introducing knowledge management (KM) for law firms in 2010

Steve PerryKnowledge and Information Management Adviser10 May 2010

[email protected] – +44 (0) 7710 559649

2Stephen Perry Knowledge Advisory Services – [email protected] - +44 (0) 7710 559 649

Agenda

9.45 – Understanding the building blocks of KM

11.00 – Break

11.15 – Aligning KM to your firm’s strategic goals

12.45 – Lunch

13.45 – Examples of how professional services firms are getting value from KM

14.45 – Break

15.00 – Ensuring the success of KM for your clients and your firm

15.45 – Wrap up and summary


A definition

The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organisation. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes.

Credit: Dave Snowden – Cognitive Edge


1. Understanding the building blocks of KM

The four building blocks

People and culture “trust is the bandwidth of communication” - Karl Erik Sveiby

Process build KM into key business processes and workflow

Content assess what is the most important content and remember – less is more!

Technology enabling technology including social business tools


People and Culture

Benefits

•Knowledge sharing

•Creation of a one-firm mindset

•Encouragement to collaborate

•Extending communities nationally and globally

Challenges

•‘What’s in it for me?’

•Knowledge is power

•Cross-jurisdiction differences


Process

Benefits

•Introduction of national or global processes

•Improvement of existing processes

•Harmonisation of terminology

•Enhanced collaboration within teams and with clients

•Consistency

Challenges

•Lawyers do not like business processes

•Local commitment to globally imposed processes

•Too ridged and restrictive


Content

Benefits

•Rationalisation of content

•Rich external information sources shared

•Integration of internal and external data

•Agreeing global content requirements

•Global/national procurement

Challenges

•Maintenance and validity of content

•Information security

•Risk management

•Copyright


Technology

Benefits

•Improved global/national network

•Strategic technology partnering

•Introduction of more user centric applications

Challenges

•Need to revisit existing national systems

•Integration not migration

•Communication between global and national KM groups

•Need to maintain consistent IT platforms


Key elements of effective knowledge management

Strategy and senior management support active participation continuing reinforcement of the

importance of KM to the business

Creating a knowledge-sharing culture reward and recognition how to get individuals to share their

knowledge

Different sources and aspects of knowledge internal external

Understanding knowledge and its role in law firms

- tacit- explicit

Technology tools for managing different types of knowledge- intranets, portals, document management systems- social business tools (wikis, blogs, microblogging)


2. Aligning KM to your firm’s strategic goals

Define your knowledge management strategy identify aspects of the business strategy that KM can help to deliver align KM to the business strategy and show clearly how it will improve the

business establish an understanding of where you are in KM maturity and then create

a vision take small steps

Areas to explore how well are your people connected? where are the obvious holes and blockages? how easily can people find each other? do you have common formats for information sharing? how easy is it to collaborate? how do people identify expertise?


Aligning KM to your firm’s strategic goals - cont

Establish a communications plan as part of the strategy keep it ‘low key’ initially once you have some success stories then increase the PR/communication set appropriate expectations of time and effort and do not promise too much

in the early stages

Aspects of the strategy embed KM into key processes - choose one or two processes that are not

working well consider the people involved build a coalition and ensure that IT, HR, BD etc. are fully supportive and the

business risks established create a roadmap and action plan establish a programme of work with the right team


Aligning KM to your firm’s strategic goals - cont

Within the programme establish a 'tight loose' approach grip tightly the corporate look and feel/branding along with the high level

taxonomy leave many areas loose and flexible so people experiment establish the top-down guidance along with encouraging a bottom-up, self

organising approach involve people at all levels in the firm communicate on a regular basis ask people what challenges they face


Benefits of knowledge management

Overall benefits fee earner efficiency knowledge retention expertise identification collective intelligence

Key benefit areas improving business agility increasing the opportunity for innovation and creativity improving fee earner participation and satisfaction in using the knowledge

management tools better knowledge flows across dispersed teams

Important to incorporate benefits realisation into the KM/social business strategy and this should include usage adoption measurement


Prioritising your KM activities

Keep the customer in mind

Four key dimensions: alignment with strategy improvements in fee earner efficiency and effectiveness ease of implementation vs complexity cost


The Knowledge Pyramid

Simple tools to bookmark news items allowing users to organise their information.

This filtered sub-set of information can be used to contribute to discussions. When actionable knowledge is identified it can be added to a wiki-based collaboration tool.

The top layer ties everything together and makes it easy for an individual to manage, track and participate.

Personal home page

Wikis/ blogs

RSS newsfeedinternal / external sources


Example Roadmap and DeliverablesC

lien

t S

erv

ices

Win

nin

g w

ork

Systems decommissioningWeb development

Doin

g t

he w

ork

Information Architecture

May 09 to Jul 09 Aug 09 to Oct 09 Nov 09 to Jan 10

Firmwide IA and taxonomy agreed

Bus. req. for client

collaboration

Extranet/Client version of Wiki

Establishing KBD’s people data needs

Enterprise search rolled out

Review know how in Athena

OneSearch decommissioned

Old Intranet turned off

FAB decommission

Alumni & employee profiles Portal

launched

CA workflow & Hot topics defined

VISION

Fee earner empowered

KBD Systems

Website CMS defined

2nd round testing .com security & architecture

Client mailing portal defined

Experience db rolled out

Pitch db rolled out

Transactions db rolled out

KBD data rules and bible complete

Effective gov. of all KBD systems

Define profile & architecture & strategy

Enterprise search pilot - Athena

DACEE MLT soft launch

Wiki IA comms and plan

Wiki IA – business case for labels & upgrade to 3.0

Information Policy & Ops Exec governance established

Scaling back ERIC

Publications database

Alumni data work completed

Profile Builder 2 implemented incl.

Wiki profiles

Scoping search

Corporate and LMG MLT work scoped &

started

iFreshfields Phase 1 rolled out

KBD IA defined and strategy written with clear

action plan

Deal.col decommissioned

Beauty Parade Index decommissioned ArtWeb delivered

New GlobalCalendar

Publication Storage implemented

CA phase 1 Implemented

improved FBD TV solution implemented

Website CMS implemented

Internal comms FBD TV Phase 2 delivered

Decomm ERIC

Copyright permissions decommissioned

Privacy Copyright solution

CRM outline strategy


3. Examples of how professional services firms are getting value from KM

Freshfields

KPMG

Morrison Foerster (MoFo)

CMS Cameron McKenna

Deloitte

Mills and Reeve


The Three Generations

Baby Boomers

(born 1946-1964)

The hi-fi generation

Generation X

(born 1965-1979)

The sci-fi generation

Generation Y and Millennials

(born 1980+ )

The wi-fi generation


Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

Enterprise Wiki Social Intranet

business need

example uses

change management elements

lessons learnt

overall result


Business need

Needed to move away from the static intranet to a more collaborative, participative and dynamic environment

Content was out-of-date, difficult to find and complex to maintain

High resource/time costs due to repetitive, labour intensive processes with long review cycles and limited number of editors

Interfaces not consistent or easy to use

Low user satisfaction and usage


Example – Private Equity Group


Example – ITG Sector Group


Example uses

Creating a document groups quickly create Wiki spaces for pitches, thought leadership

or know-how

globally dispersed teams are directed to the Wiki to make their contributions

central team then collates the information and builds the document from all the material in one space

US Partners discussion forum Wiki space allows the US Partners to discuss, debate and agree

the key issues facing the business


Change management elements

Adoption basic & Advanced training (via face-to face & Webex) 5 minute ‘viewlet’ created for Fee-earners project Wiki & on-line support

Sense of friendly ‘competition’

Consistency not necessary

Participation not mandated

Key influencers targeted

Increasing collaboration to drive business benefits


Enterprise 2.0 collaboration projects - cause and effect

• This diagram shows the positive change effects to an organisation through using Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools


Lessons learnt

What would we have done differently? planned the content migration in more detail agreed earlier how to measure and monitor usage identified more business processes which would benefit from the Wiki initiated more two-way communication between users and the central team built a coalition

What worked well? tight/loose approach clear business need and part of the firm’s strategy did not over-promise focus on usability and user centric design communication of good practice


Overall result

Increased intranet use and participation

Cost-effective capture, maintenance and delivery of firm and client-related information

Better informed staff with access to timely and relevant legal intelligence

Improved collaboration and knowledge sharing between globally dispersed teams

Huge demand for new content areas

Users have now adopted the intranet as their own


4. Ensuring the success of KM for your clients and your firm

Client KM servicesLeadershipProcessesUsability and user centric designAdoptionCultureGetting started with Enterprise 2.0


Client KM services

Commodity on-line services

News alerts

Deal rooms/extranets

Know-how or guides

e-Learning

Legislation tracking tools

Support offerings litigation support project management

KM Consulting


Leadership

A successful KM project must have several champions they must believe in the project, enthusiastically advocate it and have the

ability to make things happen

Align KM initiatives with the strategy demonstrate how it will add value and deliver significant benefits to the

organisation

Set expectations and be realistic


Process

Embed collaboration and knowledge sharing into the key business processes identify where KM could improve efficiency and effectiveness establish new ways of working

KM and the use of social business tools should be part of how people work the benefits of collaboration and knowledge sharing will naturally flow as a

by-product

Try to get people out of email and sharing their knowledge and experience using collaboration tools


Email v Wiki Collaboration


Usability and user centric design

Focus on usability and a user centric design

Spend a considerable amount of time on ensuring the KM solution is compelling, interesting and focused on the way users want to work

You should regularly ask your users what works for them and what does not

You should not base the designs and layout just on the views of your in-house User Interface (UI) experts


Adoption

Two-way communication between the users and the central team

Constant user feedback is vital as people then feel they are being listened to and the central team can adapt its approach

Communicate examples of good practice and create a sense of friendly competition

Focus on individual productivity, not overall corporate productivity

Constantly communicate ‘What’s in it for me?’ (WIIFM)


Culture

Most law firms have a knowledge sharing culture as it's the way they have developed and grown over the years – but some don’t

Get senior management to include collaboration and knowledge sharing in the mission, objectives and goals of the organisation and departments

Make sure people are rewarded for collaborating and sharing knowledge via acknowledgement and recognition

Use stories of how people in the organisation have been helped by KM to deliver an even better client service


Getting started with Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 sharing is a by-product of doing work

Requires changing structures and routines

Light-weight, flexible pilots with an incremental rollout

Voluntary user-growth over large-scale top-down implementations

Individual incentives and motivation to improve productivity

Easy to use with an appropriate structure, design and context

Sensible policies that guide self-regulating communities people have freedom to experiment they can collaborate/communicate in ways that suit them while mitigating risks in

the process


5. Wrap up and summary

KM is about improving decision making capability

Sharing knowledge has less to do with content and tools and more to do with connectivity and context

Build your KM initiatives around social business tools

Focus on adoption

Make sure KM is aligned with the strategic objectives

Align KM to improving client service

The people/culture aspects are the most important

ark group workshop introduction to knowledge management 10 may 2010

Education

fi generation

professional

firms strategic

building blocks

law firms

knowledge

business strategy

aligning km