People-focused knowledge management

Understanding the Enterprise Direction and Context
In the example at the beginning of this chapter, the business moti-
vation for understanding enterprise direction and context is stated
clearly in two of Palmera’s objectives:
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Employees are persuaded to develop an understanding of what
is expected from them, how their individual achievements
support Palmera’s overall strategy, and how they benefit and are
rewarded as a result. Employees are motivated to be responsi-
ble for their own development and to take advantage of the
available development opportunities that Palmera provides.
Continuous learning encourages employees to develop them-
selves and to find ways to improve their own and Palmera’s per-
formance. Employees continuously look for ways to develop so
that they can stay at the forefront of technological development,
share experiences, take risks, and learn together.
The Service Paradigm
Proactive enterprise managements look beyond daily work; in
addition, they pursue durable performance over the long term by
maintaining broad awareness. They emphasize that they themselves
and their employees not only deliver work products directly associ-
ated with their functional job descriptions and immediate work but
also act productively and responsibly in other respects as well. In par-
ticular, proactive enterprises expect that all employees, departments,
and organizational entities, as part of their daily activities, will
support a wider scope of work and participate in the implementa-
tion of enterprise strategy and the principles of governance.
Within an enterprise, each operating entity — department, unit,
team, and individual employees — is expected to deliver business ser-
vices in the form of work products in support of the enterprise’s
purpose. The desired business services can be defined explicitly within
narrow scopes and in considerable detail as explicit job descriptions,
or they can be quite general and broad. Many organizations utilize
service paradigms to outline the broader nature of the desired ser-
vices, at times as a complement to the job description. Service para-
digms define expectations for employee and entity behaviors from the
perspectives of external and internal customers, the enterprise, and
other stakeholders. In general terms, the service paradigm describes
how products and services are delivered and how employees are
expected to act and perform. The purpose of service paradigms is not
to specifically outline which deliverables should be produced and
how they should be created and delivered; other vehicles do that.
Service paradigms serve several purposes. On a higher level, their
main purpose is to delineate what each operating entity is expected to
deliver from strategic and tactical perspectives. The service paradigm
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for a unit is an expression of how the unit and its personnel envision
and practice the enterprise philosophy, direction, and strategy.
A second purpose is to define a set of expectations against which
the general performance of the unit can be judged qualitatively. A
service paradigm cannot be used as the yardstick against which the
specific performance can be measured quantitatively; that requires
different mechanisms.
A third purpose is of direct interest for KM and is perhaps the
most important one: it outlines requirements for knowledge and
other resources and conditions needed to fulfill the assigned respon-
sibilities. It guides identification of the resources and capabilities
needed to deliver the service paradigm productively and competently.
Service paradigms describe what the enterprise, and individual
units and people within it, ideally should do for the enterprise, cus-
tomers, and stakeholders and how they should appear to observers
through their work products and behavior. Hence, the service para-
digm scope may cover several areas and in particular the enterprise’s
expectations for how the employees and operating units — including
departments — will behave.
Following is one example of the basic service paradigm for
employees in a large service organization. This service paradigm
covers four basic areas: