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Pervading the idea of knowledge sharing are three myths. Perhaps myth is the wrong term—maybe they are just assumptions that seem reasonable at first glance, but when acted on send organizations to a dead end. Many of the organizations I studied started with one or more of these assumptions and then had to make corrections to get back on track. The three myths are (1) build it and they will come, (2) technology can replace face-to-face, and (3) first you have to create a learning culture.
Build It and They Will Come
Managers who want to make the knowledge in their organizations more available often have a mental image of a large warehouse that contains all of that knowledge. They envision those who are looking for knowledge going to the warehouse and taking out what they need. The idea has a lot of intuitive appeal. Knowledge seems so amorphous that the notion of its being documented and located in a central place offers a comforting sense of control and manageability.
The first thing most organizations do is build a central electronic database, a perfect fit for the warehouse image. But, to their dismay, having spent a considerable amount of money to create the database, very little happens: neither contributions nor retrievals occur with much enthusiasm. Bechtel, one of the companies profiled in this book, experienced this with its initial Clearinghouse. The workers at its construction sites sent in very few items and seemed to have little interest in the system. Chevron's Corporate-Wide Data Base for Best Practices also elicited a modest response. Such experiences are a disappointing outcome to a very well intentioned idea.
When organizations find that their members show little interest in the database, they often backtrack in an attempt to "fix" the lack of contributions. The thinking is that an incentive system is needed to reward people for contributing and retrieving knowledge. Incentives have become a fairly familiar second step in knowledge management scenarios. The types of rewards offered have varied from the mundane to the ridiculous—a Dove bar for each time you go into the database, 500 frequent flyer points for every submission. The consulting firm KPMG invented a "give to get" scheme; employees can't take any knowledge out of the system unless they put something in. In some companies the database manager ends up doing a lot of encouraging to get submissions. The manager of Chevron's system, for example, urges people to "send that in," although she still ends up writing many of the submissions herself. The same is true at Bechtel. People in central functions who visit construction sites are more likely to write up an idea themselves, even though they actively encourage engineers at the sites to "send that in, even if it's just written on the back of a napkin." Ernst & Young, like several other consulting firms, has tried to address the issue by putting an item in its performance review form related to contributing to E&Y's Knowledge Web.
Although incentives work to some extent, none of them delivers the hoped-for results. The answer lies not in better incentives but in altering that powerful originating image of the warehouse. That image places the focus on collecting and storing knowledge instead of on reusing it, which is the ultimate goal. This starting image needs to be transformed into one that focuses on reuse.
Technology Can Replace Face-to-Face
If a group of people who do the same kind of work are brought together, they will begin to share knowledge (although we often think of this as telling "war stories"). That has always been one of the great side benefits of training programs or of attending conferences. But getting people together is costly, because it involves travel and time away from the job—expenses that in this time of cost cutting seem extravagant.
One of the great promises that technology holds is that it can allow people to share knowledge without having to be in the same place. Although this sounds reasonable, it unfortunately just doesn't always work out that way.
All of the knowledge management systems I studied that were initially designed as technology systems have evolved toward being a combination of technology and face-to-face meetings. Ford's Best Practice Replication process is one of the most effective uses of this technology/face-to-face hybrid to share knowledge that I've seen. Best Practice Replication was championed by Dale McKeehan, vice president of Vehicle Operations, in March 1995. McKeehan saw a need for Europe and North America (both in his area of responsibility) to get better at sharing ideas. A team of production engineers was sent from a Vehicle Operations plant in Kansas City to a similar plant in Saarlouis, Germany. The production engineers were there to "walk the line" with their German counterparts to see what was happening in the Saarlouis plant and gather ideas that they could use in the Kansas City plant. Then, a few weeks later, the German team paid a visit to the Kansas City plant to see what they could use. Out of these meetings fifteen short-term and thirty long-term best practices were identified. These initial practices became the basis of the Best Practice Replication Database, which has grown to over 600 ideas and now involves all thirty-seven Vehicle Operations plants around the world. In addition to identifying forty-five best practices, something else happened during these initial visits that was perhaps more important. The engineers from the two plants got to know each other; they came to respect each other and to recognize that the other had some very useful ideas that they had not thought of themselves. Stan Kwiecien, Coordinator for Best Practice Replication, Vehicle Operations, says that the system would not have worked without first building trust through face-to-face exchanges and would not continue to work without the quarterly face-to-face exchanges among the production engineers. As evidence of their importance, the quarterly meetings usually produce an immediate jump in submissions to the database.
E&Y is another case in point. The firm has a very sophisticated Knowledge Web that holds some 350,000 items and has up to 3,000 hits a day. But a vast system of face-to-face interaction encourages and supports this technology system. Twenty-two networks of consultants work in particular industries or on particular solutions (e.g., managed care, manufacturing, supply chain operations, new product development). The networks hold frequent face-to-face meetings to learn from each other and to build the relationships that support the Knowledge Web. And as at Ford, a surge in submissions as well as hits on the system always follows a network meeting. Recently, E&Y has moved even farther into the face-to-face realm by "hard-tagging" certain expert consultants in each network to travel around as full-time collectors and disseminators of the knowledge for that network.
Technology has to be married with face-to-face interaction to create the most effective systems; one does not replace the other, although clearly one can greatly enhance the other.
First You Have to Create a Learning Culture
"Our organization has a very competitive culture, so no one is going to tell anyone else something that might help the other person get ahead." The third myth, based on beliefs such as this, is that the exchange of knowledge happens only in organizations that have a noncompetitive or a collaborative culture. It follows that the first thing you have to do is to fix the culture and then get people to share. But I have found that it's the other way around. If people begin sharing ideas about issues they see as really important, the sharing itself creates a learning culture. I have, of course, inserted an important caveat in that sentence: "about issues they see as really important."
Ford supplies an illustration of this point. Every Ford plant is responsible for making a 5 percent productivity increase every year. People in the plants refer to it as the "task." This is serious business; as one plant manager said, "If you don't make your task, your successor will." Year after year it is a real chore to keep making the 5 percent task, and production engineers are stretched to find some new process or technique to reduce the cost of labor, materials, or energy. Now, the Best Practice Replication process sends the production engineer in each Vehicle Operations plant five to eight best practices items a week, each of which describes how a sister plant reduced costs. Each item spells out exactly how much was saved, specified in hours, materials, or energy. The production engineers have come to rely on this system as a way to make their task. In fact, on average, 40 percent of task comes from best practices pulled off the system—and in some plants 100 percent of task is taken from the system. It is significant that this system is so well used in an industry that is known for being highly competitive. People use it because the system offers help with a very critical business need. But what has also happened at Ford as a result of this ongoing exchange is a change in the company's culture. A learning culture is developing based on this experiential understanding of why knowledge sharing is important.
It is a kind of chicken-or-egg issue: Which comes first, the learning culture or the exchange of knowledge? Given many organizations' rather abysmal success rate at changing their culture, I would put my money on having the exchange impact the culture rather than waiting for the culture to change.
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