28 People first – the secret to Knowledge Management
PEOPLE FIRST – THE SECRET TO KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
In undertaking a rapid redesign of HQ ARRC’ s operational website and working areas, the Central Staffs identified important lessons in balancing the relationship between people, process and technology.
Lieutenant Colonel Roger McNair, British Army
Introduction
Throughout 2013 and 2014 HQ ARRC invested considerable manpower resources constructing two independent information management( IM) systems on the SharePoint 10 platform, one for use on operations and one to support a peacetime battle rhythm at our permanent headquarters( PHQ) in Innsworth, UK. Both systems are capable of operating on NATO Secret( NS) or the Mission Secret( MS) networks 1. Although the operational IM system had been recognised as best practice during the ARRC’ s Joint Evaluation on TRIDENT JAG- UAR 15 in May 2015, the front end user interfaces( homepage, websites and working areas) were the subject to a storm of adverse lessons from the ARRC’ s staff 2. Simply, whilst the system was technically competent the staff found it difficult to use and it had not gained widespread acceptance. The challenge facing the ARRC’ s Central Staff was to understand the staffs’ concerns and redesign the operational websites and working areas in time for the ARRC’ s deployment to Latvia in November 2015.
An investigation by the ARRC Central Staffs( the lead branch for IM) identified the following issues:
• The system’ s collaborative working areas and webpages did not reflect the way the staff actually worked through ARRC’ s core battle rhythm process of Assess, Plan, Refine and Execute.
HQ ARRC officers conduct combined, Joint and Collaborative Planning
• Collectively the above issues fostered mistrust in the ability of the IM system to enable the core process. Personal ownership of information( as opposed to shared ownership) gradually became the‘ default’ position leading to an obvious movement of critical information and knowledge from open-shared areas deep into branch‘ vaults’.
Unwittingly, an overly technical( IT led) solution used in building the original IM system had led to the introduction of an IM architecture which required the staff to adapt their ways of working to the IM systems’ design. Whilst the experienced staff adapted to the system architecture to some extent, new members of the ARRC team arriving in summer 2015 found the websites and working areas did not reflect well their new responsibilities. The complexity of the ARRC’ s battle rhythm and core process makes it reliant on a robust deployable IM system to share information and enable collaborative working. Of immediate concern was the risk of a dysfunctional operational IM system jeopardising the HQ ARRC’ s ability to experiment with distributed command between the Baltic States and UK during ARRCADE FUSION 15( AF15) in November 2015.
Knowledge Management – Rebalancing the relationship between People, Process and Technology
Responding to the staffs’ comments and concerns the ARRC’ s Central Staffs redefined the relationship between people, process and technology, and introduced the concept of Knowledge Management( KM). The ARRC defines KM as a command and leadership process, which treats knowledge as a critical resource and fosters a culture and practice of capturing, filtering and sharing knowledge, in order to improve performance, to gain or maintain the operational advantage.‘ Knowledge’ includes both information stored on the IM system and an understanding of how this information is used to inform decisions and create outputs. Thus KM is about ena-
• High staff turnover in the summer 3, immediately preceding intense activity in the autumn leading up to the‘ exercise season’, hampered training on unfamiliar systems and resulted in a severe degradation of corporate knowledge on‘ how to do’ the core process. Where staff found their predecessor’ s records they did not understand the context in which the information had been created or used to inform decisions and produce outputs.
• An inability to find saved records( due to system’ s design, training, staff turnover and user error) caused mistrust in the system, leading staff to develop work from scratch.
Figure 1 – How HQ ARRC rebalanced the relationship between people, process and technology when redesigning its operational website and establishing the relationship between IM and KM.
1 Described in the ARRC Journal dated June 2015.
2 The JOINTEVAL Team identified the IM processes employed proved the capabilities to secure, transfer, process, store and optimize the flow of high-quality products. Unfortunately, the IM system proved not to be intuitive and whilst the experienced staff adapted to the rigid system architecture, new members of the ARRC team arriving immediately before and after JOINTEVAL found the websites and working areas did not reflect well their new responsibilities.
3 HQ ARRC’ s staff rotate on average every 24 months, with a peak staff turnover of up to 30 % annually in August.