People-focused knowledge management

Value Creation and Productivity
Increased productivity — producing valuable results with fewer
resources, producing higher value results with the same resources, or
achieving a combination of the two — creates increased value for the
enterprise. Most business leaders recognize that the ultimate basis for
improving productivity consists of being able to make outstanding,
knowledge-intensive decisions and innovations. They achieve this 
by applying quality IC assets to improve competitive positioning,
product/service quality and features, and day-to-day product and
service delivery.
Elapsed time of responding to customers to complete work and
introduce new products into the market is an important aspect of
productivity. Expedient handling of work — quick turnaround for
client work, short time to market, and many more — improves per-
formance and economic productivities on both the personal and
ch02.qxd 5/3/04 2:32 PM Page 39

---

40
People-Focused Knowledge Management
organizational level. Reducing elapsed time requires innovation and
task-related knowledge, often in many areas at the same time. It often
requires extensive conceptual knowledge, such as script and schema
knowledge and procedural metaknowledge.
With knowledge and other IC assets as the basic enablers of pro-
ductivity, it again becomes necessary to manage them deliberately and
effectively. The productivity gains required to remain viable become
directly dependent upon effective and systematic KM.
A Systemic Model of Enterprise Performance
As indicated earlier, all enterprises are collections of closely
coupled subsystems in which the performance of each department or
subsystem influences the operations of other subsystems and the
overall enterprise. These influences travel along many pathways and
have many different forms. As a result of the interconnectedness, the
overall enterprise performance is affected by the distributed activities
within every subsystem. For overall effective performance, the 
subsystems must be effective to provide the desired behaviors. A 
simplified model of systemic functions and connections within a 
commercial enterprise is shown in Figure 2-2. Four primary factors
are indicated: Drivers, Enablers, Facilitators, and Mechanisms. Solid
arrows indicate performance-influencing relationships. The figure
provides a perspective of the role that IC assets play by enabling
enterprise performance.
Drivers are the most important factors and provide impetus and
energy to act. They provide goals, rationale, and intents for the 
enterprise and for people — the reasons for actions and criteria for
performance. The drivers define the purpose and strategy for the
enterprise.
The principal enablers of performance consist of knowledge,
understanding, and other IC assets. Once the drivers provide the
needs and goals for actions, enablers provide the means to establish
the proper course, content, quality, and effectiveness of actions.
Facilitators consist of factors such as operating capital, relation-
ship capital, and information capital. Facilitators provide resources
to make actions easier — to reduce friction that works against actions.
Information facilitates the ability to act by describing the contexts,
circumstances, and particulars of situations that need handling.
Mechanisms consist of the functional elements that are mani-
pulated — the processes that are operated to produce actions. 
ch02.qxd 5/3/04 2:32 PM Page 40

---

T
he
E
ffective
E
nterprise
41
Stakeholder
Requirements
Operating
Capital
Relationships
with
Stakeholders
Information
Assets
Investment
Capital
Infrastructure
Technology
Work
Organization
Enterprise
Practices
Enterprise
Structure
Customer
Demands
Personal
Motivation
Knowledge and
Understanding
Other
Intellectual
Assets