Knowledge harvesting Reaping the rewards?

This article is from the February 2004 issue of Update.

A colleague has left the library to go travelling. The post is temporarily frozen, the tasks need to be re-allocated and work done on a new job spec. The last few weeks before they left were hectic and there was only time for brief discussions. They left some manuals and notes but they do not make much sense. An existing member of staff will need to take over the duties in the short term but, with little time for a handover and no way of contacting the departing employee, this is going to be problematic. This is when knowledge harvesting (KH) could come in handy.

Knowledge Harvesting may sound like the latest fad or craze to come out of knowledge management (KM) and it is — in terms of being one of the newest areas of development. However, forget images of wheat sheaves — KH has the potential to be a valuable tool in helping organisations prevent staff knowledge and expertise going out the door with the employee.

KH is just one aspect of a knowledge management approach to the organisation of human resources within the workplace. Traditionally, when workers leave their employment, their knowledge and know-how depart with them, and KH aims to address this problem. The knowledge management portal of the National Electronic Library for Health (NeLH) defines KH as:

‘An approach that allows the tacit know-ledge or know-how of experts and top performers in an organisation to be captured and documented. This know-how can then be made available to others in various ways such as through training programmes, manuals, best practices and knowledge management databases.’¹

Knowledge harvesting builds on the language and concepts of knowledge management, using terms such as explicit and tacit or implicit knowledge. Discussion of the differences between types of knowledge would be an article topic in itself. However, for this piece, tacit knowledge is defined as the knowledge which is ‘between the ears’ of workers — ‘the intuitive, experience-based know-how that resides in people’s heads’.²

KH is increasingly being used by major organisations such as Buckman Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, the Post Office and the NHS. However, there is little evidence of it being used in other public sector environments such as higher education or public libraries.

There are many potential benefits in using knowledge harvesting, the key ones being:

• protection against knowledge loss when staff leave;
• better understanding of an organisation’s ‘implicit knowledge base’, leading to increased productivity and efficiency. People can use existing expertise rather than having to go through their own trial-and-error experiences;
• the knowledge of a few key individuals is made readily available to others who need it, without the expert having to be there;
• the learning curve of new people joining the organisation is made less steep.

Key stages of knowledge harvesting
The processes and methods of KH tend to be tailored to the individual organisation’s specific needs. However, there are several widely acknowledged stages, which the NeLH sums up as:

• focus — decide what specific knowledge and expertise you want to capture;
• understand your target audience — understand who will be using the knowledge that you are capturing before you start to capture it;
• find your experts — identify who has the know-how and knowledge you are trying to capture;
• choose your harvesters — an effective harvester is crucial;
• harvest — interview your experts (preferably using one-to-one, face-to-face interviews). Questions might include: Could you describe a time when...? What’s the first thing you do…? How do you know to do that? What techniques do you apply when…?
• organise, package and share — gathered knowledge can be edited and organised into, and presented in, a form that meets the needs of its users;
• apply, evaluate and adapt — ensure that the captured knowledge is being accessed and applied and that users are getting value from it. Documents will need to be continually refreshed to retain their value.

The breakdown of KH into key stages makes it seem like a straightforward process. However, it is not that simple and there are a number of potential barriers to be overcome.

Knowledge harvesting is heavily dependent on an organisational culture of knowledge sharing and many organisations are simply not accustomed to this. As highlighted by Carl Frappaolo, Vice-President of the Delphi Group Inc., suddenly imposing a KH process on to unwilling workers is a recipe for disaster: ‘You could do all the harvesting you want, but it won’t be viewed as valuable or utilised.’ This means that some preparatory work is required:

‘It may mean changing the way the culture is instilled and the way people think about the value of sharing what they know with other individuals. It may mean you have to change the way teams get structured and rewarded. All that needs to be put in place before asking people to share.’³

This need for workers to be willing to share their knowledge and make this an everyday practice may be problematic for cultures such as HE where there is generally no knowledge sharing.

Timescales and financial resources may also be potential barriers to KH. There are no set guidelines for how long the process will take and the packaging of the information can be resource-intensive.

Continuous process
It is possible to conduct KH as a one-off event. However, to ensure integration into organisational culture and also to maintain the value of the information by keeping it up to date and relevant, knowledge harvesting needs to be a continuing process. It should not be used simply as a last-minute, emergency measure when employees are leaving.

The Post Office ensures KH is a continuous process by using interviews at three stages — (‘the 3Es’):

• entry level to gather knowledge from new employees while they still have ‘new eyes and a fresh perspective’;
• expert level, as employees develop skills and become experts in a particular role or field;
• exit level, where the focus of the interview shifts to capturing knowledge about what it takes to do the job. The exit interview is a tool used by most organisations but it has traditionally focused on capturing human resources information.⁴

Unless KH is continuous, the organisation may be faced with the ‘exit paradox’, as highlighted by Skyrme:

‘The less you capture knowledge on a regular basis, the more you need to capture it at exit, yet the less likely you are to have the mechanisms in place to do so or the leaver’s willingness to co-operate.’⁵

KH may be the latest concept to arise from KM, but it is important that organisations have realistic expectations of the process and understand that the full benefits will only come when KH is integrated and used with other aspects of KM such as communities of practice. As Eisenhart⁶ succinctly puts it, ‘Knowledge harvesting is only one tool in the KM box’.

The Centre for Information Research (Cirt) at the University of Central England undertook a pilot project to develop a KH framework to be tested with retiring lecturers in a small academic department. The key harvesting methods employed were proformas and interviews:

‘We developed proformas to capture some of the more basic and factual information, such as key resources used and location of documents. The employees were asked to complete the forms prior to the interviews.

‘Initially, an interview was conducted with a member of staff who had taken over new areas of work without having gone through a KH process. This gave the team insights into what the individual wished they had known.’

A series of interviews was conducted with the retiring lecturers in order to capture more detailed information about specific areas of expertise — in this case the modules being taught. The lecturers taking over these modules also sat in on the interviews, allowing them to ask follow-up questions to clarify points. This was valuable, as the incoming staff identified areas of importance which were not obvious to the Cirt team or interviewees. The captured information was then packaged in an accessible format.

Despite initial scepticism, the incoming lecturers found it a worthwhile process; comments from successors included:

‘I learned so much, both about this topic and how to make sense of teaching it.’

‘Involvement in the harvesting sessions has given me a tremendous headstart in the preparation of one of the modules that I’ve taken over.’

Although the Cirt framework was developed specifically for an academic department, the tools and processes are potentially transferable to any organisational setting, including libraries. All organisations suffer when they lose staff. The capture and sharing of knowledge and expertise is beneficial to libraries for several reasons:

• Gaps in employment: staff are not always instantly replaced in libraries, e.g. when posts are frozen, leading to a period when roles must be taken on by existing staff. This process will be made much easier if the knowledge about the role has been stored and can be easily accessed.
• Complex technical processes: a lot of library work involves complex, technical processes, with staff often developing their own ways of doing things, instead of following standard procedure. These shortcuts may be unknown both to existing and new members of staff, who would have to develop their own process through trial and error.
• Compartmentalisation: libraries are often strongly compartmentalised, which will not encourage sharing of knowledge.
• ‘Busy-ness’: staff may be too busy to explain all aspects of the work and some processes will be learnt ‘on the job’. This training will be made easier if this information has already been captured and documented.
• Training: libraries sometimes run training courses which are often the responsibility of only a few members of staff. By structuring and sharing their knowledge, libraries could ensure that training courses would continue in the unexpected absence of, or following the loss of, training staff.

These are just some of the reasons why libraries might benefit from adopting knowledge harvesting. Many of us have experienced that sinking feeling when you learn that a valued member of staff is leaving and realise the time that it will take for a new employee to reach anywhere near the same level. Similarly, we may have felt panic when faced with having to fill in for someone due to unexpected absence and finding that we have no idea which version of the database to use or the contact at a supplier that will give us a special discount.

We believe that librarians could learn much from large organisations such as the NHS and begin to sow the seeds of know-ledge harvesting now in order to reap the benefits in years to come.

References
¹ NeLH. Knowledge Harvesting. NHS Information Authority, 2001 (www.nelh.nhs.uk/knowledge_management/km2/
harvesting_toolkit.asp).
² L. Wilson and P. Holloway. Ten-page Guide to Eliciting Implicit Knowledge. Knowledge Harvesting Inc., 2000 (www.knowledgeharvesting.org/kho/tools/10-page%20Guide%20to%
20Eliciting%20Implicit%20Knowledge%20-%20v1.6.pdf).
³ In M. Eisenhart, ‘Gathering knowledge while it’s ripe.’ Knowledge Management. April 2001, pp. 48-54 (www.knowledgeharvesting.org/kho/articles/Knowledge
%20Management%20Magazine%
20Feature%20Article%20-%20April%202001.pdf).
⁴ NeLH. Exit Interviews. NHS Information Authority, 2001 (www.nelh.nhs.uk/knowledge_management/km2/exit_
toolkit.asp).
⁵ D.J. Skyrme. "Disappearing knowledge: are exit interviews the wit’s end?" Update/Entovation International News, 55, 2001 (www.skyrme.com/updates/u55_f1.htm).
⁶ Eisenhart, see 3.

Katy Lancaster and Joanna Spry are researchers in the Centre for Information Research (Cirt) and Michael Shoolbred is a senior academic in Information Studies. All three work at the University of Central England.

They would be happy to receive enquiries about the pilot project and knowledge harvesting (katy.lancaster@uce.ac.uk or joanna.spry@uce.ac.uk)