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Expertise Locator
Systems: People Driven v. Data Driven
Garry Cullen has
worked with global property company, Lend Lease for the past
18 years. Over the last four years he has worked in the knowledge
management arena focusing exclusively on the ikonnect initiative.
In that time, Garry as part of the global team providing the
service, have worked tirelessly to grow it from 50 Garry's educational background is in engineering and business with a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) and Master of Business Administration (Executive), both from the University of New South Wales. These have allowed him to combine both a business and construction perspective to the various projects he has been involved with . Prior to joining the global knowledge sharing team, Garry has worked on a number of varied non-construction projects such as Lend Lease's Olympic Hospitality programme during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and the "Excalibur" process re-engineering project.Construction projects where Garry was involved include the Harry Seidler designed "Capita Centre" Office building in Sydney and the Greensborough Plaza Shopping Centre in Melbourne. Dr. Melissie Rumizen,
author of The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management ,
began her career as a German and Russian linguist in the United
States Army. During her 10 years in the Army she had a variety
of assignments, including w Upon leaving the Army she became an education specialist at an Army training school, where her duties included competency testing and the design of correspondence courses. She then moved to the National Security Agency (NSA). Initially, she was assigned to the language-testing branch. After this project ended she transferred to the corporate total quality management office where she introduced benchmarking to NSA. In late 1995 she attended a conference on knowledge management where she and a colleague became convinced that knowledge management was an imperative for NSA. As a team, the two spearheaded an effort to have KM adopted as a strategic goal. When the goal was adopted, the team turned its attention to helping determine the first steps for implementation. In 1998, Melissie joined Buckman Laboratories where her duties as knowledge strategist catapulted her into prominence as a knowledge management expert. Earlier this year Melissie left Buckman to take up similar responsibilities at SAIC. For those who are looking for practical ideas that provide enough detail to help them implement similar programs or strategies, this one's for you! A conversation between Melissie Rumizen and Garry Cullen began during a recent AOK Dialogue and continued back channel. Jerry Ash, however, was kept in the loop and the conversation led to a major case report in the June issue of Inside Knowledge Magazine which is a case-based magazine. A PDF of the magazine layout, which includes supporting graphics, can be downloaded below. Or the original text can be read further down this page. The most valuable sharing can be found in a flow chart originally published in the IK report and can be viewed online or enlarged as an AOK PDF. The process is not proprietary even though supporting software is under development and will be trademarked. Please do your homework. Read/study all this material and then join in the conversation with Garry Cullen and Melissie Rumizen and learn how people-based expertise locator processes outperform database-driven systems. Then, if you think it's the right solution for you, you'll have the basics on which to build.
Garry Cullen was taking a break from his job as 'matchmaker' for knowledge seekers and sharers in the Australia office of Lend Lease Corporation when he checked into the Association of Knowledgework's K-Net discussion group. There he spotted an outside knowledge seeker, KM maven Melissie Rumizen, saying:
Naturally Garry responded, because that's the way knowledge sharing begins at ikonnect, the knowledge sharing system available to nearly 10,000 Lend Lease employees and the employees of countless clients on six continents. It is probably the most unique and effective system in the world and it is not database driven. Its fundamental principles are based on Lend Lease experience and objectives:
Garry didn't need to contact a third party to match Melissie to the expert. He was the expert and-in Melissie's own words-he "bowled her over." Although the ikonnect logo is trademarked and the supporting software has a patent pending, the business process itself is a human process and not proprietary. With regional head offices in Sydney, New York and London, Lend Lease not only uses it but shares it freely with its clients. In this report, it is shared with IK readers in enough detail to provide the basis for developing a similar system. The solution is a great deal simpler than the problem and can be home grown at a fraction of the cost and many times the value of a data-based system. The Issues Common complaints against data-based expertise locator systems include the fact that they generally only document internal knowledge; capturing all of any person's experience or knowledge is impossible; people prefer to search human networks first; the scope of the data is limited by the amount of time an employee can or will devote to inputting it; all expertise locator systems are supply driven; and the supply (known knowledge) doesn't fit the demand (the specific question a colleague has to ask). Melissie Rumizen, who recently moved from Buckman Labs to SAIC, is an expertise locator skeptic. She voices each of these complaints:
"Expertise locators, as with other databases, are too often based on the assumption that all knowledge or experience needed can be found internally," Rumizen says. "That claim is impossible to prove or disprove, but we do know that most people rely on their own personal experiences in searching for people with answers which often reaches beyond the bounds of the organisation."
"Databases generally provide structured information such as names, photos, titles, brief job descriptions, previous work experience and contact information. Unstructured information can include a person's likes and dislikes or anything else a person feels relevant. "However, the data is limited due to the time it takes an employee to enter the information; and, at best an employee profile cannot cover the sum total of anyone's experience and expertise or match it to the unknown problems that may drive a future question. Compounding the problem, keeping such an inadequate database current is near to impossible."
"While stories that illustrate miraculous connections abound," Rumizen says, "I'd prefer to focus on the types of knowledge needed and how best to provide it. For example, in a consulting firm knowledge, documentation and contacts for previous projects are critical. What knowledge is needed on a routine basis? What knowledge would provide a high payoff? What knowledge is most critical to the organization's key capabilities and strategy? Perhaps the best way to provide that knowledge is through multiple strategies to include communities of practice, project databases and other ways to link expertise.
While the expertise locator may offer a possible source, Rumizen says "no one likes to make the dreaded salesman's cold call to someone they do not know." People prefer to contact people they know or who are known to be approachable. In Knowing What We Know: Knowledge Creation and Sharing Within Social Networks, researchers Rob Cross, Andrew Parker, Laurence Prusak and Stephen P. Borgatti found that despite easy access to a world class knowledge management system and other accessible information sources, 85 percent of the managers in the study reported using personal networks, not databases, for obtaining the information that had an impact on the success of a project. Four attributes of these personal relationships were found which promote effective learning:
Lend Lease Situation Lend Lease never bought software. Nor did it develop its own version of a yellow pages-style database. But it knew it had to find an alternative. When Lend Lease first recognized it had a knowledge management problem, the company was a leading real estate services business with a business portfolio covering project management, construction development and management services for commercial accounts that had been developed during nearly 50 years. Like most problem-solving companies, Lend Lease had several document depositories where content went quickly out of date; people were not submitting new content and preferred to use their own networks for the latest knowledge rather than downloading the documents. Many of the authors of the original documents were leaving the company and it was difficult to find new owners responsible for managing it. Frustrations with these issues, and a knowledge-seeking experience by Lend Lease Asia Pacific CEO Ross Taylor, led to the big idea. "I was looking to engage a management consultancy to help me with a key piece of work on the Microelectronics Industry," Taylor recalls, "so I invited three leading management consultancies to prepare a proposal. Two came back with two-inch thick proposals but the third said 'We have a guy in Taiwan who has just spent six months working on this exact topic; why don't you give him a call and discuss your needs before we do anything?' Once I had his name I spent 30 minutes on the phone with him and learned all I needed to know. After that I thought, gee, we don't need databases; we just need a service that facilitates exactly what I had just done!" The idea led to the ikonnect service at a time when Lend Lease had grown into a diverse, complex and widely distributed enterprise. Today Lend Lease is a network of companies operating in 40 countries. Bovis Lend Lease is the largest of the companies, providing project management and construction services worldwide. In addition, other companies provide a variety of diverse services on a regional basis. For example, in the Asia Pacific region, Delfin Lend Lease focuses on the development of large integrated residential communities, incorporating retail, residential, office, infrastructure and community facilities. In Europe, the major focus is on a number of sectors including hospitals, the defence sector and urban regeneration. In the US, Actus Lend Lease develops military homes and communities for the Department of Defense. The Genesis "When we were developing the concept of ikonnect," Garry Cullen, facilitator for the Asia Pacific, says, "we looked high and wide and did not find much published on facilitated expertise systems. We did look very closely at the product supplied by Ask Me, but felt that system lacked some of the key elements we felt were needed for success, particularly human facilitators. In 2001 a six-month pilot was launched in Bovis Lend Lease to establish whether the concept could build credibility. A group of 150 senior managers worldwide and one facilitator in each of the three regions were chosen for the test. If the pilot project could earn support from this management group, the CEO reasoned, the rest of the company's employees would buy in. "We developed the service and the tools as we worked answering questions," Cullen recalls. The quality and quantity of questions handled during the test period and the support shown by the group of managers led the CEO to commit funds for the service to expand to the rest of Bovis and ultimately to the rest of Lend Lease. Today all Lend Lease employees and many of the employees of Lend Lease clients are involved in the system. There are four full-time facilitators and one part-time. To date more than 3,000 users have logged 12,000 questions and answers and a limitless supply of success stories. The Process The best way to understand the process is to follow the flow chart presented in this report or the more detailed chart or download the PDF version of the chart and enlarge it for better viewing. Rather than attempt to capture all organizational knowledge in a single database, the ikonnect system starts on the other end-with the questions, which abandons the impossible scope of data collection in search of a question and starts with the question itself and progresses through a set of organized steps. Here is a simplified summary: 1. Ask a Question "Most people think their personal networks are better than they really are," Cullen says. The 'Name Game' was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and is intended to help people understand the limitations of their own networks and thus compare this to the power of ikonnect's Lend Lease wide network. The result is self concluding and thus very effective, Cullen says. 2. Receive the
Question "The actual question is usually completely different to the original question submitted by the person," Cullen says. Why? "Because once we understand the context of the question, it can nearly always be made broader or narrower to better meet the real needs of the person asking." If it's a new user, the facilitator captures the user's information. If the user has used the system before, the facilitator only needs to record the details of the seek. 3. Find Sharers When those methods don't produce a sharer, the facilitator can seek help from facilitators in other regions or use a regional 'Request For Knowledge (RFK)' to put out a general appeal to everyone in the organization. If the search for a sharer fails, the facilitator advises the seeker that sharers were not found. Even this is valuable to Lend Lease as the seeker could be a future sharer on that subject and the seeker now knows to stop looking internally and engage a consultant to assist. If sharers are found, the facilitator continues to do the seeker's leg work. 4. Validate Sharers 5. Arrange the
Connection 6. Seeker Makes
Contact Note: Maximum time elapsed at this stage: seven days 7. Resolve and
Capture But the work is not done. If the case is a good story, then the facilitator follows up with the seeker for a quote and details about the results of the share. Stories are published on the Lend Lease intranet called "the Hive," published together with RFKs, used in the ikonnect newsletter or as a 'WOW story' to share the lessons learned from the case with everyone in the organization and clients to build further credibility for the programme. Like most KM programmes, an ongoing healthy communications plan is fundamental to the sustainability of the service. Determining the Value Added Garry Cullen's response was impressive, but Melissie Rumizen's original question centered around her point that she had never found anyone who could tell her what real value an expertise locator had delivered-cost compared to benefit. As in many knowledge management initiatives, giving a definitive answer was not easy. "I am assuming that you mean a hard dollar return where there is a statement that we spent X dollars on our expertise location system and it provided a Y dollars return (and Y is a lot greater than X)," Cullen assumed. But he stressed that ikonnect was different from a software expertise location system because:
Using these principles, the system has provided useful answers to more than 12,000 questions from its employees by putting them in touch with other employees who are willing to share their knowledge. All of these questions and answers have been logged by the facilitators so that facilitators can better make connections in the future. This data also allows ikonnect staff to show usage trends and growth in networks through SNA developed tools. Surveys have been run that clearly indicate the ikonnect service delivered value in excess of cost. There are many stories where someone used ikonnect and saved a client $500,000 (see sidebar story "Fire Dampening"). "However," Cullen admits, "we have yet to crack the holy 'we spent X but delivered Y value statement,' and we are probably never going to be able to do so." Why? If you save time it doesn't necessarily save money-time has a way of getting filled by some other activity and therefore no money is 'saved.' And, Cullen says, "in a service-based business there are too many inputs that go into creating an output. Proving a causal link between one particular input like ikonnect and an output is impossible. However, there appears to be no doubt in the Lend Lease management suite that ikonnect has solved the problem CEO Ross Taylor originally saw. In a company that has cut over 20 percent from the overheads of its several subsidiary companies in the last three years, the ikonnect programme has continued to receive increased funding from senior managers. Regardless of the lack of hard evidence, it is obvious that the ikonnect service is seen as providing added value. Conclusion Many companies have spent large sums on data-based expertise locator systems-on the software, the data input and the staff. Some organizations have tried repeatedly because it is critical for knowledge-based enterprises to know what they know and what their employees know. If truth be told, all attempts have resulted in poor results or failure because data-based systems to date are supply driven and do not fit the needs or the organization and its people. Lend Lease has pioneered an alternative too innovative to be ignored. The most powerful part of the resulting knowledge database is the stories. See the sidebars for a few examples. To engage in a conversation with Garry Cullen and Melissie Rumizen on expertise locator technology and the Lend Lease ikonnect experience, join the Association of Knowledgework, and get ready for a two-week email and online STAR Series Dialogue in July with guest moderators Garry Cullen and Melissie Rumizen. Then in August, return to the STAR Series for a dialogue with Rob Cross on social network analysis and knowledge networks. Sidebar: Fire Dampening Snowball Effect In Australia, a Bovis Lend Lease director sought the help of two experienced construction industry colleagues, who together had 50 years experience, to assist with an initiative involving recurring defects that plagued clients. One problem involved fire dampers which are provided inside ductwork to automatically block off air flow when temperatures indicate the presence of a fire, thereby blocking off distribution of dangerous smoke inside the ductwork. The problem was that fire dampers must be installed properly and inspected routinely to ensure they continue to protect. The seekers decided to search for an alternative and contacted ikonnect to ask about other methods used elsewhere around the globe. A sharer in the New York office, provided several alternatives including a product by 3M called "FireMaster" Duct is a fire-resisting fabric. This product was not available in Australia and thus was not known by the seekers. They followed up with the manufacturer and discovered the manufacturer had considered exporting it to Australia but didn't think there was any demand. Clearly the seekers were about to change that. Meanwhile, another employee of Bovis Lend Lease in Sydney was about to send out a tender package he had prepared to replace A$850 thousand worth of fire dampers for a project in Sydney. He had heard of ikonnect having used it for another question only two weeks earlier and decided to contact ikonnect to see if anyone had any knowledge about fire dampers. Ironically, he knew the other seeker and had passed him in the corridor that very morning! He learned from ikonnect about the original seeker's recent discovery and quickly contacted him. Through a series of connections, an official of the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, who had authority to grant dispensation to the Australian Standard, visited the site and agreed the dampers would not need replacing at all, which reduced the cost of the work by A$500 thousand. Sidebar: Sharer Becomes Seeker The ikonnect team uses a Request for Knowledge (RFK) system when it is faced with a 'needle in a haystack' problem. RFKs are distributed by email to all employees in the Lend Lease and usually contain a small fraction of the questions received in a typical week. A senior consultant with Bovis Lend Lease, the largest subsidiary company in the Land Lease family, opened up an email containing an ikonnect RFK. With 30 years of experience on all three continents, he thought surely there would be a question he could help with. One of the questions
was about a particular brand of door imported from Italy. That
aroused his interest because he was in the middle of reviewing
a design for client KPMG's Sydney office that included a specification
for the same brand door. Alarm bells went off in the potential sharer's head and he advised his client of the issue. A representative of KPMG called a meeting with the architect demanding that the door supplier be changed. The potential sharer's thoughts: "ikonnect is not just useful, it is essential. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience in the company which is accessible through the system. It's rapidly becoming one of the tools of our trade and the more people use it, the better it will become." Sidebar: ikonnect the Differentiator A large construction and renovation program resulting from a court-mandated response to a state supreme court ruling required upgrades to inner-city schools facilities through the State of New Jersey, US. One phase of the project was a USD$300 million program spanning three years. The largest construction management companies in the country were competing for the contract. Bovis Lend Lease, which already had a significant reputation in the area of school construction, was in the third and final presentation for the largest phase of the project. Bovis was competing against six other contractors and it was struggling to find some clear differentiator, since in reality, Bovis was like most of the competitors in the way it conducts business on large projects. During the closing minutes of the presentation, two questions were asked by one of the selection committee members: "How can Bovis Lend Lease draw on lessons learned experience from the previous phase in order not to re-invent the wheel on the next phase? Does Bovis have any way to interact from one project team to another?" One of the Bovis presenters described the ikonnect system and explained how the service was available to all staff globally to solve problems using previous experiences. Other presenters were able to produce ikonnect reminder cards from their wallets. They were passed around to the committee members who were very intrigued, extending the presentation for another ten minutes. Bovis won the contract. ikonnect was a factor and Bovis now includes ikonnect as a differentiation factor on all of its client proposals. "We were recently awarded another major project," the original presenter says . . . "largely because of the owner's fascination with our ikonnect program. It was a major differentiator. The client could not learn enough about the fantastic depth of resources, information and benchmarking capability represented by ikonnect." Sidebar: Busting Bureaucracies A Lend Lease associate contacted the ikonnect team when she needed some help identifying the right person in the Australia Post organisation to assist with obtaining a red street posting box for Delfin Lend Lease's Nelsons Ridge project in Sydney. The ikonnect team used the RFK approach to find an answer. A colleague in Delfin Lend Lease Queensland responded to the RFK with a contact in Queensland. The ikonnect team got in touch with the contact who identified the correct person in New South Wales (NSW). The seeker was able to directly contact the right person in Australia Post, NSW who could assist in the process of installing the mail box at Nelson's Ridge. "I am pleased with the prompt response the ikonnect RFK generated," the seeker says. "It enabled me to work through what would normally have been a time-consuming process in half the time, achieving what will be a great outcome for the new community at Nelsons Ridge." The seeker also commented that Australia Post's structure took "a bit of investigating" to find the first contact in Queensland, and now the contacts and the processes are on the ikonnect system for anyone else in the company to search. "The ikonnect service makes it so much easier to pick the brains of colleagues in other regions and share valuable information for anyone in the company to access," she says. "Perhaps the ikonnect team can help you bust through your bureaucracy." |
Preparing for Conversations
with Garry Cullen and Melissie Rumizen
Introductions
questions per
month to over 500 per month. In 2005 the milestone of 12,500
questions was reached showing that it has received phenomenal
usage.
orking
at an intelligence site, acting as a platoon sergeant in an infantry
division, and instructing at an Army training school.