Traffic at US Broadcasting

Corp

Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Kara Craig
LIS 880 Knowledge Management
Dr. Crowley
17 December 2020
 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Knowledge Management Benefits Map 3

Knowledge Management Implementation Plan 4

Strategy 5

Plan 7

Test 9

Roll Out 10

Operate and Improve 11

Knowledge Management Framework 12

Sources 13

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Introduction

Many of the traffic departments for stations and networks at US Broadcasting Corp (USBC) all operate
on different timelines, methods, and have different structures. Some stations/networks finalize logs and
have them sent to engineering at a set time every day, while others often are working until 5pm,
sometimes after. This could be due to various reasons (unfamiliarity with certain processes, sales team
having advertiser’s/agencies’ orders in later than required, not receiving materials in time, etc.). This
leads to delayed finalization of television logs, more copy errors (which leads to loss of revenue),
technical errors that cause broadcast interruptions, and an improper work-life balance amongst
employees.

In studies done on the effects of Knowledge Management (KM) implementation within media
organizations, authors have noted that “the use of knowledge management, knowledge preservation,
knowledge transfer, knowledge creation, and application had positive and significant impact on the
management of media organizations” (Sharazi, 2016, p. 1452). We can best understand knowledge as the
information necessary to successfully complete a task and an essential part of operational processes. With
KM implementation, we hope to create a culture of knowledge sharing that improves all of our trafficking
processes, specifically through the creation of a shared repository across all stations and ongoing
Communities of Practice that will cultivate continued knowledge sharing amongst all stations and traffic
regions.

With a Knowledge Management plan, we hope to achieve the following goals:

● Cut back on copy errors that cause loss of revenue
● Ensure all broadcasts run smoothly and avoid any technical errors
● Stick to uniform deadlines in order to allow more time to catch issues and maintain a better work-
life balance

These KM goals can be directly tied to USBC’s goals of:

● Revenue Growth across all broadcast and digital platforms
● Quality in our broadcasts and programming
● Encouraging innovation from employees

They can also help to visualize our values of:

● Value of Local
● Value of Programming
● Value of Growth
● Value of Innovation

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Knowledge Management Benefits Map

Below is a benefits map showing the Knowledge Management practices and how they will connect to
USBC’s strategic goals.

We want to clearly illustrate how the objectives of KM implementation will support the business and
goals of USBC, linking all processes from start to finish. The KM interventions will result in Business
Changes. These changes will provide Measurable Outcomes that are clearly connected to our company’s
goals. Below is how we plan to achieve this through the Knowledge Management Implementation Plan.

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

The Knowledge Management Implementation Plan will act as a project timeline to outline the various
stages and steps taken for KM to be integrated into everyday processes. The Implementation Plan will be
plotted to follow the below stages:
● Strategize
● Plan
● Test
● Roll Out
● Operate and Improve

Our desire is, through peer-assists, interviews, mentoring, and other knowledge capture activities, we can
then create and implement a digital repository of traffic processes, best practices, and lessons learned, that
will help to achieve the above stated goals. This knowledge repository will be accessible to all traffic
hubs and departments across all stations and networks in order to ensure that our processes are seamless
and without interruption due to any knowledge gaps, allowing us to continue being a strong part in
achieving the goals of USBC.

With this plan, we will focus on knowledge capture and strategy within formed traffic regions, especially
Communities of Practice (which will be determined after the formation of the Knowledge Management
team and completion of Strategy phase). We will form a KM team to assess the current culture of
knowledge management, areas of strength and weakness, and needs/desires of all traffic teams.

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Strategy

In this stage, we will also build the Knowledge Management team and assess the current state of
knowledge management in the organization, working with Traffic managers, leaders, and other
stakeholders to determine KM needs and areas where KM will have the greatest impact on business
drivers. The roles to be filled are (as adapted from Milton & Lambe):

● Knowledge Management Leader (or Chief Knowledge Officer) - Preferably an internal employee
hired into the role that will lead all KM efforts for the whole organization, working closely with
organizational leadership to determine the objectives of the implementation program.
● Project Manager (will possibly be one for every traffic region) - Will look after administrative
aspects of project; maintaining project plan, managing budget, and will report to KM leader
● Knowledge manager - maintain and document knowledge of the team, build a KM community of
practice, and start to build the corporate knowledge base
● KM Coaches/Assistants - people who will go out and support KM activities in the organization;
deliver proof of concept

We would like the KM team to be a mix of employees from HR, traffic, sales, engineering,
communications, and IT. Having a diverse KM team will be especially helpful during potential testing
and roll out phases across USBC, as there should be a well-rounded and knowledgeable team ready to
approach KM from all angles.

The team will also identify a Sponsor for the project, a C-level executive to advocate on behalf of the KM
team and implementation process. Ideally, it would be someone who is knowledgeable of traffic
processes, such as the President of Networks and Programming (as they oversee all operational aspects of
the stations in the company).

The KM team will begin drafting a Knowledge Management framework (as shown on page 13) to guide
them once they reach the planning phase.

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Plan

In this phase, the KM implementation plan will be created and finalized. We will determine the
knowledge that needs to be gathered/captured (i.e. such as step by step processes) through meetings with
traffic managers and teams across all regions. Once that has been assessed, we will then determine the
best methods to capture that knowledge and technologies to use to house the knowledge to ensure its
accessibility.

Based on our knowledge of the company, we believe that Communities of Practice (CoP) should be
formed across all regions and employees of all levels as a primary method of knowledge capture. These
CoPs will act as “tools to seek feedback from colleagues on an area of work or a specific activity or
product” and will help one another to better understand the idiosyncrasies in the work across all regions in
the company (United Nations Development Programme, 2007). These CoPs would ideally be:

● Regional traffic communities (such as Midwest Region, Southeast Region, etc.)

● Communities for all traffic directors and managers (National CoP as well as regional CoPs for
traffic managers)
● Communities for all traffic coordinators (National CoP as well as regional CoPs for traffic
coordinators and assistants)

Other techniques of Knowledge capture that we think would be most effective are:

● Mentoring - “links mentees (less experienced employees) with mentors (more experienced
employees) in the organization” (Spy Pond Partners)
● On-The-Job Training - “any kind of instruction that takes place at the actual job site and
involves learning tasks, skills, or procedures in a hands-on manner” (Department of
Administrative Services, New Hampshire)
● Regular intra office/intra division meetings - “tools to seek feedback from colleagues on an
area of work or a specific activity or product” (United Nations Development Program)

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● Best Practices/Lessons Learned - “The identification and use of processes and/or practices that
result in excellent products or services.” (Knowledge Management & Transfer Model, State of
New Hampshire)
● Peer Assist - “The process involves a team of people who are working on a project or process,
seeking knowledge and advice from others with previous experience and expertise in the area”
(United Nations Development Program)
● Peer Review - “tools to seek feedback from colleagues on an area of work or a specific activity
or product” (United Nations Development Program)

Technologies that we believe should be used to assist in capturing and documenting the knowledge
include:

● Wiki Sites/pages
● Intra-company chat apps like Microsoft Teams and Skype
● Online Message Board, Forum, or Q&A functions
● Shared drives/folders
● Recording of meetings

With these knowledge capture techniques and technologies, we hope to create a culture of knowledge
sharing amongst the teams in order to gather and collate the knowledge held by employees. We will then
take the knowledge gathered and place them into a singular digital repository to be accessible to all traffic
teams across the company, especially as we move to the testing phase.

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Test

In the testing phase, we will begin to see how these KM activities look in everyday practice. As the goal
is to prove the validity of knowledge management to all, we plan to perform pilot projects, testing these
knowledge practices (techniques, technologies, and digital repositories) in a single market or region
before rolling out across all traffic teams in the company. For example, a traffic team in X market would
consult the digital repository, their CoPs, or mentor in order to complete log finalization at the proper
deadline.

The things to be measured and analyzed would be:

● Time to complete copy and finalize log and ability to hit all deadlines (Daily)
● Broadcast errors (gathered by engineering team) made on the part of traffic (Weekly)
● Number of credits and loss of revenue due to traffic errors (Monthly or Quarterly)

Having daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly marks where we can continually measure the effectiveness
of KM to the company allows for “quick wins” that we can deliver to the company on a regular and
ongoing basis. Stakeholders and executives can regularly assess the effectiveness of KM implementation
and we can continually tweak things in our plan on a smaller scale. The timeline for these would be
determined by the KM team but one to two quarters would allow for a clear showing of results.

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Roll Out

After a successful testing phase where pilots and quick wins have successfully proven the value of KM to
the company, from C-level to employees, the framework will be implemented across all teams within the
company. The testing phase would essentially be repeated across all markets and regions, ensuring that
KM is becoming properly embedded.

The KM team will assist the Traffic teams in embedding KM and helping them to take over all activities
to become knowledge workers themselves, through regular training and hands-on exercises.

Operate and Improve

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

The “final” phase of the KM implementation plan is a continual monitoring of KM activities and
effectiveness of the framework. KM has successfully been embedded within the company and activities
have already been transferred to the traffic teams, where the Knowledge Leader/Chief Knowledge Officer
is now more in an operational role. Despite this, all techniques and technologies will continually be
assessed and will inevitably need modification as company goals change and new challenges present
themselves. Adjustments to the KM framework will happen as needed.

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 Traffic at USBC / Knowledge Management Implementation Plan

Knowledge Management Framework

Discuss Document Synthesize Find/Review

People/Roles Traffic hubs, traffic Minutes, discussion Knowledge owner for Knowledge
teams, individual facilitator, knowledge each traffic hub/region managers/traffic
stations/network engineer w/ traffic mgr. coordinators (more
familiarity with ins and
outs);

Process Weekly meetings, Q&A Interviews, after action Best practices supported Before action reviews;
Forum, Baton Passing, reviews by could do knowledge,
Knowledge Handover knowledge exchanges
across teams

Technology Discussion forum; Teams Voice/video recordings Wikis, Shared Drives, Search, Taxonomy
Chat app lessons mgmt. system Repository (housed on agreed upon by all
HR site?) traffic/cops

Governance Traffic hubs and Expectations for lessons KM policy, metadata Expectations for lesson
corporate, CoPs capture reuse/continued
knowledge sharing

Above is how we imagine our KM framework to eventually be filled, with a clear breakdown of the
actions needed by people, processes, technology, and governance in order to discuss, document,
synthesize, and eventually find the knowledge captured across teams. This KM framework will act as a
guide to build the KM implementation plan upon, ensuring that all areas have been met (especially when
beginning the testing and piloting phase). To reiterate, with our KM implementation, we will:

● Identify Critical Knowledge

● Collect, Store, and Organize that Knowledge
● Share Relevant Knowledge and Information Between Users
● Utilize Existing Knowledge to Drive New Knowledge Innovation

After successful implementation, we hope to eventually see close to zero loss of revenue due to copy
errors on the part of traffic, close to zero broadcast interruptions due to any technical errors caused by
traffic, and uniform deadlines across all markets to ensure a more orderly delivery of logs with more time
to catch any errors.

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Sources
Below are the sources that were consulted in the creation of this document.

Department of Administrative Services, State of New Hampshire. Knowledge

management & transfer model: Techniques and forms. https://das.nh.gov/hr/
workforcetoolkit.html

Garfield, S. (2014, August 18). 9 Questions to Answer for Knowledge Management.

Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140818180219-2500783-9
-questions-to-answer-for-knowledge-management

Garfield, S. (2014, September 15). Identifying the Top 3 Objectives for a KM Program.
Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140915160122-2500783-
identifying-the-top-3-objectives-for-a-km-program

Garfield, S. (2016, June, 14). Implementing a Successful KM Program, 100th Post, and
20 Years in Knowledge Management. Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com
/pulse/implementing-successful-km-program-100th-post-20-years-stan-ga
rfield

Garfield, S. (2018, April 26). Knowledge Management Implementation Plan and KM

Program Governance. Medium. https://stangarfield.medium.com/
knowledge-management-implementation-plan-and-km-program-governa
nce-44b6b6e3c344

Milton, N. J., & Lambe, P. (2020). The knowledge manager's handbook: A step-by-step
guide to embedding effective knowledge management in your organization
(2nd ed.). Kogan Page.

Morrissey, S. (2005). The Design and Implementation of Effective Knowledge

Management Systems [Unpublished master’s thesis}. University of
Pennsylvania.

Shirazi, Z.D. (2016). Management of media organizations (radio and tv) with special
emphasis on knowledge management. The Turkish Online Journal of Design
Art and Communication, 6, 1452–1459. https://doi.org/10.7456/1060AGSE/030

Spy Pond Partners. Knowledge management guide NCHRP project 2098.

http://sites.spypondpartners.com/kmdemo/index.html#browse

United Nations Development Programme. Knowledge Management Toolkit for the

Crisis Prevention and Recovery Practice Area. (2007, March).

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https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/p%26i%20to%20post
.pdf

United States Agency for International Development. (2016, March). Feed the future
enabling environment for food security: Knowledge management
implementation plan. https://usaidlearninglab.org/sites/default/files
/resource/files/ftf_eefs_km_implementation_plan_final_usaid.pdf

Warren, B. M. (2008). Introducing and implementing a new media knowledge

management plan for public radio program directors [Master’s thesis,
University of Pennsylvania. ScholarlyCommons.

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