To meet the long-term technology and performance needs of the upstream industry, the present and future market must first be understood and then acted upon. A collaborative knowledge management (KM) system complements other market assessment tools by harnessing the collective capability and experience of an organization's employees to more effectively identify, communicate and act on customer needs, market knowledge and potential solutions. While many companies' KM efforts are focused on technical problem solving and/or employee development, a KM system can also be used to develop better organizational and individual understanding of, and more importantly, adaptation to the market. Any employee can initiate or participate in collaborative communication to actively share and discuss customer needs, competitor activities, new technology applications and successes. Any employee can submit ideas for new or improved products to meet their local market needs. Where appropriate, these ideas are collaboratively reviewed, improved and validated through KM. We use our KM system to better understand the market and drive innovation. Examples demonstrate the use of collaborative discussion to share market intelligence, clarify market assumptions, harness the 'wisdom of the crowd' in collecting and validating new product/service ideas and transfer technology. KM tools and collaborative activity show promising value in improving market understanding and driving technology innovation. Halliburton broadly defines knowledge management as a systematic approach to getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Often the 'right information' pertains to market needs, new ideas or new technology. Knowledge Management Effort Overview There are many definitions for knowledge management. Halliburton prefers "a systematic approach to getting the right information to the right person at the right time." This is an adaptation of the American Productivity & Quality Center's (APQC) definition: "A set of strategies and approaches to create, safeguard and use knowledge assets (including people and information), which allows knowledge to flow to the right people at the right time so they can apply these assets to create more value for the enterprise." The company's KM approach is centered on developing and supporting communities of practice that meet the needs of the organization. While providing access to common portal processes and tools, it is believed each community has unique needs and distinct business objectives. However for the purposes of this discussion, the precise definition of KM adopted by a company is not critical. What matters most is the level and type of collaboration among employees that a KM system enables. At the heart of these communities is the ability to communicate and collaborate around relevant topics. The collaboration tool enables anyone in the organization to:Ask a questionPush knowledge (best practice, idea, etc.) proactively to the communitySee the original question/issue and all replies in one placeReply with an answer or opinionLearn on demand by searching previous discussions and accessing managed content Issues involving one or more communities can be shared to increase collaboration and gain additional perspective. While these discussions typically involve technical or operational problem solving related to the communities, we see an increasing amount of collaboration occurring around planning, innovation and strategy. Dedicated knowledge brokers for each community provide full time administration to facilitate that community's KM effort.
fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractTo meet the long-term technology and performance needs of the upstream industry, the present and future market must first be understood and then acted upon. A collaborative knowledge management (KM) system complements other market assessment tools by harnessing the collective capability and experience of an organization's employees to more effectively identify, communicate and act on customer needs, market knowledge and potential solutions.
Simply retaining knowledge within an organization is not enough to ensure its survival unless talented employees are ready to leverage that knowledge. Changing demographics within the petroleum industry raises many concerns for the coming decade including the identification, development and retention of an organization's future leaders. An existing, advanced knowledge management (KM) community gives an organization's upper management a unique view into key employees' ability and willingness to solve technical problems, communicate, innovate, influence peers and lead group consensus. Disciplined review of collaborative efforts captures peer recognition and provides a more impartial means of generating a list of talented personnel who exhibit leadership qualities and technical ability. This informal list can be used to complement formal succession planning, generating a wider base of candidates and enhancing the selection process. Examples demonstrate how this application of KM identifies ‘natural thought leaders’, evaluates candidates for key positions, and develops succession plans for future leaders who will drive the direction of the organization. Introduction Knowledge management (KM) has been the subject of many industry papers and articles, but we suspect there are as many or more untold examples of failed implementation of KM efforts in corporations as there are successful implementations. In our observations, one primary reason for failed KM initiatives is the nearsightedness of companies to realize the additional benefits that can be derived from collaborative KM systems above and beyond providing a more efficient means for employees to solve problems. The papers depicting successes generally focus on using a KM system to develop better technical solutions, connect geographically or hierarchically disconnected experts, and improve processes, generating value chains and/or decreasing time to competence for newer employees. This paper looks at KM from an alternative perspective - using a KM system to identify, evaluate and develop emerging leaders. The industry's challenge of recruiting, developing and retaining a global workforce is well documented[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and frequently discussed. Charts showing the age distribution of professional organizations such as SPE (Figure 1) are often used to illustrate that the majority of the industry population is approaching retirement age, and either an insufficient inflow of younger professionals is available and/or there is too little time to develop younger workers to fill the void left by outgoing personnel. These eventual retirees frequently are the most experienced, knowledgeable employees in the organization and will leave with irreplaceable expertise in the form of tacit or undocumented knowledge, unless there is a system in place that combines organizational ability to learn, retain key staff and make a knowledge-sharing culture a reality.[8]
TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractSimply retaining knowledge within an organization is not enough to ensure its survival unless talented employees are ready to leverage that knowledge. Changing demographics within the petroleum industry raises many concerns for the coming decade including the identification, development and retention of an organization's future leaders.An existing, advanced knowledge management (KM) community gives an organization's upper management a unique view into key employees' ability and willingness to solve technical problems, communicate, innovate, influence peers and lead group consensus. Disciplined review of collaborative efforts captures peer recognition and provides a more impartial means of generating a list of talented personnel who exhibit leadership qualities and technical ability. This informal list can be used to complement formal succession planning, generating a wider base of candidates and enhancing the selection process.Examples demonstrate how this application of KM identifies 'natural thought leaders', evaluates candidates for key positions, and develops succession plans for future leaders who will drive the direction of the organization.
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