People-focused knowledge management

Understanding Adjacent Operations
Anyone who works within an organization understands the poten-
tial value of knowing what happens around their own position or
function — upstream, downstream, and in adjacent departments and
operations. Understanding how their own operating area relates to
other functional areas makes it possible to understand how “my func-
tion” is affected by those functions that provide inputs to “me” and
how “I” affect those who receive my function’s work products, be
they chemical flows, manufactured parts, completed clerical work,
sales orders, decisions on how to handle competitive information, or
any other work product.
Situation-handling effectiveness may be improved in many ways.
For example, by understanding adjacent operations, workers can
interpret the implications of what happens elsewhere and take 
advantage of positive developments or take preventive actions when
problems arise.
If there are problems within their own function, workers can fore-
warn those who may be affected. They can also innovate with insight
— for example, create deliverables (work products) that are better
suited to effective operations elsewhere, improve communications,
and create valuable network contacts to deal with future challenges.
The list goes on and on with numerous benefits.
The Relevance of General and World Knowledge
General knowledge — both generic and a specific understanding
of society, business, science, and so on — is important for effective
situation-handling for many reasons. Of particular importance is 
the role of general knowledge in identifying and understanding the
overall context in which the target situation is positioned. Compre-
hension of the situational context provides insights into overall goals
and objectives and such aspects as potential flexibility for dealing
with the situation to provide the most effective action-options.
ch05.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 152

---

A Knowledge Model for Personal Situation-Handling
153
Other reasons for the importance of general knowledge include the
broadened abilities to create more innovative action-options and to
project potential consequences and implications over wider domains
and longer time frames. General knowledge also improves abilities
such as “thinking outside the box” and understanding such as how
to address situation-handling which have dilemmas associated with
multiple stakeholders who have conflicting objectives. In addition,
world knowledge provides direct and practical insights into the 
conditions of particular situations from extra-enterprise perspectives,
thus permitting more robust and effective situation-handling.
General and world knowledge consists in part of mental reference
models. That knowledge is augmented with other mental constructs,
such as proxy beliefs and values, which are of some interest because
to a large degree they affect personal motivation and perspectives.
5
More importantly, general and world knowledge also includes the
personal capability to perform conceptual blending — to combine
abstractions and practical understanding in new ways to find creative
and innovative solutions to challenges.
Notes
1. Most tacit decision-actions are automatized, whereas others require 
conscious processing. Collins and Kusch (1998) characterize automatized
and nonconscious decision-actions as mimeomorphic actions that are exe-
cuted automatically. They characterize deliberate and explicit decision-
actions as polymorphic actions that deviate from the routine and are
adapted consciously or semiconsciously to the situation and context.
2. For routine and many non-routine situations, decision making based on
tacit mental models takes on the average 6 seconds as discussed by Klein
(1998, 2002).
3. The process of receiving and accepting information is itself complex 
and relies on effective handling of subtasks that range from obtaining
information, sensing data, decoding data to build information, analyzing
information, comparing information with what can be expected, deter-
mining information reliability to accept/reject information, and so on.
4. Figure 1-2 identified six categories of work complexity from routine 
to novel challenges: (1) routine situations (simple, repetitive, and well
understood situations); (2) logical but less common variations (transfor-
mations) of routine situations; (3) complex, yet expected, extensions 
of routines integrated with external factors; (4) unexpected challenges
(conditions), but with a mix of routines and external factors; (5) totally
ch05.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 153

---

154
People-Focused Knowledge Management
unexpected situations and non-routine challenges, yet within the larger
job scope; and (6) unusual challenges outside job scope.
5. Proxy beliefs and values: We use both basic and fundamental work-
related beliefs and values to generate a priori judgments and we use
“proxy beliefs” in reasoning situations to analyze if a hypothetical con-
dition will be acceptable. We first generate proxy beliefs associated with
existing situations or potential scenarios by using our mental models to
project what we believe the outcomes will be. Then we compare the
believed outcomes with the values that we hold for those kinds of situ-
ations, and we immediately associate the value judgment of the outcomes
with the initial hypothetical condition. Finally, we transfer the value
belief for the outcome to become a proxy belief for the initial condition.
ch05.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 154

---

6
E
NTERPRISE 
S
ITUATION-
H
ANDLING
Premise: Individual Situation-Handling Actions
Lead to Consolidated Enterprise Behavior
Whenever individuals or automated functions handle situations
within the enterprise, their actions will affect enterprise behavior. In
the aggregate, all individual actions within the enterprise result in the
consolidated behavior that affects customer relations, product quality
and features, cost effectiveness, employee morale, or any number of
other behavioral characteristics.
The Enterprise Situation-Handling Example