THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING - Klever Insight · Klever is an award winning, next generation knowledge management software and services company working with customers around the

Klever Knowledge Benchmark Report 2

015

THESTATE

OFKNOWLEDGE

SHARING2015

Klever is an award winning, next generation knowledge management

software and services company working with customers around the globe to

build innovative knowledge sharing practices. Klever believes that every

organization can use their knowledge as a lever so they don’t have to keep

re-learning what they already know. Klever's platform incorporates

behavioral science insights with practical, proven techniques to rapidly bring

knowledge-sharing behavior into an organization. It has proven to increase

productivity by 30-300% within three months. Company services range from

online assessments and acceleration plans to benchmarking, training, onsite

consultation, and knowledge management projects.

The Klever team is passionate about helping organizations leverage and share

their most valuable asset - their knowledge. We connect a vibrant, global

community of people ready to share in the journey with you. Klever was

founded by Phil Verghis, Dr. Adam Krob, and William Stockton, drawing on

decades of experience successfully implementing and training

knowledge-sharing techniques to organizations of all sizes around the world.

Credits

AuthorsDr. Adam KrobWilliam StocktonPhilip Verghis

ContributorsFinula DarwinCinda Daly

Data AnalysisDr. Adam Krob

DesignerKajoli Gokarn

ContactFinula [email protected]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Contents

Executive Summary.......................................................................4

Process Benchmarks.....................................................................10

Technology Benchmarks...............................................................12

Culture Benchmarks.....................................................................14

People/Leadership Benchmarks...................................................16

A Final Note..................................................................................18

Peter Drucker wrote in Management Challenges for the 21st Century:

“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution ofmanagement in the 20th Century was the �fty-fold increase in the

productivity of the MANUAL WORKER in manufacturing.The most important contribution management needs to make in the

21st Century is similarly to increase the productivity ofKNOWLEDGE WORK and the KNOWLEDGE WORKER.”

McKinsey Global Institute in 2012:

28 HoursTime spent each week by knowledge workers writing

e-mails, searching for information and collaborating internally.

In 2015, this is still a big opportunity for improvement.

http://www.getklever.com

Executive Summary


Executive Summary

Today’s global competition demands that team members have to access the knowledge they need as close to their real-‐time need as possible. One study suggested that organizations are losing $1.3 Trillion in potential value by not adopting knowledge-‐sharing practices.1 Add to that the sheer torrent of information that organizations create. Effectively sharing knowledge is not a choice; it is an imperative.

Klever’s Knowledge Benchmark Report 2015 aggregates data from 745 unique responses to an assessment. Those taking the assessment included industry leaders, executives, operational managers, and team members in organizations that either have an existing knowledge-‐sharing program or are contemplating one.

For knowledge sharing to succeed over time in an organization, there are four distinct areas that need to be addressed:

• People / Leadership• Process• Technology• Culture

To gauge the perceptions of knowledge sharing across these four important dimensions, we asked 14 simple yet powerful questions. The findings are based on a statistical analysis of the responses, filtered through Klever’s combined five decades of practical experience in launching, sustaining, and reinvigorating knowledge-‐sharing programs.

Key Findings Our analysis of the data revealed three important findings in organizations’ perceptions of their knowledge-‐sharing programs.

People/leadership: Gap between what Executives and their Teams perceive 73% of executives said that they actively promote continuous learning within their organization. However, managers and team members rate the promotion of continuous learning significantly below where executives scored it.

Without strong motivation supported by leadership behaviors, training, and truly aligned measures, team members will find more and more opportunities to opt out of sharing knowledge.

Processes/Technology: Processes & Technology are out of alignment Organizations have invested in both knowledge-‐sharing processes and tools to support them, but there remains a significant gap between these two critical components of a knowledge-‐sharing program. Knowledge-‐sharing processes were rated highest by organizations overall while the technologies were rated lowest.

Knowledge sharing is a set of behaviors, supported by best practices and enabled by technology. Without this linkage, investments in knowledge-sharing processes and technologies will significantly underperform

their potential.


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Culture: Revert back to old habits under stress While a number of organizations have adopted best practice processes and tools, the motivation to make sharing knowledge part of what the team does every day lags behind. In particular, organizations tend to go back to pre-‐knowledge-‐program behaviors in times of rapid change or stress. Only 31% of organizations said they always or often invest in long-‐term solutions like knowledge-‐sharing practices when fighting fires.

Changing behavior is much easier than changing an organization’s culture. If you make tiny changes in habit so that every time you see a piece of information, you improve it so the next person benefits, then you

will rapidly realize significant productivity improvements.


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Klever Knowledge Sharing Quadrant

The Klever survey tool segregates responses into four areas based on a proprietary weighting formula. It assigns a quadrant based on perceptions of two different organization capabilities:

• The ability to articulate a compelling vision of knowledge sharing to the organization (the x axis);• The ability to execute on that vision (the y axis).

88.7% of respondents said that they were either successful at articulating and executing on a vision for knowledge sharing or they were able to accomplish neither effectively.

This trend was consistent across size of organizations sampled and self-‐identified job functions.

The ab

ility to

execute on that vision

The ability to arOculate a compelling vision of knowledge sharing to the organizaOon

Enlightened Self-‐Aware

All Talk Reality Check

Benchmark Quadrants

All Talk. Organizations in this category typically have a strategic vision, but can’t quite deliver on the tactical side. In other words, they have a plan but they’re struggling to execute. The difficulty may be a gap between knowing and doing, a lack of resources, or perhaps management gets distracted by the latest “shiny object.”

Reality Check. Organizations in this category typically fall into one of two groups: 1) They’re new to knowledge sharing and aren’t quite sure where to begin, or 2) They’ve tried knowledge sharing before but got stuck. Why? Often it’s the lack of ongoing commitment after the excitement of the launch, or perhaps the executive sponsor got distracted by the latest “shiny object.”

Self-‐Aware. Organizations in this category execute fairly well on tactical objectives. They probably follow procedures properly and take care of escalations and crises after they erupt. However, they fall behind industry colleagues by not doing as well on strategic issues. For example, do they take the time to step back and think about how to prevent crises from happening – especially the ones that happen again and again?

Enlightened. Organizations score in this rarified category for one of two reasons: There is a strong leader who is experienced and informed about knowledge sharing or they are a relatively small organization.


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Survey Respondents

The survey drew responses from a wide variety of respondents, with a good representation of small companies (42% from organizations smaller than 201 employees) and a mix of different organizational responsibilities/job functions.

Survey Respondents – By Company Size Survey Respondents – By Job Function

In particular, this healthy mix of responses from different organizational perspectives is critical. Effective knowledge-‐sharing practices require buy-‐in and effort from each of these three stakeholders – executives, operational managers, and team members. This benchmark report articulates all three perspectives and, when appropriate, calls out where there are differences in their perceptions.

42%

23%

27%

8% 0-‐200 employees

201-‐1000 employees


36%

38%

26% Execulve

Manager

Team Member


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People/Leadership

Technology

Process

Culture

KnowledgeSharing

Benchmarks


Knowledge Sharing Benchmarks

In order for an organization to effectively share knowledge over time, it has to succeed in two important ways:

1. Team members have to be motivated to share their knowledge, and 2. Sharing knowledge has to be embedded in the team’s workflow.

Often, an organization’s understanding of its knowledge-‐sharing program is derived from the top down. They understand the changes made to tools, practices, measures, and communications. In many cases, however, they do not know if these changes have made an impact on the motivation of the team or if sharing knowledge is truly integrated into the day-‐to-‐day work of the team.

There are four areas that illuminate the organization’s relative success in these two important ways:

• People/Leadership • Technology • Process • Culture

Klever has created 14 knowledge sharing benchmarks that uncover organizational strengths and weaknesses for these four areas. While the responses to these questions do not directly report on the activities that organizations are engaged in, they do uncover the degree to which those activities have affected their mindsets. They also speak to the organizations’ perception of the adequacy of the processes and tools they currently have in place. Why is understanding these perceptions so critical?

Perceptions of the success of knowledge-‐sharing programs are reality, and these perceptions directly influence buy-‐in, engagement, and long-‐term success.

Benchmark Results Overview By Job Function By Company Size

2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Process

Technology

Culture

People/Leadership

2.5 2.7 2.9 3.1 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.9

Process

Technology

Culture

People/Leadership


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Process Benchmarks

One of the two key tasks to effectively share knowledge is integrating knowledge-‐sharing practices into team workflows. Organizations scored themselves highest in this area, across all sizes and job functions. Respondents from organizations from 201-‐5,000 employees and all managers rated the statement “knowledge sharing is embedded in how we do our work” the highest of all benchmarks.

Organizations have invested significant resources in creating effective processes. The popularity of approaches like Communities of Practice and Knowledge-‐Centered Supportsm1 has continued to grow over the past decade. This is not surprising, as process re-‐engineering is an activity that most organizations are familiar and comfortable with. Organizations have already been through the re-‐engineering cycles of the 1980s and 1990s with practices like TQM and Six Sigma.

Process average

Benchmarks

1 Knowledge-‐Centered Support is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation – http://www.serviceinnovation.org.

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Leadership invests as many resources in training and

developing the team as in the knowledge tool

Leadership clearly communicates the importance of knowledge and learning

Knowledge sharing is embedded into how we do our

work

1

2

3

4

5


12



Benchmark Score on Likert Scale – Always (5), Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never (1)

Leadership invests as many resources in training and developing the team as in the knowledge tool

3.1/5

Leadership clearly communicates the importance of knowledge and learning

3.13/5

Knowledge sharing is embedded into how we do our work 3.16/5


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Technology Benchmarks

Organizations’ satisfaction with the technologies they have chosen represents their lowest level of satisfaction. More specifically, organizations overall do not believe that their knowledge tools support their processes. Nearly all organizations (with the exception of the largest ones) rated one of the two technology benchmarks lowest of all. Executives and operational managers gave the lowest marks to the benchmark: “The technology we have makes it easy to share information within the company.”

Benchmark – The technology we have makes it easy to share information within the company.

In many ways, this result is not surprising. As John Ragsdale pointed out in the TSIA report, “The State of Knowledge Management 2014,”

48% of employee-‐facing knowledge implementations and 39% of customer-‐facing knowledge implementations are on their 3rd, 4th, 5th or more solution in recent memory.

Tools often carry the lowest switching costs of all the components of a knowledge-‐sharing program, as the organizational effort required to shift processes and behaviors is substantial. Organizations seeking rapid improvements look to switch tools to address their challenges with sharing knowledge.

The technology benchmarks suggest a very different underlying challenge that will not be addressed by the “rip and replace” cycle described by Ragsdale. This challenge is the lack of alignment of the processes as they are executed in practice and the tools themselves. Team members see and feel this gap most strongly. Organizations must close the gap between the two, which will require effort in altering tools and practices and the expected behaviors.

2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3 3.2 3.4

Team Members

Operalonal Managers

Execulves


14



Technology average

Benchmarks


The technology we have makes it easy to share information within the company

2.86/5

Most people would agree that we need to invest in knowledge-‐sharing processes before purchasing technology

2.89/5

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

0

50

100

150

200

250

The technology we have makes it easy to share informalon within the company

Most people would agree that we need to invest in knowledge-‐sharing processes

before purchasing technology

1

2

3

4

5


15




Culture Benchmarks Organizations understand their corporate culture when they look at sustained and repeated behaviors or interactions of a team. Respondents rated cultural benchmarks almost always in the middle, with a slight skew higher. This supports the contention there is a gap between the processes and the supporting technologies. Organizations are still struggling to get the expected level of benefits that the processes they have crafted are expected to produce.

There is one exception to the otherwise mediocre scores in the cultural benchmarks. Respondents from organizations larger than 5,000 employees rated this benchmark highest: “We have a culture that values collaboration more than command and control.”

Benchmark – We have a culture that values collaboration more than command and control.

Large organizations have led the creation and adoption of new knowledge-‐sharing processes and are painfully aware of how easy it is to slip into a command and control bureaucracy. Organizations and technology providers are increasingly touting the “social” elements of their knowledge programs. The “social” components (meaning real-‐time collaborative elements) of knowledge sharing are increasingly popular, and executives have spent significant resources encouraging them.

2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5

5000+ employees



0-‐200 employees


16



Culture average

Benchmarks


We have a process for using and acting on information in our knowledge bases

3.06/5

We invest as much time in fixing the root causes of the fires as we do in fighting fires

2.95/5

We have a culture that values collaboration more than command and control

3.02/5

We reward people who solve problems in a scalable way, rather than individuals who perform heroics over and over

3.08/5

It is easy to get help from anyone in any department 3.02/5

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

We have a process for using and aclng on informalon in our knowledge

bases

We invest as much lme in fixing the root causes of the

fires as we do in fighlng fires

We have a culture that

values collaboralon more than

command and control

We reward people who solve problems in a scalable way rather than

individuals who perform heroics over and over

It is easy to get help from

anyone in any department

1

2

3

4

5


17




People and Leadership Benchmarks People and leadership benchmarks try to evaluate whether the organization is sustaining its commitment to a knowledge-‐sharing program through explicit promotion of learning or creating a positive environment for team members.

There were two important findings in these benchmarks. The first is that respondents from small companies (smaller than 501 employees) scored this benchmark the highest: “We have easy access to lessons learned by others in the same organization.” Small organizations simply do not have the same structural impediments to sharing knowledge as larger ones. Interestingly, executives also rated this benchmark the highest of all 14.

Managers and team members scored this benchmark the lowest: “Leadership promotes the importance of continuous learning.” Executives, when presented with the same benchmark, score their organizations significantly higher.

Benchmark – Leadership promotes the importance of continuous learning.

This disconnect is important because knowledge-‐sharing programs require the commitment to continuous learning to filter down through the organization. Executives perceive that they have made a commitment to learning, but team members’ day-‐to-‐day interactions with processes, tools, measures, communications, and incentives are not matching this commitment.

2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 3.1 3.2 3.3

Execulves

Operalonal Managers

Team Members


18




People and leadership average

Benchmarks


Leadership promotes the importance of continuous learning 2.95/5 Employees routinely recommend to their professional colleagues that our organization is a good place to work

3.13/5

Customers routinely recommend our company's products or services to others

2.89/5

We have easy access to lessons learned by others in the organization

3.15/5

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

0

50

100

150

200

250

Leadership promotes the importance of conlnuous learning

Employees roulnely recommend to their

professional colleagues that our company is a good

place to work

Customers roulnely recommend our

company's products or services to others

We have easy access to lessons learned by others in the same

organizalon

1

2

3

4

5


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A Final Note


A Final Note

The state of knowledge sharing in 2015 is not entirely bleak. On the contrary, many organizations have invested in tools and processes to share knowledge.

51.7% of respondents said that they were successfully executing a compelling vision of sharing knowledge in their organization.

There are also real dangers that the combination of unaligned processes and technologies will result in more frustration and programs that significantly underperform their potential. The data bear this out.

5 of the 14 benchmarks were rated by respondents lower than 3

Only 4 were rated above 3.1

Organizations that do not share knowledge effectively are at a disadvantage. Organizations are applying the lens of knowledge sharing to customer experience and seeing significant productivity gains. Lagging organizations must catch up.

Organizations that have led the adoption of knowledge-‐sharing practices must continue to evolve. The competitive advantage that knowledge-‐sharing practices afforded them is evaporating. These organizations must innovate further, looking for ways to effectively share knowledge beyond their borders and with teams that need and consume knowledge very differently.

How organizations must evolve There are three specific courses of action that organizations can take to address the four critical areas identified in this benchmark report.

1. Shrink the technology and process gap. The gap emerged for several reasons, including an attempt to apply knowledge-‐sharing processes across organizations that do not match the way some team members consume and create knowledge. Forward-‐looking organizations will analyze the use, creation, and hand-‐off of knowledge on a team-‐by-‐team basis. In particular, organizations need to see how experts are using knowledge compared to front-‐line team members. Comparing these to the capabilities of the supporting technologies, these organizations will make changes on both sides to close the gap. 2. Align the culture and the behaviors. Forward-‐looking organizations will revisit their operational measures and reward programs to ensure that they are not encouraging relapses to pre-‐knowledge-‐program behaviors. They will also build new training and communications initiatives that highlight the proper execution of knowledge-‐sharing practices and how adopting them will positively impact team members themselves, not just the company, team, and customers.

3. Identify and eliminate blind spots. Forward-‐looking organizations will also assess where team members’ perceptions diverge from their own through survey techniques that provide visibility into differences by geography, job function, and team.

Effectively sharing knowledge is no longer a competitive advantage.

Knowledge sharing is now a requirement.


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About the Authors

Dr. Adam Krob, Klever CIO and Co-‐founder. Adam constantly looks for ways to make knowledge sharing simpler. He came to Klever from the Verghis Group, where he helped companies around the world with their knowledge-‐sharing programs. He has a PhD in political science from Duke University, and an MBA from Tulane. Adam livesin New Orleans, LA.

William Stockton, Klever Business Development Executive and Co-‐founder. Bill focuses on making sure Klever scales in a customer-‐friendly way. He came to Klever from Deutsche Bank in New York City, where he ran one of the world's largest KCS implementations in a highly complex environment. He has an undergraduate degreefrom the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He lives in New York City.

Philip Verghis, Klever CEO and Co-‐founder. Phil has won numerous awards for knowledge sharing since the early 1990s. As VP of Infrastructure & Support at Akamai Technologies, he founded the Customer Support team and ran the global Network (15,000 servers), Operations (66 countries) and IT teams during a time ofmassive growth and profitability, and during the dot com crash. During his time Akamai went from $0 in revenue in 1999 to over $200M in revenue in Q1 2004. Prior to Klever, he was a trusted advisor to service and support executives around the world with The Verghis Group. Phil has an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer engineering and a MBA from the University of New Hampshire. He lives in Chapel Hill, NC.


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THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING - Klever Insight · Klever is an award winning, next generation knowledge management software and services company working with customers around the