222 Anand, Pauleen, and Dexter
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- People to People. This category was identified primarily as a culture issue and
focussed on sharing the experience and knowledge of staff and making it easily
accessible through maintaining and developing contact networks. In this instance,
an environment was required, for example, “coffee machine discussions,” which
enabled and encouraged the exchange of ideas, and which ensured that staff were
aware of who knew what within the organisation, as well as allowing new experi-
ences to be shared. - Institutionalise Knowledge. While the Bank was good at capturing decisions, it
was not always as efficient in its responses to them. For example, the thinking that
went into its decisions, the alternatives discussed, and market reactions were not
always captured. Consequently, there was little learning captured for reuse. The
challenge here was to turn individual knowledge into an institutional repository,
so that it became part of the corporate memory. - Collaborative Culture. The intent of this was to change the culture so that sharing
became second nature within the organisation, and as a consequence, moved away
from the view that “knowledge is power” to one of “knowledge sharing is power.”
From an organisational perspective, this meant ensuring that the organisation
allowed sharing to happen, with executives leading by example to develop and
actively reinforce the organizational culture (Schein, 1992).
An example of facilitating opportunities to share is the recognition of the impor-
tance of staff mixing in the cafeteria. When the existence of the cafeteria came under
review, the Bank decided to keep it as its benefits in this regard had been recognised.
Activities in this area were focussed on creating a collaborative culture in order to make
the most of the resources that the Bank had, and a collaborative working environment
in which sharing is active and deliberate.
The completion of the gap analysis allowed the Knowledge Services Group to
identify a number of specific initiatives that would enhance knowledge management
within the Bank. These initiatives were developed and categorised in terms of cost and
importance as shown in Figure 4.
In general, the initiatives were aimed at improving the accessibility to structured and
unstructured data and to the knowledge held by people, improving the corporate
memory, and developing the right culture. In particular, they focussed on infrastructure
issues such as the tools required. These issues could be regarded as the low-hanging
fruit since they were more easily understood by people and provided a catalyst for a
change in culture. However, they also included more difficult cultural and leadership
issues. In keeping with the complex nature of knowledge management, these initiatives
presented a multifaceted approach that included cultural, technological, and organisational
infrastructures as identified by Gold, Malhotra, and Segars (2001).
During the strategy development process the general feeling amongst many within
the organisation, apart from the knowledge management enthusiasts, seemed to be one
of nonchalance. In many respects, it was recognised that the concept of knowledge
management was not new, and there was an underlying feeling of a new label being placed
on an old problem. The Knowledge Services Group countered this by talking not about
knowledge management, but about the specific issues that were being identified and how
these might be resolved. While the term “knowledge strategy” or “knowledge frame-