The document discusses the importance of convening knowledge and expertise within organizations. It describes a convening competency that addresses identifying hidden knowledge, facilitating effective conversations to surface that knowledge, and translating the knowledge into usable insights. With the right facilitation, conversation techniques, and translation methods, conveners can streamline processes like new product development and accelerate changes like mergers by enabling sharing of tacit knowledge across teams, geographies, and expertise.

1. Being the Convener
―Being a catalyst for sharing hidden know-how‖
August 16, 2011 To get ahead in today’s business world, leaders understand they
must quickly capitalize on the know-how (knowledge) that lives inside
their organizations or networks – in the teams, processes and experts
that comprise them. You can make this happen by being a boundary-
Kate Pugh spanner, helping others to surface usable insights, and putting know-
AlignConsulting how to work.
www.alignconsultinginc.com
katepugh@alum.mit.edu We describe a ―convening competency‖ that addresses this through
Sharing Hidden Know-How (Jossey-Bass, 2011) planning, facilitating, and following through from effective
conversations. Paired with appropriate technology and participation,
Roberto Evaristo ―conveners‖ use facilitation, conversation and translation to
3M Corporation, streamline new product development, accelerate merger integrations/
Knowledge Management Program Office restructurings, enable off-shore and outsource teams, and smooth
revaristo@mmm.com transitions to new executives, teams, and geographies.
Jroberto.evaristo@gmail.com (These ideas expand upon and apply many of the concepts in the
book Sharing Hidden Know-How (by Katrina Pugh, Jossey-
Bass/Wiley, 2011.)
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2. Agenda
• What’s wrong with traditional tacit knowledge-transfer
approaches?
• You can help!
• Deep dive on the competencies
• How (where) do you get those competencies?
• What’s animating you?
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3. Three Knowledge Transfer Cases
Large Med
Device Strategy
Case 3M Manufacturer Consulting Firm
Experienced IT team missed Fleeting case teams
operators suddenly deadline, quality
Business Issue retire in crucial objectives
manufacturing site
Story telling, After action review Template-based,
K transfer preceded by (project team only) filled by junior
Approach rudimentary ―critical consultant with
event‖ assessment senior review
Lack of planning not a Self-improvement, Repository slow to
handicap, but warning but no big probes get used (still going
Result about future K into systemic issues to personal
transfer investments networks)
Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge
Blind spot? Mis-match? Jail?
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4. What’s the problem?
Knowledge • We need to probe past
―Where’s the scarcity?‖ to
“Blind ―What matters to the
Spots” organization?‖
– Issue is a team-change, new
project or product start up
• We don’t know who knows, or
who needs to know
– What organization might be
holding back for political
reasons? Job-security? Fear of
recrimination?
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5. Addressing the unknown unknowns
[T]here are known knowns; there are things
we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns;
that is to say we know there are some things
we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the
ones we don't know we don't know.
Donald Rumsfeld, Feb 12, 2002
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6. What’s the problem? (cont’d)
Knowledge • We fail to see the relevance
of the lesson learned to our
“Mismatches” context (discipline jargon)
• Documents rather than
dialogues
– Omissions, summaries,
acronyms, implications for
original audience (The cryptic
PowerPoint)
– Alternatively, detail, when
need a simple answer
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7. What’s the problem? (cont’d)
Knowledge • High effort to create
repositories, and difficult to
“Jails” achieve quality, build
credibility
• Info glut and poor search
– 107 Trillion emails in 2010
(12T real); 153 million blogs
– Unstructured data mining
expensive, time-consuming
• Unidirectional: Too much
push and not enough pull!
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8. Roberto’s regret
• ―My only surprise is the surprise by other people
that it (traditional repositories) didn’t work!‖
• It could not possibly work – BY DESIGN
– Didn’t address inherent asymmetry of cost-benefit in
provide/retrieve processes -- blindspots
– Didn’t get context, insight (try to be all things to
everyone) -- mismatches
– Didn’t address long-term sustainability issues -- the
ability of the system to be relevant over time -- jail
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9. What are the competencies a convener
needs?
Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge
“Blind Spots” “Mismatches” “Jails”
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10. 1. Facilitation: Prioritizing
Knowledge Impact Sharing Feasibility
• Improve efficiency? • Participants available?
• Single points of failure? (Stand-in available?)
• Product/mkt innovation? • Participants ready?
• Job satisfaction? • Facilitator available?
• Experts/veterans leaving • Know-how is
or moving? accessible?
• Surprisingly successful? • Appropriate ―cover‖ or
• Surprisingly not? safety?
• Knowledge absorption
rate?
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11. 1. Facilitation (cont’d): Boundary Spanning
not just people, but also ideas
Strengthening weak ties Connecting ideas
Boundary spanning between
knowledge creates ―uncommon
connections,‖ one of the sources
of 3M Innovation
Extra-organizational knowledge
can also be connected (say,
Twin Cities Knowledge
Management Forum members
who benchmark across
industries)
Models can be used to abstract
and relate previously
unconnected areas of
knowledge (e.g., the DMAIC,
systems thinking archetypes)
Source: Andrew Parker, Stanford University (Thank you, Stan Garfield)
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12. /
2. Conversation: Evoking conversation
Posture of Openness
Glen
Beck!
Robert Paul
Reich! Krugman!
Pursuit of Diversity
Voice
Sense of agency or authority
(opposite: Idolatry)
Sarah Lady
Palin! Gaga!
Suspension Listening
Not judging Not assuming
(opposite: Certainty ) (opposite: Abstraction
Practices of Dialogue Respect
Appreciating what is
(opposite: Violence)
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13. 2. Conversation (cont’d): Helping people
ask right questions, right tone
Indirect Probe—―
And the
Direct Probe—― reason you Tag Question—
Why is that did that is. . . ―That’s
important?‖ .‖ important,
isn’t it?‖
(warms
people up)
Prompt
Redirect—
Question—–
―What else ―Good point.
might come Can we put
that in the Playback—
into play?‖ ―Let me try to
parking lot?‖
restate that. . .
.‖
Leading
Question—
Float—–
―Are there
solutions in ―What about. . .
the area of. . ? What are the Thank You!
.?‖ benefits?‖
Michael Wilkinson’s’ generic information gathering moves (Secrets of Facilitation, Jossey-Bass, 2004)
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14. 2. Conversation (cont’d): Visualizing knowledge
using text, concept mapping, systems thinking
Concept Mapping Systems Thinking
Cats
Canary -
population
[Eat] Balancing
Loop
Canaries + Steady
Canaries
state
Canary Meals
[provide]
-
Time
Balancing
Calories to Loop
Cats
Cat Fat+
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15. 3. Translation: Help others put the
knowledge to work
Help the ―brokers‖ (seekers’
reps) with:
• Representing the ―Seekers‖
• ―Remixing‖ Content
• Promoting learning
• Handling perish-ability
• Measuring impact
• Being a change agent!
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16. 3. Translation (cont’d): Have a repertoire
of translations
Build a repertoire of translations relevant to you. Some
examples:
• Amyris Technologies: fermentation processes in drug
development applied to produce ethanol
• ―Subscription model‖ (publishing, members’
Starts
organizations) adopted by community farms during
• 3M’s hearing aid group learned about aesthetics from Boundary
dental prosthetics spanning!
• Recreational ammunition cartridges became oxidized
(―looked old‖), so they benchmarked with L’Oreal
cartridges for lipstick
• US Postal Service leveraging Nordstrom’s customer
service
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17. Convener Competency Summary:
Transcend any individual process
Spans boundaries
• Brings people and ideas together
• Prioritizes
• Coordinates
Facilitation
Puts knowledge to work Surfaces usable insight
• Summarizes • Tone of common curiosity
• Translates • Models
• Measures and Nudges • Probes, Captures
Translation Conversation
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18. You can grow the convening
competency…
• Identify the risk implications of Start a knowledge portfolio
Facilitation
blindspots (―feasibility and impact‖ 2x2)
• Evoke serendipitous Social NW analysis, social media
connections planning
Conversation
• Convene break-through Facilitation, dialogue, systems
conversations thinking
• Inspire responsibility for shared Change management, Stakeholder
learning, and collective change mgt., impact communication
Translation
• Model common curiosity instead of Story telling, relevant case
competing development
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19. Take it to the bank
 New Product
Development
 Merger integration
 Offshoring/Outsourcing
 Overcoming Info-Glut
 Exec./Team Transitions
 Sales insights
 Making social Media
initiatives succeed
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20. Who is the ―convener‖?
Like the waterfall’s
structure, You:
• Guide, channel,
• Manage the flow,
• Enrich with
minerals,
• Re-mix different
sources
• Help nourish the
flora and fauna,
recycle
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21. Questions about the ―convener‖:
What ―convening‖ do you admire in others?
What obstacles
do you see?
What are you already doing?
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22. Appendix
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23. Kate Pugh, AlignConsulting
• Kate has 17 years of consulting and seven years of industry experience.
She held leadership positions with Intel Corporation, JPMorgan, and
Fidelity. Kate helped run Intel Solution Services’ Knowledge and Process
Mgt Group, led Fidelity Personal & Workplace Investments KM, and
initiated and ran the JPMorganChase’s Finance Portal Program.
• Kate has helped launch and/or run over 20 communities of practice,
including Intel’s award-winning Enterprise Architects’ community.
Sample clients include ClearChannel, Fidelity Investments, The Gates
Foundation, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Medtronic, Mitokine
Bioscience, Motorola, State Farm, and The World Bank. Kate is on the
Board of Knowledge Mgt. Institute Canada and on the faculty of
Columbia’s Inforamation and Knowledge Strategy Masters program.
• Kate has an MS/MBA from MIT Sloan, a BA in Economics from Williams
College, and certificates in Dialogue, Facilitation, Mediation, Project
Mgt., and LEAN Six Sigma.
• Kate wrote the book Sharing Hidden Know-How (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
She has articles in Harvard Business Review, NASA Ask Magazine, The
European American Business Journal, IBM Syn.Chrono.us Blog and
DashboardInsight.
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24. Roberto Evaristo, 3M
• Prior to joining 3M in late 2006, Roberto was on the faculty of the Liautaud
Graduate School of Business at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has
researched and consulted extensively for over fifteen years in many of Forbes’
500 largest worldwide companies, including Dell, Petrobras, Baxter Healthcare,
Fujitsu, Toshiba, and IBM.
• At 3M, Roberto has continued to work on a methodology he created: strategic
knowledge mapping (SKM). SKM addresses those strategic questions that
CEOs and other high level managers absolutely need answers to and that
existing resource allocation solutions have struggled to offer enterprise-wide
transparency, such as ―Where are your firm’s capability strengths and
vulnerabilities? Where should you be deploying resources to strengthen your
capabilities? How will restructuring affect your capabilities? What business
opportunities are you missing out due to gaps in your capabilities?‖ SKM
enables new perspectives on traditional issues such as succession planning,
staffing strategies, global R&D knowledge transfer, planned expertise growth
path across the workforce, and increasing transparency of knowledge location in
mergers and acquisitions.
• He has published over 100 book chapters, conference proceedings and
refereed articles in both academic and practitioner journals. He has also been a
frequent keynote speaker in worldwide meetings and conferences. Roberto
earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Management Information Systems from the
University of Minnesota.
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25. Some Reading
• Sharing Hidden Know-How (Jossey-
Bass, April 2011)
• Case Study: 3M Uses Storytelling to
Uncover Tacit Knowledge, 7-Jan 2009,
G00162392 (by request from Gartner)
• Jamming with the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement ― (NASA Ask
Magazine, Winter, 2011)
• ―Don’t Just Capture Knowledge – Put It
to Work,‖ Katrina Pugh and Nancy M. NASA Ask Magazine Magazine
NASA Ask
Dixon, Harvard Business Review, May
2008.
• Sustainable Communities: Top 10
CSFs for Keeping the Faith, IBM
Synch.rono.us Blog, July 19, 2010
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