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T h e W a y A h e a d
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CREATING, MOVING, AND USING THE KNOWLEDGE WE NEED:
A MANDATE FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AT
INTERNATIONAL RELIEF
DON ROBISON
CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER
AUGUST 12, 2010
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Organization and Role Description
Organization Name: International Relief (fictional)
Type of Organization: International non-profit relief, development and advocacy agency working with
children, families, and communities to overcome poverty.
My Position. I am the new Chief Knowledge Officer of the organization. My salary is actually paid
through the donations of individuals and businesses which support my work.
Size of Organization: Based in the U.S., International Relief, boasts a home-staff of some 320 workers at
their Phoenix, AZ offices; and an international staff of over 1,500 working in 75 different countries.
Organizational Maturity. International Relief has grown steadily since its inception in 1955. It is
recognized worldwide for effective and sacrificial work with the poor. Workers are typically well-educated
and work together well. There is a strong and positive social and learning environment throughout the
organization.
Current Knowledge Management Activity. Led by young volunteers and staff in India, there are several
web-based communities of practice. A vocational training program near Amritsar, in the west of India,
trains software programmers. This group has created some custom applications that are used throughout
the organization: a web-based work area that stores documents, allows discussion threads, and facilitates
presentation.
Using their limited personal funds, workers in Pakistan planned and executed two-day meetings of workers
from several relief agencies to discuss the challenges of vocational training in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Sri Lanka. The attendees found the conferences so valuable (and encouraging) that the annual
conference has grown in three years from a meeting of 15 relief workers in Pakistan, to over 100 workers
from ten organizations who work throughout the region.
Existing Training Programs. International Relief operates two key training programs. Their traditional
orientation training program operates out of Phoenix, AZ and prospective field staff attend the program
prior to heading out to the field. This program is effective at transferring the organization‟s visions and
values, and for providing practical skills for cross-cultural relief work. The key trainers are experienced
field personnel who have a contagious passion for the work and great expertise. Students often say they
wish the initial training program were twice the length.
Field training is ineffective. Five paper-based correspondence courses are set up to train field staff in
specific areas. Although it is required that the field staff complete one course a year for the first five years,
less than 25% actually do. Feedback from students and other field staff rate these courses as “completely
irrelevant to our work.”
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Finances. International Relief operates solely off of the contributions of individuals and organizations.
The annual budget is just over $76 million. Many of the staff—both at home and on the field—are
volunteers. Remarkably, over 50% of the budget is devoted directly to relief, development, and advocacy.
Technological Infrastructure. Because of the widely dispersed nature of the work, the organization
required solar/satellite laptops for each field staff member. These laptops were purchased by the individual
staff member with an allowance provided for them and use different operating systems and web browsers.
Interestingly, over 97% of field personnel currently use Skype as their primary means of communication
and report reliable connectivity through their satellite connections, regardless of their physical location.
Main Bases of Operation:
The U.S. Home Office: 320 staff. These staff members are administrators, administrative support,
trainers, and spokespeople. Location: Phoenix, AZ.
o Additional 50 Recruiters and Representatives positioned in 25 U.S. urban areas
The International Office (London): 45 staff.
o Additional 15 Recruiters and Representatives positioned in 10 U.K. urban areas
Twelve key forward operating bases
o India (Supporting 35 teams representing 300 workers)
o Somalia (Supporting 18 teams representing 150 workers)
o Chad (Supporting 18 teams representing 135 workers)
o Sumatra (Supporting 15 teams representing 120 workers)
o Georgia (Supporting 10 teams representing 120 workers)
o Pakistan (Supporting 11 teams representing 135 workers)
o Iraq (Supporting 12 teams representing 145 workers)
o Caucasus (Supporting 9 teams representing 120 workers)
o Bolivia (Supporting 8 teams representing 135 workers)
o Mongolia (Supporting 12 teams representing 140 workers)
Problems that the entire organization would agree about:
Because of the de-centralized and widely disbursed nature of the organization, it is difficult for
newer field staff to benefit from the expertise of seasoned staff. And there are no reliable avenues
for that at this time.
Significant aspects of the work are similar in each location, but there is a sense that all efforts are
“first-time inventions.” People know that challenges have been met before, but they don‟t know
how to access lessons learned, or even what the challenges were.
People are excited to have satellite laptops. They have greatly improved morale and productivity,
but there is a daily sense of frustration over how the work is still isolated because of the lack of a
standard suite of desktop tools. Many have started saving documents to .pdf format for sharing, but
that leaves people frustrated when they want to make minor changes to existing documents and
cannot do it with their desktop tools.
Money is tight everywhere, and a dollar saved here or there may feed a starving child.
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The Way Ahead: The Future of Knowledge at International Relief
The poor of the world wait in breathless anticipation for International Relief to become truly
excellent at what we do. The work we have done to date has been remarkable, especially considering the
resources and people we have devoted to it, but hunger still kills 13,000 children a day and that figure is
climbing (World Vision, 2010). And, as we know from our daily work throughout the globe, hunger is just
one of the many faces of poverty. The purpose of this paper is not to present the grim status of world
poverty—though we all know it to be grim and have dedicated our lives to battling it. The purpose of this
paper is to present a rich strategic opportunity. We can significantly energize, unite and improve our
existing workforce, and perhaps facilitate innovative breakthroughs that will multiply the impact we can
have on our world.
In May 2010 our “Clean Water” well project in Cameroon was evaluated as a failure. We had
worked with the local people to dig new wells, but could not get them to believe that the water was cleaner
than the water they drank from the nearby polluted river. Apparently, there were animistic beliefs
confounding the issue that we underestimated. One jarring truth about this failure is that it was a repeat of
two failed well initiatives that we worked within 600 miles of the same location in a neighboring African
country six months earlier with the same cultural people group. We repeated the same failure three times
in six months without knowing.
The time has come for International Relief to develop a robust ability to
create, move, and use knowledge. It is time to benefit more broadly from what
we already know, and to create together the knowledge we need for the future.
Many of our people have demonstrated brilliance and creativity in overcoming the
challenges of their local situations, others have seen rich gains from solving
common problems as teams or in groups, still others have shown that distance and
separation can be bridged through creative use of money and technology. We
need to dramatically improve our knowledge management capacity so that we are
intentionally cultivating the knowledge and innovation we need to effectively meet
the challenges of a world in poverty. This paper presents a vision for
International Relief as a robust knowledge organization and presents a road map
for accomplishing the vision. It will also describe our current state presenting the
current needs and lost opportunities. The paper will conclude with a discussion of
the benefits of the proposed knowledge organization.
Many would ask, “Why now? We have been working with the poor for over fifty years, we‟ve done
well, why should we think about knowledge management now?” The first quick answer is that this is not
the beginning of knowledge management in International Relief, we have been intentionally growing and
innovating, teaching, mentoring, and sharing since our birth as an organization. Knowledge management is
not a new initiative at all. Second, not only have we been managing our knowledge since our birth as an
organization, but every organization does this in one way of another or they cease to exist (Davenport &
Prusak, 1998). Cultivating the expertise and knowledge to accomplish the things we have to accomplish is
fundamental to our organizational life, it is our breath.
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But, the third answer is the most compelling. We must now intentionally and significantly improve
our ability to grow, move, and use knowledge because of where our success has placed us: we are now
1,800 workers in 75 different countries around the globe. In that position we are poised to make a huge
impact on world poverty, but only if we are up to the challenge: only if our teams work synergistically, and
only if each of us is the best he or she can be. This means we
have to take every opportunity to intelligently confront
challenges, we have to think together in teams and groups, we
must innovate, and we must move the wisdom and expertise
that resides in pockets out into the peripheral regions of our
workforce. Further, advances in information communications
technology afford us opportunities that were not available
earlier. One great answer to the question, “Why now?” is the
technology that would make a revolutionary leap in
collaborative organizational learning possible is available to
us inexpensively.
A Vision for Knowledge Growth, Movement and Use at International Relief
We envision an organization where collaboration, synergy, innovation, wisdom, expertise, learning,
best practice, and communities of practice are the norm of our everyday work together. We envision an
organization where the challenges of poverty as they are addressed in one location inform the actions taken
by teams in others; where the hard lessons learned are shared freely and are accessible and valued by all.
We want to repeat effective practices as locally appropriate, improve ineffective practices, and
collaboratively develop breakthrough processes. Through modeling, proximity, interaction, and mentoring,
the wisdom and expertise of accomplished staff will be consistently transferred to new staff. Field workers
will have access to learning opportunities they value and the organization needs. International Relief
workers will see their work as part of a whole system of relief that includes the labors of many national and
international colleagues. Therefore, we will freely share and create forums for sharing that will result in
joint solutions to difficult shared challenges. We will value knowledge and facilitate its growth, movement,
and use throughout and around our work all over the world.
Anemic Knowledge Flow: Understanding The Current State
We have bright and innovative people doing amazing things around the world. The problem is, they
generally operate their own. As an organization we have not developed infrastructure, systems or good
opportunities for the knowledge of our people to flow or be of benefit to others. The following bullets
describe what we lose with our current systems and approaches:
Our teams reinvent solutions to the same problems on a daily basis. Our current goal is to get
qualified workers on the ground in the right places. The issue is that we have inadequate
communications and knowledge structures, so our teams cannot benefit from the work that has gone
before and they must invent new solutions to common problems every day. We should have
systems that allow teams to access the lessons learned by other teams.
Our success has put us in a unique
position: we have 1,800 workers in 75
countries… We are poised to make a
huge impact on poverty, but only if we
become great at growing, moving, and
using the knowledge we need.
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Though we have the expertise to handle most of our field challenges, no one knows where that
expertise resides. Over 65% of our field staff have over 10 years of experience. We know how
to do a lot of things, we boast experts in many domains. The problem is, we do not systematically
identify who those experts are. We do not know how to get to them.
Our junior people are operating in a vacuum and do not
routinely benefit from the experience and wisdom of our
senior and experienced people. We have recruited great
people, but they operate in twos and threes, and with our
current systems, they operate almost completely
independently. It is very difficult for a field worker to get
relevant advice or direction outside of his or her area of
operation.
The extreme wisdom, experience and contagious passion of our home office trainers is under-
utilized. Our home preparation training is exceptional, and field personnel would benefit from
continued contact with the home trainers, but there are currently no points of contact for that. The
wisdom and experience of our home trainers must be more creatively and effectively mined.
There is little creative friction or synergy in our organization. Problems are solved at the local
level almost all the time. Because our teams are so widely distributed, they are practically on their
own. But, the problems faced in each of our locations could help inform the solutions we use at all.
We must create venues for practitioners to meet, argue, dream, and invent together.
We have consistent identified knowledge/skill gaps in the field that our current training
programs do not address. Our field training is simply “broken.‟ This is a fact that the home office
and field representatives agree upon. Our field training must be attractive and relevant to our
people. We have a bright group and continuous learning is a core value for many of them. There are
many potential gains if we meet our people there.
Our staff is increasingly frustrated by the lack of a single compatible desktop suite. Documents created by one team are inaccessible by teams working nearby. Existing structured
knowledge in the form of documents is therefore suspended in a no-use zone because of software
incompatibility. We must develop a standard desktop productivity package to allow this basic
sharing of document types
.
We do not routinely work with local agencies engaged in similar work to achieve shared
solutions to problems. Even though the successful accomplishment of many of our local missions
would be accommodated through an active collaboration with others working in the area, we do not
have common practices or systems for sharing with them. We need to cultivate the value and build
the processes and systems to routinely do this in all our areas of operation.
In summary, we are not accomplishing all that we can as effectively as we can because of an
“anemic” knowledge flow. Our people are sometimes frustrated by barriers that appear to be easy to
overcome, but which nevertheless continue to defeat progress. The things we have discovered in parts of
our organization are not readily available in other parts of the organization that need them. It is time to
significantly improve the way we handle knowledge at International Relief.
Our junior people do not routinely
benefit from the experience or
wisdom of our experienced people.
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Mapping the Way to a Healthy Knowledge Ecosystem
We are proposing two courses of action at this time. We propose that we adopt the full system of
systems approach depicted in Figure 1 as our long range goal for organizational knowledge management,
and secondly it is proposed that we approve the three phase implementation plan depicted in Figure 2 below.
The proposed system will work as a sort of “knowledge ecosystem.”
Figure 1. A representation of the functions and components of a mature knowledge management system
for International Relief. This diagram depicts both systems and processes.
As mentioned, for the short term, we are proposing that Phase 1 of the knowledge management roll-
out plan (depicted in Figure 2) be implemented in the next twelve months. Upon successful
implementation of Phase 1, we should regroup, publicize tangible victories, and proceed to Phase 2 of the
plan. Full implementation of all three phases should be completed by August 2013.
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Figure 2: The three phases of the implementation plan.
Three Phase Implementation Plan. The first phase of implementation will focus on areas where
our innovators have already developed successful prototypes or where we already have a clear consensus
regarding the organizational need. Phases 2 and 3 involve the implementation of new initiatives. While
these knowledge management approaches have been proven in various applications, their implementation
will involve dedicated labor and careful roll-out. This paper discusses Phase 1 implementation, leaving the
implementation of Phases 2 and 3 to the outline form presented in Figure 2.
Phase 1. Phase 1 implementation will involve the creation of an “Innovation Team” responsible for
planning the adoption of the knowledge initiatives, development and enterprise release of two significant
learning or knowledge systems, the establishment of a standard office desktop suite of software, and the
encouragement of two approaches that our people have shown to be effective. The proposed budget for
Phase 1 is attached as Appendix A. Each step will be led by a responsible organizational office, our
proposals for which office should lead each step is also described in Appendix A. A brief summary of the
substance of the Phase 1 plan:
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The Innovation Team. The first step is to recruit the “Innovation Team,” this is the group drawn
from all levels of the organization that will design and implement the roll-out. This team should
include key innovators who have already fielded knowledge management solutions, and include
influential representatives from communities of practice. This is not a publicity committee, this is
an „innovation adoption‟ group. Their task is to plan the best ways for our knowledge management
initiatives to fit into our organization.
Implement Standard Office and Collaborative Systems. The next two steps of Phase 1 are 1)
implementing the Open Office desktop suite for office functions, and 2) the adoption of Google
Groups as International Relief‟s standard online collaboration tool. These two steps will require
minimal cost but considerable computer support labor to download and install software. The U.S.
Home Office will be responsible for policy and roll-out communications.
Reengineer Field Training. The most significant enterprise labor and addition of Phase 1 will be
the reengineering of our Field Training and Education process. The U.S. Training Organization
will be responsible for this initiative. The following task sequence is anticipated:
o The U.S. Training Organization will conduct a
Needs Assessment to identify the performance
and knowledge gaps in the field. This Needs
Assessment will include extensive interaction
with field personnel. Needs will be identified
and prioritized in terms of “costs to mission
accomplishment.” Conclusions regarding needs
will be communicated back to field leaders for validation.
o After performance or knowledge needs (or desires) are objectively identified, the U.S.
Training Organization will identify and acquire or design and develop appropriate
interventions.
o Concurrently, the software programming school in Amritsar, India will modify the latest
version of Moodle in anticipation of use as a collaborative distance learning system.
o The U.S. Information Technology Office will conduct a survey of existing systems and
describe the performance characteristics and limitations of our current network and field-
available bandwidth.
By any objective measure, our
current field training system is badly
broken.
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Encourage Communities of Practice and Establish a Standard Two-way Communications
Medium. The last two implementation steps of Phase 1 involve taking successful local initiatives
and launching them enterprise-wide.
o First, Skype will be established by policy and by publicity as the official two-way
communications medium. Innovative or effective user stories will be regularly presented in
the monthly internal newsletter.
o Second, a “Group-It” seed fund will be established. The goal here is to encourage local
community of practice conferences such as the ones successfully conducted in Pakistan.
What Could We Gain?
The potential “wins” of this implementation plan are enormous, far outweighing the relatively
modest investment of labor and resources required by this plan. The general gains from implementation of
this entire plan will affect performance and personal engagement throughout International Relief. The
specific gains we may realize from Phase 1 implementation are clear:
Implementing Open Office as a standard desktop suite will yield the following gains:
o The substantial current barrier created by different document formats will be erased,
allowing for wide-spread structured knowledge sharing and reuse.
o Costs associated with Open Office are minimal.
o The Open Office suite is interchangeable.
Adopting Google Groups as our standard collaborative web groupware will yield the following
gains:
o Widely separated workgroups will be able to securely collaborate. Group documents and
contact information will be easily organized.
o Google Groups is offered to non-profit organizations at no cost.
o Our workforce already sees the web as the chief communications and collaboration
medium, this move builds on that existing value.
Conducting a needs assessment in the field and then acquiring or developing necessary content
with extensive field input will result in relevant offerings. This is an area that all of us agree is
in need of reengineering.
o Specifically, this could result in significantly improved field performance in our areas of
greatest need.
o This should reduce the frustration of our bright recruits who value learning as a lifelong
process.
o Having a good collaborative distance learning system like Moodle will dramatically
improve our ability to train at a distance. Using our own programmers, we can develop a
tailored application of this shareware at minimal cost.
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Adopting Skype as the standard two-way communications medium is a logical step. Formally
institutionalizing Skype as the organization‟s medium of choice validates the current use of this
powerful tool and also encourages the increased use of it. Providing user stories should increase
its innovative use.
Finally, the local community of practice conferences in Pakistan were huge successes. While
there is a bit of an art in making such meetings work, we want to encourage a lot more of this
sort of collaborative face-to-face meeting. This initiative also emphasizes a major cultural value
we want to push: we are in this challenge with others who help us think more holistically, who
help us develop solutions that are more powerful than if we develop them alone.
Conclusion
Organizations live or die by what they
know, by how they innovate and grow, and by how
they transfer and use the knowledge they have
(Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Gery, 1991; Rossett &
Schafer, 2007). Much of the critical expertise and
knowledge of an organization resides in the tacit
knowledge of its leaders and experts (Davenport &
Prusak, 1998; Wiig, 2000). Knowledge is
sometimes considered a “thing” but it is really more
fluid than that; as it exists within the minds and
hearts of experts it is often inexplicable (Davenport
& Prusak, 1998). Managing knowledge, then, is
difficult to do well, but the potential gains are enormous.
International Relief stands at a critical point in our organizational life, we have enjoyed significant
success with our work with the poor throughout the world, but that very success has positioned us in a place
where must improve our knowledge management structures and processes. The plan proposed here
encourages the growth of knowledge in every cell of our organization, it offers our people rapid gains and
the promise of significant long-term progress in areas they value. The plan recognizes the value of gaining
buy-in from leadership and rank-and-file members and proposes face-to-face, process, and technological
knowledge growth interventions. The world anxiously waits for us to get truly excellent at what we do: the
road to excellence is paved by improving our ability to grow, move and use the knowledge we need to solve
the problems presented by poverty.
Managing knowledge is difficult to do well, but
the potential gains are enormous.
Our success has put us in a position to accomplish
great things, but only if we become great at
managing the knowledge we need.
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References
Davenport, T.H. & Prusak, L. (1998). Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What
They Know. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Gery, G.J. (1991). Electronic Performance Support Systems. Tolland, MA: Gery Performance
Press.
Rossett, A., and Schafer, L. (2007). Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From
Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Wiig, K.M. (2000). Knowledge management: An emerging discipline rooted in a long history.
In C. Depres & D. Chauvel (Eds.), Knowledge Horizons: The Present and the Promise of
Knowledge Management, (pp. 3-26). Boston, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
World Vision. (2010). Retrieved August 10, 2003 from http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/
pages/search-for-a-child?open&campaign=11935136&cmp=KNC-11935136&ttcode=hunger
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Appendix A: The Proposed Phase 1 Knowledge Management Project Budget
and Organizational Responsibilities Implementation Step Responsible Proposed Budget Note
Innovation Team, KM
Project Roll-out
CKO, Assistant
Director U.S. Office
$15 K
Implement Open Office as
standard office suite
CIO $10K Significant labor for CIO shop, little additional
cost
Implement Google Groups
as standard online
collaboration tool
Assistant Director,
U.S. Office
-- Cost neutral
Identify field needs,
acquire or design relevant
valuable training
U.S. Training Dept $260K Could involve partnering with Universities or
other training venues, or significant design and
development.
Establish Skype as two-
way communications
medium
Assistant Director,
U.S. Office, CIO
-- Cost neutral
Actively encourage local
community of practice
conferences
CFO, Regional Mgrs. $90K These funds should be used as “seed” to
encourage low-cost conferences like the
Pakistan conference. Should implement other
interventions to spotlight the approach and
availability of financial assistance.
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International Relief