Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Success Stories
A strong methodology of communicating best practices across Utility stakeholders.
Supports: knowledge sharing, learning, team building
LEVEL OF EFFORT
SIZE OF UTILITY
SCOPE OF WORK
MED
SCALABLE
WIDE
An old adage is ―success begets success.‖ And indeed it can if a success in one situation is
recognized and understood sufficiently to benefit others who are in similar situations and
circumstances. This aspect is related to the transfer of Best Practices.
Success stories can also serve to showcase project efforts and accomplishments to
stakeholders. What happened in this project? What significant findings or results occurred?
Use the language appropriate for your target audience (see Communications Plan), and
positive, catchy phrases or quotations from participants along with facts and figures.
Radhakrishna at Penn State University provides the following tips for writing success stories:
Explain in about 10 sentences the need, importance, and significance of your project
(the problem situation).
Cover in 5-6 sentences the objectives and methodology (what you want to accomplish
and how information is collected).
Talk about in 10-15 sentences the project results (what happened, significant findings).
Present in 10 sentences or less the program impact (what’s being done differently, what
has been learned).
Discuss in 5 sentences or less the future potential (what’s next for this project, what is
the larger contribution to the Utility/stakeholders).
Disseminate (newspapers, conference proceedings, professional organizations,
extension publications, staff updates, impact statements, journal articles).
In Project Study #25, the Utility implemented a Process and Operational Improvements
initiative that has resulted in significant dollar savings. In this organization, continuous
improvement is celebrated.
Recognizing successes can serve as a reward for individuals, teams and communities, and
for the Utility as a whole. See ideas for recognition and rewards.
Expected Outcomes:
Communicates successes that others can duplicate or build upon.
Provides a reward to those who made the effort successful by letting them communicate
their work to others in the Utility.
In some cases, the patterns that created the success can be studied and applied to
other situations, thereby producing more successes in other areas.
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