Keeping knowledge from walking out the door --- SOPs

Over the last two years, I have been working on the formation of the SOP Cooperative, a cooperative effort among water utilities to share standard operating procedures. This Cooperative was born at a water and wastewater utility knowledge management workshop. The question on the table was, “How to keep knowledge from walking out the door.” The clear answer to this question was, we capture knowledge in our standard operating procedures (SOPs). Then when asked, “Do you have good/current SOPs for all your key processes,” the answer was commonly no or we’re working on it.

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are a good place to document knowledge. When properly developed they can be used to:

• document the current state of practice,
• ensure that important aspects of a task are not overlooked,
• remember how to do infrequent tasks (i.e. annual or season procedures)
• ensure consistency between different individuals or crews
• training
• capture and preserve operating knowledge

There is also significant value in the process of developing SOPs. We often find as systems begin to discuss operating procedures and begin the documentation process, they learn a lot, especially when the same task is done by a number of different individuals. We find that different individuals develop their own tricks and more efficient ways of doing things. Occasionally we find misconceptions about the process and/or “wrong” ways of performing the task. SOP development provides the opportunity to discuss, share, and capture knowledge.

The SOP Cooperative was formed to facilitate the sharing and discussing procedures between utilities.  There will be more about this in future posts.

KM and mobile devices

I watched a presentation by Clayton Grigg, CKO for the FBI on their knowledge management program. You can see this and a large number of the KM World presentations at:  http://www.kmworld.com/conference/2012/.

One point that came up during the question and answers was: How do you handle employees using off the shelf technology (i.e. moblile devices such as  I-Pads, smart phones …)? He made a couple of comments that include:

·         People will use this technology. You can’t stop it…

·         These systems are advancing rapidly and can be easier to use and powerful than network systems

·         Users are much more IT savvy and can bring new ideas from using these systems.

·         A big challenge is maintaining security.

·         The KM challenge is how to integrate off the shelf devices with your organization’s IT

The old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” rings true. I’ve heard from a number of utilities that they’ve started providing field crews with smart phones and/or I-Pads. By providing this technology and providing updates and training they can gain some level of control while providing technology to improve efficiency on the job.  

This point was reinforced as I was updating my website and got a message from GoDaddy (my web host) that my webpage was automatically updated to work on a mobile phone.

Knowledge Management and Workforce Issues for Water Utilities

Over the last few years, KM has been gaining traction for addressing workforce issues in the water industry. The American Water Works Association and the Rocky Mountain Section of AWWA have both formed knowledge management committees. The August 2011 edition of the Journal of AWWA featured the KM committee report.

A recent survey of water treatment operators in Colorado showed:

• 90% ranked KM as important or very important.
• Less than 10% of the respondents had a formal KM
  program
• 65% have a program under development or are just
  getting started.
• The top issues were ensuring that operators had the information they need to do their job, followed by the loss of knowledge from retiring employees.
• The top challenge was resources

In talking with utilities, there is substantial concern over impending retirements. I heard from a system the other day that 80% of their operators are eligible for retirement. In others, this number is over the next five years. No matter what figure you use, concerns over potential knowledge loss
are well justified.

Knowledge retention - bridging knowledge

I was recently contracted to provide continuity of management for a soon to retire manager. My roles will be to complete one short-term project and provide interim management of another long term project. In essence, I’m providing a bridge of knowledge from the retiring employee to the new employee.

From a knowledge retention perspective my tasks are:

1) Learn all I can from the retiring employee,
2) Capture/ document key and salient items, and
3) Share/ transfer to the eventual long-term employee (hopefully hired soon).

At the first meeting, my first challenge became clear – identify “who” -- who are the contractors, stakeholders and end users. This includes contact information as well as insights on roles and expectations. Another task will be to identify documents and other resources and where they can be found.

While this position is important just to keep things running, this knowledge bridging will enable the new employee to get up to speed more rapidly

Knowldege retention - Proactive vs. recovery?

With high turnover and difficulty in replacing key employees, knowledge retention is becoming more and more important.

I classify knowledge retention efforts into three categories:

1) Proactive – as an everyday task, capturing knowledge on an continual basis
2) Salvage – When you know someone is going to leave, capture essential knowledge in the time allotted.
3) Recovery – Finding or reconstructing the needed knowledge afterward

In an ideal world being proactive would be the best. However, capturing knowledge takes time, effort, and resources. There’s a fine balance between the value of knowledge captured and resources required. Prioritization and most importantly an understanding of “mission critical” or “position critical” knowledge is a good place to start.

KM lesson - returing man to the moon

Picture this scenario: You’re in a rush to beat a competitor to achieve a very complicated goal. Tons of pressure is being applied to accomplish the goal first. You assemble the best of the best, and use a variety of large and small contractors to help you. After tons of trial and error, you complete it, have a huge success, win accolades, and then move on to another project. 35 years later, you’re asked to do the same thing without reinventing the wheel. Could you do it?

This is the case with NASA’s Ares project, taking man back to the moon 35 years after the fact. Weird Science did a great show titled space junkyard. It’s worth seeing from a knowledge management perspective.

A few points that were clear:
· In the rush and the pressure to accomplish, KM was not a priority.
· There was no central repository of all the files and data. Drawing still exist, but not the why (tacit knowledge) things were done that way was not captured.
· Much of the spacecraft was used in accomplishing the mission and remained in space. That’s why the junkyard is so important. NASA can reverse engineer some parts. The problem is they are working on final products, with no knowledge about the mistakes made along the way.
· Many of the contractors have gone out of business, their knowledge is gone.
· NASA engineers moved on to different projects or private companies soon after the mission. After 35 years, I’m sure most have long since retired.
· The problems and challenges remain the same and while there have been major advances in technology, the engineering is basically the same. In other words the same knowledge needed in 1969, is the knowledge needed today.

A Washington Post article describes the “Saga of the Lost Space Tapes.” The story gives another example about the missing lunar video tapes. They weren’t used much following the mission and for a variety of reasons (cumbersome, highly specialized format) were archived, moved, and eventually misplaced.

Can you blame NASA? Of course in hindsight people do, but at the time, in the rush of the space race, I’m sure 99.9% of us would be in the same place. What’s impressive to me is that NASA learned from this and has developed an excellent knowledge management program.

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.