1) Boulder Labs Mentoring Pilot:Accelerating Knowledge Transfer

By Dr. David DeLong

In mid-January 2006, Sara Millar stared out the window of her second floor office at the Boulder R&D Center1. She wondered how she was going to improve the productivity of the Chemical Innovations Team (CIT) that she had taken over in the last week. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Center does research and product development on a broad range of environmental and energy-related technologies. Millar’s 10- member team was responsible for developing new technologies that could be used to clean up toxic waste sites. But, in her first management job, Millar faced a number of daunting challenges.

She knew that the organization, known locally as the Boulder Labs, was at risk of losing unique knowledge about chemical technologies if she didn’t help older employees share their expertise before retiring. In addition, she had young employees just out of college who needed extensive training in the unusual aspects of the Lab’s work before they could become productive. She also recognized that unless these new, inexperienced employees quickly became engaged with interesting work they were more likely to leave. In addition, Millar wanted to recapture some important capabilities that her group had lost in recent years. For example, the organization’s inability to staff and run its Toxic Substance Testing (TST) Lab meant the unit couldn’t bid for important outside contracts and had to outsource their own testing to more expensive vendors.

Download PDF to read full text.  DeLong–BoulderLabsMentoringCase

2)  Best Practices in Succession Planning: Case Study with Edwards Lifesciences

Recorded Webinar (video, audio, 53 mins) 2006

This business webinar was delivered by a staffer from Edward Lifesciences (a large medical services company, 2000+ employees).  She outlines the succession planning strategies implemented at her company.

http://www.successfactors.com/video/display/?width=683&height=512&file=/media/video/webinars/wps-edwardslifesciences.flv

3) Case 3: How a Nonprofit Organization Plans for Succession: Next in Line

Rothwell, William J.. Effective Succession Planning : Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within (3rd Edition). Saranac Lake, NY, USA: AMACOM, 2005. p 386.  All rights reserved.

http://site.ebrary.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/lib/ualberta/docDetail.action?docID=10120171

This is an ebook from the U of Alberta Libraries.  Login in and go to page 386.

The case studies in this Appendix are meant to represent a broad range of succession planning and management programs drawn from previously published accounts. They represent both best-practice and typical-practice cases. Read them and note the similarities— and the differences— that exist in succession planning and management efforts across a spectrum of organizations.

Below are some excerpts from the interview.

Chantal: Please explain why an organization should think about knowledge management?

Government of Alberta: It is a key piece of succession management and organizations that do not think about knowledge management will greatly impact their business success, effectiveness and efficiency. Knowledge management is even more critical today than ever before given the current state of the economy and the ever increasing number of people who can retire at any time or will be able to retire in the near future.

Chantal: Can you explain how an organization can create, share, gather and optimize the flow of knowledge within an organization?

Government of Alberta: An organization needs to ensure that key stakeholders are involved including employees, managers, information management, information technology, human resources and knowledge management experts. “Fostering a culture of sharing and learning is everyone’s accountability.”  An organization needs to create a learning environment, access corporate memory and intentionally share and incorporate knowledge management practices into day-to-day interactions.

To read more about the Government of Alberta’s approach to knowledge management, click here.

Darryl Currie is Grant MacEwan University’s Executive Director of Human Resource Planning & Development.  He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta and an MBA in Human Resources Management from Royal Roads University.  During his thirty-plus years of experience in the HR field, he has worked as an HR professional, manager and executive leader and has participated in the evolution of human resources management as a highly transactional and tactical organizational function to one as a strategic organizational business partner.  In addition to his regular responsibilities, he is currently teaching Human Resources Management in MacEwan University’s Management Studies Program.

Below are excerpts from the interview with Darryl Currie.  To read the full interview click here

Simrit: How would you define knowledge management?

Darryl: Knowledge management is managing the intellectual capital of an organization. Intellectual capital is what gives an organization its competitive advantage.  KM has become important as our economy has moved from an industrial model to an information-based model. KM means figuring out who has what knowledge within the organization and putting in place processes to manage that intellectual capital.

Simrit: Please explain why an organization should think about knowledge management?

Darryl: Intellectual capital becomes an organization’s competitive advantage, so you need to preserve that advantage.  If you don’t take care to know where the advantage lies, then competitors will take it away. You have to be aware of your organization’s value proposition and protect it.

Simrit: Can you explain how an organization can share, gather and optimize the flow of knowledge within an organization?

Darryl: To share, gather and optimize the flow of knowledge within an organization, project management process could be used.  KM has to be a defined objective, and KM and knowledge transfer should be incorporated into the company’s strategic plan rather than being siloed off into a separate function. The KM strategic objective should have the support of the senior executive team. The organization needs to live and breathe KM. The organization should encourage employees to share information by making the process simple and rewarding.  Further, documentation and recording are very important, making sure people store and transfer knowledge from one generation to another.

Simrit: In your experience what elements must be in place to have successful knowledge management activities?

Darryl: Purposively introducing KM activities requires creating a culture that promotes knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, and that involves change management. Applying Kotter’s eight steps to manage change will help in the creation of that new culture. These 8 principles include: (1) creating a sense of urgency, (2) building the guiding team, (3) getting the vision right, (4) communicating for buy-in, (5) empowering action, (6) having a manageable number of initiatives, (7) persevering, and (8) reinforcing the value of the new culture.  It is important to understand that people are fearful of and resistant to change, so they need to be made comfortable about the new culture, such as reassuring them that in sharing their knowledge, they are not hastening their own departure from the company.

Simrit: Can you explain how succession planning could help KM?

Darryl: Succession planning to be helpful in KM should be done at all levels of the organization. The organization should look at its current as well as its future needs and then accordingly decide which position or jobs need to be planned for, what knowledge needs to be preserved, documented, and transferred. Further, competencies should also be reviewed at all levels and that should be used as a basis for filling positions.  For example, the best widget maker does not necessarily make the best widget-maker’s supervisor. The competencies needed for the former are different than those needed for the latter.  The organization needs to assess talent that it currently has and what it will need in the future.  Mentoring programs need to be set up, and people need to be assigned direct responsibility for mentoring. The organization needs to continually look at people’s skills and see what they will need to fulfill the new needs of the organization.  This needs to be a perpetual process.

Simrit: How do knowledge management and talent management fit together?

Darryl: Talent management is about people, ensuring that you have the appropriately skilled people or competent workforce in place for now and the future. KM is about ensuring you have an effective process of moving intellectual capital to places it needs to be. You have to apply a talent management process to ensure that the intellectual capital gets where it needs to be.

Connie Gerskick
“The search-transfer problem: the role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits”

Bob Buckman
More about Bob, and his ideas about knowledge managementclick here.

The first interview was conducted with Mark Wolfe, a twenty-year communications practitioner with a background in print journalism and electronic publishing, including design and project management for several large scale national and international employee communication projects. More recently, Mark was recruited to help design and deliver executive courseware in Knowledge Management for Royal Roads University.

Below are excerts from the interview with Mark. Read the full interview here.

1. How would you define knowledge management?
There are multiple ways to define:
1. Conceptual – human communication processes aimed at the creation and sharing of meaning, the acting upon of which creates the potential for knowledge.
2. Operational/organizational – designs/routines within organizational structure aimed at developing/sustaining communication and cultural practices in support of knowledge creation, transfer and storage, either in human memory/capacity or encoded as static information resources.
3. Socio-cultural (Personal KM) – norms, values, habits and dispositions adopted/developed as part of an individual’s on-going biological and social response to the environment, giving rise to patterns of information processing whose reliability comprise personal knowledge structures as resources in “managing” reality.

There are more other ways: philosophical, biological, sociological, anthropological, as well as in terms of social theory (complexity theory and social networking), information theory, etc.

2. Please explain why an organization should think about knowledge management?
I think your question is why should organizations consider embracing KM – just thinking about it is a different question/activity. Assuming you mean “consider” here, organizations should do so because people always bring a lot more to their workplace than what job descriptions call for, and it’s a missed opportunity to leverage those embedded assets and the potential for unforeseen insight/gain that typically arise from them when allowed to interact on a meaningful (symbolic exchange) level.

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=109ab07b14a5a5dc643b1575fc6183779b3ac3b9

Knowledge management is an increasingly important concern in today’s economy which runs primarily on knowledge (Drucker, 1993 cited in Wright, 2004).  Since knowledge is the intellectual capital that creates profits by giving businesses a competitive advantage, organizations today are focused on preserving the loss of this valuable resource (Nonaka, 1991 cited in Wright, 2004). As the world economy has become more knowledge-based, the threat of knowledge loss through the impending retirement of the Baby Boomer generation has become all the more real. One way to retain the vast amounts of knowledge locked inside the minds of all employees and to minimize knowledge loss within organizations large and small is to manage knowledge through succession planning.

Harnessing and preserving the knowledge that people gain through experience is critical to succession management. It also ensures that the business of an organization continues in an efficient, effective and uninterrupted way. As many industries are now facing the challenge of an aging and retiring workforce coupled with workforce reductions in response to the economic downturn, the loss of knowledge and the loss of people with the knowledge is rising. Canada, all European nations, Japan and China are all currently facing the same dilemma (Aiman-Smith, Bergey, Cantwell & Doran, 2006, p.16).

In Alberta, the province anticipates a shortage of 93,000 workers over the next 10 year period (Alberta Employment and Immigration, 2009, p.5). For every two people who are retiring, there will be less than one person to take their job (Health Canada, 2008, n.p.).The main factor driving the predicted shortages in Alberta is its aging demographics. With fewer young people entering the workforce to take the place of retirees, by 2016 the annual labour force growth in Canada is expected to near zero. As workers increasingly exit the labour force, they will be taking years of knowledge and experience with them.

This knowledge that walks out the door is precious capital. Knowledge capital can be defined as the wealth of knowledge and skills that has been accumulated by an organization and its employees. Knowledge that is not stored, retrieved, transferred and used to make decisions is considered lost knowledge. Beyond the loss of organizational history, core knowledge, skills and abilities, the financial consequences of losing human and intellectual capital can be enormous. For example, according to Parise, Cross and Davenport (2006), “…the departure of just one experienced marketing manager could cost millions of dollars from the loss of critical marketing and client knowledge” (p.32).  In addition, the loss of human capital can be detrimental to an organization’s efficiency. And in most cases, adding more human resources is not the solution. “…[G]lobal organizations increase the chances for reduced efficiency by continually reinventing the wheel, a costly problem which is only exacerbated by the loss of the individual experience that serves as an important source of organizational memory” (DeLong, 2002, p.2).

When employees leave an organization, they depart not only with what they know, but who they know. Often referred to as relational capital, this type of knowledge is embedded in relationships built with customers and stakeholders. “Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that such relationships are crucial sources of information and performance in organizations” (Parise, Cross and Davenport, 2006, p.32). The value of relational capital lies in the flow of knowledge between the interacting organizations. In some relationships between individuals, the level of personal commitment exceeds the formal requirements of the organization to work together. “This tacit dimension of relational capital ties the knowledge flow to the individual, rather than the position” (Massingham, 2008, p.5). As such, the exit of employees and their networks can negatively impact the knowledge flow with external organizations.

Knowledge loss can also result in a reduced capacity to innovate. “Losing experience and expertise when senior people retire…can slow down and reduce the quality of innovation, which is central to many firms’ business strategies today” (DeLong, 2002, p.1). Experienced knowledge workers also possess more than routine know-how and rudimentary skills – they have tacit knowledge. According to Clark (2008), tacit knowledge includes “personal knowledge embedded in individual experience and involving intangible factors, such as personal beliefs, perspective, and value system. It contains subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches. Before tacit knowledge can be communicated, it must be converted into words, models, or numbers that can be understood” (n.p.).  It is important to note that tacit knowledge is critical component in innovation. As competition becomes more global, economies shift to more knowledge-based models and the demand for market-focused response increases, the workforce needs to be driven by innovation, technology and entrepreneurship to keep up with the pace of change.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=u2cma670X1kC&lpg=PP1&dq=knowledge%20management%20and%20succession%20planning&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q=knowledge%20management%20and%20succession%20planning&f=false

Did you know?

In the last 10 years, workers 45 and older have increased from 33% to 40% of the U.S. workforce, while workers age 25-44 have declined from 51% to 44% of the labor force. [Source: Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce, by David W. DeLong]

A study of 115 U.S. companies conducted by RHR International found half the firms expected to lose 50% or more of their senior management by 2010. [Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics in “Aging Workforce Presents Business Challenges,” by B. Neill, Bradenton Herald, 2/3/08]

At NASA, the number of engineers and scientists older than 60 outnumber those under age 30 by almost 3 to 1. [Source: Lost Knowledge]

More companies should design knowledge-transfer programs like the one being piloted at AmEx, says consultant David DeLong

We’ve seen two trends that are really making knowledge transfer in organizations today an increasingly salient issue. One is the major demographic shifts that are coming, which includes not only the retirement of baby boomers, but the increased turnover of highly skilled midcareer employees and the increased difficulties of recruiting, developing, and retaining Gen Ys, younger workers. These demographic shifts, combined with the explosion of technical, scientific, and managerial knowledge in the workplace in the past 30 years, means that when people leave organizations today, they are potentially taking with them knowledge that’s critical to the future of the business.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AND VIEW VIDEO ON http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/aug2008/ca20080820_195439_page_2.htm