Knowledge Works

The Handbook of Practical Ways to Identify and Solve Common Organizational Problems for Better Performance

Christine van Winkelen, Jane McKenzie

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781119993629
• eBook ISBN: 9781119977810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Knowledge Capital
• Index: Business

Knowledge Works is a handbook full of ideas to help you draw on people's knowledge to keep ideas fresh, reduce waste, and build competence and capability. You can either dip into it according to your needs, or work through it in a more systematic way to create a plan to improve your organization's performance.

" Knowledge Works is a very practical book that provides proven solutions for important knowledge-related problems in organizations including: how to convince managers that knowledge is important, how to create a knowledge-sharing culture, and how to improve the quality of conversations. A must-read for all managers of knowledge-intensive organizations."
Daan Andriessen, Professor of Intellectual Capital, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands

"To be successful as a manager, you need to make better decisions, be more innovative and to do more with less. In this highly practical handbook, Christine Van Winkelen and Jane McKenzie offer new ideas to challenge your current thinking and achieve this. Their work is soundly based on 10 years collaborative research with the Knowledge Management Forum at the Henley Business School."
David Gurteen, Founder and Director, Gurteen Knowledge Community

"This book shows in a very inspiring and hands-on way how knowledge works. This is an utmost important understanding in the growing intellectual economy for increased operational knowledge effectiveness. The book has in an impressive way systematized many challenging K-works perspectives, from knowledge mapping and flows to social media and knowledge creating conversations. It is demonstrating a number of insightful real life stories and projects during 10 years of the Henley KM Forum, as well as providing valuable reading notes. Happy Knowledge Work..."
Leif Edvinsson, Honorary Chairman for the Henley KM Forum, The World´s First Professor of Intellectual Capital

Section VI

Make change stick

Chapter 15 – Developing knowledge-sharing behaviours and effective knowledge activists

Chapter 16 – Moving from hard sell to compelling buy

Chapter 17 – Improving the quality of conversations

Chapter 18 – Taking account of national culture in designing knowledge initiatives

What Makes Change So Difficult?

Evolution and change is a natural part of any ecology, but it always involves loss and learning. As human beings, our identity and mental view of the world is wrapped up in our past experience. In a work context, when what we have known has brought us success, it may seem hard to give up a track record of reward for the uncertainty of something new.

Simply telling people what to do is not enough for them to change. People may have to re-evaluate many deep seated personal assumptions, beliefs, values, as well as relinquish hard-won knowledge, expertise, and familiar behaviours to adapt to a new environment. Convincing people that the journey will be worthwhile and beneficial needs careful thought about how to approach them in terms that are meaningful for them. Managers need to communicate why and how change might happen in a way that people can easily absorb and which resonates with what matters to them. Conversations about change are either places where people can make the necessary mental adjustments, or where the fear of loss and learning are reinforced to the point of generating resistance. Language is the medium of conversation, and generally language is imprecise and open to interpretation. This is due to past experience, and mental and cultural filters.

Spreading change across organizations involves rethinking long-held assumptions about priorities and the way to manage assets. It is even harder to shift the collective mind of the organization away from the dominant logic that has developed over time than it is to shift individual beliefs. As we saw in Chapter 14, moving from a tangible industrial economy to a more intangible knowledge-based business needs changes in organizational behaviour, as well as the ability to flex and adapt the core knowledge that makes the firm distinctive. This often means significant collective re-learning. Managers have tools that they can use to shift collective behaviours, such as performance management systems, training and development, or even selection and reward, but fundamental beliefs and assumptions may drag the change back into well-trodden patterns of behaviour unless there is sustained effort.

How Can You Make It Easier for People to Accept Change?

In helping people to accept change, a good first step is to win some allies. Engage the enthusiasts: help them understand the sort of skills and behaviours associated with effective knowledge-related initiatives. They can then become advocates to support the spread of good practice by modelling good behaviour, coaching others, encouraging implementation of knowledge initiatives, and generally infecting others with their enthusiasm and abilities. For knowledge sharing to become a good habit, it is helpful to embed the principles in different human resource development and management processes too, so that there are other triggers to spread the change in behaviour.

However, we also know that processes and procedures, even if ostensibly followed to the letter, may not be followed in spirit. They are open to interpretation and can become a nominal tick box exercise if people do not really understand or buy into the purpose and benefits of compliance. This limits the potential for creating the kind of engagement needed to exchange more complex and difficult to articulate knowledge. Understanding what motivates and drives people’s behaviours, (whether in terms of the impact of personality on willingness to share knowledge, the cultural predispositions that shape instinctive responses to change initiatives, or the mental filters, biases, and interpretations we unconsciously apply to communications) allows you to have greater influence as you try to embed better practices into the daily pattern of operations.

In this section, there are several checklists and frameworks to help you influence others more effectively. These include ways to prepare for and reflect on conversations and communications as you try to implement knowledge related initiatives. By becoming more aware of the often unspoken inhibitors to change that are rooted in the inner workings of our minds, it is possible to become more convincing in your communications, more effective in conversations, and more influential in achieving the desired outcomes for knowledge initiatives.

If you work internationally, this also requires a heightened sensitivity to different preferences that are imbued into nationalities as a result of formative experiences and what is considered accepted behaviour within their societies.

The best way to raise your awareness and sensitivity to the impact of changes that you are instigating is through honest and disciplined reflection. This can be done alone or in a structured conversation with a coach or mentor. Such reflection can take place before an event: reflect forward on what might happen, how you might respond, what you might do instinctively, and whether that is right for a situation. Alternatively you can reflect after the event: look back on what happened and review how you actually reacted, what you might do differently next time. Over time, with the help of the sort of structured frameworks offered in this section, the discipline of reflecting will become more instinctive; it will require less conscious effort and you will begin to reflect in the midst of action and adjust your behaviour, so that continuous learning becomes a natural part of the process of connecting with others.

Key Questions to Ask Yourself

As you start to use the ideas in the next four chapters ask:

• When you start a project, plan an initiative, or need to make a decision, where should you build in time for structured reflection to improve the process of engaging others with your ideas, expectations, and requirements?
• Who will be your natural allies, who will spread enthusiasm and active engagement with knowledge-sharing initiatives? How can you help them to develop their ability to lead local and international conversations and create effective communications and convincing arguments?
• When trying to roll out knowledge-related activities across cultures what do you need to know about local cultural preferences in order to achieve global consistency and local acceptance?

Chapter 15

DEVELOPING KNOWLEDGE-SHARING BEHAVIOURS AND EFFECTIVE KNOWLEDGE ACTIVISTS

Snapshot

A deep understanding of what “knowledge-sharing behaviour” really involves allows managers to select people for important roles and to design initiatives to encourage positive behaviours. The Henley Knowledge Sharing Behaviours model has been translated into a competency framework that provides a useful reference point for many development initiatives. Awareness of the elements of the model can support processes such as performance management and leadership development within the organization, ideally through integration into existing competency frameworks. When individuals are aware of these competencies, it can also help them focus self-development activities. Understanding the link to personality is also useful because in general it is easier for people to change their behaviour in a way that is in tune with their preferred style. It is also important to recognize that behaviours that may “come naturally” to some people may be difficult for others to sustain.

In addition to encouraging widespread knowledge-sharing behaviours, in most organizations the team dedicated to planning and implementing knowledge-related initiatives is very small. Those responsible for improving the use of knowledge in the organization need to engage allies and encourage local knowledge activists. There are nine characteristi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Knowledge Works
• Title page
• Copyright page
• INTRODUCTION
• Section I: Establish strategic priorities
• Section II: Enable operational effectiveness
• Section III: Stimulate innovation
• Section IV: Increase learning capacity
• Section V: Become more agile
• Section VI: Make change stick
• Index