EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This case study reflects the work of a global organization in its knowledge management efforts to sustain and transfer learning from a global leadership development curriculum. It focuses on the Knowledge Management (KM) solution developed to support employees to sustain their learning, to enable them to share their insights and experiences with others, and thus increase organizational capability. The paper is written to illustrate an example of a large organization’s efforts to engage employees to share their learning from a management programme across geographical and cultural boundaries.
INTRODUCTION
This case study reflects the work of a global organization in its knowledge management efforts to sustain and transfer learning from a global leadership develop- ment curriculum. It focuses on the Knowledge Management (KM) solution developed to support employees to sustain their learning, to enable them to share their insights and experiences with others, and thus increase organizational capability. The paper is written
to illustrate an example of a large organization’s efforts to engage employees to share their learning from a management programme across geographical and cultural bound- aries.
Georgensen (1982) estimates that learners retain approximately 10% of material covered in a tutor-led workshop when back at the workplace. The KM strategy in this project was to support high-performing, high-potential employees to retain a greater proportion of the tutor-led learning and experience. This in turn increases organizational capability by transferring the learning to colleagues and delivers a greater return on investment to the business.
A key challenge of the KM strategy was to effectively manipulate existing KM
platforms within the business and research and propose the use of additional ones.
The issue was to make best use of the current multiple resources in the organization, acknowledging that not one of them was totally suited to meet the needs across the globe. The Learning and Development team worked to find a solution with either a range of existing platforms or, as a result of research and testing of new technologies, a new KM platform to support the strategy.
There are a number of cultural challenges associated with implementing effective KM across a global organization with presence in over 100 countries, with different levels of technology sophistication, language, and experience. Revenue-generating business demands mean implementing an effective KM strategy with “learning” content as another challenge entirely. For example, time spent documenting personal reflections from learning and on-the-job experiences, and reading others’ reflections from learning and on-the-job experiences struggles to compete with business opportunities that deliver an immediate bottom-line return.
The nature of the insurance industry is relationship based. Interaction has histori- cally been, and still is, predominantly face-to-face or over the telephone. As Nixon (2000) confirms, many other industries have found implementing effective technology-based KM solutions with only face-to-PC interaction is a cultural and pragmatic challenge. In their everyday role, brokers prefer to pick up the phone and talk to someone or go to see them versus logging on to a computer, entering a password they need to have remem- bered and change regularly to maintain security protocols. The Lloyds of London broking environment, established in 1688, reinforces the face-to-face relationship-based culture. Experience of working with an internal client group to support employees to use the system suggests that if the Internet connection is slow or a password is typed incorrectly thus denying access, users will pick up the phone before trying again, or worse, will avoid the system in future.
BACKGROUND
The Organisation
Marsh Inc. is the world’s leading risk and insurance services firm. Its aim is “[t]o create and deliver risk solutions and services that make our clients more successful.” Founded in 1871, it has grown into a global enterprise with 400 owned-and-operated offices and 42,000 colleagues, who serve clients in more than 100 countries. Marsh’s annual revenues are $6.9 billion, and the company meets client needs in two principal categories:
• Risk Management, insurance-broking, and programme-management services are provided for businesses, public entities, professional services organisations, private clients, and associations under the Marsh name.
• Reinsurance-broking, risk and financing modeling, and associated advisory ser- vices are provided to insurance and reinsurance companies, principally under the Guy Carpenter name.
The organisation is made up of distinct divisions with specialist knowledge. One of the key business drivers for the future is to maintain and develop the specific knowledge within each of these divisions, while sharing more learning and experiences across the business, particularly to reduce “reinvention of the wheel” comments across divisions and geographies.
SETTING THE STAGE
Knowledge Management Platforms in Learning
Newman (1991) defines KM as “the collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge.” The cascade and consistent communica- tion of corporate goals and performance management is pivotal to business success, learning interventions, and employees’ personal development. In 2000, Marsh made a fundamental shift in the mechanism used to cascade company strategy across the globe. Local performance management tools, processes, and procedures were replaced with one common approach to aligning goals and consistently measuring performance with the Balanced Scorecard.1
At the beginning of 2001, there was no common, pan-European technology platform specifically targeting learning and the consistent documentation of learning in Marsh. E-mail provision was the one common tool and platform across the globe. The company had a variety of software to support the creation and application of databases and had the capability to share databases across geographies, through shared network drives, Internet-based secure “filing” programmes, Microsoft Access and Lotus Notes programmes. Few employees were aware of the range of these capabilities and even fewer were aware of how to manipulate such tools.
In 2001, the firm implemented a global learning management system with specific, pan-European capabilities including e-learning, registration for tutor-led learning, and an online lending library with books, CDs, tapes, videos, and computer-based training (CBT). The system also provided the capability to record for each learner what learning they had accessed and to allow an “approver” path for line manager involvement and alignment to learning. Usage statistics have increased from 11% of the total European population in 2001 to more than 28% in 2004.
In 2002, the organisation launched a company-wide portal, an interactive client and colleague platform to source information about Marsh to both external and internal requestors. The portal is intended to ultimately replace local country-specific intranet
sites. The learning management system is now operating effectively from this medium. Local intranets are still in operation across Europe providing more specific local information to employees with the portal offering a platform that spans the entire region and links to colleagues and learning in the United States.
The business is using a number of communication tools to promote cost-effective knowledge sharing, the most common being an interactive, Internet-based tool WebexTM, used alongside the telephone for conference calls to share presentations, documents, and access to specialised software. This tool allows Internet dialogue over the course of a meeting and has “ownership” rights for a person or persons to own a presentation document and to be able to make adjustments online in real time with feedback from the conference call participants. This tool can also be used with external clients and has been particularly useful in sharing across boundaries as all colleagues have a desktop computer and access to a phone.
CASE DESCRIPTION
This paper will specifically focus on the KM strategy implemented for the European implementation of a global leadership programme. The programme is one of three core programmes in a Global Leadership Development Curriculum and targets high-perform- ing, high-potential colleagues with people management responsibility. It is a three-day off-site event. Titled “Managing Essentials,” it was launched in the spring of 2002. The business used an external provider to deliver across the globe with a core team of dynamic and experienced facilitators. This strategic decision enabled consistency of message, delivery, language, and experience.
The audience for the programme is diverse in years within the organisation and in the industry, time in a management role, geography, and first language. In Europe alone, the target population of colleagues to attend the programme in the first 18 months was close to 500 (50% from the United Kingdom and 50% from continental Europe). Results from employee surveys and dialogue on the programme demonstrated the need to create ownership and responsibility for change at this level. The Learning and Development (L&D) network of colleagues managing the programme at the local level across the globe is also diverse. Technology has played a key role in communicating across geographies with both the delegate and the L&D communities by way of the telephone, Internet, e- mail, various global software platforms, and even camera.
The ultimate KM strategy for Managing Essentials is to improve organisational capability and capacity.2 Underpinning this are four main goals:
1. For delegates of the programme to sustain their learning of best-practice manage- ment tools and techniques
2. For delegates to sustain the pan-European colleague network from the programme
3. For delegates to share their learning and lessons learned from implementation with other colleagues
4. To demonstrate a measurable return on investment against the learning intervention
Next is an account of what actions have been taken to address each element of the strategy and the observed outcomes to date. Georgensen’s (1982) hypothesis of learning
retention was a key factor in the design of the strategy with pre- and postcontact with delegates at progressive intervals to reinforce the learning. For this reason, the material that follows identifies the cycle stage of the actions taken to the programme (pre, during, or post).
Sustaining the Learning
Pre Event
High-performing, high-potential colleagues were the target audience for Managing Essentials because this population was generally known to be more capable and willing to cascade learning, lead by example, and to therefore impact the majority of colleagues as a result of their experience on the event. To ensure appropriate employees with this skill set were exposed to the learning, employees could not self-register for the programme but had to be nominated by a senior colleague in their business.
To combat cultural issues that historically reinforced silos within the business and across geographies, Managing Essentials is delivered at a pan-European level as opposed to local country level. Nominations are managed by the Programme Manager through the database to ensure a 50/50 split of participants from the UK and continental Europe. The deliberate mix of delegates on each event, sharing and cascading knowledge and breaking down business segment and geographical boundaries, has been recognised by delegates as a core strength of the programme.
During the Event
Every delegate received a hard copy binder of materials covering the learning models and references from the three-day event and supplementary reading materials and references. The facilitators referred delegates to their binders throughout the programme and ensured key action points were documented in the binder to encourage participants to refer back to it and use it when back at the office.
On approximately 60% of the conference calls held with delegates post event, at least one employee referred to his/her frequently returning to the binder to remind him/ her of his/her learning. Many claimed to keep their binder on their desk where it could be easily referred to.
Post Event
The Marsh internal Learning and Development team developed a sustainability timetable post programme using a variety of KM tools. A summary of activity is noted in Table 1.
Months three, six, and 12 of the postprogramme plan were proposed in first quarter 2003, but have not yet been fully implemented. Europe has consistently implemented up to the three-week stage in this timeline and has sporadically implemented the six-week and onwards activities.
Each of the KM tools and practices used in the above timeline has its pros and cons. The objective of using this range of tools and methods is to provide an overall synergy to all the learners involved, appreciating different learning styles. The feedback the team has had is that the facilitated conference call is useful for reminding delegates of their learning and bringing the “community” back together again. The conference call does not, however, lend itself to support those colleagues who speak English as a second language and the transcript of the call, while a valuable record of verbatim comments and stories, is detailed and time consuming to analyse at a later date.
As the networking opportunity of the event holds such great wealth for the participants and lends itself to the transfer of knowledge both to the network after the event and to their colleagues back in the office, a digital photo is now taken on site on the last day of the programme and circulated to the delegates approximately two weeks afterwards via e-mail. For those people who learn more effectively in a group and through visual stimulus (as opposed to audio or kinesthetic), the photo provides a reminder of the experience and the learning.
The A5 laminate needs no translation, it’s colourful, and delegates do not need to actually “do” anything with it other than hang it somewhere prominent on their desk as a reminder. When walking around the offices, these laminates are becoming more and more visible with the numbers of colleagues attending the programme. This is a simple way to cascade the message as yet other colleagues ask questions about the laminate on the desk and the explanation cascades the learning.
The central conference would provide value to the delegates and the organisation, but taking more than 250 colleagues out of the business for a day and bringing them to a central location has financial and work flow implications. A compromise suggested by the participants has been to hold local country conferences. This is something the team considered implementing in fourth quarter, 2004.
Three years after implementation, the learning management system the business has implemented globally is becoming a powerful tool. European colleagues are beginning to embrace the tool although they are just scratching the surface to use it to its full functionality. Employees have been forced to become familiar with the system and to register for learning events through this medium where previously they called through to a learning team to manually register for events. Many, however, are not using the personal learning history, assigning a mentor, or reporting functionality of the system. The second e-mail sent at the two-week stage post programme (above) targeting the high- performing, high-potential employees, enforces strategic organisational goals of em- ploying more blended learning, promoting the learning management system, e-learning, sustained learning, and the use of technology as a learning tool.
Transferring the Learning Across the Organisation
During the Event
Key learning from best-practice networks of learning professionals in the United Kingdom led to the discovery of Unilever’s3 Transfer of Learning tool known as APT2 (Acquire, Practice, Transfer to Job and Transfer to Colleagues). This tool has been consistently utilized at the end of each of the three days in the Managing Essentials programme. Delegates identify and publicly document what learning they have acquired, how they will practice that learning (in a safe environment where they can afford to make mistakes), how they will transfer the learning to the job, and how they will transfer the learning to colleagues. At the end of each day, this is recorded by each participant on post-it notes and posted on flip charts, where it stays over the duration of the programme. Delegates can add to it as required over the three days. After the event, the data are recorded electronically by the programme management team for redistribution to del- egates by e-mail, primarily providing an aid to sustain the learning but also to remind and share with the group how everyone committed to transfer the learning. Feedback on this process has been that it is a useful reminder of the programme content as everyone records what key learning they have acquired each day, and a generator of ideas of how to implement the learning. This record is also used as a tool to describe to senior leaders what key learning the participants are taking away from the programme and what they are committing to do back in the office on their return.
One of the richest sources of knowledge transfer and sustainability is storytelling. The power of the true story, the real experience of someone in the room or someone the participants know as a colleague has an impact few, if any, other mediums can match. Participants in the programme, like many others in the financial services industry, are rarely satisfied with theories. They need proof, not simply of how something has worked but of how something has worked in their environment under the same pressures they work under. The external providers Marsh work with to deliver the learning are insightful in the way they share their stories and experiences to emphasise and reinforce learning points. A key aspect of the KM strategy has become to collect, collate, and share participant stories across the relevant geographies, where a colleague can be named for their success at making a difference — not only for the what, but also the how — after attending the programme. The KM strategy reflects this as participants are asked to attend conference calls post programme and to share a story of their learning and implementation back at the office.
The stories from the conference calls are cascaded (with employee permission) back to the external providers who facilitate the programme. The external facilitators also elicit stories from participants over each three-day event, record the story and the source, and then use these stories at future events. For delegates experiencing later programmes, this makes the experience tailored when they hear the external facilitators referencing known employees and their real experiences with the material. One example of such a story was that of a woman who consistently used four key questions with her team in monthly one- to-one meetings. She had read a number of texts and had experimented with a variety of tools to develop her people to be proactive, show initiative, and involve her when appropriate. She shared these four questions on the programme and her experiences in asking them of her team; how they first reacted, how they reacted over the short term, and how they react today. As a result of her story and the reaction of the group on the programme, her story and the questions are now included as part of the learning event. A testament to the KM efforts is the fact that on recent programmes in Europe, delegates have brought this story to the workshop, having heard it from other colleagues or seen it practiced.
Demonstrating Return on Investment
Pre Event
At the launch of the first programme, all nominations were collected through e-mail. The team relied on e-mail to communicate the new programme and to connect with the target population. Lists of nominators, nominees, and delegate information were initially collated by a central team on a programme-by-programme basis on spreadsheets. Over time, as management information reporting was required, a more functional database was developed allowing easy access to all details of attendees from across Europe by country, business unit, programme attended, and nominator. The ease, speed, and flexibility of reporting available in this database has increased efficiency and accuracy in the information reported. For example, one leader in the business asked for a report of all the colleagues in his/her business unit who had attended the programme over a given time period. The leader used the list to ask all those colleagues who had attended to make a formal presentation in a full office meeting to share their knowledge. The learning management system has now been successfully implemented throughout the majority of Europe and options are currently being generated to maximise this facility in the nomination of participants, ensuring cross-business unit and cross-geography partici- pants on each programme.
A three to six month Business Challenge is a key part of the prework for participants. The Business Challenge was devised together with the external provider delivering the workshop and the global Learning Team. The Challenge is agreed upon with the local line manager and brought to the event to share, discuss, and create an action plan. The Challenge meets a number of the KM strategy criteria in that it aligns the individual and his/her manager to a business output of his/her learning and demonstrating a return on investment measurement (subject to the goal being specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed).
The Business Challenges are one example of thread being sewn between many of the delegates as discussion is generated when delegates realize many have the same or a very similar Challenge, albeit in a different business unit or geography. Connecting cross-function and cross-geographical border issues and people continues to be a focus for discussion around the return on investment for the event. The postprogramme conference calls have begun to identify business opportunities across divisions in the organization and direct revenue-generating projects as a result of the network estab- lished and promoted at the event. It is hoped that in time these trends and successes will be recorded by delegates on an Internet-based platform for any employee to see, learn from, and follow.
The networking and quick understanding of the knowledge and business represen- tation in the room is a fundamental quick win of the curriculum and the platform on which further learning will be maintained and shared. Feedback after the first few programmes in 2002 alluded to the struggle to get to know everyone and how they contributed over the three-day event. As a result, Europe implemented an additional prework assignment named Background Information. Each participant was asked to complete a brief electronic proforma prior to the event documenting his/her name, office location, business unit, three to six month Business Challenge, time of service with the company, greatest achievement while at Marsh, and what they do on a Sunday afternoon. These data are e-mailed to the Programme Manager to be collated into a simple spreadsheet and circulated to delegates at the beginning of Day 1 of the event to help people know and remember colleagues they meet and learn from. This document is also circulated after the workshop by e-mail, along with an e-mail distribution list to encourage the network to sustain and grow.
Post Event
Marsh Europe invested in a questionnaire distributed to a random selection of colleagues who had attended the programme. These questionnaires were sent out to delegates six to eight months post event through an online Web-based interview tool allowing the results to be recorded electronically and transferred into a database for future reference. The outcome of the questionnaires was verbatim comments leading to a number of conclusions about the event itself, the impact of efforts to sustain learning, and the needs for KM tools.
The feedback identifies that while colleagues felt that the programme gave them much material to enrich their personal effectiveness, few were able to make the connec- tion to how the learning had impacted the organisation. The Business Challenge template has been revised in the third year of delivery of the programme to include a specific question to the delegate of the hard-dollar value of the business challenge they hope to complete as a result of their learning. These documents are signed before each delegate leaves the event and sent to a central global team to collate. The next step proposed in this process, with a high-man-hour intervention, is to go back to each delegate three to six months after the programme to reconcile proposed dollar return with actual return to clearly demonstrate a tangible bottom-line impact. One particular Business Challenge has estimated a return equal to the financial value of delivering one Managing Essentials event for 30 employees.
It has been agreed to investigate the development of a leadership “portal” which would also enable colleagues across Europe to interact, share learning and lessons learned to a greater proportion of delegates with the tool targeting all those who have attended Managing Essentials, rather than those who attend each individual programme.
KM Across the Learning and Development Community
The global Learning and Development network has been investigating KM oppor- tunities to enhance and ensure consistency in the role of colleagues increasingly involved in managing this programme around the globe. Through the programme’s life of just more than two years, colleagues in different geographies have approached its implementation in slightly different ways, all sharing their experiences with the global Programme Manager based in New York. The global Learning network is now looking to use a specific database functionality through the cross-company e-mail system to communicate with each other, store documentation, and to share tasks.
The decision to use this particular database came after consideration of a number of internal options, including a Microsoft® Access database, use of an intranet, and use of technology known as E-Room. None of the above media allowed an economical, easy global access and storage of documents along with online interactive communication through electronic discussion boards. The Access database would be difficult to share and update across the globe on each regional internal network. Ensuring secure access to the intranet site to restrict access to only L&D colleagues would come with compara- tively high expense on a direct cost basis and the “one more log-on and password” toll to colleagues in using it. The E-Room facility offered the closest match as a type of online filing cabinet where information could be stored, e-mails could be sent and access levels could be dictated; unfortunately, this option was prohibitively expensive for the number of users anticipated over the foreseeable future.
While the chosen database is not the most visually stimulating platform, the challenges of the other options make it the most practical and economical solution.
CONCLUSIONS
The KM strategy for a core Leadership Development programme in Europe is to sustain learning for colleagues who attend, cascade learning to others, and demonstrate return on investment from the event. While the organization had a number of KM tools available in various geographies, these were mainly used to manage day-to-day business knowledge. Sharing of learning materials and experiences was a relatively new concept in the organization. The existing tools have been flexed to implement a structured programme of interventions to increase organizational capacity through this sharing of knowledge. There is now a set of tools and practices in place to reinforce and cascade the learning across Europe aligned to the organizational culture using a variety of mediums including, but not limited to, the PC. These tools and practices are being shared in the internal learning community across the globe. The foundations of the strategy are in place and are being executed. It is too early to confirm the long-term success of this solution, but feedback to date suggests the strategy is supporting sustainable KM and breaking down geographical and business silos to improve organizational capacity.
REFERENCES
Georgenson, D.L. (1982). The problem of transfer calls for partnership. Training and
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Kaplan, R., & Norton, D. (1992). The Balanced Scorecard—Measures that drive perfor- mance. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 71-79.
Newman, B. (1991). From the introduction to “An open discussion of knowledge management.” Retrieved from www.km-forum.org/what_is.htm
Nixon, N.M. (2000). Common knowledge: How companies thrive by sharing what they know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.