When is a company both a brand-new startup and an established and mature company at the same time?

In November 2016, Johnson Controls spun out its auto seating business, creating a new, wholly independent company called Adient.  Adient was born as a fully mature company, with established clients, operations, and market share.  But Adient was also born with a strong desire create a new corporate culture of information sharing and collaboration.

How could the new company do both?  How could Adient continue to maintain the content and information that was needed to sustain operations, while simultaneously rethinking how employees communicated, collaborated, and exchanged information?

Immediately after the launch of the new company, Adient Communications and Enterprise Knowledge LLC (EK) teamed up to rethink and redesign how the old-style employee portal could be transformed into a new digital workspace.

From the outset, the team identified a set of competing priorities that it needed to rationalize during the transformation process.  They needed to:

• Maintain continuous access to legacy information used in day to day operations;
• Clean up the mountain of obsolete information that Adient had inherited from its parent company;
• Make information access and maintenance easier and more intuitive;
• Change the paradigm for how the company communicates to employees;
• Change the dynamics of how employees exchanged information and collaborated, breaking down traditional barriers to information exchange by using a more social model.

The portal transformation team designed a way to gradually transform the portal in real time, rebuilding it while maintaining access to current information.  The transformed digital workspace would:

• Disseminate “official” company announcements using social tools rather than email or static content;
• Delineate spaces for all company content vs. team based content;
• Align content access interfaces with how users look for information;
• Align content maintenance interfaces with content owners;
• Enable contextual, search driven navigation to simplify the overall portal architecture and move users to target content quickly;
• Include refreshed – and dramatically simplified – content about company functions and tools.

A New Paradigm for Internal Communications

Instead of using traditional static tools for internal communications such as long form news articles and email announcements, the portal transformation team shifted toward new uses for traditional social tools.  The company’s social network (in this case Yammer) was redeployed in the service of traditional internal communications by putting in place two innovations:

The employee communications “avatar.” The portal transformation team created an employee communications avatar within Yammer and used the avatar for official announcements from the company.

Social network style employee announcements were now available both on the portal home page and via the Yammer app.  The announcements were shorter, more immediate, and easier to scan; they allowed for employee comments and “likes,” and were available through a variety of user interfaces, both desktop and mobile.

Internal “twitter-style” leads for traditional articles. The team replaced the traditional static “news quilt” on the portal home page with a news stream that essentially served as a rolling inhouse twitter feed. Leads to traditional featured news articles or videos were linked to the full versions of the item, again with access from more interfaces and with more mobility and scan-ability.

Realigned Search Scopes

To improve search results in the short term, search scopes were adjusted away from the default “index everything” approach, to a more finely tuned set of search results that returned more reliable content.  The revised search scopes:

• Separated the all company facing portal content from team content;
• Focused on destination content rather than landing or index pages;
• Pointed to content that was actively curated by content owners;
• Used “best bets” to match selected content to specific tasks.

Transforming Traditional Portal Content

To transform old style portal content for the full range of company functions, the portal transformation team created three tracks of work, namely:

• Design and implement a common information infrastructure as a foundation;
• Segment and prioritize the work to gain control over the tasks ahead;
• Extend the infrastructure to each functional area and content owner via a standardized process.

Information Infrastructure

A common information infrastructure formed the foundation of portal transformation.  The infrastructure included enterprise metadata and content types, common search facets, and a patterned approach for portal design that could be repeated for each functional area of the portal.

Search driven navigation at each functional level dramatically simplified the page hierarchy and reduced the level of effort needed to transform each functional area.  Each area was now a “content engine,” designed to consume content from content owners and serve content to users based on browsable search facets.  Content owners were now focused on maintaining content rather than on managing an individually designed portal site.

The enterprise metadata, content types, and search refiners were extended and deployed to each functional area as they were addressed.  The common page hierarchy followed the pattern in the diagram below:

Prioritized Approach

Not all functional areas of the company could be addressed at the same time.  

Prioritizing and then ordering the individual functional areas allowed the portal transformation team to transform the portal one functional area at a time. Before engaging with the individual content owners, the portal was segmented by functional area and then prioritized across three criteria:

• End user value and importance;
• Relative size and complexity;
• Readiness of individual content owners.

High value, low complexity areas of the portal were identified using a magic quadrant and then further prioritized by considering readiness of individual content owners to engage in the process.

The result was a prioritized listing of legacy portal sites that began with high value / low effort sites where the content owner was ready and willing to undertake the transformation process.

Rolling and Repeatable Process

For the actual conversion of legacy portal content to the new digital workspace model, the portal transformation team established a process that could be repeated again and again with each new functional area that was addressed.  The end-to-end process was highly regimented and could be staggered with different functional areas at different stages in the process at the same time.  For a functional area with an average amount of content (e.g. between 100-200 information items) the entire process from engagement to launch took about 6 weeks.

Here are the individual process steps:

• Engage with content owners to describe the process;
• Guide content owners through a cleanup of their legacy content, identifying content that should be archived, the content that should be moved to the transformed portal space, and the content that should be moved after modification;
• Extend the enterprise metadata and content types to accommodate the new function;
• Build out of standardized information and document repositories for that function;
• Migrate refreshed content into the new repositories;
• Build contextual landing and search results pages;
• Launch and announce the transformed functional area.

Conclusion and Results

The transformation work at Adient is ongoing.  Even with this highly structured and repeatable approach, changing an old-style employee portal to a more agile and flexible digital workspace takes time.  Structuring the work in this way, using standards and a repeatable process, allows for a sense of momentum and continuous improvement that is obvious and observable by employees throughout the company.  Portal transformation is no longer a chore that runs in the background, it is a company-wide initiative that is changing the way that Adient works.

Ensuring the adoption of new knowledge management programs, systems, and tools requires thorough planning well in advance of actually launching a new initiative. It also takes an agile approach to designing your solution so that you can adapt what you deliver based on what your employees truly need to help them get their job done.

In this presentation, you’ll learn how to develop, refine, and execute the following critical plans, which will ultimately maximize employee engagement with the “new way of doing things.”

• Charter and Project Plan
• User and Stakeholder Analysis Plan
• Communications and Change Management Plan
• Training Plan

Based on her experience managing a successful initiative to design and implement a content management tool for the communications department of a large manufacturing organization, Mary Little will share step-by-step guidelines for improving the adoption of your knowledge management solutions.

Mary gave this presentation to the October 16-20 CKM Class in Tysons, VA.

Please click here to view her full video presentation...

Effective knowledge sharing is the lifeblood to knowledge-based organizations. High-performing organizations are ones that have mastered the art of empowering their newer employees with the knowledge and experience of the more-tenured, highlighting new ways of thinking and doing, and fostering a broad set of avenues for knowledge to flow up, down, and sideways throughout the organization.

Through my years of KM consulting, I’ve noted that too often an organization will focus on trying to fix the tools and technologies around knowledge capture, management, sharing, and finding, without addressing the behavior, processes, and culture that feeds mature knowledge sharing organizations.

Within this framework, the “if you build it they will come,” concept is blatantly false. Most team members won’t gravitate toward the shiny new tool just for the sake of it. A new technology may attract a small subset of early adopters or may generate an initial burst of interest, but without a focus on instilling and maintaining a culture of knowledge sharing in your organization, these tools can only do so much.

In my experience, there are three primary reasons people don’t share their knowledge, especially in the context of tacit knowledge capture in online KM Systems like communities of practice, micro-blogs, and threaded discussions.

• Lack of Priority – When we speak with knowledge holders we often hear phrases that include, “I don’t have time,” or “I’m too busy.” This often gets diagnosed as a lack of interest in sharing one’s knowledge, but at EK we often find the root cause to be a lack of priority stemming from management. If an organization doesn’t stress the value and importance of sharing knowledge, enterprise knowledge sharing can’t be woven into the fabric of the institution.
• Worry About Being Replaced – Everyone has heard the phrase, “Knowledge is Power.” Unfortunately, many people tend to consider this as job security. We often encounter individuals uninterested in knowledge sharing because they want to be the person with the answers. For them, empowering others with that knowledge means they’re less essential to the organization. We commonly see this in highly competitive organizations or functions and industries already experiencing high turnover.
• Fear of Getting in Trouble – In more heavily regulated organizations, individuals often have it drilled into them that anything digital is discoverable in court. This can sometimes lead to a negative loop, where individuals avoid documenting their knowledge. Even in less heavily regulated organizations, certain organizational cultures punish the squeaky wheel and instead encourage their employees to keep their heads down and get the job done the way it has always been done.

Though developing and sustaining a culture of knowledge sharing in your organization requires a broad array of techniques and tools, there are several keys that I find to be critical to overall success.

• Start at the Top – Knowledge sharing culture, like most organizational culture change, starts at the top. The leaders of an organization can invigorate or kill a knowledge sharing initiative based on the support they give it and whether they themselves use it. If an organization’s management sets knowledge sharing as a priority, it will be so. I recently had a CEO tell me he would write the first micro-blog for the company’s new wall and commit to visiting the space at least once a week. That type of leadership doesn’t always exist, but where it does, you’re likely to see a much easier transition to effective knowledge sharing at all levels.
• Reward and Honor Knowledge Sharing – Organizations that are the most effective at knowledge sharing are those that treat their experts like rock stars. The holders of knowledge should be rewarded not just for having it, but for sharing it. Effectively rewarding and honoring knowledge sharing can take many different forms. It can include tying knowledge sharing metrics to real incentives (bonuses, positive reviews, etc.), but certainly doesn’t have to. Simply recognizing individuals as experts and broadly thanking them is oftentimes enough. One organization with whom we’ve worked has begun providing unique online badges and titles to those who have shared their knowledge energetically and effectively, and the results have been excellent, with more in the organization seeking the same recognition and wanting to participate.
• Protect Your Knowledge Sharers – Ensure you’ve established appropriate governance, workflows, and training for knowledge sharing. This goes beyond saying “No, Stan, this is not the place for you to share pictures of your eight cats wearing matching bow ties.” Depending on the industry and framework of your organization, you need to protect your employees by putting the appropriate controls in place so they leverage their knowledge sharing tools in the ways for which they’re intended. Mistakes will happen, so having the right level of reviews and shepherding of content is also a critical investment to ensure these systems trend towards “better” instead of “worse.”
• Think About Email – People use email because it is easy, familiar, and fast. As you’re designing your future knowledge sharing systems and processes, recognize that it takes no more than 45 seconds to send an email with an attachment. Design your knowledge sharing system to allow someone to share in 45 seconds or less. That means sacrificing some level of granularity for the overall usability, but the level of participation will increase as the barrier to entry decreases. 
• Provide Context – Knowledge sharing systems without context quickly stagnate. If you’ve defined a broad and shallow community of practice for “Innovation” around your organization, don’t expect a lot of conversation. Knowledge sharing formats, especially at first, work best with more specific topics and context from day one. The fastest buy-in for knowledge sharing tools happen when the conversation has already begun. To that end, in advance of deploying a tool…
• …Seed Your Content – A critical step in the design and deployment of a knowledge sharing system is mapping what I call the “Eaters” and “Feeders” in the organization (those who will primarily consume content, and those who will primarily supply content). Recognize, too, that a Feeder on one topic is a potential Eater on another. Prior to rolling out a new tool, make sure you’ve enlisted a key number of your Feeders to begin conversations and use these tools in order that, by the time the Eaters get to see it, there’s something for them to consume.
• Communication Goes Both Ways – As with any KM initiative, two-way communications are critical for success. Help your users understand the importance and value of knowledge sharing, but also continuously seek their guidance and feedback on how to make it easier and better for them. If you’ve got a knowledge sharing tool or are planning on rolling one out, I strongly recommend you create a specific forum for ideas on how to improve the tool!

Take a moment to remember how you felt the last time you were surprised at work with an announcement of a big change. No, really – pause for a moment and think about it.

Whether it’s new technology, a change in process, or a complete reorganization, it’s really jarring for most people to hear about a substantive change which impacts your work very late in the process. Unfortunately, we see this scenario all too often – both in Agile and Knowledge Management (KM) projects. In our experience, adoption of new technologies and processes suffer due to poor or insufficient change communications.

In this blog, I’ll outline the key techniques we employ at EK to engage people earlier using skillful change communication techniques to improve adoption and to nip resistance and confusion in the bud.

• Feedback, feedback, feedback: Involving people in true co-creation of change – even in small decisions – is the best way to promote adoption. In terms of communication, this means soliciting feedback and having an authentic dialogue. Feedback can take many forms: focus groups, crowdsourcing on online platforms, self-selection events, or even quick voting exercises. Some sensitive types of change are more “top down” by nature, and may involve less overall employee direction. This is no excuse to send a long email as your only “change communication.” After all, leaders can still employ dialogue in town hall or Q&A formats and change agents can have informal conversations to alleviate confusion.
• Understand and share the value: There are two types of “value” in change communication: value to the business and value to people being asked to change. Often overlooked, the first step is making sure there is agreement at the executive level of why the change is being made. For example, are there clear objectives for an organization’s KM project? Next, communicate the “WIIFM” – what’s in it for me – for individual employees to adopt the change. This is going to vary based on role, individual motivation, and even personality, and the best way to find out is to talk to people being asked to change – not to assume. Once patterns have been established – share them! Even better, ask individuals not on the change team to share – this will be a more authentic message. 
• Show vulnerability and build trust: At EK, we’ve worked with a number of leaders going through complex transformations who hesitate to communicate in times of uncertainty. This is completely understandable, but if executives are feeling unsure, employees generally feel much more lost. It’s even more important to communicate during these times, even if the message is, “I’m listening,” or “I don’t know the exact answer now, but we will discover it together.” This message may make leaders feel vulnerable – but it will help stop rumors and will build trust with teams who might otherwise be suspicious that decisions are being made without their input.
• Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself: The average worker receives nearly 100 emails a day – is it reasonable to expect them to pay attention to a single email announcing a change? This is why employing multiple modes of communication is so important. People also may have individual preferences for modes of communication like a chat tool, in-person meeting, or even physical artifacts, so what may seem like repetition to you is often just effective communication. As a general rule, the bigger or more emotionally charged a change is, the more frequently communications should happen. Frequency in this case is a way to alleviate fear, as rumors are more likely to start when a change impacts an individual’s role or could potentially result in job loss.

While it may seem like change communication is more of an art than science, following these four techniques will go a long way to establishing trust and making an organizational change go more smoothly. Struggling with the messaging around your organization’s next big change in KM or Agile? Reach out to us at info@enterpriseknowledge.com.

In part one I examined the connection of KM and AI and how this connection has led the way for cognitive computing; while in part two I examined those industries that will or are soon to be disrupted by Cognitive Computing.  In this post I will examine those technologies that will lead in the disruption brought to many industries by the way of cognitive computing.

Cognitive computing is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerized model. Cognitive computing involves self-learning systems (Artificial Neural Network machine learning algorithms) that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing to imitate how humans think. The goal of cognitive computing systems is to accelerate our ability to create, learn, make decisions and think.

According to Forbes, “cognitive computing comes from a mashup of cognitive science and computer science.” However, to understand the various aspects of this mashup we must peel back the various components of cognitive computing. These components are centered within AI and KM. The components of cognitive computing enable these applications to be trained in order to recognize images and understand speech, to recognize patterns, and acquire knowledge and learn from it as it evolves producing more accurate results over time.

Cognitive Technologies

Cognitive technologies have been evolving since I started developing AI applications (Expert Systems and Artificial Neural Networks) in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Cognitive technologies are now a prominent part of the products being developed within the field of artificial intelligence.

Cognitive computing is not a single technology: It makes use of multiple technologies and algorithms that allow it to infer, predict, understand and make sense of information. These technologies include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms that help train the system to recognize images and understand speech, to recognize patterns, and through repetition and training, produce ever more accurate results over time. Through Natural Language Processing systems based on semantic technology, cognitive systems can understand meaning and context in a language, allowing deeper, more intuitive level of discovery and even interaction with information.

The major list of cognitive technologies solutions include:

Expert Systems, Neural Networks, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Big Data Analytics, Deep Learning, Machine Learning Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, and Data Mining

Various cognitive technologies or applications are being developed by many organizations (large, small, including many startups). When it comes to cognitive technologies, IBM Watson has become the most recognized. IBM Watson includes a myriad of components that comprise the Watson eco system of products.

Companies Delivering Cognitive Solutions

Here are a few companies delivering cognitive solutions that take advantage of the cognitive technologies mentioned above as well as the industry they focus on.

Industry: Healthcare

Welltok: Welltok offers a cognitive powered tool called CaféWell Concierge that can process vast volumes of data instantly to answer individuals’ questions and make intelligent, personalized recommendations. Welltok offers CaféWell Concierge to health insurers, providers, and similar organizations as a way to help their subscribers and patients improve their overall health.

Industry: Finance

Vantage Software : provides reporting and analytics capabilities to private equity firms and small hedge funds. The company’s latest product, Coalesce, is powered by IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology. This is an example of a company developing a software platform and using IBM Watson’s API’s to provide cognitive capabilities. This product addresses the need to absorb and understand huge volumes of information and use that information to make split-second, reliable decisions about where and when to invest client funds in a highly volatile market.

Industry: Legal

One of the major impediments to quality, affordable legal representation is the high cost of legal research. The body of law is a growing mountain of complex data, and requires increasingly more hours and manpower to parse. Lawyers are constantly analyzing data to find answers that will benefit their clients. For law firms to stay competitive they must find ways to cut cost and streamlining legal research is one way to do just that.

ROSS Intelligence: software is built on the Watson cognitive computing platform, ROSS has developed a legal research tool that will enable law firms to slash the time spent on research, while improving results.

AI & Blockchain

Detailing AI, KM and Cognitive computing would not be complete without adding blockchain to the technologies that will disrupt several industries. Functionally, a blockchain can serve as “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically. AI & Blockchain come together when analyzing digital rights. For example, AI will learn the rules by identifying actors who break copyright law. The use of AI applications will be extended by incorporating blockchain technology. When blockchains scale to encompass big-data, AI will provide the query and analysis engine to extract insights from the blockchain of data.

Cognitive technology solutions can be found in a number of applications across many industries. These industries include but are not limited to legal, customer service, oil & gas, healthcare, financial and automotive just to name a few. Cognitive technologies have the potential to disrupt Every industry and Every discipline — Stay Tuned!!