People-focused knowledge management

Table A-1
Examples of knowledge management vigilance states.
State of Enterprise
Comprehensive Knowledge Management-Related
Characteristics
Vigilant
Everyone in the enterprise understands how to be 
Attitude Is: Realistic,
most effective — and pursues intelligent-acting 
Automatic, and Tacit
behavior — for both their own and the enterprise’s
Knowledge Is Fully
advantages by creating, capturing, building, and
Internalized
applying the best knowledge
Systems and approaches for transforming and
deploying knowledge are everywhere
Culture and incentives are fully supportive of KM and
are “Knowledge-Focused”
Proactive
Most employees — and all top managers — have
Attitude Is:
accurate understanding of how to create, use, and
Proactive and
manage knowledge assets in support of enterprise
Pragmatic Based 
goals and for personal gains
on Deep Insights
KM capabilities and activities are being implemented
to bring about a broad KM vision
Culture and incentives are gradually being changed
Literate
Many employees — on all levels — understand how
Attitude Is:
knowledge is created and transferred — and KM’s
Systematic but
value for sustained profitability and viability
Dependent
They know KM is needed but cannot act without
outside assistance
Culture and incentives are not yet supportive of KM
Aware
Some employees — some top executives — are
Attitude Is:
generally aware of the importance of knowledge
Idealistic and 
They don’t know how to implement KM corporate-
Innocent
wide and can’t make it a practical priority
Culture and incentives are not considered
Unconcerned
The value of knowledge is not explicitly recognized —
Attitude Is:
only in isolated cases
Not Caring
Management and employees manage knowledge
sporadically, intuitively, and individually
Culture is not cognizant of knowledge values
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can be fitted into schedules and efforts that already are overcom-
mitted and priorities that are of crucial short-term importance.
Knowledge vigilance surveys tend to bring such issues to the surface.
Purpose: Identify KM awareness levels and attitudes toward KM
within parts of an organization as well as the whole enterprise. The
main purpose is to identify major issues and start the process of
raising knowledge-related issues and thereby initiate a KM dialogue
among the people within the organization.
Knowledge Surveys and Knowledge Audits
A knowledge audit provides a facts-based evaluation of where the
enterprise must focus its KM efforts to attain its goals. The audit is
a qualitative evaluation to identify the knowledge-related competi-
tive effectiveness of the enterprise by identifying areas of strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT analysis), and risks.