Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Nurturing Organizational Health
Embedding
Sharing
Evaluating and Measuring
Learning
Your strategy or initiative is underway. While measures were determined early in the
Planning stage, now is where they will tell the story. Thus a discussion of measures is included
below. A classic and continuing challenge to management is to follow through on a strategy,
program or project. Too often they start with a big bang and gradually fade into the distance as
other demands (and perhaps opposition) slow down momentum. From experiences like these,
many workers take a cautious or even cynical view of new efforts to “improve” the Utility. This
makes it even more important that any new program or strategy is designed to be sustainable
for as long as it contributes to the health and performance of the Utility. To be sustainable, a
program has to validate its contribution to Utility performance. But that is not enough. The
program needs to be able to adapt to the needs of the organization and have other
characteristics addressed below. A major contribution offered by knowledge management is its
ability to help the entire Utility adapt and maintain high performance by supporting several of the
below listed organizational characteristics.
Nurturing Organizational Health
Organizational health is the capacity to maintain high performance in a changing, uncertain,
complex and anxiety-producing environment. An organization is considered healthy when it has
the internal capacity and capability to deal with this new reality over time. Since organizational
performance is the sum of every decision and action every day in the organization, the healthier
the organization, the higher the quality of decision-making and consequent actions. Eight
factors that significantly influence the capacity of an organization to sustain high performance in
this environment are provided below with descriptions.
v Continuous learning (workers and organizations always gaining knowledge and
adapting behavior)
v Quick response (the organization is capable of reacting/responding quickly when
needed.)
v Robustness (the capacity to operate in a broad range of environments)
v Resiliency (the ability to recover readily, to resume its original performance)
v Flexibility (capable of being changed, or flexed, susceptible to influence or persuasion,
tractable)
v Adaptability (the ability to change to fit a specific need or situation; an alteration or
adjustment in structure or habits)
v Stakeholder satisfaction (providing value that satisfies stakeholders—customers,
governance boards, regulatory agencies, local communities and employees)
v Alignment (the capacity of an organization to simultaneously maintain organizational
cohesion and worker empowerment).
In a 2005 study involving participants from 24 Federal government organizations, the two
hundred senior executives surveyed felt that stakeholder satisfaction, resilience and robustness
were strengths of their organizations. On the other hand, alignment, adaptability, quick response
and flexibility were seen as organizational capabilities that were below average. This meant that
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