Chevron Corporation

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. Headquartered

in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries, it is engaged in every aspect of
the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,
marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is
one of the world's six "supermajor" oil companies; as of 2013, it ranked eleventh in the Fortune
Global 500 list of the world's largest companies.

Developing The Chevron Way was an important step in creating our culture of
Operational Excellence. It explains who we are, what we do, what we believe and what we plan
to accomplish. It was developed nearly two decades ago so everyone our business touches would
have a concise definition of our vision, values and strategies. Our value of "protecting people and
the environment," as stated in The Chevron Way, drives our OE: "We place the highest priority
on the health and safety of our workforce and protection of our assets and the environment."

Organizational Culture
Two key concepts are important in Chevrons corporate culture: the learning organization
and committed teamwork. Through informal benchmarking with other
companies developing CoPs, the corporate IT group feels Chevrons CoPs are doing
better than average in the way they function and collaborate on teams. But without
a sharing/learning culture, people will not invest their limited time and attention in
any knowledge management system. However, if the knowledge management system
is a required part of the work process, even an unfriendly system will get used. The
challenge
for successful knowledge management is to provide easy-to-use systems that
are part of the normal work process.
A critical cultural barrier is answering the question Whats in it for me? Chevron

does not have a totally compelling answer to this question yet. The teams are collecting
success stories that demonstrate time saved by participating in CoPs (time is probably
the most important commodity), new business opportunities (e.g., by use of
People Connection), and professional recognition. Metrics around sharing and reuse
are being built into the annual performance evaluation and technical career ladder/
promotion/job-posting processes. The most powerful lever is building knowledge
management into the regular work process; it should be the way Chevron works.
To overcome cultural barriers, the corporate IT group is publicizing success stories
in the company newsletters and on the internal corporate portal. Recently, examples
of how knowledge workers are being helped by the knowledge management
initiatives in place were presented at a senior executive meeting. Similar presentations
have been made to employees at regional sharing fairs.
Successfully

Support Structure
The support team consists of three people: the knowledge management project manager
and architect, a database specialist, and a communications specialist. They were
selected by matching interests with specific skill/project requirements. The project
manager
works with the knowledge management council to define specific project goals and
works with project teams to deliver the applications or processes. The project manager
also does most of the communicationpresentations to other Chevron teams and
strategy discussions with management. The database specialist is a project manager for
the People Connection project and serves as the coordinator for the database CoP.
The communications specialist helps spread the word about their plans and delivers
the communication plan within CITC (Chevron Information Technology Company).
Initially, Corporate Quality team members used networks of senior quality coaches
(with representatives from most of Chevrons operating companies) and later key
bestpractice
team coordinators to develop a KM team. The next-generation effort created

a Knowledge Management Council (sounding board for ideas and a knowledge transfer
vehicle) and later a small project team. Other knowledge management activities resulted
in the formation of additional project teams, sometimes including a corporate knowledge
management representative.
The corporate IT group is now working with senior executives to reinforce knowledge
sharing and reuse as fundamental corporate values, not just tools. To be successful,
knowledge management has to be made a part of business processes and
included on annual performance evaluations and in criteria for promotion.
Chevron does not use an explicit reward/incentive system. Sharing knowledge and
mentoring others are components of its technical career ladder, criteria for promotion,
and job evaluation. The plan is to strengthen these elements and add specific metrics
to measure what was shared and reused. It is important to make knowledge
sharing and reuse a part of normal work processes.

Current Efforts and Future Plans

The growth of CoP activities as a part of the learning organization tool kit and
increased contributions from a wider Chevron audience are critical success factors to
Chevrons knowledge management efforts. Senior management has a key role to play
in converting knowledge management from a tool to a core value. One approach
would be to form a senior management network that would commit to:
bringing issues to the network for discussion, best-practice sharing, and potential
resolution;
focus on management issues and processes, such as behaviors, resource allocation,
work processes, policy generation, etc., and use the existing Knowledge Connection
Web site;
champion corporate strategic best practices;
involve senior executives to become active sponsors on critical best-practice networks;

 design a measurement system to capture progress made in sharing (behavioral

process measures) and improvements (results measure); and
design a reward system targeted at both employees and management and included
as an important element of performance evaluations and management incentive
management

Business Strategy:
Due to Chevrons decentralized nature, individual operating companies define
their own strategies. It is difficult to design and execute corporatewide initiatives,
although recent experiences with a standardized IT platform and the collaborative
work done to achieve Y2K compliance are good success stories. Overall, knowledge
management strategies are aligned with strategic business objectives, offering KM as
one way of accomplishing goals. These strategies are communicated through an
informal knowledge management community of practice and are being used to begin
sharing examples of knowledge practices and applications.
Chevron is seeing a gradual shift from a focus on operational excellence (cutting
costs, cycle time, etc.) to a growth strategy based on innovation. This is clearly seen
in its e-business activity. Chevrons knowledge management strategy is placing greater
emphasis on the rapid flow of knowledge to transfer innovative ideas and practices and
the connection of people to people to quickly answer questions and solve problems.
Chevrons main thrust has been on best practices, thus knowledge assets are the primary
driver for its knowledge architecture. Although both accessing knowledge assets
and the flow of knowledge have always been important aspects of building the strategy,
between 60 and 70 percent of the effort has been on access and retrieval of assets

up to this point (greater emphasis will be placed on communities of practice in the

future).
The IT and corporate quality groups teamed to design the strategy with input
from the knowledge management network. IT and corporate quality made awareness
presentations and funded/managed the development of key tools such as
Knowledge Connection, People Connection, and the CoP model. Later in 1999, an
IT team consisting of the original planner/architect, a database technologist, and a
communications specialist was formed to concentrate on applications for the IT service
company. Members of the knowledge management network had informal meetings
to share these plans within their respective organizations.
Besides contributions from internal project managers, engineers, and consultants,
Chevrons strategy leveraged information and guidance from literature, APQC, IT
analysis groups (e.g., Gartner), and conferences. There was some collaboration with
EDS, Chevrons IT outsourcer, and Ernst & Youngs knowledge management consortium
also contributed to the strategy design.
Chevron realized that communities of practice are a key delivery mechanism for
creativity and innovation. Employees also need quick access to the information and
knowledge required to accomplish the task of cutting costs and achieving safety
objectives. Knowledge organization/search and retrieval tools and behaviors to make
documenting successes and lessons learned a required part of the Chevron work