People-focused knowledge management

importance by creating greater value. It therefore becomes important
to facilitate competence development in people who are asked to deal
with these situations. They need good and pertinent knowledge, not
only within their conventional work domain, but also within broader
domains to understand how their actions affect — or are affected 
by — adjacent and up- and downstream processes or functions and
external entities. They need broad perspectives, good world knowl-
edge, and methodological skills to innovate and envision options and
implications.
The Knowledge-Based Situation-Handling Model
The knowledge model for situation-handling is based on an infor-
mation processing paradigm and is constructed in good “engineering
fashion” by combining and integrating building blocks borrowed
from many areas. It rests on perspectives from cognitive science,
systems science, management science, information theory, and other
areas, such as long-time experiences with intellectual and manual
work. In the personal domain, the model is a vast simplification 
and idealization of the real and complex mental processes about
which our understanding is still rudimentary. For organizations and
computer-automated situation-handling functions, it is still simplified
but more realistic. In particular, this model addresses processes 
associated with delivering competent work. Hence, the model does
not deal explicitly with learning or innovation mechanisms or the
detailed mechanisms and processes within its four primary tasks.
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A Knowledge Model for Personal Situation-Handling
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We argue here that knowledge is the key factor in effective 
situation-handling. People use their knowledge to handle situations
more or less effectively to satisfy enterprise goals, to gain personal
advantage, and to satisfy many other purposes. They may attempt to
control, influence, or change the situation outright when that is pos-
sible, adapt to it when it is not, or pursue a combination of adapta-
tion and external change — interventions — to move conditions in
the desired direction. We divide situation-handling into four primary
tasks: (1) Sensemaking; (2) Decision-Making/Problem-Solving; (3)
Implementation; and (4) Monitoring. A schematic overview of 
the relationships between these four tasks is indicated in Figure 5-2.
This figure also indicates some connecting variables and paths along
which information and knowledge enter the process. In addition, it
presents the “functional proficiencies” needed to operationalize each
primary task: Situational Awareness; Action Space and Innovation
Capability; Execution Capability; and Governance Competence and
Perspectives. The degree of usefulness attained by the functional 
proficiencies is highly dependent upon the extent and quality of
knowledge and expertise that people possess or is otherwise made
available to tackle the tasks. If knowledge is limited or competence
is reduced, the functional proficiencies become constraints that will
reduce the effectiveness of the overall situation handling. If knowl-
edge is improved and expanded, the functional proficiencies will
provide opportunities to improve current performance or even make
it possible to pursue new strategies.