9th Annual Midwest KM Symposium: Part 7 – Maggie Starkey

This is the seventh in a series of posts about the Midwest Knowledge Management Symposium held June 16, 2023 at Kent State University. This post is about the sixth presentation in Track 1 (People and Processes) delivered by Maggie Starkey.

Maggie Starkey is an accomplished knowledge management specialist with over ten years of experience in multiple roles in the manufacturing industry. She is an innovator who seeks out opportunities for improvements and implements new ideas to make a positive difference for her colleagues at Kraton Corporation.

In 2020, she found her passion for knowledge management after seeing the vast amount of knowledge being lost at Kraton and became the key player in the creation and implementation of the knowledge management program. She holds an associate degree in business management and a BS in Public Relations and Marketing. She will also complete her MS in Knowledge Management in December of 2023.

Building on knowledge gained from experience and higher education, she regularly attends conferences and training to continually increase her expertise in knowledge management and other key areas that tie directly to KM. She is a change agent for Kraton, continually developing and implementing new tools and mechanisms to improve work processes and share knowledge across the R&D organization she represents. She is active in the SIKM Leaders Community and plans to start blogging.

How to Make KM Stick: Steps to Achieving a Knowledge Sharing Culture by Maggie Starkey

Maggie stressed the importance of buy-in from leadership and strong governance. She advised doing the following:

• Develop a strategy with clear tie to business objectives.
• Appoint a steering team.
• Define formal roles, responsibilities, and processes.
• Engage first level managers because they are key to transforming the culture.
• Stress to all managers they need to walk the talk and lead by example.

She recommended recruiting early adopters and advocates, designating them as Knowledge Champions. This includes seeking out potential advocates behind the scenes.

Maggie shared how Kraton does rewards and recognition. She described their KM Excellence Award and Peer Recognition programs.

She suggested finding pain points in the organization and alleviating them with KM solutions in the flow of work. For Kraton, these included:

• Expertise Location
• Content Management and Search
• Electronic Lab Notebooks

Maggie asserted that the most important thing to do is to build trusting relationships with your people. She said, “All I do is change management.” She recommended identifying the best forms of communication for each phase in the Prosci change management model.

The final slide Maggie presented was about making KM stand out and making it fun through:

• Specific KM program branding
• Contests and trivia with prizes
• Celebrating all the hard work done

Maggie’s presentation was well received. To continue expanding her knowledge, she picked up two books written by symposium speakers:

Maggie was a member of the planning committee for the symposium. And she used her artistic creativity to design the logo used for the event:

Part 8 of this series will feature Linda Lavelle. Part 6 featured Rachel Teague.