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326 Chapter 9

Box 9.4
A vignette: What should KM focus on within our rrganization?

The knowledge audit and gap analysis phases of the KM strategy will help determine what
the KM efforts should focus on within a given organization. While there are some high-
level goals such as effi ciency or innovation and some generic KM initiatives such as
implementing communities of practice or an expertise locator system, each strategy will
necessarily be unique. Every organizational context is different so a “ one size fi ts all ”
approach cannot work for a KM strategy. The audit or diagnostic phase ensures that the
core characteristics of the organization are well-understood and taken into account in
proposing KM recommendations.
For example, in a public utility company, an extensive audit revealed that while explicit
knowledge was formally shared quite extensively, there were few if any opportunities to
meet to share knowledge informally. As a result, the lessons learned were edited so as to
not cause any undue alarm, with the result that when they reached the eyes of the CEO,
the reports all read a bit like “ something terrible happened, we were not 100 percent
prepared, we dealt with it, all is now back to normal. ” In fact, the knowledge audit revealed
that this organization worked exceedingly effi ciently and effectively under normal
operational conditions. In the context of an emergency, however, work teams no longer
knew their roles, they could not collaborate in more dynamic, tacit ways preferring to
keep to “ the book ” or manuals and rules, and they often failed in carrying out their critical
duties.
For this particular organization, an emphasis on tacit knowledge and informal ways of
sharing this knowledge became a critical focus for the KM strategy. Employees were
encouraged to meet and discuss project postmortems with peers before reporting more
formally up the hierarchical levels of authority. Additional recommendations were made,
including short term training of teams so that they could better perform in crisis situations
through role playing and simulations in the short term; and beginning the journey to
cultural change by encouraging employees to send anonymous e-mails directly to the CEO
and rewarding them for risk-taking.
Another organization, an international aid outfi t, revealed quite a different focus
for KM during the course of their KM audit. This organization had branches around the
world and operated in a highly complex environment: multiple locations, multiple
languages, and multiple stakeholders, including funding agencies, partners in the various
countries, and a high turnover rate due to two-year mandates. The audit revealed that
tacit knowledge was being well shared throughout the organization, primarily through
informal contacts using Skype (voice over Internet) and occasional face-to-face meetings.
A number of bottom-up or grassroots communities of practice had emerged on their own,
further linking geographically dispersed workers around a common mandate theme. In
fact, this organization ’ s evolution in KM terms mimicked that of the World Bank, which
created over one hundred thematic communities to better harness the expertise that they
provided to third world countries.