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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