Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Chapter 3: Roles of Leadership and Management | 27
Empowerment
second team then nominates the first team for some kind of reward and recognition
based on these results.
• Recognition by the Project Leader. The project leader should continuously promote
and publicize individual and group or team contributions to organizational goals.
Contributors can be recognized in newsletters, on web sites, at staff meeting, during
special luncheons, and so forth.
• Recognition by Senior Leadership. Another mechanism for project leaders to recognize
contributors is to inform senior leadership of success stories. This information
should be accompanied by a request for a personal note of appreciation from senior
leadership to the individuals or groups/teams commending their work and acknowledging
how their contribution has made a difference to the mission of the utility.
• Utility Shared Knowledge Award. Develop an incentive program for the quarterly
and yearly awarding of incentive awards (certificates, coins, small statues) for the
shared knowledge voted by organizational members to be the most helpful to the
organization.
Empowered employees make empowered decisions in their day-to-day work. Knowledge
that is essential to the success of the utility resides in people at all levels. Further, since knowledge
needs shift and change in response to new demands and ideas from the environment, no single
individual or group of individuals can have all the knowledge necessary to run a utility. For leaders
and the utility to take advantage of worker’s knowledge and experience for organizational improvement,
the context, direction and authority to make local decisions should be at the point of action
where the best knowledge resides.
If the utility’s workforce has not been empowered in the past, and hence may not understand
what knowledge sharing means among employees, it falls on the leaders and managers to
begin a process of working with their employees and sharing their knowledge of the relevant
aspects of the utility. Knowledge represents the initial step toward creating an empowered workforce
that can develop and implement the knowledge needed to ensure effective actions are taken
on a daily basis throughout the utility. Overcoming the resistance of an un-empowered workforce
cannot happen quickly or easily. Leadership and management must be patient, consistent, and
dedicated to working with employees to change the culture from one that is un-empowered to one
that is empowered.
As shown above, there are many actions that leadership and management can take to support
the planning for, overcoming resistance to and successfully implementing organizational
structure that support KM strategies and initiatives. Many more ideas are included in the KM
Toolkit. Good organizational structures provide an environment within which both employees and
managers can work together for the long-term benefit of the utility.
©2011 Water Research Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.