Executive Interviews: Interview with Colonel Steven Mains on Knowledge Management
July 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Colonel Steven Mains
Colonel Steven Mains serves as the Director of the Center for Army Lessons Learned, part of the US Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas.

younger workers. Business is too competitive to suffer a drop in capabilities with each retirement or reassignment. There has to be a common way to store and retrieve data across a company so that everyone can tap into the data stored at other locations. This allows someone to look for solutions others have developed, without having to disrupt the organization if it is too hard or too disruptive to others, people just wont do it and will have to conduct discovery learning. Organizations that can reduce that friction gain a competitive advantage.

• Whats the role of technology in making KM strategy successful?
  Technology is very important but is only one leg of the three legged stool the others being people and processes. It has to be intuitive and effective in storing, sharing and accessing data. Moreover, it does not necessarily have to be that advanced. It just has to be sufficient for the desired purpose. The more bells and whistles, the harder a system generally is to operate and the less likely to be used. Part of the KM strategy is matching the tools to the task.

• Some companies have Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and few KM experts advocate that companies would be better served by CKOs. In your opinion, what is the desirability of having CKOs on the board and what purpose do you envisage they would serve?
  I think a CKO is a great idea to do a couple of things: provide access to the CEO so as to get buy in from the corporate leadership for a KMstrategy that is integrated into all facets of the organization, to get access to the resources required to implement a KM strategy across a corporation and to send the message to the business units that KMis important to the boss subordinates do best those things that the boss thinks are important. Having a CKO runs a risk, however. If the KM strategy simply becomes a process to feed the CEO and the Board of Directors but has little impact on the rank and file workers, it is doomed. The ability to reduce internal corporate friction occurs at the lower levels as much or more than at the higher levels. It is simply a function of the geometric nature of most companies there are many workers at the lower levels and just a few higher level managers. Understandably, the decisions become more important as one goes higher, so it is not a perfect comparison, but the sum of the many small impacts on each lowlevel worker tends to outweigh the impacts at higher levels. The CKO needs to understand that his biggest contribution is on the shop floor even while he interfaces daily with top management.

• What kind of organizational structure and organizational culture do you propose for fostering knowledge collaboration and hence benefit from it?
  Imentioned earlier about going froma competitive environment to one of cooperation. Sharing lessons across business units requires managers and workers that are open to documenting their successes as well as their challenges. They all have to bewilling to learn from others. As an example, we had an organization that was convinced that they had nothing to learn from the rest of the Army. They also viewed our analyst as a "spy" placed in their organization to keep an eye on them. We ensured the organization that our analyst would pass no information back to CALL (and the rest of the network) without their permission. After several months of work, our analyst was able to assist them with several challenges they had and kept faith by only passing approved information back to the rest of the Army. In time, the flow of information opened. The organization saw the benefit and wanted more, not less, cooperation. They still have not reached the level of cooperation we see in others, but they have come a long way.

• Is it correct to assume that KMpractices are to be encouraged only/more in knowledge driven industries such as IT consulting, Telecom etc? Or should KMs reach be extended to other industries, as well? What have been your observations on this over the years?
  KM is important in any industry. Any process can be made better and good ideas come from any business unit. And every organization has the problem with losing knowledge when key members retire or leave and the key members are not always the ones at the top of the organizational chart. I talk about retaining knowledge fromthe lowest levels, but the people with their hands on the product as it goes through production (and that means knowledge products as well as physical) have the most direct impact on the customer, so we have to focus on themandmake them the best they can be.

• What are the challenges in implementing an effective KM program?
  Where should companies look for KM practices within their industry or outside their industry? The biggest challenge is recognizing that we all can learn from others and that by sharing we get better.We tell our children that to share is a virtue, but as we grow we say that knowledge is power and that sharing gives away power. In fact, sharing brings us power and makes all of us better than we otherwise would be.

1. Knowledge Management Case Studies
2. ICMR Case Collection
3. Case Study Volumes