Unilever (UK/Netherlands)

Two weeks after Paul Polman had been appointed as Chief Executive, he asked for a review meeting with Cathy Bautista, Head of Unilever's Knowledge Management Group. At the meeting they dis- cussed Unilever's achievements in establishing communities of practice and various knowledge repositories. However, he was concerned about the extent to which Unilever's knowledge crea- tion and transfer processes were aligned to corpo- rate objectives and strategies. His fear was while there may be a lot of learning and knowledge within Unilever, it might be insufficiently focused towards delivering better products and services. He asked Cathy to re-evaluate current knowledge management activities from a strategic perspec- tive and to put forward recommendations that would move Unilever towards a more purposeful approach to its learning and knowledge.

Unilever is one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world with an annual turnover of over 40bn. The company employs around 250,000 people based in over 100 countries. It has a large and varied portfolio of foods, home and personal care products including such well- known brands as Flora, Omo, Ragu, Calvin Klein and Dove. Uniliver invests around 2.5 per cent of its annual turnover in research and develop- ment leading to continuous product innovations and filing of patents each year. It takes learning and knowledge seriously and believes that trans- ferring this knowledge into its products and ser- vices is a key source of competitive advantage. The organisation has ambitions to be 'multi-local' through understanding and anticipating local needs around the world and producing products and services that fulfil these needs. Internally Unilever aspires to be a networked learning organ- isation with its diverse and dispersed workforce and often questions whether it has become more of a top-down 'teaching organisation'.

Unilever's Knowledge Management Group has aimed at delivering the learning organ- isation vision through a number of targeted interventions. They have developed a frame- work of organisational knowledge processes and

focused their efforts on locating, capturing, shar- ing, transferring and creating knowledge. Cathy Bautista sees two clear reasons for this approach: 'Firstly, as a group it is helpful to have a struc- tured way of organising the what and the how of knowledge acquisition. Secondly, the team knows that to be able to give better advice and support to their customers, they must excel at what they do'. She recognises the benefits of learning from mistakes and 'error harvesting' but appreciates that it is more of an aspiration in some parts of the organisation. 'Learning from success is relatively easy as we can actively promote and help embed lessons derived from successful experiences. Learning from failure is more sensitive but just as important. We are pro- moting a culture of being willing to learn as you go and to embrace and apply learning both from success and failures. This is what I would call a "wholesome way of learning".'

Unilever started its knowledge management activities in 1996. A key strand of its activities has been the development of several dozen com- munities of practice (CoP). To initiate these informal networks, they organised 'Knowledge Workshops' to bring together key experts and practitioners from around the world. The pur- pose of the workshops was to focus efforts in a functional domain and to ascertain what people did and didn't know about the area. The domain had to be core to Unilever's strategy. This allowed a shared vocabulary and terminology to develop as well as identifying any knowledge gaps. Each workshop generated a 'Knowledge Domain' for each community of practice. This comprised handbooks, manuals, presentations and any information deemed valuable to that domain. There was also a list of key people and groups within Unilever who had long-term expe- rience in that domain such as meal sauces.1

Each CoP had a champion to help coordinate and mobilise the network. The champion held a relatively senior position to encourage com- mitment and focus to the CoP. The aim of the CoP was to encourage collaboration between

geographically dispersed plants and to cross functional boundaries. The CoPs were built around four key principles: deliverables, people, operations and leverage. The deliverables could be business deliverables such increasing efficien- cies in organisational processes or they could be knowledge deliverables such as new insights or producing best-practice guidelines. The people aspect ensured that there was a right mix of experts from diverse geographical and functional backgrounds. An 'activist' role was articulated in each CoP. The activist position rotated around the group and was introduced to ensure that there was strategic alignment with community activities. The operations element of each CoP was around creating a safe and trusting environ- ment where people felt comfortable to contrib- ute and co-create new knowledge. The leverage dimension was to create linkages between the different communities rather than having lots of isolated communities within such a large organ- isation. Each community developed their own identity and brand and engaged in two-way dia- logue with other communities.2

External feedback was provided to each CoP after it had been in operation for some time. This took the form of a health-check questionnaire and identified strengths and gaps in the persist- ence of the community. Each CoP also tried to classify the value of their activities in a variety of ways. This included a list of success stories, quotes from satisfied community 'customers' and use of the balanced-scorecard framework.

Another major strand in Unilever's knowledge management endeavours was the development of an intranet portal. The aim of the portal was to aid knowledge sharing and increase collabor- ation across the organisation. The portal held a knowledge repository with a search engine cov- ering different CoP projects, a CRM database as well as key procedures and practices. The knowl- edge repositories were supported by 'chat groups' who provided hints, tips and guidance on how best to use the material. Community interactions were maintained using community software such as e-groups and Geocrawler. A 'yellow pages' database was created to help identify experts.

The main challenge was getting experts to main- tain and update their profiles regularly.3

Unilever has tried to capture the knowledge and learning of retiring employees through nar- rative accounts called 'learning histories'. They used two game-show formats, 'Blind Date' to match people with the necessary expertise and 'Mastermind' to help people question a departing expert. The learning histories served as a form of organisational memory to help employees think through what they might do in similar situations.4

Learning from projects was captured in 'Knowledge Debriefs' to help prevent recur- rent mistakes 're-inventing the wheel' on each project. The debriefing focused on process and technical learning. Interviews were conducted with project participants to capture the five best and worst aspects of the project. These were dis- cussed with all participantsand documented as a form of process learning. Technical learning came from comparing key product attributes and consumer attributes set at the beginning of the project. Two delegates from new related projects attended the project debriefs to ensure that mis- takes weren't repeated and any learning was transferred to the new project.5

Cathy reflected on her earlier meeting with Paul Polman and smiled at his perceptive remarks around knowledge management. She recalled her own affirmation in this area through organisational circulars:

'Knowledge management needs to be aligned with CEO's strategy. It will be essential to define how KM can support the business strategy, as well as build and/or strengthen KM competencies across the business. Professional competencies need to focus not only on what people do, but also on what they need to know in order to deliver. In that sense the discussion shouldn't be as to whose responsibility it is, either the CKO, CIO or HR function, but rather of how to ensure thatthose needs are deliberately identified and addressed'.

It was time to move some of this rhetoric into reality. Cathy called her knowledge management team together to discuss the way forward.

Questions

1 What advice would you give Cathy Bautista on improving the strategic focus of Unilever's knowledge management activities?

2 What changes, if any, would you make to Unilever's communities of practice?

3 How could 'learning histories' be further developed to capture organisational memory?