Surrounded by Geniuses: Knowledge Management Learning From Other Industries

B7:Surrounded by Geniuses:
Knowledge Management Learning
from Other Industries
Steven Lastres (Moderator)
Stephanie Barnes (Speaker)
Connie Crosby (Speaker)
#AALL13
© Missing Puzzle Piece Consulting, 2013

Presenters
Stephanie Barnes
Chief Chaos Organizer
Missing Puzzle Piece Consulting
Connie Crosby
Principal
Crosby Group Consultinginsert photo insert photo
#AALL13

Outline
#AALL13
• Knowledge management recap
• Corporate case studies
• Application to the legal industry
• Moderated panel discussion

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Recap

What is knowledge management?
• Connecting people to the knowledge they need to do their jobs whether
that knowledge is tacit or explicit
• Creating an organization that learns from its experiences and improves
Said another way…
• KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their
intellectual and knowledge-based assets
• “Knowledge management is the leveraging of the organization’s collective
wisdom (know-how) by creating systems and processes to support and
facilitate the identification, capture, dissemination and use of the
organization’s knowledge to meet its business objectives.”

The Value of KM for Law Firms
• Gives the firm a competitive advantage since the firm’s know-
how is easily accessible
• Increases productivity: lawyers don’t waste time searching for
information
• Improves practice support by fostering collaboration
• Speeds response time to client requests
• Provides an on-ramp for junior lawyers to get up to (billable)
speed more quickly
• Helps integrate the “practice of law” and the “business of
law”

ALM Law Librarian Survey 2013
What other departments is the
head librarian responsible for?
2013 2012 2011 2010 2009
Competitive intelligence 58% - - - -
Knowledge Management 43% 67% 59% 40% 19%
Intranet 28% 31% 35% n/a n/a
Records 11% 14% 19% 28% 38%
Conflicts/Intake 11% 17% 30% 36% 35%
Court services/Docketing 11% 12% 16% 16% 19%
CLE 8% 17% - - -
Information Systems 2% 2% 3% - 4%
Other 15% 14% 11% 12% 19%
Multiple responses were allowed.
Used withpersmission

Information/Knowledge Professional:
Roles and Responsibilities
•Advocate and promote the benefits of pursuing
Knowledge Management Champions
•Cross-functional team
•Provide advice, best practice guidance and training on Knowledge Management
Governance Committee
•To promote the values of Knowledge Governance
•To monitor, evaluate, evolve knowledge management practices
Knowledge Management Program Team
•The accountable person within the organization who owns the KM Process and is responsible for its
implementation, performance, and maintenance, as well as governance and standards
Knowledge Management Process Owner
•Helps to institutionalize Knowledge Management in the organization; they are team-based KM subject matter experts
Knowledge Manager
•Ensures that they create and maintain appropriate records in relation to their work and to manage those records in
accordance with the organization’s information/document management policies and procedures
Individual

Think, Pair, Share
What barriers are there to
Knowledge Management in your
firm/organization?
Photo: CBegg50 on Flickr

Barriers
• Cost
• Reluctance to share
• Billable hour (no
incentive to contribute)
• Naming conventions of
documents
• Training
• Top-down management

CASE STUDY 1
Oil and Gas: ConocoPhillips

The company
An integrated, international energy company
with operations in more than 30 countries,
ConocoPhillips recognizes the value of
enterprise-wide knowledge sharing as a way to
meet the company’s safety, environmental and
operational challenges.

Situation Description
• Needed to get people to share knowledge,
experiences, and expertise across the
organization to improve productivity, quality,
and safety

The Process
• Selected Communities of Practice and a
technology platform that supported their
activities to share and document knowledge
• Started small
• Management support at highest levels
• Carefully expanded across the organization

The Result
• Functional excellence, including safety
• Decreased environmental impact
• Reduced lost production

Role of the Information Professional
• Facilitated the whole process from strategy
creation, to program initiation and
implementation and to maintenance and
continuous improvement of the program
• Worked cross-functionally as a facilitator,
broker, bridge-builder

Lessons Learned
• Learned before starting their program—
looked at what others (not just in their own
industry) were doing
• Collaborative, iterative, pilot-based approach
• Emphasis on behaviours and linking to
business improvements, not technology

APPLICATION TO THE LEGAL
INDUSTRY

Legal info pros can...
• Research other industries
• Take ownership of pilot projects, or support
those who take ownership
• Support practice groups

Supporting practice groups
• Develop processes for collection and
processing of explicit knowledge assets
• Collection of lessons learned/after action
reviews
• Monitor and help to evolve the KM practices
of the practice group

CASE STUDY 2
Automotive Manufacturer

The Situation
• Improving access to knowledge
• In June 2000, this manufacturer began a
journey of supplementing existing product
know-how (tacit knowledge) with written
(explicit) information and knowledge. The
written knowledge is structured for sharing
and reuse.

The Project
• Improve the original technology that housed
the knowledge base

The Process
• Collected requirements and feedback from
current users
• Reviewed products available off-the-shelf vs.
custom-developed

The Result
• Picked an off-the-shelf product
– Cheaper
– Easier to maintain and support
– Provided required functionality
• Improved product quality
• Reduced structural costs
• Improved time to market

Lessons Learned
• Importance of understanding the
requirements: depth and breadth of
knowledge and information flows and how
people do their jobs
• Importance of matching requirements with
the supporting technology

Legal Info Pros Can...
• Apply skills for evaluating commercial
products for a range of users to benefit the
larger organization
• Develop a systematic method for gathering
requirements
• Monitor advances in tech for specific KM
purposes

A Method for Systematic
Requirements Gathering
• Build on-going relationships with tech users at
all levels inside your organization (esp. both
“power” users and “Luddites”)
• Interviews
• Focus group discussions
• Surveys
• System monitoring/statistics

Requirements gathering
• Learn to develop lists of requirements in the
vendors’ language
• Split into “must have” and “nice to have”
• Keep up with developments in selected areas
of tech industry to know what is available

Keeping Up With Tech
Developments
• Follow communications from vendors you
already buy from
• Look to see who your vendors’ competitors
are
• Industry blogs, newsletters, interest groups,
trade shows
• Talk with others in the legal industry
• Talk with those in other industries

CASE STUDY 3
Environmental Company

The Situation
• The company had been using an ECM product
for 4-5 years, spending approximately $1
million on it.
• Users were generally dissatisfied with the
usability of the platform, response times were
slow, support was inadequate in some
geographical locations, and the user interface
was confusing.

The Project
• The company hoped to further expand the use
and acceptance of the platform by improving
response times for users and by improving the
taxonomy and meta-data used to structure
the user interface.
• The company requested that their technology
implementation be reviewed and aligned with
business processes and objectives in order to
achieve these objectives.

The Process
• The project provided technical support for the testing and
installation infrastructure improvements
• The project reviewed the existing taxonomy and provided a
mapping from the old taxonomy to a new one that aligned
with user activities
• It provided a roadmap for other knowledge management
activities for the company to execute as the organization
grew and became increasingly global
• In all project activities user input was sought in order to
ensure the technology improvements, both hardware and
software, would meet user needs and objectives as well as
align with the business processes that the users were
executing

The Result
• User acceptance and use of the technology
increased 50% within six months of the
project completion

• Facilitated the requirements process,
understanding and documenting knowledge
and information flows and how people did
their jobs
• Resolved gaps in the current state versus the
desired state

Lessons Learned
• Importance of involving all stakeholders in the
requirements discussion
• Some issues won’t be knowledge
management issues, but they will impact
knowledge management up-take

• Help determine the business needs and
objectives before purchasing tech
• Once requirements are gathered, look at tools
already on hand for suitability
• Help to implement existing or new
technologies for best use
• Create a firm-wide/organization-wide
taxonomy

On Taxonomies
• Not just for law-related subject research
• Can be used across the organization to tie
together content, processes and systems
• Can be used internally across departments, on
website, on intranet, in KM systems
• Adapt existing taxonomy or build your own

CASE STUDY 4
ICICI Bank

About ICICI Bank
• Founded in the mid-1950’s at the request of the
World Bank, the Indian government, and Indian
industry
• Diversified financial services supplier providing
retail banking facilities
• Second largest bank in India, and is growing
internationally
• 1200 employees in 2000, which was the start of
the KM program, to 30,000 in 2008

The Situation
• The organisation was motivated to act due to
the upheaval caused by the tail-end of the
dot-com boom, which was depriving the bank
of many good staff as they left in significant
numbers to join dot-com start-ups – taking
their knowledge and know-how with them.

The Process
• A team was put together encompassing KM, HR,
technology and research with a brief to ‘just do
it’. Indeed they did and a beta version was ready
within just three months
• The organization developed WiseGuy, ICICI’s KM
intranet portal – easily accessible from the main
staff portal – to provide a way of capturing and
disseminating the knowledge of departing staff

And Then…
Before KM was fully implemented the organization was faced with the
prospect of a reverse merger of ICICI Bank with its parent ICICI, which went
through in 2002.
The KM team had to restructure to meet the needs of the new corporate
entity. Some issues articulated at the time included:
1. How to connect this vast new pool of employees with each other;
2. How to share business-related information about clients, deals and ideas;
3. How to manage staff through the change process via communication,
messages, channels and so on;
4. How to overcome the problems caused by staff turnover;
5. How to ensure that every person in the company is adequately equipped with
the skills and training required for their jobs and for lifelong learning and
development.

The Result
• Through the use of KM and the supporting
technology, employees stayed permanently
aware of the external competitive challenges
of the business, which helped them to remain
open to new thoughts, ideas and ways of
working
• KM processes became the way they worked

• Regrouped and realigned knowledge
management initiative when the organization
changed

Lessons Learned
• Importance of change management activities
• Importance of maintaining alliance to
organization goals and objective
• Importance of a cross-functional team

• Be valuable contributors to multidisciplinary
teams - sit between tech, content and the
user
• Help others in multidisciplinary teams
understand one another
• Teach others what we already know about
change management

Change Management
• We are used to dealing with change ourselves
• Learn more about change management
principles
– involve the people affected in the decision-
making
– Communication is key
– Chaos is inevitable; learn how to mitigate it
• Help your firm become a learning organization
and be willing to change as needed

CASE STUDY 5
Multinational Fast Moving Consumer Goods Company

The Situation
• The company operates in the fast moving consumer goods
market, meaning that they provide products that are sold
quickly and at relatively low cost, for example, snack foods,
toothpaste, and other grocery and toiletry items.
• The company, referred to as FMCGC, had been operating in
emerging markets for several years, but were not
experiencing the level of success that they desired.
• Their success in industrialized countries was not translating
to the new markets in the developing economies like China,
India, and Russia where their products were sold through
thousands of small retail outlets rather than the large
supermarket model that is prevalent in Europe and North
America.

The Process
• The company has operated for almost a century and has a strong sense of
values that makes it important to be able to learn, disseminate, and apply
lessons learned
• With some external help and guidance they decided to implement a
Community of Purpose programme
• The communities are comprised of senior staff members who have
responsibility for delivering a high-level of performance in an area of
strategic importance, like increasing sales revenues in developing markets.
• The programme started off focused on the people and process side of the
equation.
• There was a conscious decision to delay any technology purchase and
implementation until the organization had success with the communities,
so they initially used existing in-house technology to support the groups.

The Result
• The Communities of Purpose have been very
successful, and the technology supporting them has
helped the participants to easily share what they have
learned
• In the first five years that the programme existed sales
in the small retail sales channel in the 12 emerging
markets trebled, while profits have more than doubled
• In first 8 years, $1 billion of value to the organization
has been delivered by communities and networks and
knowledge sharing initiatives

• Recognize the need to focus on the people
and process, not the technology

Lessons Learned
• Different market conditions call for different
strategies, finding a solution is iterative
• Importance of aligning with organizational goals and
objectives
• Importance of bringing people together and giving
them time to form relationships, troubleshoot, and
brainstorm solutions
• Taking technology out of the equation, initially, and
bringing it in only to support the people and process
activities once those are figured-out

• Become knowledge managers for cross-
geography practice groups/communities of
practice
• Book and facilitate meetings or calls
• Help members connect with one another -
help to create the “loose ties” that develop
into fuller relationships
• Worry about the tech so group can focus on
the work at hand

CALL to ACTION
KM FOR LEGAL INFO PROS

Advancing KM
for Legal Info Pros
Make KM an explicit
part of my role
Get support to do a pilot
Get support to
create a strategy

Information/Knowledge Professional:
Roles and Responsibilities

Roadmap to Advancing in KM
for Legal Info Pros
Learn Listen DefinePrioritizeDevelopMeasureEngage

Roadmap to Advancing in KM
for Legal Info Pros
Learn Listen DefinePrioritizeDevelopMeasureEngage
Read the
KM thought
leaders
Take
courses,
webinars
Talk to
others
Join
communities
of practice
Watch other
industries
Pay
attention
Ask
questions
What are
the internal
business
issues?
What are
the industry
business
issues?
Where are
the gaps?
Talk with
key players
Volunteer
for projects
Ask to be
included
on teams
Help
practice
groups with
internal
processes
Info or
knowledge
audit
Suggest
projects of
business
value
Show your
value:
What are
you doing?
What is the
effect?
How is it
important
to your
organization?
Monitor
advancement
over time
Develop
relationships
Broaden
your
experience
Expand
knowledge
in key areas
Become
the expert in
specialized
area(s)
Develop
expertise in
change
management
Tie activity
back to
business
values
How can
you help
the bottom
line?
Start small,
build on
successes
Define your
activities
Define your
organization’s
activities
Use pilot
projects
Define your
role(s)
Help define
others’ roles
Help define
workflows,
processes

Panel Discussion
• Steven Lastres, Moderator
Director of Library & Knowledge Management,
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
• Stephanie Barnes
– Stephanie.barnes@missingpuzzlepiececonsulting.ca
– 416-522-5126
– www.missingpuzzlepiececonsulting
• Connie Crosby
– conniecrosby@gmail.com
– 416-919-6719
– www.crosbygroup.ca
• For more info, visit: Law Firm KM www.lawfirmkm.com
#AALL13

Surrounded by Geniuses: Knowledge Management Learning From Other Industries

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