This blog focuses on how to leverage the knowledge held, created, shared in an organisational context; with the objective of fostering creativity and innovation for competitive advantage. Leveraging your organisational knowledge relates to Knowledge Management, organisational learning, human capital development, social media/networks strategy, multi-channels Customer Relationships Management (CRM)
Search This Blog
30 December 2007
It was about SOA all along! Chapter 5
With the family reunion of the Christmas break, I have only managed to complete Chapter 5. In my defence, it is probably the most important chapter of the book judging from the powerful messages it conveys. The following chapters seem to be only about some of the consequences of taking on the challenge defined in this chapter: “Creating a Program of Service Enablement”. The authors describe such a program in terms of three levels or steps:
1. Designing a Single Service.
2. Designing Systems of Services.
3. Service-Enabling your Enterprise Applications.
According to the authors, no company has yet (at the time of writing) reached level 3! This is probably still true but I wonder if a company like Google that seems to have been implementing step 2 for years now, is not already well into service-enabling its core applications (and maybe they were designed as such from the beginning). In any case, what is implied here is that the first companies to successfully reach (and complete) step 3 are likely to be the success stories in the coming years.
The chapter starts with a wonderful email sent by the CEO of the fictitious company Vorpal. She writes to all the staff to involve them in building a new service-focused culture. The goal is to foster technological innovation throughout the company and “take shadow IT out of the shadows”. Once again, I’m not aware of many CxOs (let alone CEOs) with such an open-mind on new technologies and the courage to initiate and lead the drastic cultural change that a SOA demands. Such forward-looking leadership is indeed a must for a successful SOA implementation.
Chapter 5 describes 5 rules for successful SOA implementation. I want to comment only on the first two:
This chapter’s first rule is about promoting Shadow IT. The authors are quick to note that it is not a new phenomenon. Probably since IT was provided to people to do their work, most of them would work out their own “tools, procedures and workarounds” to increase efficiency at doing their job. Most importantly, this personal or team innovation is done without the IT department (official) involvement and in most cases even without it’s knowledge. This unofficial but productive IT is what the authors define as Shadow IT. I will quote their conclusion on this topic: “Failure to embrace and support Shadow IT in the long run means wasted resources, and inability to maximize the value of your company’s collective candlepower, and lost opportunities”.
The second rule is “Institute a Service Culture”. This is for me the cornerstone of an SOA implementation. The author only give this rule half a page but a lot more is implied. Service-enabling an Organization means adapting its internal culture. “Creating a lifecycle process in which services are made, reported, judged, and finally supported by IT, is essential to maximizing the potential of your homegrown and ecosystem-developed services.” I would add that all this creativity and innovation resulting in productive services must be formally recognized and rewarded. New pay, rewards and even promotion mechanisms will be needed to foster Shadow IT.
Going back to the second level of a Service Enablement Program introduced above, the authors give a brief but useful explanation of how to build a good set of services. In a nutshell, [each service must be] “sufficiently granular to allow for easy reuse; good design is decomposing process steps into a suite of services that can be orchestrated to solve the business need in question, while allowing for recombination.” This implies a potentially large number of services that will then need to be cleverly referenced, tracked and maintained.
The last comment I will make on this chapter refers to its last section (before a set of real life examples) titled “Rethinking Your Architecture”. SOA implementation will eventually (when reaching the level 3) mean a completely new organisational physical structure, and not just limited to IT but hierarchies and departments as well. When embarking seriously on the SOA adventure, you must be ready for significant no-turning-back – sometimes painful - changes that will transform your Organization.
19 December 2007
It was about SOA all along! Chapter 4
17 December 2007
It was about SOA all along! Chapters 2 & 3
13 December 2007
It was about SOA all along! (Chapter 1)
Here are my thoughts after reading chapter 1 of the book “Mashup Corporations. The End of Business as Usual”.
This book illustrates its arguments with the help of a tale of a fictitious company Vorpal going through the process of implementing SOA. The authors do stress that it is a rather idealistic scenario, but I couldn’t help thinking that the way in which the realization of the need for a more flexible infrastructure came about, was unrealistic for most organizations today. You have this young clever marketing manager who explains to the CEO how he uncovered a new unsuspected source of income. In order for Vorpal to benefit from it, it had to find ways to allow online ordering flexibility.
The thing is, if you currently work in a (relatively large) organization where a n-2 manager can simply request for a meeting with the CEO to talk about an exciting personal experience that may be of interest to the company, already consider yourself lucky. Then if you are among the lucky ones, if the CEO does listen to your entire story in details, then calls in on the spot the CIO or any other senior directors to listen to it too and give their opinion, consider yourself to be privileged to work with an exciting CEO with a modern management style. Now, if your story is likely to end up initiating a formal project in which you will have a leading role, please tell me the name of your company to add it to my shortlist of preferred employers!
Anyway, the authors’ intentions were not initially to consider all the likely resistance to SOA adoption. Instead, the Vorpal scenario helps us understand typical reasons for needing SOA and a typical implementation process with its cultural, organizational and technical impacts. In this second edition of their book, the authors have added chapter 7 “Overcoming barriers”, after realising how important the challenge to convince decision-makers of the need for SOA was in many companies. So, I’ll come back to this issue after reading this chapter.
The key concept I will retain from this first chapter is the difference between “Hub IT” and “Edge IT” and that “SOA flourishes at the edges”, just inside the firewall or literally outside of it.
I will quote a very useful definition of Web Services: “[they] are standard approaches to exposing the capabilities of a company’s web site or internal systems to other web sites or systems by bypassing the user interface and connecting directly to the underlying technology”.
To be continued…
12 December 2007
It was about SOA all along!
30 November 2007
Mesh working rather than Matrix working
15 October 2007
The Age of Collaboration
31 August 2007
European organizations are failing to effectively create and manage their intellectual capital
19 June 2007
Knowledge is only in our minds or not?
27 May 2007
Asking the right questions to assess an Organization’s culture.
Nirmala Palaniappan (or Nimmy as she seems to like to be called) an experienced KM professional with Wipro based in India, wrote a post on Bob Sutton’s blog comments, and spotted a very good comment by one of Bob’s readers (in fact it is one of the best comment to a blog post I’ve seen) Wally Bock, a leadership consultant (http://www.threestarleadership.com/ ). His comment was in response to a question asking what are the questions to ask employees of an organization to get a feel of the dominating internal culture. Wally suggests the following 3 questions:
- What kind of people gets promoted around here? The behavior and performance you reward is what you'll get more of.
- What "bad" behaviors are tolerated here? This is good for patterns of behavior.
- What kinds of stories do people tell each other? Stories are the carriers of culture. Beware if all they tell are "dumb boss" stories. Understand that service is a value if what you hear are "heroic service" stories.
Reading these excellent questions, I realised that answering them would give you a hint whether the culture is conducive to knowledge sharing or not. In other words, whether the 16 syndromes are present or not.
For instance, when promotion depends more on whom you know above you in the hierarchy rather than on your achievements, experience and competences; this would indicate a lack of trust, constant political games and most probably a highly hierarchical structure.
When the tolerated bad behaviours include selfishness to meet personal objectives, it would indicate strict Job Description framing, lack of availability of experts, rewards only for individual achievements, and only short-term objectives.
When the stories often speaks of ‘them’ versus or against ‘us’ for example, highlighting the differences between groups/departments/teams within the organization; this would tend to indicate a culture of information silos with poor communication/collaboration between them. A general lack of awareness of useful internal knowledge that people could benefit from is also very likely in such a context; and probably the groupthink effect is frequent as well. Also recently, an APQC newsletter directed me to an article written by Susan Elliott Blashka about a presentation Nimmy gave during the APQC’s May 2006 KM conference. Nimmy’s KM toolkit is very interesting and I might write about it in another post. However, I will here highlight the list of questions she suggested for helping a company assess its capacity to leverage knowledge though capture and dissemination:
<<… Asking the following questions, Palaniappan said, can help a company gauge its capacity for explicit knowledge capture:
- Do we know what we know?
- Are our practices, structure, processes, and systems well known and easily accessible?
- Do we look toward the past and capture our learning?
- Do we know who’s who?
- Are we able to recognize patterns in our business?
- Do new employees get into the groove quickly?
- Does our workflow consider knowledge needs?
- Do we have processes and tools to manage our knowledge artefacts on a continuous basis?
She posed other questions that relate to explicit knowledge dissemination and utilization:
- Do our systems work together? Are they integrated?
- Do we find ourselves reinventing the wheel?
- Do we use the knowledge that we capture? Do we leverage technology to retrieve and access knowledge?
- Does the organization get together and learn? Does the organization work together—sharing and collaborating?
- Are there sharing mechanisms in all our knowledge-intensive processes?
- Does the workflow consider knowledge needs?
- How easy is it to find and utilize information?
- Is there consistency in the performance of functions across the organization?
[…] To determine the state of an organization’s tacit knowledge capture, Palaniappan said, individuals must ask themselves:
- Do our people policies and practices emphasize learning, sharing, and teaching?
- Does the organization spare the time to stop, think, and learn?
- Is it easy to find and access people (experts)?
- Does the organization have listening and questioning habits embedded in its culture?
- Is “retiring work force” a serious challenge?
- Does the organization operate primarily in the area of consulting and knowledge-intensive services?
And for the last category, tacit knowledge dissemination and utilization, Palaniappan presented the following questions:
- Does the organizational culture emphasize trust, win-win, and excellence and innovation through collaboration?
- Are like-minded people or people with similar interests able to locate and work with each other?
- How fast is the organization learning?
- Do people make time for mentoring and thinking and learning together?
- Does the organization know who needs whom?
- Are roles defined based on knowledge needs? Is succession planning knowledge-focused?
- Does the organization understand its knowledge requirements to a significant level of detail?
- Is the captured explicit knowledge under-utilized?
Using Nimmy and Wally’s questions, we should be able to assess fairly well how conducive to knowledge-sharing an organization’s culture is. This strengthens my view that in order to successfully make an organization become knowledge-driven, one must start by addressing the internal culture. The early introduction of new tools and technologies should only be to support this necessary cultural transformation. Furthermore, the less conducive to knowledge-sharing an organizational culture is, the more the drive for change must come from the Organization’s leadership.
http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com22 May 2007
Sarkozy’s goal-driven government structure
Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly elected French President, is completely rearranging the Cabinet as it has never been done before. He is grouping departments together under the same boss (minister) that never worked together. He is also breaking up departments for the first time. The central principle is a very clever one: The Cabinet’s departments are formed on the basis of their main goal and purpose, no longer on the basis of their functional relationships. For example, the goal of transforming France into a “Green” country requires departments such as “Environment” and “Energy” to be joined together (the “Energy” would have usually been managed by the Economy and Finance” dept). Another example is to remove the management of visas from the Interior department, and associate it with the dept responsible for “Integration” and “National Identity” to form a new dept for Immigration. The goal here is clearly to have a more holistic approach to the issues related to immigration. Whether or not we agree on these political goals is not my interest here. I am however intrigued by the implications of these drastic departmental changes for the civil servants affected. The media have already reported a lot of mostly worried comments from some managers, and the point in common I could identify was anticipated problems due to cultural differences! Here we go again with the importance of Organizational Culture but this time in the Public sector. Another significant impact due to some redundancy in activities will be a reduction in the workforce. The most telling case is the one affecting the separation of the “Labor” dept from the “Economy & Finance”, and its association with the “Social Relations” dept. In the Labor dept, you typically find the ones who came out of the French civil servants schools with the top marks. They are usually very good in math, very rigorous and methodical. In the Social Relations dept, it could hardly be more the opposite! They usually graduated with the lowest marks, have more “artistic” mindsets (rather than scientific) and have better communication skills. Both sides clearly have no idea how they are going to work together! Nicolas Sarkozy’s idea here is to give them a common goal of improving labor issues, with the realisation that it will require a combination of economic and social changes. For example, one of the objectives announced is to level the salaries between men and women within two years (today in France, men can be paid up to 40% more than women for the same job)! It will be very interesting to see how all these departments learn how to work together. These collaborations will need to be rapidly effective and efficient for the new Government to meet its objectives and convince the French people that it is on the right track. I wonder if someone will think of calling on the services of Knowledge Management consultants. I now come to the point I really wanted to make here: does this goal-based organizational approach make sense for a private company? We could start with an example: consider the strategic goal to “set a rate of annual increase of say +20% for retail customer loyalty”. For simplification, that is the number of existing customers purchasing at least once each year (I am assuming a luxury goods industry here). Typically, such an objective would be given to the Retail department. Some other departments such as Marketing might also be made aware of it and asked to assist. Now, what would it mean to adopt Sarkozy’s approach? You would need to think out of the box and regroup together under the same leader various departments or teams (parts of departments). I can suggest the following list for this example (but this exercise is very context-dependant, so each situation can demand a different organization) :
- The Retail department
- The part of the Customer Service department (After-sales services) specifically dealing with Retail customers (as opposed to wholesale).
- The part of the marketing department focusing on the retail market.
- The Public Relations department.
- The Press department.
Possibly, you could even include individuals or teams from some of the shared services departments that usually devote most of their time for Retail matters. I can think possibly of:
- Information Systems (IS) support professionals. For example, the team supporting the CRM application, a key tool for such a customer-focused objective.
For the shared services, the question to ask is: “will the individuals or teams concerned add more value by being integrated into this new “Super Retail dept” or by remaining closely linked with all the other teams within their respective department?” You should really consider this from a Knowledge sharing point of view. For an IS support Analyst to report to the Retail Director would undoubtedly facilitate his/her understanding of the business needs and deliver tailored support. However, from this point on, he/she ceases to be a shared resource and the cooperation with the rest of the IS department is then seen as secondary. In other words, this makes sense if the workload generated by the Retail department’s IS requests justify this IS Analyst to be full-time focusing on them. So then, supposing a Company implements this goal-driven organization, isn’t there a risk to have to re-organize too often when the strategy changes? Yes, but I don’t see this as a risk if this process of reorganization becomes engrained in the Company’s culture. The whole Organization must be built on principles of flexibility: flexible structure, flexible processes, flexible roles. This implies in turn a knowledge-sharing culture. Employees need to be used to share knowledge across departmental boundaries. In fact, there should be no internal boundaries when it comes to knowledge sharing (except for what needs to remain confidential). Such flexibility of course wouldn't typically suit more an Organization operating in a fast-moving/fast-changing market, but it could be argued that all markets are changing increasingly faster in this flatter World. Peter-Anthony Glick
http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com
30 April 2007
The search for the unified definition of Knowledge...
21 April 2007
Questions to Verna Allee on how to start a Value Networks analysis
09 April 2007
“Knowledge management strategies that create value”
(Accenture.com article) It presents a rather visionary KM approach considering it is now about 8 years old.
The article starts with this statement I totally agree with: “There is no one-size-fits-all way to effectively tap a firm's intellectual capital. To create value, companies must focus on how knowledge is used to build critical capabilities”. I would add that the more pervasive a Company’s organizational culture is, the more this is true. So many technological solutions have been presented as THE knowledge-sharing solution, and nearly as many have failed.
“[…] Knowledge management is complex and multifaceted; it encompasses everything the organization does to make knowledge available to the business, such as embedding key information in systems and processes, applying incentives to motivate employees and forging alliances to infuse the business with new knowledge. Effective knowledge management requires a combination of many organizational elements—technology, human resource practices, organizational structure and culture—in order to ensure that the right knowledge is brought to bear at the right time”. Well, this is what I (and many other KMers) have been writing for some time now. You cannot count on technology alone, or on a structural change alone, or on a new reward and recognition mechanism alone, to instigate a deep, long-lasting and effective leveraging of an Organization’s Knowledge. You need a holistic approach with both top-down leadership and bottom-up initiatives, being aware along the way that different core processes will require different KM solutions. The authors then present a framework created and used by the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change. Its aim is to associate “specific knowledge-management strategies with specific challenges that companies face”.
Well, my first impression of this framework presented this way was: whow! That looks simple (if not simplistic). I was reassured a bit when reading two paragraphs down that “[..]It is important to note that there are no hard-and-fast connections between a certain core process and a work model, because the same process can be performed in different ways”. In other words, you cannot actually plot core processes on the table above to build a model to fit all companies. This would also contradict the initial statement that there is no one-size-fit-all solution. So this is where the Accenture consultant comes in. The way the work is performed in the organization must be defined in order to select the right KM approach.
In the above diagram, the authors show how an Organization’s work processes can be aligned with a specific KM model.
I think this framework is approaching the issue in the correct manner, i.e. holistically and with a good deal of flexibility in order to adapt to any organizational context. However, there is a level of flexibility that I believe is missing. It could be that it was omitted by the authors in this rather short presentation. Nevertheless, I can only judge on what is given here. The flexibility that seems to be lacking is the consideration that within a specific work process, say Retail operations, you can be faced with a rather more complex context than what is assumed with the different diagrams given in this article. In the example above, the authors have assumed that Retail operations would be aligned to the Transactional Model. The authors define this model as the one “in which there is a low degree of both interdependence and complexity. Work is typically routine, highly reliant on formal rules, procedures and training, and depends on a workforce that exercises little discretion”.
Indeed, Retail relies on direct transactions with the end-customer. However, the definition above is valid in a mass-market context with low value, low margin, high quantity and relatively low product differentiation. Take instead the luxury market context (and I choose this example because I have 14 years of experience in it) with high value, high margin, low quantity and very high product differentiation. Within the Retail operations of a luxury products (and/or services) organization, you will find:
* A rather low degree of interdependence, so the Transaction model still fits for this dimension.
* There is relatively high degree of complexity. In the jewellery business for example, the expertise in gemmology of the sales-associate can represent the key added-value for the customer in search of a diamond necklace. Experience in how to satisfy very demanding and difficult customers is typically what can make a good sales-associate very good.
* Work is not “routine” to the same degree as in a mass market since each transactions can differ greatly due to the uniqueness of the product sold, the customer’s varying requirements and behaviours and the sales-associate varying level of expertise and experience.
* Work relies on formal rules and procedures but not exclusively. There is also a significant degree of informal relationships between sales-associates or between them and their customers, with whom they build strong relationships over time. Often, a sale is made as a result of this informality.
* Work does initially rely on training - especially for Brand and product knowledge as well as sale-techniques – but the best performers among sales-associates rely even more on their intuitions and experience.
* Work does depend on a workforce capable of making decision on their own, such as proactively contacting customers, deciding on which products to suggest to a customer, or offering/accepting a discount in a responsible manner.
The Expert model would therefore come to the rescue in this context but not as a replacement of the Transaction model. I am suggesting here that a combination of both models is needed to map a luxury business’ Retail operations. In this Retail context, there is still a degree of “routinization” and automation, and there is a definite “productization”. However, there is also a significant need for experienced hiring and capability protection. Capability/skill development is also a concern. (Apprenticeships used to be commonplace in luxury retail businesses some 20/30 years ago, but was replaced by a more individualistic and internal competition-oriented approach. I foresee that it will come back as a result of more knowledge-conscious management – read my earlier post on the subject: http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/03/knowledge-sharing-for-retail-manager.html).
Now what would such a mix of these two models mean in terms of practical solutions? The authors do not provide (for obvious reasons) the list of KM solutions they would implement for each model. However, I can guess one here.
The degree of “routinization” involved in luxury retail operations would demand solutions delivering just-in-time information (as opposed to just-in-case) to the sales staff. This could be in the form of a CRM tool providing a sales-associate specific information about an unfamiliar but regular customer sitting in front of him/her. It could provide the list of all the products the customer purchased so as to enable the sales-associate to suggest matching products among new or older collections. It could also have the anniversary dates such as the customer’s or his/her partner’s birthday, or their wedding date; for the sales-associate to wish him/her and suggest suitable gift ideas. All this customer-specific information is valuable but it can really create significant value when it is associated with context-sensitive information – in effect, offering expert knowledge. This is where our authors’ Expert model comes in: In the situation above, our sales-associate would benefit from the relevant knowledge of a more experienced colleague. More experienced here does not necessarily mean more seniority; it can mean better specific knowledge about the customer being served, or even about the customer’s cultural background. What is needed is therefore an apprenticeship-like solution associated (or better integrated) with the CRM tool. For example, the sales-associate could be informed that the customer is of Indian origin and Hindu, with the “warning” that between August and October, all Hindus purchase gifts (and in particular luxury products) to offer on Diwali (their annual “festival of lights”). The sales-associate could happily then suggest: “Oh Diwali is coming soon isn’t it? Please let me show you this brand new collection of jewellery that should look stunning when worn with a sari” (typical Indian dress).
I have here mixed the Expert and Transaction models but I am sure similar combinations will be needed in other contexts, sometimes involving 3 or even all 4 models. Graphically, this means to allow a work process to be plotted in the middle so as to overlap 2 or more models. The Process mapping diagram shown above seems to allow this (“customer service” work process overlaps the Integration and Transaction models) but it is not clear if it was really intentional (probably they worked it out themselves since then). In any case, it was a promising framework and I would love to learn of its implementation successes.
Peter-Anthony Glick
http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com
31 March 2007
Dave Pollard's "KM quick wins" against my "organizational cultures not conducive to knowledge-sharing"
Dave Pollard recently posted the following on his still amazing weblog: Knowledge Management: Finding Quick Wins and Long Term Value. First, do read it. Then, consider the association I have made below between his list of quick wins and longer-term programs, and my list of cultural traits hindering knowledge-sharing (http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/03/organizational-cultures-not-conducive_20.html#links ): Six 'Quick Win, Low Hanging Fruit' KM Projects. 1. Make it easy for your people to identify and connect with subject matter experts. This deals with: 7. Lack of Awareness of internal knowledge. And even maybe in a more medium-term with: 4. Organizational silos that do not (or poorly) communicate/collaborate. 2. Help people manage the content and organization of their desktop. 3. Help people identify and use the most appropriate communication tool. 4. Make it easy for people to publish their knowledge and subscribe to the information they want. These three quick-wins help people be more efficient so could help with: 8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge. The quick-win no.4 also deals with the cultural traits 4 and 7 above. 5. Create a facility for just-in-time canvassing for information. 6. Teach people how to do research, not just search. These last two quick-wins again deal with the same three traits above (nos 4, 7 and 8). Six Longer-Term Big Payoff KM Programs. a. Make your information professionals anthropologists. This program will have a similar impact to most of the quick-win above. It will further help in making people more effective and efficient and at connecting with one another, so will help with: 7. Lack of Awareness of internal knowledge. 8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge. 4. Organizational silos that do not (or poorly) communicate/collaborate. b. Embed intelligence in systems, processes and tools. I think the only trait this effectiveness/efficiency improvement program helps with is: 8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge. c. Teach your information professionals to be sense-making specialists. This program focuses on the information professionals and for them will help with: 15. Modesty resulting from lack of encouragement. 11. Job Description framing. 8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge. d. Use knowledge to drive innovation. With open-minded top-executives, this program could maybe help with: 16. Top-executives misunderstanding KM challenges. If innovation is rewarded then this program would also indirectly help with: 3. Reward achievements of each individual based solely on personal objectives. And it could also drive the insertion of "being innovative" through "collaboration/knowledge-sharing" in job definitions so helping with: 11. Job Description framing. e. Canvass the wisdom of crowds. This programs helps with the following traits: 8. Lack of Availability of internal knowledge. 1. A strictly hierarchical top-down structure. 13. Only money talks. f. Collect, and attract people to use, stories and anecdotes. At first, I thought this one would not relate to any of my traits but it does. This program would help making people feel more comfortable in sharing their knowledge; in fact, some would share knowledge without realizing how valuable it can be to others. Therefore this one helps with the following two traits: 14. Perfectionism resulting from fear of being wrong. 15. Modesty resulting from lack of encouragement. I have managed to associate 10 of the 16 cultural traits to Dave’s 12 quick-wins and longer-term programs. It’s good and I would certainly agree that all these initiatives would move an organization, or more precisely some of its collaborators, in the right direction. However, the six “anti-knowledge-sharing” cultural traits left-out are significant in my view. Dave’s approach is based on the principles of Personal KM and, as I already wrote (http://leveragingknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/11/personal-knowledge-management.html#links) I do not believe you can sufficiently change an organizational culture with only a bottom-up approach. The only initiative in Dave’s list that attempts to initiate a top-down change is the program (d) about using knowledge to drive innovation. I did loosely associate it to the trait relating to top-executives misunderstanding KM. This is because within a culture not conducive to knowledge-sharing, you will need more than that to have your top-executives truly understand and support KM. You could be told: “We are innovative already and we must be using knowledge in the process, so we’re fine, no need of KM”. Using Dave’s quick-wins and some of his programs can surely help drawing the attention of top-executives. With a few influential sponsors on-board, you could then hope to tackle all the non-conducive cultural traits including the other six such as 5. Lack of trust, 6. Internal politics, 9. Too much pride or 2. Reward achievements of each individual based solely on personal objectives. So PKM will help but will not succeed on its’ own if the goal is a deep and lasting cultural change.
Peter-Anthony Glick