Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Chapter 8: The KM Toolkit | 63
• Identify, agree and delegate new actions as appropriate.
• Inform team members and those in authority about developments, clearly, concisely
and in writing.
• Plan and execute team review meetings.
• Stick to established monitoring systems.
• Probe the apparent situations to get at the real facts and figures.
• Analyze causes and learn from mistakes.
• Identify reliable advisors and experts on the team and use them.
• Keep talking to people, and make time available to all.
• Share everything possible with all team members.
The Four Organizational Processes
In every organization there are four processes that are used continuously, although often
they are used unconsciously, invisible or merged together depending on the problem and experience
of the individuals involved. Together, these four processes—creativity, problem-solving,
decision-making and implementation—constitute a procedure for ensuring that all aspects of a
situation are taken into account. Knowledge is at the heart of all four of these processes, and
undoubtedly all four will play a role in planning and preparing for, executing and sustaining KM
strategies and initiatives.
Creativity is both an art and a science. The creative process typically has four stages.
• Stage one is the problem, situation, or opportunity identification where a thorough
discussion of the issues and objectives occurs among interested/responsible organizational
employees to ensure common understanding of the desired effort.
• Stage two is gathering relevant information needed to focus potential new ideas and
to provide stimulation for idea generation.
• Stage three is the actual generation of ideas via brainstorming or some other
technique.
• Stage four is the discussion; evaluation and prioritization of ideas to determine which
ones are the best.
Each of these stages is built upon the collaboration and interactions among individuals and the
exchange of ideas. Further, creativity is part of the learning process. Each assumption leads to an
entirely different set of ideas that are acceptable for consideration. A useful technique to aid thinking
out of the box is to first surface the basic assumptions of individuals and teams that may underlie
an initial response, and then change that set of assumptions and follow the consequences. This
frees up the mind to generate more and different ideas.
Problem-solving is one of the most important processes in the organization. Taking inputs
from the creative process as needed, the problem-solving process provides the links between ideas,
problems, and decisions. The output of the problem-solving team or community is a solution set of
alternatives that provide ways to achieve a desired situation or problem solution. There is no one
process for solving problems, and rarely is there a single solution. When people, organizations, and
complex relationships exist, it is often impossible to identify causes. Before a team can solve a
problem, it must first agree on exactly what the problem is, and why it is a problem. Since for the
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