“Tribal Knowledge Sharing” interview

Which employees have access to the Tribal Knowledge Sharing tool and which group of employees use it the most?

Everyone has access yet not everyone knows about the tools, especially people who don’t spend much time in front of a computer such as installers and technicians. Most of the content available today is focused on order entry so the most frequent users are call center and front office personnel. We are working to dramatically change that in the coming months with much more content and webinar sessions focused on topics of interest to other groups.

The long-term plan is not just about helping people get immediate access to content that helps them in their current jobs. It’s really about making it really easy for anyone to learn about anything, including the tasks that other people do. This helps each of us gain a broader understanding of how complete processes [not just the part directly in our hands] get down and ultimately impact the business. When you know more about the job of someone who is “upstream” or “downstream” from your responsibilities, it’s much easier to have dialogue about improving the bigger picture.

Having easy access to everything also improves career growth through cross-training, including self-initiated learning to help you prepare for your next job opportunity. Showing up at an interview saying, “I have dug into the knowledge resources about this job over the past few weeks” goes a lot further than showing up and saying, “So what do you guys do over here anyway?”

What are the most frequently used resources?

The most recent modules tend to be the most frequently used regardless of content. Most of the content is “disposable” in the sense that it has a limited shelf-life. Given the constantly changing nature of our business, most of the content we learned a year ago is no longer relevant. It’s as if we should constantly ask our brains, “What have you learned for me lately?”

Since the web-based training module contributors are anonymous, how do you recognize the employees who make excellent contributions?

We chose to make the posts anonymous to encourage peers to evaluate content on its own merit rather than voting for friends or dismissing the contributions of “the others” [to borrow a term from Lost].

In the upper right corner of the page, the users who have the highest rankings are featured in what, over, time becomes a king of the hill bragging right, as fleeting as that may be. While getting recognized for highly-valued contributions is great, most people who add to the mix do it out of a desire to help their peers and the company. We often tend to forget that most of us are motivated to learn and grow not just for our own personal gain, but to be part of something larger that benefits the greater good.

How do you address vandalism [profanity, inappropriate humor, flaming, etc.] in the knowledge sharing system?

It’s never happened so far. All new posts are reviewed by an approver before they show on the main page. Of the few that don’t make it, most are duplicate posts [a bug we had to fix in the system]. Once a post is public, any user can flag it for review which immediately pulls that post out of circulation for an approver to scrutinize more thoroughly. While flagging is also rare, the commitment of users to keep the information accurate and valuable is what makes the tool work.

Aren’t you afraid that people will post misinformation that will encourage others to do the wrong things?

When we described the concept of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing to an executive at another large company, he was outraged by the potential of a tool like this for spreading rumors, lies, “shortcuts” and misinformation, especially at the level of front-line employees. We asked, “Isn’t is scary that the same people you trust to talk with your customers you don’t trust to talk with one another?”

Human beings are social creatures and arguably, we learn most of what we know from casual conversations. Training classes, books, videos, and similar methods are also useful, of course. At the same time, having the chance to think, verbalize our thoughts and get social feedback is an important part of internalizing knowledge rather than passively consuming information. All of this happens in what we call “six feet of separation” meaning that most of our questions go to people in the immediate physical vicinity. If I have to get up and find someone to ask a question, it’s because I think that the people immediately around me can’t give me a “good enough” answer. The truth is, most of the time, a “good enough” answer is right there in my peers.

Doesn’t this mean that subject matter experts and trainers get pushed to the side when any one can create and publish their own content?

The truth is, there is no such thing as a “subject matter expert” or “trainer.” Both of these labels represent a relationship based on trust, and trust changes over time.

As soon as the training session, meeting or rally are over, people talk to one another in the hallways, breakrooms, smoking areas, etc. and ask questions like, “What did you think about that? Do you agree? Do these people know what they are talking about?” In other words, people are always creating and sharing content with one another and evaluating the trustworthiness of everything they hear. The difference is, with tools that encourage sharing ideas and lessons with a larger audience, more people can benefit, evaluate and weigh in. Plus, our job should be to help everyone contribute to the business goals, not to protect the special status of a few people who supposedly are never wrong.

Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” We wonder if in the future, everyone will be an expert for 15 minutes.

Are there any key strategies when launching this training approach to ensure its success?

We are always “launching” these types of tools and don’t see that process as ever being finished. Like a lot of Web2.0 start-ups, we are perpetually in “beta” mode and figuring thing out as we go along.

One of our most important early lessons learned is that this type of approach is not something you can pull of with “top-down” mandates. People have to want to use tools like these for them to take off. The best way to get momentum is to provide a very intuitive interface and identify highly-motivated early adopters who contribute strong content in the beginning to get the ball rolling.

We used a low-tech version of social network analysis to identify trusted resources in the division, the people who tend to get the most questions from others. We found that these “hubs” in the social network didn’t necessarily have any special titles or formal status; they just had reputations for being approachable, knowledgeable and helpful. It turns out that most of these “go to” people are stressed by their popularity and often frustrated by answering the same questions over and over. When we find people in that situation, we say, “What if you could answer these questions once in about 5 minutes, direct other people to your answer, help them find other answers that they might have, and still get all the credit for your genius?” Most people say, “Where do I sign up?”

This entry was posted on December 8, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under work, user-created content, learning theory, collective intelligence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.