如何改变代理策略
改变代理策略
在多层次的世界，生存和繁荣的需要多方面的改变策略。套用阿什比定律必要的多样性定律,在改变策略中，必须有更多的品种比在你试图改变的系统中的多。
所以我们如何改变一个复杂的组织,以满足这个新世界的挑战爆炸的信息,增加不确定性,和不断增加的复杂性?虽然肯定是没有简单的答案——因为变化是一种情况和时间依赖。一个组织变化过程朝着成为一个聪明的复杂的自适应的系统，必须让每个人都参与公司以及外部合作伙伴。自组织网络和知识的人越来越相互联系，越来越复杂的世界变得越来越全球化,更大的一个组织的自组织变革策略必须发挥作用。
英格尔改变策略提出了实现我们所说的连通性的选择。这意味着各级决策组织的,但不同的是,显然不仅基于为未来指明了方向,但有凝聚力的方式基于理解为什么那个方向是可取的和个人决策的角色扮演对共同愿景的直接目标和他们的支持。在顶层,不断增加的知识和分享组织，基于一个共同的方向和一套共同的信仰和价值观背后的理论力量而去改变策略。
知识共享的成长之路
实现改变各级组织遵循的增长路径和分享知识。例如,当探索一个新的想法,无论是在个人或一个组织作为一个整体——关闭第一次创建结构化的概念。随着这些概念发芽,一些集中但有限的共享这些概念的发生。
The Change Agent S Strategy Commerce Essay
Surviving and thriving in a multifaceted world requires a multifaceted change strategy. Paraphrasing Ashbys law of requisite variety, there must be more variety in the change strategy than in the system you are trying to change.
So how do we change a complex organization to meet the challenges of this new world of exploding information, increasing uncertainty, and ever-increasing complexity? While there is certainly no simple answer---since change is situation and time-dependent---the change process for an organization moving toward becoming an intelligent complex adaptive system must engage every individual in the firm as well as external partners. Since organizational networks of people and knowledge have become more and more interconnected and more and more complex as the world has become more global, the larger an organization the more a self-organizing change strategy must come into play.
An ICAS change strategy sets out to achieve what we call a connectedness of choices. This means that decisions made at all levels of the organization, while different, are clearly based not only on a clear direction for the future, but made in a cohesive fashion based on an understanding of both why that direction is desirable and the role that individual decisions play with respect to immediate objectives and their support of the shared vision. At the top level, a continuous increase of knowledge and sharing based on a common direction of the organization and a common set of beliefs and values is the theoretical force behind the change strategy.
知识共享的成长之路——The Growth Path of Knowledge Sharing
Implementing change at every level of the organization follows the growth path of knowledge and sharing. For example, when exploring a new idea---whether within an individual or in an organization as a whole---closed structured concepts are first created. As these concepts germinate, some focused but limited sharing of these concepts occurs. Over time, particularly if positive feedback occurs during the limited sharing, there is increased sharing and a deeper awareness and connectedness through sharing occurs, i.e., a common understanding of the concept is shared across a number of people. From this framework, individuals and organizations participating in this sharing create new concepts and from those concepts new innovations, and purposefully share them across and beyond the framework, leading to application of these ideas to everyday work. As connectedness increases, there is also heightened awareness, or consciousness, of the potential value of these concepts to a larger audience, leading motivated individuals and organizations to advance these concepts even further, engendering the rise of social responsibility. This is pictured in a graphic entitled The Rise of Knowledge and Sharing.
Wisdom occurs when knowledge is integrated with a strong value set and acted upon with courage. Through leading and teaching (leadership and education), this wisdom facilitates the growth of new concepts, and an expanded connectedness with like individuals and organizations around the world. It is at this level in the growth of knowledge and sharing where we have built enough wisdom and knowledge to create and share new thoughts in a fully aware and conscious process, i.e., to purposefully strategize what concepts to share and how to share them, consciously contributing to world growth.
The underlying realization in this pattern is that a single individual in an organization (or a single organization in an enterprise, or a single enterprise in a global market) cannot effectively function at a level so far above others that there is a lack of recognition and understanding of the level of that functioning. Historically, there are occurrences where innovators and forward-thinking ideas failed during one period of time only to emerge again during a later period as a leading market product or practice. The old adage "Everything in its own time" has helped explain the earlier failure. In the fast-paced and interconnected world of today, we have the ability to create "its own time," inverting the adage and placing success of forward-thinking ideas squarely in the ability of an organization to create a shared understanding across the global environment. In other words, while ideally the ICAS will stay ahead of competitive organizations, it may want to encourage sharing and the growth of knowledge across its market sector to ensure a wider and deeper understanding by customers of the value of its contribution to the marketplace.#p#分页标题#e#
For example, in an organization not built on flow and sharing, a brilliant idea developed before its time, which is so far beyond current thinking that no one recognizes its value, will have little chance of funding and support. In an industry where there is little cross-organizational sharing (other than piracy out of context), when a forward-thinking firm produces a product before its time, the product will have little opportunity for success without the recognition of value, the industry's ability to support and sustain it, and people's ability to use it. The sharing of ideas within and across organizations can plow the ground for receptivity and demand, with initial competitive advantage going to the first product in the field and the long-term competitive advantage going to the best and most continuously improved product.
Thinking about the description above of the rise of knowledge and sharing, the change agent's strategy suggested here is holistic, and not bounded by the organization. Indeed, it encourages interactions across large relationship networks and sharing and learning across organizational boundaries. As discussed above, while this may at first appear contrary to organizational advantage in a competitive world, having the best information and knowledge is only a first step toward being competitive. The greater value for an organization is how this knowledge is used and the ability of those who are using this knowledge to discern value in it, integrate it, recognize patterns, and adapt it to changing requirements in a turbulent environment. This knowledge can rarely be given away because no other organization would know how to discern value, interpret it, recognize patterns, or adapt it, but other organizations can build on it and, from their different perspectives, create new ideas that, in turn, can be built upon by other organizations.
Since change itself is an emergent characteristic, it is a product of combining, integrating, and correlating elements of the change strategy with the organization's direction, objectives, structure, culture, and leadership. The change strategy must be consistent with the desired organization (ICAS). In the ICAS, the means do not justify the end; they serve as an example of the richness and effectiveness of the end state, of the desired approach for how future work gets done. There is a visible consistency in ICAS theory and actions throughout the strategy suggested below.
The change strategy model can be viewed in terms of orchestrating and implementing twelve specific elements. These elements are: creating a shared direction; building the business case; demonstrating leadership commitment; facilitating a common understanding; setting limits; sharing new ideas, words, and behaviors; identifying the strategic approach; developing the structure; measuring and incentivizing; providing tools; promoting learning; and envisioning an even greater future. Each element is detailed below.#p#分页标题#e#
创造一个共享的愿景——Create a Shared Vision
In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge (1990) emphasizes the importance of a shared vision where employees participate in the development of a corporate vision, and can then make decisions and take actions consistent with the directions set by senior leadership through the shared visioning process. For the ICAS, in an unknowable future, the vision must be more of a direction than an end state. In their research on consciousness, Edelman and Tononi (2000) identify the mechanism that provides unity to consciousness, thereby creating a continuous history of thought and a consistency of identity and action. This ability to maintain different parts of the brain in harmony and to pull them together in an organization is facilitated by constant and widespread communication.
The journey toward becoming an ICAS starts with a shared direction of what the organization will accomplish and how it will be accomplished, i.e., how the work gets done. Learning from history, we realize that it is advantageous for an organization to have a strategic plan. What may be different about the ICAS approach is that the plan is a product of the whole organization, with inputs and reviews at every level of, and from every functional area in, the organization. In the development process, goals are worked and reworked to assure the right set of goals addressed at a low enough level to make them real and viable, and a high enough level to provide flexibility and tailoring at the point of action where implementation decisions are made. The plan has the potential to bring the organization's collective vision of its future into clear focus, and communicates leadership's commitment to this vision.
The process of developing the strategic plan is part of the change strategy. The strategic plan as a collective process brings with it a sense of ownership across the organization, and responsibility for the outcome, both laying the groundwork for successful implementation. A way to get even more people involved is to make success stories a part of the plan. Early in the planning cycle, leadership publicizes the desire to locate early successes to serve as examples for each top-level goal or objective of the plan. As the top-level goals/objectives emerge over the course of the planning process, with them emerge examples of innovative thinking that is jumpstarting the organization toward achieving these goals/objectives. Not only does this process identify innovations underway, but it facilitates further ownership of the plan, and encourages organizational units to understand and begin implementation of the plan prior to its publication and distribution. By the time the plan is staffed through the various stakeholders of the organization, the organization is aligned, senior leadership is committed, and implementation has already begun.
#p#分页标题#e#建立商业案例——Build the Case
From a corporate view it is essential to have a strong business case for any anticipated change strategy. This business case lays out the current organizational effectiveness level, identifies needed changes and, most importantly, describes the anticipated changes and expected results of those changes in terms that make sense from a business perspective. However, the business perspective is not the only perspective to be considered because it is equally important to have the anticipated changes make sense to the employees and other organizational stakeholders such as customers and the environment and local community as they apply.
Walking through the process, the business case first looks carefully at the result of anticipated changes, the strategic and tactical actions necessary to achieve those changes and the anticipated performance and competitive advantage of the organization assuming those changes are complete. It needs to address those changes in terms of long-term organizational health and competitive advantage, short-term anticipated payoffs, and the various risks arising from the strategic and tactical implementation of the changes. For the business case to make sense, it must also address the current and anticipated environment from marketing and customer viewpoints as well as potential risks relative to government regulations, technology breakthroughs, etc.
The business case should include, wherever possible, quantitative parameters with backup information relative to their reasonableness in terms of investment requirements, return on investment expectations, etc. The reasons for the suggested or needed changes must be identified and thoroughly examined. Ideally, the changes needed at every level of the organization and perhaps with vendors, partners, and even customers are identified. The suggested changes are also looked at carefully relative to the impact on employees, the structure, and the culture. Historically, each employee's silent question will be WIFM (what's in it for me?) and how will it affect my local work and my local organization, as well as the organization as a whole?
The business case also addresses the feasibility and fundamental approach for the change management recommended. Thus, are the changes consistent with the current structure and culture of the organization, or are both of those going to have to be significantly revamped to achieve the desired end state? What are the financial, managerial, sociological, technological, and political consequences of the recommended changes as seen by both outsiders and insiders?
An examination of basic beliefs and assumptions underlying the recommended changes needs to be performed with the results made part of the business case to ensure that suggested changes are not accidentally biased by antiquated assumptions or belief systems. For a business case to be solid, it also must include some idea of, and characterize in some fashion, the future market within which the organization is going to move.
The strength and thoroughness of the business case will depend heavily on the size of the organization, the nature of its leadership, and the expectations of its customers and other stakeholders. These balances may be large-scale research balances all the way down to individual knowledge worker competencies, attitudes, and decisions on priorities or work or how to approach problems. As always, since everyone is potentially subjected to internal biases, erroneous assumptions, and misplaced beliefs, it is wise to get a second, or perhaps group, opinion to reevaluate how individuals or teams perceive the situation, their most effective aspects of work, or their balance points. From another perspective, all changes in organizations create/demand a change in a number of balance points. While often knowledge workers and leaders do not recognize that they are simply changing balance points, it is exactly these changes that can be so threatening to individuals if they do not recognize them as balance points and important aspects of the work.
证明领导的承诺——Demonstrate Leadership Commitment
When a respected senior leader clearly demonstrates commitment to a vision through words and actions, members of the senior leader's relationship network, which includes subordinates, quickly follow. In short, there are champions waiting to emerge throughout the organization: champions of theory and action, champions of specific processes or projects who are in fact already implementing these processes or projects at some level. In every organization there are forward-thinking individuals who push the edge of change, no matter what name that change is called by. It is the change agent's responsibility to find these individuals and spread the word of their successes, tying them to the vision of the organization. As leader after leader begins to demonstrate and communicate successes, large or small, other leaders recognize potential value to their focus areas of the organization. Interconnected successes quickly spread across the enterprise, proving the old adage "success begets success."
It is appropriate here to discuss the change agent's role in the organization. While the most effective change agent is recognized as organizationally connected to the highest levels of the organization, having free access to senior leadership, a true agent of change cannot be considered a competitive part of the infrastructure, nor can a successful change agent own the change they lead. These people are assigned to act as a funnel for building change across the organization, identifying successes, picking up the ideas behind those successes, and spreading them throughout the organization. The change agent connects people, integrates ideas and actions, and builds visibility of leadership commitment to those ideas and actions. Simple but consistent actions can facilitate this change. Here are some ideas about how to capture and communicate leadership commitment in a large, widely dispersed, global organization:
Develop a short video, beginning with a two-minute opening by the senior leader of the organization, and featuring project leaders talking about their early successes. Have the senior leader hand-write notes to accompany copies of the video to leaders throughout the organization, asking them to ensure that every employee has the opportunity to see the video.
Develop pass-it-down training, beginning at the very top of the organization. The concept of pass-it-down training is that leaders at all levels have the opportunity to impress on their teams the importance and significance of building the ICAS. This process has the added benefit of ensuring that organizational leadership understands the new organization and how it will operate. Teaching and facilitation are forms of learning.
Hold a "town hall," featuring senior leadership, virtually supported (television, video) to facilitate geographically dispersed organizations, with live connectivity via telephone and computers. Much like a telethon, this event will offer the opportunity for workers at all levels to interact with senior leadership, voicing their concerns and ideas and receiving an immediate response, howbeit "we need to think more about that." This process, called "event intermediation," ensures a point in time where all senior leaders understand the importance of the ICAS, and have an awareness of what their areas of responsibility are doing to move toward becoming an ICAS.
Capture quotes from early leaders and champions and embed these in presentations, both internal and external, at every level of the organization.
Hold a "knowledge fair," where every functional and organizational area of the organization is featured showing how they are contributing to achieving the vision. Have senior leadership open the fair, and include enjoyable, memorable events that are centered around the way the organization needs to work, with members of the organization participating in the presentation. Create a groundswell of sharing and understanding by opening the fair to employees, stakeholders, and partners.
Develop a virtual CD or portal-based reference tool about the knowledge fair capturing people talking about their projects and leaders talking about their organizations, all focused on their contribution to achieving the ICAS vision. Circulate this throughout the organization and the organization's stakeholders.
促进一个共同的理解——Facilitate a Common Understanding
So often we as human beings leap forward with little thought for the consequences. While a shared vision certainly helps define the direction we are leaping, the larger and more complex an organization the more the imperative to develop a shared understanding of the reasons behind the movement toward that vision to ensure a connectedness of choices.#p#分页标题#e#
Representations in terms of words and visuals are the tools of trade for facilitating common understanding. Early models should address those areas needing the greatest clarity. Since every organization is at a different stage of development, has a different culture, and may or may not already understand the importance of knowledge and learning to the success of the organization, it is critical to ensure a solid recognition of the power of sharing knowledge, moving the organization from the bureaucratically embedded concept of "knowledge is power" to the emerging concept of "knowledge shared is power squared." For example, the knowledge life cycle model used throughout the government was intended to generate discussion on the relationship among data, information, and knowledge; the reality of information decay (information has the potential to become less important over time); and the effects as knowledge spreads across the competitive base. Each employee has a story to tell, and the intent of this model was to engage response, to bring out both positive and negative feelings regarding past experiences, clearing the air to move toward a new way of thinking, and build focused thought. Facilitating a common understanding of the knowledge life cycle is so critical that the KMCI organization has spent several years developing a Knowledge Life Cycle model (Firestone and McElroy, 2003).
As the Department of the Navy moved toward becoming a knowledge-centric organization, there were common stories that emerged. For example, one explication might go like this: as knowledge is shared across organizations, it becomes more widely used. On the negative side this means that competitors now have the same opportunities; on the positive side, since ideas generate ideas, everyone has a greater opportunity to build new knowledge. What becomes of paramount importance is how those ideas are used. Another common explication that emerged from looking at the model focused on creativity and went something like this: since all people are creative, and everyone in today's world has access to an almost exponentially increasing amount of information, it is likely that any given creative idea will emerge in more than one place. Once again, what is paramount in a competitive market is continuous learning (creation of new ideas) and the ability to effectively (and quickly) act on those ideas.
To build a common understanding of "knowledge," a simple visual of a red apple with a bite taken out of it can be used. Within the apple are listed many of the IT advances important to success. The word "knowledge" streams out of the empty space where the bite was taken. The message delivered with this visual is simple and straightforward: while all that we are doing in information technology and information management is critically important, it is not until the bite (of information) is taken, chewed, digested, and acted upon that it becomes knowledge. Knowledge is created within the individual, and it is actionable. While organizational knowledge could certainly be considered an emergent phenomenon, the creation of knowledge and recognition of patterns at the organizational level is through people.
Once again, the process and thinking that goes into developing the models an organization uses to convey the way work gets done are just as important, if not more important, than the outcome. We'll discuss this further in the next change element on setting limits.
设立限制——Set Limits
All of the models discussed above limit the field of the possible in order to focus on a concept, facilitate a deeper understanding of that concept, and provide a mechanism for communicating that concept. We also set limits (provide focus) through developing and refining descriptions and definitions. Focusing on a concept in this manner provides the opportunity for developing new ideas, new thinking. For example, The Federal Chief Information Officer Council invited cross-agency participation, and representatives from the private sector and academia to focus on what knowledge management meant to the Federal government. The results of this partnering were a clearer understanding of the role of Chief Knowledge Officers in the U.S. government, and definition of the fourteen learning objectives for a government certification course. In essence, these learning objectives defined the scope of knowledge management for the Federal government as seen at that point in time. Limiting the scope of what was involved provided the opportunity to focus in these areas to add value to the bottom line of the organization. These learning objectives are detailed in Chapter 15.
A second example is one that might sound familiar; it has occurred in many government and private sector organizations. It is also analogous to any new change effort that the environment dictates---and management agrees---will add value to organizational effectiveness. When e-business became the leading concept of the day, in many organizations money was taken from current change efforts to fund the new idea on the block. When a new concept emerges and is either supported by senior leadership or should be, it is the change agent's task to clearly build the relationship between the new idea and current efforts to harness any synergy between new and current management focus areas. Too often, ongoing change efforts are tossed aside for new ideas before they have a chance to add value to the organization, and, eventually, as this pattern repeats itself, it is difficult for employees to take management change efforts seriously. This results in an organizational culture encouraging a wait-and-see attitude regarding all change strategies. By building on current efforts---and then fading out or merging these efforts with the new as is determined favorable to the organization over time (with employee input)---it is possible to take full advantage of new concepts, approaches, and perceptions.
A potential first step toward achieving this strategy is for the leaders of each change effort to coauthor and publish articles on the focus of each of these efforts, and how they fit together to work toward achieving the organization's mission. This process helps develop agreed-upon definitions, brings about focus, and builds working relationships that will help both efforts succeed. Returning to our example, how would we provide focus and create synergy between e-business (eB) and knowledge management (KM)? The focus of KM is on intellectual capital (with KM viewed as a process for optimizing the effective application of intellectual capital to achieve organizational objectives), and that means people; while eB is the interchange and processing of information via electronic techniques for accomplishing transactions based upon the application of commercial standards and practices. These definitions reflect a common focus viewed through different lenses. Continuing the analogy, both eB and KM bring with them a focus on processes. KM provides a methodology for creating processes within the organization to promote knowledge creation and sharing---processes that build on total quality and business process reengineering concepts. In like manner, an integral part of implementing eB is the application of business process improvement or reengineering to streamline business processes prior to the incorporation of technologies facilitating the electronic exchange of business information. KM, implemented by and at the organizational level, and supporting empowerment and responsibility at the individual level, focuses on understanding the knowledge needs of an organization and the sharing and creation of knowledge through communities and Web-enabled collaboration, connecting people. The knowledge systems supporting these communities, based on interoperability concepts to ensure enterprise-wide sharing, build on information management, taking into account the human factor. While both KM and eB are in the business of information exchange, the KM focus is specifically on the knowledge sharing aspect of this exchange. This focusing of KM and eB---or setting of limits---provides a rich fabric for the two strategic efforts to complement each other and for the organization to recognize that both efforts offer synergistic opportunities for long-term success.#p#分页标题#e#
分享新想法,言语,行为——Share New Ideas, Words, and Behaviors
Thinking in new ways demands new words, or putting old words together in new ways, to communicate new thinking; and those new words (or combinations of old words) drive new behaviors. In like manner, new behaviors drive new thinking and new words. As early as 1784 Hugh Blair identified a clear, close alliance between thought and language, "Thought and Language act and re-act upon each other mutually" (Erlbaum, 1982). Later theorists such as Brown, Black, Bloomfield, Skinner, Quine, Popper, Wittgenstein and Whorf regarded language as a major form of behavior, a significant entity in its own right. Emig (1983) contended that language is a powerful, if not unique, way of constructing reality and acting on the world. While the theoretical tapestry that builds relationships among thinking, language, and actions is varied and inconclusive, it is clear that there is a relationship, and that effective use of words and understanding the concepts these words represent has the potential to affect thoughts and behaviors.
As an example, take the concepts of clustering and clumping. While these words have long been a part of Webster's collection, the way they are used in forward-thinking organizations today drives a necessary change in behavior. Clustering and clumping define different ways of organizing (and accessing) data and information. Clustering is how data and information are usually organized, bringing together those things that are similar or related. This way of organizing is driven by the content of the data and information itself. Clumping is organizing data and information driven by the decisions that need to be made. At the enterprise level, those authoritative data fields that are needed for decision-making are identified and connected (or clumped together) to provide real-time input to emerging decision-making requirements. In a system, that means linking secondary data and information needed by the individual who will use the primary information for decision-making. For example, if a decision-maker has repeated failure of an engine part that is only periodically used, not only is it important to know how to fix it and have spare parts available if it is a recurring problem, but it might have saved considerable time, effort, and dollars if the decision-maker had the knowledge that the engine was scheduled for replacement six months down the road. There are often pieces of information that if known would change the decisions we make on a daily basis. When a segment of the organization creates a database or information system for the organization or enterprise, it is responsible for thinking through how that information will be used, and what additional known or potentially available information may be required by the decision-maker using the original information. We don't know what we don't know. With knowledge comes the responsibility to use and share it wisely, and to help others use and share it wisely.#p#分页标题#e#
A second example is the increasing use of the word verication. Verication, not yet discovered by dictionary updaters, is the process of consulting a trusted ally. We as humans do it regularly. When we do not have explicit evidence to verify the correctness of a decision, or question the explicit evidence we do have because of our "gut" feeling, we vericate the decision. This means going to a recognized expert with whom you have a relationship (a trusted ally, often a colleague or friend) to get their opinion, i.e., grounding your decision through implicit data and information. Having a word for this behavior helps leaders and workers to recognize it as an acceptable practice in decision-making, increasing the value of intellectual capital in the organization.
As new ideas, words, and behaviors are shared consistent with the vision of the organization, an aggressive, comprehensive communications strategy, both internal and external, is essential to ensure the connectedness of choices discussed above. Internal successes and external validation provide strong explicit evidence in support of the business case. The use of teams and communities --- an important part of the ICAS implementation strategy --- helps facilitate the flow of information and knowledge across the organization. Here are a few ideas on how to do that:
Create a meme (an idea that catches on and becomes embedded in the culture). An example of a meme is "change through ex-change" or the famous army slogan, "be all you can be." These are expressions that take on a life of their own. "Knowledge shared is knowledge squared" is also a meme.
Build a story on the vision of your organization and circulate it widely, using it as a basis for discussions.
Participate in external studies and research projects with respected, high-name-recognition organizations such as APQC (American Productivity Quality Center). When participating in a study, rotate representatives and create forums for these representatives to share what they are learning.
确定战略方法——Identify the Strategic Approach
There is no substitute for strategic thinking at all levels of the organization. To create an ICAS organization, all knowledge workers need to think strategically as well as locally. The first key to any kind of "thinking" is an understanding of what needs to be thought about. So, develop a draft concept of operations for the new organization and spread it across the organization for response. Put it up on a server and open it up for virtual comment (with ownership of comments). This is an important point. If a knowledge worker has a point to make, it should be a point they will claim, and one the organization will look at and consider. (Another option is to have every leader in the organization read this book. That will provide a plowed field to sow and make our publisher happy enough to continue publishing our work.)#p#分页标题#e#
Implementation at the organizational level must be discussed in terms of connectivity and flow. See Chapter 10 for a complementary approach to change related to the creation of emergent characteristics of an organization.
A key part of the change strategy is creation of a community of practice to help facilitate change, engaging integrators at all levels of the organization. One person, or one part of the organization, cannot accomplish change; it must come from within at every level of the organization. Integrators are knowledge workers who are respected, trusted, and regularly communicated with by others in the organization. The integrator role is highly dependent on personality and values, and is a role that emerges over time in relationship networks. These individuals, key to both formal and informal networks, are usually obvious in an organization, but can be identified through social network analysis. (See Chapter 21, "Networking for the Bottom Line.") Develop these integrators into leaders and champions. Implement their good ideas; and, above all, engage them in multiple teams and communities.
发展策略——Develop the Structure
As technology advances, seamless infrastructure is essential to facilitate the collaboration and free flow of information that enables effective decision-making. While short-term change can occur through mandates, and it is often short-term in effectiveness as well. Long-term change requires embedding the change in the culture of the organization (see Chapter 7). At the same time, the infrastructure must be put in place to support the vision of how work will be done.
We live in a technology-enabled world with global implications. More and more work will be done at a distance, driving the need for collaboration and knowledge systems that support interoperability. Development and support of, and rewards to, teams and communities ensure use of the technology and information infrastructures; education and training of the workforce ensure the ability to successfully use it.
The organization's Career Center, in conjunction with the human resources department, can benefit long-term change in a number of areas. Here are some ideas:
Conduct a gap analysis of the skill sets of the current organization and the desired organization, addressing the competencies necessary to achieve projected missions and strategies and initiatives to help the organization attract new personnel and sustain the capabilities to accomplish its missions.
Identify the work that will be done within the organization, and that work which will be outsourced to support the organization. For the government, this includes identifying the work that is inherently governmental.
Develop a Workforce Strategic Plan to develop strategies and specific plans for hiring, training, and professional development, with the goal to promote integrative competencies throughout the workforce. A thoughtful, visionary, and forward-thinking plan can lay the foundation for positive organizational transformation.#p#分页标题#e#
Develop a career path guide to provide individual guidance to employees in meeting the continuing challenges of technological change. The guide should include an explication of roles in the new ICAS organization with related learning objectives and job requirements.
Create a virtual tool for individuals to use in developing their personal career paths. The tool could help the workforce assess their current and required competencies, as well as helping them generate a career progression plan to attain competencies needed for future job assignments based on individual, long-term goals.
Embed change elements and future skills needed into all ongoing short and long-term education and training initiatives.
措施和激励——Measure and Incentivize
In a survey conducted a few years ago in a government organization implementing a KM system pilot, responders identified the most important factors in successful KM implementation in this relative order: culture (29%), processes (21%), metrics (19%), content (17%), leadership (10%) and technology (4%). What is fascinating, and a product of the organization's culture as well as that of many industry organizations, is that metrics (how success is measured and communicated) appeared more important than content (that which is in the system itself). Metrics are critical to most organizations, and have become part of the culture of the organization as well as the managing system. Recognizing this aspect of your organization from the very beginning of a change approach can mean the difference between success and failure of your change efforts.
Metrics drive behavior, and can be a powerful force of behavioral change. One change approach is to ensure metrics are used that measure the organization's intent for the future---not just measuring past actions. Senior leadership can sponsor a working team focused on developing metrics guidance for the organization that includes participation from across functional and organizational units. While metrics must be specifically tailored to the organization, there are three types of specific measures to monitor and guide change initiatives from different perspectives: outcome metrics (concerning the overall organization and measuring large-scale characteristics such as increased productivity or revenue for the organization); output metrics (measuring project level characteristics such as the effectiveness of lessons learned information to capturing new business); and system metrics (monitoring the usefulness and responsiveness of the supporting technology tools). Have your team develop an overall process for developing metrics, including sample metrics and case studies. Again, recall that what you measure identifies what management feels is important, and drives the way work will be done. Measure for the future.
An active and highly visible awards program that rewards both individual and team behaviors draws out successes and involves a larger number of employees in change efforts. Once again, behaviors that are rewarded will become behaviors that are embedded into the infrastructure of the organization and of the organizational culture. Here are some ideas:#p#分页标题#e#
Develop an awards program rewarding teams who are early implementers, with senior leaders presenting the awards. Create events to publicize these awards.
Sponsor spin-off communities of practice and interest and build-in both individual and group awards. Examples of awards programs would include a monetary award for the individual who is voted (by members of the community) as the most knowledgeable, most accessible, and with the best response rate; and a group award to all members of the community who participate in specific solutions.
Give promotions in terms of leadership and monetary remuneration to those individuals (and teams!) who best emulate the desired behavior for the future organization.
提供工具——Provide Tools
Buckminster Fuller once said that if you want to change a culture, provide tools. Any change approach can benefit when we recognize the truth of this observation. As guidance and policy is issued, tools that provide approaches to, and resources for, accomplishing that guidance and policy are distributed. As befits the ICAS organization, the tools themselves are a product of subject matter experts across the organization who come together for a period of time to develop these resources, i.e., the process of development as well as the product is part of the change strategy. Virtual toolkits are then made freely available---on the server and/or compact disks---to all employees, stakeholders, and organizational partners, with the understanding that change in a complex organization must be validated externally while driven internally. Change cannot occur in isolation, and with the permeable and porous boundaries necessary for successful organizations in a global world, it is difficult for a single organization, or part of an organization, to move forward when those surrounding them are operating at a stale level of thinking. Areas of initial focus for developing the ICAS include:
All of the integrative competencies (see Chapters 14 through 19) and any additional ones specifically required for your organization to survive and grow.
Team and community care and feeding.
Metrics guidance.
Security and privacy issues in an open environment.
促进学习——Promote Learning
No organization or individual can change without learning, nor once change is made can any organization or individual continue to function and be of value in a changing environment without continuous learning. Though this important concept emerged over a decade ago in the Total Quality environment, and Senge (1990) pushed the learning organization into higher-level executive thinking, we're just beginning to realize the importance of it, and putting systems in place to help facilitate learning in a virtual world.#p#分页标题#e#
A first step is to embed learning into the everyday life of the organization, with the organization and its leaders encouraging and providing opportunities for learning, and every knowledge worker taking responsibility for---and being accountable for---their own learning (see Chapters 14 and 16). Here are several ideas to begin this approach:
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 120 hours of continuous learning activities (using organizational toolkits, attending conferences, etc.) each year in addition to the minimum competencies established in their career fields and required for specific workforce assignments.
Make continuous learning a bullet in every individual's performance appraisal. Taking the ICAS approach, each employee would develop a continuous learning plan in concert with their manager and team leaders, self-certifying completion of this plan during performance appraisals.
Set the organizational expectation---and validate that expectation by example at the highest levels of the organization---that every leader will be a mentor, and that every pupil has the responsibility for horizontal sharing of what they are learning.
Ensure rotational assignments, allowing individuals to build viable networks based on relationships across the organization (and beyond the organization in their fields of expertise wherever possible).
想象一个更大的未来——Envision an Even Greater Future
The place from which we currently act and respond, our point of reference, is reflective of the bureaucratic model upon which our organizational structures were grounded. As a groundswell of change is created through this strategy in conjunction with the creative change ideas that will emerge from within, the organization's point of reference will also change. To ensure this process of continuous improvement, new ideas and new thoughts need to come into focus and enlarge the future vision. This, of course, is the role played by new management movements, as organizations in the Western world moved through total quality management and business process reengineering, then e-business and knowledge management. What is critical for future success is an organization's ability to take the best of each new focus area---each new fad---discern the value, determine fit, and integrate the best of each focus area into the organization in a way that makes sense.#p#分页标题#e#
In the complex world in which we live, there is no lack of new management approaches, and assuredly each approach offers potential value. What is difficult is to achieve is the balance between recognizing and sustaining that which is good in an organization, embedding that which has been determined valuable and is currently being implemented, and embracing the value offered by new management approaches. What is that balance? What are the potential gains and losses from this approach? How do we facilitate the gains and mitigate the losses? Finally, since a complex organization cannot be controlled in the classical meaning of the term---nor should it be---how do we ensure that value, as it emerges, is shared across the organization?
This dilemma of balance extends through every aspect of an organization. A visible example is the insertion of new information technology such as wireless. At what point does the organization wishing to succeed in the future global world embrace wireless technology? How fast should this transition move? What mindsets and strategies (such as moving the security focus from technology to information) need to be changed?
In this new world, many organizations are moving forward at a fast pace, with a vision and strategy, but without a predetermined path. The path has been and will continue to be forged by dedicated professionals in each organization, working individually and collectively, but always aware of the organization's mission and vision. The ICAS vision is to increase the number of dedicated professionals, and to ensure that every single individual in the organization has awareness of---and is committed to achieving---the vision of the organization. As this vision turns and changes in response to the turbulent environment, the understanding of individuals within the organization must turn and change with it.
This focus on people is holistic, ranging from the creation of theory and the building of shared understanding to the development of infrastructure to support individual and organizational learning and development of knowledge centricity. Enterprise-level leadership ranges from promulgating guidance and policy, to providing tools, to rewarding success. Effectively, this complex change strategy cannot help but encourage a natural progression toward the ICAS across and within the organization, contributing to the cultural change essential to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the ICAS, and facilitating a connectedness of choices through the sharing of new thought in a fully aware and conscious process.
