“Retaining Organizational Knowledge” (James Thomson)

James is talking about retaining organizational knowledge; would like this to be somewhat interactive.

Agenda:
- What is knowledge retention?
- How did he manage the staff at the Beehive
- How do you manage technical knowledge organizations

Knowledge Retention
- lots of people doing knowledge work
- how to retain knowledge with shifting demographics
- identify critical knowledge
- know where it resides
- preserve and put it to best effect

See PDF for more (16 pages).

Do we need a formal strategy?
- “people are our best asset”
- senior management know this is important ... but only 20% of firms from the US have a knowledge strategy
- why is there such a disconnect between “what we say” and “what we do”?

Problems with knowledge sharing:
- culture doesn’t value knowledge
- don’t or can’t identify critical knowledge
- no incentive to share
- no tools or technologies available
- HR managers know the “need” but not the “how”

Challenges issues:
- measuring the program’s effectiveness (43%)
- measuring the ROI
- identifying the best knowledge
- management support
- short-term focus
- identifying when knowledge / workers are at a risk of leaving
- building the business case

Lots of different tools available:
- email, company meetings, file share, after-action reviews ... and many more.
- high adoption for some, low adoption for others

Case Study: Managing Knowledge at the Beehive
The Beehive is the seat of government in New Zealand ... see beehive.govt.nz
- huge number of silos (political and geographical)
- James’s style was to walk around and talk to people ... but that was very different to embedded approach
- hard to know what knowledge was where
- turf issues
- cross party difficulties (especially when coming up to an election)
- extreme pace and work load

What they did:
- make it a dedicated effort
- put in place a learning training strategy
- drive for commitment, not just compliance
- there were some very knowledgeable people ... came on board quickly
- knowledge cafes
- documentation, from experienced staff
- centralized experience on tap
- availability after departure ... for mentoring / consulting after they’d gone

About Temporary Knowledge Organizations
- bringing people with different skill sets together for a temporary project
- look up Dave Snowdon on complexity theory
- multiple disciplines working together
- agile development

Questions and Answers
Q. With retiring staff, what about allowing them to come back on a part-time basis?
A. We did at the Beehive. It's a cultural thing.

More Information
More on the conference: see #bs7im on Twitter