Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

32 | Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water Utilities
Culture
Culture is the way work gets done. Major characteristics of the culture would be flow, collaboration,
creativity, empowerment, communication and networking, adaptability, an action orientation
and leadership serving as role models.
A major detriment of effective communication and knowledge sharing is the degree of trust
throughout the workforce, trust of the utility as a whole and of its leadership and management.
Trust is a cumulative belief that another individual (or the organization) will live up to employee
expectations. In order for an individual to share their knowledge with another individual they must
believe that this knowledge will not be misused or used against them, and that this sharing will be
reciprocated. Distrust is as much a communications issue as an attitudinal problem. When people
do not have good communication they cannot clearly signal their intentions or expectations. Rather
than treating communication as a transfer of information, it is better to ensure that communication
is the sharing of understanding.
Training and Education
While some functional training can be mandated, it is not enough for employees to stay
viable in a rapidly changing environment. Since training and education dollars are limited, one
approach is to issue continuous learning guidance for the entire workforce, placing increased
responsibility on employees to remain current and expand by taking advantage of new ways of
learning. Distributed learning technologies, experiential learning, and other nontraditional
approaches to education and training are rapidly supplementing the traditional classroom student/
instructor approach. With these new approaches, knowledge workers have the ability to take
responsibility for, and direct their own learning and development in a variety of ways and on a
continual basis throughout their careers. The guidance sets the expectation that all knowledge
workers participate in a set figure (such as 40 hours) of continuous learning activities (using organizational
toolkits, attending conference, etc.) each year in addition to the minimum competencies
established in their career field and required for specific workforce assignments.
Recognition and Rewards
A solid recognition and rewards program combines senior leadership recognition, staff
management recognition and peer recognition. Ideas for recognition and rewards are discussed in
Chapter 7 and included in the Resources section of the KM Toolkit.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR STRUCTURING THE UTILITY
The following guiding principles are proposed for structuring a utility for knowledge sharing
and organizational learning.
The structure needs to be compatible with the culture and both should be ecologically
matched to the environment and the utility’s purpose, strategy, and vision. Cultures are heavily
influenced by the interplay of structure, vision, and external environment. For example, a learning
culture is often difficult to create in a bureaucratic-type organization.
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