Preparing
for Conversations with Richard Cross
Organizational
Change: When All Work Is Knowledge Work
 Introduction
Richard Cross is a Xerox veteran whose
evolutionary career follows the path of Knowledge Management.
He has a first degree in politics and international relations.
He was sponsored by Xerox to complete an MSc in Organisation
Design and Development specializing in Organization Culture and
Change .
He then joined the
U.K. division of Xerox in 1982 in the area of Management Education
where he was responsible for first line Management Training.
and Management Assessment Centres. After experience in sales
operations within the UK company as a Personnel and Sales Training
Manager in 1987 Richard transferred to the Xerox International
Operation, covering Africa, Eastern Europe, and India, where
he was Human Resources and Quality Manager. This involved extensive
international travel as Richard worked closely with a newly established
joint venture in India called Modi Xerox and supported the HR
development of Operating Units in Kenya, Nigeria and Eastern
Europe. As the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Eastern European
economies opened up Richard became fully involved in the Human
Resource and Quality implications of the transition to a market
economy. He played a pioneering role in the investment expansion
case and change management issues as Xerox expanded into markets
as diverse as Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Ukraine
and Russia.
In 1991, Richard
was appointed to the Xerox Europe Quality Office and selected
and played a pivotal role in the team that developed the successful
application for the 1992 European Quality Award (the equivalent
of the Baldrige Award). In 1993 Richard then assumed responsibility
for Business Excellence the internal self-assessment and peer
review process that became the basis of what is now the world-wide
Xerox Management Model. He also had responsibility for benchmarking
on a pan-European level. Working with the then Chairman of Xerox
(UK), Richard supported a best practice example called Team C
written up in Fortune by Tom Stewart.
Richard then worked
as a small team in exporting the pioneering Xerox techniques
applied to recapture market share from the Japanese outside the
organisation. In this phase of his career he had significant
experience in supporting strategic Quality and change management
assignments with blue-chip multi-nationals including the first
five European Quality Award winners. He also continued his travels
working in all European countries as well as China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, the Philippines and US.
Richard now works
in the UK Practice of Xerox Global Services as Principle Consultant
Knowledge Management. Formally launched in October 2001 Xerox
Global Services focuses on Business Process Innovation, with
core competencies in knowledge sharing, and enterprise content
management. It will play a key role in delivering Xerox research
capabilities to the market and supporting the Xerox turnaround.
As founder of the Xerox Knowledge Club, Richard both consults
and conducts research-led effectiveness studies on the implementation
of KM in Europe. He is also on the founding committee of the
Special Interest Group on KM of the Strategic Planning Society.
Outside work Richard
is a ski fanatic and enjoys both winter and summer vacations
in his mountain retreat on the borders of France and Switzerland.
Richard has, since
inception in 1997, been on the editorial board of Knowledge Management
magazine, one of the original Knowledge Management publications
and an AOK Affiliate. Although eclectic and pragmatic in approach,
Richard is a keen advocate of the socio-tech approach to systems
and KM implementations.
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Background on KM at Xerox
For the fifth successive
year, Xerox Corporation has been recognized as a global winner
in the 2002 Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) by Teleos,
an independent knowledge management research company. Xerox has
been ranked among the world's top 10 most admired knowledge enterprises
since the award was created in 1998 and is part of MAKE's Hall
of Fame, along with other global organizations like Microsoft
and IBM.
Teleos recognised
Xerox as having a package of measures in place to boost organizational
knowledge including: its corporate culture supporting knowledge
best practices; managing enterprise capital to create value;
collaborative corporate knowledge sharing, and organizational
learning. "Xerox has a long history as a champion of managing
knowledge for competitive advantage," Teleos stated.
The 2002 Global
MAKE winners were chosen by an international panel of senior
executives and leading knowledge management experts. The panel
rated organizations against a framework of eight key knowledge
performance dimensions which are the visible drivers of competitive
advantage. Other organizations included in the MAKE list are
Accenture, BP, Buckman Laboratories, Clarica Life Insurance,
Ernst & Young, General Electric, Nokia, Schlumberger, Siemens
and Unilever.
Xerox's research,
experience and internal success in leveraging its organisational
knowledge have helped the company reduce costs and improve business
performance. This practical internal experience is made available
externally to customers through Xerox Global Services. Working
with customers, Xerox Global Services identifies ways to help
them benefit from improved knowledge and work practice management
and develops and implements tailored solutions to realise these
opportunities.
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Organizational Ethnography
By Richard Cross
The industry abounds
in well-documented stories of gigantic business-transforming
IT projects which have failed, and almost any business manager
has war stories of projects where hard work and hard cash have
both failed to provide adequate business solutions. One perspective
on this might be that there are fundamental issues about the
very technology itself and its fit with the social context within
which it is used in these organisations.
At Xerox Global
Services, the consultancy arm of Xerox, our emphasis is on studying
the 'knowledge ecology' within an organisation, the qualitative
real-life work practices that exist, not exclusively on quantitative
generalisations on cost-savings or formal processes. We use the
term "organisational ethnography" to describe the way
it is possible -- and useful -- to apply to organisations the
kind of methodologies used for studying tribes and cultures.
The goal of organisational
ethnography is to understand work from the workers' perspective
and the principles they use to get work done -- what we call
'practice over process.' We all know that there is a big difference
in what people are supposed to do in their jobs with what they
actually do. Practice over process aims to improve existing practices
by really understanding how work is done. The emphasis here is
on the social dimensions of work and the informal practices and
processes used as opposed to the ways in which formal job specifications,
documented processes and managerial overviews may assume that
work is done.
Nearly all companies
have at some time failed in the implementation of technology
because the real-life work practice and social side of the organisation
have been underestimated. One such example is the London Ambulance
Service (LAS) and its attempt to introduce a computer-aided dispatch
system called LASCAD. In the mid 1980s the LAS decided that a
new dispatch system was vital to maintain its three-minute dispatch
standard and 14-minute target for ambulance arrival. The aim
of the new computer-enabled system was to remove the inefficiencies
of the paper-based manual system, and voice-based radio or phone
mobilisation. It would identify and dispatch the most suitable
resource automatically.
When the new system
went live it promptly underwent massive failure at all levels,
including back-up. It was then switched off and manual working
reintroduced. The subsequent enquiry concluded that four years
would pass before a fully operational computer-aided dispatch
could be in place.
So what went wrong
and what can we learn from their mistakes? The formal inquiry
that followed determined that LAS failed to involve the stakeholders
of the system. With the new system, the ambulance staff were
no longer able to decide which ambulance to take or which crews
to assign. The control assistants were under increased pressure
because they entered the data on which the system based its decisions.
Personal contact between Central Ambulance Control staff and
the ambulance crews was eliminated by the move to computer communications.
This deteriorated staff-management relations, convincing the
staff that management was trying to marginalise them.
To be successful,
technologies must always be accommodated within some social context
and must always involve people right from the start. Project
managers must always be aware that there is a knowledge element
in even apparently simple tasks that requires collaboration between
humans, most of which will not be documented and are therefore
can be easily overlooked by technology developers.
Quite simply, there
is something very personal about knowledge and about how information
moves around an organisation. Each time knowledge changes hands
or is communicated it mutates and evolves. Any strategy or project
must take into account of this dynamic and understand how information
is shared and grows within a work community. The natural collusions
that occur and the implicit ways of explaining, learning and
understanding must be understood and valued if a project is to
succeed. Moving to this social based approach relies on the people
who are actually engaged in the practice to interact with as
opposed to be subject to the rationality and assumptions of an
implementation team.
Whilst the concept
of organisational ethnography may seem a bit 'blue-sky' to a
business person who likes to think of themselves as hard-nosed
and focused on the bottom line. Technology projects that can
respond to the informal and the implicit may help foster trust
and remove a great deal of the burden and barriers to deploying
technology. At Xerox we believe and the LAS example supports
this that it is more profitable to start by asking the
right questions than by imposing inappropriate solutions.
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How Organizations Can Build
Expertise Through Knowledge Sharing
By Richard Cross
Whether they admit
it or not, many people cling to the dictum that knowledge is
power. And yet, increasingly, we know that effective learning
comes about through a variety of informal channels centred on
knowledge sharing.
A project within
Xerox has shown one way to square this circle, and has taught
us some important lessons about the ways in which communities
build expertise through interaction.
Historically, Xerox
believed that the best way of maintaining its printers and copiers
was to ensure that every customer received the same, consistent
service. Accordingly, engineers were issued with comprehensive
workbooks that described mandated repair processes in step by
step detail.
The official policy
and belief was that engineers followed these processes rigorously.
However, when Xerox researchers started working closely with
communities of service engineers and once the engineers' initial
suspicions had been dispelled, they discovered that actual work
practices differed significantly from the theory. Engineers actually
kept two copies of documentation, the formal, issued one, coupled
with unofficial sets of notes, tips and shortcuts.
This additional,
rich information was either held privately by the engineer or
shared with immediate colleagues through conversation and war
stories. There was little motivation to share the material with
a wider community, partly because the update cycle for the formal,
paper-based documentation was lengthy and partly because experience
showed that when suggestions were submitted, the originator rarely
received any credit.
In order to overcome
these problems, and working closely with the field service community,
a process was developed that enabled this information to be shared
widely and quickly. After deployment of a Minitel pilot in France,
a PC and web-based system was developed that supports both digital
documentation and a database of tips from engineers around the
world.
Delivering the documentation
meant developing a laptop-based diagnostic system that supports
the extraction of data from copiers and printers and context-sensitive
rendering of information based on that material. Engineers found
that having a laptop had other benefits as well. Customers saw
them in a different light and put greater trust in a person using
a PC than in someone who kept having to consult a book.
But the most significant
benefits have come from the creation of the worldwide database
of tips. Designing the right process for gathering this information
was essential, and was achieved by having field engineers design
it themselves, rather than imposing it on them.
Anyone from field
service can create a tip and submit it for validation by product
specialists and 'tigers.' These validators talk with contributors
about their tips, both to improve them and help submitters to
learn from the conversation; they ensure the quality of tips
before publication, combine redundant tips, and remove those
that are out of date.
Two factors encourage
engineers to submit tips. The turnaround time is fast, with a
normal tip being processed in a matter of days. And the contributor's
name stays with the tip, ensuring community recognition and enhanced
reputation. There are anecdotes of prolific engineers being applauded
on appearing at meetings, and it appears that there is a correlation
between a person's job performance and the amount of knowledge
shared with peers. When asked if a monetary incentive would be
useful as well, a tiger said "such incentives would corrupt
the process."
The project is changing
the roles of individuals. Engineers now spend more time thinking
of new ways to diagnose broken machines and new ways to make
them more reliable. A specialist, who might have felt threatened
by the system, welcomed it saying: "We can spend more time
figuring out how to handle difficult problems, and less time
on repeating solutions we know about."
As well as improving
service quality, there has been a real financial payback. The
thousands of tips on the database act as a continual source of
information for service engineers, and the normal learning curve
observed as product familiarity grows, has been accelerated by
a third. This in turn has meant a reduction of 10 percent in
both time spent on service calls and spare parts used.
The project, known
internally as Eureka, has taught Xerox some valuable lessons.
First, it demonstrates the need to identify actual work practices
before redesigning any processes or implementing technology.
Secondly, it proves the value of developing systems in conjunction
with users, rather than developing systems and imposing them.
Finally, it illustrates the benefits that can be derived from
exploiting individual and community knowledge, and that the incentives
to share that knowledge can be intangible but still very real.
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