Admiral Allen has suggested that the Coast Guard must become a learning organization, an organization that manages its knowledge assets in a holistic and systematic manner.

 

This proposed knowledge management pilot will put to use a process used at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and discussed in a presentation at the May 2008 APQC KM Conference in Chicago.

 

The pilot will use an interview methodology focussing on successes, failures, and proven practices developed and utilized during the subject matter expert's tenure as an organizational performance consultant.  The subject matter expert will participate in a series of interviews over the space of three days.  These interviews will cover far ranging topics in support of tacit knowlege necessary for both organizational performance consultants Coast Guard wide and consultants working in the 8th District.  Interviews will be video recorded.  Some of the interviews will be transcribed.  The primary source material will be made available online.  Secondary products, such as job aids, essays and papers, and tools will be developed and made available online.

 

The pilot must be conducted in a relaxing and informal environment in order to allow the subject matter expert to focus on providing accurate and complete information.  In addition, the pilot ought to be conducted offsite in order to ensure the participants are dedicated to the task at hand.

 

Our Master OPCs represent a tremendous amount of corporate knowledge and since we will replace them with most likely a practitioner level OPC, at best, we need to develop a system that captures that knowledge to ease the loss to the District and the OPC corps.

The project has two fronts.  The first front is local, which is, the knowledge and status of previous work, current work and future work of OPC clients in D8 and beyond.  If we develop a systematic approach to collecting the details of the customer base we can ease the pain of transition of bringing in a new OPC with less experience in the field and possibly in the culture.  The second front is preventing the lost benefit of a Master OPC. Ideally, we would develop a system to capture the lessons learned, the proven practices, and the feedback for the program on what could have been better from departing OPCs especially at the Senior and Master Levels.

Products and Source Material

• On becoming a Coast Guard Organizational Performance Consultant: the initial video

Interview Questions and Issues

The following list is a rough list of issues and questions to be discussed during the interview sessions.  Notecards with these issues expanded can be found here and also attached below at the bottom of this page.

• Best consultning gig
• Most troubling gig
• Consulting philosophy
• Changes to practice over the years
• Working with partners
• Success with client
• Failure with client
• Important lesson learned
• Leagacy to leave to OPC cadre 
• Choosing work - how?
• Contracts with clients
• Ways to make work easier
• Challenges faced and how overcome
• Learning wish you had at start of OPC
• Wahat to bring to work as OPC
• Office processes
• Changes would have made
• Talk through a gig from start to finish
• Things that made job easier
• Unfinished business
• Keys to success own background
• General keys to success
• What wish someone had told you before taking job
• Things do differently
• Characteristics of best relationship with client
• Most helpful books and references
• Models used in work
• Most humorous gig
• Most enjoyable gig
• Projects with best/higest pay off or ROI
• Dealing with a difficult client
• Greatest challenges on the job