7

British Airways

Getting the knowledge plane off the ground

This case amplifies the initial stages involved in setting up and moving towards a knowledge and learning orientation. The major challenge at this stage is often to convince people in the company, at all levels, from the bottom to the top, of the benefits and value that knowledge management can bestow.

British Airways (BA) sees knowledge as key to its future success in the airline industry. While the term ‘knowledge management’ is used to cover a wide range of approaches, behaviours and tools to support and encourage the use of knowledge, BA believes firmly that managing for knowledge will help it to achieve significant improvements in innovation, creativity, flexibility, speed to market, meeting customer needs and working effectively in a global business.

British Airways embarked on the knowledge management journey with a concerted effort in the early part of 1998, though there had been seedling efforts throughout the company in the years before. Its goal was to quickly move from an awareness to a seamless approach within a matter of five to ten years. An indicative example of high-level milestones that the company set itself, is shown in Table 7.1.

The aim of BA's knowledge initiative is to move toward the BA vision, in which knowledge management is a normal part of business operation. The vision sees the future as one in which all staff, irrespective of the part of BA in which they work, share knowledge and work in a mutually supportive climate. Before it can do this BA recognizes that it must overcome a number of obstacles. The first of these challenges is to remove the widespread misconceptions of what knowledge management is, and its relevance for the company. British Airways approached this challenge by first identifying the prevalent beliefs that existed in the company and then widely communicating an answer to clarify and promote knowledge management to its people. The most common myths versus BA's knowledge management champions’ answers are briefly elaborated next.

Table 7.1 British Airways’ indicative high-level milestones

The top five knowledge management myths at BA

Myth 1: It is all hype.

BA proponents’ answer: Although there is hype in the marketplace, the early adopting companies are now well up the learning curve and many are reaping significant benefits. These adopters include the top consulting partnerships such as KMPG, and other organizations for whom knowledge is a core activity of business. The time is now ripe for a company like BA to adopt knowledge management.

Myth 2: We are doing it already.

BA proponents’ answer: This is true for specific areas at specific times, but it is not the case throughout the organization. We now need to move towards our vision where knowledge management is both systemic and systematic.

Myth 3: It is all about databases.

BA proponents’ answer: Knowledge management is two-thirds culture and behaviour, and only one-third technology.

Myth 4: All knowledge is good knowledge.

BA proponents’ answer: Knowledge can become out of date, or fail to justify the cost of creating or collecting it.

Myth 5: Just do it – it must be a good thing.

BA proponents answer: Knowledge management is not a panacea. Any knowledge management project should be approached with a clear vision, assessment of the benefits at all stages and organizational and behavioural support.

British Airways advocates believed the way forward, at these initial stages, was for the company to:

• establish a high-level cross-company knowledge project board
• support a best practice group to share experiences from early knowledge management projects and to make recommendations about skill development
• fund a database of company contacts and expertise, e.g. a company ‘Yellow Pages’ project is widely agreed to be the most beneficial knowledge management starting point
• exploit the e-working infrastructure (e.g. Lotus Notes, intranet, video-conferencing) and introduce Lotus Notes’ add-on tools where appropriate
• consider making the role of ‘Quest’ centres as corporate knowledge brokers
• introduce a BA-wide search engine, using the new intranet search as a springboard
• plan how to knowledge-enable all staff – not just desk-based ones
• maintain a watchful eye for any other knowledge management developments outside the company and examine these for possible relevance to the company, e.g. the increasing trend toward intellectual capital measurement.

To implement knowledge management, BA's proponents have designed a select number of guidelines of best practice thought:

1   Understand what knowledge management can do for you. If the business need is not obvious to you or your customers then you probably do not need it. But, check what the competition is doing before rejecting it.

2   Spend time thinking about behaviours, skills, structures and reward systems to support your objectives.

3   Define the business benefits before, during and after the project.

4   Consider both tacit and explicit knowledge (many areas focus on one at the expense of the other).

5   Decide who your knowledge community is – it could include people outside BA.

6   Use the existing technical tools, unless it becomes obvious that a more specialist tool is needed.

7   Do not spend more than a third of your budget on technology.

8   Try to make knowledge management part of the process rather than an extra task.

9   Remember that most people want to ‘get’ before they ‘give’.

To get people to understand and appreciate the value of knowledge management, and the way it could be used within the company, BA champions recount numerous knowledge management stories. Three success stories that were used to initiate and sell the knowledge management effort are described next.

Knowledge management stories to fuel internal energy and interest

The World Bank

The World Bank has transformed itself from a lending organization for Third World development projects to a worldwide knowledge-rich business. In the old World Bank organization, typically a government or institute would ask it for advice. The World Bank would send in a team to investigate, the outcomes of whose efforts would, perhaps in six to nine months’ time, be a report. The catalyst to knowledge management emerged in the form of a request from the government of Pakistan asking for advice on road surface deterioration, but within very quick timescales. The bank was able to contact ‘its experts around the world’; finding people in Chile, Israel and South Africa who could all contribute to the answer. This provided the World Bank with a glimpse of its future direction.

The World Bank began this transformation with strong leadership from the top, in two stages:

1   Building communities of practice in all their areas of expertise (with electronic support). This included people inside and outside the organization and enabled a much faster response to many of the requests they received.

2   Making the resulting knowledge databases available as a resource to their clients – effectively giving them expertise on tap.

Lesson: Although. BA is also a global organization it is very unlike the World Bank in the way that it operates. Nevertheless, the principal of transformation and faster response are important learning points and can be beneficial in many areas.

British Petroleum (BP)

British Petroleum is a leader in knowledge management and has some very simple messages such as ‘learn before, learn during, learn afterwards’. One example of their approach is the use of video to connect people with problems on oil rigs to the experts back at base, e.g. a machine which appears to be about to fail is video-taped. These can then be used as part of a video conference held with a expert. This not only regularly saves on lost time in drilling while waiting for an expert to be flown in, but also the knowledge is automatically collected (on video tape which is a much richer medium than text). This can later be used to improve the machinery and/or to support the next person who hits the same problem.

Lesson: Again, BA may not resemble BP but there are parts of BA, such as, engineering, which could make use of remote video. Much could also be gained from the idea of automatic information updates. Even more powerful, and relevant to BA across the board, is BP's principle of ‘learn before, learn during, learn afterwards’.

Thames Water

Thames Water engineering underwent a process re-engineering exercise. One of the findings that emerged from this exercise was that here was a large waste of time for engineers to go into a depot to collect their assignments at the beginning of the day. This led the company to install radio data-links in their vans, allowing engineers to go direct from home to their first assignment. While this looked good on paper, it unfortunately also removed the opportunity for informal knowledge sharing at the depot. The engineers found a way to replace this by using a café in the area. They would all call into the café two or three times a week, and they asked the café owner to keep a notebook for them. Each engineer would write new information in the notebook for the next person to read.

Thames Water have now given the engineers an old building by one of their reservoirs which fulfils the same function as the café, and they are gradually bringing in electronic support for knowledge sharing.

British Airways considers this an important story because it shows that knowledge sharing does not always mean using technology, and that if you are not careful technology can make things worse. It also emphasizes the importance of the community: in this case, the need to share knowledge was so strong that a way was found round an organizational block.

Lesson: If you are part of a knowledge community, what are the organizational supports and blocks for that community to meet and interact?

Winning the hearts and minds of people

In order to successfully introduce knowledge management the company has to overcome any resistance that may stem from cynics and disbelievers. There will always be someone who says, ‘I already do that’. British Airways knows it must convince people that although they already have many good practices in the business, this does not mean that the company has knowledge management. Knowledge management is not simply about repackaging what people are already doing. Knowledge management is more than just technology, video-conferencing, discussion web sites or databases. It is a systematic company-wide set of frameworks to help knowledge to be thought about, communicated and applied successfully. This means that knowledge management activists must provide not just tools, but support and advice to enable the use of these tools, and join the technology with culture, policies and organizational designs for sharing.

Around 1998, knowledge sharing was still in its infancy and remained very much a personal initiative. To derive real benefits the company had to get people to move forward and make knowledge sharing a natural part of everyday work.

To get the initiative moving, BA champions and advocates understood that they must gain support and sponsorship from the very top, and buy-in at the bottom. For this reason, BA's knowledge champions, Delia Stevens, Naomi Stanford and their colleagues, clearly articulated ways that knowledge management could help develop the company. The link between knowledge management and the company's mission was explicitly examined, since it is a key factor in winning support from the top (Table 7.2).

Table 7.2 How knowledge management can contribute to BA's mission

British Airways’ strategic approach to knowledge management

British Airways has approached building its knowledge management initiative by introducing the programme company-wide, but has attempted to do so in a manner that is flexible and can be customized to the particular needs of different departments or communities.

The strategic goals, at the programme introduction stage, were to:

• communicate and educate people in the company about the importance of knowledge and how to get the best out of it
• understand the knowledge management requirements of different departments and functions within BA and its alliances
• use new technology to enable the proposition ‘make the right knowledge available to the right people at the right time’ or ‘knowing what we know, when we need to know it’
• maximize business advantage, from knowledge, by using the best techniques in the right business areas
• ensure suitable attitudes, behaviours and ways of working are introduced so that an ethos of knowledge sharing becomes pervasive.

Managing culture and people for sharing

It is a common experience that people will not value knowledge management until it has been personally useful to them – they want to get before they give. British Airways knows it must devise methods of breaking this vicious circle.

British Airways believes that to a large extent success in knowledge management is a cultural issue. The position taken up by people often reflects their outlook and past experiences. Pessimists may voice concern that no one will willingly share knowledge, because they see others as rivals in a win-lose game. Optimists may conclude that while people are keen to communicate and share experiences, they are held back by time pressures or lack of an appropriate forum, or perhaps by inability to relate the activity to corporate goals. BA sees these types of attitudes as a strong justification for not focusing upon technology alone. Knowledge management success will come from generating the right climate in which sharing behaviours can occur.

Technology solutions are the easy part. They can be bought off the shelf. What is difficult is making technology work. The only, long-term, way of making technology work is to make people ‘work’. British Airways is complementing technology with other simple methods such as knowledge fairs. Knowledge fairs are relatively unstructured methods of bringing together people with a common interest. An example, BA cites, is of one company in which coffee was free for two 20-minute periods each day, which encourages unlikely people to meet and talk.

Without the right behaviours for sharing, knowledge management will never really take off. As part of its engagement with this challenge, BA has asked its people to consider and reflect upon four key issues:

• Behaviours– those holding you back and those helping in sharing and collaboration.
• Skills – how knowledge management can enhance the individual.
• Job – how knowledge management can enrich work.
• Organization – how knowledge management is being conducted currently, how it could be improved and how it benefits the company.

These dimensions are captured in Tables 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 and 7.6, which are used as guidelines to help individuals in their reflection process. These tables illustrate the limiting and facilitating factors to knowledge management along each dimension, together with what BA is currently undertaking, with examples and questions for individual reflection.

Final reflection

By focusing on these, seemingly simple, initiatives, BA has made significant progress toward its end-goal of becoming a knowledge-based, knowledge-led global airline. British Airways aims to retain it prominence as a leader in a fiercely competitive industry by tapping into the intellectual talent and energy of its employees.

Table 7.3 Behaviours reflection

Table 7.4 Skills reflection

Table 7.5 Job reflection

Table 7.6 Company reflection