Building Blocks In The Firm s Knowledge Management Approach

Building Blocks In The Firm’s Knowledge Management Approach

Defining Its Values

In 1998, KPMG defined its three global values: Clients, People and Knowledge. As a means of accelerating the adoption of the global values, the UK firm developed its Values Charter to explain what the values meant in terms of people’s behaviour. The Charter included the following:

• We will respect all of our people and the contribution they make to the firm.

• We will listen to and aim to understand alternative perspectives.

• We will openly and proactively share knowledge.

• We will respect our own and our people’s need to balance personal and business lives.

• We will support our leaders, encourage our peers and develop our people.

In terms of the implementation of these values within the UK one of the ways in which the firm has proceeded is by using these as a base for development, the partner admission process and for assessment (and hence reward). Since the introduction of the Values Charter the firm within the UK has been working on a number of changes to help bring these values alive, to ensure that they inform and become embedded in day-to-day practice.

The firm has continued to revise its practices to reflect its values, particularly those relating to knowledge creation and sharing. Knowledge is seen as a highly valuable asset within the firm and all staff are expected to apply and share their knowledge. It is for this reason that there has been a strong emphasis on developing a coaching culture. One of the firm’s aspirations is to facilitate individuals’ learning, and hence build their knowledge assets, through encouraging more movement around the firm. Thus a link is being made between career development and knowledge management.

Some of the initiatives introduced to help equip individuals with the skills and tools needed for knowledge sharing, as well as to manage their own learning and development, are set out below.

Culture Change

To succeed in business today the firm recognises that it needs to offer a more responsive and flexible service to clients, but at the same time provide a fulfilling environment for its people, and pay attention to its longer-term future and overall sustainability.

Early in 2001, the UK firm launched ‘darwin’, its most significant culture change programme. The name for this culture change programme was chosen carefully to encapsulate the themes of evolution, growth and sustainability. The ideas arising from ‘darwin’ have their origins in complexity theory and the principle of self-organising systems. The firm has focused on five strategic levers for change:

• Thought capital – the ability for ideas to surface and for intellectual capital to circulate freely around the firm. This is a key element in the firm’s knowledge management approach.

• Mindset – having an ability to deal with complexity, being comfortable with ambiguity and having the courage to act despite uncertainty.

• Diversity – to provide a richer tapestry of varied approaches and perspectives to business problems.

• Coaching culture – a quality of helpfulness demonstrated in the way people relate to one another and the way the firm’s systems and processes work.

• Joined up accountability – having the right emphasis on controls while providing the freedom for people to experiment and develop, in consultation with others.

The way in which ‘darwin’ was designed, planned and launched represents a new approach for the firm. The project has been managed by a ‘nerve centre’ consisting of a changing core group, drawn from different parts of the firm, thus very much taking a multi-disciplinary team approach. But it is the way in which the firm chose to communicate this culture change programme to its people that marks a significant cultural shift. Instead of using traditional communications approaches e.g. powerpoint presentations, or memos, to launch the culture change programme, a more creative and open communications approach was adopted.

Over a four-day period everyone in the firm had an opportunity to observe video streamed clips of pre-filmed discussions at their desktops. These discussions were very similar in style to those in the television programme ‘Big Brother’ and involved colleagues discussing a topic linked to each of the five strategic change levers. Staff who participated in these discussions were encouraged to be as open as possible. The series of videos were named Galapagos. They gave everyone in the firm the opportunity to observe colleagues dealing with significant cultural change issues in real time.

One of these topics was about how individuals manage their career within the firm, including the difficulties they encounter. Those participating in the discussion exchanged their own career stories, as well as those of colleagues. The stories included: the difficulties encountered when trying to make lateral career moves within the firm; the difficulties encountered by those who want to work more flexibly, such as home-working, or working part-time; the tensions experienced by support workers, such as secretaries, who want to broaden their career opportunities, as well as the experience of colleagues who have left to go and work for other consultancies. Each of these discussions surfaced valuable insights into some of the existing restraining factors experienced by individuals when managing their own careers, thus providing insights into where change is required.

Supporting Career Development

Individuals within the firm have always been encouraged and supported with managing their own careers. An additional resource, introduced in the late 1990s, to help individuals manage their own career was the career broker service (see Holbeche, 1999).

One of the key strands emerging from ‘darwin’ relates to people and career development. A key theme of the people and career development work is that of helping individuals manage their careers within a broader eco-system. Here the firm is aspiring to help its people learn and grow through developing a career that involves moving around its eco-system. In this way individuals will be supported to develop a successful career within a knowledge business.

In essence the firm is adopting a much more grown-up stance on career development, even to the point of acknowledging that it may be appropriate for some individuals to look outside the firm for a career move, at some point in their career. Equally it may be appropriate for an individual, who has made a career move outside, to return to the firm at a future point in time too. In career terms a stronger emphasis is being placed on valuing diversity, adopting modern ways of working, facilitating relationship building, as well as the development of skills through building a coaching culture.

The firm recognises the learning opportunities that can occur through involvement in community programmes and actively encourages its people to participate in its community involvement programmes, which have five themes: mentoring, leadership, enterprise, employability and team building. The ‘ Community Bank’ programme enables employees to allocate half a day a month to various community projects. During 2001, around 1,500 people within the firm participated in one or more community projects (KMPG UK Annual Report, 2001). There is also the opportunity for some people to work on more substantial projects within a community organisation.

Developing A Coaching Culture

Coaching is seen as one of the firm’s strategic change levers and hence an integral part of its culture, i.e. the way in which individuals work with, and learn with and from each other. The firm stresses that everyone in the firm has a right to expect coaching from others and that its people have a responsibility to provide coaching to others when requested.

There are two key aspects to the coaching culture being developed within the firm. First, in terms of the way in which individuals operate and relate to one another, for example:

• having a leadership style which helps individuals to realise their full potential;

• encouraging and enabling coaching and mentoring processes;

• encouraging and supporting an environment where people feel motivated and encouraged and receive timely and constructive feedback;

• continuing to enhance the quality of our performance management processes.

Second, in terms of accessibility and availability of more structured help, for example:

• the accessibility of coaching following specific development activities;

• having learning and knowledge management tools which provide intelligent information and help people to make the right decisions.

The firm has invested, and is continuing to invest, in a number of resources to help build a coaching culture. These include: access to internal and external coaches to support personal development; skills training to develop the skills used in a coaching relationship; leadership support for coaching; information and access to appropriate coaching support through the firm’s people portal ( MyLife@KPMG), as well as learning and development resources and contacts.

In addition there are a number of structured development processes that can lead to a specific coaching need. For example: 360-degree feedback; performance management review; senior management development programme; senior management assessment centre and the Director and Partner Panel Interview. Guidance on how to gain access to coaching support following any of these development processes is again available via the firm’s people portal.

The Nerve Centre, set up as part of ‘darwin’, regularly tracks initiatives and progress being made in different parts of the firm on its coaching journey. Its role is one of identifying and connecting different players within the firm so that lessons learnt can be shared across the firm.