knowledge harvesting

Knowledge HarvestingDiscussion with Chicago KM Forum

Nancy Dixon, Common Knowledge Associates*

Kate Pugh, Intel® Solution Services

Hans Meidjam, HP* Services

April 10, 2007

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Copyright © 2007 Intel Corporation, Hewlett Packard and Common Knowledge Associates

These slides are not complete without the oral commentary and discussion. Please do not distribute.

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Agenda

• Who are we?

• What is harvesting?

• Three stories

• Ten factors that drive harvesting approaches

• Discussion


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Who Are We?

• Nancy Dixon, Common Knowledge Associates*

• Kate Pugh, Intel® Solution Services

• Hans Meidjam, HP* Services


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What is Harvesting?

• Knowledge harvesting has three major objectives: 1. Real-time team and individual insight 2. Improve team’s processes 3. Reuse by the larger organization

• You need to harvest mindfully ─ with reuse and learning in mind.

• Integrated, well-planned and well-facilitated harvesting does pay off.


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•Choose projects and project teams

•Get executive sponsorship

•Identify harvest topics via pre-interviews with participants and/or meeting with sponsor

•Identify potential knowledge seekers who may participate and/or receive

•Estimate time commitment

•Prepare event logistics, participant list, templates, conference tech

•Do capture interviews, and/or conduct harvest events

•Summarize findings

•Preview findings individually or in group setting

•Review with sponsor

•Conduct transfer event with team, other stakeholders, and/or

•Work with stakeholders to integrate knowledge into process, training, etc. or publish in a repository

•Reuse knowledge acquired during harvest or received via transfer

•Innovate/ build upon knowledge

•Measure

Select PlanDiscover/ Capture Transfer1 Reuse2

1Knowledge transfer begins during planning (with project team), continues during capture (between and among teams, with facilitator, or with stakeholders), and downstream, resulting from publishing and from conversation.2Reuse begins immediately with transfer and continues as a result of these varied vehicles.

What is Harvesting? Some ApproachesTypes

of

Ap

pro

ach

es


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Story 1: Success in Exploratory Drilling


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Story 2: Intel® Solution Services Project Knowledge Harvest

Return Value to Intel

Solutions Development and Integration Service Owners

Capability Development

Solution Delivery Kit

Another Active Project or Sales Process

Training

Sales Support Case Study

Knowledge Nugget

Sales Support

Business Process Knowledge Integration

Project Team Panel


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HP® Services Knowledge Harvesting (General)

•Get (executive) sponsorship for interviews

•Projects > 15 people

•Projects > 4 months

•Determine if you will include customer in the interviews

•Successful and failing projects

•Research project documents

•Decide with sponsor about interviewees

•Invite for 30- minute phone interview

•Safe interview environment, interviewee approves minutes

•Open questions•Probe for root

causes•Interviewer

needs some content knowledge

•Ask reusable collateral

•Round out with group interview

•Consolidate in slides

•Present to sponsor(s) and then to interviewees

•Ask for approval for publication

•Disseminate learnings per stakeholder group

•Presentation via webinars

•Stakeholder- specific presentations

Select PlanDiscover/ Capture Publish Reuse

Knowledge Capture through Individual Project Team Member Interviews


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What Decisions do You Need to Make about the Approach?

• We sought to answer approach decision like:– Have a facilitator?– Format (e.g., facilitate a meeting)?– When to harvest– Be anonymous?– Have subject matter experts present?– Do packaging?– Get commitment to harvesting?

• We tailored our harvesting approaches in response to 10 environmental and business factors


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Ten Factors Driving Harvesting Approaches

Environmental Factor Approach Decisions Examples

1. Criticality of the knowledge to the organization

Selectively harvest; profile and track projects to determine which to harvest

Harvest if there is a risk or error that could be spared another project team

2. Proportion of knowledge that is unique and, of that, tacit vs. explicit

Match the harvest format(s) to nature of the knowledge (tacit/explicit) and degree to which originating team needs to engage in sense-making.

Do tacit harvesting in real-time and explicit harvesting offline (e.g., Get Docs, include survey, etc.); ignore non-unique knowledge; do a timeline to encourage sense-making.

3. Need for immediate transfer

Involve knowledge seekers as harvesters; harvest during the project vs. just at the end

Have originating team as panel format. Seekers among those asking questions to panel.

4. Complexity of the knowledge topic

Complexity may be technical or organizational; harvest facilitator(s) should have topic insight; selectively involve participants in events

Select subject matter experts from related disciplines who can use specialized knowledge to probe more precisely; have independent interviews where there is potential for conflict or defensiveness

5. Degree of hierarchy, politics

Facilitate taking into account internal politics and reluctance to share

Consider need for anonymity; include/ exclude senior team members; assist group in discerning facts from abstractions;use carrots and sticks


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Ten Factors Driving Harvesting Approaches (Cont.)

Environmental Factor Approach Decisions Example

6. Differences in knowledge recipients

Differences (e.g., role, culture, dispersion across time and space) necessitate packaging for reuse.

Include people who will translate and contextualize the knowledge downstream (e.g., Marketing)

7. Degree of dispersion of team (i.e., dispersion figuratively and literally)

Use technology appropriately to accommodate dispersed locations or involvement in different modules of the project

Format(s) of the harvest (e.g., face-to-face, Microsoft LiveMeeting*, teleconferences, individual interviews, wiki)

8. Size of group/team The larger the group, the more difficult are logistics and conversation effectiveness

Formats of the harvest interview (e.g., Microsoft LiveMeeting, face-to-face, representative, sub-groups)

9. Type of facilitation Role of the facilitator as broker of related knowledge, developer of reports, subject matter expert, group facilitation, live recorder

Facilitator does just-in-time transfer of related knowledge to knowledge originating team

10. Need for external viewpoints/valida-tion

Augment/refine/validate comments of originating team

Separate interview (e.g., client/customer, supplier, expert)


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How Do These Factors Match or Differ from Your Environment?

• Which of these factors are most important to your harvesting approach decisions?

• Have you encountered different environmental and business factors?


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How Have these Approaches Worked for You? What Other Approaches Have You Used?

• How did your use of these approaches help you to meet your harvesting objectives? Why?

• Do you have other approaches?


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*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Copyright © 2007 Intel Corporation, Hewlett Packard and Common Knowledge Associates.

Questions or Comments?

Appendix

Presenter Biographies


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Nancy DixonDr. Dixon is an author and consultant working with clients to create effective ways to hold knowledge conversations. She is the author of eight books as well as over 50 articles that focus on how organizations learn.

Her new book, CompanyCommand: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession, is a description of how the U.S. Army’s leading community of practice, CompanyCommand.com, was created. It is co-authored with Tony Burgess and Nate Allen, the company commanders who developed one of the Army’s most effective and acclaimed communities.

Before forming her own company, Common Knowledge Associates, Dr. Dixon was Professor of Administrative Sciences at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Earlier, she was a member of the Human Resource Development graduate faculty at The University of Texas, Austin. Dr. Dixon serves as an editorial reviewer for the Human Resource Development Quarterly and as a member of the Editorial Board for Management Learning and for Action Learning: Research & Practice. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Workplace Learning. Dr. Dixon’s consulting company has worked with corporations and government agencies to prepare professionals for knowledge conversations, develop lessons learned systems, and facilitate after action reviews and peer assists. She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and serves as a member of the Knowledge Management Advisory Board for SAIT Samsung.

Common Knowledge Associates2857 Selma LaneDallas Texas 75234


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Katrina Pugh, Intel® Solution ServicesKate Pugh is with Intel® Solution Services, Business Process and Knowledge Integration, responsible for knowledge harvesting, communities of practice, and portal design.

Intel Solution Services is Intel’s 300-person consulting organization and the only for-fee, externally-facing Intel consulting organization. It provides architecture, design, and planning services in these solution domains:

• Enterprise Client

• Enterprise Architecture

• Data Center of the Future

• Digital Supply Chain

• Digital Health

• Digital Enterprises/Communities

To succeed, Intel Solution Services must rapidly learn from its customer-facing engagements. Not only does it need to continuously improve the speed and accuracy of its consulting, but it must also detect and incorporate emergent business needs of the industries it serves.

Kate joined Intel from JPMorgan Chase (formerly Bank One Corporation) where she spent three years as a First Vice President, Finance, responsible for planning, delivering, and operating the portal and managing the training and communications functions.

Before working in the technology and banking industries, Kate did strategy and technology consulting for 15 years with IBM, PwC Consulting, Mercer Management Consulting, Aberdeen Group, Monitor Group, and DIA*logos. With IBM (formerly PwC Consulting), Kate led the global knowledge management strategy consulting practice.

In each knowledge management program, Kate focuses on business disciplines such as strategy, finance, business process reengineering, and organizational learning. This raises the credibility for knowledge management, and up-levels the way we think of knowledge from abstract and intangible to measurable and profit-driving.

knowledge harvesting

Business

knowledge transfer

content knowledge

knowledge tacitexplicit

specialized knowledge

proportion of knowledge

knowledge topic3

reuse knowledge capture

potential knowledge