Many Approaches to Collaboration in Business Technology

In early 2008 I participated in an internal focus group to help my 500-member global supply chain project figure out how we could be more productive. We had a nice cross-section of the company participating in our focus groups so our suggestions varied widely. As a front-line employee, most of my suggestions were about employee empowerment: We can get more done for the company if each of us has greater insight into the project’s direction and greater personal freedom to make decisions. Senior managers hoped to spend less time in perfunctory required meetings so that they could focus their efforts on helping their teams succeed.

Focus groups are always more fun with food!
(photo by Mom the Barbarian)

Search for Productivity Highlights Value of Employee Knowledge
Following a week or two of these focus sessions, our project leaders came back with a few good directives: Superfluous meetings were discouraged, open communication was valued, and each employee was encouraged to identify and correct any inefficiencies they came across. Now that productivity has been a watchword around my company for seven months and counting, I have done a lot of thinking about where potential added value can be found. The knowledge inside the heads of my fellow workers is a major source of potential productivity that can always be more effectively utilized.

Step 1: Knowledge Transfer as Basic Collaboration
In my three years on this project I have seen our training and Knowledge Transfer processes from many angles:

• On-boarding sessions acclimate new team members to our project.
• “Lunch and Learn” lectures are offered as a part of our safety training curriculum.
• Knowledge transfer (KT) plans are required as a mind-map of individual positions to be used in case of employee transition. When one person leaves a team, they are responsible for using their prepared documentation to train and assist an identified successor.
• We have a variety of Intranet document repositories, chiefly a Lotus Domino repository accessed via Lotus Notes. Other major destinations are shared folders on our LAN as well as a variety of web sites that have grown up to support different needs.

This variety of knowledge tools and strategies has clearly been successful in keeping our company moving, but there are still key weaknesses. Our KT plans do not always tell the whole story of a job and its requirements. On a project driven by Gantt charts people may not always preventative maintenance like KT planning or lessons-learned sessions until after the next major deadline has been satisfied. An “always on” attitude towards employee knowledge resources can help avoid these pitfalls.

Step 2: Knowledge Management as Advanced Collaboration
Based on my readings of relevant books and blogs, the concept “Knowledge Transfer” is no longer the popular way to approach these perennial concerns. A quick Googling shows that “Knowledge Management” (KM) has about four times as much mindshare. By presenting knowledge-centered initiatives as knowledge management, the informed executive recognizes the immutable nature of business issues like employee turnover, incomplete documentation, and inequal distributions of talent and experience. Knowledge management strategies have been gaining steam for over a decade and I am certain that they have a much higher chance of success than a classic knowledge transfer initiative.

Step 3: Is Knowledge Sharing the Way Forward?
Long a proponent of knowledge management in the workplace, IBM is now pushing knowledge sharing as their plan for tomorrow:

It’s a bold move considering the firm has been working under the management model for over a decade. Chris Cooper, knowledge sharing solutions leader at IBM Global Business Services (GBS), deems it a ‘philosophical repositioning’. “Management suggests control: control of process and control of environment. The sharing tag is quite important to us,” he explains. (from KnowledgeBoard)

The idea of sharing knowledge between teammates rather than managing it top down or transferring it in a one-off session appeals to me greatly. Indeed, this free sharing of experience and ideas is the empowerment I pined for in our focus group sessions earlier this year.

In the last three years I have moved from coordinating safety-oriented lunch and learn sessions to directing my team’s weekly knowledge transfer initiative to unofficially appointing myself as my team’s collaboration and knowledge sharing champion. My latest effort was a workplace wiki powered by the open source Screwturn package. I’d hoped to quickly build up a valuable community-driven resource for my team to use as a complement to our existing repositories, but unfortunately my section of this 500-person project is being put on hold for a few years and I am moving to another team. That particular tool may not have the opportunity to grow much further.

What Should Your Knowledge Strategy Be?
Hopefully this writeup has piqued your interest in knowledge-based collaboration as an integral part of business. The emergence of community-oriented social networking tools such as Wikipedia and the Web 2.0 ecosystem are standing by, ready to help you leapfrog your competitors and develop knowledge sharing as a core strength of your organization.

In his excellent 2004 book Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization, CEO emeritus Robert Buckman of Memphis-based Buckman Labs asserts that the best way to compete in a global economy is for an organization to establish itself as a leader in knowledge sharing. Buckman goes so far as to recommend the creation of a Chief Knowledge Officer position reporting directly to the CEO! An egalitarian exchange of crucial business and product information between motivated teammates constitutes an unassailable advantage over the competition. The “command and control” structure implied in traditional knowledge management falls short of fully empowering all employees to contribute to their fullest.

I recommend you take a sober look at your knowledge strategy. You will see valuable information locked in the heads of departing employees. You might find subject matter experts doling out their valuable expertise one morsel at a time rather than getting it online for the entire team to see. You can be more confident in the future of your organization if once instill a culture of continual sharing and learning.

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