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Using Expertise - The Story So Far

Matt MooreInnotecture

April 2010

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Our purpose

Human expertise critical to organisations (if we believe management rhetoric)...

...and yet very little research carried out on how organisations manage this expertise (or fail to).

Joint project between Straits Knowledge in Singapore (Patrick Lambe & Edgar Tan) & Innotecture in Sydney (Matt Moore).

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Our methods

Narrative collection & sense-making (based on Cognitive Edge).

i. Blog for collecting & sharing stories.

ii.Workshops with anecdote circles & archetype/issue extraction (outputs available on wiki).

Online survey.

All outputs are publically available under CC.

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Blog

http://usingexpertise.blogspot.com/ Seeded with stories from previous projects. Responses from all over the world (Singapore,

USA, Australia, UK, India). Supplemented with anecdotes collected in

workshops. 180+ stories so far. Some commenting. Press interest (Australian Financial Review).

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Workshops

Workshops completed so far: Melbourne, Australia Canberra, Australia Sydney, Australia San Jose, USA Washington DC, USA

15-40 participants per workshop Happy to do more (just pay for travel)

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Anecdote circle

8-20 people per circle, 45-90 mins Focusing question – e.g. “Can you remember a

time when you saw expertise being valued – or not?”

Guide participants away from generalised opinions or facts – otherwise sit back and let them talk.

Starts slowly but difficult to stop.

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Sensemaking

Stick stories on the wall - from participants and other sources (e.g. blog).

Ask participants to identify characters & incidents -then apply adjectives.

Remove adjectives & ideas then mix. Create archetypes & challenge statements. http://usingexpertise.wikispaces.com/

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Survey

Web-based (Surveymonkey). Promoted through emails lists (e.g. actKM, SI

KM Leaders, KM4Dev). 132 responses so far. Australia & US heavily represented. Significant responses from those in non-

commercial (government, development, NFPs), services firms (consulting & law) and education.

Respondants predominantly KM, IM, L&D, HR or IT.

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What have we found?

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Scoring 0-3: Mostly public sector organisations

“The organisation is so large that our piece is invisible until there is a catastrophe.”

“It could be much more important if the value and importance of human resources is recognised.”

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Challenges: Sector Differences

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Challenges: Regional Differences

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Role Knowledge

Role Knowledge

Relational KnowledgeRelational Knowledge

ExperienceExperience

Technical KnowledgeTechnical

Knowledge

SkillSkill

MemoryMemory

Know-how

Templates, procedures, routines, practice, OJT

Know-who

Directories, introductions,networking, trust-building

Can-do

Training, coaching, practice

Remember-why

Documentation habits, storytelling, team-based working

Can Diagnose and Decide

Repeated and improving practice, career planning, placements, OJT, mentoring, shadowing, cognitive task analysis

Know-what

Training, study, qualifications

What do we need to retain?

Source: Patrick Lambe

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Scoring 0-3: Mostly public sector organisations

“The organisation is so large that our piece is invisible until there is a catastrophe.”

“It could be much more important if the value and importance of human resources is recognised.”

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Expertise Failures

•Inexperienced person misinterprets rules, doesn’t check with experienced staff

•CEO gets 2 different answers to same question, gives to public 6 weeks apart

•2 lead experts leave organisation, several clients lost, 3 years to recover

•Inexperienced person chosen to lead project, client loses confidence, cancels project

•New manager has his own agenda, pushes out expertise, leading to loss of capability and morale

•Not knowing what expertise is available leads to substandard work and missed opportunities

•Senior manager declared medically unfit, too dependent on him, lost staff, clients and suppliers

•Environmental spills and plant accidents

•Time lost re-learning lessons we learned ten years ago

•Cross-site expertise does not transfer, not taken seriously: “we know best”

•Buying same expertise in multiple times because we can’t retain it

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Risk Mitigation

• Succession planning

• Knowledge transition/ handover process

• Documentation

• Team-based working

• Job rotation

• Contracts: notice periods, non-competes

• Post retirement contracting

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Expertise Development Processes

• Personal/ career development plans

• Job rotation

• New starter training, OJT

• Lessons learned processes

• Mentoring

• Succession planning

• Team-based working

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“Everybody knows” - consulting and research

“Everyone has access to a skills database … across several hundred areas of technical & soft skill knowledge. Everyone in the firm has access to everyone's scores.”

“Nobody knows” - government & healthcare

“Most people know about the expertise in their local 'silo'. Not much cross-dept under-standing of broader expertise available. Also expertise is misunderstood to be associated with roles rather than with individuals.”

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Ways of Improving Expertise Management

(Respondents talked about how they could improve the way they managed expertise. Their responses were coded into common themes. Theme statements are scaled by frequency of occurrence in responses)

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Participative research project:

“Using and leveraging expertise in organisations”http://usingexpertise.blogspot.com

Organised by Patrick Lambe Straits Knowledge www.straitsknowledge.com and Matt Moore of Innotecture http://innotecture.wordpress.com

N.B. Matt Moore in the UK in July

Take our “Managing Expertise” Survey!

http://tinyurl.com/expertisesurvey