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November 22, 1999

Myths & Realities
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Texaco has been experimenting with ways to reduce the amount of employee effort required to participate in its knowledge-management initiatives. Last year, for example, the company built a "Yellow Pages" directory with profiles of 1,500 employees. The directory lets managers and line workers who need help find people within the company with relevant experience.

But getting workers to take the time to keep their profiles fresh has been difficult. So the company recently installed software from Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc., which uses key words gleaned from outbound E-mail to update those profiles automatically.

Most managers say they try to build a company culture that's conducive to knowledge sharing and make it clear that knowledge sharing is a condition of employment.

"We only hire people who want to share knowledge," says Doug Kalish, chief knowledge officer at Scient Corp., a San Francisco supplier of E-commerce consulting, software development, and systems integration services. Managers emphasize knowledge sharing during new-hire interviews. Employee evaluations, raises, and promotions are based in part on such criteria as how many training courses people have designed or taught, documents or white papers they have written, and new employees they have mentored.

Personal recognition can be used to motivate employees, too. At Xerox, service technicians who contribute expertise to the company's Eureka expert system (see Myth No. 6) have their names appended to those entries. "The whole global service organization sees their contribution," says Holtshouse. "That's a big motivator."

Occasionally, however, more overt incentives are required. A Philadelphia pharmaceutical company tried to get its sales personnel to contribute their tips on closing a sale to a new knowledge-management system, according to an IT manager. After a poor response, the drug maker began offering $50 cash incentives and things improved--a little. But the system really took off when salespeople were given a commission for sales made by others using their methods.

Myth No. 6: Knowledge management is mostly for capturing the knowledge of retiring or departing employees.
Some people see knowledge management as a giant electronic repository of expertise sucked from the heads of employees like something out of a bad science-fiction movie: That senior assembly line worker may be gone, but his or her talent for fixing a troublesome milling machine will stay with the company forever.

Most knowledge-management executives say such a scenario isn't feasible. "It's rather na�ve to think you can capture someone's know-how," says Texaco's Old. Texaco says its knowledge-management efforts are better spent creating detailed profile-databases of employees--even those who retire--that make it easier for employees and managers to locate people with the expertise they need. "Our feeling is that carbon units are better for knowledge storage than silicon," says Ed McDonald, a retired Texaco manager who's assisting with the company's efforts.

"If you have a dollar to spend on knowledge management, it's better spent on connection than capture," agrees Prusak of the Institute For Knowledge Management. "Because you can't capture most of what's valuable--the tacit knowledge."

This is another myth with some truth at its core, however. A few companies are attempting to capture employees' expertise and use it to design expert systems. One of the largest is Xerox's Eureka program for its 25,000 service technicians. Those who devise solutions for problems with Xerox copiers and printers contribute their experience to the system. Technicians who come across the problem can access the database and see how it might be resolved.

Other knowledge-capture efforts are in early trial stages. At Hallmark, about 25% of the company's employees with expertise in graphics production will be retiring during the next three years. The company is using videotaped interviews to try to capture some of their knowledge before they go.

But how long will such knowledge remain useful? "In environments where knowledge quickly becomes obsolete, stored knowledge from people who left the company five years ago isn't as important as knowledge from people who are still there," says Scient's Kalish. And Dow Chemical's Allen says some of the most valuable knowledge in people's heads, such as understanding how organizations work, is virtually impossible to capture.

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