Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Chapter 3: Roles of Leadership and Management | 23
need to think more about that.” This process, called Event Intermediation, ensures a
point in time where all senior leaders, managers and employees understand the importance
of the KM initiative or strategy and have an awareness of their areas of responsibility
to help ensure success. Event Intermediation is included as a Tool in the KM
Toolkit.
• Capture quotes from leaders, managers and champions and embed these in presentations,
both internal and external, at every level of the organization.
• Hold a Knowledge Fair where every functional and organizational area is featured
showing how they are contributing to achieving the KM vision. Have senior leadership
open the fair, and include enjoyable, memorable events centered around the way
the organization needs to work, with members of the organization participating in the
presentation. (Remember, emotion aids memory.) Create a groundswell of sharing
and understanding by opening the fair to employees and the larger stakeholder group.
• Develop a virtual CD or portal-based reference tool about the knowledge fair, town
hall, or other large group event capturing people talking about their projects and contributions
and leaders talking about their organizational, all focused on their contribution
to achieving a knowledge centric organization. Make this easily available to
employees and stakeholders.
Leaders and Managers as Change Agents
Every leader and manager working to improve the way their utility achieves its mission
takes on the role of a change agent. Because knowledge—and by extension KM—is at the core of
every individual’s contribution to the mission of the utility, implementation of a KM strategy or
initiative is no exception. Further, an organization cannot change in a vacuum. This means that as
changes occur within a utility, other parts of the utility and its stakeholders need to be changing as
well. This also means that as the environment changes, the state-of-the-art changes, or another utility
discovers a better way of doing things. Leadership must be willing to consider, evaluate and, as
appropriate, embrace these changes.
While leadership visibility is critical, more is required of a change agent. Beyond being
aware of the desired changes, employees have to understand them, believe they are necessary for
the health of the utility, feel good about them, take ownership of them, feel empowered to do them
and recognize the impact of doing them.
In the Project 4003 survey, 163 responders (78.8%) of 207 responders said yes, their
employees were learning fast enough to keep up with the changes needed by their utility. Five
other responders said both yes and no, indicating that the answer was dependent on the experience
and desires of the employee, and the time/resources allowed. In the space offered for comments,
79 responders added comments. The largest portion of these comments (30.3%) focused on training.
Half of these praised their organization’s training program; the other half called out specific
training needs. The next largest portion were comments about the difficulty of change (19%).
Other areas of comment were technology (ranging from “not keeping pace” to “new technology is
slow to take hold within department” to “technological advance is too fast for some baby boomers”);
knowledge retention (“new hires are slow in retaining information and practices shared with
them by more senior members”); and communication (“need to disseminate information” to
“roundtable discussions, conferences, quarterly discussions in-house between employees and
management”).
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