8/3/2019 Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicable methodology for improving knowledge sharing in virtual teams

1/4

This report is publishedunder aCreativeCommonsAttribution-ShareAlike2.5UK:ScotlandLicense.

1

Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicable methodology for improving knowledgesharing in virtual teams

February 17, 2012

Eleni Boursinou, Dane Lukic and Anoush Margaryan

Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

1. Purpose

This report summarises the findings of the project Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicablemethodology for improving knowledge sharing in virtual teams. The aim of the project was tofurther develop the Narrating Your Work (NYW) methodology, piloted by Hans de Zwart andothers at Shell

1, into a robust and replicable method for improving knowledge sharing and senseof connectedness in virtual teams.

The specific objectives of the study were to:

1) Refine the NYW methodology, by building upon the outcomes ofthe original pilot, and

2) Develop a practical toolkit that can be used by other virtual teams wishing to adopt the NYWmethodology.

In this report, we, firstly, describe the methodology of our study. Secondly, we summarise thekey findings. Thirdly, we propose a set of recommendations for the improvement of the NYW

approach.

2. What did we do?

Firstly, we analysed updates within Yammer generated by users through the original NYWexperiment. This included all updates made in the period from March 18 th to June 20th2011.Updates posted both within the overall Shell Yammer network, open to all Shell subscribers, andupdates within HRIT LOB team (a closed group) were extracted and analysed thematically.Descriptive statistics of the Yammer data are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Yammer data

Open (SHELL) Closed (HRIT LOB) Total

Threads 106 266 372

Questions 39 57 96

Replies to postings 92 54 146

Liked 50 56 106

@ 186 240 426

#nywlob 109 27 136

1 For the details of the original experiment see http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2011/03/18/the -narrating-your-work-experiment/

8/3/2019 Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicable methodology for improving knowledge sharing in virtual teams

2/4

This report is publishedunder aCreativeCommonsAttribution-ShareAlike2.5UK:ScotlandLicense

2

Secondly, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12out of16members of the HRIT LOBteam. Interviewees were based in four different locations: The Hague (n=8), Houston (n=3)London (n=1),and Kuala Lumpur (n=1).During the original NYW experiment, there had been18 members in the team. However, two of these were no longer part of the teamduring ourstudy. Thirteen members of the team had agreed to participate in an interview, but one personlater dropped out of the study. Three individualsdid not reply to invitation to participate in thestudy. A summary of respondents is shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Summary of respondents

Employees TheHague

Houston Kuala

LumpurLondon Total

LeadershipRole within the

HRIT LOB team

2 0 0 1 3

Staff 3 3 1 0 7

Contractors 2 0 0 0 2Total 7 3 1 1 12

It is worth mentioning that during the interviews it was challenging to ensure that respondentsdescribing their perceptions and experiences limited to the timeframe of the original experiment(March to June 2011). Therefore, the interview data refers to the use of NYW both within theoriginal experiment and in the period after it.

3. What did we find?

Main findings are structured around four key research foci we set out to investigate:engagement and connectedness; knowledge exchange; co-creation of ideas and innovation,and change.Miscellaneous findings are also outlined.Engagement and Connectedness

The majority of the respondents indicated that the NYW experiment, coupled with face-to-face meetings, contributed to improving team cohesion. As one respondent stated: WithoutNYW,we could go on for 10 days without receiving any news [from others in the team].

All respondents based in Houston and Kuala Lumpur indicated that NYW was essential andvaluable for their knowledge sharing and feeling connected with the rest of the team. Incontrast, for co-located team members, NYW appeared to be less important in terms ofenhancing the sense of connectedness.

During the experiment, three members of the team acted as NYW champions. They took onthis role informally and organically and played a crucial role in launching discussions,chasing people to contribute to the experiment and leading by personal example.Thesechampions helpedmotivate other team members to engagewith NYW.

A number of key factors that motivated the participants to engage with NYW emerged fromthe analysis. Firstly, the respondents were motivated to participate in NYW when they soughtadvice on a work-related issue or task. Secondly, they were motivated to participate whenthey sought visibility within the group. Thirdly, improved sense of comradeship was animportant reason to participate. Fourthly, praise and rewards were key motivating factors.Fifthly, respondents indicated that what motivated them to read others postings are if the

8/3/2019 Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicable methodology for improving knowledge sharing in virtual teams

3/4

This report is publishedunder aCreativeCommonsAttribution-ShareAlike2.5UK:ScotlandLicense.

3

postings were short and to the point, contained a good story, humour and fun.

NYW contributed to raising awareness and building understanding on what other teammembers were working on. This was viewed as very valuableby all respondents.

A minority of respondents felt that others in the team and especially managers that were notco-located could judge their performance on the basis of their NYW postings. Therefore

these respondents tended to post lengthy, detailed updates about their daily tasks. Theyfeared that had they narrated less, colleagues would perceive them as being inefficient orunproductive in their work. These respondents indicated that being able to post non work-related, social updates had helped them overcome their unease about NYW.

Non work-related postings may be equally important to work-related postings for enhancingconnectedness. The majority of the respondents suggested that finding out about differentfacets of a team member increased the sense of connectedness.

Knowledge Exchange

NYWappeared to be less interactive within the closed, HRIT-LOB group than in the opengroup. Few conversations took place and few questions were asked. Most of the questionslargely focused on seeking adviceon some issues -were posted in the open group or thegroup that had the relevant area of expertise.

Having an option of posting in a closed group was perceived by some respondents asenabling them to build a sense of community, allowing social interaction and creation ofdeeper relationships important to effective knowledge exchange. Other respondentsperceived that limiting postings to closed groups was detrimental to organisational knowledgesharing, which is essential in global companies such as Shell.

NYW methodology was instrumental in supporting the participants in finding solutions toissues (mainly IT-related) as well as locating people with relevant expertise:I found out thatone of the BAs was working on a similar project and I used his expertise on the matter tosolve some of the issues I was facing, instead of trial and error. We ended up connecting ona personal basis and I found out more about his hobbies... As the conversation progressed,we came up with an idea of a project for one of our clients.

Co-creation of ideas and Innovation

In contrast to what we anticipated, the combined analysis of the Yammer and interview data didnot providesubstantial examples of co-creation of ideas and innovationoccurring as a result ofNYW.This is not to suggest that NYW had not led to co-creation of knowledge or innovation, butsimply that there is no evidence to this effect in therelatively limited data we generated throughthis small-scale study. A more extensive follow up study, using a more sophisticated set ofmethodologies, could help ascertain whether or not NYW could lead to knowledge creation andinnovation.

Change

Our hypothesis that NYW could have led to behavioural change was not supported by our data.Only two limited examples of change in behaviour were evidenced in our dataset. The firstexample consisted of a change in the way a participant formulated issues and questions,

8/3/2019 Narrating Your Work: Developing a replicable methodology for improving knowledge sharing in virtual teams

4/4