Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

66 | Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water Utilities
• Depth Resources: Collaborative Leadership (MQI paper), The Depth of Knowledge
(MQI paper), Influence of Knowledge on Leadership (MQI research paper),
Information Literacy (MQI paper), Lehigh County Authority Workforce Plan, A
Model for Team Learning and Success (MQI monogram), Relationship Network
Management, Retaining Valuable Knowledge (APQC study), A Systems Approach to
Capturing Knowledge (MQI chart), Thinking Systems and Complexity (MQI paper)
• White Papers: Knowledge Mobilization
• Project Studies 1,2, 7, 8
• Case Examples 15, 21
• Case Studies: DON Case Study, NASA-Kennedy Space Center KM Case Study,
NASA Web-Based Collaborative Decision Support
The Sustaining Phase
The strategy or initiative is underway. While measures have been determined early in the
Planning stage, now is where they will tell the story. Thus a discussion of measures is included in
this section. A classic and continuing challenge to management is to follow through on a strategy,
program or project. Too often they start with a big bang and gradually fade into the distance as
other demands (and perhaps opposition) slow down momentum. From experiences like these,
many workers take a cautious or even cynical view of new efforts to “improve” the utility. This
makes it even more important that any new program or strategy is designed to be sustainable for
as long as it contributes to the health and performance of the utility. To be sustainable, a program
has to validate its contribution to utility performance. But that is not enough. The program needs
to be able to adapt to the needs of the organization and have other characteristics addressed below.
A major contribution offered by Knowledge Management is its ability to help the entire utility
adapt and maintain high performance by supporting several of the below listed organizational
characteristics.
Nurturing Organizational Health
Organizational health is the capacity to maintain high performance in a changing, uncertain,
complex and anxiety-producing environment. An organization is considered healthy when it
has the internal capacity and capability to deal with this new reality over time. Because organizational
performance is the sum of every decision and action every day in the organization, the
healthier the organization, the higher the quality of decision-making and consequent actions. Eight
factors that considerably influence the capacity of an organization to sustain high performance in
this environment are provided below with descriptions.
• Continuous learning (workers and organizations always gaining knowledge and
adapting behavior)
• Quick response (the organization is capable of reacting/responding quickly when
needed.)
• Robustness (the capacity to operate in a broad range of environments)
• Resiliency (the ability to recover readily, to resume its original performance)
• Flexibility (capable of being changed, or flexed, susceptible to influence or persuasion,
tractable)
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