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The Eight Pillars of Knowledge Sharing
How the World Bank
launched
a knowledge management program
Editor's note: This document was submitted to AOK
in response to a request
by Clare Robson, health intelligence officer, North Wales Health
Authority,
for suggestions on devising a "Vision for a KM Utopia"
to present to her
staff and board members.
By
Michel JL Pommier
Senior
Advisor, Network Operations and Knowledge Sharing Program
The World Bank Group
Drawing from the lessons
of experience for launching a broad knowledge management program
in a global organization like the World Bank, eight pillars were
instrumental to support the Bank's initiative - defining a clear
strategy based on the business needs of the organization; keeping
small the central KM unit which oversees overall implementation;
making available a budget to allow communities to function; supporting
the development of communities of practice; keeping information
technology user-friendly and responsive to its users needs; orchestrating
systematic communications to explain what knowledge means and
to keep every one informed; introducing new incentives to accelerate
the shift towards a knowledge culture; and developing a set of
metrics to measure progress.
Defining a Knowledge
Strategy
Defining a knowledge
sharing strategy which will be endorsed by senior management
and front-line staff is a difficult but essential first step.
The strategy should clearly articulate why the organization should
share its know-how, what the organization will share, with whom
the organization will share and how the organization will share.
One critical element in the World Bank knowledge sharing strategy
was the public commitment made by its president to build a "knowledge"
Bank. This decision to share, taken by the chief executive officer,
sheltered the organization from lengthy discussions that typically
surround the development of strategies in large organizations.
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 Deciding
why to share:
Given the characteristics
of the global economy, and the plummeting costs of communication
and computing, the World Bank perceived that sharing knowledge
would enhance its organizational performance, and therefore,
its global impact on poverty. This was a business decision anchored
on the realization that the new opportunities were worth the
shock of cultural and technological transformations that the
Bank was going to introduce. Knowledge management was not undertaken
for its own good. It was motivated by a decision to increase
the speed and quality of service delivery, lower the cost of
operations by avoiding rework, accelerate innovation, and widen
the Bank partnerships to fight poverty.
Deciding
what to share:
The knowledge sharing
program of the Bank is designed to share country and sector know-how,
and global best practices and research in the field of development.
The program would have been designed differently if the knowledge
of competitive intelligence, processes or individual clients
would have been at the core of the Bank's business. The issues
of the quality and authentication of what is being shared is
addressed by the thematic group leaders.
Deciding
with whom to share:
The knowledge-sharing
vision of the World Bank is ambitious. It drives the institution
to share its development know-how both internally with staff
at headquarters and in the field, and externally with clients,
partners and stakeholders. Internally, the audience is the members
of the thematic groups and the objective is to collect and make
accessible the latest and best sector and country development
knowledge that exists globally to allow operational staff to
bring higher quality advice to their clients while saving time
and costs. In itself, collecting, synthesizing and authenticating
this knowledge is already an endeavor. External knowledge sharing
poses further issues such as the confidentiality of information
given to the Bank by its clients and partners, copyright of documents,
and for the Bank activities supporting the private sector, the
protection of proprietary assets. Instead of developing constraining
procedures to address these issues, the Bank is dealing with
them as they arise.
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Deciding
how to share:
The Bank uses a
multitude of different channels to share various forms of knowledge.
For instance, a number of thematic groups are providing a mentor
for each new recruit to quickly familiarize them with sector
strategies, lending procedures and key professional contacts.
Every staff can also call a help desk, where packets of information
and referral services are available. Seasoned professionals will
attend and contribute to technical clinics (working lunches of
one-to-two hours) or search the knowledge collections on the
Intranet. Externally, knowledge sharing takes place virtually
on the Web, and face-to-face with clients and partners, either
during field missions or during sector weeks organized annually
by sector boards and their thematic groups.
Organizing knowledge
management
The location of
the central knowledge management unit in the World Bank has evolved
over time. At the program's inception, it was attached to the
information technology group because attention was primarily
focused on building a knowledge management "system,"
i.e. a repository of knowledge collections. When thematic
groups gained importance, attention shifted to connecting people
for accelerating learning and bringing the benefits of knowledge
sharing to operations. To reflect this new orientation, the central
KM unit was recently moved to the vice-presidency Operation Core
Services. Whatever its location, the Bank knowledge management
organization and functions is similar to what seems to emerge
as a pattern among knowledge organizations, i.e.
- a small central
unit (three people) has overall coordination and facilitation
responsibilities;
- operational managers
in the networks and the regions are responsible for implementing
the knowledge sharing program;
- thematic groups,
supplemented by help desks, are the preferred instrument for
sharing know-how; and
- a governance body
(knowledge management council) is responsible at the corporate
level for the overall knowledge management policy formulation.
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Providing a budget
for knowledge sharing
As we saw earlier,
the decision to provide a budget for knowledge sharing tripled
the number of thematic groups between June 1997 and 1998; hence,
sending an unambiguous message to staff that the World Bank was
serious in incorporating knowledge management into its operations.
The knowledge sharing program receives an annual budget allocation
of about 3 percent of the Bank administrative budget. Of this,
less than 10 percent is used on technology. Two percent covers
the operating cost of the central coordinating unit. The remaining,
or nearly 90 percent, entails financing the thematic groups and
the sector help desks which support the Bank's operations. These
figures are at the low end of what other knowledge organizations
seem to spend on knowledge sharing.1 Without appropriate funding,
thematic groups could neither continue sharing knowledge at their
current level nor survive since the community leaders and their
members are all involved in day-to-day operations.
Nurturing communities
of practice
In most organizations,
building a repository of knowledge collections is easier than
shifting the company's culture towards knowledge sharing. To
successfully capture, share and leverage knowledge, an organization
needs to facilitate and nurture human interactions between professionals
who share a common interest or experience, who share common problems
and whose interest is to identify solutions that will improve
their work effectiveness. Without the benefit of a shared practice,
people will constantly reinvent the wheel, deliver sub-optimal
solutions to their clients, and miss potential efficiency gains.
At the outset of
the knowledge sharing program of the Bank, only a hand-full of
professional communities was in existence. One of these, the
roads and highway thematic group, had gathered informally over
15 years. Under the leadership of a visionary and curious-minded
engineer, the group had established an email distribution list
where technical questions were debated, help was requested and,
most importantly, where success stories were shared. It is not
surprising, then, that the knowledge story presented earlier
in this paper is from that sector. Success stories validate the
knowledge sharing concept and boost the enthusiasm and commitment
of the practitioners. Nurturing the development of such communities
became a Bank priority.
The networks encouraged
their staff to organize around common themes such as environment
or poverty, and sector priorities such as early childhood development
or rural water supply and sanitation. Today, more than 120 thematic
groups are supported by the Bank, without smothering their self-organizing
drive lead by thought leaders. Beside budgetary allocations,
various instruments have been developed to nurture the thematic
groups.
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Choosing a technology
that help sharing knowledge
The "connecting
power" of information technology often leads companies to
believe that, in itself, this technology can leverage the know-how
of their professionals and partners. Bank staff throughout the
world can connect with their peers through email or the Web.
They can also access electronically the knowledge collections
of thematic groups to get the collective wisdom of their professional
practice. From this, it would be tempting to conclude that implementing
a Web-based technical solution to share knowledge is a "no
brainer." The reality did not match this perception. First,
one has to remember that most of the knowledge of individuals
is tacit. It resides deep in their minds and only a fraction
of it is indeed explicit. Only the latter can be captured, synthesized
and shared through the World Wide Web. Second, to effectively
share this explicit knowledge, the information technology tool
should be fast to access, user-friendly and easy to operate.
It should provide classification and cataloging capabilities
to easily found and quickly retrieve knowledge.
The Bank's experience
in that domain is that setting up such a system is not an easy
task. It requires a collective visioning effort from the organization
on how knowledge will be shared. Many units have to be engaged
from the onset in the development of the technology tools. Only
this will ensure that the users' requirements are met. Then,
the system may have a chance to be used in the future. Besides
information technology, other technologies drawing on the tacit
knowledge of people are essential to consider. Widely available
tools, such as the telephone, electronic mail and video-conferencing,
play a central role in the Bank knowledge sharing activities.
The combination of technology tools and human practices is likely
to be more successful than programs that focus on one or the
other.
Communicating
the values of knowledge sharing
In the process of
communicating its knowledge management strategy, the Bank was
fortunate to have the full commitment of its chief executive.
The World Bank president held several "town hall" meetings
with the staff to explain his vision. In 1998, the Bank published
its annual World Development Report on knowledge and development.
That year, it organized two Knowledge Fairs. It was there that
thematic groups could display their knowledge sharing activities
and could further illustrate with concrete examples the benefits
of working together. The first fair took place in the lobby of
the headquarters building in March 1998. It had thousands of
visitors, including the Bank president and his senior managers.
It generated an extremely positive response from the staff who
could see and feel what knowledge sharing was all about. This
first success lead the president to repeat each year the fair
during the Bank's annual meetings where attendance exceeds 10,000
people from around the world.
Storytelling was
also used by the KM program director and some network KM staff
to sensitize the organization to the kind of problems that knowledge
sharing was meant to solve. Presenting real-life, problem-solving
situations allowed each individual in the audience to recast
the stories into his or her own contextual work environment.
Suddenly, the highway knowledge sharing story was becoming relevant
to the expert on early childhood education without even pronouncing
the word knowledge management or attempting to give an elaborate
definition of it. Storytelling turned out to be a much more powerful
and effective way of communicating the values of knowledge sharing
than using one of the typical complex definitions and diagrams
found in every knowledge management book. Story telling is also
used during the inception program of new Bank recruits.
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Introducing new
personnel incentives
Traditional vertical
hierarchical models of organization tend to exacerbate the "silo"
culture of a company and discourage knowledge sharing behaviors.
In 1996, the World Bank decided to adopt a matrix organization
to precisely promote the exchange of information and know-how
between regional units which had been lacking. Although changing
the organizational structure of the Bank was an important decision,
it was not in itself sufficient to provoke the intended cultural
change. A year later, the Bank made knowledge sharing an integral
part of its formal personnel evaluation system by modifying the
small number of core behaviors against which people's performance
is assessed. This sent a strong signal to managers and staff
that the institution was serious about encouraging and rewarding
knowledge sharing behaviors. Did this change produced and instant
incentive effect? Not quite; some cynicism and posturing remained.
It had to be supplemented by a series of monetary awards.
Annual performance
awards reinforcing sharing behaviors were used by the Bank to
foster knowledge sharing behaviors. A President Award for Excellence
was introduced to recognize outstanding team behaviors. A Development
Market Place was organized to promote innovation and ground breaking
work with external partners. Seed financing was offered to the
winning proposals. Finally, a pilot performance award was introduced
in 1999 to reward cross-boundary work and client impact. It is
expected that over time these incentives will accelerate the
intended behavioral change.
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Measuring performance
Measuring the performance
of an organization-wide knowledge sharing program is a difficult,
and sometimes ambiguous, undertaking. On one hand, the return
on the significant knowledge sharing investments needs to be
evaluated. On the other hand, the evolution of behavioral changes
throughout the organization should be measured. A set of metrics
for measuring progress is essential to the sustainability of
the knowledge sharing program.
At the outset of
its program, the Bank focused mainly on measuring inputs (such
as budget deployment and recruitment of knowledge management
staff) and activities (such as the number of help desks, communities,
and knowledge collections available on-line). As implementation
progressed, the focus was expanded to measuring outputs (such
as the number of questions satisfactorily answered by help desks,
the number of page-equivalent downloaded from the web, the number
of knowledge databases and the usage of electronic tools). Outcomes,
such as lending cycle times, the quality of services, staff and
client perceptions are also measured. Measuring the overall impact
of the knowledge sharing program poses a unique challenge. Managerial
factors, changes in processes, and the external work environment
are simultaneously taking place with knowledge sharing activities.
As a result, the causal relationship between inputs and impact
remains, at best, unclear.
To overcome the
shortcomings of traditional performance measurement, the Bank
decided to subject its knowledge sharing program to two independent
assessments. In February 1999, Larry Prusak, director of the
IBM Institute of Knowledge Management, lead an external panel
of knowledge management experts to assess the relevance and impact
of the Bank knowledge sharing program. The panel was also asked
to make recommendations for improvement. The conclusions of the
panel were presented to the Bank senior management in April 1999.
The knowledge management strategy of the Bank was found "far-sighted
in conception and sound in its fundamentals. It positions the
Bank to play a key role in the world economy of the 21st
Century."
This reassuring
conclusion was supplemented in October/November 1999 by a benchmarking
study of knowledge management programs in 80 organizations conducted
by the American Productivity and Quality Center.2 In February 2000, The World
Bank was recognized as one of the five top knowledge management
organizations in the US. In June 2000, an annual survey of experts
of Fortune 500 companies, also selected the Bank as one of the
top ten Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) in the world.
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Integrating
Knowledge Sharing and Learning
Like many other
organizations in 1997, the Bank was still organizing its training
activities independently from the operational work units. A training
department located in Human Resources was responsible for curriculum
development and delivery. Training was an individual process
with clearly defined starting and end points. These training
activities were mostly ineffective. Training was delivered asynchronously
with professional skill building requirements. In addition, little
cross-fertilization existed between various professional groups.
The creation of the networks and the launch of the knowledge
sharing program rapidly changed this situation.
Within each network,
sector boards became responsible for mapping the skills of their
staff and identifying knowledge gaps. Thematic groups started
to offer regular study tours and informal learning clinics. As
the communities organized, it became clear that professional
training had to be completely reorganized. The training department
was first absorbed by the World Bank Economic Development Institute
(EDI) that had successfully trained Bank clients, mainly by using
Bank experts as trainers. Later, the Institute, working in close
collaboration with the networks, decided to transfer the training
budget and the responsibility for course content development
to the sector boards and their thematic groups, while retaining
the function of facilitation and providing logistical support.
Today, knowledge sharing and learning programs are supervised
by the same governance body, the Knowledge and Learning Council.
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Providing
Support to the Communities of Practice
Thematic groups
are not intended to substitute for existing organizational units,
but rather to facilitate knowledge sharing and learning across
regions and themes. By their very nature, thematic groups did
not fit neatly into the Bank's conventional organizational structures
and budgetary processes. Thematic groups did not conform with
top-down decision making. Their membership was largely voluntary
and based on self selection from a few individuals to several
hundreds of practitioners. Some had been defined around very
narrow themes. Others were cutting across a wide range of topics
and sectors. Only a few had the logistical and administrative
mechanisms to deliver products or services in a consistent fashion.
Given this extraordinary diversity, it is not surprising that
specific arrangements had to be put in place to support their
work and overcome early teething problems.
Other organizations
had resolved the dilemmas of embryonic communities by injecting
a cadre of "facilitators" or "coaches" or
"concierges." Whatever the name adopted, the functions
performed included assistance in the processes of knowledge production,
codification, synthesis, distribution and diffusion. Thematic
groups needed a minimum level of structure and accountability
to become the central instrument of knowledge sharing in the
Bank. Their numbers also needed to be contained to ensure critical
mass and avoid the dilution of budgetary resources. A few network
sector boards started to request a mission statement and work
program to their thematic group leaders. An attempt was made
to put in place a Directory of Expertise to identify in each
sector family the expert profile of its members and their professional
affiliation. However, more needed to be done to avoid "burning
out" thematic group leaders who, in addition to their knowledge
sharing and learning activities, continued to provide 70-80 percent
of their expert services time to their client countries.
The managing director
in charge of the knowledge sharing program called several meetings
with the thematic group leaders between 1998 and 1999 to identify
means of supporting them and areas of immediate actions.
- In areas, where
the Bank was not at the cutting edge, efforts were directed to
building up knowledge partnerships with outside partners.
- Repeat activities,
such as data base entry, web site development, referral-type
services and preparation of information packets were delegated
to the help desks and sector knowledge coordinators who were
recruited by the sector boards.
- Knowledge coordinators
were also asked to help thematic group leaders in researching
and cataloging knowledge materials, and organizing learning events
either inside the Bank or in partnership with external professional
groups.
- Networks undertook
to disseminate quickly to the rest of the Bank information about
their thematic group activities.
- The procedures
for obtaining funding for thematic groups activities were streamlined.
The alignment of thematic group activities with sector strategies
and priorities was reviewed by each sector board.
- A self-assessment
tool was designed to encourage the candid feedback of members
of the thematic groups.
- Regular workshops
of thematic group leaders were organized by the central knowledge
sharing unit. This group encouraged the consolidation of overlapping
thematic groups. It also created synergy and helped communication
between thematic groups to help introduce good practices developed
in other thematic groups.
- A knowledge intern
program was launched with graduate and under-graduate students
to increase the research capacity of thematic groups.
More information on the
World Bank Knowledge Sharing Initiative
1 According to the Gartner
Group, major consulting firms may spend as much as 6 to 12% of
revenues on knowledge sharing programs (Research Note - May 28,1998)
2The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC)
is a world-renowned resource for process and performance improvement
for organizations of all sizes across all industries.
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