Your guru leaves for a new job and the knowledge walks out of the door with him. Sadly this is the reality and there in not much to do about it. Not really! This workshop provides a methodology for keeping the knowledge in the organisation when people leave. Concepts of knowledge capturing and sharing are discussed and why it is necessary. A framework for knowledge capturing and sharing is introduced and dissected. What are the methods and tools that can be used, what are the challenges and how to overcome them? All this is put together and a number of activities emerge which are compiled into an action plan.

1. KNOWLEDGE CAPTURING &
SHARING
Niklas Sinander
Enterprise Information Manager
www.eumetsat.int
niklas.sinander@eumetsat.int

2. Knowledge Capturing & Sharing
EUMETSAT
• Enterprise Information Manager
• Previous Intranet and Web manager
• Speaker at conferences
• Initiated Information Management
Community of Practice with ESOC
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3. Knowledge Capturing & Sharing
EUMETSAT
Enterprise Information Management
-Governance
- Policies, Processes, Procedures
- Tools – Document Management, Intranet, Web Site
Information
Management
Community of
Practice in 2011
ESOC
Knowledge Management
-Governance
- Policies, Processes, Procedures
- Tools – Enterprise Search, Knowledge repositories
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Knowledge
Capturing &
Sharing Toolkit

4. Agenda
• Knowledge Capturing & Sharing (KC&S) Concepts
• Tools, Processes and Practises
• Exercise #1 – Analyse a KC&S method
• Challenges
• Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
• Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan
• Wrap Up
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5. Knowledge Capturing & Sharing Concepts
Types of knowledge
• Explicit – knowledge that can be codified
• Information
• E.g wikipedia, a map
• Tacit – knowledge that is difficult/impossible to codify
• In addition to explicit knowledge (information) needs
experience and thinking skills
• E.g recognising a face, riding a bike
• Example: Walk from the UN headquarter to Grand Central
station on Manhattan
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6. Knowledge Capturing & Sharing Concepts
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7. Tools, Processes and Practices
• Tools
•
•
•
•
• Processes
Wiki
Blogs
Streams
Instant
Messenger
• Webinars
• Expert Directory
• Search Engines
…
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• Lesson Learned
• Exit interview
• Tagging
Guidelines
• Taxonomies
• …
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• Practises
• Community of
Practice
• Knowledge Café
• Mentoring
• …

8. Exercise #1 – Analyse a KC&S method
• Analyse one of the following KC&S Processes/Practises
• Lessons Learned
• Exit interview
• Community of Practice
• Different method for each group
• Consider different aspects:
•
•
•
•
•
In which context/when would it be effective
Advantages/disadvantages with the method
Any particular challenges by using the method
What impact may the culture in the company have on using this method
Etc
• Each group to present a main finding for the other groups
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9. Where are we?
• Challenges
• Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
• Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan
• Wrap Up
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10. KS&C Challenges
Culture and Mindset (1)
• Unwillingness to share
• What
• People are hired for their skills and knowledge and are in many cases not willing to share their
knowledge and risk losing their competitive edge.
• What to do about it
• Promote a culture of sharing
• Lead by example
• Create incentives for sharing knowledge
• Confidence to share
• What
• Users might not feel confident enough to share if they believe others are more knowledgeable
• What to do about it
• Create a safe environment where people feel confident to share. Start in smaller groups and
expand to larger groups once confidence is high in the smaller group
• Build a culture of trust between people in the organisation
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11. KS&C Challenges
Culture and Mindset (2)
• Capturing and sharing takes time
• What
• Even if people are willing to share their knowledge they might feel that they do not have the time
or other tasks have higher priority.
• What to do about it
• Allow people to set aside time to share their knowledge
• Integrate knowledge sharing in the daily tasks
• Distance
• What
• Distance between people makes it difficult to interact and share. Note that distance can be
geographical, be due to language barriers and different cultures
• What to do about it
• Geographical distance: Unit or company wide physical meetings, video or phone conferences
• Language barriers: Promote a common company language and use it frequently allowing people
to be comfortable using it. Use simpler language, allow enough time for questions, speak slower
• Cultural barriers: Use people with experience from different cultures to moderate meeting.
Educate about differences in cultures
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12. KS&C Challenges
Management resistance
• Not enough support from management
• What
• Middle management do not demonstrate support for knowledge sharing, do not allocate time for it
and do not lead by example so employees will neither
• What can be done about it
• Convince senior management to lead by example
• Create incentives for middle management for information sharing
Information & technology related
• Usability of Tools, Processes and Practices
• What
• All methods used for knowledge capturing and sharing need to be non intrusive and easy to use
• What can be done about it
• Processes and Practices need to be integrated in the day to day work
• Activities for sharing should not be perceived as additional tasks to perform
• Any tool used need to intuitive to use
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13. Short break or shore break …
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14. Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
Use Case for KC&S
• List different areas where there might be a problem with how
knowledge is managed
• Are these real problems for the company?
• Would solving these problems have a real impact on the company?
• Could a KC&S initiative solve the problems? How?
• Would your management understand the problem and be willing to
act?
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15. Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
Get buy in from management
• What is the problem
• Describe the problem in terms that your management will understand
• Provide concrete examples, e.g long time to market, takes too much effort, high cost
or risk, people retiring, etc
• How can KC&S solve the problem
•
•
•
•
Present a solution that is realistic to achieve
Outline additional benefits if any
How soon could the solution deliver positive results
Again real life examples from other companies may be useful
• What would the solution require from the company
• What would the cost and effort be
• How would employees be impacted
• Any other impact
• In the end, you need to convince management that the benefits by solving the
problem out weights the cost/impact on the company
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16. Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
Start the KC&S initiative (1)
• Set up a project/activity
• Define what shall be achieved and by when
• Define concrete objectives
•
•
•
•
•
Specific
Measureable
Accountable
Realistic
Time bound
• Define a scope for the project
• Define how to meet the objectives
• Tools, Processes and Practices
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17. Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
Example
Objective:
By June 2014 the Product Delivery Unit shall reduce the amount of
changes needed after customer Acceptance Test to be less than 5%
of the cost of development.
Activities to meet the objective
Same mistakes repeated over and over again
-> Lessons Learned
-> Community of Practice
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18. Guidelines for starting a KC&S initiative
Start the KC&S initiative (2)
• Consider challenges in your company and how they should be addressed
• Define the activities needed
• For each activity define who shall perform it and how much effort is needed.
• Consider Change Management
• Order the activities in a logical order to form a project plan
• Get sign off for the project and start executing!
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19. Now, where are we?
• Exercise #2 - Build your own KC&S action plan
• Wrap Up
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20. Exercise #2 – Build your own action plan
• Groups of 3 – 4 people
• Three building blocks for creating the action plan
a) Use Case for KC&S ~10 min
b) Get buy in from management ~ 20 min
c) Start the KC&S initiative ~ 20 min
• Material
• Templates for a), b), and c) above plus for Activities
• Lists of Tools, Processes and Practices, Challenges
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21. Template – Use Case
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22. Template – Get Buy In
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23. Template – Start KC&S Initiative
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24. Template – Challenges
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25. Template - Activities
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26. Wrap Up
• What have we learned today?
• A lot of theory
• We have applied this on real life problems
• You leave this workshop with an action plan ready to execute
• Feedback round
• Share one take way from this workshop
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