The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2021 23 SPEAKING OUT Knowledge Management @ State: It’s not the technology. It’s the people. BY YOMAR I S MACDONALD, LOURDES CUE , T I MOTHY HAYNES , J ENN I F ER L . SM I TH AND BENJAM I N A . T I ETZ The authors are Team 3 of the Secretary’s Leadership Seminar inaugural cohort in the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program, a pilot to develop a diverse group of leaders to address enterprisewide challenges at State: Lourdes Cue, deputy director (GTM’s Strategic Com- munications Unit); Timothy Haynes, economic officer (U.S. Embassy Paris); Yomaris Macdonald, deputy consul general (U.S. Embassy Santo Domingo); Jennifer L. Smith, overseas section chief (PRM’s office of Admissions); and Benjamin A. Tietz, post management officer (EUR-IO). H ow common is this story? You arrive at a new post or walk into a new job, only to find yourself reinventing the wheel day in and day out because you have no handover notes, two shoeboxes full of business cards and no record of your predecessor’s activities and experiences. This affects all of us—whether Foreign Service, Civil Service or locally employed staff. One colleague arriving at a high- threat post experienced this knowledge vacuum in dramatic fashion, because it directly contributed to a delay in the recovery of hundreds of thousands of dollars of sensitive equipment that could have endangered the lives of U.S. citizens. Our estimate is that at least $10-20 million is wasted each year in time and resources, not to mention lost productivity, during transitions. On an individual level, State Depart- ment employees must feel a bit like Sisyphus—diligently advancing their knowledge and skills in an assignment, only to have the boulder roll back down- hill when they move to a new assignment and start all over again with no transfer notes, contacts or knowledge to build on. Indeed, our organization struggles to preserve the institutional knowledge lost when employees transfer, retire or sepa- rate from the department. What to do? As part of the inaugural cohort of the Secretary’s Leadership Seminar at Harvard Business School, we were tasked with finding knowledge management solutions for transferring officers. Initially, some in our group were dismayed. Did we just get tasked with fixing handover notes? In 2020, with all the challenges facing our institution, were we really still talking about Fourth of July contact lists? Knowledge management—or KM— informs decision-making and enables the seamless transfer of knowledge from one person to the next in a timely and acces- sible manner. It affects everything we do, from our relationships on the Hill to how effectively we improve the diversity of our workforce. Imagine a world where officers arrive at a new assignment and can immediately “get to work” on behalf of the American people. Effective knowledge management across our entire organization—liter- ally, across the world—is a monumental task, but it is not a new problem. In 2007 the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Transformational Diplomacy recognized the centrality of knowledge to State’s mis- sion and recommended the department “undertake an aggressive plan to become a world-class knowledge management organization.” In 2021 we are still working toward that goal. It is tempting to fall back on the idea that technology is the problem. However, knowledge management is about behavior. Change the Culture We need to change our culture from one that is about “need to know” to a mindset that is about “responsibility to share.” Instead of rushing to reinvent the wheel in each new position, let us take the time to preserve and build on colleagues’ past efforts. Without a doubt, part of our work requires sensitivity to classified, personally identifiable information and otherwise sensitive information, but this has nothing to do with our overall culture of silos and information hoarding. As transferring officers, we simply do not prioritize fostering the continuity of plans and projects and, most importantly, the continuity of relationships. The 2015 Forrester study of the problem concluded that transforming KM behavior requires two key drivers: leadership and technol- ogy. Our team argues that we have all the tools: It’s not about technology, and the pandemic showed that in the alacrity with which we embraced new technologies we thought were out of reach. We believe it’s about leadership: To achieve effective knowledge man-