A Knowledge Management experience in the energy sector

This paper presents a 5-years experience in a Knowledge Management Program in an energy sector company, characterized by geographical dispersion, different languages and cultures, standard processes, decentralized organization and high impact of technical knowledge. The approach is based on communities of practice (CoP). During this period a team has worked to facilitate and promote the exchange of knowledge, playing a role in defining the methodological approach and coordinating some activities such as CoP creation, budgeting, etc. We provide indications on which we think were the most valuable initiatives, in terms of: - amount of people reached - impact to the business results - resources needed. Successfully implementing a Knowledge Management program in an organization is related with the culture in the organization, and all the mechanisms available to influence the culture of the organization need to be aligned. We briefly present the mechanisms that were put in place in this experience.