As we have seen from our five-stage approach, the second element is the creation of a vision for the organization – a look into the future at how the organization can be, or should be in the context of knowledge. In an ideal world, how would knowledge and information best be created, captured, used and shared?
䊉 What sort of resources would we see deployed? For example, technology or role changes.
䊉 What capabilities should the organization and its people have in this future state? For example, skills and experiences.
Out of this, a vision for knowledge can be distilled, hopefully a succinct one where the benefits are obvious to all.
Table 2.2 An example STEP analysis Sociological – e.g.:
䊉 Increasing trend towards teamworking
䊉 Increasing trend towards partnership working and alliances
䊉 Demographics – major loss of staff in certain industries likely due to many reaching retirement age at same time.
Technological – e.g.:
䊉 Competitors leveraging KM and other technologies (mobile, extranet)
䊉 Roll-out becoming cheaper through economies of scale
䊉 New tools coming on stream.
Economic – e.g.:
䊉 Increasingly competitive climate in industry sector – highly skilled staff turnover
䊉 Need to demonstrate better return on intellectual capital
䊉 Threat or aftermath of merger/acquisition.
Political – e.g.:
䊉 For private bodies – issues of regulation, deregulation, integration with EU, data protection
䊉 For government funded bodies – political agendas,
‘joined up’ government, Public Records Office requirements, Freedom of Information Act.
Depending on the genesis of the push for mobilizing knowledge within the organization, there are two main types of strategy – those that ‘fit’ the needs of the organization (focused around incremental improvement and efficiencies), and those that
‘stretch’ the organization to do things differently, leveraging resources and capabilities in new ways. How the vision is drawn up will to some extent determine the balance of ‘fit’ and ‘stretch’
which the strategy will likely adopt.
The vision might be the product of much discussion, but it should be succinct enough for non-specialists to understand. An example of a good vision for knowledge is this one, adopted by the UK Department of Health (2001):
䊉 Create the knowledge base, both tangible (books, articles, databases etc.) and intangible (expertise, skills, social networks).
䊉 Make it available in user-friendly ways (exploit infra- structure, improve process, join up information assets).
䊉 Encourage and skill people to seek out, use and share knowledge and information.
䊉 Build a culture that fully rewards, encourages, values and supports knowledge and information sharing.
The important thing about this vision statement is that it derives directly from the pressures for change on the Department of Health, and wider pressures on the UK Civil Service for ‘joined- up government’. Although the language of knowledge manage- ment is used, the picture it paints is substantially driven by targets and goals set out by ministers and senior managers. If this vision were suddenly to come about tomorrow, it would represent in some sense the ‘ideal’ department it is striving to become.
It is important at this stage to remember that a vision is not the same as a strategy, which is concerned with the actual deployment of resources in order to achieve the vision. The vision – by definition – lies in the future. Whatever is contained in the knowledge management strategy, the stages must be pragmatic enough to be followed in practice. Too often there are cases where strategy is made in an intellectual ivory tower, without being challenged and validated by a wider circle.
Due to the far-reaching impact of knowledge management strategies, people in key roles are likely to be impacted, and a
successful implementation is dependent upon their cooperation.
It is therefore essential that the strategy is not owned solely by those at the top of the organization but also that key people throughout feel like they own it too, and see the benefit in implementing it and bringing others on board.
So how can those charged with getting KM off the ground in organizations make this happen? This is normally achieved through a combination of interviews, workshops, and a commu- nication plan that involves listening as well as telling, focusing on what is important to people across all parts of the organization and grades. Both ‘carrot and stick’ approaches must be used – building understanding the ‘carrot’ element is often the hardest, but once key areas of personal motivation are understood then the chance of success is more certain.
Widening involvement across the organization and grades has another advantage, that of bringing together other similar initiatives under a common focus. By coordinating knowledge- related projects, the resources, experience, and knowledge of those involved can be joined together and a greater variety of requirements consolidated. As we have previously emphasized, there is no such thing as a green field site for knowledge management these days – lots of initiatives are under way in any organization, whether with a KM label or not.
When formulating a vision, it is important to consider widely the implications for the whole organization. Peter Senge has written extensively on the ‘learning organization’ – about how organizations (as a whole) can come to learn from their environment, and from their own successes and failures. We previously mentioned the work of Arie de Geus, a former senior manager at Shell, who wrote a seminal book on how organiza- tional learning works in practice. Entitled The Living Company, it emerged from work conducted at Shell into company longevity.
Its premise – that long-lived companies have management philosophies that in some sense treat the organization as a living being – has interesting implications for the management of knowledge. A living being requires an ability to respond appropriately to environmental stimulus. Indeed, de Geus puts this ability to respond at the top of his list of key characteristics of a living company:
䊉 Sensitivity to the environment (which, he says, represents a company’s ability to learnand adapt).
䊉 Cohesion and identity (aspects of a company’s ability to build a community and a persona for itself – related to some extent to the ‘know-why’ knowledge discussed in the pre- vious chapter).
䊉 Tolerance and decentralization(symptoms that a company is aware of the importance of ecology, of constructive relation- ships inside and outside the organization).
䊉 And finally, conservative financing,which helps the organi- zation control its own evolution.
(Arie de Geus 1997, p. 16) It is unlikely that many knowledge managers will get – at least immediately – the opportunity to remodel an organiza- tion (though sensible organizations might include them, along with the IT director, in the strategic discussion!). However, there are significant lessons here about the underlying ration- ale for knowledge management. These may not be apparent at present to senior managers, but with appropriate promotion and tie-in to the overall organizational direction, can be brought forward in a very powerful way to begin to shift the viewpoint of those setting organizational or business unit direction.
Of course, it can be great fun discussing ideas for the future, and creating a long shopping list of ideas. It is important to avoid
‘paralysis by analysis’ by analysing only what is needed and no more. Bringing groups of ideas together into theme areas and questioning how they link to the corporate strategy are both excellent ways of weeding out unnecessary ideas.
However, as we have mentioned before, every journey begins at a starting point . . . and in knowledge management, that starting point is crucial in determining the appropriate course of action.
The following section looks at how this can be achieved.
2.2.1 Moving forward – strategy
Precisely how the stages in this chapter are used in practice depends on the circumstances faced. For very large organiza- tions, it will not be possible to go into great levels of detail at this stage – the intention must be to create a reasonably complete picture to a comfortable degree of resolution. For a business unit, the process as outlined above is still valuable, but a great deal more detail can be sensibly assimilated.
We began this chapter with the idea that strategy development was about seeking answers to the following questions:
䊉 Where do we want to be?
䊉 Where are we now?
䊉 How do we get there from here?
So far, we have looked at the formulation of a vision, and the conduct of various kinds of audit and assessment. The final step – formulation of a strategy – involves considerably more work than this, as we have yet to properly formulate options and assess whether they are suitable for purpose, feasible to implement, and acceptable to all parties. However, by this stage ideas should be forming as to the sort of shape a knowledge management programme might take, the business issues it might address, the difficulties the organization might encounter in implementing it, and the degree of change that might be required to achieve measurable results.
At this point, it is appropriate to begin to build the business case – the essential step in ensuring that a programme properly meets the business needs and issues identified.