People-focused knowledge management

Good Enterprise Performance Results from Effective 
Personal Actions
Effective behavior is important in all knowledge work. People tend
to think of effective and intelligent performance as particularly
important in high-level “valuable” problem-solving or decision-
making situations like setting corporate strategy. However, effective
behavior is equally, and often more, important on the factory floor
and in detailed work throughout the enterprise. Improving the
quality of the myriad of “small” problem-solving situations in every
employee’s daily work culminates into a significant improvement in
performance for the whole enterprise. It makes the difference
between a high-performing enterprise and a well-intending, but stum-
bling, organization. Enterprise strategy may be determined in the
boardroom, but it is implemented mostly by the individual actions
of employees throughout the organization. To implement the strat-
egy appropriately requires shared understanding by employees on all
levels beyond what currently is customary.
Enterprise behaviors take many forms. Top management actions
are easiest to observe, be they approaches to mergers and acquisi-
tions, handling problems such as product failures in the marketplace,
or specific personnel policies such as retirement programs or stock
purchase plans. However, other behaviors may actually be more
important but are quite difficult to observe and characterize. They
also may not be easy to modify or influence. Behaviors that are dif-
ficult to change include how individual customers are dealt with by
customer interface employees, how quickly the organization can act
to modify or develop new products and services when markets
change or where new opportunities arise, and so on.
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People-Focused Knowledge Management