The Role Of Managers

Provide Information For People To Develop Their ‘Know Why’.

Somewhat of a cliche now but change is a constant in today’s business world. It is for this reason that individuals need to have regular opportunities to hear about where the organisation is going, what that means in terms of future challenges, how they can best contribute, as well as talk about some of their current concerns and difficulties. While much of this information could be communicated electronically some business leaders feel that it is often better communicated face-to-face.

Allan Ditching, the Chief Information Officer of Progressive Corporation, a major Ohio-based automobile insurance company, holds bi-weekly Donuts-with-Ditch sessions; a practice which he initiated when he worked at AT&T (Myers, 1995). These informal sessions, run with groups of no more than 10 people at a time, provide a forum to hear people’s concerns, gather information, as well as get at some of the real issues that are getting in the way of people’s jobs. Ditchling believes that Donuts-with-Ditch type sessions provide a valuable forum for communication and interaction between senior managers and employees. These types of communications forums can provide opportunities for those at the centre to build ‘patterns of information’ about operational difficulties that might otherwise not come to light until too late.

There is an opportunity here for HR professionals to lead by example. Stephen Cronin, Executive Director, Group Resources, at Xerox Europe, for example believes that ‘ It is in the nature of hierarchy that the higher you rise, the more remote you become . . . the more senior you are, the less you know, the more dependent you are.’ (Overell, 1999). It is for this reason that Cronin initiated the practice of senior managers holding regular round-table discussions with staff at all levels within Xerox Europe. At these discussion forums, or ‘surgeries’ as they are sometimes referred to, senior managers provide information about where the business is going and invite employees to share their ideas on how they see the future. Employees are also encouraged to share their anxieties about the future at work. Each senior manager is set a target number of round-table discussions to be held; these form part of their performance objectives.

Support The Free Movement Of People

Frances Horibe (1999) argues that managers can help build knowledge in an organisation by supporting the free movement of people. As much of an organisation’s knowledge resides in individuals’ heads then this seems like a sensible strategy. However, Horibe recognises that managers may need incentives to encourage them to do this, as a natural inclination for managers is to hold on to good people rather than facilitate their movement to other teams. She suggests that to encourage the free movement of staff, the organisation (i.e. the senior decision-makers) needs to consider being over-resourced, thus creating the slack to allow movement within the organisation, as well as offering specific rewards for managers who willingly support the free movement of people.

Trial New Team Structures And Ways Of Working

In order to free individuals to work in more creative ways many organisations have introduced new team structures, or created flexible units that are isolated from the rigid operating core (Volberda et al., 2001). Citibank, for example, adopted this approach when it was developing its world-wide consumer operations and its 24-hour telephone banking service. One of Citibank’s branches in Greece, where much of the development work took place, became known as the organisation’s ‘banking laboratory’.

A similar approach was adopted by the Prudential when they were developing the Egg account. Here a separate team, where the managers and team members worked on a more equal basis, was established. The DigiLab team, set up by the BBC to build knowledge about the capabilities of digital video camcorders (Evans, 2000) is another example of where specialist teams can help meet a particular knowledge need at a given point in time.

When assembling project teams another consideration to help build and spread knowledge is actively to include ‘novices’ in the team. This is a strategy adopted by one of IBM’s top systems software managers at Hursley Park (Kavanagh, 2002). This particular management approach can have a number of benefits. First, as novices often ask naive questions, this can help stimulate other team members to question their own ideas, thoughts and working assumptions. Second, these ‘novices’ get an opportunity to learn directly from more experienced team members, thus helping to address the issue of knowledge transfer and retention.

Locate The Knowledge Experts And Extend And Reward Their Remit

Within every team there are certain individuals whom others, either within the team, or outside, consult with to tap into their knowledge. These individuals are often called upon to assist in trouble-shooting projects. But equally they may be good connectors of knowledge, both within and outside the organisation, because of their vast network. The value that these ‘knowledge experts’ bring to an organisation is often under-estimated.

However, the amount of time that these individuals spend either helping others resolve their problems, or sharing their knowledge in other ways, is often not budgeted for, or adequately acknowledged/rewarded. A consideration for line managers then is to revisit the role descriptions/job descriptions of ‘knowledge experts’ and their performance objectives, so that these reflect this often ‘taken for granted’ role. Chapter 11 introduces a tool, Social Network Analysis, which can be used to identify the different knowledge roles that people play in knowledge businesses.

Build And Facilitate Knowledge Connections

With the role of managers shifting from ‘subject expert’ to more of a facilitative role, a key task for managers is to build and extend their own network connections, both within and outside the organisation, as well as to facilitate knowledge exchanges among others within the organisation.

Managers have an important role in helping individuals understand the importance of networking in today’s business world. The more network contacts an individual has then the greater his/her sphere of influence. In addition it creates more learning opportunities, as well as opening up more opportunities from a career development perspective.

Encourage And Support Informal Learning

As 70 per cent of what we learn comes from informal learning approaches, managers have an important role to play in supporting and encouraging informal learning environments. These can range from: supporting Communities of Practice; creating spaces within the office environment where team members can come together for informal discussions; introducing a knowledge exchange slot at team meetings, or adopting the apprenticeship model of learning for individuals at different stages of their career. Chapter 6 goes into more detail about the need to re-visit learning in the knowledge economy.

With technology being a key tool that many individuals use as part of their day-to-day work, many of the practices used in the past to build and share knowledge can become lost or replaced with a technological solution. The Chair of a NHS Conference on Knowledge Management for Clinicians reminded his audience that there is still value to be had in some of the traditional knowledge-sharing practices used within the profession. Here he was referring to the traditional ‘ward round’ practice where trainee doctors follow a qualified clinician around on his/her ward rounds, thus bridging the learning between theory and practice. In the past, if a question was asked on the ward rounds that no one could answer, one of the trainee doctors would be instructed to write the question down, go away and find out the answer and return with this at the next ward round.

Re-Visit Assumptions About What Counts As Productive Work

Closely linked to the point made above about the need to create spaces for informal learning is the need to re-visit assumptions about what counts as productive work. Several other writers have been quoted as saying that talk is real work in the knowledge business as it is through conversations and dialogue that we extend our ‘know of’, ‘know why’ and ‘know how’.

In today’s knowledge economy managers need to re-frame their perception of what counts as productive work. They need to become more tolerant of what Apgar (1998) refers to as the ‘Doughnut club’, i.e. the place where virtual teams meet to talk about problems they are experiencing with customers and get feedback on what they are doing and also ‘engineering as many accidental meetings as possible’.

Make Sure Staff Build In Time For Thinking And Best Practice Scouring

One individual who shared his experiences with me of working in a creative field spoke of how his MD supported him by encouraging him to take time out to think. The MD constantly reminded him to take time out, to get out of the office environment and to find new thinking spaces.

Help Staff Value What They Know

The English Nature and QinetiQ case studies (see Section 3) highlight one of the common dilemmas for knowledge workers – they do not always value what they know. If people do not value what they know, then they may not blow their own trumpet, which can be restrictive from a career perspective. Feedback, from managers, and colleagues, either through 360-degree feedback processes, or though information from KM systems, can be useful in helping people get a better sense of their own value-add.

I have uncovered several stories as part of this phase of the research that reinforces the need for managers to re-visit what counts as productive work.

The journalist’s story – this is the story of a journalist who was challenged by his manager for looking at a book at his desk – the book happened to be a dictionary.

The utilities engineer story – in this particular organisation the senior management team took a decision to cancel the service engineers’ weekly team meetings. For the most part of the week these engineers worked independently out in the field, attending the team meetings meant that they had to make a special journey back to base. Clearly while attending the team meetings the engineers were not able to respond to calls from customers, this was considered not to be in the best interest of customers. However, in cancelling the weekly team meetings what the management team had overlooked was the amount of informal learning that took place, before, during and after the team meetings. The meetings provided an important opportunity for knowledge transfer with the less experienced engineers picking the brains of the more experienced engineers.

The salesman story – this is the story of a salesman who had worked for thirty years in the sales department of a large American company (Probst et al., 2000). His daily routine involved having chats with his immediate colleagues, as well as walking around the office chatting with other people in the department. However, a review of the sales figures by a new manager director identified that this particular salesman did not actually sell very much and thus he was dismissed. Once he had left, a number of difficulties began to emerge in the department. These included: difficulties with communication and coordination across different sub-sections, a dip in morale and new employees found that they had no one to indoctrinate them into the company’s unwritten rules. In short, the organisation had misread the role that this particular salesman had played in transferring knowledge through his daily walkabouts.