6 Knowledge Culture and the Café

Chapter Objectives

• Explore how to create the right environment for KM

• Understand the relationship between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom

• Learn how organizational culture affects the knowledge-sharing environment

• Recognize different environments for knowledge fairs and café

• Knowledge retention and learning organization

6.1. CASE STUDY: AFFECTING REAL CHANGE IN CROSS-CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE-TRANSFER PARADIGMS—KOJI KODAMA, MBA, PMP

I would like to introduce a cross-cultural knowledge-exchange experience of Koji Kodama, MBA, PMP Images. He is experientially multicultural, natively bilingual, technologically analytical, and strategically successful. Koji is a past president of the PMI Austin Chapter and currently the Global Executive Management (GEM) specialist in Saitama, Japan, Kodama Operations. Here is Koji’s story.

Nearly three decades ago, as a young electronics design engineer in Tokyo, Japan, I worked for a very well-known global semiconductor behemoth headquartered in the United States. I was suddenly thrust into the world of technology-knowledge transfer with a special assignment to temporarily move myself and my family to the U.S. headquarters for memory and microprocessor chips in Austin, Texas. I would find out later how monetarily expensive and mission-critical this significant project investment was to this corporation.

My mission: My mission is to formally lead my department in transferring technology information and methodologies from the U.S. “parent” company design center back to Japan, the “child” company design center.

My challenges and observations: Overcome intercompany/departmental silos and ongoing communications gaps. The knowledge-transfer challenges, very similar to those I overcame, to a large degree, to the success of my specific mission several years ago. Silos and communication gaps still exist today in diverse ways in many organizations throughout the world, and in most cases, take longer to overcome than first planned.

The good news: There are tangible solutions to affect real change for the better in both realms of challenges.

Case in point: As a technology nerd who natively spoke both Japanese and English, I first naïvely thought to myself as that mission was assigned to me, “How difficult could this assignment possibly be?” Little did I and my Japan-based management know at the time that the answer would eventually manifest itself in this assignment. What was initially planned for seven months turned into a full two years before the mission would be deemed a success and before we finally moved back to Japan.

THE COROLLARY OF LESSONS LEARNED

1. The challenges and gaps associated with knowledge transfer are overcome less because of such obvious hurdles of language or cultural differences alone, but rather due more by comprehending and enabling a real change in paradigm from an individual or team stuck in a mode of an inward mindset (“owned-knowledge”) to a mode of an outward mindset (“shared-knowledge”). That is, knowledge management sets the correct path in bolstering important behaviors aligned to creating, organizing, and reusing owned-knowledge, upon which foundation individuals and teams can then work efficiently toward ultimately attaining the desired results of the transformation of such to shared-knowledge.

2. Similar to the application of an agile mindset in software development, project management has become streamlined. Improved traditional norms with greater enablement of efficiency and sense of urgency, the iterative application of methodologies to knowledge-transfer projects resulting in improved visibility, adaptability, risk mitigation, and business value will affect real paradigm change toward a more collaborative, efficient, adaptive, and as necessary, predictive knowledge management culture.

The discovery of this essential paradigm change is the fundamental essence of the very subject matter as set forth crucially and urgently in this book. It is the how of such knowledge transfer eloquently discussed elsewhere herein.

As pointed out by my friend, Koji Kodama, organizations struggle to overcome intercompany/departmental silos and ongoing communication gaps. Culture plays a critical role in all KETs. Organizational culture will determine the intensity of knowledge exchange and transfer. A lesson learned in one cultural context or organization is different from another. Koji’s lessons learned experience connotes moving knowledge from the domain of owned knowledge to shared knowledge. Koji identified an agile mindset toward knowledge exchange typical of a café. This mindset will streamline traditional norms, enable greater efficiency, and improve the sense of urgency. The iterative application of methodologies to knowledge transfer projects results in improved visibility, adaptability, risk mitigation, and business value and will affect real paradigm change toward a more collaborative, efficient, and predictive knowledge management culture. Learning lessons occurs during and after the project—learning is the key.

6.2. CAFÉ CULTURE: DATA INFORMATION KNOWLEDGE

The next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce.

—Peter Drucker

In 1969, Peter Drucker, founding father of “modern management,” masterfully coined the phrase knowledge economy. Decades later, he describes a profound concept of a knowledge society, citing that the critical resources of this knowledge economy are knowledge and knowledge workers. Drucker’s prophetic description of 2021 could not be more accurate.

Exactly how might Drucker’s knowledge society play out in the world 50 years from now? At what point does the knowledge economy produce a knowledge society? Maybe, when there’s knowledge in every café, and there’s a café in every knowledge. Knowledge societies create a knowledge culture. Knowledge culture creates a café environment. The knowledge society is a café culture. It’s a knowledge exchange and transfer (KET) environment that I’m espousing. Imagine a workplace where conversation, interactive displays, team-building days, Kanban’s Trello boards, Google’s office collaborative tools, huddle rooms, new media, stand-ups, video conferencing, and hot asking are the language of work. This is that mindset that affects organizational shared values, beliefs, understanding, and behaviors. The culture is the enabler of a free-flow KM, where people rendezvous or converge at the café. You cannot talk about creating an environment of KM without establishing a knowledge culture. Symbols, language, norms, values, and artifacts are the known significant elements of a culture.

In the knowledge economy, it is not the quality of data or information that matters but conversion and accessibility and converting information to knowledge and contextualizing it for decision-making. In a knowledge society, the creation, dissemination, and utilization of information and knowledge has become the most critical production factor (Encyclopedia.com).

Most innovative economies are both knowledge economies and societies. An example is South Korea—which Bloomberg ranked as the most innovative country in 2019 (Jamrisko et al., 2019). Finland is another example of a knowledge economy. Finland has the widely acclaimed transformative capacity to become a leading knowledge-based economy in the late 20th century. It transformed from an agriculture-based economy in the 1950s into one of the top innovation-driven, knowledge-based economies and high-tech producers in the 21st century. I recommend the Knowledge Economic guidebook, Finland as a Knowledge Economy 2.0: Lessons on Policies and Governance (Halme et al., 2014). This is also mainly due to Nokia and strong government support of the tech industry. In a knowledge economy, growth in knowledge-intensive service sectors like education, communication, and information is exploding. According to the Knowledge Management Working Group of the Federal Chief Information Officers Council (2001) in its publication “Managing Knowledge at Work: An Overview of Knowledge Management,”

Data = Unorganized Facts

Information = Data + organization + Context

Knowledge = Information + Explanation + Judgment

Knowledge culture within the café space means that organizing data, explaining information, and applying knowledge will be intentionally communicated and become business in an organization. When data is organized, it becomes information; when explained, it becomes knowledge, but we need wisdom. Science provides us data, information, and knowledge. Wisdom is hard because it needs insights into humanity’s social sciences and wisdom to reflect upon it and bring upon it a pattern of experience to get understanding.

You cannot create a café culture without a proper understanding of the data, information, and knowledge and their interfaces. In traditional project management, work performance data are the raw, not-yet-analyzed data. This “unclean” data become work performance information after they are codified, processed, or analyzed. Then and only then does data become usable. On the other hand, work performance information builds upon data by giving it meaning and making it actionable. Knowledge, including project knowledge, is explained or contextualized business-critical, relevant, actionable, and partially based on experience (Leonard, Swap, & Barton, 2015).

For a better understanding of the integration and correlations among data, information, and knowledge, let’s consider the Pyramid to Wisdom, according to Ackoff’s (1989) model.

Quezon City (QC) Weather in Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom (DIKW) Context:

• If you see the weather forecast for QC but don’t live there, then it has no direct connection to your life—so it’s data

• If you happen to live or work in QC, then this same set of numbers becomes information—because it informs you of what the weather is like—even if you can’t do anything about it.

• If you live or work in QC and can use the information as a basis to make a decision (e.g., will you bring an umbrella or shades because it will be hot?) or take action (e.g., you won’t water the plants or wash the car because it might rain), then it becomes knowledge.

Wisdom is the experience that comes with using knowledge repeatedly (e.g., you know that if the weather report says 26–31 degrees C and partly cloudy, then it won’t rain—so it’s okay to wear your new shoes to go to school or work). Wisdom is the ultimate goal of knowledge. It is the application of knowledge.

In this chapter, I’ll try to simplify the KM continuum of DIKW. I regret that many discussions of KM seem to be very academic and too esoteric for a wider audience. But it shouldn’t be. We all learn, identify, share, and transfer knowledge daily. I utilize a Knowledge Café mostly outside work. I have two friends, Brad and Lue (not their real names), who can never talk without shouting at each other. I had an idea for them. We went to a café to sort their differences out. To my amazement, they were shouting every time we initiated an exchange in their home to resolve matters, but when we went to the café, it was a different ball game—no one raised his or her voice. This environment offered us an amazing opportunity to learn our differences, exchange knowledge, solve problems, and improve. We established ground rules for this café meeting, and the choice of venue was agreed upon by all.

Spaces and places that support knowledge circulation and increase its velocity are “breeding” grounds for innovation. Today’s Knowledge Café was like the Sunday dinner table of the 1950s, when so much innovation happened among newly graduated engineers.

Information refers to data or facts that have been organized and presented with the context necessary for use or application. In contrast, knowledge is typically characterized as something within a human brain, built over time from learning and experience and used as a basis for judgment, prediction, and decision-making. A convergence of knowledge management, information architecture, and data science is necessary to convert data to knowledge (Meza, 2016). You can have a lot of process and documentation, but it takes data science to give meaning to your strategy or process—it transforms data into knowledge. If the collaboration of people is excluded, it becomes mechanical.

How Do You Create a Knowledge Café Culture?

According to a global survey in 2014 and 2017, answered by over 700 KM professionals by Knoco (Milton, 2017), barriers to creating a KM environment are (1) cultural issues, (2) lack of prioritization and support from leadership for KM, (3) lack of KM roles and accountabilities, and (4) lack of incentives. There will not be a knowledge-sharing environment in a culture of short-term thinking, excess competition, super secrecy and confidentiality, disregard for re-use of knowledge, and resistance to new ideas. Also, KM will not thrive where there is a lack of honesty in sharing, empowerment, or performance drive.

To overcome these barriers, you must have an intentional KM program that is well planned and executed and part of the organization’s strategy and reward system. KM activities must be embedded in the workflow. Take baby steps.

If we want to create a culture and environment for knowledge management, we must apply knowledge to give meaning and context to data and information. There will never be a knowledge culture unless the corporate culture allows it. There must be a change in the paradigm—and how we think, perceive, communicate, or view the world of KM. Organizational cultures are hard to change. A café event can begin the discussion to evaluate, challenge, and improve our paradigms for KET. There are several ways of creating an interactive knowledge-exchange environment. Organizational culture is one of the most influencing factors that enables knowledge workers to live in the space of knowledge exchange in the workplace. Hence, fostering such a café culture in the workplace is essential in facilitating and stimulating employees to use all available platforms for information sharing and KET.

Many authors, such as Dana Youngren (2017), Laura Lynch (2020), David Gurteen (1999), and Ehsan Memari (2017), have written about how to implement a knowledge culture in an organization. They cover elements such as designing the physical environment for conducive conversation and collaboration for the knowledge workers, using various KET techniques, motivating knowledge exchange and transfer, creating the space and time for KET, incentives or rewarding knowledge sharing, and re-examining training and onboarding methods. Other considered elements incorporate the right technology enablers for KM, keeping the communication transparent, scheduling, investing in a long-term KM strategy, building a knowledge library, engaging people via conversations, telling success stories, creating a knowledge base, implementing an open-door policy, and so on.

For example, “There are 1,500 rattlesnakes in your county” is data. “That’s a rattlesnake” is information (rattlesnake, in context). “It’s a rattlesnake, it’s dangerous, and it can kill you” is knowledge. “It’s a rattlesnake, it’s dangerous, and it can kill you. Run!” This is wisdom. Both knowledge and wisdom are in the abstract realms of the KM continuum. The knowledge process starts with people, and the café culture is built on people and intellectual capital.

KM is not information management! Some people confuse knowledge management with information management or data management. I’ve attended workshops on KM that talked about everything but knowledge management. In fact, one was an information management workshop. Data and information create the necessary conditions for knowledge continuum. According to Warick Holder (n.d.), “KM is a JOURNEY, not a DESTINATION.” It’s important to understand your KM roadmap.

Another way to look at this is the number 5,121,000,000 or 5121000000. As data, the number itself doesn’t tell us anything unique about it. However, 512-100-0000 is an Austin, Texas, phone number; this is information. Information is data and documents that have been given value through analysis, interpretation, or compilation in a meaningful form. You can save this information on your phone contact list—that’s what we do with the information. But if you take further action to research to see if the number is accurate, call the contact to interact with the number’s owner, create a connection with this number, and ask for more information and email address, this is acting upon information—it is knowledge.

Knowledge is the basis for a person’s ability to take effective action or make a practical decision—if I use that number or call that number, communicate with someone over time, gain knowledge about this number and the owner of the information. You gain understanding and wisdom from this exercise after you’ve done this repeatedly.

Everything begins with data and facts, which have little meaning until you compile, analyze, and interpret them into meaningful information. When you use this information for decision-making, it becomes knowledge. When you apply knowledge, it becomes wisdom, and when wisdom is clearly perceived, it becomes enlightenment.

A strong and knowledgeable workforce is critical to success. Transforming information to knowledge reduces vulnerability to loss of institutional knowledge and essential sets of skills that an organization needs to conduct its business. Everyone at the café has some facts (data), information, knowledge, or applied knowledge (wisdom)—DIKW.

The café, which is a mindset, is the space where all of the DIKW elements converge. Activities and interactions at the café give birth to insight, experience, and, when applied, wisdom for direction and guidance. This is what I call the knowledge leadership continuum. I have conducted several Leadership Cafés. This is not just leadership gathering a café designed for leadership action, like taking the outcome of the café to formulate a strategy. I have dedicated the last chapter of this book to the Knowledge Leadership Café.

6.3. REWARDS, INCENTIVES, AND RECOGNITION AS KNOWLEDGE SHARING STRATEGY?

Our approach to KM is far more than stick or carrot. We say, “Knowledge Sharing is your job. Do it! As a reward, you may keep your job.”

—Bob Buckman (quoted in Gurteen, n.d.)

Bob Buckman, a KM enthusiast and former board chairman of the Applied Knowledge Group in Reston, Virginia, takes a diametrically opposite position to incentives and rewards for knowledge sharing. He advocates that KM is your job. Your reward for KM is keeping your job (Gurteen, 2019). David Gurteen in his online blook—a hybrid of a blog, a website, and an online book, Conversational Leadership (2019), contends that,

If I had a penny for every time someone suggested rewarding or incentivizing people to share their knowledge, I’d be a rich man. But like Alfie Kohn, I do not believe rewards work!

—David Gurteen (2019)

Alfie Kohn (1993), in his book Punished by Rewards, sees rewards and incentives as counterproductive. He argues that they are artificial inducements to motivate people and are like a short-lived bribe. This strategy ultimately fails and does lasting harm. Kohn drew his conclusions from hundreds of studies (according to him) that demonstrates that people do shoddy work when they are enticed with money or other incentives.

Kohn Provided Five Reasons Why He Thinks That Rewards Fail

1. Rewards punish. Rewards are manipulative. “Do this, and you will get that” is not much different to “Do this else here is what will happen to you.”

2. Rewards rupture relations. Excellence depends on teamwork. Rewards destroy cooperation.

3. Rewards ignore reasons. To solve problems, people need to understand the causes. Rewards ignore the complexities of the issues.

4. Rewards deter risk-taking. People are less likely to take risks, explore possibilities, or to play hunches.

5. Rewards undermine interest. Rewards are controlling! If people focus on getting a reward, they tend to feel their work is not freely chosen and directed by them.

David Gurteen (2019) added a sixth one:

6. Rewards are gamed. People will manipulate the system to win the prize at the expense of doing what is right.

So, are programs that use rewards and recognition to change people’s behavior similarly ineffective over the long run? This is debatable. Like the previous authors, I agree that rewards and incentives are not a magic bullet to motivate the project team or knowledge workers. Before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, I have always resisted the concept of or and prefer and. I believe that we can employ a café strategy with rewards, incentives, and recognition and produce a great result. Yes, a combination of all these strategies will suffice. We treat ourselves at the café, and that is okay. I have conducted several scientific surveys of attendance at my café events and workshops and found out that more than 78 percent believe that incentives and rewards will motivate them to share more of their knowledge or engage in knowledge transfer activities.

Professor and researcher Prakash Baskar and K. R Rajkumar, in their research in the International Journal of Science and Research (2015) in a study on the impact of rewards and recognition on employee motivation, discovered that there is a direct and positive relationship between rewards and recognition and job satisfaction and motivation. Hence, if rewards and recognition offered to employees were to be altered, there would be a corresponding change in work motivation and satisfaction.

The direct translation of this could be that the better the rewards and recognition, the higher the levels of motivation and satisfaction, and possibly, therefore, the greater the levels of performance and productivity.

Research published by Bersin (2012) in Forbes reveals that 83 percent of the organizations studied suffer from a deficit in “recognition.” And these companies are under-performing compared to their peers. Generally, recognition and incentives motivate and drive performance. I think that the same is the case in a café setting and KM ecosystem. Recognition and incentives motivate people.

Within the context of a café, it’s the environment you create that will enable free sharing of knowledge and information. Rewards alone do not and will not produce the right conditions for a workplace where knowledge sharing as a culture thrives. I contend that the absence of a reward may be a setback. Like the authors mentioned previously, I share my knowledge because I derive more benefit from sharing by personal motivation than providing it because of recognition, incentives, and rewards. In my research, I have not seen a successful KM program that completely ignores incentives and recognition.

During one of my knowledge fair café events, some engineers explained that their work revolves around projects. Many employees work from project to project and make little or no time for process—and that includes knowledge sharing. I don’t think it’s productive to add to employees’ work with additional KM activities. However, KM should be enshrined in the work process. On day one, a new employee should be made to know the value of KM and its place in the organizational strategy and the rewards for sharing knowledge. KM should become a fundamental aspect of the way an employee performs his or her work. Against the backdrop of a successful KM, implementation and practice are less about reporting and sharing knowledge.

Knowledge is the new unidentified asset of an organization. You cannot innovate faster than your knowledge assets or more than you manage knowledge. You cannot reap the rewards of KM unless you invest in it. Reward, incentivize, recognize, and make it a café experience.

According to a white paper on the Incentive Research Foundation Incentive Benchmarking Survey, in which 900 top-performing organizations were reviewed:

• 90 percent of the highest-performing companies use incentives and rewards to retain and encourage employees.

• 99 percent of employees have unique reward preferences, which makes incentives an excellent alternative to a traditional reward system.

• 80 percent of employees prefer strong incentives over a bigger paycheck.

• 78 percent of employees are willing to remain with their current employer due to the competitive perks and incentives it offers.

The bottom line: Because of the increasingly competitive nature of attracting the best talents today, organizations are modernizing their incentive programs. When I made a business case for an enterprise KM strategy for my organization, incentives were a significant element of the program.

You cannot force people to share their knowledge, but it would be best if you made the environment conducive to knowledge sharing. Remember that the goal of human relations is to create a win–win situation; this can be achieved by appreciating and respecting the employees’ knowledge while at the same time achieving organizational objectives. According to Stephen Covey (2004), abundance mentality means believing there is plenty for everyone. Both the knowledge workers and the organization can win. Knowledge workers must be motivated and incentivized to share their knowledge and be recognized for sharing, too; this only happens in an environment of collaboration and trust, as I discussed earlier. An African adage says to use a token or gift to retrieve the banana from a monkey’s hands. You don’t just demand that he offers you his stuff.

6.4. KNOWLEDGE CULTURE: CITY IMPACT ROUNDTABLE CONFERENCE

People choose not to change their behavior because the culture and the imperatives of the organization make it too difficult to act upon the knowledge.

—Michael Schrage

Etiologically, the word “culture” derives its meaning from a French term, which originally derives its meaning from another Latin word “colere,” which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture (Zimmermann, 2017). A culture is a way of life of a group of people—the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. Culture is symbolic communication. Culture is the system of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people (Hofstede, 1997). Culture can be a way of life or the midst of life. Structural capital is all about the knowledge within a group, community, or organization. Understand your group, city, or organization’s prevailing culture if you want to create a KM environment.

I began to connect with nonprofit organizations in Austin, Texas, in 2002. Some of the nonprofits and compassion organizations in my network were feeding the homeless and taking care of the needy and helpless by responding to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of those at the edge of society. Cities, communities, and nations, just like organizations, can have a lot going for them but lack a culture where knowledge, not just information and data, freely flows. In many cities, you have villages of silos. People cannot work together for a common cause because there’s no knowledge-sharing space. What if there were a space for those who knew a lot and those seeking to know, those who have ideas, and those looking for ideas to advance our communities to converge?

Let me tell you a story about homeless boys at the café. One day I met Larry Ball. This man had about eight young men in his van. Larry told me that he picks up homeless kids from the street, gives them a home, rehabilitates and trains them, and sends them back as meaningful members of society. Some of them don’t even know their parents. He takes them to his house. His organization provides these young men with a home, care, and emotional and spiritual support to get them back on their feet. They are mentored, educated, and then seek jobs. They begin to earn a living, and finally, become independent. He replaces them with other homeless kids. I asked him, “What is your success rate?” His response was an outstanding 98 percent!

I asked Larry how he gets support in doing this full time. His answer: “I receive little or no support. I’ve never received grants or major donations. I believe that I’m called to do this, and it’s producing fantastic results.” I met people from several other nonprofits from 2003 to 2008 through the nonprofit I founded, Apostolic Bridge Builders, Inc. I was also connected with several industry leaders and people in government who sincerely appreciate the roles and success of nonprofits like Larry Ball’s Hungry for God organization. I thought that I needed to bring these knowledge players into a café meeting. I had several such knowledge exchange/connection meetings. Somewhere, I felt that we need to have an intentional roundtable conference to know what’s going on in different communities and how nonprofits, governments, and leaders of industry can come together in a Knowledge Café–style roundtable and share knowledge and build synergy for greater community transformation. I needed to have a café and fair project for city transformation.

THREE TYPES OF CAFÉ ATTENDEES

Bringing diverse people into a café is not as easy as you may think, but it is possible. It’s a way to organize knowledge workers to enable quick, efficient decisions amidst a fast-changing work environment. I have identified three categories of knowledge owners or managers:

• Those who will not come to a Knowledge Café meeting unless there’s a detailed agenda (menu) with predictable outcomes. This violates David Gurteen’s original concept of a Knowledge Café.

• Café enthusiasts will not café with anyone until a relationship has been developed.

• Social animals just want to meet.

On the citywide or community level, how do you bring these players together? Like in a typical Knowledge Café, some people will have their own agendas. I believe that a café provides the right atmosphere for knowledge owners and visionaries to collaborate, share knowledge, and build synergy for the community’s greater good. We had several successful café meetings we called roundtables. They were less structured. Everyone’s opinion counted. We celebrated the successes of the participants. We identified with their challenges—those who had more resources willingly shared. I began to see the need to facilitate or coordinate nonprofit organizations, faith communities, media, local governments, elected officials, and businesses across Texas.

Mission America has already started City Impact Roundtable (CIR) conferences. I attended the conferences in New York; Fontana, California; and Chicago, to name a few.

We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Yearly, we had a fair and café, a City Impact Roundtable, to connect, communicate, and collaborate for strategic partnerships—leading to measurable city and community impacts and transformations. These produced dozens of strategic partnerships that changed the face of various communities in Texas. In part, Austin Disaster Relief Network (ADRN) is one of the significant results of this endeavor under my leadership. During our last CIR in Del Valle, Texas, we resolved to empty these efforts into ADRN under the leadership of Executive Director and founder, Daniel Geraci. I have been an advisory board member since its inception—providing guidance, counsel, and strategies. ADRN has coordinated and managed over 13,000 volunteers in disaster response since 2008. It deploys and trains volunteers in times of disaster in multiple areas such as incident command, trauma and emotional care, chaplaincy, case management, sponsoring surviving families, HAM Radio communications, call center operations, warehouse, clean-up, and more. ADRN has made central Texas disaster-ready, more than any other organization in Texas.

In the end, behaviors can change because of a culture shift, and the imperatives of the organization make it too easy or too difficult to act upon the knowledge. The culture must shift for knowledge to flourish. That’s the right environment for KM.

6.5. MANAGE PROJECT KNOWLEDGE TO CREATE A CAFÉ CULTURE

Roger Martin, a professor in the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and considered by many to be the world’s number one management thinker, believes that projects are the organizing principle for work and the indefatigability of knowledge workers in the project economy (Martin, 2019). A project has remained the most effective way to organize work in most organizations. Before a KM program is activated and deployed, it should be initiated, planned, managed, and executed like a project. Behind every project is an idea—whether you want to improve process or management efficiencies, increase margins or customer satisfaction, drive innovation, or manage knowledge. As I would for any project, I developed a charter for our KM program and a charter for various techniques we implemented and deployed. We intentionally introduced processes such as CoP, knowledge interview, knowledge fair and café, lessons learned, Wiki, and more. The project management discipline grounds the process and provides the necessary elements from management buy-in, business case, stakeholder engagement, communication planning, risk management, scope management, and value realization. Our membership, connection, and learning agility in various management, research, and KM organizations such as PMI, TRB, AASHTO, APQC, KM World, NASA, the U.S. Army, and more were instrumental to our success.

Knowledge Café culture connotes the understanding of managing project knowledge. KM implementation is a project that adheres to the basic principles of project management. According to PMI’s PMBOK® Guide, sixth edition (2017), the Manage project Knowledge process is performed throughout the project, is concerned with explicit and tacit knowledge, and has primarily two purposes: reusing existing knowledge and creating new knowledge to improve performance on the current and future projects (project Management Institute, 2017).

What is a project? According to PMI’s PMBOK® Guide, sixth edition (2017), “A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. The temporary nature of projects indicates that a project has a definite beginning and end. The end is reached when the project’s objectives have been achieved,” or further, “Temporary does not typically apply to the product, service, or result created by the project.”

ATTRIBUTES OF A PROJECT

• Projects have a definite start

• Projects have a definite end

• The start and end define the project life cycle

• Projects start with the charter

• Projects end with a closing

• Closing happens after turnover and acceptance

This definition is mainly for the project implemented using a waterfall project methodology. Operations are not projects, even though specific projects have some elements of temporary operations. To ensure the realization of benefits for undertaking the project, a test period (such as a soft launch in services) can be part of the total project time before handing it over to the permanent operations.

We bought a house in the fall of 2017. Before then, we had to sell our old house. When I met with my realtor, I told her that I had 45 days to close on the new house and therefore had to sell my old house within 30 days. The problem is that to get the most out of my 12-year-old house, I’d have to renovate it. So, how long would it take to renovate the house, list, sell, and close? We would have to finish the renovation in three weeks. This was a very aggressive timeline. I told her that I am a project manager and would manage the project.

LESSONS FROM A RENOVATION PROJECT

Here are some of the things I needed to get done to accomplish this project, ready for listing in three weeks. Without getting too complicated, I needed to initiate this project. I didn’t have a formal charter, but I had a written business case with the project’s objective—renovate my house to get the best value from the sale.

1. Design and planning. I secured the funding needed for the renovation. We didn’t need a permit. I contacted contractors recommended by my realtor to make sure that we met the deadline. I developed a work breakdown structure upon what needed to be done to accomplish this project and developed a schedule and budget.

2. Identified and made repairs. Since these tasks wouldn’t impact subsequent activities, I scheduled some of them to run side-by-side with other activities.

3. They inspected, updated, and repaired electrical and plumbing systems.

4. Completed finishing touches such as flooring, surface finishing, and trim.

I integrated all the processes, helped every contractor or player accountable, and accomplished the task in 16 days, listed the home on day 18, and had two offers on the same day. I sold the house on day 21. This is project management at work! I wish I could say that “this ain’t my first rodeo” in terms of renovation and selling a property. But I learned a lot, and applied, used, reused, and widely shared what I learned with my mentees. We manage the project daily by what we do at work or at home. We learn a lot from these activities. If I ever need to renovate again, I have lessons learned from the previous experience. Knowledge is information gained based on experience and education.

Within the context of KM, the most critical organizational knowledge is confined in the minds of individuals. As stated in the definition of tacit knowledge (hard to codify), specialized knowledge in employees’ hearts and minds is hard to exchange and share. You may know how to manage your projects, deliver values, and how to get things done, but it isn’t very easy to communicate this kind of knowledge or know-how and know-why. Consider the five generations of knowledge workers working together in the project management space! Every generation speaks its own knowledge language. Managing this knowledge means creating a conducive café environment to make sharing possible.

Knowledge management training, awareness, café meetings, and motivations will open the minds and hearts of the knowledge managers to see KM’s big picture and freely embrace the café inkling. Managing knowledge also involves rewarding knowledge workers for sharing their knowledge rather than penalizing them.

KM processes intentionally, systematically, and actively manage and leverage the knowledge assets in an organization, thereby creating new knowledge and innovation through collaboration.

Knowledge that is shared multiple times creates new knowledge, but the knowledge that is not shared dies and is useless! We live to share. When we learn and do, we share what we know. When we stop sharing, we stop learning. The new winners in the marketplace economy of ideas are those who recognize, identify, plan, and effectively manage their knowledge assets. Effective management of organizational knowledge assets is crucial for securing a competitive advantage in an emerging economy. Effective management of knowledge assets is a key requirement for securing competitive advantage (Boisot, 1999).

6.6. KNOWLEDGE CAFÉ EXCHANGE INCREASES RETENTION

Knowledge is a company asset, hidden until the knowledge worker releases it. The key to generating the best returns from your KM Program is to implement a well-planned methodology and ensure that your organization facilitates this release of information.

—Mike Bagshaw, Development Director at Trans4mation
Training Ltd.

As I pointed out earlier, most organizations’ knowledge assets are hidden in and by people, the knowledge workers. To retain knowledge assets, you must know what the knowledge workers know—they are the keepers of knowledge who must release that knowledge. The 2000s may have advanced the most incredible job mobility in human history. Before then, many employees spent their entire careers in one job and with the same employer. That is no more. Many people will change jobs 6 to 20 times in their lifetime. They will leave with their knowledge unless it is captured. So, it should be a top priority of top-performing organizations to implement a well-oiled process, methodology, and plan to ensure the release, leverage, and exchange of knowledge. This should be an organizational strategy for continuity, resilience, sustainability, and innovation.

Knowledge Transfer Is the New Bacon!

In January 2017, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) initiated the Knowledge Retention Pilot project called M.A.S.K. Method (Method for Analyzing and Structuring Knowledge) to capture experts’ knowledge in three subjects and develop knowledge retention books. Approximately 31 percent of MnDOT’s workforce is or will be retirement-eligible within five years. Retaining the tacit knowledge of vital technical experts is a high priority. They are developing knowledge books to retain their agency’s knowledge; preserve deep technical, organizational knowledge; share individual expertise built over the years; and make it accessible to all—a living document for successors that is easy to follow, with intuitive format e-learning platform capabilities.

There are two dimensions of knowledge retention. One is the retention of knowledge by the learner, the knowledge worker, and the retention of the organizational knowledge based on its knowledge workers’ minds and heads.

It is my opinion that an individual’s retention increases when they share their knowledge more frequently. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus pioneered the experimental study of memory and discovered a phenomenon called overlearning during his study on the forgetting curve. His basic idea is that if you practice something more than what is usually required to memorize it, the effect of overlearning takes place. Overlearning, just like continuous knowledge exchange or sharing of what you learned, the information or knowledge is now stored much more strongly. Thus, the effects of the forgetting curve for overlearned information becomes shallower (Shrestha, 2017).

National Training Laboratories Institute’s learning pyramid is unsupported by empirical research. However, it shows that we typically retain 5 percent of knowledge transferred through formal or informal classroom lecture after 24 hours. We retain 10 percent of the knowledge we acquire through reading, like reading this book, after 24 hours. When knowledge workers acquire knowledge from audiovisual, retention doubles to 20 percent. If there are demonstrations during the learning, retention increases to 30 percent. When group discussions are involved in knowledge transfer, retention increases to 50 percent. If the knowledge worker practices what they learned, like learning at the café, retention increased to 75 percent. If the knowledge worker teaches and implements (immediate use) what is learned, retention increases to an astronomical 90 percent. So, the more interactive the learning process, the more retention increases? Consider that repeated recall of information improves retention capabilities to about 80 percent. For instance, learners can have a post-course discussion or debriefing, such as conversing with their manager about how they intend to use new skills or with peers on lessons learned implementation.

Organizations like Project Management Institute (PMI; www.PMI.org), American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC; https://www.apqc.org/knowledge-retention-and-transfer), Knowledge Management Institute (KMI; https://www.kminstitute.org/), and Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI) agree on developing strategies to retain and transfer organizational knowledge assets. There is also a consensus about a set of tools that can be leveraged in converting the knowledge in people’s heads into processes and the hands of other employees. Some of the tools include, but is not limited to, lessons learned exercises, which is like an after-action review activity performed during and after the project. Lessons learned are utilized during and after the project and consulted by other project managers in future projects.

Also, communities of practice cafés, simple café conversation about leveraging of retirees’ expertise and hire-backs, storytelling programs, knowledge interviews, exit knowledge interviews, social media and technology collaborative platforms, mentoring and apprenticeship programs, including more accessible access to subject matter experts, knowledge maps, and so on, are great approaches for knowledge transfer. Knowledge café mindset is the people side of KM. Café facilitates a casual environment for increased findability/discoverability of knowledge and information, a conversation about expertise locators, and other tools, making it easy for employees to find people with the expertise they need, regardless of geographic and departmental boundaries. Organizations utilize these tools for knowledge retention and transfer. We draw café questions from these tools. Café conversations increase retention. I’ll discuss extensively the role of each of these knowledge-transfer tools and more later. The ultimate purpose of these tools is to enable knowledge retention and transfer.

6.7. CAFÉ FOR LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS

According to Workforce 2020 (Gregory, 2014), 65 percent of employees say that development and training opportunities would increase their loyalty to the company. A highly skilled workforce is undoubtedly a strategic differentiator in the marketplace. Skilled knowledge workers flourish in a learning organization.

But training is not enough! In 2012, U.S. organizations spent a whopping $164.2 billion on employee learning and development, according to the findings of ASTD’s 2013 State of the Industry report sponsored by Skillsoft and the CARA Group, Inc. (ATD, 2013). There was no evidence that this learning alone translated into a knowledge workforce.

Training alone isn’t enough to retain knowledge, considering that baby boomers are leaving the workforce in droves, the increasing job mobility of today’s workforce, accelerating market volatility, and intensified speed of responsiveness to change and technology. Learning organizations can become café organizations and must translate learning into knowledge.

A learning organization facilitates the learning and development of its employees and continuously transforms itself to remain competitive in the business environment to create a competitive advantage. Because of the pressures facing modern organizations, every learning organization continually manages its learning processes to its advantage. Knowledge management makes it possible to measure or evaluate learning, translate knowledge, uncover what we know, and create new knowledge learning.

Being a learning organization is not enough. Companies must embrace learning agility. Researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Center for Creative Leadership defined learning agility as a mindset and corresponding collection of practices that allow leaders to continually develop, grow, and utilize new strategies that will equip them for the increasingly complex problems they face in their organizations. They contend that learning-agile individuals are “continually able to jettison skills, perspectives, and ideas that are no longer relevant and learn new ones that are” (Mitchinson & Morris, 2014). Knowledge management is at the center of the metamorphosis of organizational learning. Learning-knowledge organizations learn, steward, and manage knowledge. Learning organizations are agile learners. Learning agile, versatile feedback, making meaning of our experience, and collaboration are woven into these high-performing organizations’ fabric.

Data, information, and technology inform the learning, training, and mentoring culture. Learning organizations transfer information and knowledge to the knowledge worker. This knowledge is caged in the minds and brains of the employee until the learning is contextualized. Also, context and perspective are the things that make a collection of related data knowledge.

In many circumstances, the learning circle ends here. But learning organizations with a culture of knowledge exchange try to go beyond this threshold to codify what is known by the employee, sharing, transferring, and reusing the knowledge. At this point, the learned employee becomes a knowledge employee. However, when new knowledge is created through analysis, practice, and evaluation of what is known and what the organization should know, thereby creating new knowledge, this circle is completed by moving toward new data and information that needs to be expanded and relearned. At this point, the knowledge worker becomes a knowledge manager. The learning and exchange paradigm has to change as we get people in a café mindset or physical café.

Having discussed the differences among data, information, and knowledge continuum, I would like to say that their integration will ultimately result in wisdom and enlightenment from learning organizations. Learning-knowledge organizations have integrated personal mastery with team learning, mental models, shared learning, and system thinking.

6.8. CREATING A KNOWLEDGE-SHARING ENVIRONMENT

Dr. Denise Bedford (2019), author and Georgetown University professor, said that “Moving to a knowledge culture is going to be a huge disrupter. A traditional culture rewards competition and knowledge theft over-sharing and reduces the visibility of knowledge to what is necessary.”

Knowledge culture will disrupt the ways we have learned, shared, and exchanged knowledge. The reward patterns and structures are changing forever. To create an environment of knowledge sharing, you may want to know what I mean by the environment, how to create it, and what is shared.

Organizations have spent millions of dollars on the Internet and for capturing information. Dan Remenyi, a visiting professor at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, contends that “The belief behind this approach was that if we could capture knowledge and put it in a computer, then it could be shared. This sharing would ensure the highest possible utilization of knowledge across the entire organization” (Ramenyi, 2004). How realistic has this become to organizations today? It’s like putting a suit on a monkey. Is the problem of KM technological issues or human interaction issues? If it’s merely a technology issue, it will be a breeze. You must show people where the knowledge is and make them interested in using the knowledge. The environment determines whether folks will use these. Environments are not created by default. We create an environment for Knowledge Café exchange. Maybe you work in a dog-eat-dog industry, where everyone seems to be snapping at your heels, and you are running out of napkins! Knowledge Café offers the impetus for redirection, reciprocity, and rationality, thus turning competition to coopetition. Knowledge, which is information explained by itself, is entirely inadequate to bring transformation! Knowledge exchange creates energy. Honest conversation, reflection, interchange of ideas, sharing, trust, and reciprocity are the building blocks of a knowledge-sharing environment.

In an environment of shared knowledge, sharing that knowledge is natural. Knowledge managers find joy in sharing what they know because they feel a sense of fulfillment in doing that; they trust the culture; they feel rewarded for sharing. There’s a reciprocity in sharing knowledge. In a KM environment, will you trust knowledge workers to do the right thing? Of course. How you create this environment varies from one organization to another. There’s no one answer or magic bullet. Based on my research and experience, the approach isn’t top-down or bottom-up; the approach can be either, both, or neither. During the 2019 Transportation Research Board Information and Knowledge Management Committee’s Summer Webinar, Dr. Moses Adoko contended that KM should be federated, with each part of the organization having its own autonomy under an organizational KM program. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating an environment of KM (Adoko, 2019a).

What Is Knowledge Shared?

Simply put, you share what you know, and you don’t share what you don’t know. However, you don’t wait until you fully understand what you know before your café. There are things you have a partial understanding of that you can only come to grips with if you embark on “caféing” the idea—bringing it to shared conversational space. New knowledge and innovation are made possible when knowledge is shared. We come to a café to know what we know, challenge what we know, understand what we don’t know, and unlearn what we’ve learned, and relearn Agile.

You can use the café knowledge sharing environment to solve, resolve, or discuss any issue. I once caféd with the DevOps team to define and improve the role of security in DevOps. DevOps, development, and IT operations are an enterprise software development phrase used to describe the type of agile relationship between two business units. The goal of our café was to change and improve DevOps relationships by encouraging better and café-like communication and collaboration among knowledge workers across units. I am a subject matter expert (SME) in project management, not necessarily in all aspects of the project, for example, software development. When you challenge the team to a café, facts come to light, and the team forms a common understanding. Café provides the meeting point of ideas in any setting.

We can know what we know, but we cannot know what we know until we capture and share it. When a knowledge mindset is embedded into an organization’s DNA and becomes its organizational strategy, workers become knowledge workers, the workplace becomes a knowledge workplace, performance improves, and competitive advantage accelerates. KM is not another program to be adopted but a philosophy that changes culture and a way of life. Café and demand for knowledge create knowledge sharing habits. Participants in a KM café are colleagues willing to learn from others to create a learning process and knowledge culture.

There has to be an environment of innovation and collaboration with a strategy for knowledge sharing for there to be a knowledge culture. For there to be a knowledge environment, you have to create it. It’s a Herculean task to share knowledge in an environment where there’s no culture of knowledge sharing. The culture of knowledge sharing creates a knowledge workforce. Just like change, human beings and organizations don’t just embrace knowledge management. It has to pass the common sense test.

You can’t force people to share their know-how or what they know. You do create an environment that enables knowledge culture, where knowledge sharing is not punished but rewarded.

Knowledge is the most critical asset of an organization. Being able to preserve organizational knowledge determines profitability, sustainability, competitiveness, and the ability to grow. No organization can afford to lose its knowledge base. According to the World Economy Forum, 95 percent of CEOs claim that knowledge management is a critical factor in an organization’s success, and 80 percent of companies mentioned in Fortune magazine have staff explicitly assigned to KM (Kampioni & Ciolfitto, 2015).

LITTLE STEPS OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

As I said earlier, KM is like eating an elephant—one bite at a time. It’s one brick on top of another. We are peeling an onion. As in continuous improvement, we take baby steps. Valparaiso University’s senior research professor, Dean Schroeder (2019), was right when he answered the question about small ideas and baby steps in continuous improvement.

• “Small ideas are less costly and less risky—learn as you go.

• Big improvements need lots of small ones to be successful.

• Going after smaller ideas builds an improvement culture from the bottom up.

• Small ideas have a huge impact.”

He concluded by saying that small improvements repeated over time accumulate to huge savings naturally.

My prescription for creating a KM environment is to incorporate a Knowledge Café into a way of life. There are several tools and techniques for implementing a KM program. I contend that techniques like knowledge fairs and cafés, and communities of practice are some of the most effective ways of implementing a KM culture. I have introduced these concepts in several organizations, including TxDOT, and have seen KM passion erupt.

Create an environment of openness and willingness to help and share. Identify some knowledge enthusiasts, project managers, or employees who are willing to share what they know. They must be excited by what they know and be glad to help and share with others.

PRACTICAL THINGS YOU CAN DO AS YOU CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING

• Embody team values and incorporate shared values in your fairs and cafés.

• Normalize vocabulary and develop KM-specific training.

• Allow for organic growth as practitioners show interest in KM and some form of CoPs.

• Start small. Small teams lend themselves to agile knowledge sharing.

• Leadership needs to lead in overcoming fear of sharing and show how unshared knowledge becomes obsolete.

• Use knowledge exchange as a legacy builder; for instance, those who have developed a successor should be rewarded instead of being punished.

• Recognize your opportunities to share knowledge.

• Identify KM elements and all opportunities for knowledge exchange in your organization.

• Schedule regular and recurring cafés.

• Try planned SME presentations (call for presenters and facilitators, CoP lead, new ideas, etc.) to initiate or supplement the conversation.

• Incorporate café into conferences and workshops; emphasize two-way learning and knowledge exchange as opposed to one-way presentation style.

• Share tools and technology enablers used by different units to organize, share, and invigorate knowledge.

KM ENABLERS BEYOND PEOPLE, PROCESS, TECHNOLOGY, AND CONTENT

Knowledge management enablers—people, process, technology, and content—allow the organization to develop its knowledge, stimulate the creation of knowledge within the organization, and share and protect it. According to Yeh et al. (2006), these are the most critical enablers required to create a KM environment.

• Management buy-in and continued support

• Designated KM lead, personnel, and budget

• User-friendly technology enablers

• Clear roles and accountabilities

• A business case to show evidence of KM value

• Significant process and clearly defined KM approach

• A personal belief of the champion, brokers, and KM leads

• Enterprise KM strategy

• Championship and support from teams and champions

• Incentive system

In the organizations where I have managed knowledge, we have succeeded because we first secured an executive champion. Getting an executive sponsor was a good beginning that gave us leverage. Once our charter was signed, we had the authority to activate the program, take baby steps already defined in existing KM elements, and implement enablers. We had some pilots for KM techniques, such as CoPs.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP AND EXPAND THE KNOWLEDGE ENABLERS?

• Have a governance structure

• Employ change management principles

• Incorporate KM in training and development

• Employ the right measurements (multidimensional)

• Utilize technology tools

• Utilize rewards and recognition

WHAT IS RIGHT FOR MY COMMUNITY?

Consider your community’s preference for communication and knowledge transfer—pick what’s right for your café and community!

• Expand knowledge enablers. Share those technology enablers that have proved to be effective and make them accessible to knowledge users.

• Provide governance to knowledge-sharing communities like CoPs or café sessions.

• Incorporate change management principles into your journeys for a KM culture.

• Measure your progress through multidimensional measuring or gauge the result of knowledge sharing through surveys and other means.

• Use the right technology tools to enable KM. Create the right balance of people, process, content, and technology.

• Create a system of rewards and recognition. Rewards, not punishment, accelerate the knowledge culture’s intensity.

• Work with each domain owner and champions to mature your knowledge practice areas and CoPs.

• Work with information management to identify collaborations and knowledge-sharing platforms and necessary governance levels.

• Include integral skill sets for an organizational knowledge-sharing culture (e.g., IT, HR, Communications, Library and Information Science, change management).

• Identify the most critical ways the knowledge culture can add value to your organization. Examples are connecting people through communities (CoPs) and networks, business transformation through big data, artificial intelligence (human-machine collaborations), innovation (new knowledge), improved enterprise document management, content management, findability and searchability, knowledge retention, the convergence of best practice, knowledge-based engineering, improving market share, safety records, customer relationship and satisfaction, cost efficiency, lessons learned management, social interaction and idea generation, a collaboration of content, capturing and disseminating information, content, and knowledge, searching for people, and so on.

Café and KM culture should be incorporated into enterprise training and development; one-way learning is the antithesis of a café culture, which is a two-way exchange. Knowledge culture creates a KM environment: you must be intentional, plan, and execute well, and make the process an organizational strategy.

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