Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Chapter 3: Roles of Leadership and Management | 25
• 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). 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, especially if senior
leadership and management set the example and the tone.
Consistency of the behaviors of leadership and management is important in building trust,
as is making sure that there is follow-through between what an individual 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 be 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, B will reciprocate the knowledge sharing.
The good news from the Project 4003 survey response is that the mean for the level of trust
among employees on a five-point Likert scale was 3.69 with a median of 4. This is one of the
higher means in the survey. In other words, while there is a disparity in responses ranging from
very poor to very well, the leaders and managers felt more positive about the level of trust among
employees than other areas assessed such as level of process discipline (3.24 mean) and the level
of information system integration (information is consistent and accessible) (3.08 mean).
IMPLEMENTING ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT KM
STRATEGIES AND INITIATIVES
As introduced in Chapter 4, in the Project 4003 survey process, leaders and managers were
asked: How well does your organizational structure support the sharing of information and knowledge?
Two hundred three responders to this question covered the sphere from very poorly to very
well with a median value of 3 (okay) and a mean of 3.59.
Policies and Directives
Leadership roles relative to implementing organizational structures that support KM strategies
and initiatives begin with ensuring that before initiating a KM strategy or initiative the current
policies are not contradictory or adverse to the fundamental tenets of Knowledge Management that
is, the creation, sharing, leveraging and application of knowledge. Where conflict arises between
policies, or where historical policies are detrimental to KM strategies or initiatives, leadership
needs to have these policies reviewed and updated or make a conscious choice to allow KM strategies
or initiatives to work around these policies as needed.
In the Project 4003 survey response, when asked to assess the flexibility of organizational
policies, the mean for 206 responses was 3.26. The mean of the means—which provides the average
response for this survey—is 3.44. This indicates that the flexibility of organizational policies
is considered lower than average.
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