Knowledge Management can be expensive. If nobody follows the process, then it is money wasted. While there are a lot of aspects to get people to engage in the knowledge management process, one is key.

Add 5% of everyone’s time to knowledge management. If you are a leader in a science company, you will read this and say “but we make drugs” or “but we develop X” and “our business isn’t knowledge management”. If you are a leader in a retail company, you will read this and say “but we sell widgets” or “but we develop X” and “our business isn’t knowledge management”.

Of course your business isn’t knowledge management. Without KM, however, you will not be able to achieve as much in whatever your business is.

People mostly agree that KM is important, but if it isn’t attached to a paycheck or a bonus, then they will do it ‘later’. Making this change involves management, HR and local department heads, because they all have to know what KM is and what is the impact. it also involves organizational change management. Without someone to teach KM and lead the OCM effort, then it is hard to make that 5% work. However, it is important to get to the point where people understand that sharing knowledge creates company success.

Start with onboarding and move forward to that 5%.

I recently spoke to a friend who had developed a fabulous survey for her company at the request of the C-Suite. The survey had gone out, she had collected the results and organized them into easy-to-digest slides with the underlying detail provided. She recorded the presentation, so the C-Suite could watch it anytime.

No action. Time is precious so she waited.

Still no action. No explanation. Nothing. Not even a sincere thank you.

Eventually her boss told her that the higher-ups were ‘developing strategies’.

Voice of the Customer efforts are good:

• you have engaged customers
• you hear what you are doing well
• more brains are better than one
• you get excellent information for improvement

They can go wrong however, if you do nothing with the results:

• The time of the person who developed the survey has been wasted
• The time of customers who filled out the survey has been wasted
• The company is missing the opportunity for improvement

The worst part, the ugly aspect, is that making no changes that responders can see creates bad feeling. Don’t bother sending another survey or request for comment as people won’t want to waste their time. You also ruin morale in your office. My friend won’t be spending time on any future surveys. She feels her time and efforts were wasted. My friend is putting her resume together and setting up job alerts.

You might think that an automated message thanking responders is enough, but it isn’t. If people take the time, they want to see that their comments were heard.

In terms of knowledge management, VoC can be a powerful tool to iterate and create the next level of your program or product. More brains are better than one.

Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that people gain from experience. It is the knowledge that lives inside people’s heads; it is institutional memory. Capturing tacit knowledge is key to a smooth running organization, because transitions can be managed more effectively.

Tacit knowledge is difficult to capture, so, in general, we only chip away at it. Onboarding is a good example of passing on tacit knowledge. Onboarding helps new employees get up to speed a little faster by passing along nuggets of knowledge that might otherwise take them a long time to figure out themselves. The difference between the internal search engine and the company-wide Google branded engine, providing a What to Store Where handout and showing people how to download the people search extension are some examples of very basic knowledge to include in onboarding.

The problem comes as people gain more experience and need more specific or specialized knowledge. More specialized knowledge is often held by fewer people. Because those people have been with the company longer or were recently hired for that specialized knowledge, they have less time to write down the processes. In some companies, such specialized knowledge may be considered job security. Some people don’t share it in case it leads to forced early retirement or a layoff. In general, however, passing on specialized knowledge leads to more collaborations and greater innovation.

There are three basic tools anyone can use to start capturing tacit knowledge: video-to-text transcription, Lessons Learned and a standard project folder structure. All captured information should be managed in a KM platform, and accessible through an intuitive web interface.

Saying these can be used means the possibility is there. Video-to-text transcription is the most complex and expensive. Still, anyone can record a video and store it for later transcription. Lessons Learned can be organized using simple tools such as Excel or Google Sheets. Finally, a standard project folder structure should be de rigeur in every company. Being creative with folders only leads to confusion and time wasting.

Companies need to become ever more agile, which means that established processes and information sharing practices become increasingly outdated. Fostering collaboration based on real expertise by combining capabilities is an important process to develop. If you can help colleagues to find an expert inside their division and ask questions while simultaneously building a knowledge base out of the questions and their answers, you are further ahead than most companies. At the very least, such a process enables wider knowledge sharing.

The sharing, and subsequent capturing of tacit knowledge is freeing. By sharing knowledge, not only can it be improved, but it gives people space to create new processes, new drugs and, thus, new tacit knowledge. People who share their knowledge are revered and consulted on related projects.

There are other techniques you can use to capture tacit knowledge right now:

• Communities of Practice
• Shadowing/ Mentoring
• Podcasts
• Interviews
• Video meetings
• Speaker series

Use templates to create a Community of Practice. Using an established infrastructure with additional expertise will allow people to connect with like-minded colleagues at a similar level. Having a space with which to share specialized knowledge in a give and take manner makes sharing tacit knowledge more natural. Working together cross-functionally, colleagues can accomplish more than they can as individuals.

Shadowing and mentoring is a tried and true method that can take a few different forms. Often a younger/less experienced member of a team will follow a more experienced team member around as they do parts of their job. In some cases the shadower just observes. In other cases, the shadowee or mentor explains everything they do in real time. In the first instance, the shadower often doesn’t get all the information the shadowee has to offer since there is only so much a person can glean when watching someone write or read on their computer. When the shadowee has to explain everything, the shadower gets a lot more information, but the process can be exhausting and frustrating for the shadowee, which is not conducive to transferring tacit knowledge. Additionally, the process makes their job take more time, so it doesn’t make sense to have a shadow 40 hours per week.

Podcasts and interviews can be the same. They have subtle differences. Being interviewed on a podcast can make the person holding the tacit knowledge feel important. Also, there is an element of security as usually there isn’t a live audience. The interview is recorded and can then be available for people to hear later.

In a regular interview, it is important for the event to be recorded in some way. Often, interviews take place in front of an audience, which may not be as comfortable for the interviewee. A preset list of questions, furnished in advance, helps the interviewee feel prepared and more comfortable. Video or tape recording the interview is critical for future reference.

Video meetings can also be recorded, depending on company policy. Video meetings are good, because the interviewee can show slides as well. The visual aspect engages different senses and can help the information be assimilated better. On the downside, editing can be required to focus the video for future viewing.

Finally, many departments have speaker events or forums. Colleagues can learn a lot from outside speakers. However, hosting internal people is a great way to gather tacit knowledge. The topics may be focused, but every little bit helps. Often these are hosted online and can easily be recorded.

Get started now capturing tacit knowledge. Every little bit helps and eventually you will have a library of information from our experts that we can use to further innovate. Furthering innovations helps us help more patients.

-A version of this article was first published at Roche and Genentech-

Offboarding is a KM activity because we transfer knowledge about the workings of an organization from members of the community leaving us to those who will continue the work. Most established companies have a robust corporate general offboarding process that involves a variety of activities and meetings with your management team members, IT and HR. Knowledge sharing specific to your department is not always included in the general offboarding process.

Sharing department and team practices, helpful websites, and tips and tricks during offboarding helps vital work continue. For example, discussing the most important drive folders and how they are used can be helpful in keeping documents available to those who will continue the work. Sharing this type of information always enables a team member to find documents faster and more easily after a colleague departs.

You can easily create an offboarding program in your department using existing tools.

Start small. First, decide on the key pieces of knowledge that will help your team continue their vital work, uninterrupted. Second, set up the expectation that these practices are important during onboarding. Third, at team meetings, share small bits of information about what to store where. Finally, regularly remind team members that they need to move all project-related documents to a shared drive.

Setup 1-on-1 meetings with people who are leaving. Future retirees and others who have been with the company for a long time, or hold extensive specialized knowledge, are especially important to interview. They may have links to relevant information silos that are not obvious, or are not available, to newer employees. People with a lot to share may require several meetings to get everything organized for future use. You might also consider a recorded interview, such as an oral history. Even a simple recording can be reviewed at a later date

An organization-wide offboarding gives employees a good overview of the policies and procedures in which they must engage before their departure date. However, a local, more department or project focused offboarding/training will help departing team members feel more comfortable. It will also help them feel like their work will continue and they won’t leave their team members hanging.

-A version of this article was first published at Roche and Genentech-

Reboarding is a mini-version of onboarding. People who are returning from various types of leaves or sabbaticals as well as those left behind benefit from reboarding.

In addition to planned medical leaves, sabbaticals and parental leaves, reboarding can be helpful if you “reopen your offices after a lockdown or temporary business shutdown.”  Additionally, reboarding, rather than traditional onboarding can really make a difference when a contractor joins in a permanent role, or a former colleague returns after some time away at another company. After all, these latter types of colleagues remember some things from their previous tenure, but need an update or to be reminded.

As I discussed in our articles on onboarding and offboarding, Knowledge Management (KM) is a structure in which reboarding can be slotted at the department or functional level for a high level of effectiveness. Yes, HR probably has a company-wide process, but reboarding planning at the department or functional level is a must for the daily work of the department.

A successful reboarding program requires planning. It also needs to start long before someone goes on leave. It requires having a comprehensive work coverage plan and is a great time to evaluate the workloads of the team. Having a plan in place will help everyone remember things that are important, but don’t come up daily. After a 4 month leave, you may not remember your passwords. If someone has created a strategy for dealing with that before you, use their tacit knowledge.

One of the most important reasons for a reboarding process is to keep valuable employees. You want to keep valuable employees at the department or functional level to continue valuable work, prevent lags in research or important projects and prevent high costs of retraining. There are many other reasons that are relevant to your specific industry.

When people leave the department, they take a lot of institutional memory with them. If you do not have a good way to capture tacit knowledge, then they will be leaving a big hole in your department. The other thing is that training someone new, if you can find them, costs a lot and takes time.

Another important aspect, which reboarding addresses, is fear. Going on a leave means that your employee won’t be seen, so they fear they will be forgotten. Having a plan in place means everyone knows what is happening from the day the plan is started until 4-6 months after the employee’s return. Anxiety has a huge effect on the business. Alleviating as much anxiety as possible is critical to the overall success of the business. People’s fears have to be addressed in a compassionate and concerned way in order to do their best work.

Medical leaves can be harder to plan because they often happen suddenly, thus it is important to engage in succession planning as well. However, the same process teams use for parental leaves, sabbaticals and exchanges can be used for planned medical leaves. Information about workloads and what people do can be fed into the succession planning system.

Supportive managers must never assume. They should not assume that returning new mothers want a lighter workload. Managers should not assume that someone who has returned from a difficult medical leave wants to work fewer days. These questions all need to be part of the reboarding discussion when planning. Managers may need additional training if they are uncomfortable with the messiness surrounding leaves and reboarding.

Beyond HR, support for reboarding can be provided by peers. Organize Communities of Practice that consist of working mothers and/ or working fathers who can provide peer support for parental leaves. CoPs can host a variety of sample documents and provide practical tips and tricks. Additional CoPs can be useful for those returning from medical leaves or sabbaticals. Peer-to-peer CoPs can provide a supportive environment and really help companies reduce turnover.

Implementing Knowledge Management requires time, effort, and ongoing maintenance. While immediate results may not be apparent, the long-term benefits for the company, departments, and teams are substantial.

Resources:

• –https://www.efrontlearning.com/blog/2020/10/reboarding-in-practice-how-to-reboard-your-employees-successfully.html/
• Returning From Parental Leave Can Be Stressful. How Some Employers Aim to Fix That. – https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/parental-leave-return-stress-331969e4

-A version of this article was first published at Roche and Genentech-

A few weeks ago, we talked about Onboarding as a KM Activity. In some ways, onboarding is A beginning of the KM process. It is not necessarily THE beginning. It is definitely one of the first steps in the knowledge management process from the user point of view.

In that same way succession planning is an ending. Succession planning is a tool which helps departments to keep their work moving forward as people come and go. We all want everything to stay the same, but if we know anything it is that only change is constant. We have to plan for the changes that will come. In this article we will talk about some steps KM people can take to prepare for inevitable changes.

The goal of succession planning is to promote smooth transitions. At many companies, contractors take a burden of work off full-time, regular employees, but their tenures are often shorter than we would like. Smooth transitions from one employee to another or from contractor to employee encourage seamless knowledge flow. Seamless knowledge flow is something we use to improve the opportunities for innovation. Innovation is what companies need to achieve success in the market. In order to maintain the programs and projects on which they have worked, we need constant knowledge flow. In order to enable constant and smooth knowledge flow, we need succession planning.

First: Plan. Think about things you picked up from your predecessor and what you needed to do to continue his or her work. Think about how you can make that transition for your successor smoother. We will discuss tacit knowledge in a future article. Transferring tacit knowledge is critical for smooth knowledge flow.

Second: Document. Create Work Aids for how to complete complicated or confusing tasks. Use the same template and precede each process title with a description such as “KM Work Aid.” This title makes finding work aids and process documents easier. Use documents, videos or any other technology that works to capture tacit knowledge.

Third: Communicate. Full text search does not always find the exact information for which we are looking. If you find information you know will be helpful to your team, put it in places where others can find it. Finding is improved when people include a ‘resource’ tab, for example, in your planning documents. Use the resource tab to link to documents that might be helpful later. This practice also provides context for related documents.

Fourth: Use the Tools. This means that you need to understand the features and functionality included in the various tools to which you have access. Using the available tools effectively can promote smooth transitions. For example, think about permissions. Decide early on what permissions your documents need for the future. If you are creating process documents, make them widely available from the start. This will save you time later because you won’t need to revisit documents and change permissions or respond to a constant stream of emailed access requests. Tending to permissions early also means that you won’t have to change the owner if you leave for your next opportunity.

Generic accounts are also a useful tool. If your department has a position that is continually filled by contractors, the transition will be smoother if a generic email account is used for certain services, such as support. Generic email accounts also help when people go on vacation, maternity leave or sabbatical. Wouldn’t it be great not to come back to a month’s worth of old help requests? Apply generic accounts to website ‘Contact Us’ links, to analytics tools/accounts and to survey forms. Generic email accounts allow teams to share the burden of a variety of tasks as well as providing context for new employees.

There are many other ideas for succession planning that can be developed using the tools you use every day.

Succession planning does not just mean that tasks are transferred to successors more quickly. Succession planning also means that you don’t have to recreate boring, but important, processes each time you perform the process or transfer the information to another person. The ultimate goal of succession planning should be to prevent or minimize interruptions. If processes are documented and processes do not require changes very often, you and your colleagues will save time, or gain time and can use that time to innovate.

-A version of this article was first published at Roche and Genentech-

Work Aids, Work Instructions, SOPs are all names for documents that tell people how to complete a task. The goal of work aids is always to share or transfer knowledge.  Work instructions are particularly helpful when the text caters to people who might be starting a new job, taking over new duties, or moving to a new department.

Below, I have detailed different ways to create work aids, what they can contain and some ideas for templates. The key to the whole process is that the creation and maintenance of work aids needs to be part of EVERYONE’S job description. Everyone means from the CEO to the janitor and the summer intern. Nobody can be exempt. It needs to be part of the company culture. Start small, lead by example and grow the expectation.

Each Work Aid document can contain relevant information pertaining to the department, organization or function and there can be multiple Work Aids on the same topic, especially if the point-of-view is important. In this article, I have provided some general guidelines to help those writing work aids.

Work Aids can include different elements. There should be enough flexibility in your process so that people do not feel constrained when they create or update their work aid. Depending on the task, Work Aids can include steps in a process, sample emails or database entries. As mentioned, multiple work aids can support one process. Multiple smaller documents are helpful when a task involves multiple technologies, multiple people or a complicated work process.

The most important aspect of this process is to get something on paper (on the screen!). Videos and podcasts can be a great way to communicate information, too. Getting started is key. Good intentions are worthless if they are only talk. Images definitely help communicate effectively, mostly because the information is communicated faster, making the instructions easier to skim. We all know the saying that a picture is worth 1, 000 words. It is true.

It doesn’t matter if your first draft is perfect. There will always be updates. As you remember forgotten steps or have an updated email example, update your document.

Create a Work Aids folder accessible by everyone in a location everyone can find, such as team drive or cloud location. Use the same location to store all department Work Aids. Advertise this location and its purpose at every opportunity.

Your department leadership must take an active interest in Work Aids by supporting their creation and maintenance. The consistency they create in work and their part in helping people learn processes faster is a boon to the department. By supporting a culture of Work Aid creation, department leadership can help spread the practice to other departments.

Colleagues will have an easier time getting started on work aids specific to their job when a department template exists. Templates help people start writing. Knowing the basic information your team needs makes the work aid immediately relevant. A template also helps users of the work aids know what to expect.

Templates can include

• KM Work Aid: <Enter name of Process>
• Background:
• Steps:
• Notes and Other Information:
• Update Date(s)

KM Work Aid: <Enter name of Process>

Naming the process helps people find your Work Aid. We use the name of the process as the name of the document to improve retrieval. Use common terminology and omit abbreviations.

Background:

First decide if the background is important. If it is then answer some questions such as

• What is the story of this process?
• What is the background?
• Who started it?
• Why was the process started?

Sometimes knowing the background helps people understand why the steps are listed the way they are or why the specific procedures are important. This might seem obvious today, but a year from now, the knowledge might be forgotten. Also, background will help you know when the Work Aid is out of date and no longer needed.

Enumerate the Steps:

This section is simply the steps in a process. Remember the more information the better while keeping in mind that a wall of text isn’t always helpful. Add bullet points, images and links, where relevant, to break up the text describing the process.

Update:

It is important to update Work Aids, and all KM documents. Create a schedule where this task is done once a year at the very least.

Work Aids are tangentially part of onboarding, though they may not be used until a task comes up where someone needs help. Thus, Work Aids may more rightly be considered part of succession planning.

One part of the offboarding process should be for people, especially if the person leaving, to update Work Aids. If there are no Work Aids to update, the person should create them.

Work Aids help transfer knowledge, which improves continuity of work and keeps departments running smoothly. The consistency they create in work and their part in helping people learn processes faster is a boon to the department and the entire organization.

You have to figure out what works for your organization. You can implement a Work Aids program in your department even if there is no company-wide program.

Knowledge Management doesn’t work without the commitment of management.

-a version of this article was published at Roche/Genentech in October 2023-

At a conference I attended, knowledge management team members discussed a vibrant KM community as a way of breaking down silos. Sharing information person to person across departments and divisions is a great way to share information. This type of sharing can also be time consuming and rely on serendipity. Often, Communities of Practice can solve cross departmental and divisional problems.

Recently, APQC* talked about breaking down silos as well. Silos can protect information, but silos also “prevent groups across an enterprise from collaborating toward common goals like process improvement or innovation.”

Silos can be a product of competition. Departments will sometimes hoard information so members get better bonuses or credit for finishing a project ahead of schedule. Silos can also be the result of the way information storage systems were developed.

There are many ways to break down silos in addition to person to person.

1. Publicize your projects
2. Publicize your tools
3. Read newsletters, articles and project reports (the other side of numbers 1 & 2).
4. Attend cross functional meetings about a variety of topics. You never know what you will learn
5. Assign cross departmental liaisons
6. Respond to requests for information within your company, or externally according to company guidelines.

Publicizing your projects not only helps others understand what you are doing, but allows you to share how you got the work done. This is a great way to talk about the innovative spreadsheet you created to make work easier or the slide deck template you created to ensure all team members were using something that identified them as part of the department.

Do you use special tools? Do you use standard tools in an innovative way? One of the best ways to break down silos is to use standard tools and share how you use them. Don’t share a standard IT tutorial, but share how you took the tutorial and made the tool your own.

Read newsletters, articles and project reports to find out what innovative tools or processes were created to accomplish team goals. Many organizations publish a newsletter. In large organizations, many newsletters are published. Skimming a variety of these information sources regularly gives you insights into what is going on in other parts of the organization. I have seen a KM Specialist translate IT’s missives into tutorials that helped her team work smarter. She, then, shared the information on the department website and with other KM professionals via a newsletter. The readers could then take the same information, reuse it and morph it into something else that was new.

Attend cross functional meetings about a variety of topics. You never know what you will learn. While we are all busy, you find some of your best ideas by attending events and meetings where you are a little out of your comfort zone. You also make connections that you otherwise would not have made. You have to pay better attention, thus you hear things you may not have heard before. Sometimes these ideas turn into something that can help you in your work or provide a connection that you wouldn’t have otherwise found.

Assign cross departmental liaisons. Since KM people often work alone, they tend to seek out other KM people and, naturally, act as liaisons. When you do not yet have a dedicated KM person on your team, it is important to assign someone to reach out to other departments until you can budget for a dedicated KM person.

Breaking down silos is a great way to be able to reuse information others have developed.

References:

• APQC, Breaking Down Silos For Better Collaboration article

*Nota bene: APQC is a membership institution and you may need access through your organization.

For the past three years I have worked at large pharmaceutical company in knowledge management (KM). I worked with great people, passed on KM techniques and strategies to help improve efficiencies and I learned A LOT.

APQC CKM

During that time I also studied for a was awarded Knowledge Management certification from APQC. The APQC program is an amazing experience. It is one I would highly recommend to anyone interested in knowledge management certification.

In the next days and weeks, I will share some of what I learned at both the pharma company and from APQC.

I hope you will engage with me. I am interested in the KM problems you find at your company and what you are doing to resolve them.