SHARING CRITICAL KNOWLEDGEPractical, Proven Case Studies and Examples that Can Make a Difference to Public Sector KM Practitioners

CARLA SAPSFORD NEWMAN

AGENDA

The KM Problem in the Public SectorCase Studies on KM in Other Public Sector OfficesThe Challenges You Will Face: Metrics, Training, Targets and IncentivesQ&A Wrap-Up

PEOPLE OFTEN DON’T WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO KM INITIATIVES… (they think it isn’t their problem!)

THE BAD NEWS

• Knowledge sharing is often not incentivised in public sector organisations

• Changing a public sector knowledge management culture can be painful and take a long time

• You often have to prove why it’s in their best interests to contribute to your KM programme

• Organisations often want a silver bullet: something cheap, easy and fast yet ultimately somehow a game-changer. But human nature and cultural barriers to communication and sharing are often tricky to navigate

YOU’RE LIKELY TO BE WORKING ALONE IN A WILDERNESS OF PEOPLE (Who Don’t Understand What You Do…)

• Almost all KM practitioners fall into it by accident

• Once an initial godfather or mother shifts roles, interest in KM often withers and dies

• Most people don’t even know what KM is, until you tell them… and often times, in the beginning you don’t know either!

• The way you begin to execute KM will make or break your success – if you don’t gain some short-term wins, you aren’t likely to maintain your success

• Here are some basic survival skills to help you through.

YOU’RE THE KM PROFESSIONALS, RIGHT?

• Yet in most organisations, KM ‘professionals’ or contacts, seldom have any background in KM. That was the case with me in the beginning!

• So people come to you for answers. And complaints.And you might not always know how to solve their problems…

• The temptation is to look to an IT solution. Technology interventions, which should support KM, are not an end in themselves.

• But you’ve got several things going for you. A committed leader, a comprehensive KM plan, an IT system in development and a dedicated KM team. That’s a great start!

PERCEIVED BENEFITS

• ‘What’s in it for me?’

• You need to answer this question effectively if staff are to engage and see it as supporting what they do rather than as an extra obligation.

TIME TO AUTONOMY…???

• In other words, the shorter the time it takes to get someone new up to speed, the less money the company will have to invest in them before they’re actually productive. Quantify that, and you’ve succeeded in one of the key KM survival skills!

• Time to autonomy is a key indicator organisations seek to reduce.

TIME TO AUTONOMY – MEASURING PRODUCTIVITY

• For instance, at my former employer, we had managers assess how long it took to get a new employee up to speed with a proper knowledge management plan versus without. And how much time we had saved that manager and his/her team. Then we multiplied that by the wage of the new hire. Voila! A dollar amount, quantifiable and real.

SOME RELEVANT CASE STUDIES

I will discuss these more this afternoon, but here are some examples of KM in the public sector, and metrics and incentives in particular.

I hope some of these might be relevant to your work…

CASE STUDY: KM @ McKinsey

• Spend 10% of annual revenues on KM• Reports enjoy a high reuse rate• Subject matter experts determine metadata,

including shelf life• Shared via a bespoke intranet• At the start of each new project: 50% of time is

spent on prior project research and 50% calling other people in their networks

• Personal details are kept up to date, key for next assignments

• Staff appraisals: 20% of final score linked to KM

So bottom line, it is a requirement for those consultants to undertake a search of their database to see who has gone before them, to contact them, and to learn from the experience of their colleagues.

CASE STUDY IN KM METRICS AT THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE IN IRELAND

THREE MAIN METRICS:

Know-how application

• Ranking the contribution of know-how by section• Ranking of contributions by individual• Number of times know-how was accessed

Intranet

• Resources most often downloaded or accessed• Total number of unique users per time period

Knowledge/Information Sharing

• Number of section meetings held on KM per time period• Number of KM presentations attended by staff, and how many staff

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SEVEN RELEVANT KM PLANS UNDERTAKEN AT THE IRISH AG OFFICE - 2003

Development of a taxonomy for AG Office business applications.A key tool in search engines and for content management, where consistent inputting and retrieval of search terms is essential.

A shared Intranet for the AGO.This acts as a central point of access and storage of key up-to-date knowledge and information.

Implementation of a staff specialisation and skills locator.This ensures that staff are aware of the subject specialisations and skills of their colleagues.

The development of an intranet-based shared know-how application.To ensure reduced duplication of effort and promote consistency and quality in the generation of legal advice. The application will facilitate the indexing, abstracting, updating and retrieval of legal know-how.

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THE IRISH EXAMPLE

Develop a joint legal bulletin.A monthly legal bulletin to inform staff of legal developments. This could include details of new legislation, pending legislation, judgements received, books received and recent additions to the know-how application.

Incorporation of KM in induction and training programmes.New and existing staff are instructed on knowledge-sharing applications and more generally on the principles and benefits of KM.

Generation of legal reference guides for key legal topics.These will act as an authoritative reference tool on key and emerging legal topics (e.g. group actions or asylum law).

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IN ALL THESE CASES, COSTS, RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUTCOME AND TIME-LINES ARE CLEARLY IDENTIFIED.

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OWNERS HAVE OWNERSHIP.

SO WHAT’S IT TO YOU?

• As the KM professionals, your senior management will be looking to you to model the right behaviours, and to lead the way.

• Yet the hard truth from this and other studies is:

• KM strategies have often not been well disseminated in the past (incomplete/ineffective/untimely communications).

• Rewards for knowledge sharing remained informal and limited..

SO WHAT’S IT TO YOU?

• Many public sector organisations have struggled with these same issues, including:

> Decreased competitiveness over time in knowledge-intensive work;

> Increasing silo-isation of departments when workloads increase

> Employees can face information overload;

> Employees struggle to justify the time needed to participate in knowledge-sharing

activities; and

> Internal governance structures need to be in place from the beginning.

OECD STUDY ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: 2003

INCENTIVE PROBLEM

• Government organisations have different incentives, strengths and weaknesses compared to private companies in relation to the management of knowledge.

• Competitiveness looks different, but is no less important.

• Incentives to improve efficiency, reduce time spent on work and lowering overall costs are still crucial.

OECD STUDY

INCENTIVE PROBLEM

• Outcomes, however, can be less clear and more difficult to measure (in a private company, profits are always the bottom line).

• Management structures tend to be hierarchical, which can provide fewer incentives for innovation and teamwork.

OECD STUDY

• Despite the increasing difficulties in measuring results, the activities of governments are knowledge intensive, with the need to maintain a whole-of-government perspective an important consideration.

• For reasons of public interest, access to knowledge and transparency is critical.

• Increased staff turnover, particularly in knowledge-intensive departments such as civil, creates new challenges for the preservation of institutional memory and the training of new staff.

OECD STUDY CONCLUSIONS

• KM is a core feature of the management agenda of a majority of central government organisations across member countries – and organisations were making concrete efforts to improve their KM practices.

• Cultural change was taking place, for example that sharing knowledge was less being equated with loss of power.

• Despite these changes, the most difficult challenge facing knowledge sharing was that these organisations underestimated the ‘human factor’ in their efforts.

• KM strategies have often not been well disseminated and rewards for knowledge-sharing remained informal and limited. Silo structures remained a problem to enhanced organisation learning.

After a major survey of KM practices in 2002 in the central governments of member states, the OECD concluded:

OECD STUDY AND YOU

SO…Without KM professionals like you leading the way in knowledge sharing, no KM strategy will have a chance to succeed.

THE IMPORTANCE OF METRICS

IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE IT, YOU CAN’T MANAGE IT.

Assign value to KM

Find champions and create committed stakeholders

Undertake a knowledge audit – you MUST prioritise knowledge

Paint a negative future – the more dire the better

Develop and evangelise a long-term sustainable plan

KM SURVIVAL SKILLS:The Basics

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SURVIVAL SKILL #1:Assigning Real Value to KM

• You have to learn how to speak the language of your management – value, time not lost, successful searches, reduced time on research, increased quality of decisions and judgments

• What is the cost of knowledge loss – use a consistent and relevant set of metrics. Try to quantify how much time your legal officers are wasting in fruitless searches or reproducing past legal research.

• What is the price of hiring in new talent/knowledge to replace outgoing

• Calculating time to autonomy for new recruits (months, weeks) and assigning value

• Calculating what doesn’t happen – conflicting legal decisions etc.

MEASURING USAGE OF SEARCH ENGINES/ INTERNET

• One basic measurement that comms and IT professionals use is, how does usage change once you implement a new system.

• Does the percentage of searches go up or down? By how much? For instance, over a three-month period you might set a target of 20% increase in searches. Then look at why you do or don’t hit that target.

• Usually upon a launch, everybody tries immediately and search numbers surge. But then they get disillusioned, or hit a bug, or don’t find what they’re looking for. Then the numbers plummet.

• The advantage of IT is, you can also measure how long people are spending on searches. Where they start, and where they jump off. And how many clicks. These are all useful tracking mechanisms for how well your system is working. needs.

METRICS ON USER HABITS

• You need a strategy, and targets, for how much you want your search numbers to be and over what time frame.

• You need a strategy when the new engine or intranet stops becoming the flavour of the month, and usage falls off.

• That’s where one-on-one training comes in, and focus groups, and fine-tuning. People need to know that you’re responding to their concerns, and real-world needs.

SURVIVAL SKILL #2:Creating Internal Stakeholders

• It’s like a survival movie: you can’t go it alone

• Capture the critical knowledge of key people who can be crusaders for the cause

• Enlist the help of HR and IT who can help you create the tools and incentives to institutionalise KM

• Spend one day a week generating ‘new business’ or demand for KM – evangelise

• Spend at least 10% of your time generating your own lessons learnt

• Find people you respect to bounce ideas off

• Train up your KM partners

• Have a mission others can buy into, by describing KM in practical terms

KM SURVIVAL SKILL #3:THOU SHALT SET PRIORITIES

• Undertake a knowledge audit of what you absolutely must tag and store in your KM database – you MUST prioritise knowledge

• Start small and select key KM targets

• You must be clear on how KM fits into the overall mission and vision If YOU don’t believe in what you are doing and it’s value, who will?

KM SURVIVAL SKILL #4:PAINT A NEGATIVE FUTURE

• Fear is a motivator –fear of looking bad, fear of slipping in the rankings, fear of losing out on the best cases, etc.

• Never let a crisis go to waste – learn from what goes wrong• Find relevant examples of what happens when KM or critical knowledge

capture DOES NOT happen• Illustrate what the stakes are - graphically, anecdotally and

numerically• Know what your key stakeholders are most afraid of and

use this knowledge to make your case

KM SURVIVAL SKILL #5:KEEP THE LONG-TERM IN MIND

• Develop a long-term and sustainable KM plan, but build in quick wins in the short and medium terms

• Benchmark your results against similar organisations doing top quartile work – a selling point and a reality check

• Figure out where the leadership sees the organisation in five to ten years and steer KM towards that goal

• Stay the course and slowly build up your core group of KM evangelists

PERCEPTION PROBLEM

• If you don’t define what KM is early and often, and tie it in to the strategic goals of the organisation, someone else will

• Without champions in the organisation, the best portals in the world will not be used

• Word of mouth is still the best advertisement

• With social media, and informal networks, people will share their often negative view of KM quickly and turn off potential champions from ‘getting it’

AWARENESS WITHOUT ACTION IS POISONOUS

• When you start to capture people’s critical knowledge, in whatever way you do it, you set up expectations

• You are also setting up a trust relationship – and expectations that something positive and meaningful will be done with the information

• Once that trust is damaged through mismanaging information or senior management inertia to act upon it, trust is destroyed

• Without buy-in from both the top and bottom, KM is likely to fizzle

• I liken it to a neighbourhood beat cop: people have to see the cops walking the streets many times and see they aren’t going away, before they start to come to them with the useful insider information (consultants come and go)

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL KM STRATEGY

• Organisational priorities for KM• KM vision and mission• KM operational plan• Communications plan for

internal stakeholders• KM budget• Plan for KM technical

infrastructure• Proposed KM organisational

structure• Proposed KM metrics

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL KM STRATEGY

• Proposed knowledge sharing incentives and rewards

• Plans for KM training• Plan for integrating KM and

organisation strategy• Plan for pilot projects to

ensure early wins and measurable gains

• Identifying responsibilities with respect to implementation

• Plan for monitoring progress

FIVE GOLDEN RULES FOR LONG-TERM CHANGE

Be crystal clear on the expected benefits. What’s the business case? You need to be able to detail the agreed benefits that you must deliver. Progress must be managed and measured.

People’s behaviour must change for the long term.People must believe in the benefits for them and for the organisation. You have to do more than just ‘build an IT system.’

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MORE GOLDEN RULES…

Nothing happens without leadership.You have the advantage of an AG who believes in KM. But all divisions heads must encourage and inspire staff to adopt the new behaviours if the changes are to be lasting.

Process change leads to improved performance.Organisations need to buildin new processes and routines through job redesign, to ensure knowledge capture and reuse, and to reinforce desired behaviours.

Organisational learning leads to organisational success.Responding to what works and doesn’t will be the key to success. The key to this organisational learning is what distinguishes ultimately successful organisations.

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CHALLENGES TO KNOWLEDGE TRANSFERS

People are motivated by self-interest. (Shocking, but true!)

You have to build in incentives for them to share.

INCENTIVES… TRICKY BUT HELPFUL

It’s similar for encouraging ‘right’ behaviours with KM – incentivising workers works better than punishing or shaming them (usually).

Think of it this way. If you didn’t get paid, would you show up for work?

INCENTIVES… TRICKY BUT HELPFUL

• However, in most organisations it pays to integrate good KM practice with HR best practice. In other words, building in the right behaviours into KPIs, contracts, and roles & responsibilities. Because if it’s not in someone’s job description, chances are they aren’t going to be assessed on it. Which means your chances of success are somewhat less.

• Strong performers can help lead the way for the weaker performers. Public recognition of good work can be a powerful motivator.

HOW CAN YOU REWARD YOUR OFFICERS?

• So what treats can you offer employees? Recognition? Awards? Mentions in the organisation newsletter? Kudos from the boss?

• Get creative! Sometimes the organisations which have the least money to spend on incentives have the most creative ways to empower and reward employees for doing the right thing.

• Managers might also be asked at their appraisals what they are doing to support KM activities in their divisions. And, if their staff are seen not to be participating, why this is the case. The organisation needs their support, and needs to learn what does and doesn’t work.

REWARDS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

• The civil service common grade and salary scales don’t make rewards easy. Examples elsewhere include: a merit pay scheme (e.g. designating one award annually for knowledge sharing), the input scheme (making awards to staff who make helpful suggestions in relation to KM) or through raising it as a question in promotion interviews.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING

An IBM study has shown that training for all staff in relation to KM practices and applications is crucial to overcome any anxiety that employees may feel towards a new initiative and is beneficial as a means of communicating the benefits of KM.

IBM’s experience suggests that one-on-one or small group trainings for senior managers to learn about the resources available (including a ‘buddy’ system) is particularly useful in gaining their support and commitment.

MILESTONES

• Demonstrable time-savings and improvements in the way people fulfill their tasks and responsibilities.

• Use of KM systems (as measured by resources most often accessed or downloaded).

• A shared sense that the project is a success and represents value for money (as measured by surveys of management, staff and key stakeholders).

It is useful to benchmark what the organisation wishes to achieve from its KM strategy. These milestones should be set in relation to specific projects or initiatives. Examples might include:

IF IT WERE EASY …

…Everyone would be doing it already!

You are the knowledge catalyst. Knowledge management or sharing isn’t going to happen on its own.

But with your help, you can make KM a success here at the AGC.

Q&A

THANK YOU!

CARLA SAPSFORD NEWMANCarla.Y.Newman@gmail.com

carla@strategicknowledge.org