Overcoming Knowledge Loss: Chapter Summary of APQC's 2008 Report
APQC's 2008 best practices report Retaining Today's Knowledge for Tomorrow's Work Force encapsulates research and analysis from a 2007 consortium benchmarking study examining the steps that leading organizations have taken to mitigate the loss of critical knowledge. The organizations selected for deep, detailed study through structured data collection and site visits (aka "best-practice partners" or "partners") demonstrate innovative performance in one or more of the study focus areas:
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developing a knowledge retention strategy,
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designing knowledge retention and transfer (KR&T) processes and approaches,
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implementing KR&T processes and approaches, and
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evaluating success.
Below you will find a chapter-by-chapter summary of the report. In addition to the listed chapters, the full report also contains case studies on each of the five best-practice partners: The Aerospace Corporation, Fluor Corporation, Michelin North America Inc., National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), and Rolls-Royce plc.
Access the free executive summary here.
Access the full publication here.
Chapter 1: It's Not Just About Retirement Anymore
As the rest of the report and the attached case studies will explain, most of the best-practice partners are implementing long-term KM strategies capable of handling both today's and tomorrow's KR&T needs. The majority of partners have embedded their knowledge capture and transfer efforts into their workflows by leveraging content-rich communities of practice, training institutes, and a variety of other face-to-face and digital techniques. All the partners have core groups in charge of facilitating these approaches, and high-level managers at each steward the core competencies and communities. The partners are using SMEs in targeted ways to ensure that policies and practices reflect--and that new hires are exposed to--the right knowledge.
For many partners, the urgency to create KR&T systems originated at the management level; executives and directors at these organizations voiced concerns about the imminent departure of key staff, the potential loss of knowledge that would be difficult to duplicate, or the need to ensure that new staff could get up to speed quickly. Chapter 2 discusses the work force planning approaches that led to this management-level awareness and explores the ways in which partners' work force planning approaches align with the goals of their knowledge retention and transfer approaches.
Chapter 2: The Human Capital Management Challenge
Many influences may drive an organization to enhance and protect its work force. Despite the fact that human capital management (HCM) strategy and processes are still in their infancy, APQC has found several good examples of working models. Because of HCM's tangential relationship to this study, APQC has offered high-level overviews of HCM at work in the best-practice partners.
All the best-practice organizations demonstrate aspects of good working models. Michelin has a particularly comprehensive, top-down approach to highlighting and managing competencies--an approach that is well-aligned with its mission. NASA excels in processes and tools for managing competencies. Fluor has assigned senior managers to oversee key competencies, supported by knowledge-stewarding CoPs. Rolls-Royce similarly assigns skill owners to oversee its 22 core competencies, complemented by a sophisticated structured interview process and a host of CoPs. Aerospace realizes that its Engineering and Technology Group holds key technical and programmatic knowledge and has formed a number of knowledge-stewarding CoPs to help guard that knowledge.
In order for organizations to achieve successful knowledge stewardship, they must combine their HCM strategies with effective KR&T tools and techniques. Many of these are discussed in detail in the next chapter, "Finding and Bridging the Knowledge Gaps--KR&T Approaches."
Chapter 3: Finding and Bridging the Knowledge Gaps--KR&T Approaches
The primary lesson to be learned from the best-practice partner organizations' KR&T approaches is that variety is key. The partners do not apply a "one size fits all" philosophy. Instead, they leverage an array of KR&T approaches designed to fit specific business situations and the unique cultures of their respective organizations. These include After Action Reviews, apprenticeship programs, best practices databases, online collaboration workspaces, communities of practice, technical research reports, papers, and presentations; decision support systems; expertise locator systems; internal conferences to promote knowledge sharing; structured interviews with key employees and subject matter experts; lessons learned exercises; mentoring programs; new-employee transfer induction programs; peer assists; project milestone reviews; programs that engage retirees in KR&T activities; and storytelling programs.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the best way to retain valuable knowledge is to build and sustain systemic KM approaches. On two levels, the partners have taken steps to do just that. First, each has integrated its KR&T approaches into employees' daily work processes. Second, most of the partners have designed their KR&T approaches to span the employment life cycle from recruitment to retirement.
Chapter 4: Enabling Technologies
The best-practice partners have spent many years developing and improving their IT infrastructures to support knowledge retention and transfer. Overall, they have found that stable, mature technology applications (such as portals, discussion forums, collaboration spaces, and so on), when combined with strong knowledge-sharing strategies and processes, provide for effective and robust knowledge transfer throughout their organizations. The partners' experiences also demonstrate that, although integration of disparate applications is a useful goal, the effectiveness of KR&T technology solutions does not depend on such integration. Finally, adoption of Web 2.0 applications (e.g., blogs, wikis, mashups, RSS, etc.) will certainly grow as the technologies themselves mature, but partners plan to introduce new technologies via the same methodical approaches that facilitated the development of their existing applications. At the partner organizations, technology will continue to support--but not drive--efforts to retain and transfer organizational knowledge.
Chapter 5: Governance and Partnerships
Governance and strategic partnerships both play important roles in the success of KR&T strategies and approaches. A governance structure defines the configuration of the core team, including roles and responsibilities, as well as the policies and procedures within which that team must operate. It provides the team with a framework through which to ensure the consistent development and execution of KR&T approaches in support of enterprise goals.
An organization's KR&T strategy and approaches are further strengthened by partnerships between the KM team and other strategic functions or groups throughout the enterprise. The study partners have found that, by forming relationships with other groups--such as quality, organizational development, HR/personnel development, training, and IT--they have been able to broaden the reach of their KR&T efforts, thereby increasing the number of people touched and the amount of knowledge captured and transferred.
Careful development of both these elements has greatly enhanced the partners' KR&T strategies and approaches. Chapter 6 discusses two other elements that are crucial to KR&T success: measurement and change enablers.
Chapter 6: Making the Case for Change
When implementing knowledge retention and transfer approaches, the need for balance between hard, or structural, change and soft, or behavioral, change cannot be overemphasized. Typically, less successful change management approaches fall short on addressing the soft and/or behavioral aspects. This is especially true when focusing on knowledge and its impact on the business. Effective change management focuses on and aligns structural and behavioral transformations.
Measuring the impact of skill acquisition and internalization of values--best when aligned with strategic organizational and customer objectives--is a critical feedback mechanism for any KR&T program. Long-lasting, fundamental change on the hard side will occur if, and only if, leaders at all levels of the organization learn, model, and reward a new set of soft side skills and values--in this case, to support knowledge retention and transfer.
Access the free executive summary here.
Access the full publication here.