Knowledge Management and Innovation interactive group meeting

Today I went to one more meeting at this group and the main topic to discuss was Management Model for KM. First, Correios (Biggest mail company of Brazil) presented how is their management model, and then Gerdau (a brazilian multinational siderurgy company) presented their model and an interesting case of Community of Practice. At the end of the presentation session Petrobras presented the strategic plan for KM to 2020.

After a coffee-break, where I had a chance to talk to many people from different companies including a guy from Petrobras that told me about a book “The Living Company” written by Arie De Geus, who worked in Shell for many years and his book is one of the references for Knowledge Management.

At the discussion part I was together in a table with some other private companies to discuss how can we get a management model for knowledge management in place. Not only what is needed but also how can we get there. The answer was that we need first a “click” in somebody’s head to realize that KM can be something to help his/her needs for the moment or for the future. Then, one of the ways the group realized this model could appear (thinking bottom-up) was this person getting what are the strategic goals of the company, articulate with sponsors intra-area and inter-areas, check the existing actions, and draw some possible scenarios for future and how those can impact an area or even a company result. One of the things this model must have is consider 4 big areas:

• Strategy (aligned to the company strategy),
• Structure (formal or informal, KM needs a representative person that will be the owner),
• Processes/Technology (to give directions on how the knowledge will be managed and supported by what) and
• People (the ones who have the knowledge).

I came back with a lot of ideas in my mind, thinking on how to bring Shell KM (that is strong in different ways in other countries) to Shell Brazil.

Interactive Innovation and Knowledge Management group

Last week I received an e-mail asking me if I could be the focal point in Shell Brasil inside of a group that will discuss and share what is being done around innovation and knowledge management inside the big companies in Brasil. Petrobras (NOC), Vale (3rd biggest minning company), Embraer (flight constructor), 3M (innovation company), BNDES (National Bank for Development – getting specialized in intangible assets), and some brasilian government institutions: FINEP, INMETRO, ONS, ANP and TJ.

After ask my manager permission, she approved and now I’m going there to represents Shell what will be good for Shell Brasil (having a person there to share what we are doing and learning from them) and to myself (expanding my KM connections inside of the big companies in Brasil.

Next 7th May there will be the first monthly meeting of this group of companies and I let you know here what happened there. Now is time to collect as much information here in Shell Brasil as possible around Innovation and KM being used. If I don’t find much I will talk about Shell global.

Regards,
Alex Lopes

Building Knowledge Management Culture

To start my posts in this blog I would like to start to a post published in my Shell Blog that had many comments.

I went to a presentation made by Dr. Klaus North, KM professor and founder of German KM Society, who showed KM and Inteligent companies. The presentation was here in Rio at the Federal University and was there weren't empty seats. At the presentation something interesting that came over was about the KM culture.

Most of the time that we look at KM and learn about KM, in MBA's or reading books, we always see KM in a management point of view, integrated to the business strategy, giving directions to the company, etc but there isn't much talking on how to build this KM culture at the level of people will do the KM happens at the day by day.

Companies can have a great process, tools in place, framework, management support to run KM but if there isn't an Ask - Learn - Share culture, things just don't happen. The question here is how to have this culture built? How to start it? How to onboard the sharing part of this culture at the day by day? Usually people Ask, Learn and then keeps this learning without sharing the knowledge built.

How to start doing that in our local teams? Maybe trying to put it in our GPA's a goal regarding collaboration for 2008? Maybe building a workshop to show the benefits when we have a collaboration environment that enables a leraning company? Maybe both approaches together?

Once we have a Share culture built at the team, it will start contaminating the other teams and this will becomes a company culture. Why dont you try something different today in this direction?

Regards,
Alex Lopes