People-focused knowledge management

The Enterprise Culture
The culture within an organization is driven by many factors
ranging from tradition to the behavior and philosophy of its leaders.
In general, we may think of the culture as driven by and reflecting
the mentality of people in the organization.
When an enterprise builds and orchestrates an internal practice to
deal systematically and deliberately with knowledge by having people
share insights and seek assistance from one another, a new and open
culture begins to emerge. In such a culture, people find it easy to
discuss difficult issues, emerging ideas, and tentative opportunities
with one another. They are willing to take “mental” risks that would
be unthinkable in more conventional environments. They seek col-
laboration to achieve better results quicker, and they are not afraid
to build upon the ideas of others, or to let others build on their own
ideas. In this way they, in effect, expand their action space.
2
As people expand their action spaces, and as they become stronger
through stronger collaboration, the whole enterprise improves.
Complex tasks are addressed better and more quickly, but more
importantly in the longer run, innovations abound and make the
enterprise more capable and able to engage in activities that previ-
ously were infeasible.
Behaviors and beliefs that we find in the knowledge-vigilant cul-
tures include:
ch07.qxd 5/3/04 2:33 PM Page 239

---

240
People-Focused Knowledge Management
Belief that applied knowledge is a dominant factor in personal
and enterprise effectiveness and growth.
Actions to ascertain that the best available knowledge is applied.
Practices to assess knowledge needs, availabilities, and poten-
tials to build or source knowledge.
Tendencies to build knowledge-related assets by investing wisely.
Knowledge-cognizant organization of work, knowledge loca-
tion, and organizational structure.
Widespread exploration to improve work products.
Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Strengths (TOWS) assess-
ments are made of knowledge needs, availabilities, and poten-
tials to build or source.