Keeping the Flame Alive 319Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtenproject might be immediately useful elsewhere, and certainly would provide value to
someone else in the firm. When the firm was smaller, staff with questions could discuss
them with others in the same office; now, expertise was more scattered and less available.
Individuals did not know each other as well as they did in the past, and there has been
a sense of reluctance to contact individuals outside the immediate workgroup.
Long-time employees are concerned about the effects of rapid growth on the
organization’s culture of information sharing. One termed the effect “intellectual sprawl,”
where consultants in different business units were re-creating the same work products
and techniques independently. In their view, there was not enough sharing of the lessons
of technology and engagement management, at a time when the proportion of inexperi-
enced staff grew. While the knowledge management program attempts to facilitate
sharing, there was still a sense that the best ideas were not always available, and that
human contacts were superior to the use of an information system.
Developing SMSI’s KM Program
The development of a formal KM program at SMSI was facilitated by the firm’s
history in information systems consulting. From a practical standpoint, the firm was well
positioned to implement the complex technological infrastructure associated with KM.
The firm’s leadership committed to solve the technical success and the cultural and social
challenges that KM presents. This recognition allowed SMSI to avoid some of the
stumbling blocks that less sophisticated firms faced.
Experimentation with KM technologies started in 1992, with the introduction of
Lotus Notes as a groupware tool. By 1998, almost 100 Notes servers were in place, and
all office-based personnel had desktop access to the tool; most field personnel had
shared access through one or more Internet-enabled computers. When the tool was
adopted as a firm-wide standard, a number of special interest groups (SIGs) were
established, and used Lotus Notes as a tool to facilitate discussions across offices on
topics of mutual interest as well as an e-mail backbone. Most were informal discussions
on emerging technologies; these discussions rarely lasted more than a few months as
individual knowledge needs changed. Often they became places to ask direct questions
from individuals across the firm, with additional follow-up through telephone calls.
Occasionally some synthesized databases stimulated working papers or, eventually,
encapsulations of SMSI’s best practices.
To stimulate further development and sharing of information, SMSI established a
Knowledge Colleagues program. Staff working in business units proposed short-term
technology experiments or projects, resulting in the development of a paper or prototype
to share throughout the firm. Individuals were released from their project work for two
weeks to work on their tasks, with the expectation that they would also contribute
additional time to complete their work. A series of activities dealing with knowledge
sharing was established in late 1996, facilitating transfer of information across several
core disciplines around the firm. The initial series included systems development,
business process reengineering, customer value management, engagement manage-
ment, change management, advanced technologies, and decision analytics. Knowledge
management and electronic commerce were added in 1998, along with the firm-wide
rollout of the technology platform.