The Human Element
Dr. Robert Mayfield, plant manager of Tenaska Virginia Power station (a 2007 POWER Top Plant recognized for its training and management practices), recently completed his doctoral dissertation in power plant knowledge management. Mayfield, who focused his presentation on the human element, asked and answered these questions:
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Are you determining what critical knowledge is needed at your plant?
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What knowledge is available and what is missing?
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Who needs this knowledge?
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How will the plant or organization retain this knowledge?
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How will this knowledge be applied?
Most of Mayfield’s presentation was directed at maintaining a knowledgeable and motivated workforce. He made the point that organizations that are superior at sharing knowledge are not necessarily those with the best technology infrastructure. One common malady is knowledge silos, or people or departments that hoard knowledge as a defensive strategy. Interestingly, knowledge silos are also built up around the "islands of automation" discussed above.
Mayfield advocated a formal knowledge management program to "promote an integrated approach to identifying, retrieving, evaluating, and sharing an enterprise’s tacit and explicit knowledge assets to meet strategic objectives." To distinguish between tacit and explicit knowledge, he used a baseball analogy. Explicit knowledge encompasses the hard rules of the game — there are three outs per team per inning, nine innings constitute a game (unless there is a tie), three strikes are an out. Tacit knowledge involves such things as how fast the pitches are coming to the batter and the amount of time a batter has to discern which pitch (curve, slider, fast ball) is being thrown. Tacit knowledge involves watching films of the opposing team and learning their practices and habits to gain insight that makes you more competitive against them.
Tacit knowledge at the plant level is "mainly in the heads of the experts or the experienced hands." Therefore, it has to be actively and continuously drawn out for the benefit of others in the organization. Some of Mayfield’s suggestions for doing that include: creating communities of practice, a concept that has been applied successfully across nuclear power stations; brainstorming sessions; video and audio conferences; and participation in industry user groups.
Although Mayfield distinguished the technology element from the human element, aspects of his knowledge management program have technological dimensions. One is centralized and remote monitoring and control. Mayfield called these "centralized smart stations." At these "stations," many people with functional responsibility for the assets can share in the data and the analysis that converts data into information. In addition, Mayfield advocated the use of hand-held digital devices to display photos and diagrams that help maintenance workers in the field. Finally, he suggested that plant organizations encourage fleetwide communities of practice that can share knowledge and expertise through an intranet.
—Jason Makansi (jmakansi@ pearlstreetinc.com) is president of Pearl Street Inc., a technology deployment services firm.
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