Event Recap: Fellows Forum - Knowledge Management & Sharing

By Diane Vandewall, Freiheit & Ho Architects

First, a special thank you to Rolluda Architects for sponsoring the March Fellows Forum.

Now, down to the details…

For professional services firms, our most valuable assets walk out the door every night. So what happens when your rainmaker retires, or a principal quits to go work for a competitor? Does all that institutional knowledge they stored in their head—their expertise, skills, wisdom, lessons learned, and relationships—go right out the door with them? If you have people in your firm who are information hoarders, or your firm doesn’t have a system for collecting, managing, and sharing knowledge, this Fellows Forum was for you (and your boss!).

In addition to our regular panel of Bill Strong, Karleen Belmont, and Ted Sive, the Fellows welcomed special guest panelists Tim Rice, Director of IT for LMN Architects, and Trish Buzan, Principal and Technology Director for NAC|Architecture.

This Fellows Forum was driven by 5 predetermined questions:

1.      Why should you and how do you motivate people to share knowledge within an organization?
2.      What are the barriers to knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing?
3.      What are reasonable expectations for a knowledge management strategy?
4.      What are good tools or methods for sharing knowledge?
5.      How does once benchmark and measure the success of a knowledge management program?

Key Takeaways:

*It is not the access to information as what you do with the information that makes the difference*

• The discussion started with Tim explaining that there is a difference in tacit and explicit knowledge: tacit is knowledge that is difficult to transfer by means of writing it down or verbalizing it while explicit can be readily articulated, accessed and verbalized. 

• The panel agreed Knowledge should be “Captured, Orchestrated, Kept and Used”.

• Sharing of knowledge should be fundamental to what we do and we should always look for ways to share not just individual knowledge but collective knowledge. Such as younger staff can learn from teams ‘lessons learned’ by sharing “collective knowledge”.

• Many methods to “how” we can motivate people:
• Karleen talked about the bonus structure they put in place – white papers, speaking engagements all are part of the formula to bonuses and raises and included that internal and external acknowledgement for participation/contributions are good as well.
• Tim: good ol’ fashion donuts or lunch, they do not incentivize monetarily. Sharing and collaboration is part of the culture. Free lunches are used for cross-training.
• Trish: groups share using ‘communities of practice’ and so far do not incentivize. Knowledge management is a holistic environment and can take down barriers between all team members.
• Audience added that they use “flash pinups” for formal and informal sessions to educate on projects and collaborate on design.
• Knowledge management is also influenced by generational groups. Younger do share easier in most ways, they are more collaborative in nature.

• Some people believe their worth in a firm is in the knowledge they have thus sharing is limited. Knowledge management should be thought of as “Sharing is career advancing and not sharing is career limiting”.
• Many times staff don’t realize they have knowledge to share. The panel suggests the best way to get this information is for Marketers/BD/Owners to walk around and ask questions then convince them they have something of worth to share.

• Discourse can happen when sharing knowledge so it is advised to have a ‘conversation’ not just a lecture. Conversation is two-way and influences an exchange of information.

Process to share knowledge - TOOLS:

• LMN: repository whether intranet or not, it is a must to have. There needs to be a central place to store knowledge.
• There are many platforms to sharing knowledge and they do not have to be complicated. Use what best fits the scale of the firm.
• KA (knowledge architecture) is a tool or platform for sharing. This really only makes sense if you are using Deltek – to get maximum useage.
• Open Asset is another tool that even pushes out to website. Neuforma is also another tool.
• Audience added: Facebook @Work, Yammer, Podcasts (voice record pro app was suggested), Wiki, Basecamp.
• Barrier to using some of the mentioned tools is that people don’t want to look or sound foolish so practicing or scripting is a method to help alleviate this fear.

 
Who decides on what information and /or best practices:

Tracking information can be labor intensive, start with the basics and build from there. If you start off tracking too much information then it may be too labor intensive and people will not take the time to ‘do it’. Start the basic information by necessity – what are the basics we need? May lean on the experts internally to decided or if you have ‘communities of practice’.  Also utilize the subject matter experts to pay attention to the ‘conversations’ externally and then be shared internally.

Lessons learned:

•        Be flexible in your plan. Expect to deviate from plan based on input over time.
•        It will not be perfect to start but listen to users and be flexible.
•        Start small and build up

Reward:

“Success is when someone gets more out of it than what they put into it.”

•        You do not have to the knowledge expert, just be the catalyst of conversation.

Benchmark / Measurement of Success:

•        Understand the goal of what you want – what is your value proposition.
•        Measurement – are people using it?

*if the right information is in front of the right person at the right time then it is a success.*