People-focused knowledge management

Six Success Factors for the Effective Enterprise
Enterprise success depends on the interplay of many factors. Some
are beyond influence or control by the enterprise. Others are associ-
ated with the strategic moves that its leaders pursue. Still others —
particularly the six we consider here — are associated with how the
enterprise arranges its internal affairs for operations and service
delivery through initiatives, practices, and allocation of resources.
Figure 2-4 provides an overview of a particular perspective of how
enterprise performance is the result of management philosophies and
practices, deliberate and systematic KM, allocation of resources,
scoping of jobs, and assignment of employees. The six success factors
affect the ability to handle situations to the best advantages for the
enterprise, individual employees, and other stakeholders. Situation-
handling is discussed in Chapter 5.
1. Management Philosophy and Practice
A basic requirement for intelligent operation of the enterprise
is a management philosophy that supports effective behavior 
of people and operational units. In particular, people will act
effectively and responsibly when satisfied with their conditions,
given the chance to contribute, and when they understand that
it is in their interest. However, this perspective must be tem-
pered with the realization that a few employees may have quite 
different personal agendas that are not in the enterprise’s inter-
est. These people must be managed differently.
5
In addition, a
significant group of people — some organizations report 40
percent, others 60 percent — are reluctant to assume responsi-
bility and prefer to work in supportive roles. However, they also
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