Turo Dexter
@turodexter
January 9, 2014
Opinions expressed in this presentation are
those of the speaker and do not necessarily
represent official positions or policies of the
U.S. DOT or the Federal Transit Administration.
@turodexter
Knowledge Management
and its practice at the
Federal Transit
Administration
What you are learning as you
conduct your business is too
valuable not to manage.
@turodexter
Knowledge Management
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Knowledge is an asset.
• Complex
• Scarce
• Costly
• Strategic
What is the value of what you have learned and will learn?
Where is your knowledge?
What would be the cost if you lost it?
Are your people sharing knowledge with one another?
How long do you expect to keep your experts?
Are you prepared for when people leave?
@turodexter
Consider what your organization knows.
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Manage your knowledge.
• What do you know? What don’t you know?
• Knowledge...
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Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
@turodexter
• Since nobody knows everything, THAT’S OK.
• But are you wasting knowledge and the capacity to do
more?
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New knowledge
Creativity
Ideation
Innovation
Intuition
Serendipity
Spark it, facilitate it, socialize it, prototype it.
Visualize & articulate goals. Transcend constraints.
Combine the unlikely. Ask “Why not?”
Inspire an innovation culture. Make failure OK.
Acknowledge and reward.
Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
Creation and Discovery
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
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Consultants
Conferences
Outside training
Contractors working alongside you
Knowledgeable new hires
Creation and discovery
What happens when it’s over?
How much did you keep?
Debrief one another after learning events.
Include knowledge transfer in contracts.
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
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Buying and Renting
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
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Giving and Receiving
• Internal training and cross training
• Mentoring and job shadowing – up, down,
peer
• Communities of practice
• Cross-organization and internal
• Interviews, roundtables and town halls
• Social events
• Build trust and connection
• Personality inventories, skills banks
Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
• Tacit and explicit knowledge
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Inspire a knowledge sharing culture.
Acknowledge and reward.
Leveraging
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Organizing
• Application
• Relevance
• Context
• Related items
Creation and discovery
You need to be able to find it when you need it.
Organize for browsing – don’t rely on search.
Agree on terms and conventions.
Folders often defeat knowledge management.
Acknowledge and reward great contributions to
organization.
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
• Tagging
• Facets
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
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Remembering
Case studies
Keeping and sharing journals
How discoveries were made
How we did that thing
• Flew to the moon?
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What worked best (in context)
Persistent discussion boards
FAQs, SOPs and process guides or maps
Media, bookmarks and publication libraries
• Share!
Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
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Organizing
Remembering
Decide what to document. Allow time for it.
Some knowledge will stay in people’s heads.
Deriving
Leveraging
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Deriving
Be mindful of the context of knowledge:
Best practices for identical situations.
Good practices for similar situations.
Use lessons learned in planning the next action.
See Creation and discovery.
Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
• During- and after-action reviews
• Case study reviews
• Team debriefs
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
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The payoff ! You have or are building:
• A view of knowledge as an asset
• Ways of catalyzing and gathering new ideas
• Supportive culture, relationships and trust
• Knowledge sharing among and across teams and
organizations
• Processes that keep knowledge from being lost
• Experts with tacit and undocumented knowledge
identified and mentoring others
• Critical explicit knowledge and experience
documented
• Knowledge organized so you can find it and know
when to use it
• Lessons always being learned and applied
Creation and discovery
Buying and renting
Giving and receiving
@turodexter
Leveraging
Organizing
Remembering
Deriving
Leveraging
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Knowledge
Management at
the FTA
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Nine operating administrations
supporting different modes of
transportation
Can you name them?
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U.S. DOT
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Federal Aviation Administration – FAA (47,500)
Federal Highway Administration – FHWA (2,850)
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration – FMCSA (1,100)
Federal Railroad Administration – FRA (860)
Maritime Administration – MARAD (700)
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – NHTSA (580)
Federal Transit Administration – FTA (520)
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – PHMSA
(450)
Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation - SLSDC (125)
Office of the Secretary (650), Research & Innovative Technology Admin.
(620), Inspector General (420), Surface Transportation Board (130)
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U.S. DOT
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FTA’s Mission
Improving mass transportation systems
for cities and communities nationwide
Buses
Rail vehicles
Commuter ferryboats
Trolleys
Inclined railways
Subways
People movers
Financial, technical and planning assistance
Traffic reduction
Economic development
Access to employment
*NEW*
Establish and enforce a comprehensive framework to
oversee the safety of public transportation throughout the
United States (heavy rail, light rail, buses, and streetcars)
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Grant programs to plan, build, and operate transit systems
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Budget
• FTA’s administrative budget is about 1% of that.
• Hurricane Sandy relief doubled FTA’s grant
outlays with only minimal additional staff
• Federal funding covers a small portion of local
transit costs (e.g., D.C.’s WMATA gets $150
million from FTA for a 2013 operating budget of
$1.6 billion)
@turodexter
• Approximately $9 billion per year in financial
assistance to public transit agencies across the
country – $17.3 million per FTA employee
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Almost half of FTA’s 520
employees work out of
one of 10 regional offices
where they perform
direct oversight of transit
construction and
operations around the
country.
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Dispersed Workforce
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FTA’s CKO
is a peer
with the
Director
of IT and
Director
of HR
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Gained
L&D
Team
2012
CKO
Hired
2007
First
staffer
2010
L&D
+ KM
------LKM
Contract
support
2012
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Evolution of the Learning and
Knowledge Management Group
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1. FTA Encourages a Culture of Knowledge and
Experience Sharing
2. FTA Employs Efficient and Effective Business
Processes
3. FTA Leverages its Knowledge and Experience for
Decision Making and Strategic Planning
LKM Group activities are tied to the organizational
excellence objectives of the DOT Strategic Plan.
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KM Goals
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The mission of the FTA Learning and Knowledge
Management (LKM) Group is to enhance individual,
team and organizational effectiveness by providing
tools, procedures and activities that:
• Connect FTA’s people with what and whom they
need to know
• Facilitate learning and collaboration across the
Agency
• Promote professional and personal development
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Mission Statement
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• Enthusiastic marketing of LKM services
• Achieve employee learning and development goals
• Assistance through KM to make FTA’s work easier and
more effective
• Try to never say no to a request
• Reputation of responsive service and a place to go for
solutions
• Relationships
• Strong executive support
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Succeed – if you Just Say Yes !
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Synergy with Learning & Dev’t
It seems easier for people to understand what
knowledge management is when it is discussed
alongside learning and development activities.
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• Knowledge Management
• Learning & Development
• Developing an integrated LKM Strategic Plan
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• Leadership
• Strategy
• Management
• Good political sense
• Logistics and
implementation
• Design
• Information
management and IT
• Communications
• Org. development
• Entrepreneurism
• Can-do attitude
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LKM Group Skills
• Customer focus
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L&D Activities
• Learning needs assessments
• Curriculum development and maintenance
• Procurement and travel for training: Coordinating and advising
• Learning management system: Managing and improving
• Mandatory training: Improving quality and management
• FTA’s job rotation program: Coordinating
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• Centralized course procurement and delivery
• Multifaceted mentoring program: Developing and coordinating
• Knowledge cafés for group learning
• Onboarding processes: Increasing involvement
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KM Activities
• Communities of Practice: Forming, facilitating and supporting
• After-Action Reviews
• SharePoint-based TransPort portal development and work with
offices to employ it strategically
• Intranet content management (future)
• Legacy Capture sessions with video recording of private interviews,
roundtables with peers, or town hall meetings with coworkers
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• Business process improvement activities
• DOT-wide IdeaHub program: FTA’s liaison
• Web conferencing: Supporting and evangelizing FTA’s use
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Division of Responsibility : IT
• Process analysis
• Consultative approach
• Communications and change management
• Office of IT’s strengths
• Depth of technical expertise
• Responsive orientation
• Capacity
• Ongoing effort to develop smooth, effective
collaboration
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• Knowledge vs. Information/Content Management
• LKM Group’s strengths
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• 2009 audit focused on identifying capabilities,
capacities and perceived problems rather than
stores of knowledge itself
• Business process and office function work will
help to identify some structures of knowledge
• Legacy capture activities, speaker programs in
knowledge cafés, and mentoring programs also
shine light on key human stores of knowledge
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Identifying Knowledge
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• Evangelism and word of mouth
• FTA’s intranet functions will be rolled into
TransPort over the coming six months
• We will highlight the functions that illuminate
and expose business processes, connect people
to one another, and disseminate documented
knowledge so people discover them when using
the Intranet
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Encouraging Adoption
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• Satisfaction of office leadership with improvements in
access to the information and expertise needed to make
decisions
• Easier communication
• Smooth successions
• Understanding and continuing improvement of FTA
business processes
• Faster employee development
• Employee job satisfaction
• Gauged by surveys and direct feedback
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Measures of Success
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• Much LKM Group effort into the design of new
supervisor training
• Training on KM, motivation, innovation and
engagement will advance FTA’s culture
• The ability to design training is yet another
significant benefit of FTA’s having integrated its
learning and development with KM functions
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Supervisor Training
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• FTA Administrator’s Awards & DOT Secretary’s
Awards
• Informal peer-to-peer recognition motivates
employees to collaborate and contribute
• Strong employee contributions to the IdeaHub
program are self-evident through peer ranking
• Contributions to IdeaHub that are accepted for
implementation are brought to the attention of
executives
• Cash for awards is limited or nonexistent
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Awards and Recognition
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Communities
• Special interest groups for users of specific technologies, or people
performing the same function in different offices
• Participants in a class together, like new supervisors
• Any level from analysts to Associate Administrators
• Heavy workloads impact participation
• Distributed workforce creates additional needs for peer interactions
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• LKM Group initiates and facilitates some communities itself; for
others it offers KM support and a site on TransPort
• Communities can be lifelines for information and mentoring along
with friendship and even emotional support during difficult periods
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• Principal content repositories are shared network drives
• Individual offices manage their own file organization, and the
quality of organization varies
• TransPort is built on SharePoint, with document management
functions that are beginning to be adopted
• Offices are being given the option of whether and how to
implement metadata
• For many, starting with simple folder structures in a fashion
similar to what they were used to with shared drives has
eased adoption
• We risk disorganization like on the shared drives if folders are
allowed to proliferate in an unmanaged fashion.
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Content Management
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TransPort
• Content managers
• Security managers
• Approvers
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Consistent web-like interface
Sections for private and shared content
Office input into SharePoint features enabled for their use
Offices receive demonstrations and basic training from the
LKM Group on content and document management
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• Branded implementation of SharePoint 2010
• Some standardized governance and structure
• Offices designate a single POC for TransPort implementation,
plus:
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Expertise Location
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Professional bio
Short self-reported list of special skills
Projects for which people are POCs
Photo
• TransPort’s search engine will include profile
entries in search results where keywords match
those used in profiles
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• TransPort includes a personal profile page for
each user
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• Limited time of both LKM staff and the staff of
offices who may wish to adopt TransPort or to
better organize their files on shared drives
• Difficulty enforcing governance
• Familiarity and learning curve for a new platform
• Bandwidth limitations between HQ and regional
offices
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Content Managemt Challenges
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• LKM Group facilitates After-Action Reviews for
FTA offices
• They may rely on LKM or learn to facilitate their
own
• Offices manage the results of their reviews
themselves
• LKM has successfully conducted AARs with
remote participants using interactive web
conference technology, with a virtual flipchart to
record participant input
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After Action Reviews
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• Some FTA offices have mature process
documentation
• FTA’s internal Grants A to Z database contains
extensive information on grant application,
review and oversight processes
• The Office of IT continuously refines a set of
Standard Operating Procedures documents on
using technology tools
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Process Documentation
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• New LKM priority to help offices document, add
visibility to, and improve their processes
• TransPort’s standard office home page layouts
will be modified to include lists of office
functions with links to more information about
each function
• This will improve access but also cast valuable
light on the processes themselves and facilitate
thinking about how they can be improved
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Process Improvement
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• FTA is not yet mature in broad adoption of KM
• Culture varies quite a bit from office to office
• KM adoption seems proportional to employee
engagement and inversely proportional to
workload
• Direct leadership advocacy for KM, where it is
forthcoming, has a positive effect
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Maturity
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• Heavy day-to-day workloads are the principal
barriers to greater knowledge sharing at FTA.
• Initiatives to improve performance on grant
review, project oversight and establishing the
safety office take precedence over planning for
knowledge transfer.
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Challenges
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• L&D integration is paying big dividends
• Relationships and service are key
• People and process focus
• Employee workloads are challenging
• Small, busy and growing
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KM at the FTA
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