The Dream Team met to design the methodology for harvesting operational knowledge from incumbent employees. Rob, our tech-knight, joined us to offer technological assistance while emitting serious amounts of radiation from mysterious black objects he carried. Roger was back, of course, and the Chip was parallel processing even before we started. We were joined by assorted other experts and team members.
The Dream Team established five objectives for the proposed methodology that would harvest the critical operational knowledge from incumbents and create the knowledge profile. They were:
To capture the critical job-specific data, information, and knowledge that incumbents use in their jobs
To capture the primary sources of this critical data, information, and knowledge (whether individuals, documents, or processes)
To identify knowledge priorities and leverage points (i.e., knowledge with the greatest potential to increase productivity and effectiveness)
To identify critical knowledge that was not available because of knowledge hoarding, inefficient or obsolete reporting systems, poor knowledge needs analysis, or a variety of other reasons
To analyze knowledge-based strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the job classification
With those objectives set and the knowledge categories of the Knowledge Profile template as our guide, we turned to the various methodologies that might be employed to harvest the targeted knowledge.
We began by examining the many different techniques through which human beings can acquire knowledge, about 100 in fact. They ranged from card sorting and simulations to process analysis and focused discussions to diagramming and concept mapping to interviews and questionnaires. Of these, we settled on two types as the most appropriate for the knowledge profile, although each type could take a myriad of forms. The first was the interview (structured or unstructured), and the second was the questionnaire, in whatever form it took. Both of these techniques depend upon questions to accomplish their task, and questions are the most often used means to gather knowledge. The obvious difference between the techniques is that the interview delivers the questions in person and the questionnaire through a form. Questionnaires can differ dramatically in form (electronic or manual, for example) as well as in format, yet they always retain the essential feature of being a list of questions presented in a logical order to achieve a specific set of objectives. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages in relation to the knowledge profile.
An interview requires a one-on-one meeting with the incumbent employee in which a trained interviewer poses a series of questions from a prepared list. The interview is structured if the interviewer asks only the questions on the list and only in the exact order in which they appear. It is unstructured if the interviewer is permitted to change the order of the questions, delete questions, or add questions, as might happen in probing for more information. The advantage of the interview technique is the ability it confers to probe for more specific knowledge, to seek related knowledge, or to link knowledge. It offers great flexibility, and the human interaction of interviewer and interviewee often stimulates further thought and additional information.
The disadvantage of the interview is that it requires an individual who has some training in interviewing and who is reasonably familiar with the subject matter being covered. Interviewing is expensive because of the one-on-one requirement, the special training required, the time necessary to conduct a complete interview, and the additional cost that is often incurred for video recording or transcribing. These factors limit the number of employees whose knowledge can be gathered using the interview technique.
Questionnaires can assume many different forms and can be administered in very different formats. The primary advantage of the questionnaire, in whatever form, is that it can be administered with standardized or customized content to a large number of people. As a result, questionnaires are highly efficient. Sophisticated electronic versions can be designed to probe with additional questions through intelligent prompts, mimicking some of the advantages of the semistructured interview. The primary disadvantage of the questionnaire technique is the other side of the efficiency coin: Its standardization eliminates deep individual probing and knowledge linking. Questionnaires may also be less successful than interviewers in getting the interviewee to provide complete data.
Our review of these two techniques led us to the conclusion that some jobs at WedgeMark would merit interviews, whereas most jobs would merit questionnaires. Interviews would be appropriate for unique positions where thoroughness, flexibility, and significant probing were important to secure the breadth and depth of knowledge warranted by the person's expertise and experience. In such cases, the knowledge being captured is so critical that it is usually knowledge that the organization itself must have, not just a successor. For example, the only person who knows how to operate the computer system or the only person who knows government contracting procedures would be candidates. Sophisticated software programs are available to assist the interviewer in these special cases.
For most job classifications, however, a well-designed questionnaire in electronic form is the most efficient way to capture critical operational knowledge for successors. Such questionnaires may not look like questionnaires, and they can be made highly interactive, but questionnaires they are in that they contain a set of ordered questions that the incumbent answers.
The key element that makes both interviews and questionnaires effective as knowledge-harvesting techniques is the set of questions they employ. The next task before the Dream Team was to create a set of master questions developed specifically to capture the critical operational knowledge of incumbents in any knowledge position at WedgeMark. Andre had already dubbed this set of questions knowledge profile analysis questions, or K-PAQ for short. We liked the term and continued to use it. When finished, K-PAQ would contain a complete set of questions for each knowledge category in the knowledge profile. It was not, however, the actual instrument that would be used to harvest the critical operational knowledge of incumbents. In order to understand the relationship of K-PAQ to that instrument, a summary of the process to date and a preview of the next steps might be in order. Knowledge profile creation consists of five steps:
Design the knowledge profile. Designing the knowledge profile entails two objectives: (1) identifying the knowledge categories that make up the profile and (2) determining the knowledge topics within each category.
Develop K-PAQ: the knowledge profile analysis questions. On the basis of the knowledge categories in the knowledge profile, it is possible to develop a master list of questions to capture an incumbent's critical operational knowledge. This database of questions for each knowledge category and its subcategory of topics provides the pool of questions from which to create the questionnaire that will be administered to harvest an incumbent's operational knowledge. The same question pool can be used to construct interviews. We called this database K-PAQ, which was short for knowledge profile analysis questions.
Develop K-Quest: the knowledge questionnaire. K-PAQ is a master list of questions; it is not an instrument to capture operational knowledge for a specific job classification. Were K-PAQ to be administered in its entirety as an instrument to harvest knowledge, it would take too long to complete, and many of its questions would be redundant or irrelevant. K-PAQ is merely the pool of questions from which certain relevant questions will be selected to create the instrument that will harvest the knowledge of incumbent employees. The term we chose for the harvesting instrument, whether administered by interview or electronic means, was knowledge questionnaire. We shortened knowledge questionnaire to knowledge-quest, and finally to K-Quest, which was the term we came to use. Development of the knowledge questionnaire is a multistage process described in the next chapter.
Administer K-Quest. Once the knowledge questionnaire has been developed, it is administered to all incumbents participating in continuity management in accordance with a set of procedures that are also described in the next chapter.
Generate the knowledge profile. As K-Quest is administered and completed by an incumbent, its contents are reorganized electronically into the knowledge profile for that position. The full process of knowledge profile creation, however, involves several additional stages beyond administration of the knowledge questionnaire. The stages are described in Chapter 11 ("Creating the Knowledge Profile").
This five-step process from knowledge profile design to knowledge profile generation can be diagrammed as shown in Figure 9.1.
The Dream Team designed K-PAQ as a buffet of questions from which individual selections could be made to create the knowledge questionnaire for any job classification at WedgeMark. The questions in K-PAQ were developed to facilitate thinking about job-critical operational knowledge as well as to harvest that knowledge. Operational knowledge encompasses more than data and information, although it may include data and information. It also includes formal and informal processes, procedures, and relationships; essential skills; procedures that incumbents have developed or heard about that are not official or written down, but that guide them in their work; and past experiences, successes, and failures that contain lessons for the future.
As our colleagues continually reminded us, the real need in their jobs was knowledge rather than information. But it was more than just knowledge. It was the right knowledge—and getting that knowledge when they needed it in a form that was meaningful to them. The same problems exist for successors as well as for incumbents: too much information, too little knowledge, knowledge that is ill-timed, incomplete knowledge, and knowledge presented in a form that is confusing or unhelpful. Like incumbents, successors require quick access to the critical operational knowledge they need to excel, and in a format that will allow them to process it quickly and to understand it in the context in which it will be applied. The knowledge profile is the means through which this knowledge is organized and accessed. K-Quest is the means by which it is gathered. K-PAQ is the bridge between the two.
Because K-PAQ is one of the key processes of continuity management, and because, in some ways, it is the heart of continuity management, I am incorporating its design and its basic questions into this journal. K-PAQ appears here in the same format in which it was provided to senior management for a briefing on our progress in implementing continuity management. Because knowledge questionnaires for any position at WedgeMark can be created out of K-PAQ, the senior executives found it useful to skim the list of questions as a means of more fully appreciating the breadth and depth of operational knowledge that K-Quest can capture. When reviewing the list of K-PAQ questions, the executives were asked to keep three caveats in mind.
The first caveat is that no knowledge questionnaire to be completed by any incumbent will ever contain all the questions in K-PAQ. Depending on the job classification, some questions will be irrelevant, others will be redundant, and still others will be too detailed. The strength of K-PAQ is the range of questions that it provides for creating highly customized knowledge questionnaires for specific job classifications.
The second caveat is that not all of the K-PAQ questions will require as much time to answer as it may appear. Some questions in K-PAQ are designated to appear in the knowledge questionnaire accompanied by prefilled answers, which are tentative answers developed by a team of peer incumbents. Such questions are referred to as knowledge core questions, defined as questions that tap critical operational knowledge shared by virtually all employees in the same job classification. Much of the operational knowledge in the knowledge profile is specific to the job rather than to the job classification, but not all of it. Some of it is shared by virtually everyone who holds the same position. For example, the job description, corporate mission statement, corporate objectives, operating statistics, performance appraisal standards, and so forth are likely to be very similar for everyone with the same job classification. Prefilled answers shorten the time required to complete K-Quest because such answers have only to be reviewed by incumbents for accuracy and, if necessary, modified by deletion or addition rather than created from scratch.
The third caveat is that K-PAQ is a database of questions that will continually expand as continuity management infuses an organization and more and more incumbents analyze their knowledge needs. The questions that we developed for WedgeMark are just the beginning of our K-PAQ. We anticipated (and it turned out to be true) that additional questions would be added as continuity management spread throughout the company and we developed more and more experience with it. Different industries, organizations, and job classifications will undoubtedly develop their own K-PAQs by adding highly specialized questions designed to capture the critical operational knowledge of their knowledge-based incumbents. Like knowledge itself, the bank of questions in K-PAQ will continue to change.
We keyed K-PAQ to the knowledge profile. Therefore, the four sections of K-PAQ match the four sections of the profile and are further subdivided according to the knowledge categories of the Profile. These four sections are entitled Operating Data, Key Operational Knowledge, Basic Operational Knowledge, and Background Operational Knowledge. The questions shown with a marked checkbox are likely to be fully or partially pre-answered in the knowledge questionnaire. The extent of the prefill, if any, will depend on the job classification for which the knowledge questionnaire is being developed.
Operating data is the knowledge category containing current information that is routinely used, such as key operating statistics (e.g., monthly sales figures, sales trends, and market share), budgets, projections, and so forth. Reference information such as corporate telephone numbers, policies and procedures, number of vacation days used, and so forth are also included.
Potential questions for the Operating Data section include:
Documents (such as reports, databases, memos, brochures, user manuals, service guides, product plans, pricing sheets, etc.)
Individuals to whom you can turn for assistance in providing this information
Key operational knowledge, as used in K-PAQ, is current knowledge required to perform well in a position. That knowledge is often tacit rather than explicit. Tacit knowledge is the unofficial or informal knowledge stored in an incumbent's head rather than in a database and known only to the incumbent and, perhaps, to a few others with whom it has been shared. This type of knowledge is generally not written down, unless it appears in the margins of procedures manuals or as notes to the file. It develops from on-the-job experience, trial-and-error discoveries, inventive solutions, and improvisations or as lessons learned from projects that succeeded—or failed. It consists of informal rules of thumb that incumbents have devised, principles they have developed, cause-and-effect relationships they have discerned, and guidelines they have created or that others have shared with them. Tacit knowledge is sometimes handed down from employee generation to generation in the form of stories, morality tales, warnings, scribbled notes, or private files. This kind of operational knowledge is invaluable, yet it has no value outside of its context, which is everything.
The Key Operational Knowledge section of K-PAQ consists of four knowledge categories:
Front-burner issues include decisions, assignments, questions, tasks, controversies, opportunities, threats, or anything else that may require quick action with potentially serious consequences. Major projects, which are always front-burner issues, are excluded from this knowledge category because they are covered in a separate category, Projects Pending. Front-burner issues include current issues (issues currently "on the front burner") and acute issues (likely to arise soon because of emerging factors). Chronic issues, which are ongoing issues that can flare up at any time, demanding quick responses, are included under the Hibernating Issues knowledge category. Front-burner issues may or may not require significant time or resources, but may require quick and effective action to avoid serious consequences or to capitalize on unusual opportunities. An understanding of the context, background, pros and cons, alternatives, and possible outcomes related to these issues is imperative. The determination of whether an issue is a front-burner issue and important enough to be included in the knowledge profile is left to the incumbent.
The questions relating to Front-Burner Issues are applicable to each front-burner issue. Of course, not every question will be relevant to every issue, so questions that are not relevant should be deleted from K-Quest. Others could be added if necessary to provide a concise, but clear understanding of the issue.
□ Briefly describe the issue, including its category (decision, assignment, task, controversy, opportunity, threat, etc.) and whether it is acute or chronic.
□ Who are the main parties to the issue?
□ What are the basic factors in this issue? In other words, what are the central facts one needs to know to make the decision, carry out the task, or meet the threat?
□ What are your objectives related to this issue?
□ What are the principle options related to this decision, including the pros and cons?
□ What historical information, if any, is pertinent to this issue?
□ What threats or opportunities to you or the organization are embedded in this issue?
□ Who are the principle internal contacts (those from the company, whether still with the company, no longer with the company, consultants to the company, or former consultants to the company) who can help with this issue?
□ Who are the principal external contacts (those outside the company), if any, who can help with this issue?
□ What documents constitute the primary resources to which you turn for data, information or knowledge about the issue?
□ Who are your primary allies, or what are the supporting forces on this issue (people, institutions, organizations, events, trends, etc.)?
□ Who are your primary antagonists, or what are the primary opposing forces on this issue?
□ What special insight can you offer based on your own experience with this issue?
□ Is there any other critical knowledge related to this issue that should be included in the knowledge profile?
Hibernating issues are dormant or semidormant ongoing threats, opportunities, controversies, events, or other issues that carry particular risk or reward and so must be continually monitored in case they erupt and require a quick response. The difference between hibernating issues and front-burner issues is this: Hibernating issues are not necessarily imminent. They may be long-standing issues simmering below the surface that could erupt suddenly, but might not. Or they may be regularly recurring issues that are not currently on the front burner but that will return, proving treacherous to the novice and even to the incumbent if not properly handled.
The questions relating to Hibernating Issues are applicable to each hibernating issue. Delete questions from K-Quest as necessary or add others as needed to provide a concise, but clear understanding of the issue.
□ Briefly describe the issue, including its category (decision, assignment, task, controversy, opportunity, threat, etc.).
□ Who are the main parties to the issue?
□ What are the basic factors in this issue? In other words, what are the central facts one needs to know to make the decision, carry out the task, or meet the threat?
□ What are your objectives related to this issue?
□ What are the principle options related to this decision, including the pros and cons?
□ What historical information, if any, is pertinent to this issue?
□ What threats or opportunities to you or the organization are embedded in this issue?
□ Who are the principle internal contacts (those from the company, whether still with the company, no longer with the company, consultants to the company, or former consultants to the company) who can help with this issue?
□ Who are the principal external contacts (those outside the company), if any, who can help with this issue?
□ What documents constitute the primary resources to which you turn for data, information or knowledge about the issue?
□ Who are your primary allies, or what are the supporting forces on this issue (people, institutions, organizations, events, trends, etc.)?
□ Who are your primary antagonists, or what are the primary oppos ing forces on this issue?
□ What special insight can you offer based on your own experience with this issue?
This knowledge category includes all of an incumbent's most important customers inside the organization (internal) and outside the organization (external). As used here, customer is broadly defined, and the definition of important customer is left to the incumbent. Internal customers include supervisors, peers, direct reports, and others in the company to whom formal or informal products or services are provided (including knowledge). External customers are those outside the company to whom products or services are provided on behalf of the company.
The process of identifying internal and external customers focuses attention on customer priorities, on customers as priorities, and on the quality of service provided to them. This analysis is helpful to incumbents, but critical for new hires. If new hires are not satisfactorily briefed on their customers and on their customers' special needs and expectations, they will encounter criticism, experience frustration, and may even lose the customer.
Potential questions for the Key Customers category include:
□ Who are your key internal customers, ranked in order of importance, to whom you provide formal or informal products or services? Customers may be ranked individually or by tiers (for example, 1, 2, 3 or Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3). Informal customers are people to whom you provide advice and counsel, with whom you share other forms of knowledge, or for whom you provide services on an informal basis.
□ Who are your key external customers, ranked in order of importance (individually or by tier)?
□ Are there additional internal or external customers you intend to approach or could approach (e.g., customer prospect lists)?
For each of these key customers, answer the following questions:
□ Customer name
□ Customer priority ranking
□ Internal or external
□ Product or service provided to customer
□ Contact and contact's position
□ Customer history (if applicable)
□ Special needs, requirements, procedures, or expectations
□ Selling hints or peculiarities
□ Customer testimonials
□ If problems with customer, contact
□ Other comments
According to a study by Standish Group Research, 84 percent of all projects fail in some way. Of these, 53 percent are late or over budget, and 31 percent are cancelled prior to completion. The average project takes 222 percent longer than planned to complete and exceeds its budget by 189 percent (Projects are risky business, 2001, p. 1). While there are many reasons for project compromise or failure, one of the reasons is the transfer of key personnel off the project or the lack of personnel with institutional memory of the project who can provide assistance when potential problems arise. Some jobs are primarily project based—whether software development projects, consulting assignments, or new product development. Others are not, but all jobs involve some projects that require planning, coordination, and execution.
Projects Pending includes any project in which an incumbent is involved that could have a significant impact on the organization (in other words, a major project). The criteria for including a project in this knowledge category are left up to the incumbent to determine. If it is a project that is exclusively an incumbent's to organize, direct, or launch, then it is by definition a major project, because no one else could handle it effectively in the incumbent's absence. As pending projects are closed, they are archived and stored for future reference under Completed Projects, a knowledge profile category appearing in the Background Operational Knowledge section of the profile.
The Projects Pending questions that follow are applicable to each major project pending. Delete questions from K-Quest as necessary or add others as needed to provide a concise, but clear understanding of the issue.
□ What is the name of this project?
□ Briefly describe the project.
□ What are the goals of this project?
□ Who are the official parties involved in this project?
□ Are there any unofficial or interested parties related to the project who play an important, if indirect, role?
□ Is this project anyone's pet project, and, if so, what are the ramifications?
□ What is the history of this project, if relevant?
□ What are the issues, if any, associated with this project?
□ What opportunities or threats to you or the organization are related to this project?
□ What major decisions, if any, are likely to arise out of this project?
□ Which individuals or forces, if any, oppose this project, and what is the best way to deal with them? Put another way, what are the biggest obstacles to completion of this project?
□ Who are the principal internal contacts (those within the company) and the principal external contacts (those outside the company) on this project or those who know the most about this project who could be relied on to provide assistance?
□ What are the primary documentary resources to which you can turn for data, information or knowledge about this project?
□ What special insight can you offer based on your own experience with this project?
□ Is there any other critical operational knowledge related to this project that should be included in the knowledge profile?
Every job can be described in terms of six components: objectives, functions, activities, decisions, skills, and performance evaluation criteria. These six knowledge categories are examined in the Basic Operational Knowledge section. They are important to new hires because they describe the parameters of the jobs they are assuming. They are also important to incumbents, however, because they provide an overview of their jobs and a perspective on how they spend—or should be spending—their time on those jobs. The analysis that creates this section of K-Quest will pinpoint knowledge leverage points: areas where knowledge-based productivity gains can be achieved through changes in priorities, activities, and time allocations or through improved skills and decision making.
Basic operational knowledge is contained in mission statements, annual goals, budgets, databases, organizational charts, Web pages, policies, procedures, and other official documents. But it is also the kind of knowledge that grows out of on-the-job experience, arises from stories passed between colleagues, and develops from thoughtful analysis.
The Basic Operational Knowledge section of K-PAQ consists of six knowledge categories: Job Objectives, Primary Job Functions, Reporting Lines, Primary Job Activities, SWOT Analysis, and Innovations.
Every job can be described in terms of its objectives, functions, and activities. This knowledge category focuses on employee objectives and on their relationship to the operational knowledge that incumbents possess or need to acquire.
Potential questions for the Job Objectives category include:
□ What are your performance goals or objectives for the coming year (i.e., those on which your performance appraisal will be based)?
□ Are there other short-term goals you have set for yourself (such as sales, projects completed, customers served, or other performance measures)?
□ What are your long-term goals and objectives, as expressed in performance measurements?
Ideally, job objectives, functions, and activities should be aligned. Functions should support achievement of organizational objectives. Functions describe the kind of work that we do (whereas activities describe the tasks that we perform to carry out those functions). The functions of a sales job, for example, might include developing new customers, supporting present customers, or assisting other organizational units in understanding customers. For successor employees, job functions provide an overview of the job.
Potential questions for the Primary Job Functions category include:
□ How much time do you devote to these functions, on average? In other words, what does your average day look like in terms of time devoted to these functions?
Formal reporting lines are depicted in organizational charts, but organizational charts do not tell the whole story. As important as they are, they do not reveal informal lines of authority, the courtesy heads-up, the blind carbon copies, or the indirect reporting arrangements that are equally important to success in a given position. While invaluable for successors, these questions benefit incumbents by focusing their attention on the characteristics of those to whom they report and the most effective means of dealing with them.
Potential questions for the Reporting Lines category include:
□ Who are the people to whom you report directly?
□ For each direct report, provide the following information:
What are this person's three most important objectives?
What is his or her management style?
How does he or she prefer to communicate (through oral briefings, memos, formal reports, telephone calls, e-mail, social gatherings, staff meetings)?
What are his or her pet preferences?
What are his or her pet peeves?
□ Should you have fewer or more direct reports, and why?
□ Who are the people to whom you report indirectly?
□ For each indirect report, provide the following information:
What are this person's three most important objectives?
What is his or her management style?
How does he or she prefer to communicate (through oral briefings, memos, formal reports, telephone calls, e-mail, social gatherings, staff meetings)?
What are his or her pet preferences?
What are his or her pet peeves?
□ Who are the people who are neither direct nor indirect reports with whom you should share knowledge for political, personal, or other reasons, and why?
All job activities, whether tasks or responsibilities, should support one or more job functions, which, in turn, should support achievement of the job's objectives. The Primary Job Activities knowledge category can be invaluable to incumbents because it will:
Allow them to increase the alignment of their activities with their job functions and objectives.
Allow them to analyze the amount of time they devote to their primary activities in light of their objectives.
Allow them to analyze what they do in relation to the operational knowledge they have or need to acquire.
Identify key leverage points of productivity: activities with the greatest value added. It is these activities to which more time and resources should be dedicated.
The following chart shows the three question sets to be answered for each activity. In other words, for each primary activity, an incumbent is queried about the time spent on that activity (time relationship), the knowledge required to accomplish it (related knowledge), and the processes (related processes).
Activity Identification | Set A: Time Relationship | Set B: Related Knowledge | Set C: Related Processes |
|---|---|---|---|
Potential questions for the Primary Job Activities category include:
Activity Identification
The following questions on time relationship relate to each activity:
The often-quoted Pareto principle (or the 80/20 rule) states that 20 percent of a group of people will be responsible for 80 percent of production, that 20 percent of customers will produce 80 percent of the business, and that 20 percent of our effort generates 80 percent of what we are trying to achieve. On the basis of the 80/20 rule, we can guess that something like 20 percent of our activities and 20 percent of our operational knowledge produce 80 percent of what we are trying to accomplish. The goal, therefore, is to identify that 20 percent.
Each primary activity is supported by operational knowledge. In accordance with Pareto principle, these questions focus attention on acquiring or enhancing the 20 percent of operational knowledge that generates 80 percent of achievements.
Potential questions on knowledge identification include:
□ What operational knowledge, if any, could you enhance that would increase your productivity in these primary activities?
□ What operational knowledge, if any, do you need, but do not have, that would make you more productive in primary activities?
An important area of operational knowledge is understanding how things get done—the formal procedures and informal processes by which employees carry out their activities, accomplish their tasks, and achieve their objectives. If formal corporate documentation painted an accurate picture of organizational processes, it would only be necessary to read the corporate policies and procedures manual (while staying awake), various handbooks, and a few key memos in order to know everything. But corporate documentation seldom describes how things really happen in an organization.
People often set up informal processes that are more efficient and effective than those mandated by the organization. Or they devise ways to circumvent the formal processes in order to save time or to move their projects to the head of the line. Or they come up with better, faster, or more innovative solutions than official procedures describe. Social capital plays an important role in the development and communication of such knowledge, as do communities of practice, knowledge networks, and friendships. All these sources generate knowledge that is used to modify obsolete corporate procedures that fail to keep step with the demands of the rapidly changing work environment. The process identification questions in K-PAQ attempt to capture the processes that incumbents have modified or created to make their primary activities more productive.
Potential questions on process identification include:
□ For each activity and its related knowledge, briefly describe the processes and procedures that you follow, especially if they are short-cuts.
□ What processes or procedures have you modified or created that have enhanced productivity?
□ What standard procedures or processes are particularly cumbersome or counterproductive?
SWOT is an acronym used to describe the analysis of an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses (including competitive advantages), and an analysis of threats and opportunities facing the organization or the incumbent. Successful leaders and great organizations are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and monitor them continuously. In an ideal world, these strengths and weaknesses would be candidly assessed with the goal of eliminating the weaknesses and capitalizing on the strengths.
Potential questions on strengths and weaknesses include:
□ What are the strengths of your unit or of the strengths of the organization as they affect your unit?
□ What are the strengths of other units that should be taken into account in dealing with them?
□ Are there ways to capitalize on these strengths that are not being pursued?
□ What are the weaknesses of your unit or of the organization as they affect your unit?
□ What are the weaknesses of other units that have to be considered in dealing with them?
□ How might these weaknesses be reduced or eliminated?
□ What are the weaknesses of outsourced suppliers that have to be considered in dealing with them?
□ What are the three biggest mistakes made in your unit in the last year, and what are their lessons?
□ What are the three greatest successes achieved in your unit in the last year, and what are their lessons?
□ What are the three most significant improvements made in your unit over the past year?
Threats and opportunities include short-term and long-term threats and opportunities that incumbents or their organization face. Short-term threats may also have appeared under Front-Burner Issues. The following questions relate to both the incumbent and the organization.
□ What major threats, if any, do you see developing over the next year?
□ What major threats, in any, do you see developing within the next five years?
□ What might be done to counter these threats?
□ What major opportunities, if any, do you see developing over the next year?
□ What major opportunities, if any, do you see developing over the next five years?
□ What might be done to capitalize on these opportunities?
Competitive advantage is a form of opportunity. In business, competitive advantages are attributes, capabilities, ideas, resources, products, services, or anything else that makes one entity, product, or service more attractive in the marketplace than competing entities, products, or services. For purposes of K-Quest, the term competitive advantage is broadly applied. By answering the following questions, incumbents will have an opportunity to analyze existing competitive advantages, determine those that can be strengthened further, and identify those that need to be created.
Potential questions on competitive advantage include:
□ What are the primary competitive advantages of the service or products that you develop, provide, or sell, listed by service or product?
□ How do you capitalize on these competitive advantages?
□ How can you or the organization strengthen these competitive advantages?
□ What new competitive advantages might be created?
□ What are the primary competitive advantages of the organization as they apply to you and your job?
□ How might you or the organization strengthen these competitive advantages?
□ What new competitive advantages might the organization create?
Innovations is the knowledge category that captures the shortcuts, creative solutions, modified techniques, procedural revisions, new ideas, or any other changes that incumbents have developed, heard about, or otherwise applied. They are often informal, unofficial, and unreported, arising from the incumbent's tacit knowledge base and shared with one or two people, with the team, or perhaps with no one. They represent significant organizational opportunities for increased productivity and effectiveness and are a key part of the knowledge legacy that incumbents can pass to their successors.
Potential questions for the Innovations category include:
□ What changes or modifications have you made to existing organizational procedures, policies, processes, rules, or requirements that have increased your productivity or effectiveness? These changes may have stemmed from your own experience or they may have resulted from conversations with your colleagues or others.
□ If not covered by the previous question, what new ideas, creative solutions, or innovative approaches to carrying out your job functions or conducting the primary activities of your position have you developed or employed?
Some answers to the preceding questions may also appear under the Activity Identification knowledge category.
Background operational knowledge is knowledge that incumbents may not consciously use every day but that is an essential part of their operating knowledge. Background operational knowledge is often analytical knowledge compiled by incumbents from official and unofficial sources and synthesized into strategic concepts and principles that support their strategic thinking and lead them to networking resources. This knowledge category is vital to successors if they are to grasp the nature of the job they are assuming and move quickly to high productivity. But this knowledge category is also important to incumbents, because it forces them to analyze key components of their knowledge base and to keep them current.
The Background Operational Knowledge section consists of six knowledge categories: Knowledge Network, Skill Sets, Performance Evaluations, Completed Projects, Unexploited Ideas, and Incumbent Biographies.
Key knowledge suppliers are individuals connected to incumbents by mutual knowledge needs. Together, these individuals form a knowledge network, which can be defined as a web of formal and informal relationships composed of people inside and outside the organization connected by mutual knowledge interests. An incumbent's knowledge network includes internal and external suppliers, colleagues, competitors, consultants, mentors, and others to whom incumbents turn for knowledge and the social and political relationships through which to grease the wheels of decision making, cut red tape, get a higher priority for requests and projects, or otherwise speed up the processes on which high performance depends. People who know the ropes or know where the bodies are buried are especially important network members. These continuity sages can often provide knowledge and ensure knowledge continuity when no other reliable source can.
Some of the individuals named on this list of key knowledge suppliers will be useful to successors and some will not be, but the list itself will be invaluable. Although successors still have to re-create the knowledge relationships, they can do so with greater efficiency and understanding if they know whom to contact and why they are contacting them. For a new hire to start from scratch to create a knowledge network is very time-consuming. It will take weeks or months for a new hire to recreate the knowledge network of the predecessor. Without access to the knowledge network, however, new hires will find it difficult if not impossible to retrieve needed information or obtain the necessary cooperation and collaboration to be productive quickly.
Knowledge networks can be traced through a mapping process, which is built into K-PAQ. The process identifies people within the organization and external to the organization who are joined by shared knowledge requirements, mutual knowledge opportunities, and social ties that lead to knowledge exchange. In a larger sense, knowledge mapping describes how people influence each other and relate to each other on the basis of knowledge. It traces organizational knowledge flow among incumbents and others inside and outside the organization, tracking three types of flows:
Critical knowledge inflow (knowledge from sources external to the organization)
Critical knowledge outflow (knowledge from the organization to external sources)
Critical knowledge cross-flow (knowledge shared only within the organization) that is essential to the work incumbents do
Knowledge mapping provides an overview of an incumbent's knowledge network that facilitates prioritization of knowledge relationships that support their work, identifying those that need to be strengthened and those that can be deemphasized.
The names of some people in the knowledge network may also appear in response to other K-PAQ questions (for example, if they are important to specific functions, projects, decisions, or activities), but this section on key knowledge suppliers provides an integrated overview of the contacts on which incumbents regularly (or occasionally) depend to function well in their jobs. When the knowledge profile is created electronically in high-technology continuity management systems, any key knowledge supplier reported elsewhere will be summarized under this heading. Key knowledge suppliers can be referenced by expertise, by work or project experience, by knowledge application (cutting red tape, general advice, political insights, confidential knowledge, and so forth), by corporate function (marketing, budgeting, planning, and so forth), by job classification (sales manager, accountant, and so forth), and by other useful categories.
Potential questions for the Knowledge Network category include:
□ Who are your key informal and formal internal knowledge suppliers (e.g., knowledgeable supervisors, peers, subordinates, or mentors)?
□ Who are your key external knowledge suppliers (e.g., customers, suppliers, consultants, or mentors)?
□ Which peers (those holding the same job classification) do you turn to for assistance when you need it?
The following questions relate to each key knowledge supplier. Questions can be added as necessary.
□ Name
□ Expertise or knowledge function provided
□ Position (if internal) or position and organization (if external) with contact information
□ History of the relationship with the key knowledge supplier (if relevant)
□ Anything else about key knowledge suppliers that should be included in the knowledge profile
In an era of turbulent change, continuous learning is a necessity. An important aspect of continuous learning and of operational knowledge is developing the set of job-related skills required for high performance. This knowledge category will help incumbents and successors compare their existing skills to the ideal skill set. From that analysis, they can determine the additional training they need to improve those skills or acquire new ones.
Potential questions for the Skill Sets category include:
□ What additional training or education would be helpful in your job? For example, would you benefit from an introductory course in accounting, budgeting, marketing, finance, or logistics offered through an in-house training session, an online course, or a course offered by a local college? What additional technical skills should you acquire?
□ Are there any additional technical skills that would be useful to you?
This knowledge category describes the criteria and processes through which employee performance is evaluated, compensation is set, and promotions are earned. Although it is primarily for the benefit of successors, it benefits incumbents by crystallizing their thinking about how success is achieved in their positions. In some cases, the questions should not be answered, but nonetheless considered by incumbents as they develop their career strategies. The goal of the knowledge category, however, is to have incumbents include as many answers as they feel comfortable in revealing.
Potential questions for the Performance Evaluations category include:
□ Who is officially responsible for your performance evaluation?
□ Who else has input in that evaluation?
□ Is there an informal evaluation process that bears on the official process?
□ To what extent is your performance judged on the basis of what you do versus what your group does?
This knowledge category archives all major projects completed by incumbents during their tenure with the organization. The category does not appear in K-PAQ or K-Quest because it is automatically populated by completed projects from Projects Pending. When incumbents update their knowledge profiles and designate a pending project as having been completed, it is automatically moved to the Completed Projects knowledge category of the profile.
One of the challenges for incumbent employees in any organization is setting aside the time and finding the discipline to exploit the new ideas they have generated. Innovative solutions, creative revisions, and imaginative approaches often occur to employees during the course of their work. Sometimes they pursue these ideas; often they do not. This knowledge category requires incumbents to examine ideas that have not been developed or exploited to their full potential. Not every incumbent, of course, has such ideas, but these questions apply to those who do.
Potential questions for the Unexploited Ideas category include:
□ What ideas, suggestions, or recommendations for improving operations have you developed that you would like to pursue?
□ Who might be of assistance in helping you exploit these ideas, either through further development or through wider implementation?
□ What ideas or recommendations were made by your predecessor that have not yet been developed or implemented?
□ Who might be of assistance in helping you develop or implement those ideas?
Each knowledge profile contains a biographical sketch of every incumbent who has contributed to it, along with that incumbent's favorite photograph of himself or herself. The originator of the profile is called the founding incumbent and is especially honored.
The purpose of the biography is to personalize the profile and to connect the incumbent emotionally to it. The biography may be of any length. We encourage a biography that includes both professional aspects (such as jobs held or special areas of expertise) and personal aspects (such as hobbies, interests, home town, family members, and so forth), or anything else that incumbents would like to say about themselves in this biography. Incumbents should provide their favorite photograph of themselves, which will be scanned into the profile for inclusion with their biographies.
Because continuity management at WedgeMark is a work in progress, the Dream Team was very interested in feedback on the K-PAQ questions. For that reason, we developed a final section that did not relate directly to the knowledge profile, but rather to the design and administration of the knowledge questionnaire itself. For example, we recommend that these three questions be included in each K-Quest to ensure that no critical operational knowledge was omitted:
What operational knowledge critical to your position has not been captured by the previous questions but should be included in the knowledge profile?
What additional questions, if any, should be added to capture this knowledge?
What questions do you remember asking during the first few weeks or months of your employment in this position that were not raised in K-Quest?
The Dream Team was also interested in the incumbents' experience of taking the knowledge questionnaire. Therefore, we recommended these questions as well:
What was the most helpful thing about taking K-Quest?
What was least helpful thing about K-Quest?
How could the design, format, or administration of K-Quest be improved?
K-PAQ was the source for the questions that would populate the knowledge questionnaire, but the process of choosing those questions and creating the questionnaire itself was still to be devised. Because each knowledge questionnaire would differ according to the job classification for which it was designed, we would have to develop principles and procedures for creating the questionnaire and for administering it. To this task, the Dream Team next turned its attention.