Organization M (a real organization) is a network consisting of 15 related professional organizations. The President of Organization M, upon the recommendation of a Board member who understood the value of KM, decided to launch a KM initiative. Organization M functions through (a) a small secretariat of less than 15 staff members, (b) about two dozen technical committees, and (c) several geographically-distributed chapters.

The KM initiative was launched with three KM briefings for: the Board, the secretariat staff and the chairmen of committees and chapters.

Committees and chapters are composed of volunteer professional members who donate their services despite their busy work schedules. Committees have specific technical tasks, such as planning and executing conventions and forums, accreditation, professional journal, awards, professional ethics, etc. Chapters’ work revolves around providing continuing professional education and training for Organization M’s thousands of members.

Committee and chapter chairpersons perform management roles. A well-designed KM initiative can definitely help the work of committees and chapters, but the challenge is to convince committee and chapter chairpersons that KM would be beneficial to their work. When the third KM briefing was scheduled, few chairpersons signed up. They were either too busy or did not appreciate the value of investing their time for KM. To encourage more chairpersons to sign up, we sent the one-page “Invitation to a Conversation about KM” below.

-
AN INVITATION TO A “CONVERSATION ABOUT KM”

Our KM consultant would like to invite interested Committee and Chapter Chairs for a “Conversation about KM” so that your Committee/Chapter can avail of the above assistance. One hour invested in this Conversation could be worthwhile for your Committee/Chapter work, and you may also get useful KM tips for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of your personal professional work.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

In September 2005, the Executive Director of STREAMS (an international network of NGOs in water and sanitation, which was one of CCLFI’s partners) asked for our help. STREAMS Board members flew to Manila and are meeting together with an Observer from their major funding sponsor, the Netherlands Government. She asked, can I please convince her Board that KM is important? My time slot was only one hour. And she warned that the Observer is avowedly sceptical of KM!

I did a quick workshop with the Board members, where I asked a series of 3 questions.

I asked the Chairwoman (the CEO of the Water Research Commission of South Africa) Question 1: To an outsider like me, can she please tell me in a few brief sentences what are the valuable development results their network wants to achieve?

I then wrote the key phrases on the whiteboard; the result was 2-3 key outcomes.

We next distributed metacards (similar to Post-Its) and felt pens to the Board members including the Observer. Then I asked them to write down (in short phrases) answers to Question 2: What programs, functions or projects of your network and its members are most important in achieving those development results?

We posted and clustered their answers on the white boards. After about 20 minutes discussion, we picked out a very important function or program. There was much debate what is the “most” important; so we settled for “a very important” program.

I next asked them to write down again in metacards, their answers to Question 3: What skills, information/knowledge, support systems and relationships are most important in implementing this program well?

Again we posted and clustered their answers. We then discussed the results and after about 30 minutes arrived at a priority shortlist of Generator Knowledge Assets or GKAs.

Finally, I concluded, “according to your collective judgement, the successful performance of your organization hinges on how well you manage these few Generator Knowledge Assets.”

-

High-Octane KM: Working backwards to identify CKAs

In about one hour, the Board members saw: (a) the importance of KM to their organization, (b) the link between KM and their organization’s goals, and (c) that focused KM can be inexpensive.

Managing only the GKAs is “high-octane KM”. It is “lean and mean” KM.

During coffee break, the Observer approached me and said something to the effect that KM is indeed important.

I maintain that KM initiatives must be driven by the socially (or commercially) valuable outcomes an organization wishes to achieve or contribute to. One way to ensure this is to ask your internal and external customers’ needs and requirements. In other words, KM must be demand-driven, not supply-driven. KM must start with customer needs.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Re-using work templates developed by someone who has been efficiently performing a particular task is another inexpensive KM approach. This approach also works very well for shortening learning curves of new recruits.

A work template is a document, code or material that was used in performing a task well and can be re-used to perform other identical or similar tasks. By guiding action, a work template helps perform a task quickly and with fewer mistakes especially by those who are doing the task for the first time:

• A checklist of things to do or to watch out for
• A form letter for a type of communication that is repeated many times
• A spreadsheet to compute something or to summarize something
• A workshop session guide
• A step-by-step action guide
• A successful proposal that can be used as a pattern for drafting future proposals
• A course outline or course syllabus
• A well-written report to guide writing of next similar reports
• Etc.

Knowledge workers (often unconsciously) improvise, re-use and improve work templates as a matter of course. They do these little things to simplify and speed up their work. They do not call what they are doing as “knowledge management” and often they do not recognize that they are creating and reusing valuable “knowledge products.” Nevertheless their intended result is what KM is really aiming for: more effective action.

—

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Motivating knowledge workers in KM projects does not have to cost much money. A survey of 22 Asian organizations performing good KM practices (conducted by Asian Productivity Organization) reveal an interesting pattern: they employ various (low-cost) ways to motivate knowledge workers:

• Rewards and recognition schemes are often used. Airtel in India instituted the Knowledge Dollar (K$) as the unit of performance credit and the Joint President’s and CEO’s Knowledge Management Award. A Learning Award for knowledge transfer and an Enterprise Award for intrapreneurship were established by Unilever Indonesia. Wika in Indonesia instituted ten different awards. The Learning Award resulted in “new enthusiasm for learning, confidence in trainers to conduct sessions, new standards of module development… and preservation of knowledge not captured before.”
• Infosys uses measurable returns from KM initiatives to demonstrate the benefits and rationale for engaging in KM. Initial positive feedbacks on outputs/benefits of KM were encouraging and provided motivation for the continuing development of KM at Goldsun in Vietnam.
• At the Department of Health in the Philippines, members of the KM Team through a workshop surfaced their personal talents, passions and life goals and each member clarified how he or she can optimize the conscious convergence between personal and organizational goals.
• Management of Qian Hu in Singapore designed a mix of informal and formal communication modes to strengthen buy-in from employees and customers. This includes “floor walks”, tea sessions and informal gatherings besides more formal modes such as seminars and focus group discussions.
• At SCG Paper in Thailand, a balance of virtual interaction and physical or face-to-face meetings is employed. Physical spaces designed for interactions are provided that can foster openness and trust among employees. Similarly, Bank Negara Malaysia redesigned its library environment to make it more reader friendly, using ergonomics furniture and encouraging a more cheerful mood using paintings and appropriate color scheme for walls and furniture.
• The importance of senior management commitment or executive sponsorship was mentioned in many case studies. In a survey of more than 200 organizations in Thailand this factor was ranked highest among critical success factors for KM. At Siriraj Hospital in Thailand, the CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) was selected on the basis of commitment, leadership ability and recognition from other staff. Leadership and policy was ranked second in a study in Malaysia of success factors in KM. JTC Corporation’s managers created “a motivational organizational culture characterized by a caring leadership behavior which supports active questioning and allows for mistakes… Employees are thus able to trust each other and to share their opinions about work related issues more freely.”
• Learning is a win-win activity for employees and the company. CAPCO in Taiwan established an on-line learning program for its employees, the Multimedia Cyber College. It has motivated its employees by including on-line training and certification as part of the employee evaluation and promotion processes.
• The motivational value of learning through face-to-face interaction in a team or CoP is mentioned in many case studies. Unilever Indonesia, SCG Paper and Siriraj Hospital in Thailand, and SAIT in Korea are examples of organizations that set up and nurture many CoPs. To sustain employee interest in KM activities, Bank Negara Malaysia initiated cross-functional teams, benchmarking projects and study visits or attachments.
• At SCG Paper, the honor of being a mentor or coach is seen as a motivating element in tacit knowledge transfer processes such as the buddy system, job rotation and cross-functional group activities. Designating functional heads as the knowledge champions and setting up a community of experts were instrumental in gaining buy-in for KM at Airtel. Wika and Bank Indonesia created the role of “begawan” (sage) for mature and experienced mentors.
• “Praise Ground,” which is an avenue for peer-to-peer public compliments for exemplary KM behavior, is an innovative process at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. According to the case study author,
  “A member identifies another employee who has done something worthy to be praised and writes a short, but entertaining note about it on the website. That member, then, identifies still another employee to praise and the process is repeated over and over… The Praise Ground is one of the most popular and most frequently visited website at SAIT. Most, if not all, members at SAIT consider it a great personal honor to be mentioned at the Praise Ground.”

If you wish to read more about these 22 KM case studies which I edited, click here and access the 3rd item in “Downloadable KM e-books”.

KM in Asia (22 case studies)

—

Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

A simple tool for increasing the likelihood that employees will perform desired KM behaviors is to incorporate those behaviors into the periodic Performance/Personnel Evaluation System. Personally, I prefer that employees (for example through a briefing) are assisted to understand and appreciate KM and what KM can do for them (see previous blog on “T3-1 Showing a concrete benefit of KM to the knowledge worker”). Demonstrating success of a KM pilot project in a selected unit within the organization is even better. However, a combination of many approaches may be the best approach, whichever is suited to the culture and problem of the organization concerned.

An innovative approach used by SEAMEO INNOTECH in lieu of a generic Performance/Personnel Evaluation System is the individualized Personnel Development Plan whereby each employee, in consultation with his/her superior, commits to take specific actions or duties towards gaining or enhancing specific competencies during an evaluation period. Presently, the management of INNOTECH is considering incorporating the practice and learning of specific KM competencies in the Personnel Development Plan.

—

Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

KM for development-oriented organizations (government agencies, non-government organizations or civil society organizations, non-profit foundations, aid or donor agencies, social enterprises, etc.) is more complex than KM for private corporations. In development-oriented organizations, external KM (or KM to serve stakeholders) must consider the multiplicity of stakeholders and external actors, each with their own different or sometimes conflicting interests and agendas, complex power relations, differences in cultural background, different “knowledges” or epistemological assumptions, etc.

A simple way of quickly grasping the differences in interests and power relations among a group is through a sociogram. Below is a sociogram drawn for the members of the Executive Committee of an ad hoc network consisting of local and national government, non-government, private and academic members.

The sociogram was constructed after interviewing and iterative discussion/refinement of the diagram with a knowledgeable informant who knows and have worked with everybody in the Executive Committee. The sociogram has two dimensions: extent of informal power/influence and position along an issue or policy dimension, in this case environmental beliefs or ideology. Note the following:

• The members are generally clumped at the high-power, right-leaning end of the diagram. This means somewhat general agreement and power equality.
• The widest gaps between any two members show the potential conflicts. An actual conflict can be depicted in red. In the figure the widest gap is more horizontal then vertical, which means that the conflict is more along beliefs than along power differentials.
• The Chairperson (Person #1) and Vice-Chairperson (Person #2) are more-or-less ideologically at the center of the group, which means that they are in a position to mediate or balance the groups “to the left” and “to the right”. The vertical position is informal power. Note that the Chairperson is at the top: he has both formal and informal power. However, there are two members (Persons #6 and #7) who exert slightly more power than the Vice-Chairman, and they are both “rightists”. Hence, if the Vice-Chairman takes over, he may not be able to play the balancing role because two “rightists” may tend to overpower him.
• The person with the most extreme position in the group, or the farthest away of everybody else is Person #4. She is the head of a network of local civil society organizations. She is somewhat aligned with Person #3. She is always at odds with Person #7 who is represents a private corporation. The power of Person #7 comes from the fact that this corporation is a major funder of the operations of this group.

Can you see now that a simple sociogram can give you that much insight?

In fact, an ordinary organizational chart tells you very little, namely, only the formal reporting relationships. It shows vice presidents at the same level but we know that in reality, vice presidents are never equally close to the president, and they often have unequal informal power or influence. In fact, it can happen that the secretary to the president is more powerful than any of the vice presidents! Ha ha!

—

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Do you need to conduct a meeting between people who are located at different cities in the world?

As CCLFI principals are spread around the globe (Jasmin Suminstrado in Africa and Europe, Alwin Sta. Rosa in Pacific countries, Daan Boom in Nepal, me hip-hopping across Asia and new member Ron Young in U.K. and France), we had to find and practice an inexpensive method of conducting on-line meetings. Former CCLFI Director for Operations Leslie Gopalan from Malaysia had introduced us to this tool. And of course, before we teach a KM tool to our clients, as a matter of policy, we first practice the KM tool ourselves.

Our simple formula:

1. Create an Agenda (topics or issues for discussion or decision, lead person or responsible person, dates, any background information) in Excel file, upload it to Google docs (a free service by Google), invite members who will attend the meeting to view/edit it, and email the exact time of start of the meeting.
2. Before the meeting time, any member can edit or add new materials onto the Google doc file.
3. At the appointed time, members go on-line and conduct the meeting using Skype conference call (of course, every member must have Skype accounts – it is free; use of headphone is advisable to minimize audio feedbacks and ambient noise).
4. During the meeting, each member accesses the agenda worksheet in Google docs, and anyone can edit or add new materials to record the points being raised and the decisions reached (any cell being edited by one person is temporarily locked out from the others; but once he is finished editing, the result is visible and editable by the others; members can edit different cells simultaneously).
5. There is no need to write a Minutes of the Meeting; the Minutes is being written by everyone as the meeting progresses!
6. The decisions reached and the actions to be taken are recorded, together with the person responsible and the deadline date for finishing the action.
7. In other words, at the end of the meeting, the Agenda morphs into the Minutes of the Meeting.
8. Days and weeks after the meeting, the people responsible for the different actions agreed upon must report on his progress (or problems met) by making corresponding entries on the Google docs file at any time. At any time too, any member of the team can check the progress of the others by accessing the same file. In other words, the Minutes of the Meeting next morphs into a team Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) tool!
9. Once all the actions are done, the file can be part of the team’s work archives.

Does your team use any similar tool? If so, please describe it too using the “Leave a Comment” link below. Let us learn from each other.

—

Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

This is a sequel of the previous bog (“Development Organizations: Supporting Desired Stakeholder Actions”).

Advertisers are skillful in answering the question: “What message, and how shall it be delivered, so that it enables desired customer actions?” The answers depend on what normally drives the customer’s actions: her values/interests and her problems/needs.

-

-

Observe how concisely Starbucks delivers a message that appeals to social responsibility — a value that more and more customers are expecting from companies they buy from:

“Responsibly grown.
Ethically traded.
Proudly served.”

“Let’s drink to
a better future for
coffee farmers.”

Going back to the topic of the previous blog, if you belong to a development or non-profit organization, what concise message can you deliver to enable, support or trigger stakeholder actions that you mutually desire?

—

Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Knowledge management in government and development organizations is more complex than knowledge management in private corporations. For one, development organizations have to serve and deal with many stakeholders and external actors with their many different and sometimes competing interests and operating at different levels: international, national, local and community levels. For another, market-based measures common in private corporations are generally absent in the development sector.

I am in Hanoi, Vietnam this week, interviewing managers in public, local and international non-government and international donor institutions — stakeholders of the UNISDR-Asia Pacific (UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction). My mission is to help UNISDR-AP better understand the knowledge needs of its various stakeholders in South and Southeast Asia, starting with Vietnam (a Stakeholders Knowledge Demand Assessment study).

An exceedingly simple framework for this purpose is one based on the same basic KM framework described in the F-series of my blogs:
-

KNOWLEDGE and other actionable information –> Desired stakeholder ACTIONS

-

The steps are straightforward: (a) identify and rank (by power and reach, level of trust in your relationship, etc.) stakeholders whose interests coincide with those of your development organization, (b) identify and rank (by relevance, coincidence of interests, etc.) specific stakeholder actions that you mutually desire, and (c) identify and rank (by cost-effectiveness, responsiveness to top knowledge gaps, etc.) knowledge and other actionable information that can enable or support those actions.

Some observations and caveats:

• In the private sector, the desired stakeholder (=customer) action is simple: keep buying your products. In the development sector, desired stakeholder actions are multi-level and more complex. The above steps can be useful for prioritizing across various choices.
• Enabling or supporting desired stakeholder actions is central to value creation in development organizations. This can be called “external KM” and it is often more important than, or it is what drives, “internal KM” which aims at internal or operational efficiency.
• Advocacies of some development institutions are not readily understandable by the common layman. UNISDR advocates “disaster risk reduction” or DRR — a concept that cuts across many sectors and disciplines: project design, community preparedness, building codes, land use and zoning policies, early-warning technologies, speed of coordinated implementation across government agencies, basic risk management knowledge among the general population, revision of existing legislation and standards, etc. One cannot simply ask a stakeholder what knowledge it needs, without first assessing its level of awareness and knowledge of DRR. A stakeholder knowledge demand assessment is useful only after a stakeholder had moved from unconscious ignorance (not knowing what they need to know) to conscious ignorance (being aware of what they need to know).

—

Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Here are some techniques my colleagues and I have advised, tried and/or monitored to reduce knowledge loss when experienced staff is resigning/retiring:

• Over a period of several months, the retiring staff confers with his understudy whenever the former makes an important or critical decision or problem solving episode. He explains the situation, what factors he looks at, what are the risks, and why he chose the solution. In other words, the coaching process is focused only on important decision-making episodes.
• For a very busy executive about to retire, ask few but high-value questions. For example, we asked an executive who was centrally responsible for conceptualizing and overseeing a unique program: “After doing this program several times, what advice will you offer a new executive who will take over the program? Let us say that you have only 10 minutes available to provide this advice.” The 10-minutes limit forces the executive to “skim off the cream” and thus provide the most high-value advice culled from his long experience.
• One difference between an experienced staff and a neophyte is that the former has much tacit knowledge about what could go wrong in a particular activity, business process or project. Interview the retiring staff or ask him to list the risk factors involved, and the corresponding signs (we use the terms “pink flags” or “red flags” to differentiate between levels of probability and seriousness of a risk) that he looks for to check if the risk seems to be materializing.
• Ask the resigning/retiring staff to collect and provide you with his work templates. Turn this over to the understudy or replacement, who must be able to ask the retiring staff questions whenever the manner of use of any template is not clear to her. This technique presupposes that members of the organization is aware of the value of, and can recognize work templates and other reusable knowledge objects/products.
• Request the retiring staff if he or she can be occasionally consulted by phone after retirement.
• Do not call a project “harvesting knowledge of retiring staff.” Who wants to be “harvested”? This was odious title of an actual project in one organization and the project did not fly. “Knowledge turnover” or “knowledge transfer” or “understudy program” sounds better. The other reason for failure is that the actions called for on the part of the resigning/retiring staff were not part of the terms/contract of employment of the staff. Therefore the next tip is:
• Insert “knowledge turnover” provisions into the employment contract of knowledge workers.
• Form an informal “consultants pool” consisting of retirees in a specific area of work and set up agreed protocols for consulting members of the pool on problems in their specific area of specialization.
• If a work process is relatively specific, predictable or uniform, encourage a retiring experienced staff to accept outsourcing jobs after his retirement. In one factory, the owner even sells the associated equipment at a much reduced price.
• If the retiring staff is a business development officer, an account executive or a marketing officer with personal and crucial relationships with business partners or clients, he introduces his understudy or replacement to the business partners/clients (and their secretaries or assistants), brings her to business and social events where the business partner/client will be met and briefs her on the specific and unique personality characteristics, requirements and expectations of each business partner/client.
• Adopt a company policy that replacements must be hired or identified at least 30 days before resignation or retirement, and corresponding company procedures for knowldge transfer during that period.

  Cheers!

  —

  =>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
  =>Jump to Clickable Master Index

  Posted in KM tool, knowledge management ]]> http://apintalisayon.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/t3-5-reducing-knowledge-loss-when-experienced-staff-resignsretires/feed/ 0 Apin