People-focused knowledge management

Knowledge Leveraging. Knowledge is applied or otherwise
leveraged. By using (applying) knowledge, it becomes the basis
for further learning and innovation as explained by other 
mechanisms.
The importance of the enterprise knowledge cycle becomes evident
when people within the enterprise consider when and where to build
and exploit structural IC. This is part of the intangible asset man-
agement mentality as emphasized by Lev (2001) and discussed in
Chapter 7.
The Need to Increase People’s Knowledge
Knowledge Required to Act Effectively
Leaders of effective enterprises understand that all employees, at
every level, must possess broad knowledge to address their work
challenges competently. Broad knowledge is needed to deliver com-
petent and effective work and to innovate. It includes directly work-
related professional and craft knowledge, organizational navigational
knowledge, and understanding of enterprise goals, objectives, and
functions. It also includes practical and pertinent metaknowledge
such as critical thinking and other procedural and task-related goals
and about what is and is not known. In addition, people need to be
emotionally engaged to apply their knowledge by delivering the work
required. It is not enough to have intellectual and practical under-
standing and to know the value of delivering quality work for stake-
holders, the enterprise, and themselves.
Work-domain topic knowledge and general world knowledge (i.e.,
managerial, professional, and craft knowledge) allow people to
gather appropriate information, understand and evaluate, explore
and innovate, decide how to handle the situation, project and judge
acceptability of potential outcomes, and implement selected actions
effectively. Innate personal capabilities — attitudes — clearly provide
a basis for acting effectively, but without specific work and general
knowledge and skills, people cannot attain the necessary practical
and subject-specific proficiency needed to fulfill expectations. Better
knowledge normally improves the quality of work by supporting
ch03.qxd 5/3/04 2:35 PM Page 93

---

94
People-Focused Knowledge Management
“smart working” rather than “hard working” — for both individu-
als and organizations.
Good managers make quick decisions based on established judg-
ments while considering broad implications and the novelty of the
situation at hand. Such behavioral models must remain our ideal.
Managers — and every employee with any level of responsibility,
including factory floor workers — must be provided with awareness
to consider broad consequences of their decisions — upstream,
downstream, adjacent operations, over the longer term, and while
taking into account how relevant stakeholders are affected. As
achieved by the proactive and decisive company example in Chapter
2, workers must be provided with an understanding of what is
expected of them. They must be provided with clear communication
of their role in implementing enterprise strategy, objectives, and direc-
tion, and they must be able to explore what it will mean for them
personally, in order to build operational mental models and under-
standing. They must also understand the nature of the services they
are asked to provide, sometimes expressed in the form of service par-
adigms (Chapter 7). These communications and discussions can be
conducted through “knowledge cafés,” “town meetings,” or similar
processes as discussed in Appendix B.
In routine work, topic knowledge is very important and can also
be used as a basis for automation. When work becomes more
complex, the availability of topic knowledge is more limited; it is
impossible to provide appropriate “how-to” topic knowledge for all
conceivable possibilities. In these situations, metaknowledge becomes
progressively more important as work complexity increases, as indi-
cated in Figure 3-13.
With improved knowledge, people know better what to do and
how to do it. They must be provided with knowledge of what they
know and how to think critically and be innovative. That is, they
need metaknowledge, and they need to engage in metacognitive rea-
soning. Then they will know why they can do it better and why it
will serve themselves and the organizations well. These are basic
reasons why the major purpose of KM is to make the enterprise intel-
ligent-acting by facilitating the creation, accumulation, deployment,
and use of quality knowledge.
There is one problematic issue, however. People tend to make
single-criterion decisions. That is, normally people are not prepared
to deal with multiple-criteria decisions and do not intuitively under-
stand how to make decisions that require them to balance several cri-
teria or objectives simultaneously. Since that is the case, it is no
ch03.qxd 5/3/04 2:35 PM Page 94

---

A
ctions
A
re
Initia
ted by
K
no
wledgeable
P
eople
95