Teaming, collaboration framework and tools

Sharing individual knowledge or articulating tacit knowledge with others is the key for an efficient knowledge management process. Leaders has to foster this process. The new leadership needs to reorientate individual thinking. The new leader will be designers, teachers and stewards with a range of new skills that create 'followers' as active participants in their own destiny. Such leaders will be designers of the social architecture of organization. Following Senge, one of the skill an organization need to develop in order to enhance this new leadership is "Team learning".

It's the art of fostering teaming, collaboration and partnering. It resides in a right balance between creating social context and using communication technologies and methods. A right blend between events, working context, seminars, meetings or technologies from telephone conferencing to collaborating spaces or methodology like open space, participatory action research providing a shared context to participants. Why, What, Who, When, Where and How's!

The field of KM implicitly recognizes that knowledge is social. There is no way of recognizing data as information or knowledge outside some kind of social context. The field is also beginning to validate the notion that the value of knowledge depends on the action to which it gives rise.

Collaborative tools can be defined with 2 dimensions: time and space.

• Time: is the collaboration taking place simultaneously or at different times?
• Place: the collaboration can occur at the same place or not.

In 1999, Schlumberger started a KM pilot to build a knowledge hub for oilfield personnel, primarily to improve the ability of its people to provide the best quality service. Technologically, the challenge was manageable; the Schlumberger global intranet SINet* already provided secure, authenticated connectivity between most of the company's sites and offices, and the Schlumberger corporate knowledge hub offered a software tool to publish and easily disseminate information. Although the ability to use in one part of the world what we have learned in another is helped by tools and technology, people are both the key to successful KM and its most hallenging element. Success depends on motivating people to share their knowledge and reuse that of others as part of the day-to-day job. A knowledge-sharing culture translates into reduced job preparation time, less stress and better performance.

• Capture, share and apply wordwide expertise.

• Take advantage of new measurements and techniques - in real-time

• Consistently supply the best drilling solutions and practices

• Reduce learning time

• "Just-in-time, just enough, and just for me."

Dramatic Results: A high-risk, deepwater exploration project was successfully drilled in the Gulf of Mexico by applying the learning from previous wells and integrating it efficiently in the drilling process. Drillling time was reduced by 39% compared to the goal of 30% and the overall savings were of the order of USD $14.3 million.

From Schlumberger website

Example

Buckman Laboratories

"To process requests for information, we used people who acted as runners between users and operators. They would identify people who could answer requests, take requests to them, remind them-gently, if needed-to answer, and then send out the answers. Although this seemed to be working at first, problems crept up. Requests were paper-based, sometimes requiring weeks to receive, process, and return-particularly from our overseas locations. Additionally, they usually only contacted those they personally knew, and often the same people answered requests over and over again. It became evident that Buckman needed a network that operated globally and could tap into the knowledge of all of their associates with relative ease. They also needed a means for sharing information in response to customer needs as quickly as possible. They chose a new system for knowledge sharing which was named K'Netix (Buckman nowledge Network) and includes their access to a worldwide network, forums for sharing knowledge, e-mail, and a library of critical knowledge that has been shared and captured, as well other necessary resources. Perhaps the most well-known part of K'Netix is their forums: "open places" where anyone in the company can post a message, question, and or request for help or technical support. Their forums have really paid off. For example, when a customer in France had a specific problem and an associate in Monaco posted the problem at 4:58 a.m. on a Wednesday. By 2:20 p.m. a U.S.-based associate proposed an answer, which was discussed by others on the forum. Within several days another associate said he had a similar problem with a different customer, gave a solution he had previously used, and asked how he should solve this one.

Forums also enable them to share what they have learned with other associates. This system enables them to bring all their resources to bear on a problem, to do so across the thousands of miles and time zones that separate them, and to increase both the quality and speed of the response time to their customers. This has become a competitive advantage for them, as they offer not only the resources of the associate working with the customer but the resources of the entire organization within a short time. For guiding the development of K'Netix, Buckman employed six principles:

1. The number of transmissions of knowledge must be reduced to one to achieve the least distortion of that knowledge.
2. Each associate enters knowledge into the system.
3. Each associate has access to the knowledge base of the company.
4. The system functions across time and space with the knowledge
5. The system is easy to use for those who aren't computer experts.
6. The system communicates in whatever language is best for the understanding of the user.

Today they add another principle: give people the electronic equivalent of gathering around the coffee pot in the office. In addition to sections for industries they serve and competitive intelligence, their forums include a section for news, as well as a "breakroom." They also use their knowledge-sharing system to connect socially.

Many organizations today are focusing on the use of communities of practices to foster sharing of knowledge and best practices and include such companies as Johnson and Johnson, Xerox, Chrysler, and the World Bank.

The Buckman Laboratories news and breakroom sections expressly allow people to interact socially within a sanctioned business environment. Additionally, this supports their business objectives. Although they have no hard data to support this assumption, someone who uses the system to post messages in the breakroom and news section is more likely to use the system to share knowledge. One of their systems operators encourages people to participate in these informal discussion areas, believing that it encourages overall participation. They also have a section dedicated to their successes, where they report their wins, such as sales and obtained certifications, and why they succeeded. In this instance, they also responded quickly and with urgency to customer problems. Their ability to do all this hinged upon teamwork, not only among Buckman Laboratories associates, but also with their customer. By documenting the win and the factors that caused it, they as an organization were able to learn. Their system recognizes publicly and personally those who make their successes happen. Another factor that enables the success of their knowledge-sharing system is their support structure. For various topics, they have section leaders who are recognized experts and who know the others operating in that field. They also have systems operators who monitor the discussions in the forum, tracking requests and making sure they are answered. If necessary, they contact people directly and ask them to respond. Additionally, they act as a cheerleaders, giving positive feedback to those who do respond.

technology alone is not a solution,

when they provide such a system, each associate has the ability to expand his or her span of communication.

Perhaps the most critical lesson is the importance of organizational culture. Buckman Laboratories has learned that creating a culture is a journey, not a project. Although they continue to develop new emphases and projects, establishing a knowledge-sharing culture remains both a lodestone and a challenge.

Adapated fromMelissie Rumizen