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The Role of Organizational Culture 255

Box 7.5
An example: Viant

Viant ( Stewart 2000 ) is a consulting company in Boston, public since June 1999, and is
often touted as a leader in knowledge sharing. New employees start off with an initiation
course of three weeks in Boston. At the end of their three weeks, they now know someone
in each of Viant ’ s offi ces, and have a laptop fully loaded with off-the-shelf and proprietary
software. They learn team skills and consulting strategies, including a mock consulting
engagement. They bond and hear company folklore. In terms of workplace layouts, Viant
has a “ leaky knowledge environment, ” balancing openness and privacy. People tend to
underestimate how much private offi ces are used for meetings. At any given time, Viant ’ s
leadership team consists of a score of offi cial members and about an equal number of
rotating “ fellows ” nominated by their peers in the fi eld. Conventional reporting relation-
ships do not work with consultants who rotate in and out of assignments, so consultants
have no fi xed boss; instead senior people act as “ advocates ” for a number of “ advocatees. ”
Performance reviews are 360 degrees, of course, emphasizing the growth in an employee ’ s
skill levels, while stock options are used to recognize excellent knowledge sharers. As
part of their everyday work, consultants complete a “ quick sheet ” that describes the
knowledge they need, what can be leveraged from previous projects, what they will need
to create, along with the lessons they hope to learn from each assignment. A longer report,
a sunset review, is produced at a team meeting to learn what did and did not work well.
Almost every document ends up hot-linked to Viant ’ s intranet site. Sunset reviews are
always done with a facilitator who is not part of the team, which keeps everyone honest.
Every six weeks, the KM group prepares, posts, and pushes a summary of what has been
learned.
Viant is also unusual in that it picks “ project catalysts ” from top consultants in the
company. They are pulled off client work for several months and assigned to other projects
where they do not supervise. They are not, however, passive — they are there to help: What
are you doing? How can I help? Looks like you need an example of a business plan to
adapt for your client, let me get one, and soon. This is in-your-face KM — and they are
referred to as agitators. Knowledge sharing is natural, instinctive, and painless in all aspects
of our lives — except our corporate ones. Companies who succeed in sharing knowledge
somehow “ force the issue ” — at Viant, that is the job of the agitators.