Today we’ll continue exploring the process, people, and technology considerations for implementing an expertise locator system—now with a look into the key people considerations. Research shows that when considering the people component of implementing an expertise locator system, it is important to understand the underlying philosophies and organization principles so as to be prepared for the human elements that could otherwise cause an expertise locator initiative to fail.
Being sensitive to what participation in an expertise locator system represents to the individual employee and the organization is an important first step. For example, participation in BP Amoco’s Connect system:
…not only represents a way to locate expertise, it also demonstrates the participants’ willingness to be contacted, therefore making all users more collaborative – and approachable. In this sense, the existence and high profile of a product such as Connect reinforces the importance of knowledge-sharing and encourages staff to think consciously about why others may want to contact them and how they can help people find them. This thought process prompts a knowledge-sharing culture at a critical time for the newly-merged organization. (Collison, 1999, p. 13)
In addition, to encourage a culture of trust, it is recommended to “establish employee ownership” and not require participation (Collison, 1999, p. 13). Also realize that expertise location can suffer from a lack of participation due to people not wanting to share their contact information and/or self-identify themselves as experts (potentially increasing their workload when asked to share their knowledge) (Smith & McKeen, 2006, p. 45). To address each of these concerns that the employees may have, it will be important for this company to consider these issues when creating the communication plan for the initiative as well as the overall change management strategy being pursued to address the recent and future organizational changes.
“Human facilitation [of the process also] is essential” (Smith & McKeen, 2006, p. 51). One approach to doing this would be to define groups of experts with identified leads. At first these leads would take a visible role in promoting and participating in the expertise locator system; the leads could also be the initial point of contact for any requests for experts and/or questions on that area of expert knowledge. As the company matures in its move toward a knowledge-sharing culture, these groups of experts could also form the basis of future communities of practice. Another benefit of having expert groups and leads identified would be a reduction in the potential “cold-start problem.”
Systems often suffer from the cold-start problem where there is a mismatch between the number of experts and users. In some cases, experts out number users, discouraging experts' participation or affecting revenue. In other cases, there is a dearth of experts (or qualified experts), and users become frustrated because of poor response times or low-quality answers. (Maybury, D'Amore, & House, 2002, p. 203)
To further counteract this issue, as well as help with some of the previously-stated people concerns, it will also be important to secure participation from senior management and key individuals across the organization. Management’s leading by example will help with the initial and ongoing acceptance and usage of the system.
Despite these efforts, it is important to know that some people will hold tenaciously to the belief that their personal networks are enough (Smith & McKeen, 2006, p. 51). Thus, work may need to be done to help employees realize the potential limitations in their personal networks. For example, short training sessions could demonstrate the potential of the system by comparing examples of who their personal network would identify to solve a problem versus who the system points them to (Cullen & Rumizen, as cited in Smith & McKeen, 2006). Examples such as this will likely show that the system can point the employee to many more (and perhaps better) resources in the new, combined organization rather than what their old (and perhaps now outdated) personal networks would have.
References
Collison, C. (1999). Connecting the new organization: How BP Amoco encourages post-merger collaboration. Knowledge Management Review, 2(1), 12-15.
Maybury, M., D'Amore, R., & House, D. (2002). Awareness of organizational expertise. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 14(2), 199-217.
Smith, H. & McKeen, J. (2006). Development in practice XXII: Expertise location and management: Hope or hype? Communications of AIS, 18, 44-54.
- Robin
Copyright Robin Donnan 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Performance Associates, Inc.
