2.1 Stage 1: Understand pressures to change
2.1.3 Inside the organization – a workplace audit
whether they are instead just things that might be ‘nice to happen’. And it should never be too far from participants’
thinking that the ideas generated must at some point be firmly linked to clearly defined business benefits – a business case that lacks rigour, agreement, or proof is unlikely to lead to strong commitment and a successful implementation.
Once the pressures to change and the knowledge opportunities have been teased out from the stakeholders and linked to the overall goals and objectives, we find we have obtained the tools to gain a better high-level understanding of where we want to be and where we are now. It is now time for a more detailed understanding of where we are.
2.1.3 Inside the organization – a workplace
Work to do (value needs adding)
Training Direction
Support Ask a friend
Ask the audience Ask an expert
Work processes
and rules
The ‘knowledge workplace’
Wisdom Knowledge Information
Culture, incentives and objectives Improve
Work completed (value added) Share with a friend
Share with the audience Share with an expert Knowledge
bases
Knowledge bases
important to identify and give recognition to areas of strength that can be learned from and the lessons applied in other areas.
The audit, therefore, is not a ‘witch-hunt’, but more of a discovery exercise.
The main audit areas are as follows:
䊉 Knowledge intensive roles
䊉 Knowledge intensive processes
䊉 Main community/workplace groups, where people work together and exchange information and knowledge
䊉 Technology used to support the activities of individuals and workgroups
䊉 Information and content – ‘explicit’ sources
䊉 The culture of the organization – an assessment as to what degree it helps or hinders knowledge sharing and organiza- tional learning.
Figure 2.2 shows in summary how all of these elements interact before we expand on them in more detail. We term this the
‘knowledge workplace’.
Figure 2.2 The knowledge workplace, developed by Trevor Howes and Tony Clack
In the workplace people will already know certain information and have an amount of knowledge and wisdom. They are employed to perform a range of activities, or work processes, and are often supported in this by technology. In addition, they will have specific objectives, and be influenced by the incentives on offer and surrounding culture. They will also receive varying degrees of training, direction, and support to guide their actions for the corporate and their personal good.
Work will then flow to them, whereupon they may ask ‘friends’, a wider audience, or specific experts for advice. They may also use paper and electronic systems to find what they need. In doing their work they may also improve the information and knowledge. For example, by adding what they have learnt from their own experiences. So as well as completing the work, they may also share this knowledge with friends, a wider audience, specific experts, or record it within paper and electronic systems.
The knowledge workplace is where a cycle of work constantly flows, where the individual adds value and contributes to the wider community of knowledge.
Knowledge-intensive roles
People get hired for a job partly because of formal qualifications, but among a group of similarly qualified individuals, the person with experience will always come out on top. In the workplace, experience and personal expertise count for almost everything.
For example, a Channel 4 television series, Faking it, revolved around the efforts of specially chosen experts in a particular field in teaching a skill to an individual with no background in that field – examples included teaching a vicar to sell used cars, and a classical cellist to be a dance DJ. It achieved this by giving them special coaching to get them up to a standard where they could be judged alongside ‘real’ professionals. From a knowl- edge management perspective, these shows demonstrate the importance of things like professional jargon and ‘tricks of the trade’ or rules of thumb in establishing credibility and enabling people to function confidently. These are no less important for
‘real’ professionals than for bogus ones!
In this context, it is clear that the way a role is defined and the make-up of the workplace (which adds context as well as specific processes that people follow) are very important in influencing performance. These in turn are also impacted upon by manage- rial actions, including direction given from a management
viewpoint, as well as decisions taken regarding training, skills, and workplace support. For example, an individual may know a great deal about a certain computing language from an intellectual perspective, but his or her skills in actually using it may be a little rusty, and he/she may be encouraged to go on a training course that emphasizes gaining practice. The individual may also be given access to software that will help debug and test programs, and perhaps also a set of best practice information containing details of previous experiences of people who use the language. Here the training is the course, the direction was the instruction to attend the course, and the supportis in terms of the software tools provided.
A knowledge-intensive roles audit will go through the organiza- tion, workgroup by workgroup, identifying the key roles – sales managers, for example, or second-level customer support – that place the most demands on individual and organizational knowledge and information. Each business unit might identify the ‘top 5’ roles (with a number of people in each role noted) for example, with descriptions and perhaps a list of key information sources associated with each role. Commonalities and patterns can then be mapped – for example, there may be insights to be gained in whether roles tended to be clustered in customer facing positions, mostly internal facing, or more support oriented.
See Appendix 2 for an initial template and example to assist you with such an exercise.
Knowledge-intensive processes
Each of the roles identified will be associated with a set of formal and informal processes – anything from completing timesheets, to running a bid, and dealing with complaints. In order to perform these an individual must use several kinds of knowledge, first of all personal knowledge to understand the context of the request or requirement to do something, then knowledge of the (formal or informal) process associated with carrying it out, then knowledge of how to use any systems or technical components (such as forms or communications devices) required by the process.
A process audit is useful in setting out what the top five knowledge-intensive processes are, associated with each of the
‘knowledge-intensive roles’ previously identified. The rationale for this is that optimum functioning of knowledge processes are essential to the organization, for through them value is directly added which is then passed onto the customer. This is the cornerstone of organizational advantage and success.
At this point, it is not required to redesign processes (though ideas arising about efficiencies that might be made should be collected) as more detailed process analysis will take place in the next stage. All that is required here is an understanding of which processes add the most value to the organization.
See Appendix 3 for an initial template and example to assist you with such an exercise.
Functional groups
Here we look at the main communities/groups where people work together to exchange information and share knowledge.
The organization chart is a good place to start – but most organizations now have teams or other working methods that cut across formal boundaries. An important element of know- ledge management strategy is finding appropriate ways to foster communication and knowledge sharing across these boundaries, as well as finding ways to capture ‘shared’
knowledge within groups and subgroups, and make it avail- able to other group members, business units, or indeed the whole organization.
Formal and informal groups are recognized as the main conduit for sharing of experiences, and for giving and receiving of feedback and advice. To analyse these, we need to move beyond the organization chart, and start to map out the linkages between formal workgroups; charting the strengths and weak- nesses of these links and their effectiveness helps form a picture of the relationships that exist to support one another. Do these groups help the individual? Do they provide enough support and quality of information? Also can you easily find an expert to gain advice from in specific circumstances?
If working on a knowledge management strategy for the whole organization, it may not be possible to do much work on groups other than to identify some of the key issues facing workgroup performance – thinking of the needs of a few ‘sample’ groups will help keep the work at a pragmatic level.
Technology audit
Technology infrastructure plays a crucial role in today’s work- place: joining people together to enable communication through many different media and channels, and providing access to content creation, access and manipulation tools.
An information and knowledge technologies audit examines the status of an organization’s technology estate, looking at the infrastructure (desktop, server and networks) and the software available to users. Questions need to include aspects such as:
䊉 Does the technology support knowledge sharing (do tools exist)?
䊉 How useful do people find existing tools?
䊉 Is performance adequate (network speed, compatibility issues)?
䊉 What are the most useful elements of technology for the key roles and processes?
䊉 Do communities and workgroups use technology appropriately?
䊉 What is the potential for new technologies or upgrade of existing ones?
䊉 What standards are in place and are these appropriate for the future?
These questions should uncover potential problems, such as the suitability of the underlying networks, platforms, infrastructure, and applications services. The responsiveness of the IT team to business needs and operational change may arise as an issue – also effectiveness and appropriateness of security – for example, even where security measures such as virus protection or firewalls are in place, the way they are implemented may be preventing people from being able (or feeling able) to share sensitive information.
Many organizations will already regularly conduct such an audit under efforts to manage IT strategy. However, while material assembled for this purpose may be extremely valuable in a KM strategy context, it should be recognized that there is a particular knowledge focus that requires a fresh and holistic look at IT provision.
Information, content and skills audit
The information and content audit seeks to identify if the quantity and level of information is available to support the key roles and processes. This is a sizeable task – a recent audit conducted for a government customer, for example, turned up more than 10 000 Lotus Notes database files in an organization of around 4000 people. Many of these databases were things like group diaries, but more than half of the total were thought to be
no longer in use. Most organizations use a very complex patchwork of internal and external information sources, some of them shared between many owners in the business and some even shared with or wholly provided by external partners.
Information sources can be databases, news feeds, intranet sites, memos, books, and ‘expert’ opinion. ‘Content’ is a term more specifically used to mean information which is delivered via the web, a category covering quite a large subgroup of information, from tiny snippets of information in intranet pages, to very large aggregated files containing Microsoft Word, Excel or Power- Point documents, or PDF files.
Methods of assessing workgroup-level information and content management needs are discussed in depth in Stage 3 (together with a much more detailed information and technology audit, aimed at assisting with development of a detailed implementa- tion plan), but for the initial audit, the essential questions are ones of fundamental and business-wide relevance:
䊉 Is the information architecture adequate in terms of scope, classification, and access? Can staff access the information and documents they need – are they captured and stored, and if so, are they available, quickly, at the point of need?
䊉 Is there clarity on what information and documents are business critical?
䊉 What are the main frustrations regarding access to information?
Once again, the goal at the level of knowledge management strategy is to get to a top-level view of the issues and challenges.
Detail analysis and input to project design comes in Stage 3.
Culture and knowledge climate
The interplay between the culture of an organization (the unwritten ‘rules’ and customs, which in turn reflect the overall tone and value system) is frequently the dynamic that most clearly distinguishes one organization from another. The degree to which firms are risk-taking or risk-averse, homogeneous or diverse in terms of people mix or behaviour across geographies, or resistant or embracing of change, all dramatically affect what it is like to work for these firms; the sorts of people attracted to work there (or repelled by the culture) can also have a major impact on its performance and success.
From a knowledge perspective the cultural imperatives or constraints matter enormously. Questions such as ‘What behav- iours are supported and rewarded by management?’ (which in turn influence what distinctive competences are developed over time) are important. Culture is essentially driven by the expectations and actions of senior management over a long period, relating to what results are expected and most import- antly how those results are achieved. If management try to change things too quickly, differences can rapidly develop between the ‘official’ corporate culture espoused and the unofficial culture that may hang over from an earlier era, or have developed by itself over time.
This is particularly prevalent with professional cultures – groups of academics, lawyers or doctors, for example, have a strong professional culture that in many cases is more potent than local organizational cultures where they physically work.
Assessment of culture, and local or organizational impact on knowledge issues, can be a tricky exercise but is most commonly attempted by questionnaire. Fujitsu’s Knowledge Assessment toolkit is based around a series of questions (several hundred in the fullest version) that assesses attitudes in organizations to such things as information strategy, people and skills, know- ledge sharing, incentives, use of technology, collaboration, partners, and customers.
Such an assessment process can be used at various different junctures – at the earliest stages, when a knowledge manage- ment programme is being evaluated; in fuller form, in develop- ment of KM strategy; and in bespoke form, working with individual workgroups as part of a change management or KM implementation process. With the questionnaire, elements of information, content and skills are also rolled into the tool, enabling a fairly comprehensive picture of the status of an organization to be quickly established.
The following represents the sort of questions typically asked. In Fujitsu’s case, the tool is customized to suit the particular company and industry sector in which it is being applied.
Respondents – who will vary in role, seniority and number according to the circumstances in which the questionnaire is used – are asked to grade the following using a scale 1 to 5 where 1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree. The results should be brought together and averaged out across the group.
Please grade the following:
䊉 Your organization is open to constant change
䊉 Your organization uses a recognized business model
䊉 The leader is committed to knowledge sharing
䊉 Your organization understands why better use of what people know is required
䊉 Your organization has a long-term vision for the role of knowledge
䊉 Your organization has the information to meet its critical business needs
䊉 Management focus wider than financial performance indicators
䊉 Information flows regardless of hierarchical structures
䊉 Staff are encouraged to share information
䊉 Mistakes are tolerated
䊉 There is a ‘no blame’ culture
䊉 Staff are rewarded for information sharing
䊉 Staff are trained in the use of information access and retrieval tools
䊉 Staff are aware of their performance relative to customer delivery
䊉 Non-standard and constructive challenge are encouraged
䊉 Exit interviews are conducted when staff leave the business or move to another unit
䊉 Staff are encouraged to work in teams
䊉 Information is shared between business/departmental units
䊉 Staff are free to share and work with other parts of the organization
䊉 There is a community spirit
䊉 People feel they can define their own working practices
䊉 Companies create their own business opportunities and are not totally led by the market
䊉 Knowledge sharing is part of the company culture
䊉 Staff feel they can contribute towards business strategy
䊉 Business performance is evaluated using more than financial indicators.
There have been instances where organizations have chosen to re-run this sort of evaluation at fixed intervals, to assess whether the culture supporting knowledge and information sharing is improving.