He Drills for Knowledge

Knowledge-management guru John Old drills away at a potential gusher: the collective brainpower of Texaco's 18,000 employees in 150 countries. Their pool of knowledge ranges from how best to set the stroke depth of an oil-well pump to how to get the inside scoop on top competitors. Old's mandate inside Texaco, which pumps more than 1 million barrels of oil a day, is to connect people who have questions with the people who have answers -- helping the company to work faster and more efficiently.

"Knowledge management" is one of those business buzzwords that goes in and out of favor every few years. But for Old, 58, managing knowledge isn't a fad -- it's a critical business challenge. And it's as much about creating personal relationships as it is about installing elegant applications. In an interview with Fast Company, he offered some of his best thinking on the theory and practice of managing knowledge.

Lots of companies talk about intellectual assets and managing knowledge. What's the most important feature of a knowledge-management system?

Any technology solution will fail if it doesn't recognize the importance of human connections. Here at Texaco, our strategy is to connect people and help them leverage their know-how. Knowledge is contextual, so technology that simply enables people to "write down what they know" doesn't work very well. And you can't force people to share knowledge. David Snowden, with the Institute for Knowledge Management, uses three principles to test if technology will work to help spread knowledge: One, knowledge can only be volunteered; it can't be conscripted. Two, people always know more than they can tell and can tell more than they can write. And three, people only know what they know when they need to know it.

Do people who know each other tend to use knowledge-management tools more?

When you can see somebody's face and body language, it builds trust. Having personal relationships aided by technology feels right to most people. That said, it's not impossible to create trust online between people who haven't seen each other. There's also trust by proxy: I trust somebody because a friend whom I trust says that this person is okay.

But nothing beats personal interactions. We encourage our global practice areas to convene for face-to-face meetings once a year. Last year, we even brought together a group for a "Lessons Learned" summit in knowledge management. We wanted to hear from successful practice communities, as well as from networks that failed.

What were some of the success stories that you heard?

One of our folks used PeopleNet [a search engine for employees on the company's Intranet, @Texaco] to contact someone with 25 years of drilling experience to clear up a problem. The person who needed help was confused over how to figure out the "pinhole" position on the equipment that controls how far an oil well's pump goes up and down. The directions that he was getting were contradictory. Using PeopleNet, he found someone with lots of experience who could help out.

What I liked most about the story was that the person with the question chose to ask the 25-year veteran because he had read his biography and had seen his picture on the Intranet.

He wrote that the more experienced person's photograph had made him appear to be a likable guy who wouldn't seem to mind answering a question from a stranger in the company.

We had another person who used PeopleNet to search out various sources of competitive information to help decide whether Texaco should enter into a new line of business. The kind of information that she needed is generally unpublished; she needed some really savvy insight. She wrote in her success story that "80% of what you want to know about the competition is inside your business." I'd have to agree with her.

Those stories highlight one of our major lessons learned: Use the simplest technology you can for the purpose at hand, whether it be a search engine or an email distribution list. For example, we use a software system in-house called KnowledgeMail, from Tacit Knowledge Systems, because it helps people make good contacts with colleagues who happen to be focused on the same issues they are.

Do you worry much about security or about the loss of privacy?

I worry much more about trust. Trust and privacy are linked together. I'm not worried about my privacy when I'm talking to or sending an email to someone I trust. And usually, I trust the people I know. I only want privacy from the people I don't really trust.

So trust matters. But how do you go about creating a sense of urgency inside the company around the idea that people should share what they know?