KM Roundtable

1
Perspectives on Organizational Change Knowledge
Management or Knowledge Management

• KM Roundtable
• September 10, 2003
• Mark Addleson,
• Director M.S. in Organizational Learning KM
• School of Public Policy
• George Mason University

2
little k, BIG M

• There is a view of KM as a successor to TQM, BPR.
  (clearly it isnt so, it has too few letters!)
• KM is set of tools management has. KM is
  something that management has and does to make
  organizations more profitable, more efficient.
• Essence of this view
• Put some knowledge into management.
• The management culture stands top-down,
  structure, control, by-the-numbers but add some
  knowledge tools to help management

3
but listen to Larry Prusak on knowledge
management

• 1) Knowledge is profoundly social
• 2) Knowledge is embedded in practices, cultures,
  and networks.
• 3) Knowledge is sticky, eclectic, and local.
• 4) Knowledge is dependent on trust (without trust
  or a mission knowledge isn't shared cf large
  corporations)
• 5) Technology is subordinate to human ends.

4
KM as a mirror of change

• Two ways of viewing change
• The change you might try to manage
• The world around us is changing
• Speed of innovation
• New technologies
• eGov
• Information matters
• The change we are becoming
• We are changing our, beliefs, attitudes,
  values, views of how things work are changing
• New science
• Postmodernism
• Wicked problems
• Work has changed - knowledge/knowing matters

5
Where is work? Seeing past the structure

• Walk into any organization - not the nice, neat
  managerial offices but the factory, design
  studio, or sales department and take a look.
  In one corner, a group of people are huddled in
  debate over a vexing logistics problem. In
  another, someone is negotiating with a customer
  halfway around the world on the Internet.
  Everywhere you look, people and products are
  moving, crisscrossing this way and that.
• Ask for a picture of the place, however, and
  chances are youll be handed the companys org
  chart, with its orderly little boxes stacked atop
  one another. The org chart would show you the
  names and titles of managers, but little else
  Indeed, using an org chart to view a company is
  like using a list of municipal managers to find
  your way around a city.
• The fact is, organizational charts tell us
  only we are mesmerized with management. No
  wonder they have become so irrelevant in todays
  world.

Organizing
Organization
Mintzberg, H and Van der Heyden, L (1999),
Organigraphs Drawing How Companies Really
Work, Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct., 87-94
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Things changed but no one said so

• What began as a stealthy revolution is now
  becoming more and more obvious but few are
  willing to actually speak about it.
• The arrival of knowledge work/management signals
  something quite profound. It is one sign that
  the ideology of management which shaped our world
  and our workplaces is dysfunctional and dying.
• The revolution is tied to a fundamental change in
  the way we see the world, the problems we deal
  with, and the way we organize, or manage, in
  order to solve those problems.
• All conventional ideas about management are based
  on the idea of a controllable world and tame
  problems.
• The world is like a machine (e.g. motor car
  engine). You create organizations with experts
  at the top (structure) who identify problems and
  tell others what to do (control) to solve them
  efficiently (optimization). Knowledge is stuff
  that experts have.
• But all of sudden social issues stopped being
  tame. From homeland security, to AIDS in
  Africa, from improving education to providing
  health care, from inner-city poverty to the
  management of toxic waste.

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What happened while we werent looking?

• The issues we are dealing with became wicked.
• Knowledge work is about
• making meaning - what is happening, what should
  we do?
• finding ways to do things effectively, and
• finding ways to do things better/more creatively
  .
• not solving problems (the problems are not
  going away)
• Organizing to solve wicked issues is
• a collaborative, participative, creative social
  process of sharing knowledge in order to make
  meaning
• people engaging each other in conversations,
  saying what they think and know, telling their
  stories

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The BIG K view

• What is this knowledge management focus really
  about? At the heart of the knowledge question
  lies a very different logic about how value is
  created . knowledge sharing not knowledge
  hoarding.
• This new logic represents a radical rethinking of
  basic business and economic models.
• As executives and business leaders absorb this
  simple truth they find they must completely
  change the way they think about the organization,
  business relationships, measures, tools, business
  models, values, ethics, culture and leadership.
• In short it changes everything.
• (Knowledge management is a label that no one
  really likes, but we seem a bit stuck with it at
  the moment. I like knowledge leadership myself.)

Allee, Verna (2000) Knowledge Networks and
Communities of Practice, draft of article for OD
Practitioner, August 2000
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The essence of Km

• Km is about
• Rediscovering work (as knowledge work) and the
  relational nature of work
• Discovering that work is in the conversations of
  CoP or work groups
• Knowledge work
• revolves around making meaning of the issues we
  are dealing with and is intensely social
• happens in conversations, by people sharing
  information, ideas, points of view
• is supported by good access to information
• rests on trust, care, responsibility,
  accountability
• Km is about people having back their voices

10
Change Rules OK!
You might say that organizations are one way for
us to practice what it means to live as a
collective being, not just as an individual
being. I think that's what the discipline of
working together is ultimately about. When we
encounter change, we have to be able to
understand our own habitual patterns and be
willing to move into a different way of being.
One of the dilemmas that hits us in organizations
is that we might be quite willing to change, to
deal with chaos and uncertainty as part of life,
but there are very few organizational beliefs to
support us. It's a very big leap for
organizations to move from the realization that
they have to cope with change, to the
understanding that if you're going to be in a
continuously changing environment, then all of
the ways in which you have learned to manage have
to be examined. We think people learn to
manage change by going off to the two- or
three-day seminar or reading a book. We're
talking about real, 180-degree change - instead
of trying to control everything, we're learning
to align our intentions with emerging realities.
This is a profound shift in our way of being.
You're not going to be able to do that just by
having the idea in your head that it's something
that you ought to do. What we really need to
change are our fundamental organizing behaviors
or habits. That's why this time is different in
many ways.
Extracts from Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley,
Changing How We Work Together. Interview in
Shambhala Sun, January 2001
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What we know about doing Km

• Km is the recognition that organizing getting
  work done happens in networks of conversations.
• Km is embedded in (communities of) practice It
  is the way we do things. It is not an add-on
  and does not work as an add-on. You become a
  knowledge centered organization.
• Everyone does Km - from mail rooms to board rooms
  and police officers to city hall. Km is about
  sharing knowledge.
• Km is a political act. When you start on it you
  are doing things that go against the grain - if
  you do it well.
• Much of what is important in Km cannot be
  measured and trying to make it measurable means
  we pay attention to the wrong things. (How do I
  love thee? Let me count the ways).
• We understand better what Km is not it is
  neither simply improved communications, nor
  better training, nor new technology. It is,
  as Wheatley and Senge say, a way of being.

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How do you do it?

• Km is not out-of-a-box stuff. No instant
  solutions.
• Km is not a top down thing. Km happens
  conversation by conversation.
• We are talking about (re)learning.
• Learning is characterized by experimentation and
  practice. It is facilitated by a mindset of open
  inquiry.