how to keep the knowledge when the guru leaves

KNOWLEDGE CAPTURING & SHARING

Niklas Sinander

Enterprise Information Manager

www.eumetsat.int [email protected]

2 EUM/GES/VWG/13/728066 Issue 1, 5 November 2013

Knowledge Capturing & Sharing

EUMETSAT

• Enterprise Information Manager

• Previous Intranet and Web manager

• Speaker at conferences

• Initiated Information Management

Community of Practice with ESOC


Knowledge Capturing & Sharing

EUMETSAT Enterprise Information Management -Governance - Policies, Processes, Procedures - Tools – Document Management, Intranet, Web Site

ESOC Knowledge Management -Governance - Policies, Processes, Procedures - Tools – Enterprise Search, Knowledge repositories

Information Management Community of Practice in 2011

Knowledge Capturing & Sharing Toolkit


Agenda

• Knowledge Capturing & Sharing (KC&S) Concepts

• Tools, Processes and Practises • Exercise #1 – Analyse a KC&S method

• Challenges

• Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative • Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan

• Wrap Up


Knowledge Capturing & Sharing Concepts

Types of knowledge

• Explicit – knowledge that can be codified

• Information

• E.g wikipedia, a map

• Tacit – knowledge that is difficult/impossible to codify

• In addition to explicit knowledge (information) needs

experience and thinking skills

• E.g recognising a face, riding a bike

• Example: Walk from the UN headquarter to Grand Central

station on Manhattan


Knowledge Capturing & Sharing Concepts


Tools, Processes and Practices

• Tools

• Wiki

• Blogs

• Streams

• Instant

Messenger

• Webinars

• Expert Directory

• Search Engines

…

• Processes

• Lesson Learned

• Exit interview

• Tagging

Guidelines

• Taxonomies

• …

• Practises

• Community of

Practice

• Knowledge Café

• Mentoring

• …


Exercise #1 – Analyse a KC&S method

• Analyse one of the following KC&S Processes/Practises • Lessons Learned

• Exit interview

• Community of Practice

• Different method for each group

• Consider different aspects:

• In which context/when would it be effective

• Advantages/disadvantages with the method

• Any particular challenges by using the method

• What impact may the culture in the company have on using this method

• Etc

• Each group to present a main finding for the other groups


Where are we?

• Challenges

• Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative • Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan

• Wrap Up


KS&C Challenges

Culture and Mindset (1)

• Unwillingness to share

• What

• People are hired for their skills and knowledge and are in many cases not willing to share their

knowledge and risk losing their competitive edge.

• What to do about it

• Promote a culture of sharing

• Lead by example

• Create incentives for sharing knowledge

• Confidence to share

• What

• Users might not feel confident enough to share if they believe others are more knowledgeable


• Create a safe environment where people feel confident to share. Start in smaller groups and

expand to larger groups once confidence is high in the smaller group

• Build a culture of trust between people in the organisation


KS&C Challenges

Culture and Mindset (2)

• Capturing and sharing takes time

• What

• Even if people are willing to share their knowledge they might feel that they do not have the time

or other tasks have higher priority.


• Allow people to set aside time to share their knowledge

• Integrate knowledge sharing in the daily tasks

• Distance

• What

• Distance between people makes it difficult to interact and share. Note that distance can be

geographical, be due to language barriers and different cultures


• Geographical distance: Unit or company wide physical meetings, video or phone conferences

• Language barriers: Promote a common company language and use it frequently allowing people

to be comfortable using it. Use simpler language, allow enough time for questions, speak slower

• Cultural barriers: Use people with experience from different cultures to moderate meeting.

Educate about differences in cultures


KS&C Challenges

Management resistance

• Not enough support from management

• What

• Middle management do not demonstrate support for knowledge sharing, do not allocate time for it

and do not lead by example so employees will neither

• What can be done about it

• Convince senior management to lead by example

• Create incentives for middle management for information sharing

Information & technology related

• Usability of Tools, Processes and Practices

• What

• All methods used for knowledge capturing and sharing need to be non intrusive and easy to use

• What can be done about it

• Processes and Practices need to be integrated in the day to day work

• Activities for sharing should not be perceived as additional tasks to perform

• Any tool used need to intuitive to use


Short break or shore break …


Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative

Use Case for KC&S

• List different areas where there might be a problem with how

knowledge is managed

• Are these real problems for the company?

• Would solving these problems have a real impact on the company?

• Could a KC&S initiative solve the problems? How?

• Would your management understand the problem and be willing to

act?



Get buy in from management

• What is the problem • Describe the problem in terms that your management will understand

• Provide concrete examples, e.g long time to market, takes too much effort, high cost or risk, people retiring, etc

• How can KC&S solve the problem

• Present a solution that is realistic to achieve

• Outline additional benefits if any

• How soon could the solution deliver positive results

• Again real life examples from other companies may be useful

• What would the solution require from the company

• What would the cost and effort be

• How would employees be impacted

• Any other impact

• In the end, you need to convince management that the benefits by solving the

problem out weights the cost/impact on the company



Start the KC&S initiative (1)

• Set up a project/activity

• Define what shall be achieved and by when

• Define concrete objectives

• Specific

• Measureable

• Accountable

• Realistic

• Time bound

• Define a scope for the project

• Define how to meet the objectives

• Tools, Processes and Practices



Example Objective: By June 2014 the Product Delivery Unit shall reduce the amount of changes needed after customer Acceptance Test to be less than 5% of the cost of development.

Activities to meet the objective Same mistakes repeated over and over again -> Lessons Learned -> Community of Practice



Start the KC&S initiative (2)

• Consider challenges in your company and how they should be addressed

• Define the activities needed

• For each activity define who shall perform it and how much effort is needed.

• Consider Change Management

• Order the activities in a logical order to form a project plan

• Get sign off for the project and start executing!


Now, where are we?

• Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan

• Wrap Up


Exercise #2 – Build your own action plan

• Groups of 3 – 4 people

• Three building blocks for creating the action plan

a) Use Case for KC&S ~10 min

b) Get buy in from management ~ 20 min

c) Start the KC&S initiative ~ 20 min

• Material

• Templates for a), b), and c) above plus for Activities

• Lists of Tools, Processes and Practices, Challenges


Template – Use Case


Template – Get Buy In


Template – Start KC&S Initiative


Template – Challenges


Template - Activities


Wrap Up

• What have we learned today?

• A lot of theory

• We have applied this on real life problems

• You leave this workshop with an action plan ready to execute

• Feedback round

• Share one take way from this workshop

how to keep the knowledge when the guru leaves

Business