Knowledge Management Fitness
Learning Organization and Corporate University Practice
Knowledge management is creating, interpreting, retaining, and transferring knowledge so that the entire organization can benefit. One multinational company with sites in Asia, U.S., and Europe, wanted to make sure their global knowledge base was continually dispersed across functions, divisions, and geographic units. "We saw that the people who knew how to solve problems were scattered in many different locations," one manager said. "We wanted to figure out how to connect them so they could share knowledge." Another manager declared that their goal was to become a "know-who-based company" where all knowledge was available everywhere through human networks.
An enterprise can't become a "learning organization" unless knowledge is systematically shared. From our experience, here are some ways to get started in knowledge management.
- Focus learning first on the areas in which improvement is critical to business success.
- Begin with a workshop to jump-start the process.
- Choose participants who are homogenous by level and heterogeneous by function.
- Extend invitations to participants either in person or by phone-no emails or memos. The more senior the person asking, the more attractive and important the program.
- Choose an external facilitator - not a trainer. He/she should know how to create a safe environment for risk taking and progress discussions along.
- Ask for a commitment of two hours; start and end on time.
- Explore in depth and ask for examples when, "This will never work in my environment" rears its head.
- Pay special attention and recognize participants who have taken a risk and thrown light on the powerful and omnipresent hidden culture that drives "things to do and not do, say and not say."
- Encourage participants to talk to one another on issues rather than having everything directed to the senior session leader or facilitator
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FITNESS TEST
To assess how welcoming the management, culture, human resources and work climate are to organizational learning and knowledge application, take the following "fitness test." Rank each item on a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 being "disagree" and 9 being "fully agree." This test will highlight those areas in which the organization is weakest and thus where more work will be needed to lay the groundwork for a knowledge management system.
One way to use this tool is to get a variety of people in the organization to complete the questionnaire, then compare the rankings. You may be surprised how different groups of people perceive the same organization. A group discussion or focus groups can help to educate, generate shared understanding, and develop awareness and examples of how the organization functions. These activities can also determine the next steps the organization is prepared to take.
1. ASPIRATION, MISSION and DIRECTION
- There is shared clarity about what the company or institution is in business for and what its value is.
- People in the organization have a sense of where the enterprise is going.
- The organization culture supports a performance ethic
- Goals, targets and outcomes are stretching
2. INDIVIDUALITY
- The organization encourages individual stretching, delegation, coaching and decision space.
- Individuality is seen as more of an asset than conformity.
- Senior people accept that they do not always have all the answers.
- Decision makers can cope with challenges to their decisions
- Management of consequences for success and failure.
3. INTERDEPENDENCE
- There is a sense, among the various parts of the organization, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
- People look for win/win solutions rather than competing regardless of the consequences. They consider the impact of their actions on other parts of the organization and customers.
- Organization infrastructure excels at three control levers: people; financial; operational
4. FLEXIBILITY
- The organization is not weighed down by hierarchy.
- Innovative solutions and ideas are generated across internal boundaries.
- The organization enables and encourages people to take risks.
- It responds to new situations quickly and effectively, employing new methods and combinations of technology, new talent, resourcefulness, with a creating the future focus.
5. COMMUNICATION
- Issues and concerns are regularly aired and shared.
- Senior people actively seek out the views of staff.
- Systems exist to allow people to raise the red flag if they see something unsafe or wrong.
- Decision making is transparent (not behind closed doors) and communicated.
- People are eager to share new ideas and applications and technologies
- Management and employees excel at the three motivational levers of people, opportunities and culture values
6. CONFLICT RESOLUTION
- The organization manages differences and conflict rather than suppressing them.
- People state their point of view, knowing it will be listened to and taken into account.
- Differences are viewed, and used, as "creative tension."
- Difficult issues are worked through, not avoided. If they are delegated to teams, there are clear goals, timetables, and outputs.
7. RECOGNITION SYSTEMS
- Reward systems publicly acknowledge exceptional achievements and results.
- Reward systems are based on achievements and results rather than on seniority.
- People are rewarded in ways other than pay and recognition-for example, with training and development, greater responsibilities, job rotation, or assignment to special task forces.
- The organization clearly communicates measures of success and illustrates them by example.
8. ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
- The organization regularly stands back, reviews its actions, and previews the challenges ahead.
- It learns from previous successes and failures-what worked and what didn't.
- There is transparency of performance feedback for business and institutional units, self-managing teams and individuals.
9. ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS
- The organization continually monitors its performance and its relationships with today's unforgiving market dynamics, community, contractors, suppliers, customers, etc.
- It anticipates changes in the environment and positions itself accordingly.
- It seeks to understand how outsiders perceive it.
- Management and employees spotlight results by understanding how much greater the penalty is for missing market expectations than the reward for over delivering on promises
No one receives a perfect score. A high score (and each company and institution is unique, so "high" is subjective) indicates that the organization is very well prepared to leverage organizational intellectual capital.
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