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by Michael Robin
Thursday, September 20, 2001
Buckman Laboratories International Inc. has long been known for profiting from successful efforts in knowledge management. When Robert Buckman became chairman and chief executive officer in 1978, this family-owned specialty chemicals company headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., followed a hierarchical management approach and a product-driven strategy. Confronted by strong competition and plans for global expansion, he embarked on a process to shift the company to a culture of openness and knowledge sharing that focused not on products but on problem-solving for customers.
Over the next 22 years Bob Buckman was the company’s knowledge champion, enthusiastically supporting and encouraging the widespread use of KM processes. In 1992 Buckman Labs launched K’Netix, its enterprise-wide communications and knowledge sharing system. The company is not simply an early adopter of KM techniques and tools, but a success story that others look to. Today, it employs more than 1,300 people in 90 countries.
A key player in the continuing success of deploying knowledge management for business gain at Buckman Labs is Melissie Rumizen, who joined the company in 1998 as personal assistant to the CEO for knowledge management. Her responsibilities were broad. Examining a KM program that had been running for a long time, she identified critical gaps and strategies for filling them, as well as other gaps they could live with. Along the way she developed and now maintains the company’s KM Web site, found at
After beginning her career as a linguist in the U.S. Army, in 1988 Rumizen joined the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Working on education and training issues for the NSA, Rumizen recalls, she became interested in "what people knew about what we did, because there weren’t any training manuals or classes." Developing ways to capture, document and share this knowledge, she became the agency’s first benchmarking manager.
In April of this year, Bob Buckman retired and his cousin Steven became CEO. While Rumizen’s mission has not changed, her title and slot on the company org chart have. Today her title is knowledge strategist, and she reports to Sheldon Ellis, vice president of the BulabLearningCenter. Rumizen spoke with KMM’s Michael Robin about the evolution of knowledge management at Buckman Labs.
How did you become involved with KM and Buckman Labs?
I was in the corporate quality office of the National Security Agency in 1992. We were doing an assessment cycle and wanted to do benchmarking as part of that cycle. APQC [AmericanProductivity & QualityCenter] was brought in to give us the training, and the light dawned on me. Then in 1995 APQC and Arthur Andersen did a knowledge imperative symposium and another light dawned. I saw that this was an extension of what I’d been trying to do. Knowledge management is a way to be systematic and to look at the broad ranges of activities involved in creating, sharing and leveraging knowledge across an organization.
How I got here is pretty simple. In October of 1997, I visited Buckman along with 19 close friends from the NSA. Buckman held a "sharing day," where people visit to learn about what Buckman has done and is doing in KM. At the end of the day I said to Bob Buckman, "I don’t want to go home." He said, "You don’t have to." I started the next January.
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What does a knowledge strategist do?
Buckman is unique in that it has a mature program. The program we currently have in place was started in 1992, although the roots of knowledge management here go back to the founding of the company in 1945. When I came here, Bob Buckman, who was the driver for knowledge management, was slowly disengaging from the company. A little over a year ago, he completely disengaged. At that time, I was shifted to the LearningCenter, but basically I still look for gaps that can be addressed with knowledge management strategies and tactics.
For example, last year we identified the need to improve our ability to team for the long term. While the company has been engaged in global collaboration for many years, lots of times that collaboration was for short-term things. We were not as strong at building virtual teams that operated over several months or perhaps several years. I was key in helping to develop that teaming process, thanks to my background in total quality management.
We use a planning tool, Think T, originally developed for our salespeople. When they are going to go out on a call, we want them to sit down and plan the objectives and the things they plan to cover. It has since come to be used as a planning tool for everybody in the company. In fact, you cannot visit the CEO unless you have used that tool to plan the meeting.
But it’s not enough to plan; we have to stop and reflect upon what has happened. There is a crying need here for an after-action review process--or, as I pitched it inside the company, the "flip side." Think about what worked well and what didn’t, and then continue the planning process. What did we learn here? Is there anybody else we need to tell about this? The first tool gives us the plan and the objectives. The after-action review helps us to critique the results and learn to do better.
Does a knowledge strategist have to be an advocate?
What you do in KM a great deal of the time is you sell. You’re selling an idea, a process, a concept or a belief. You have to communicate with the person you’re selling to, put yourself in their shoes. What’s important to them?
For example, we’re going to do a formal product launch of our adaptation of the after-action review. We are a sales-oriented organization: 50 percent of the people are engaged in sales. The launch will include a CD-ROM in at least three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. We’re going to give out laminated cards that include the forms we’ve developed. We’re going to have a marketing brochure. We even have a name for it: the Buckman After-Action Review, the BAAR. The symbol is someone pole-vaulting over a bar. We say that the purpose of the BAAR is that we always need to raise the bar. We always need to improve our performance. We always need to get more customers, make more sales and do a better job for our customers.
Our learning center does quite a bit of this because we consider marketing part of our job. I was the one who came up with the name for the BAAR. I’d never done anything like that, but that’s part of life at Buckman. If you’re going to do something, you have to be able to sell it. I’ve learned the importance of communication and marketing in a way I never understood before.
What makes Buckman a knowledge company?
This is a specialty chemical company as opposed to a commodity company. From the Dows and DuPonts you buy what we call "single component chemistry"--you take it and do something else with it. Those products have low R&D costs, and the companies don’t provide any service with it. In contrast, the chemicals we develop are more complex, are driven by customer needs and are used for a specific application. We have higher R&D costs and shorter product life, so we have to share what we know.
Has the role of KM changed as a result of the CEO transition?
Bob was very intuitive; if it seemed like a good idea, he’d try it. One of the things the new CEO is strong on is alignment. When you talk to Steve about something, you have to explain why you want to do this, what sort of impact you expect on the bottom line and what the linkage is back to the vision and business strategies and customer needs. Also, when you do something, Steve wants it done across the entire organization. So the end result is that we may not try as many ideas, but what we do try gets pushed deeper and wider throughout Buckman. We know going in what it will do for us.
The initial threshold for getting a project approved is higher, but once you reach that threshold the possibility for success is higher. Once you convince our CEO, you’ve got the story you’re going to use with the rest of the company: This is why we’re doing it. This is the benefit we’ll get from it. This is the linkage to our vision and strategy.
Steve makes crystal clear the ties between knowledge management and the company’s vision, strategy and goals. We no longer do KM because it seems like a good thing. We do it because it is clearly linked to our vision, strategy and goals. We also understand what sort of return we will get on our investment. Steve has an open mind for new opportunities, but we need to have a clearly defined benefit in mind.
What is an example of such a project?
One of those is storytelling. There’s a clear purpose for why to use storytelling: to give our leaders a powerful tool for communicating. We’re aligning this tool to communicate our vision and our business strategy. It will also be part of our ongoing program for what we think our leaders need to know. This is going to be a key tool for our leadership, and the ROI is going to be improved communication.
Our salespeople are also interested in this. I’m working with our marketing department to see how we can use storytelling as part of the bonding and selling process in sales training. How can we adapt it to help our sales associates connect and communicate better with people?
What do you teach people about storytelling?
A key component is how you actually tell a story. We’re going to teach three types of stories. One of them is the vision story that Steve Denning developed in his book The Springboard [KMCI Press, 2000; see "Required Reading," May 2001 KMM]. He talks about the importance of communicating a vision, and he lays out various criteria. [For an interview with Stephen Denning, see "The Knowledge Bank," June 2001 KMM.]
Basically, in a vision story you paint a picture of the future. The hook is that you tell a story set in a common situation in your organization. It’s something everyone can relate to, but what happens isn’t what they expect. You set up a classic conflict, and then your resolution is novel and unexpected. The moral of the story is that knowledge management is going to get us to that future. We’re not going to use it as a vision of knowledge management, but to teach our leaders how to communicate a vision.
The other two are from a book called The Story Factor by Annette Simmons [Perseus Publishing, 2000]. These stories help people to establish a connection and to build trust. The first one is called the "who am I" story. You tell a story about yourself or something that’s important to you that gives people a sense of who you are.
The next story we’re going to use is called "why am I here." This gets to what a salesperson does. It’s pretty obvious what a salesperson does, but the key thing about that story is the benefit to the person you’re telling it to.
Does Buckman Labs try to measure the impact of KM?
No. Part of that is because the program was put together in 1992. It isn’t anything new but a way we do our business.
But this company does measure. We have a key performance measurement (KPM) system. Ideally, the types of things we do in KM are going to contribute to those measurements. A problem for measuring KM results is the same problem you have for measuring the impact of IT: It’s an incredibly important enabler, but it’s nothing to do for its own sake. That makes it hard to measure the impact and the results. My preference normally is that if you have a good measurement system within your organization, link to that. Of course, that’s another question: Do you have a good measurement system in your organization?
We do key performance measurements by business group, but we also look to see how the groups are aligned with each other. Key performance measures for one of our operating companies need to be aligned with the key performance measures for Buckman worldwide. Are we doing what we’re supposed to do? For example, a fundamental at Buckman is our concern for the environment. We set standards that exceed legal requirements across the world. Each operating company must meet those corporate standards. However, given the differences in operating companies, we measure each company separately, backing up those measures with audits. We report individual scores, which align with our overall KPM for the environment. But we do not report a single, global score for the entire organization.
What are the key lessons the company has learned in its experience of managing knowledge?
There have been a number of them. One of the key lessons learned is that you continue to learn key lessons. You never have all of the answers. Sometimes these are things you wish you had done differently. Sometimes, though, you step back and say to yourself, "I hadn’t realized how good an idea that was and how well we did it." It can take a while to prove your ideas.
Another key is serendipity. You must leap on the advantages for unexpected good consequences. At that point, act like you meant to do it all along!
One of our lessons was learned in 1998, when we drastically changed our IT system. When we first brought the system on--and this is a lesson we continue to pay attention to--we did not pay attention to middle management. We do not do that anymore. Middle management has to be included up front and courted assiduously. Like anyone else that’s involved in the change, you have to explain to them, "This is what’s going to be new. This is what’s expected of you. Here are the consequences if you do right. Here are the consequences if you do wrong."
It’s a continual learning process. You have to view knowledge management as being implemented in phases. Each phase has its own issues, its own challenges and its own ample supply of lessons learned.