Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Chapter 4: Characteristics That Support Knowledge Sharing and Learning Organizations | 31
• Career development is the joint responsibility of the utility and every employee.
• A teams’ responsibility transfers directly to every team member.
• Trust and integrity are not useful characteristics, they are conditions of employment.
Teams and Communities
The knowledge network is the weaving together of people, whether through teams, communities
of practice, one-on-one relationships or through virtual social networking. For example,
IBM has embraced the blogosphere, encouraging employees to participate in blogging, social web
applications (such as wikis) and networking, all emerging as important areas for engagement and
learning.
Task teams at various levels of the utility’s structure are a natural way that work gets done.
The structure of an organization encourages individuals with similar skills or similar focus areas to
work closely together. There are ten items that determine the capability of a team to do its job.
These key success factors are: team leadership, shared vision/approach, team collaboration, empowerment,
technology support, team learning, enterprise partnering, feedback, team co-location and
team size.
Communities of Practice are made up of people who actually work (practice) in a specific
domain of knowledge. CoPs bring people together who face many of the same issues and opportunities.
These communities are particularly effective in large organizations (where people do not
regularly interact) and across organizations (where the sharing of ideas and lessons learned can
prove extremely valuable). Communities can also be effectively employed for cross-utility collaboration.
While the focus of CoPs is on value added, mutual exchange and continuous learning,
participants often brainstorm and seek solutions to specific issues and problems forwarded by
community members. Thus, participation and reliance on CoPs increases over time. This powerful
form of community can prove a continuing source of ideas and energy for long-term KM
implementation.
Communities of Interest (CoI) are groups of people who have a common interest in an area
of knowledge. They are a community of learners who exchange ideas, develop relationships and
work towards furthering their knowledge and the application of the area of interest. A CoI can be
used in support of a CoP.
Workforce Planning
Because knowledge resides in people, workforce planning becomes paramount to utility
sustainability. For example, a Workforce Strategic Plan could include developing strategies and
specific plans for hiring, training, and professional development, with the goal to promote integrative
competencies such as Information Literacy, Communications Skills, Facilitation and Systems
Thinking alongside functional competencies. A second example would be to conduct a gap analysis
of the skill sets of the current utility and the desired utility, addressing the competencies necessary
to achieve projected missions and strategies and initiatives to help attract new personnel and
sustain the capabilities to accomplish its mission. Future skills would also be embedded in
on-going short and long-term education, training and learning initiatives. A third example would
be to develop a career path guide to provide individual guidance to employees in meeting the continuing
challenges of technological change. Knowledge Retention and Succession Planning are
integrally connected to Workforce Planning.
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