The SRA Symposium - College of Medicine

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areas of responsibilities. The knowledge worker would receive an email with the contents of the
question and a link to the actual web application that would carry them through the process. With
the first person, they have options on how to handle the question which was very important to the
overall level of using existing knowledge, acquiring new knowledge, and seeking new. The initial
employee has the ability to answer the question first based on their areas of responsibility and
they should know the answer. If this is true, they simply type in the answer and submit. The rules
engine would acknowledge the fact that the employee knew the answer, store the answer in the
knowledge repository, and forward the answer to the customer.
On the other hand, if the employee should know the answer but cannot provide it, he/she will
forward to someone who they may think know the answer or to the next person in the chain based
on the weighted average of the there area of responsibilities. The next person in the chain goes
through the same process until the customer’s question is answered. If a weighted average cannot
be provided initially, the question would go to the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) who, based on
their knowledge of associations, would forward the question to someone with the organization
and the process would start all over.
The expectations to be gained from this initiative was for the organization to measure the amount
of knowledge each responsible person possessed, the understanding of the organization’s structure,
and if employees had the right amount of training. As the question would flow through each stop,
the measurement process would pick up the following:
• The question was answered by the employee who should have known the answer
• The question was answered by the employee who knew the answer but was not part of their
area of responsibility
• The question could not be answered by the employee even though it was their area of
responsibility
• The question could be answer by the employee nor was their area of responsibility
The program ran into its second hurdle when it came to the PAO (a contractor in this case) who
would forward the question to their associations. The other groups of employees refused to take a
question from a contractor as they believed that they didn’t have to take orders from a contractor.
This caused a huge problem and slowed down customer service. Furthermore, most employees
saw this task as a tedious process because it interfered with their daily routines. They believed
that it was the responsibility of the “web master” to answer these questions. Even though the web
master was from a technical background it was obvious that customer service expectations were
minimal throughout the organization.
Because of the unexpected hurdles it was difficult to truly measure the organization’s level of
knowledge, skill sets, and associations. From a technical stand point, it was truly believed that
developing a flow-based architecture where employees’ daily interactions with web-based programs
would not be disruptive but would make it very easy to successfully create a peer-to-peer
knowledge work center. The unexpected hurdle was a culture that needs to be addressed from the
very beginning. This is often the problem with most knowledge management programs and other
technology driven programs. In many cases too, when programs don’t work, the technology is
replaced assuming this will be the fix.
Understanding how people think, interact, and work together is very crucial to the success of any
program. What was found after the month long pilot that it was too hard for leadership to accept
the fact that their organization did not want to share or participate. Leadership wanted to blame
the technology and therefore demanded that the program be terminated. After this decision was
made, a ripple affect occurred. Not addressing the culture caused every other program based on
272 2005 Symposium Proceedings Book