In 2010, ExxonMobil began using cognitive interviews to uncover deep subject matter expertise and thinking from its HR experts. In 2014, a Policy Leadership Academy emerged that has transformed ExxonMobil’s policy world into a forward-thinking, highly influential, effective, and aligned global team. This program has created significant global alignment around some very key areas of policy related to corporate opinion, exceptions, interpretation, and change management. We talked to Bredow Bell Thompson, Manager, Global Policy, Compliance & Communication about how ExxonMobil turned cognitive interviews into a valuable part of its KM strategy.
Bredow Bell Thompson will be presenting “Transforming Cognitive Interview Learning into Global Competency Development” at APQC’s 2016 KM Conference on April 28-29.
What event or situation motivated you to take on this initiative?
The initial project was to migrate higher-level HR policy work to a lower cost location. HR had already successfully migrated administrative work that was portable. The challenge in moving the higher-level work is that it takes years of experience to develop these competencies, and we would be migrating the work to very recently hired employees. We needed to develop an experiential training program to significantly accelerate the development of competencies.
How did you decide which knowledge to prioritize?
The initial challenge was to migrate higher-level policy work. However, after we began using the methodology, we recognized another important knowledge gap that could be addressed: capturing the critical thinking skills of key HR technical experts who were anticipated to retire within the next two years. Research shows that experts are unable to convey as much as 70% of their critical thinking skills in normal job handover processes. We realized that even if we could capture a fraction of that, it would be worth the time.
As a global company, have you encountered any challenges collecting expertise around the world?
Our main challenge has been resourcing to conduct interviews and developing transfer products. We are a very lean organization, and no additional staff or budget was added for this. The way that we overcame this challenge was to keep the scope narrow enough that the most personally committed employees could handle it and to use non-traditional resources.
When someone really “gets” the value of this, they are willing to do whatever it takes to make progress. Through the 5 years, I have been one of those champions; I am fortunate to have had two others on my staff who have been similarly committed, and I have encountered a few others like us in other functions. Here’s an example of what I mean: When we were developing the material that became the basis for the experiential training, I personally did much of the content writing while my husband was driving us on a long road trip. Another example is that I have conducted phone interviews at 2 a.m. my time with experts on the other side of the world because that was the only time they and their replacements were available. You can accomplish just about anything you set your mind to. These personally committed resources and I set our minds to make this project a reality, and then we did whatever it took to make it happen.
We continually keep our minds open for how to get resources for this project. For example, we used new hires and summer interns to develop some of the training materials, and we used former employees who had left in good standing to take care of family members to develop many of the interview products. Whenever budget money was available, we would contract work out to other resources for a short period of time.
What is the key to turning the output from expertise interviews into practical tools and training that other employees can learn from?
I believe there are three keys:
- secure the manager’s commitment regarding how he/she wants to apply the learnings;
- engage and influence the expert to commit to finding effective ways to transfer those learnings; and
- measure the results (both numerically and qualitatively), and share what you measure.
How did this program help organizational development?
The organizational development achieved in the context of this project was the acceleration of competency development. Novice employees became competent more quickly through the experiential training and products like quick reference guides and checklists. In addition, competent employees became experts more quickly by sitting in the interviews with the experts and through the online interview products that were developed from the experts they replaced.