“Managing Knowledge in an Oil Exploration Office: BP Amoco Norge (Norway Office)”
by Nick Milton

In: Jack J. Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 39-53. 

Summarized by: Ivs Alzona
22 August 2001

 

Summary:

Knowledge of operational activities, such as exploring, drilling, and producing oil, is critical to the success of BP Amoco Norge. In 1992, the author started a five-year post as a knowledge manager within BP Norge and, with the input of the exploration staff, built and applied a system of knowledge management and continuous improvement to all of the business activities. The author's role was to monitor and facilitate this system. The four key lessons learned are to get staff buy-in, involve management, have a knowledge manager to monitor and facilitate the system, and for knowledge management to be a visible part of the business process. It is important to maintain a knowledge bank and crucial to choose the right person to run it.

Introduction

BP Amoco Norge

  • Business unit within the multinational BP Amoco group
Knowledge Management [BP Amoco]
  • Systematically making use of the knowledge in the organization
  • Applying it to each new project
  • Tapping into what BP knows to help deliver business results anywhere in the world
Benefits
  • Never making the same mistake twice
  • Cutting the learning curve to its minimum
  • Making every decision in the light of the full knowledge base of the group


Background

BP Amoco Group

  • Global petrochemical giant
  • One of the largest energy companies in the world
  • Norway business unit has 400 employees [250 onshore], its core activities exploring for and producing oil and gas from the North and Norwegian Seas
Nick Milton gives a detailed account of BP Amoco's activities and his involvement since 1992 through 1997 [BP's most successful time since the mid-1970s]. His role initially was to take accountability for the quality of work done in the Norwegian exploration office. His role was singular within the BP Group: to ensure effective use of knowledge in the new asset organization staffed by multi-functional teams.

Basis of his role:

  • To build and apply a system of continuous organizational learning
  • With the capture and reuse of knowledge
  • To optimize business results
KM was very important to the company, albeit it was not called that at the time. The company's activities were very expensive and returns are paid back only AFTER the oil starts to flow ashore. KM helped reduce costs and increase efficiency every step of the way. Imagine spending $10 million drilling a well in the wrong place because of a bad geological prediction.
 

Building Knowledge Into the Working Process

KM initiatives N. Milton introduced:

  • A continuous learning system called PMS, based on the Deming learning cycle [please see figure 1]
  • A structured questioning and dialogue process, called a retrospect to translate the project team's tacit knowledge into codified knowledge for future use
  • A searchable "lessons learned" Website, or knowledge base

The entire office held a two-day meeting, combining plenary and syndicate work, at a remote hotel.

Meeting topic: Find new ways of working

Objective: to become more efficient by working smarter

Agenda was developed to help the staff develop its own way to rework the business processes to increase efficiency, reduce mistakes and rework, and leverage learning

Outcome: PMS

  • Elements of standard project management
  • Project Leaders search for knowledge and experience at project startup to help at the planning stage
  • In early days: used library search and phone calls to people who could help
  • Over time: use of database of knowledge and experience
  • 1996: use of intranet
Retrospect
  • knowledge capture meetings
  • facilitated meetings of the project team, where structured questioning and dialogue process uncovers teams unconscious learnings and allows those learnings to be expressed as lessons for the future
  • Crucial step in the whole process
  • Initially: set in Word files on a local server
  • 1996: searchable website
To be really useful, the database of lessons had to be
  • maintained
  • distilled
  • packaged
This site allowed people to find relevant previous lessons for application at project startup, thereby closing the learning loop. [please see figure 2]

The KM initiative also needs to manage its own knowledge, applying the PMS system to it.
 

A Week in the Life of a Knowledge Officer

Two weeks were never the same.

  • Visit each Project Leader every month for details of their projects [60 - 100 projects running at any one time]
  • Influence Project Leaders to conduct Retrospects
  • Spend time with Project Leaders going into new projects
  • Schedule Peer Assists including 2-day assists from external teams
  • Facilitate and serve as scribe in 2 to 3 Retrospects lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours
  • Rewrite notes
  • Extract knowledge
  • Create a record of future lessons learned
  • Have participants agree on validity of lessons
  • Pin them up on main notice board
  • Update the lessons-learned database
  • Spend half a day working on explanatory manual for the PMS
  • Do work on the Website
  • Do an introductory run-through to the system for someone new in the office
  • Sit in at high-level management team meetings
Peer Assist
  • a structured and facilitated knowledge-exchange meeting at which people with relevant experience shared what they knew
Most activities had to do with
  • perfecting the PMS
  • monitoring its use
  • prompting
  • coaching
  • facilitating people in KM actitivies
  • give urgency to KM
These were essential or the system would fall into disuse.

Advice on CKO [Chief Knowledge Officer]

  • keep it as a separate function
  • reporting directly to the leadership
People are reluctant to share and analyze their failure because of fear of being exposed or showing weakness especially if it would impact their career or pay.
 

The Roles and Competencies of a Knowledge Manager

The roles, responsibilities and competencies of a Knowledge Manager are detailed in Table 1.
 

Table 1. The knowledge manager's primary roles, responsibilities, and competencies

Roles
Responsibilities
Competencies
Ensured staff had access to all the knowledge it needed, wherever this knowledge may have originated

Encouraged the adoption and application of knowledge in business activities in a sustainable manner to deliver challenging business goals and distinctive performance

Captured new knowledge gained through business operations for future use in a way that would improve our capability to deliver the business goals

 Championing and promoting the PMS system

Creating an awareness of the behaviors and culture needed

Mentoring and encouraging people to use the system

Facilitating the meetings

Maintaining the database of lessons learned

Tracking the reuse of these lessons in the business

 A confident and effective communicator using various media

A skillful listener with an open style, good at facilitating discussion

Excellent influencing skills

Strategic thinking in terms of culture and behavior, business processes and technology

A clear and current understanding of the business situation and processes

A good working knowledge of the business strategy

An in-depth understanding of the principles of knowledge management

Good networking and sharing of ideas and success

Major responsibilities

  • championing KM
  • maintaining the knowledge bank
  • tracking knowledge reuse
Most important competencies
  • soft skills
  • especially influencing skills


Why Our Knowledge Management System Worked and Advice for the Future

Six key lessons from BP Norge's experiences with KM

  1. Let people build their own KM system.
  2. You need full endorsement from senior management.
  3. Build a sense of urgency into KM tasks to ensure they are consistently done.
  4. Make the system visible.
  5. Actively maintain the bank of knowledge.
  6. The best knowledge managers have strong interpersonal skills.


Summary and Aftermath

Norway KM system

  • taken up by the BP Group
  • formed the basis for highly successful group-wide BP KM project
Peer Assist and Retrospect became core components of the company KM model.

Lessons learned on storage of knowledge and the need for distillation and packaging were adopted as standard practice across BP Group.

Roles, responsibilities, and competencies formed template for new KM posts around the globe.
 

Questions for Discussion

  1. The critical areas of knowledge for BP Norge included applications for acreage, exploration, drilling and oil production. What business areas of knowledge are critical to the success of your company? What does your organization really need to know in order to succeed?
  2. At BP Norge, staff involvement was crucial in developing our knowledge management system because the staff realized it could help them to manage their heavy workloads. What strategies could you use to introduce KM to your staff, and how would you demonstrate its benefits to them?
  3. One of the key success factors in Norway was making an individual accountable for the capture and reuse of knowledge. Who works with knowledge in your own business? How could you make this a specific and accountable role?
  4. The knowledge role in BP Norge was independent and not part of line management. Where does (or would) KM sit in your organization? What are the implications of their placement?
  5. People working with knowledge will need some of the skills of journalism such as skillful listening, summarizing, and effective communication. How well do you select for these sills in your organization? Where would you find people with skills such are these?


The Author

  • Joined the central BP KM team as its knowledge manager after the 5 years described in this chapter
  • As such, he is responsible for
    • Developing
    • Codifying
    • Publishing
    • Teaching what BP Amoco knows about knowledge management
    • Managing director of Knowledge Transformation International [http://www.ktransform.com] formed through outsourcing Amoco KM team


References

Milton, N. (in press). "Mining the Deep Knowledge --- Tapping Into Things You Don't Know You Know." Knowledge Management Review.

Milton, N. (1999). "Knowledge With Shelf Life." Knowledge Management, 2, 10.



Go to article:
  • Dede Bonner. “The Knowledge Management Challenge: New Roles and Responsibilities for Chief Knowledge Officers and Chief Learning Officers.” Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 3-19.
  • Adam Gersting, Bill Ives and Cindy Gordon.  “A Human Performance Approach to Knowledge Management: Andersen Consulting”. in: Jack J. Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 23-38.
  • Nick Milton.  “Managing Knowledge in an Oil Exploration Office”. in: Jack J. Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 39-53.
  • Verna J. Willis and Gary L. May. “Strategy and the Chief Learning Officer”. in: Jack J. Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 55-70.
  • Michael H. Mitchell and Nick Bontis. “Aligning Human Capital with Business Strategy”. in: Jack J. Phillips and Dede Bonner (editors). In Action: Leading Knowledge Management and Learning. American Society for Training and Development, 2000.  pp. 73-86.
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