The primary knowledge-related aspects of this case included the
team’s methodological Problem-Solving expertise, the knowledge
sharing with the marketplace of Parity’s intents and actions, and the
educational program for CSRs.
Enterprise Action Spaces
Frequently, enterprise approaches become constrained by conven-
tional thinking such as the “If
it is not broken, don’t fix it!” men-
tality. Action Spaces are often more constraining in the enterprise
than in the personal situation and may be subject to “group-think”
and committee behavior that reduces creativity to the “least common
denominator.” For these reasons, it is often helpful to bring in a dif-
ferent perspective, a different paradigm, or problem framing in which
the group members have fewer constraints.
Restructuring Sales and Operations to Increase
Profits Led to Action Space Expansion
LearnsSys, Inc. developed advanced computer-based educa-
tional materials for industry. Cecilia Cho, LearnsSys’s president
was dissatisfied with the effectiveness of their sales process. She
also thought that their contract work led to excessive change
orders and delays. This was in spite of LearnsSys’s recent efforts
to streamline its marketing-sales-proposal-contract execution-
systems delivery value process, which was as good as advanced
thinking in the industry could make it. Nevertheless, Cecilia was
positive that a better approach could be devised to improve
performance.
Cecilia argued with her team — who were quite proud of the
present arrangements — to help find better solutions. They
thought her wish was beyond reach. They agreed that the reason
for what Cecilia considered to be a problem was that the market
was limited. LearnsSys technology was too advanced and there-
fore amounted to a certain amount of hard-to-sell “technology-
push” instead of “demand-pull” that customers would naturally
ask for. They did not see any reason for a “rethink” or change.
All the same, Cecilia brought her team together to consider
the marketing-to-delivery process from new perspectives. In the
past, they had focused on information and work flows, but Bud
Norman, the innovative R&D director, who also spearheaded
LearnsSys’s advanced technology, suggested that maybe they
Enterprise Situation-Handling
181
ch06.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 181
should look at what he called “understanding flow” instead.
Bud felt that in executing the marketing-to-delivery process the
salespeople and proposal writers did not properly represent
LearnsSys’s technological capabilities. Also, Sal Sanguese, head
of software development, thought that many change orders
could be avoided if better customer specifications were included
in the contracts. And if change orders were reduced, that could
lead to shorter execution times and lower execution costs.
As they argued and discussed, it became clear that most had
opinions about the limitations of insights at several points in the
process and that these might be caused by “understanding prob-
lems.” Jane Quist, head of sales, suggested that, quite often, it
was difficult for the sales team to explain how advanced
features would benefit potential customers. She also indicated
that at other times she learned later that valuable features that
could be implemented quickly and inexpensively were not
included in the proposed work due to lack of understanding.
Others indicated additional limitations, all understanding or
knowledge-related.
Initial suggestions for improving the situation (this was
natural for an educational materials developer) were to provide
an educational program for sales and proposal people to give
them insights to represent LearnsSys capabilities better. That
was quickly discarded for two reasons. First, conditions and
technology changed too fast, and second, everyone already had
enough to learn and keep up with. Hence, it was not possible
to plan for more education.
After more discussion, a new model developed — that of
placing people with relevant understandings and expertise in the
various situations where they could make a difference. It was
agreed that senior software and R&D people would join with
the sales team to work with potential customers to conceptual-
ize what LearnSys could do and how that would benefit the cus-
tomer. The software and R&D people would only rotate in
visiting roles. However, after conceptualizing a potential con-
tract, they would next assist in writing the proposal, and if a
contract was secured, the same people would participate in, or
lead the contract work. In this way, there would be opportuni-
ties for a wide range of people to participate.
This model was built on the concepts that the presence of
deep understanding of advanced technology and implementa-
tion in the customer situation would quickly help conceptualize
182
People-Focused Knowledge Management
ch06.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 182
