Don't just focus on the tool - failure of Best Practice Replication at Engico

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Yesterday I blogged about the success of Best Practice Replication (BPR) at Ford.

BPR was such a simple idea, and Ford licences the software to other companies, so why should it not work everywhere?

And yet it didn't work everywhere.

Here, to balance the success story, is an interesting case study of how BPR completely failed at Engico, and how that failure persevered for 4 years. For me the most interesting sentence in the whole article is this one

"Under certain circumstances, failure can reinforce belief; one merely needs a good reason to explain the failure".

Here's what happened.

• In 1999, Engico read about BPR and said "we want that." BPR was seen as addressing varius problems related to silo working and resolution of common problems

• They attempted to licence the Ford BPR system. 

• Negotiations failed and they decided to build their own system

• The new system was launched, on a new platform rather than the existing Lotus Note platform, and supported by plans for communities of practice.

• For the innovators, the launch was almost ideological. "For them the “idea of BPT as such” was so powerful, so positive and so strong, that they fully believed “soon, everybody will be using the BPT process because it is so clearly the right thing to do”. Now, all that needed to be done was to launch the process".

• The engineers in the factories were not interested in voluntarily submitting best practices. "Their focus  lies firmly with their own organization…their own work with improvement. And they have their network, and they have their meetings via telephone…and they meet once or twice a year in this network. And they are probably satisfied"

• A German factory submitted several best practices, and then waited to see if others joined in. When they didn't, the German factory refused to submit any more. "Why should I waste my time on distributing my stuff, if I don’t get anything in return? Show me first of all that the others are submitting something."

• The users blamed several things - they lack of involvement in the design process, the difficulty of assigning value to practice improvements, and problems with the IT (which was unfamiliar, hard to use, and ran into connectivity and network problems).

• So the innovators decided to fix the technology, and in 2001 removed the IT tool for rework. At the same time the underlying IT platform was being revised.

• By 2002 there was a new version, but this had become more complex, and still did not work.

• Work continued. Deadlines slipped.

• "After struggling for nearly three years to get the BPT process underway by attempting to convince the process development managers out in the divisions to establish new communities, by obtaining a commitment from managers who had already established communities, by solving the technical difficulties, and by persuading the members of the existing communities to describe and submit their best practices through the system, to no avail, the innovators acknowledged towards the end of 2003 that the BPT project was a failure".

I think we can see several reasons for failure here. 

• The BPR approach did not help the workers by providing them with solutions, but added more burden. 
• The tool was rolled out as "the right thing to do" rather than a work aid. 
• The tool was seen as the solution
• The tool was too new - new platform, new technology, new processes. 
• When the tool was not met with the correct behaviours, the solution was "change the tool" rather than change the behaviours (probably because changing the tool was seen as the easier thing to do, and because of the ideological belief described above).
• Engico persevered with the tool for 4 years before giving up. The author describes this as "A Surviving Failure" (ie a failure that continues to survive) and sees the cause for this as the innovators' strong belief in "the technologies inherent goodness". He says

"The innovators were disappointed, but they did not give up. As is often the case in KM projects and innovation projects in general, they put the blame on the intended users and others who did not understand the tremendous benefits of using the new technology and/or technical problems. And when the technology resisted, when they encountered technical problems with the IT infrastructure – especially with the CoolSnake Intranet platform – the innovators argued that once the problems were solved, the BPT process would work, because the “idea of BPT as such was good” and in any case “had nothing to do with the IT system”. The BPT innovators were certain that once their machine worked, everybody would be convinced of its goodness. But, the machine did not work and therefore could not “convince anyone because of its good working order".

KM case study - the Ford BPR system (Quantified success story #73)

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The Best Practice replication system was an early Knowledge Management approach, applied by Ford in the 90s, to share improvements around the 37 manufacturing and assembly plants in the Vehicle Operations division.

The interesting thing about this system is that it is rigorous, defined, quantified, all the things that we often think Knowledge Management should NOT be, but for a long time it worked extremely well at Ford.

• The system is based around communities of practice for production engineers 

• Within this CoP are “Focal Points" responsible for best practice in specific areas

• At each plant, innovations and improvements are identified and tagged as "Best Practices"

• These have to be "proven practices" - ie they have to be shown to work, and to significantly improve things.

• There is a validation step, to demonstrate that these practices really are good, and really are worth replicating

• These validated practices are entered into an Intranet-based system. this is done through an  Intranet report page, which records things like where idea came from, how much time, money or manpower it saved, who to contact for details, images and video  

• The system "pushes" the practice to the other focal points in the CoP

• Between 5 or 8 practices per week come through the system

• Each focal point who receives a practice needs to fill in a form saying what has been done with this knowledge in their local plant - adopted it (and if so, what value did it add), rejected it (and if so, why), improved it, put it on hold for further investigation.

• Statistics of adoptions and value were captured and reported regularly

• Plant management meetings were held on a regular basis to review levels of adoption

• Engineers within the community would meet quarterly face to face, to build trust and relationships

• Engineers have reciprocal site visits, to visit each others plants and to understand each others contexts.

• All of this was within a context of a strong pressure on operating costs, which drove the management of each plant to be very receptive to any ideas that would cut cost.

Ford claim that the Best Practice replication system delivered $1billion in hard documented value from 1995 to 2002, for an annual investment of $500,000 (that's an ROI of nearly 300-fold).

The Best Practice Replication system itself has been licensed to many organisations, including Shell, Nabisco, Kraft, and the US Navy

Lessons Learned Database v Lessons Management System

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In this blog post I want to contrast two software systems, the Lessons Database, and the Lessons Management System, and showcase the Lessons Management Hub; an excellent example of the latter.

There are two types of Lessons Learned approaches, which I call "Lessons for Information" and "Lessons for Action".

These represent maturity levels 1 and 2 from my three level categorisation, and can be described as follows.

"Lessons for Information" is where lessons re captured and put in reports, or in a database, in that hope that people will look for them, read them, and assimilate them. "Lessons for Action" is where lessons are used to drive change and improvement to processes, procedures, etc.

"Lessons for Information" is supported by a Lessons Database, "Lessons for Action" by a Lessons Management System. Let's contrast the two.

• In a Lessons Database, the database is the final home of the lessons. In a Lessons Management System, the final home of lessons is considered to be the complied knowledge of the organisation, which may be procedures, doctrine, guidance, best practices, wikis, etc.

• In a Lessons Database, lessons reach their reader through search. In a Lessons Management System, lessons are pro-actively routed to those who need to see them and to take action.

• In a Lessons Database, lessons accumulate over time (this was the problem with my first Lessons system in the 90s - it got clogged up over time with thousands of lessons, until people stopped looking). In a Lessons Management System, lessons are archived once they have been embedded into process and procedure, and the only content is the lessons currently under review.

• In a Lessons Database, there may be duplicate lessons, out of date lessons, or contradictory lessons. Through the use of a Lessons Management System, these have all been resolved during the incorporation into guidance.

•  In a Lessons Database, there are limited options for metricating the process. You can measure how many lessons are in the system, but that's about it (unless you capture data on re-use). Through the use of a Lessons Management System, you can track lessons through to action, and can measure whether they are being embedded into process.

See more detail of a Lessons Management System here

Nelson Mandela on the value of Knowledge and Experience

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After this morning's sad news, I though it appropriate to repeat my blog post from July of this year which illustrates the value that Nelson Mandela, that great statesman, unifier and visionary, placed on Knowledge and Experience.

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The text below is taken from the excellent book “playing the enemy”, by John Carlin – a book about the transition in power in South Africa from the old apartheid movement to Nelson Mandela’s new government, and the unlikely but huge role that the 1994 rugby World Cup played in this process and in the reunification of national spirit.

There is a little section in this book that made me light up as I read it, because it shows the importance Nelson Mandela places on knowledge and experience.

The scene is just after Mandela’s appointment as president, and John Reinders, chief of presidential protocol under De Klerk, and the former head of the prison service, is in his office packing up his desk.

 “I came in early that morning to collect my things”, Reinders recalled. “All us whites had applied for jobs elsewhere, sure that they would be asked to leave. Quite a few of us meant to go and work for De Klerk in the deputy presidency”.  

Reinders was packing away his mementoes of 17 years spent running the presidential office, organising ceremonial dos, bumping into famous people on official trips, when suddenly he was startled out of his reminiscences by a knock at the door. It was another early riser. Mandela. 

“Good morning, how are you?” he said, stepping into Reinders’s office with outstretched hand. “Very well, Mr. President, thank you. And you?” “Well, well but ….” Mandela said, puzzled, “what are you doing?” “I am collecting my things and getting ready to go, Mr. President”. “Oh, I see. And may I ask where you are going?” “Back to correctional services, Mr. President, where I used to serve.” 

“Mmmm,” said Mandela, pursing his lips. “I was there 27 years, you know. It was very bad.” He grinned as he repeated, “very bad!” 

Reinders, flummoxed, offered him a half-smile back. “Now,” Mandela continued, “I would like you to consider staying here with us.”  Reinders examined Mandela’s eyes with astonishment. 

“Yes. I am quite serious. You know this job. I don’t. I am from the bush. I am ignorant. Now, if you stay with me, it would be just one term, that is all. Five years. And then, of course, you would be free to leave. No, please understand: this is not an order. I would like to have you here only if you wish to stay and share your knowledge and your experience with me.” 

Mandela smiled. Reinders smiled, wholeheartedly now. “So,” Mandela continued, “what do you say? Will you stay with me?” Amazed as he was, Reinders did not hesitate. “Yes, Mr. President. I will. Yes. Thank you.” 

At which point his new boss gave him his first task: to gather together all the presidential staff, including the cleaners and gardeners, in the cabinet room for a meeting. The new president walked among them, shaking hands with each of the hundred or so people assembled, saying a few words to each, in Afrikaans where appropriate. Then he addressed them all. “Hello, I am Nelson Mandela. If any of you prefer to take the severance package, you are free to leave. There is no problem. But I beg you, stay! Five years, that is all. You have the knowledge. We need that knowledge, we need that experience of yours.” 

Every single member of the presidential staff stayed.

Choosing which decisions to support through KM

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The purpose of Knowledge Management is decision support.


Peter Senge tells us that Knowledge is the ability to make effective decisions, and if we want to improve the effectiveness of decision making in our organisations, then we look to KM to help us.

But which decisions?

Which are the decisions which it is most cost-effective for KM to support?

Firstly, there is no point in supporting the tiny daily decisions, which have an impact in the $100 dollar range. There are too many of these to be able to handle them easily, and the amount of KM investment is likely to be very high.

Secondly, there is no point in trying to support the very rare decisions that happen once a decade or so (decisions about major acquisitions or divestment, or decisions about complete reversals of strategy).  You could do a lot of good KM work on these decisions, but it would be ten years before that knowledge was re-used.

The ideal place to focus is in the middle - the decisions that are worth millions, and are made on an annual basis. Here the value of KM will be high, and the re-use of the knowledge will be relatively frequent, and a year is about long enough for people to have forgotten the details of the last decision, and to start to reinvent the wheel unless KM helps them.

KM, benchmarking and targets

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Most commercial organisations track internal KPIs, and publish internal benchmarks.  They publish league tables of the different departments, and differentiate the high performers, and the poor performers.

But Why? What's the point?

The answer is that benchmarking can identify the poor performers, can identify what each area of the business needs to focus on, and can give them a measure of how much they could (and need to) improve.

But they won't make the improvement, if they don't know how.

Benchmarking on its own is just a labelling exercise. It tells the departments where they need to improve, but it doesn't help them learn how to improve.

This brings us to the second purpose of benchmark, which is to map out the knowledge transfer that needs to happen within the organisation.

Benchmarking may show where performance of a team or unit is weak, but it also shows which other teams or units are stronger performers, and so can be sources of knowledge. The strong performers can help the weaker performers, and benchmarking identifies which are which.

Managers can also use benchmarking to set targets and drive the learning – “the factory in Poland uses 20% less energy than you do – I want you learn from them, and close the gap halfway by year end”. “Slough uses 80% of the packaging that you do – learn from them, and close the gap halfway by year end”.

In all of this, Knowledge Management is the enabler.

Target setting creates the focus of knowledge sharing, while measurement and benchmarking define where that knowledge should come from. Knowledge Management closes the gap, enabling the production units to learn from Slovenia, from Slough, from Syracuse. The mechanism of learning may be by site learning visits, by Peer Assist, by creating Knowledge Assets or training courses, or through the operation of Communities of Practice.

Communication strategy as part of the KM change program

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KM is a change program, and Communication is one of your most  levers in delivering change. Every KM implementation needs a communication strategy.

Here is some guidance on a KM communication strategy, illustrated by quotes from Knowledge Management teams we have worked with, most of which were collected at post-implementation Lessons Capture reviews. (For a free communication plan template, visit our download page).

Set up a Communication strategy and plan as part of the culture change aspect of your KM program.

"We should have implemented a communication strategy, to define all the different ways of communicating, what the medium would be, what the target audience would be, what the message would have to be". 

"We should have allocated always in our plan, an element of communication process. Even when push came to shove, we should have fought for that just like we fought for some of the other things that were close to our hearts and our commitment".

Start the communication strategy from day 1 - the same time as the KM strategy itself

"Maybe what we could have done with the benefit of hindsight is have that communication strategy right from the start instead of inventing it three quarters of the way through".

Make a member of the team accountable for the KM communication strategy

“Make it someone's accountability. To form a strategy and to keep revisiting that strategy. Don't let it fall below the water line”.

Communicate, even when the details are not clear 

"The message that we have been giving has been an honest one. We have told people but we are aiming to do something, although we haven't told them what it's going to look like to after the summer, because we don't honestly know ourselves. If we had gone and said "we are going to do this, this and this" then they might have asked a lot more questions".

"Compared to some that we have seen, our communication is very much better. (Program X) for example are putting a lot of effort in, but they are not telling anybody anything. We took the opposite tack, and decided to tell people that something was coming. When they ask questions, we say "we do not yet know the details"".

Build an internal mailing list

"We developed a bulletin for people who self-select to stay in touch with things. There are 1000 or 1200 people in the organization who have an interest in what we are doing. Every month we send an e-mail to all the new joiners, and say "Do you know that people are sharing their trade secrets on the intranet all across the company? would you like to be kept in touch with this?" And every time we have a workshop with a group of people, we add them on, and every time we do some consultancy or just meet people we ask them if they would like to subscribe. We send it out once a month by e-mail. It is quite colorful, it is not just plain text, we put colored text in it, we have four bulleted items, and there's a link to one thing on the Live and Learn site and then two other things on the intranet which have been published, and we advertise our workshops".

Make sure you budget for communications in your manpower planning

"We could easily have doubled or trembled the level of communications that we were doing, if we had had the manpower".

Communicate your KM successes to the outside world, so that the messages can trickle back in.

"As a company, we tend to learn more from people outside the company than from inside so we were deliberately trying to create a reputation that would come back into our company"

 “My recommendation to anybody in any organisation, is to identify who the key players are in other organisations in your sector or area, and talk to them as well, so that you are planting various seeds not only in your own organisation, but across the sector. After a while, because all these key players talk to each other, you find that you have started to connect them up and they are talking to each other”.