Succeeding With Knowledge Management:
Getting The People-Factors Right
Peter A.C Smith & Moira McLaughlin
Presented 6th World Congress on Intellectual Capital & Innovation
January 15-17, 2003 at McMaster University , Hamilton , Canada
© Copyright TLA Inc. 2003
Abstract
Knowledge Management (KM) and organizational learning are widely accepted as valuable means for organizations to enhance intellectual capital, encourage innovation and optimize performance. The authors maintain that successful implementation of either of these approaches is critically dependent on the collaborative nature of the organization’s social fabric. They further assert that this social fabric is significantly influenced for better or worse by critical non-rational people-factors that are ignored in a typical KM or organizational learning initiative.
The authors contend that organizations largely operate at all times under a cloak of rationality, ignoring non-rational realities such as emotion. The result is that energy that could be applied productively actually becomes a damaging force that undercuts performance. It is argued that an organization implementing KM and/or organizational learning must strike an adequate balance between rationality/technical efficiency and non-rational factors if the anticipated benefits are to be captured.
In this paper a performance-based approach to the design and implementation of a KM system is proposed that facilitates identification, clarification, and remediation of the key non-rational people-factors that impact its usage and efficacy. This approach is independent of the type of KM system envisaged.
The authors first lay a “New Science” foundation for the performance approach. Next they explain how a KM environment can be designed, implemented, and monitored using a simple performance system comprised of three performance drivers or “fields”. They go on to examine important shortcomings they believe are common to KM implementation, and explore remediation via factors that shape the state of these three “fields”. The role and impact of vision and mission statements, plus various physiological and non-rational factors are discussed.
The authors further maintain that leverage for remediation lies in upgrading “Personal KM” by first assisting managers to change the quality of local peer-peer and peer-subordinate interactions to enhance authenticity and create emotional openness. Action learning has been found to be an ideal vehicle to achieve these ends when exploited as part of an intensive workshop and coaching program enriched with skills drawn from disciplines such as counselling.
Introduction
For more than a decade Knowledge Management (KM) has been proposed by many authorities as a viable means to optimize enterprise performance in the face of the rapidly increasing complexity and ambiguity of our modern world (Drucker, 1988; Itami & Roehl, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Von Krogh, 2000; Choo & Bontis, 2002). During this period the KM field has been significantly hyped; however, practitioners and researchers have begun to have access to reasoned critiques (Fuller, 2001; Seely Brown & Duguid, 2000; Pietersen, 2001) and balanced reviews (Despres & Chauvel, 2000a). Indeed there is now an admission that KM systems can fail to deliver on their promise (Fahey & Prusak, 1998; Newell & Scarbrough, 1999; Lindgren & Henfridsson, 2002; Storey & Barnett, 2000). It is our contention that the true reasons for sub-optimal KM performance are in very many cases related to the lack of supportive attitudes and emotions on the part of the organization’s employees. Since most organizations only countenance operation within a facade of rationality (Smith & Sharma, 2002a) such negative people-related factors remain unacknowledged or at best undiscussable. As a consequence solutions are not explored and organizations are forced to repeat history with predictably dim results.
Fortunately of late there has been an acknowledgement of the people-centric nature of KM implementation. Comments by authorities such as Wiig (2000; pp. 4) “ … there are emerging realisations that to achieve the level of effective behaviour required for competitive excellence, the whole person must be considered. We must integrate cognition, motivation, personal satisfaction, feelings of security, and many other factors”. Wiig (ibid; pp. 14) cites a number of authors to support his contention that “Overall KM will become more people-centric because it is the networking of competent and collaborating people that makes successful organizations” and “One key lesson to be learned is that we must adopt greater people-centric perspectives of knowledge …Technology only goes so far” (ibid; pp. 25). Snowden (2000; pp. 237-8) notes that: “ (organizations) … are gradually becoming aware that knowledge cannot be treated as an organizational asset without the active and voluntary participation of the communities that are its true owners. A shift to thinking of employees as volunteers requires a radical rethink of reward structures, organizational forms, and management attitudes. Even where the KM focus is essentially technology based, the importance of people to the process has been acknowledged. For example, Davenport
In this paper we aim to heighten awareness of the impact of people-factors on KM implementation and to offer practical approaches that we contend will “get the people factors right”. First we review the tried-and-true approach to performance that one of us (Smith) has utilized successfully with a broad range of organizations for almost two decades, and we will show that this approach is based in a “New Science” perspective. Next we use this performance model to frame descriptions of initiatives that shape various people-factors for successful KM implementation.
We find the notion of a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS) useful for exploring and defining what it is that individuals, at differing organizational levels, should know in order to successfully implement KM. According to the performance model discussed later, each individual’s PKMS will contain cognitive, affective and resource related factors with respect to implementing KM. The approach described in this paper is aimed at populating an individual’s PKMS with knowledge about the successes and pitfalls of KM implementation, and is particularly directed to shaping the affective people-factors domain of the individual’s PKMS.
A Performance-Based Approach To KM: The “New Science” Platform
In this section we discuss the theoretical platform for our performance-based approach. The platform is based in complexity science (Gleick, 1987) and Chaos theory (Fitzgerald, 2002). Complexity and Chaos were first popularized as a “New Science” perspective on business organizations by Wheatley (1992), and later developed by other authors such as Mitroff and Linstone (1993), Kelly (1994), Sanders (1998), Gabriel et al (1999), and Lewin and Regine (2000).
Wheatley (1992) contends that the world is formed of complex dissipative structures in which disorder can be a source of order, and growth is found in dis-equilibrium. The richness of the diverse elements in a complex system allows the system as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization (Waldrop, 1992). Chaos by itself does not explain the structure, the coherence, and the self-organizing cohesiveness of such systems. Even the most chaotic of systems stay always within certain boundaries called “strange attractors” (Gleick, 1987) providing order without predictability. According to Wheatley, one of the best ways to create control under these conditions is through the use of forces called “fields”. Many scientists now work with the concept of fields - invisible forces that structure space or behaviour (Bateson, 1988; Mitroff & Linstone, 1993; Boisot, 1994).
It is argued that an organization must develop a visionary core at its “center” to provide such fields (McNeil, 1987; Parker, 1990; Smith & Saint-Onge, 1996). The organizational meaning thus articulated becomes Gleick’s (1987) “strange attractor”, and in this way individuals make meaning to produce order from chaos, giving form to work, and structure to what is happening at the level of the individual.
A Practical Three “ Field ”
In this section we describe the three “field” system, based on the theory discussed in the last section, that we use to actualize our performance-based approach to KM, and populate the PKMS. The three systemic fields are termed Focus, Will and Capability. The generic model is presented in Figure 1, and represents here an outcomes-driven KM performance system. Performance is driven by the business outcomes desired; for example, formally via The Balanced Score Card (Kaplan & Norton, 1996) or informally via simple objective-setting exercises.
