Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Fast is critical in the ever-increasing pace of our lives. We now reach around the world in
fractions of seconds to obscure sources of the latest scientific or business developments.
Speed is becoming ―multi-media‖, meaning that one media supports another. You reach for
your mouse to find and send an email, 30 minutes later you’re on the phone with someone
you’ve never met, and three weeks later you’ve having lunch with that individual during a
conference at a distant city.
Free has to do with minimizing the costs for people to engage. Nothing is free. But focusing
on the cost of engagement may be a barrier to entry, whether it be time and space for a face-toface
engagement or the cost of a collaborative software environment. There are two issues
addressed here. One is that inordinate costs are distracting to building relationships. The
second is that costs become a hurdle for every opportunity reaching out. This design principle
simply says to make the costs transparent to the individual, pursuing economies of scale and
absorbing the cost at the organizational level.
Open refers to both the boundaries of the system and the expansion of thinking. An open
information technology architecture is a fundamental design principle. Opening up space to
colleagues definitely fosters the notion of networking. Opening up to new ideas and different
ways of thinking fosters learning and innovation.
Global has to do with exploration and the emerging sense of unity as a world. In the future
global may truly become the concept of shared space. But even today, no matter what our field
of expertise, it is pursued in a global context with the realization that the global space has much
to offer in terms of learning.
Relevant initially implies relevance to the topic of the domain and the assets of the
knowledge base. Relevance is also the building of ideas as individuals, groups and the
organization learn from each other.
Rich means that the space is rich in design (colors, ideas, variety, complexity) such that it
stimulates all areas of the mind/brain.
Compelling starts with the stickiness of the virtual system, then moves beyond that
stickiness to considering shared space in terms of its ability to attract and retain participation.
Does the shared space operate in such a way as to become a key asset to participants in their
day-to-day work?
Wenger describes 13 fundamental elements of community that technology can affect. These
are: presence and visibility, rhythm (in terms of events and rituals that reaffirm value), variety of
interactions, efficiency of involvement (must be easy), short-term value (each interaction needs
to create some value), long-term value, connection to the world, personal identity, communal
identity, belonging and relationship, complex boundaries (multiple levels and types of
participation), evolution (maturation and integration) and active community-building.
It is also important to recognize that in many ways the resources of a shared space are to
knowledge workers what tools or instruments have been in many crafts, guilds, and builders
throughout history. In many instances the relationship to tools has taken on a reverence that
has deep cultural or religious meaning. Such relationships complement or build upon regard for
professional skills and status. Such is the transformation that occurred as knowledge workers
moved from typewriter to computer to computational computing power to the computer as a
communications tool to a virtual space in the 21 st century ―my-workspace‖ revolution, and have
extended into Wikis and Blogs. See Case Example #20 for a baseline set of guidelines for
social networking.
In Case Example #22, the US Forest Service developed a community center on line to
assist wildland fire work groups in sharing knowledge. Today knowledge workers develop,
aggregate, and manage their personal workspace resources virtually throughout their career,
and have the expanded capability of interacting and working in a global shared space.
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