ks white paper

7/27/2019 KS White Paper

1/22

IBM Global Business Services

GBS Learning Knowledge

Redefining Knowledge Management

Systems and Processes in aWeb 2.0 World

White Paper

Moving beyond the hype and making it real


2/22


Page 2


3/22


Page 3

Abstract

For decades, Knowledge Management systems and processes have been defined

and governed around access to tightly guarded assets. With the advent of Web

2.0 this governance is seriously challenged. Consumer technology has outpaced

what is commonly available to workers in the corporate world. Consumers, not

centeralized departments, are now driving the world of social networking and

collaboration. In order to adapt to changing times employers must redefine howthey approach Knowledge Management. In todays emerging world of digital

convergence, we must overturn traditional delivery approaches, and move from

the inflexible Knowledge Management systems of old into a culture of Knowledge

Sharing. Throughout this transformation we have moved beyond the hype and

transformed IBMs processes and systems by applying the success of consuemer

Web 2.0 technologies within the walls of the corporation, leveraging the collective

intelligence of the employees, enabling cross-border and cross-generational

collaboration, and not only preserving but enhancing the rich base of intellectual

capital within IBM.

Table of Contents

3 Abstract

4 Introduction

5 From Knowledge Management toKnowledge Sharing

6 Web 2.0 Technology Applied to KS

## Practitioner 2.0

## Conclusion


4/22


Page 4

Introduction

The IBM PC was introduced 26 years ago. Employees enjoyed state of the art

client server computing, while home computing was limited to TRS-80s and 300

baud acoustic coupler modems for dial up connection. Technology at the work-

place was clearly superior to what was commonly available at home, although

access to computing was limited to a portion of the workforce.

Fast forward to 2008. Consumer technology has suddenly outpaced what is com-

monly available to most workers in the corporate world. Employees use Google to

search for materials on their own websites. Wikipedia is one of the most common

reference sites for information and knowledge. The use of social tags to find

videos on YouTube or photos on Flickr is widespread. Prior to making purchases

on line or in store, customers routinely go to websites to check product ratings

and comments made by fellow shoppers. Social networking sites like Facebook

and LinkedIn are creating communities and connecting people in a way never

before experienced in human history. Web 2.0 is not a short lived fad or phenom-

enon; it is a paradigm-changing force. When people search at work, they expect it

to be as fast and accurate as Google.

The 2008 Global CEO Study by IBM found that most CEOs are bombarded by

change, that the rate of change is increasing, and that many are struggling to

keep up. Enterprises that will be most successful in the future are the ones that

can not only respond to the rapid pace of change, but also leverage that change.

The CEO Study found that financial out-performers are making bolder plays.

These companies anticipate more change, and manage it better. They are also

more global in their business designs, partner more extensively with their custom-

ers and choose more disruptive forms of business model innovation.

The IBM Global Business Services (GBS) Learning and Knowledge team hastaken the bold initiative to radically redefine existing knowledge management sys-

tems and processes with the ultimate goal of providing an environment that will:

take advantage of the power of Web 2.0 without throwing away the rich col-lection of assets which have been built up over many years

leverage the collective intelligence of the workforce, connecting employees

across geographies, organizational hierarchies, and lines of business

allow multiple generations of workers, the digital natives and the digitalimmigrants, to thrive in this brave new world


5/22


Page 5

This paper describes the systems and activities of this transformation project

which apply the consumer technologies of Web 2.0 successfully within a corporate

context.

From Knowledge Management to Knowledge Sharing

Many companies treat knowledge like data and information, and manage it tightly,

like a commodity. A corporate taxonomy defines exactly how to categorize and

file assets, and entire departments of Knowledge Managers are charged with the

responsibility of defining and managing the governance and processes around

access to these tightly guarded assets.

Web 2.0 turns these ideas on their head; the very things that made the old

paradigm successful control, structure, centralization are the very things

that will doom a Web 2.0-based Knowledge strategy. Conversely, many of the

drawbacks of the traditional knowledge management model (labor-intensive,

costly, often highly manual) are diminished or not present at all as the activity of

knowledge creation, categorization, and sharing becomes distributed to each andevery employee.

In Web 2.0, knowledge is shared, not managed. Individuals look not only to

the organization as a source of information, but also more and more to each

other. They look to each other as sources for content, as well as for validation

and vetting of content. Is this any good? Where is the best example? Who

can I talk to that can help me? The corporation is still a valuable source of

information and context, but it is no longer the only one.


6/22


Page 6

Formal taxonomies are replaced by a loosely defined folksonomy1 of social tags

that is dynamic, flexible, organic, and reflects the collective intelligence of the

users. Many corporate staff organizations cannot conceive how social software

works. Without a formal hierarchy in place, they believe, the inevitable outcome

must be anarchy and chaos. Yet, open source projects like Linux and Wikipedia

have shown that it is possible and successful.

The key cultural barrier that must be overcome is to let go. Trust the users. The

user-defined folksonomy can be as successful, if not more successful, than the

formal taxonomy. It is possible, for example, to find a photograph of a monarch

butterfly on Flickr without having to navigate animal world > insects > flying

insects > butterfly species > monarch.

The first step in the evolution from Knowledge Management to Knowledge

Sharing is letting go at the key points of control. In most cases, this means the

centralized knowledge management organization and the top executive levels.

Without this leap of faith, and letting go, the shift cannot happen.

But, letting go is just part of the equation. Once the knowledge management team

lets go, its up to the employees in the organization to pick up the activity. Web 2.0

is all about active participation. Employees must share. They must be active users

- contributing and engaging, instead of passively searching and browsing. They

must contribute at all levels, from high powered assets to rating, tagging, editing

content and providing feedback.

When these two complementary behaviors take place, traditional knowledge

management goes from a centrally controlled activity, to one which is in the

hands of the users becoming a knowldge sharing organizagtion.

Web 2.0 Technology applied to Knowledge Sharing

Key Success Factors

1. Flexible Platform

2. Quick build and deployment cycles

3. Blend of old and new technologies

1 Vanderwal, T. (2005). Off the Top: Folksonomy Entries. Visited November 5,

2005. See also: Smith, Gene. Atomiq: Folksonomy: social classification. Aug 3, 2004.

Retrieved January 1, 2007.


7/22


Page 7

The Right Platform

Large-scale technology implementations are always challenging. Given the

combination of rate of change in technical capabilities, increasing software

service sources and increasing user expectations, successfully implementing

and supporting knowledge sharing platforms is especially difficult. In this

environment, a key success factor is the platform selection. It is imperative

that the platform be flexible, allow for easy and fast maintenance, be readily

extensible, and allow for rapid functional enhancements.

In addition to the platform itself, the approach to enhancements and maintenance

must allow for quick build and deployment cycles. Any knowledge sharing

system must be able to rapidly reflect emerging business priorities, so an ability to

quickly build and deploy changes or make enhancements is critical.

Another key success factor is to adopt an approach to blend old, proven

technologies with new, high-potential, yet relatively untested technologies. A mix

that leverages a solid functional base and incorporates bleeding edge functionality

in a controlled way has proven to offer a good balance. Applying all three ofthese elements use of an extensible platform, endorsing and enabling quick

build and deployment cycles, and blending solid base functionality with bleeding

edge functionality significantly improves the likelihood of achieving the desired

results.

These principles were applied and are reflected in the substantial changes to the

knowledge sharing platform in 2007/2008 that underpins the successful shift

from traditional knowledge management to knowledge sharing. The previous

platform was a large, complex custom application that evolved over many years

with multiple layers of interconnected functionality. While the platform wasconsidered successful for its purpose, it was so complex that enhancements and

maintenance were both expensive and time consuming. In 2007, the L&K

organization began a project to overhaul the platform and completely re-design

the application base. The selection of Websphere Portal 6 provided a completely

new Services Oriented Architecture dynamic, improving the development cycles,

costs and end user capabilities.


8/22


Page 8

Some key attributes of the new approach include:

A portal base providing basic functionality

Open standards that allow for Agile development from all over the world (seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development)

A extensible portlet approach that allows multiple organizations to developtheir own portlets that can be added to a portlet palette and/or a portal tab

End-user customization and profiling, including an ability to personally selecand add portlets to any portal tab

Reduced cycle time between functionality releases due to the Web 2.0 portlet-

based functionality approach

Learning and Knowledges new Services Oriented Architecture approach has

improved end-user capabilities, reduced costs, accelerated development and

deployment times to truly provide a Web 2.0 environment for knowledge sharing.

Technology now facilitates traditional content management activities

Previous knowledge management processes required many labor-based

processes. While largely effective for its core service, this was costly and limited

in scalability. New technologies are now allowing for automation of traditionally

manual content lifecycle processes and are accelerating the time to publish

assets. Some examples of this automation are highlighted below.

Auto-tagging

After the contribution process, auto-tagging allows for the automatic classification

to a core taxonomy, providing two key benefits: 1) users no longer have to take

the time to select taxonomy keywords at the point of submission; and 2) content

review teams no longer have to review, correct or populate field values. The endresult is a much faster contribution process, eliminated review steps and improved

accuracy (which improves the end-user ability to find assets in a search).

Auto-archiving

Previous archiving approaches called for periodic quality assessments by subject

matter experts. The labor intensive, asset-by-asset review would result in a

determination of whether each asset should be retained or archived. While

functional, this approach was expensive, time consuming, and limited in its

coverage due to capacity and financial constraints for subject matter experts.


9/22


Page 9

The new approach leverages information available in the system based on user

interaction, then applies that information to automatically archive content based

on pre-defined criteria. Every document amasses what is called its activity

score. This score is a weighted blend of activity on a document such as user

visits or hits, number of downloads, number of social tags, user rating, etc. A

higher weight is applied to the activities that require users to take an active step,

such as the application of a social tag. The system analyzes the activity scores

each month and any document not meeting a minimum score during a rollingtwelve month period is automatically archived.

By leveraging all user activity instead of requiring a focused project to assess

quality, weve developed a much less expensive, much more scaleable approach

that can be applied to the entire knowledge base every month. Allowing the

system to maintain its own content equilibrium based on criteria that can adjust

monthly as needed.

Reduced content approval cycles

Fundamental asset review and approval cycles have traditionally been performedby content management teams, who would review each document one-by-one,

validate and update field classifications, test attachments and review abstracts.

These reviews frequently required back-and-forth communication with authors

and took time to reconcile. It was often several days from the time of submission

to publishing. The new approach essentially eliminates the delays by publishing

immediately (with the exception of required legal actions). Incorporating auto-

tagging and auto-archiving approaches allow a much more open approach

regarding content flowing into the repository. Additionally, social tagging and user

ratings help surface key content so users can quickly navigate to relevant, high

quality content. This approach removes 90% of the review requirements whilestill retaining necessary quality.

Federated Search using the taxonomy

For years, knowledge management programs across the company sought to tightly

control asset repositories and managed repository-distinct searches (typically

aligned by the different lines of business). Todays environment, calls for a new

approach as the importance of complex, cross-line of business solutions grow and

the need for multiple types of content increases. Federated search has provided

the solution to this challenge by allowing users to have a single search window


10/22


Page 10

with the search hitting multiple sources. For example, Learning and Knowledges

new search hits the primary asset repository from each line of business, several

hundred wikis, the corporate media library, the high value solution asset

repository, and many more. This means that users can truly go to one interface

and get everything at their fingertips, no longer having to search through multiple

self-contained databases.

A past issue with federated search was inconsistent taxonomies across repositories.This prevented coherent search results . The new technology in auto-tagging,

however, provides a way around this issue without having to manage a single,

enterprise taxonomy. Instead, each repository can manage its own taxonomy

and knowledge base, and the auto-tagging can be directed to a combined index

and to be used to create similar terms and a single set of facets for search result

narrowing. This approach has dramatically improved the user experience and

has not required massive unification of taxonomies or repositories around the

enterprise.

Social tag search using a folksonomy

Social bookmarking and social tags has been available in IBM for several years.

Adoption started somewhat slowly, but has grown rapidly over the last year and a

half (accruing more than a million tags in this period). Today, the internal social

tagging service is gaining a presence in nearly all major applications and is taking

a key role in knowledge sharing.

Recognizing this dynamic, Learning and Knowledge added a social tag search

on the front page of the new portal. While the federated search looks across all

content, the social tag search allows users to search social tags that individualshave applied to the content. This is fundamentally different, and allows for

content findability in new ways.

Another element of the social tag search is the ability to see the social tags

applied by individuals. This allows users to know what someone else knows

with immediate visibility into content others have tagged.

The social tag search as a stand-alone portlet has provided valuable incremental

search capabilities to the more traditional approach in the federated search.


11/22


Page 11

Integrating Web 2.0 with traditional search

The federated search and the social tag search have both offered substantial

improvements to previous capabilities provided by single repository searches.

Even more powerful is the integration of the two. The Learning and Knowledge

team worked through early 2007 on this integration to offer users a Web 2.0

search that combines a federated traditional search with social tagging. This

search works by allowing user to enter a single search string, which is bounced

against the federated search index. A set of relevant results is returned to thesystem, which is then bounced against the social tag repository. The social

tag repository returns tags that have been applied to the documents that were

identified as relevant to the search criteria. The resulting search results contain

the traditionally relevant documents across multiple repositories, plus the relevant

social tags. Since the tags are all associated with the search results, they can

be used as filters to narrow search results much like more traditional facets.

Now, users have an ability to narrow search results by both managed taxonomy

facets (enabling federation through auto-tagging) and relevant social tags. This

innovative approach changes the user experience in search and accelerates time t

relevant assets.

Search enhancements

While the new integrated Web 2.0 search offers game-changing improvements,

there is always room to grow. Several enhancements have been added to the plans

and include:

Sponsored links similar in concept to Google, though applied differently for

an internal application. Business leaders and subject matter experts can iden-

tify key assets for a given business area and these are highlighted in a portlet

The portlet is treated as a separate content source for our federated searchand can promote any content that has been highlighted in a sponsored link

portlet that is relevant to the search criteria in special sections of the search

results.

Did you mean? functionality that provides suggested synonyms or spell-

ing corrections for user-entered terms.

Recommendation engine similar to the concept demonstrated externally by

sites like Amazon. The knowledge sharing parallel can make recommenda-

tions to users based on several criteria. For example, it can surface recom-

Business Transformation Outsourcing

Page 11


12/22


Page 12

mendations based on assets viewed by others who have run similar searches.

It can also recommend based upon assets viewed by other users who are close

in the social network proximity to the person running the search. This lever-

ages the notion that people close in social networks have a tendency to want/

need similar content. Another element being incorporated into recommenda-

tions is a weighting based on user expertise. So, if a particular user has been

designated as a formal expert, then their tags and ratings would carry moreweight than the average user.

These enhancements continue to drive search result quality, further accelerating

business performance.

RSS

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has been used in the enterprise for a few years

in a relatively limited capacity as a means to allow users to subscribe to content

most commonly used on sites or portlets that provide news or some other

recurring publication. This allows a user to receive a push of the subscribed

content rather than regularly returning to multiple sites for the content of interestRSS has grown in its use over time and now allows people to subscribe to content

posted by individuals in blogs, individual social bookmarks and many other

applications.

Knowledge sharing is leveraging RSS in the above examples, but is also adding

it the new portal to allow users to define their own search criteria, and then save

the search as an RSS subscription. This allows users to receive a proactive push

of any new content or edits/updates to existing content that meets their personal

interests.

Expertise Locators

An ever-increasing element of knowledge sharing is the ability to interact with

others to receive guidance, understand context, and capitalize on previous

experience and brainstorm ideas. Traditional means of expertise location were

managed largely by personal networks and manual lists by the knowledge help

desk. This approach was sometimes effective, but it was not scaleable or formal.

New technologies have now allowed for a more robust expertise location capability

that combines elements of formal and informal expertise.


13/22


Page 13

Informal expertise

Informal expertise location is enabled by an application developed jointly by IBM

Research, Lotus and Learning and Knowledge called Atlas. Atlas (referred to as

SmallBlue internally) analyzes registered users outgoing emails, instant message

chats and corporate directory (BluePages) expertise profiles to infer expertise.

The application allows searches on expertise topics and will identify the top 100

experts based on the sources described. A user can then see their own socialnetworking path to each of the experts. Additionally, they may see the social

networking diagram of all experts on a particular topic. This capability allows

visibility into expertise across the organization in all geographies, making huge

strides in achieving a globally integrated enterprise.

Formal expertise

Augmenting the informal, inferred expertise location is an approach that is more

formal and managed. In an application called Blue Reach, people can register

as an expert and spend time providing guidance/assisting others. Experts can

designate office hours that will show them on-line to the instant message box in

the Blue Reach application during the specified hours. If they are logged into the

normal instant message service outside of their designated office hours, then they

will not show as on-line in Blue Reach.

The Blue Reach application, in addition to showing available experts, also

facilitates the connection by providing a special instant message window. Upon

the conclusion of any interaction the application also requests ratings and

feedback from each user. This allows each expert to see summaries of their time

spent and the resulting value as perceived by the other parties.

Both SmallBlue and Blue Reach are made available in the new portal. The

combination of informal and formal expertise location has dramatically enhanced

user capabilities and further accelerates time to business performance.

Instant Messaging

One of the best examples of grass-roots Web 2.0 employee behavior is IBMs

instant messaging application, SameTime. Originally started as an experiment,

the value to instant messaging was so great that it became one of the most rapid

(non-mandated) technology adoptions in IBM history.


14/22


Page 14

Instant messaging (IM) has provided a major change to the way people interact

on a daily basis. Phone and email used to dominate, but instant messaging

has taken over as a pervasive, ubiquitous means of every-day communication.

Functionality such as the ability to send a screen-grab via IM, to send a file via

IM (reducing email traffic), to send a hyperlink and even emoticons to express

feelings have embedded instant messaging firmly into the way we do things

around here. Instant messaging has become a way to stay in touch with amobile, geographically diverse workforce, and has accelerated both the actual and

expected response time for information requests of all kinds.

Given its massive user base, it has become an important enabler to leverage in

knowledge sharing. Instant messaging is being leveraged as a:

Connection platform for formal expertise location

Mobile device application

Platform for surfacing a streamlined version of the Web 2.0 integrated search

service through a plug-in

Platform for surfacing formal and informal expertise location services

through a plug-in

These uses enhance the capabilities of a proven technology that is already being

used all over the enterprise.

Practitioner 2.0

The transition from Knowledge Management to Knowledge Sharing is as much

a culture change as a technology change, especially in the corporate world. In

the consumer world, people are free to follow new ideas, new products, and newservices and only the strong survive. But in the corporate world, there are

politics and baggage. The desire to take risks and lead is often tempered by the

fear of failure or corporate ridicule.

So, how is this new kind of practitioner created Practitioner 2.0 that can and

will take advantage of what Web 2.0 has to offer? How do companies get leaders

to let go, and ensure that employees will pick up the ball?


15/22


Page 15

Leaders

Much like the central Knowledge Management organization, leaders are

fearful of anarchy and chaos in the absence of specific top-down direction and

control. They are worried that bad content will be added to repositories,

that the wrong assets will be leveraged, and that they will lose the ability

to set direction. What needs to be remembered is that there is a very wide

spectrum between total control and total anarchy. One of the recommendationsimplemented with IBM leaders is Co-operate, dont control. What this means is

that there are some things that are totally open, and other things that the leaders

have the ability to control. Its not all managed, and its not all anarchy you

must have a mix of the two - a mix of both sanctioned and unsanctioned content.

This middle ground provides a safety net, and enables the leaders to take that

leap of faith, knowing there are some core things they can still control. Examples

include the ability to:

Identify key sponsored links to be surfaces during search

Control editor access on sponsored links

Customize structure of wiki pages

Control editor access on a minimum of core wiki pages

Highlight core content needs on wiki to drive contribution

Create a core set of tags to influence practitioner tagging and folksonomy

Some leaders have embraced the Web 2.0 approach completely, with many now

authoring their own blogs and actively participating in the social networking and

expertise locators within the corporation. A successful transformation will ensurethat the full spectrum of leaders both early adopters and laggards is included

in change management plans.

Practitioners

The old phrase If we build it, they will come does not necessarily apply.

How do companies get the general population to participate once the central

Knowledge Management team has let go and the leaders have taken the leap of

faith?


16/22


Page 16

Education and Communications

Its not enough to simply build and launch new technology and processes. No

matter how simple, how intuitive, how self-explanatory the tooling, it is still

necessary to let people know whats available, and help them bridge from what

they use and how they behave today to what they need to use and how they need

to behave going forward.

As with any major change initiative, delivering the messages once is simply not

sufficient messages must be delivered multiple times, through multiple, credible

channels, and the messages must be sufficiently tailored as to be meaningful.

Finally, to drive rapid change, traditional communication approaches must be

supplemented by innovative, viral ways of driving and sustaining behavior change.

IBM developed a core set of communications and messaging about the knowledge

management transformation, and then customized, customized, customized.

Messages were embedded in existing communication vehicles, leveraging trusted

sources. Face-to-face education was delivered in both large and small sessions,

knowledge sharing modules were embedded in new-hire education, and hundreds

of hours of web-based education were conducted.

But that was not enough..To drive Web 2.0 behavior, a Web 2.0 approach

needed to be taken. At each stage in the deployment, technology and tools were

leveraged to educate and inform (and sometimes entertain!):

Developed a Practitioner 2.0 wiki, containing information about new pro-cesses, technology updates, and links to key communications

Established a Practitioner 2.0 blog written by a global team of change man-agement managers

Deployed a Mentoring Up Knowledge Ambassador program - where young,enthusiastic digital natives worked with other employees to help bring themup the Web 2.0 learning curve

Enabled mobile access to key applications, pushing the sharing of knolwedgebeyond the four walls of the office

Deployed a How-To video series downloadable to iPods

Delivered three different viral video campaigns via IBMs internal intranet

video service


17/22


Page 17

Once the employees knew about the new approach and tools and how to use them

the next challenge was getting them to adopt them as their own.

The Carrot

First and foremost, the new technology and new processes must be easy and

intuitive: one button to tag documents, one button to rate documents, and a

simple contribution process.

Repeat visitors are crucial . In addition to ease of use, we need to ensure the

employees are getting value from their activity. Employees must find what they

need, quickly and easily. Subject matter experts must be found within expertise

locator tools. In the corporate world, participation is predicated on the fact that

participating will help employees do their jobs better, faster, and in new and

innovative ways.

People need a reason to change their behavior. The fact that the new Knowledge

Sharing model will help them do their jobs better and faster is appealing, but

its not enough. The old adage that what gets measured is what gets done still

holds true. In order to change behavior, you need to change the way people are

measured and rewarded, and to change the criteria for promotion. As part of

IBMs Web 2.0 Knowledge Sharing model, we have put in place recognition and

reward systems to encourage the new desired behaviors. There are two core

components: the Points Program, and the promotion criteria.

The Points Program

We all want to know, How am I doing? And, we want to positively reinforce

the desired behaviors of contributing, rating and tagging content. The Points

Program addresses both of these objectives.

The Points Program operates much like a frequent flyer program: the more active

you are, the more points you get. Each time an employee contributes content,

rates content, or tags content, their activity is recorded, and is reflected in a Point

score.

The score is a balanced scorecard, incorporating three key components:

1) How much stuff am I contributing?


18/22


Page 18

2) how active am I in rating and tagging other peoples content?; and

3) How valuable do other people find MY content? That is, how often is my

content rated, tagged, hit, and downloaded?

As such, the Points score is reflective of the totality of the employees activity, and

the value derived from it, rather than merely measuring throughput. Employees

can view their Points score at any time through the new Knowledge Sharing

portal, as well as the key metrics that input into the overall score

The Points score is used to motivate behavior change in several ways. Similar

to frequent flyer programs, at certain tier levels employees are eligible for awards

and prizes. Additionally, monthly reports are available to managers to review

their employees activities, and to visibly recognize top contributors. Finally, the


19/22


Page 19

Points score can be reported to the employees manager and may be used as a

consideration in the year-end performance evaluations.

Promotion Criteria

In any organization, measures and criteria are in place for promotion from

one level to the next, and IBM is no different. To complement the How am

I doing? measures of the Points program, and ensure the Web 2.0 behaviorsbecome part of the IBM culture, we have embedded the desired behaviors into

criteria for promotion. In order to be promoted, an employee must demonstrate

specific capabilities in increasingly complex or broad situations, including desired

Knowledge Sharing behaviors and capabilities. Knowledge sharing activity is

not by itself sufficient for promotion; however, it may be one of the objective

measurements used in the evaluation process. In this way, we are driving

sustained behavior change.

The Stick

In addition to the positive reinforcements and enticements above, there must

be measures in place to ensure compliance when and where necessary. Top

leadership in IBM committed to making this change successful. As such, they

requested, and regularly published, a scorecard of adoption activity, putting one

area of the business in direct competition with another. The Points Program

mentioned above was included in this senior level scorecard, and was also

leveraged by managers to drive their own scorecards. One manager rank

ordered all of her employees and published the list each month. These tactics

proved quite successful when regularly implemented month after month. As one

executive said, Its management by embarrassment theres no way I want to

show up on the bottom of that list.

Another way to embed new behavior in the culture is to make it mandatory.

So, for example, no one likes to complete expense reports, or file taxes, but its

mandatory to get reimbursed or your tax refund if youre lucky. By the same

token, at the end of a project, no one wants to empty the project teamroom into

the formal knowledge repository. So, we made it mandatory.

At IBM, there is an internal group that manages the administration of all of our

contracts. As part of the project lifecycle, there are certain activities that must be

completed, including development of a formal statement of work, monthly billings


20/22


Page 20

and contract close-out. Theses are specific process gates, and compliance with

them is taken seriously and is reported on regularly. In order to drive behavior

changes into the very fabric of what gets done every day, we partnered with the

contract administration group and piggy-backed on their process gates. So,

now, each process gate includes the requirement to contribute certain kinds of

knowledge capital, and that gate cannot be passed until the content has been

added to the knowledge repository.

While these two approaches (management by embarrassment and mandating

contributions) may initially seem contrary to Web 2.0 philosophy, they are

actually the first steps in a long-term behavior change. When seat belt laws were

originally enacted, many people buckled up because they were afraid of a ticket.

Now, its become an ingrained habit for most people to wear seatbelts in the car.

The same concept holds true here: what is initially mandated will become habit

and the way we do things around here.

Conclusion

Through adoption of web 2.0 technologies and tools the Learning and Knowledge

group has redefined IBMs Knowledge Management systems and processes

moving beyond the hype and positioning the consulting practice, and IBM as a

whole, for ongoing success and industry leadership.

The Learning & Knowledge team did not merely respond to trends, they took

advantage of technology and sociological shifts to help shape and lead the

approach to knowledge and enterprise Web 2.0 adoption. They drove a bold,

disruptive change that overturned the traditional delivery approaches, and

reinvented the meaning of Knowledge Sharing.

In designing and developing solutions, the Learning & Knowledge team

collaborated with groups across IBM, listening and responding to their needs

and choosing a development platform that enables ongoing collaboration as needs

develop and mature.

Expertise and talent were leveraged across the globe, accessing people and

knowledge wherever they reside. Global perspectives and input are reflected

in the final design, as are considerations for the impact of the design on the

environment.


21/22


Page 21

The transformed processes and systems apply the success of consumer Web

2.0 technologies within the walls of the corporation, leveraging the collective

intelligence of the employees, enabling cross-border and cross-generational

collaboration, and not only preserving but enhancing the rich base of intellectual

capital within IBM.


22/22

Copyright IBM Corporation 2008

IBM Global Business ServicesRoute 100Somers, NY 10589U.S.A.

Produced in the United States of America08-08All Rights Reserved

IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks or registeretrademarks of International Business MachinesCorporation in the United States, other countries,or both.

Other company, product and service names maybe trademarks or service marks of others.

References in this publication to IBM productsor services do not imply that IBM intends to makethem available in all countries in whichIBM operates.

ks white paper

Documents