Interesting article du Wall Street Journal on the introduction of communities at Schlumberger (52,000 employees in 80 countries). With success, since almost 12,000 of them are members of one of the 23 communities (and 140 sub-groups!) that the company has.Schlumberger takes the concept a step further, since these communities are genuinely self-organised and elect their own leaders.
A question of management
Schlumberger’s problem had nothing to do with the deployment of KM tools, but rather with getting employees to share their expertise and experience for their own benefit, that of the company… and that of its shareholders.
Schlumberger only sells services, and was struggling to get specialists who were very comfortable with individual projects but reluctant to get involved in collective projects. The company’s reaction, after all the traditional techniques had been tried in vain, was: ‘if it’s impossible to manage these people, let them manage themselves’.
Another objective is to increase the influence of professionals in the field on the priorities of top management and to create links between several communities. In both cases, the objective would seem to have been largely achieved.
The approach
As nothing similar could serve as a benchmark, Schlumberger first asked anyone who volunteered to join a specific community to do so, without any a priori or a posteriori checks on skills or areas of specialisation. Then, given that the CVs were being held by HR and that nobody really knew each other, participants were asked to create an online CV… a process that proved a resounding success (50,000 CVs published to date). The key to success: for the first time, employees were given the opportunity to say ‘this is who I am’, to exist.
After six months, the members of these still embryonic communities were asked to elect their managers… which doubled the rate of participation in internal elections compared with the time when the community model had not been adopted.
For the CEO of Schlumberger, self-management is the key factor in the success of a community, because experts are above all sensitive to the esteem of their peers.
And to conclude: ‘the best people to choose who will lead them are those who actually work together’.
So what do you think?
As an advocate of this type of operation myself, I’m pleasantly surprised by this example. I’d even go so far as to say that they really go a long way. Managing by esteem, letting individuals choose who is best placed to manage them, recognising that with a certain type of population it’s better to let them manage themselves… and to say it so frankly is truly surprising at the present time.
Of course, this type of approach is not valid for all types of company. Here, with a large proportion of experts and knowledgeworkers, it makes perfect sense.
I also like the idea behind it: we’ve tried everything and it didn’t work, so instead of wasting time and money on traditional recipes that are proving their limits, let’s dare to innovate and look at things as they are in our companies today.
There is, however, one outstanding question. We operate on geographically dispersed communities, that’s fine. You can put your CV online to make yourself known and to exist, that’s fine. I’m still curious to know what the other parts of the process are, because it seems obvious to me that tools have had to be deployed to enable these communities to exchange and live online.
Does anyone have the answer?
