Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

BUILDING TRUST
Develop a leadership-supported “My Story” program (the sharing of stories by
organization members on who they are and what they offer the team), and an
“Encouragement List” (three positive things about each member of the Utility that affirm that
individual’s worth as a knowledge source and contribution to the Utility). These are used to
introduce individuals during meetings, provide examples where appropriate, and design
Knowledge Sharing events such as lunchtime exchanges. See Case Example #3.
Develop and facilitate a “Care to Share” Blog on anything Utility members care to share
with each other about hobbies, interests, trips, photos, etc.
Support social networking. Social capital is developed through trust, dialogue,
collaboration and reciprocity. The way in which social networks are created reveals the
ways in which social capital is realized, such as friendship (one to few) or virtual
communities (one to many). See Community of Practice, Shared Space and Wiki. Trust is
built over time from personal experience (I know you), shared experience (we both worked
on the same project), transfer of trust (I know someone who knows you) and shared values
(we operate by the same rules). These social networks can be a primary way of doing
business. See the MQI paper on Relationship Network Management and the APQC
benchmarking study on Virtual Collaboration.
Consistency of behavior is important in building trust, as is making sure that there is
follow-through between what one says they will do and what they do. As noted above, trust
is built, over time, between two individuals who are always honest with each other, are
supportive of others and follow-through on their promises. Trust takes considerable time to
create and can e broken in a single incident, misunderstanding or by a simple mistake. For
person “A” to share their knowledge with person “B”, person A must believe that B will not
misuse that knowledge, will not use that knowledge against “A” and, if A needs some
knowledge that B has, that person B will reciprocate the knowledge sharing. See Case
Example #3.
See:
Project Study #8 (Loudon County Sanitation Authority, VA)
Tools: Knowledge Sharing
Relationship Building
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