How to begin a project in a new business: collaboration, communication and a dash of KM

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A week back someone asked me for a bit of advice about getting projects off the ground so I thought I’d share this with her (and you). At the request of the Executive Chairman I’m doing a really interesting piece of work at the moment with a new management team. If we pull it off it will be a great example of how to embed Knowledge Management principles into a business with the aim of speeding up development and learning as we go.

theoretical and practical underpinnings
Successful project management is dependent in no small part on collaborative team working. Learning Before, Learning During and Learning After (core foundations of what is often called Knowledge Management) can transform the way project and management teams work and how they collaborate. Simple techniques associated with each step will ensure that what we learn as we progress is fed back into the way we work in the future. The techniques associated with each step are tried and tested across a variety of industries and cultures. We are going to begin by creating an environment and way of working that encourages collaboration and openness: where we all share in success and are able to identify and rectify potential failure.

the brief

The funding clock is ticking and ‘product’ (a prototype) has to be at an advanced
stage if not already delivered for Q3 2015.
In short, the new team has to ‘hit the ground running’ from January and rapidly
establish a modus operandi in the first 90 days to ensure:

  • all issues around obstacles to delivery are capable of being surfaced in an open
    and supportive manner;
  • a set of core behavioural norms including communication and a technical
    collaborative infrastructure are established by the team for the team;
  • everyone understands their responsibilities, role and deliverables and is aware
    of the strengths of the rest of the team; and
  • everyone celebrates successes and takes ownership of potential failure

My initial brief was along these lines:

…help create a collaborative team environment with a shared understanding of what needs to be done and by whom…

the backdrop

Without naming the client (I will call them Polyglot)) I can tell you:

  • it’s space age stuff involving energy retention (so green and renewable)
  • it’s a multicultural environment and none of the 6 ‘man’ team has English as a first language
  • none of the team have worked on a project together
  • they have ambitious targets to develop a working prototype

Each was chosen because of a specialism – PhD’s abound – and an ability to go beyond what’s conventional.  But they have different backgrounds, cultures, outlooks and personal value sets. They are hungry and excited about the prospect of creating a product that can change the way we look at energy retention.

Ahead of the meeting I sent them an outline of the session and opened as follows:

You face a tremendously exciting and challenging 2015. A
new company, a new multinational team and a project that
has the potential to change the way energy is consumed,
stored and saved. Few organizations and the people who
work for them can look forward to the coming year with
such anticipation.

Project Mobilisation Meeting #1

Its Day Four and most of the team arrived on Day One. We’ve assembled at their new offices which is appropriately housed on a reseach park. In advance I asked each of the team to be thinking about a proud moment when they had enjoyed working in a team.

The aims of the half day session were:

  1. Begin building a Polyglot culture based on collaborative team working.
  2. Understand the respective strengths of the team members and Polyglot.
  3. Help kick off the ‘project’ with a shared understanding of the obstacles, deliverables and timing.

The agenda I worked up for the half day kick off session is below. What I can share is how the opening went (taken from the write up I produced):

Introductions
Everyone had a really interesting story to tell about him or herself and an astonishing array of experiences. Perhaps the most revealing was that nobody had English as his or her first language. We adopted this mantra as a way of overcoming potential misunderstanding:
‘I heard you to say…. and I understood you to mean….’
Further we agreed that whenever anyone did not understand a phrase or word they would seek clarification and record it on a white board along with a glossary of terms.

item who comments
Introductions Ask people to introduce themselves with their name and an interesting/unusual fact. Scene setting: why are we here, what the session is all about.give some examples of good (and bad) experiences
Hopes & Fears Exercise In 2 parts. Each person to write down on Postit notes:Why I joined? To plenary and call out.Then 3 hope and 3 fears and put up on the wall.
‘when you look at things differently’ An exercise designed to get people thinking about different perspectives.Split into 3 teams and give each a paper with one of 3 ‘professions’. Ask them to jot down notes about the room through that ‘lens’. Back to plenary for call out and learning’s.
My proudest team moment PC to ask each person to tell his or her story. JM to note down words for each person that sum up emotions, skills & knowledge, outcomes, behaviours.
How can we ensure the project fails? This exercise (a Reverse Brainstorm) will surface barriers/obstacles and solutions. Split into two teams; ask them what can they do to make sure we fail to meet the deadlines and quality standards.
What would you tell your Dad? Ask each person to write down a response to this ‘over dinner question’: So tell me what is it you are doing?Then get everyone to come and put his or her ‘offerings’ onto the wall. In plenary for discussion and agreement.
And finally: ‘Homework’ set the task: present an outline project plan on Friday 16th January. NB We will decide the composition of the teams in advance. There will be no guidance.

Why what the boss says (and does) matters : 3 examples to make you weep

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Its not unusual at year end to take time out to think about the year ahead and reflect on the year past. Those thoughts are often prompted by conversations with people over copious lunches and dinners about corporate goings on.

fallen-tree-One such event occurred the Saturday between Christmas and the New Year. On a very windy morning (in the dark) I hit a tree that had fallen at Friston Hill on the main South Coast road, walked away from the car unscathed (even though the car was not) and so was in reflective mood about cuts to services, tree felling and pruning.

My dinner companion that day was recounting a sorry tale from her past which can best be described as the ‘mine is bigger than yours’ syndrome. In short the CEO (whose profile was increasing to the chagrin of some of the board) departed in haste prompting a dramatic fall in the stock price and the departure of some of the core team as well while the Chairman filled the now vacant positions with his own team. I’d seen a similar occurrence at a software business I was close to. There the CEO was deemed (by the incoming Chairman) to be a technologist not a commercial man. So the Chairman who had previously run a business though crucially not in software made appointments over the CEO’s head. Unsurprisingly it ended in tears and the excursion into the US a portend of things to come where investors lose their shirts!

These discussions made me ponder the difficulty of being in a Chief People Officer, Head of Talent Management and Head of Global Communications role since they are all dependent on the machinations above them at board level. In both cases I’ve seen at first hand how people who’ve given so much to an organisation can be ‘erased’ from the payroll and while the payoffs can be significant the scars take a long while to heal.

What it says to me is that few of the value statements that organisations come up with are grounded in the way they conduct themselves internally when the going gets tough. Here’s a few more examples:

#1: ‘no publicity, not now, not ever’

Last year I was contacted by an old friend, For the sake of anonymity I will call him Mohamad. He has a long and distinguished career in finance and recently developed a wonderfully innovative financing mechanism for a blue chip organisation he was advising.

Mohamad approached me since he knew through our joint alumni network that I had helped a number of organisations to surface and then make use of knowledge that could improve the way organisations worked.  We talked a lot about the critical knowledge that he’d developed running the project and how it might be used for future financings for the good of his organisation and indeed his country (it was at that level).

Armed with a few ideas on how he might go about capturing how decisions were made and implemented and a possible mechanism for sharing what he’d learned (factional stories) he went off to meet his boss.  Imagine his (and my) disappointment when he was told: ‘no publicity (of any form)’.  While a simple Google search shows him and the name of the project financed – there was a bit of publicity – nothing at all exists in the public domain or in his organisation on the method. And it seems like it never will despite mission statements that talk about becoming a learning organisation.

#2 ‘do as I say, not as I do’

I was advising an organisation in the West Country.  The CEO (who sadly passed away in a car accident having survived a Tsunami) was about to announce a bout of pruning and cutting back.  I was gobsmacked when he turned up the day before the announcement in a new Porsche.  The point I made to him was the signal he was sending, irrespective of when he had ordered it, was the wrong one and for him to regain the trust and commitment of his team he had to be seen to be in it with them!  The Porsche made few appearances after that.

#3 ‘if we are doing so well why do we feel so bad’

A close friend was at a end of season bash/annual pep talk. Her unit had exceeded all its targets and her personal performance and that of her team was a real cause for celebration.  In fact when the Group CEO got up to speak she was actually looking forward to it. After all her unit had bucked a corporate trend and she’d worked hard (often on a Sunday) to provide clients with an exemplary service.

When the CEO sat down she was totally deflated: instead of praising he implored the business to do better and berated those who had not met targets.

What proved the final demotivator?  When some of the tickets to a show (that many would have wanted to see) were handed to members of senior management rather than ‘balloted’ for use by the staff.

It made me recall a plane conversation back from Washington where my fellow traveller told how his business (he ran a call centre operation) had achieved an unprecedented 93% approval rating yet was being pushed to go to 94%.

and finally

I am currently helping an emerging business to think through project mobilisation and team building with a multinational and multicultural team. Its an exciting challenge and I shall be drawing on experiences such as those I’ve described to help create a collaborative working environment.

I continue to believe that to have credibility, value and mission statements have to be owned and embraced at the very top and not purely the work of consultants who canvass staff opinions and produce group think outcomes for the CEO and Board to rubber stamp.

Future of Legal KIM: ‘Death of Difference’ and the need for effective legal project management

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A really timely thought piece ‘Becoming the law firm clients really want’ landed on my desk this week. The future of LawBy Peppermint Technology Research, it characterised the future of law firms as being ‘the death of difference’ noting that legal will become much like other sectors. This scenario has profound implications for lawyers, professional support lawyers and legal knowledge & information management (KIM) professionals.

On December 9th Martin White and I will be hosting a breakfast breakout event at the RSA The future for Legal KIM: An Outside-In perspective.  In it we will look at some of the issues facing KIM professionals. Martin and I have worked in many industries across many countries; we’ve seen and been involved in seismic shifts in the KIM roles in engineering, energy, the 3rd sector, publishing, software and finance. Our thinking in putting this event together was to share some of our experiences in a relaxed setting with like minded legal KM’ers.

So over the past few weeks in the run up to the event we have been looking at the four big issues research had told us were near the top of the legal professions ‘must do’ list.

  • Lawyers come and go – capturing knowledge at speed
  • Getting the best from virtual teams
  • Collaboration and KM beyond the firewall
  • Bringing it all together – legal project management

I began with Going but not forgotten: knowledge capture in a hurry, Martin then wrote  The opportunities for digital workplace adoption by law firms and  Certifying virtual teams – a key skill in digital workplace implementation.

bringing it all together – legal project management

Today I am going to focus (from a KIM perspective) on the challenges of setting up a project management infrastructure that allows an organisation to learn from previous experiences and feed back learnings from the project back into the business.

There are many project management disciplines being used in industry. The Stage-Gate new product development (NPD) methodology is one example in which the veracity of new products are assessed and resources allocated according to a set of criteria for each stage of the process. Knowledge capture is built into the process.

Irrespective of the system you adopt below are a few of the questions you will need to be asking (I’ve omitted the obvious budget ones):

set up (learning before)

  • What do we know about this subject and what has been done before?
  • Who is an expert (internal and external) and can we get their input before starting the project?
  • Who should we invite to the Kick Off meeting and how do we want to structure that?
  • What structures are we going to use for management, monitoring and decision making?
  • Who is going to be on the Project Steering Group and how do we manage those stakeholders and others? How often should they meet and in what format?
  • How are we going to capture the outcomes of meetings, store the material we generate and make people aware of what’s happening?
  • How do we collaborate across teams and boundaries to ensure the best possible decisions are made based on the best?

conduct (learning during)

  • Who do we go to for answers to tricky questions that arise and how do we do that?
  • How often are we feeding learnings back into our project?
  • Who is providing updates and in what format?
  • Where are we storing progress reports?

conclusions (learning after)

  • What format will the debrief take and who will be invited?
  • When and where will you hold it?
  • Who will be tasked to action the outcomes?

I remember a conversation once with Professor Victor Newman on his Baton Passing Technique which arose in part to ensure project knowledge is passed on.  He said:

The big problem in managing learning to have an impact is to know what knowledge is useful, to whom, the form it should take, where and when it is best applied and when best to share it

Baton PassingAlongside is an extract from the slides Victor and the British Council made available.  It works, I’ve tried it!

I have used in addition: After Action Reviews, Pause & Reflects, Retrospects to name but three.

 

 

Earlier this year APQC published an interview with me in which I described the concept of DEBRIEF as a technique for capturing learnings at the end of various stages of projects. I will talk more about that on the 9th.  It’s not too late to sign up here!

and finally

Too often the KIM team are excluded from the project management processes in favour of an accredited (Prince 2 trained) Project Manager. In my view that’s a grave mistake, there are KM techniques for each step of the process and the good KIM’er will be well versed in facilitating such interventions.

If you fail to learn from what you’ve done then you will not improve as a business and will be uncompetitive with those who do.

 

 

 

knowledge capture & retention: don’t forget the returnees from overseas assignments

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I am again indebted to Strategy & Business magazine. In a thought provoking article ‘The Untapped Value of Overeas Experience‘, Dan Wang of Columbia University draws on extensive research carried out with over 4k people representing 81 countries who had spent between 3 months and 2 years working in the US.

It found that:

Only 48% of employees returning from overseas assignments reported having shared knowledge and then having seen it implemented.

And itf you think this issue will be dissapear as a result of technological advances such as improved Video Conferencing, think again, PWC’s Talent Mobility 2020 Report notes that international assignments will increase by 50%.

This phrase stood out

Not all knowledge is created equal.
The traditional model of sending workers abroad or of hiring
workers with international work experience has focused on technical
skills. The idea is that people will acquire technical knowledge about
the procedures needed to perform a specialized task, whether it’s testing
a new pharmaceutical drug or developing components for an aircraft,
that might otherwise be unattainable in their home country. My survey, however, showed that the currency of international talent mobility lies not in these types of skills but rather in realizable practices. Returnees were more likely to transfer nontechnical knowledge about managing relationships and coordinating work among employees than asset or industry-specific technical knowledge and they placed a much
higher value on the former, as well.
Workflow knowledge tends to be tacit, difficult to demonstrate or
describe. This is why the returnee is valuable. Respondents who were effective at transferring such workflow practices were also skilled at adapting them to local environments.

If Dan’s premise is correct (and I believe, from work previously undertaken on the value of missions and knowledge tours, it is) then organisations are going to have to think more about how such temporary relocations or secondments are managed and Knowledge Managers (together with HR profesionals) need to plan ‘before, during and after’.

So thanks again Dan, I have updated the slide I use to illustrate the need for a continuous knowledge capture and retention cycle throughout the employment life of an employee.

Slide1

Going but not forgotten: how to conduct knowledge capture in a hurry

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It’s August in the Middle East where the temperature rarely dips below 30c at night and reaches 50c+ during the day.  Contrast that with winter where snow is on mountains that trap carbon emissions severely impacting air quality.

I’ve been there 7 times in the past 12 months and seen all the seasons and how they impact people’s demeanours.  How festivals such as Ramadan affects productivity (while enriching the soul of those who follow its strictures), how the New Year which occurs in the spring makes people look longingly towards the future and how April seems to be everyone’s favorite month: clear blue skies, snow capped mountains, a purity about the air and a profusion of flowers.

July and August are the hot months when recruitment people at universities globally are most busy and when many organisations in the Middle East and Asia see their talent take sabbaticals to go back to school to further career prospects.

I am with a client where 3 of the most talented minds who have been the core team on a project have been offered the chance to further their academic careers overseas.  This is not unusual in a part of the world (east from Istanbul) where educational attainment is prized and the title of Dr. elevates one’s social standing.  It’s their last week, in fact they’ve really already left but at my prompting our sponsor agrees that I should have a discussion with them with the aim of:

  • Identifying the networks of people within… who the leavers connected with
  • Getting recommendations as to how existing business processes might be enhanced based on experience gained in flagship projects
  • Maintaining an ongoing connection with a view to developing an Alumni network of skilled ex …people

Importance of set up

The set up is important. In an environment where conformity and learning by rote the norm everything must be done to maKnowledge Capture to doske the participants feel at ease and willing to share. So the room had to be quiet yet not too formal and the desks set up in a way that encourages conversation not question and answer. This is what I say to people who attend my masterclasses.

For an interview such as this to really succeed the interviewee needs reflection time. Always send a briefing note, a technique I learned many years ago with Sparknow LLP while conducting an Oral History assignment with Islamic Development Bank.

The purpose of this note is to give an interviewee time to reflect on their career (highs and lows) ahead of their departure, feeling they have said what they want to, been heard and passed on enough that someone following can build on their legacy. Here’s the note:

Briefing paper sent to the participants a few days before the interview

Going but not forgotten

We would like you in advance to be thinking about your time at … from the day you joined to the day of your departure and specifically:

  • Draw a timeline to cover that period with a line in the middle. Above that line (in the highlights section) think of three moments (events, projects or incidents) that you would look back on as favourably reflecting the time you have spent at …. They might be personal, team or even organizational. Having identified them see if you can think of an image or an object that reflected that moment. Then place (draw/write) or bring along those images. If you can’t then see if you can think of a title for each. We will be asking you questions about each event or project.
  • Below that line (the lowlights section) repeat the exercise again over the spread of your time at …. These lowlights might include a time when you felt dispirited, confused, when something didn’t happen or there was a blockage in a project. Again the purpose is to understand what happened and how (if you did) you overcome the situation.

On the day of the interview you will be asked to reflect on your career from the day you arrived to now. With your permission we will record the interview so that we capture the real highlights and will make any transcript available to you thereafter for your own personal use.

Why should you participate? Often when people leave an organization having made a significant impact there are gaps in the knowledge of those who are left behind, what we describe as ‘organizational memory’ is not as strong as it could be. It is important to recognize your contribution and to try and capture that in a small way.

Thank you for agreeing to participate.

Notes for interviewer (based on a 90 minute window of time)

Questions to be posed during the interviews

Arriving:

  1. Tell me about your first day, what were you expecting, did it meet those expectations?
  2. How did it differ from your previous job?

Working:

  1. Looking back over your time, if there is one thing you wish you could have had, what would it have been?
  2. What surprised you about working at ….?
  3. Who has helped you the most at ….?

Leaving:

  1. What will you miss about …?
  2. What will you tell someone who is about to join your ?
  3. What advice would you give to someone about to do your job?

a few of the nuggets that surfaced

 what would You tell someone…

  • Don’t underestimate the challenge of changing mindsets
  • Project governance needs to be clear
  • Be serious about what is crucial
  • Don’t just rely on consultants, go find the people who know in our organisation
  • Makes sure the contract specifically covers who holds the IP rights at the end
  • Helping is more important that reporting and always recognise contributions

Each had an anecdote to illustrate it and prompt a meaningful discussion.

an example from closer to home

In an ideal world the sudden departure of employees with key knowledge should not be a cause for concern. Organisations that have adopted a 9 step process throughout an employee’s life cycle and fed learnings back into the processes of the business will take situations like this in their stride.  I remember a quote from Barney Smith the former Head of KM & Information Services at Natural England who’d overseen the establishment of a knowledge retention (transfer) programme without realising he would be one of the main contributors. This is from an interview with him conducted by Sandra Higgison (ex Editor KM Magazine) as part of research into the ‘evolving role of the knowledge manager’ I worked on while at Sparknow:

…I love Natural England in so many ways, and partly because as soon as the general election was announced, the chief executive said, we’re going to have to make a third of our staff redundant.

So I’m part of the redundancies group – I put my name forward. And the first thing, I get this letter, and it goes to me, copied to my line manager in Natural England. Says you’ve applied for redundancy, you’ve filled out the forms, you’ve made your own calculation, we’ve considered it, we’re happy to proceed on that basis. And the next stage is two-fold: Firstly, we will be approaching the pension provider for a formal evaluation of your redundancy assuming you depart on such and such date. Secondly here’s the knowledge transfer toolkit.

I did a full knowledge transfer pack using this toolkit about a year ago.  And had workshops for about 5-6 people, unpacking what it is I know about how to use it. And it actually came out as a package.  I’m grateful for doing it. Didn’t quite get it back correctly, because I like mind maps. I’ve used a software package called Mind Manager...and one of my management team sat with me for a whole afternoon trying to get stuff out of my brain.  And I had a knowledge management expert come in and then spent two months on the phone, do you have any questions? Do you have any documents? Do you have this all unpacked. And they’re now rolling this out again.

This time, it was absolutely brilliant that publicly and within the organization it was like, we’ve already got the plan and the tools ready, as soon as someone leaves, here’s the knowledge transfer toolkit.

a few do’s and don’ts

Sudden departures are inevitable in all organisations, those that have processes in place to mitigate such departures will undoubtedly be better off that those who have to react in a hurry.  Here’s a few do’s and don’ts:

  • Organisations are usually adept at capturing, don’t capture on a just in case basis otherwise you will have created a ‘bucket’ of information and anecdotes that are never accessed
  • Be clear about what it is you are trying to capture and why – it should be the Critical Knowledge that makes the organisation work and it would struggle without
  • Recognise that when departures do occur you offer the departee an opportunity to leave a legacy and to create an enlarged alumni network.
  • Make Knowledge capture and retention part of the way we do things around here, adopting a process that includes learning before, during and after any piece of work and at all stages of the employment cycle

Employee Knowledge Cycle

 

 

 

 

and finally

If this has been of interest and you’d like to know more I am going to be running a Masterclass on effective Knowledge Capture and Retention in a week’s time and with Martin White of Intranet Focus hosting a Breakfast Breakout at the RSA on the Future of Legal KIM (this topic is a big issue for them) on December 9th.