The Water Advice Network - Knowledge Retention

As a way to ensure the continued availability of knowledge from recently retired and part-time water professionals, I recently launched the Water Advice Network. I started out by signing up folks that I had worked closely with. In a short period of time, word spread and the network is quickly adding more and more top names from the water industry, worldwide. This includes the retired executive directors of the Awwa Research Foundation and his counterpart in Australia; directors from EPA, Ontario Ministry of the Environment, and the state of Wisconsin; former chair of the National Drinking Water Advisory Council; highly respected consultants; and two retired VPs of major water utilities. I've also begun to add top researchers from major universities.

The individuals I've added to the network have an average of over 35 years experience and represent a huge wealth of knowledge that would be lost to the industry without this network. While they all want to stay involved, they are not interested in a full time or even a formal job, Their main interest is in sharing their knowledge. So in forming the network, my main goal is in making everything easy for them and also for utilities to tap their expertise. I handle the marketing, billing and other administrative matters. We accept credit cards and make the advisers available on a hourly basis. If you want only an hour of their time, that's fine. If you want something more, that's great too. We're not interested in long-term, large projects. That will be left to the big consulting firms. The services we will offer include:

· Advice – They’ve been there and can help you address difficult decisions. They can provide a second opinion or assist you in complying with regulations.
· Mentoring – Have an experienced professional as your personal mentor and only a phone call away.
· Document review – Obtain an independent, expert review of your plans, strategies and reports.
· Peer review – Bring in a team of independent, highly qualified experts to review your project or program.

Our first client is a very small utility and I was able to provide an international expert (recently retired) to assist them and their consultant. Both the utility and their consultant are benefiting from his wealth of knowledge and he's excited by sharing his knowledge.

To read more about the Water Advice Network, go to http://www.oxenfordconsulting.com/The_Water_Advice_Network.html.

KM and Business Continuity Planning

Last week I attended a two-day training program titled "Business Continuity Planning for Water and Wastewater Utilities: How to keep your utility in business and operating in times of crisis." I went to the workshop to determine if and how I can incorporate business continuity planning (BCP) into the KM work that I'm doing. My general conclusion was that a good BCP plan has components of KM and and good KM plan considers what to do in a time of crisis.

Business continuity planning considers what happens if... How do you keep your business running, continue to complete your mission and keep your people safe. What happens if you can't get back in to your facility for 24 hours, 30 days, or they are destroyed completely? Examples could be a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado or just a water pipe break? We even talked about pandemic flu which could reduce the available workforce by over 50%. How do you stay in business?

From a KM perspective, the issue becomes what critical knowledge do out need and how can you access it during a crisis. Is key knowledge accessible at an alternative location? Do multiple people have access to it? What people and skills (tacit knowledge) do you need and how do you get a hold of them. What happens if you don't have a computer, blackberry or cell phone? What happen if all your paper records are gone?

A good KM strategy needs to consider not only the knowledge you need to manage and use during normal business operations, but also during a crisis. By considering it upfront and as a component of your KM planning, you can save time, effort, and be ready in the event of an emergency.

Is this likely to be needed, let's hope not. However, toward the end of our session a tornado warning was issued and two of our classroom participants rushed out because a tornado touched down by their offices.

Knowledge Retention

Over the last few months I've heard more and more questions about knowledge retention and tying knowledge management to succession planning.

Myron Olstein in the report "Succession Planning for A Vital Workforce In The Information Age" (Awwa Research Foundation, 2005) stated that for drinking water utilities:

•Half of your workers will not be with you in 10 years
•Most of the useful operating knowledge will go with them
•EPRI report estimates that more than 80% of useful operating knowledge is tacit

These sentiments are being echoed throughout the water supply community, particularly by HR departments that are struggling to fill positions with qualified candidates.

This recognition has also spurred a lot of interest in purchasing systems to capture knowledge. The first question I'm often asked is what knowledge system should I purchase? While some knowledge systems are great, they should be last in your planning for knowledge capture. My recommendations are to:

• Identify what information do you need to capture?
• What can you do with existing processes and systems?
• What simple things can you do first to capture knowledge (people and process)
• What knowledge systems can support these activities? (technology)

Knowledge management planning should also not be done in a vacuum and should be integrated with business strategies and succession planning.

Website launched

To support my consulting business, I recently launched the website, www.oxenfordconsulting.com.

Check it out and let me know if you have any feedback.

Excellent example of change management

My church provided an excellent example of change management in building a new sanctuary. During the service yesterday we celebrated success and had an opportunity to reflect on our role in the change. Here's what happened:

In the spring of 2002 a congregation visioning meeting was held. There the concept of a new building was launched.

A steering committee from the congregation was formed.

In late 2003, a huge event was sponsored to launch the funding raising and to gain involvement.

During the construction, there were periodic symbolic events that took place to give each person an opportunity to feel part of the construction. For example, one Sunday each person was given a rock and then given the opportunity to place it in the foundation. Another time, people were invited in to sign the new beams. These are just two of many examples.

There were also numerous times when the plans for the buildings were shown during a service, with an opportunity to discuss in a small group after. I must have looked at these plans and added comments at least 10 times during the course of construction.

Yesterday, we were all reminded our role. As each step was announced, those that participated were asked to stand. 99% of the people in the church stood up. The few remaining were invited to join in and given ways they could get involved. Around me I could hear whispers of, "I was there," I did that."

The proof is in the demonstration. Here are some examples:
- 2700 people attend church on Sunday. Over 3200 people donated toward the project.
- Fund raising goals were far exceeded and people have volunteered to continue their giving even after they fulfilled their pledge.
- Construction is on schedule and will finish 6 years to the day after the visioning meeting.
- Most importantly everyone is excited and feels that they had a role this change.

Death by e-mail

I just watched the demise of an organization's leader after trying to pass a controversial reform via e-mail. This is the third time I've seen this happen.

While e-mail is a wonderful thing, it's not designed as a discussion tool for the following reasons:
- E-mail is one-way communication, not discussion.
- Written words and tone often get misinterpreted - 90% of communication is non-verbal
- Messages often cross in cyberspace, so you're commenting on proposal 1 while others are commenting on proposal 3.
- It's much easier to be negative when talking to a computer screen
- People don't read every word of an e-mail message (or at least I don't)
- Many important decision makers tune out when the flow of e-mails get too great.

My guidelines for e-mail are:
1) It's Ok to use to send out a proposal via e-mail
2) It's OK to accept comments (but don't assume that everyone read it)
3) Only respond to the comments by saying "thanks for your comments."
4) Compile the comments and have a face-to-face or conference call to discuss the controversial points.

Winning proposals

A few months ago I was on a committee to award a project. We had about five teams that could have easily done the job, what separated them was their ability to transfer knowledge. In the proposals and presentations a few quick things jumped out at me,

1) Proposals are a reflection of what you will produce. Examples that I didn't like were:
- Proposals that did not focus on the end product (more on this later)
- The first 20 pages were on the team (see comment above)
- Small things that made it difficult to read the proposals i.e. small font, colored boxes that hid the text, pamphlets and loose information that fell out.

2) During the presentations, the most important thing is that the reviewers like you and want to work with you.
- If you are a team, present as a team (often one person takes over the conversation too much)
- Don't try to oversell optional items. One team lost because they spent 60% of their time, saying we need this additional item.
- All of your team need to be strong presenters, not just the principals. The team I voted for had the best #3 person (the one who would do all the work).
- Prepare, prepare ....

Winning proposals is about who can best transfer knowledge, saying as clearly as possbile how you will best meet the requestors need.

In my consulting practice, I started working with teams preparing proposals. It's great to help technical experts. They know their subject area, but not necessarily transferring their knowledge into winning proposals.

Idiots Guide to Increasing Blog Traffic - Part 3

I've recently applied what I learned on this blog to more fun pursuits, my songwriting website and blog. My current focus is on increasing traffic. This is more difficult with music sites due the huge number of sites out there. What I have done so far is:

1) Registered with major search engines
2) Optimized website metatags
3) Use del.icio.us for keyword tagging
4) Use keywords in every posting
5) Comment on other bloggers sites and in discussion forums
6) Contribute articles to key websites

I've seen a slow and steady increase with each of these items. What's really great is that I've been asked by a few musicians to help them increase their traffic and better position their websites. Should be fun!

Position eliminated

My KM was officially eliminated at the beginning of August. A number of factors contributed including a large reduction in revenue and a new director. However, the reality of it was that it was time. I had served in the cultural and organizational change role since 1994. It is said that a new employee is most effective in making changes for the first six months. Yet I served in this role for twelve years.

Launching innovation in an organization takes a huge effort and if done well, the effort goes unnoticed. As a change agent, you're constantly pushing against the natural instinct to resist change. A management consultant once said to me, "you keep getting bloodied, yet win the war." Looking back, there has been some amazing changes. They happened much slower that I would have liked, but they did occur.

Over the next few months, I plan to do some consulting (feel free to contact me) and move forward with a project long over due, my songwriting website.

I will only be updating this blog on occasion.

Digital final reports available

We completed our project to digitize and make available via the web 425 of our pre-2003 final reports. This involved digitizing about 90,000 pages. These reports make up the majority of our knowledge base, now with a total of 581 reports available.

A major challenge in this project was copyright permissions for figures and tables in older reports. In the pre-internet days we had requested permission to use figures in tables in the report. However, we did not specifically request rights to use electronically. Taking the conservative approach we used a contractor to obtain digital permission from the original copyright holders.