KM Singapore 2012

After last year’s presentation about ROCK – Retention of Critical Knowledge – there was a great expectation to hear again from Aw Siew Hoong (Ash) and the work Shell is doing on knowledge management. At the 2012 KM Singapore conference, Ash talked about lessons learnt and how what are the key elements to make them work for business.

According to Ash, there are three key elements that need to be taken into account to make lesson learnt effective. First, lessons learnt are not about technology or databases  but they are about people, “engaging people positively and early enough” in the process. Second, lessons learnt, as most other KM initiatives, need to be backed up and actively supported by Senior Management, otherwise there won’t be the uptake that is necessary for them to work. Third, capacity is important in terms of people that can take care of the back off and make things work in the background.

Ash goes on elaborating more on the process followed by Shell to do lessons learnt, where they have been using an existing methodology from the Risk Assessment Group that allows to quantify every lessons learnt applied in terms of cost avoidance or cost savings. Like it or not, top management in every organization things in terms of cost savings – having a system that allows to quantify lessons learned in terms of costs has proved to be very successful for Shell.