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Storm Warning Managing Knowledge in Turbulent Times L I A VO LUME 25, NUMBER 3 J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 0 5 10 I The upcoming retirement of the baby boomers poses a threat for companies: critical organizational information may be lost, setting off a destructive dynamic. What is needed is effective knowledge management. It is imperative that leaders educate themselves to promote and implement efforts to manage knowledge well by creating a holistic approach to sharing, capturing, storing, and reusing knowledge. by Richard B. Wa l l a ce have a colleague who grew up in Oklahoma. He once told me how he had learned to watch approaching thunderstorms for a wall cloud—a lowering from the base of a storm. When the wall cloud rotates, that sig- nals a serious event is in the offing. When he saw a wall cloud, he knew he had to act quickly to get to safety. The bad weather that organizations in the United States are looking at today is the impending retirement of baby boomers. This event is serious even if considered only for its magni- tude: 20 percent of American execu- tives will retire by 2008, 71 percent of government senior executives were eligible to retire in 2004, and half of all federal employees will be eligible for retirement this year. Even worse, this storm is coming with a wall cloud, and it’s beginning to rotate. With the departure of so many people at once, critical organi- zational knowledge may be lost, set- ting off a destructive dynamic. For instance, a lack of experience-based knowledge can affect an organiza- tion’s ability to learn and adapt, to make good and timely decisions, and to repeat past successes. Consider this excerpt from “How to Battle the Current Brain Drain,” an article in the March 21, 2005, issue of Fortune magazine: “Way back in the 1960s [the National Aeronautics and Space Administration] spent $24 billion (in 1969 dollars)—and at one point employed 400,000 people—to send 12 astronauts to the moon. But

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Storm WarningManaging Knowledgein Turbulent Times

L I A • VO LU M E 25, N U M B E R 3 • J U LY/AU G U ST 20 0 5

10

I

The upcoming retirement of the baby boomers poses a threat for

companies: critical organizational information may be lost, setting off

a destructive dynamic. What is needed is effective knowledge

management. It is imperative that leaders educate themselves to

promote and implement efforts to manage knowledge well by creating

a holistic approach to sharing, capturing, storing, and reusing

knowledge.

by R ichard B. Wa l l a ce

have a colleague who grew up inOklahoma. He once told me how hehad learned to watch approachingthunderstorms for a wall cloud—alowering from the base of a storm.When the wall cloud rotates, that sig-nals a serious event is in the offing.When he saw a wall cloud, he knewhe had to act quickly to get to safety.

The bad weather that organizationsin the United States are looking attoday is the impending retirement ofbaby boomers. This event is seriouseven if considered only for its magni-tude: 20 percent of American execu-tives will retire by 2008, 71 percentof government senior executives wereeligible to retire in 2004, and half ofall federal employees will be eligiblefor retirement this year.

Even worse, this storm is comingwith a wall cloud, and it’s beginningto rotate. With the departure of somany people at once, critical organi-zational knowledge may be lost, set-ting off a destructive dynamic. Forinstance, a lack of experience-basedknowledge can affect an organiza-tion’s ability to learn and adapt, tomake good and timely decisions, andto repeat past successes.

Consider this excerpt from “Howto Battle the Current Brain Drain,” anarticle in the March 21, 2005, issueof Fortune magazine: “Way back inthe 1960s [the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration] spent $24billion (in 1969 dollars)—and at onepoint employed 400,000 people—tosend 12 astronauts to the moon. But

Page 2: Storm Warning: Managing knowledge in turbulent times

in the 23 years since the Apollo pro-gram ended, the engineers who car-ried crucial know-how in their heads,without ever passing it on to col-leagues, have retired or died (orboth). . . . So to fulfill the Bushadministration’s promise to return tothe moon in the next decade, NASAis essentially starting all over again.Estimated cost to taxpayers in currentdollars: $100 billion.”

What can your organization do toprevent the coming storm frominflicting similar destruction? Theanswer is effective knowledge man-agement (KM). It is imperative thatyou, as a leader, educate yourself topromote and implement the effort tomanage knowledge well.

SIX PRINCIPLESMost everyone has heard of knowl-edge management, but many peoplethink it’s primarily a technical activ-ity focused on storing content. Theexperience of Science ApplicationsInternational Corporation (SAIC), aresearch and engineering firm thathas helped numerous organizationsdeal with daunting, practical organi-zational challenges, shows that it’snot. Instead, knowledge managementis best understood as the capacity tocapture, reuse, and learn from thepractical knowledge that is created inthe course of conducting an organiza-tion’s business. It requires simple yetsystematic actions.

Leaders must understand six basicprinciples—which SAIC has identi-fied through its work in both the pub-lic and private sectors—in order tolead an effective knowledge manage-ment effort:

Knowledge is personal; it requiresdesire, relationships, and trust tomove it and use it. Putting the properstructure in place to support thedevelopment of the social capital nec-essary to develop knowledge is alaborious and sometimes tediousprocess that pays huge dividends in

the end. It is this social connectivitythat allows for the most effectivetransfer of knowledge.

Capturing knowledge doesn’tensure performance, but as part of aholistic process the right knowledgecan be codified for transfer and reuseby others. The hallmark of an effec-tive approach to the application ofknowledge to a business setting is thereuse of critical knowledge. Criticalknowledge is both timely and rele-vant. Capturing knowledge is indeednecessary but the capturing processcannot overwhelm the process ofreuse. Reuse drives performanceimprovements and establishes themomentum for further transfer withinthe organization.

Balance knowledge collection withconnections among people; the mostcurrent knowledge will always be inpeople’s heads. Connecting the peo-ple who have the knowledge and thepeople who have the need for theknowledge is the most important wayto gain organizational buy-in andincrease near-term performance. Thetransfer of experience is knowledgemanagement in its truest form.

Technology is necessary but insuf -ficient; making it easy, fast, and con -venient to collaborate across newboundaries makes the differencebetween such collaboration happen -ing or not. Technology is the mostprofound enabler in promulgatingknowledge across the organizationand sustaining innovation. However,the end point is the learning thatcomes from sharing knowledge andexperience, not the use of the tech-nology. Spend time up front to mapthe technology to the process, not theother way around.

Helping individuals and teamslearn before, during, and after awork project is the most effective wayto improve performance in the shortterm. Embedding learning processesinto business processes establisheslearning as part of the way an organi-zation does business. A well-testedapproach is to use a peer-assist

process for learning before doingwork, after-action reviews to learnfrom events that occur and workstages that are completed while theoverall project is still ongoing, and aretrospect for learning when the proj-ect is finished. These learningprocesses are simple to use andshould be a part of the day-to-dayoperations of an organization.

Go where the energy is and meetpeople where they’re at. Initially, anyimplementation will meet someresistance, so it makes sense to findthe areas where there are earlyadopters willing to try something newor where the organization’s sufferingis so pronounced that it mitigates theresistance to new approaches to prob-lem solving. Go where the work isaccomplished, where most of theanswers already exist.

THREE CHALLENGESThe challenges that leaders face inapplying knowledge management intheir organizations fall within threebroad categories: skepticism, limitedresources, and the not-invented-heresyndrome.

L I A • VO LU M E 25, N U M B E R 3 • J U LY/AU G U ST 20 0 5

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Richard B. Wallace is a

manager in the Knowledge

Management Division of

Science Applications

International Corporation, the

largest employee-owned

research and engineering firm

in the United States. He has

experience in enterprise-wide

projects ranging from the development of communities

of practice to the development and implementation of

knowledge repositories that fundamentally affect how

people do their work. He holds an M.S. degree in busi-

ness administration from Michigan Technical University

and is a Ph.D. degree candidate in knowledge manage-

ment at the George Washington University. He can be

reached at [email protected].

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Continued on page 14

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Skepticism usually results from aprevious failed attempt at knowledgemanagement. However, such failuresoften occur because the effort wasnot focused on embedding learninginto the normal business practices ofthe organization. Practical experienceshows that near-term success helps toovercome skepticism. The six knowl-edge management processes outlinedearlier are simple by design and anexcellent way to engineer early winsand gain the traction needed for long-term success.

K n ow l e d ge management pra c t i c e sm a ke the eve ry d ay operations of ano rga n i z ation easier and more effe c-t ive. No one wants to spend moneyand re s o u rces on projects that do nota dd value to the orga n i z ation. Th at iswhy embedding the know l e d ge man-agement ap p ro a ch into activ i t i e sa l re a dy being accomplished is key tol o n g - t e rm success. If know l e d ge man-agement practices are used to enhanceexisting know l e d ge - s h a ring activ i t i e sin the orga n i z at i o n , ove r wo rked per-sonnel face no added bu rden and theirp e r fo rmance improves over time.

Fi n a l ly, t h e re is an element of n o ti nvented here in eve ry orga n i z at i o n .A practical ap p ro a ch to know l e d gem a n agement is making commonsense common pra c t i c e. To accom-plish this, find the activities that area c t u a l ly know l e d ge management bu ta re not defined or re c og n i zed ass u ch , and build from this strength ofthe orga n i z ation. Th e re are few ifa ny orga n i z ations in wh i ch somefo rm of know l e d ge management isn’tbeing accomplished. The idea is tom a ke these practices more system-atic and provide leve rage for theo rga n i z at i o n .

FOCUS ON REUSEAlthough the importance of leverag-ing organizational knowledge is

undeniable, there are countless com-panies whose attempts to do this havefailed. The reason is that their effortsfocused on capturing knowledgerather than on the more difficult stepof enabling and encouraging knowl-edge reuse. The essence of learning isthe practical application of organiza-tional knowledge. Successful captur-ing of knowledge must be focused toensure that what is learned candirectly improve how people get theirjobs done and accomplish the organi-zation’s goals.

The thinking on know l e d ge man-agement and on sustaining a learn i n ge n gine in an orga n i z ation hasevo l ved signifi c a n t ly in recent ye a rs .E a rly effo rts focused on cre at i n gt e ch n o l ogy solutions, in the mistake nbelief that tech n o l ogy alone wo u l dp rovide the answe r. Connecting peo-ple electro n i c a l ly without bu i l d i n gthe necessary infra s t ru c t u re aro u n dtheir know l e d ge—the social cap i-tal—has led to many disap p o i n t-ments and a lack of delive ry on thep romise of know l e d ge manage m e n t .Because all know l e d ge is based onex p e ri e n c e, t e ch n o l ogy itself is notve ry useful for getting at the know l-e d ge that lies within an orga n i z at i o n .O n ly after the ex p e c t ations of tech-n o l ogy solutions fell short did orga n-i z ations begin to re a l i ze that tech n o l-ogy alone was not the answe r. It isby cre ating a holistic ap p ro a ch tos h a ri n g, c ap t u ri n g, s t o ri n g, a n dreusing know l e d ge that leaders canre a l i ze the maximum potential oftheir orga n i z ations and cap i t a l i ze ono p p o rtunities to learn .

Technology should not be dis-counted, however. Tools for storing,retrieving, collaborating, and sharingplay significant roles in a holisticapproach. The aim is to maximize theability and opportunity to transfercritical, reusable knowledge at theright time and to the right placethroughout the organization.

L I A • VO LU M E 25, NU M BE R 3 • J U LY/A U G U ST 20 0 5

LEARNING PROCESSESEstablishing a holistic knowledgearchitecture is the only way to createa truly high-performance learningorganization. To get started on suchan architecture, leaders can imple-ment three simple processes in theirorganizations. The majority of workin most organizations is accom-plished by teams, so it makes senseto start there. By establishingprocesses for people to learn beforework starts, during the execution ofwork, and after projects are com-pleted, leaders can lay the ground-work for robust learning engines intheir organizations.

Learning before doing is sup-ported through a peer-assist processthat targets specific challenges,imports knowledge from people out-side the team, identifies possibleapproaches and new lines of inquiry,and promotes sharing of learningthrough facilitated meetings.

A process called the after-actionreview, modified from a U.S. Armypractice, aims to get people to learnimmediately after an event or com-pleted work stage while the overallproject is still ongoing. After-actionreviews focus on making incrementalbut continuous improvement inaccomplishing the everyday tasks ofa project by answering four ques-tions:

• What was supposed to happen?• What did happen?• Why are the scenario and the

outcome different?• What can be learned from this

difference?

After-action reviews help team mem-bers identify what is important forsuccessfully completing the projectand build trust among team members.

Learning after a project is com-pleted is accomplished through the

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How to Manage Knowledge in Turbulent TimesContinued from page 11

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retrospect process. It encouragesteam members to look back on theoverall execution of the project todiscover what went well or wrongand why, with a view toward helpingfuture teams repeat the successes andavoid the pitfalls.

TWO ELEMENTSFor knowledge to be managed effec-tively in an organization, two funda-mental elements need to be present:viable communities of practice andwell-conceived and -maintainedknowledge assets.

In most organizations, peopleform communities around specifictasks or activities because collectiveknow-how provides significantadvantages. These communities ofpractice are a proven means ofenhancing the performance of theirmembers by accelerating problemsolving; facilitating faster learning;maintaining and improving standards;increasing autonomy, empowerment,and risk taking; and encouraging per-sonal development.

Communities of practice, if man-aged properly, can thus be stewardsof organizational knowledge. Eachcommunity requires a champion—typically a senior executive—whoprovides the community with itslicense to operate; a leader, who pro-vides overall guidance and builds andmaintains relationships with thechampion and other leaders tostrengthen recognition and supportfrom the organization; a core group

that does the work of building thecommunity and maintaining its rele-vance to business objectives; and awider group of members and practi-tioners who share best practices andexpertise and are willing to contributetime to community discussions andcross-business learning processes.

Most orga n i z ations have manyc o m munities of pra c t i c e, and ch o o s i n gwh i ch ones to emphasize and deve l o pis a fundamental leadership ch a l l e n ge.We l l - d eveloped communities of pra c-tice must cre ate and become the custo-dians of know l e d ge assets.

A knowledge asset is a tangibleexpression of what the organizationknows about a practical issue. Theseassets are best defined by asking spe-cific questions, such as, What do weknow about developing a new prod-uct? A knowledge asset might exist inthe form of a Web site or merely as acollection of word-processing files,but it always includes the following:

• The business context for theissue in question.

• Key lessons and insights in theform of frequently asked questions,guidelines, checklists, best practices,and stories.

• Guidance on what needs to beaddressed at each stage of a practicalprocess.

• Links to people who have expe-rience to contribute.

• A reference library of docu-ments that might save people time.

• A network of people, drawnfrom the community of practice, who

manage, validate, and renew the con-tent of the asset.

SEEKING CONVERGENCEThe high-performance organizationsthat will succeed as they transitioninto the next generation of leaders arethose that not only encourage but alsofoster the convergence of innovation,leadership, and knowledge manage-ment. Successful leaders who recog-nize this must provide their organiza-tions with the means to ensure asustainable competitive advantage,the ability to hear the stories thatmatter, the wisdom to translate theknowledge, and the power to create afuture of choice.

Although knowledge managementrequires focused effort, in the longrun it is not additional work; rather itis a means to accomplish currentwork more effectively.

As a leader, h ave you prep a re dyour orga n i z ation to manage itsk n ow l e d ge better? Wh at are you wa i t-ing for? The storm is coming.

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KM ResourcesWould you like to learn more aboutk n owledge management? Here is a pa rtial list of reso u rces to co n-s u l t:

• The knowledge management sec-tion of the Science Applications

International Corporation Web site,at www.saic.com/km.• The Complete Idiot’s Guide toKnowledge Management, by MelissieClemmons Rumizen (Alpha Books,2002).• Knowledge Management Review.

To see a sample issue of this publi-cation, go to www.km-review.com,register, and click on “Publications.”• Inside Knowledge magazine. Tosee a summary of the current issueof this publication, go towww.ikmagazine.com.

Knowledge management

requires focused effort,

but in the long run it is

not additional work.