People-focused knowledge management

External and Internal Enterprise Effectiveness
Enterprise effectiveness must be considered from two points of
view: outside and inside. The outside perspective deals with effec-
tiveness in the marketplace and relative to external stakeholders.
Effectiveness can be measured by how well customers perceive that
they are treated and by the value of the goods and services they
receive, how good the financial performance is in the eyes of
investors, the fulfillment of societal and environmental responsibili-
ties, fairness in employee relations, and so on. The inside perspective
deals with effectiveness within the enterprise itself — how well indi-
vidual and aggregated actions are selected and shaped to fulfill enter-
prise objectives. Examples include the ability to create high-quality
products, short time to market, good utilization of operating capital,
efficient internal operations to reduce costs and deliver on time, fast
widespread adoption of new and better operating practices and other
valuable learnings, extensive building of new personal knowledge,
and structural IC through creativity and innovation, workforce
loyalty, satisfaction, and so on.
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People-Focused Knowledge Management
Success and Knowledge-Intensive Work
When actions work together to support enterprise objectives, the
enterprise succeeds. Individual decisions, large and small, behind
each action provide the desired effectiveness that leads to the proper
result. In the aggregate, when decisions and resulting actions are
made in support of the enterprise objectives, strategies, and visions
— when they effectively support the desired enterprise direction —
then the enterprise can be considered effective and can be expected
to succeed.
There are other crucial aspects of effective behavior. One aspect
deals with the effectiveness of networking among employees — and
with outsiders — to collaborate to undertake joint actions in concert
and aligned with common purpose. Another aspect deals with the
issue of enterprise growth and renewal — positive change — by build-
ing enterprise intelligent capital through learning and innovation.
In our context, we consider work
3
to consist of active processes
that generate valuable products and services through combinations
or conversions of less valuable components, through outright cre-
ations, or through other actions. Most work of this kind is knowl-
edge intensive in that the actions are governed by the application of
knowledge and understanding — such as using mental reference
models that give guidance by providing facts, rules, concepts, per-
spectives, goals, methodologies, models, or other kinds of action pat-
terns. The quality of delivered work is largely a function of the
applicability of the knowledge that has been applied. Appropriate
knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective
work. Other factors also apply.
In business, knowledge-intensive work is conducted by people
everywhere — in every department, in every function, at every orga-
nizational level. In addition, by embedding knowledge in inanimate
agents, knowledge-intensive work is conducted by different functions
such as automated systems and procedures, automatic control
systems, and many kinds of machines and operating technology. In
short, knowledge-intensive work is the fundamental value-creating
process of any organization or entity.