Knowledge Management

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- Describe why knowledge management activities should be supported by enabling condition.

The most important reason is there are many barriers against knowledge management, to overcome these barriers, enabling condition is necessary and crucial.

There are four major barriers.

First, the fear of change. From human nature, people hate change and prefer staying the same. In the IBM case, we see these barriers very clearly, the old employees can hardly accept the reform because they did not want change. This problem is significant in the traditional Japanese company. The life-time employment and seniority based system strengthen the unwilling to embrace change.

Second, people prefer to indulge in their little world and work separately. In IBM case, before reform, different department are seldom share all the information promptly and efficiently.

Third, the escape of taking responsibilities. It’s also part of human nature. Because people are afraid of making mistakes and being blamed by others. The easiest way is to avoid responsibilities.

Four, the nature to pursue comfortable and easy life. This nature would let people to escape challenge and innovation because the process to create new knowledge is suffering.

All these barriers impede the knowledge management and need to be overcome. But how? Enabling condition is the most effective way to remove these barriers.

First, to encourage the innovation by create the innovative environment. In IBM, Palmisano made the new value in 2003 which include “dedication to every client’s success” “innovation that matters- for our company and for the world” “trust and personal responsibilities in all relationships” create the environment for innovation and embed these values in employee’s minds.

Second, to enabling condition for trail and error. In IDEO, they seldom fire people due to their mistakes in creating and trying. Oppositely, they encourage employee to try new direction and new ideas even it was errors in practice. In this culture, people prefer to try new ideas and regardless of the fear of taking responsibilities.

Third, to create a performance-based evaluation and promotion system to break the traditional stereotype. In IBM, Palmisano encourage employee to take their responsibilities and to build trust with clients directly. He implemented the manager value fund to give team more power to make decision. Through these methods, employee’s passion was inspired and more dedicated to achieve higher performance.

All in all, enabling condition to remove the barriers is the key for the success of knowledge management.

- Knowledge has aesthetic values, created by endless pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Describe why phronetic leadership is required in a knowledge creating organization referring to these characteristics of knowledge.

The biggest reason why phronetic leadership is required in a knowledge creating organization is the tacit characteristics of knowledge. The aesthetic values such as the endless pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty are abstract and tacit. We need to make them explicit, justified them in the practice and transfer them into wisdom to guide the real life. Only phronetic leadership can make it happen.

Like Nonaka Sensei said, phronetic leaders have six key abilities including setting a good goal, perceiving reality as it is, creating Ba, narrating the essence, exercising political power and fostering phronesis. I’d like to analyze them one by one and explain how they influence knowledge creating.

The ability to make a judgment on goodness is the foundation for knowledge creating because it decide the direction. If the direction is wrong, no matter how hard you make effort, it just a waste of time. The best example to articulate this ability is Soichiro Honda and Steve Jobs. Like Honda said “Just to be hard working has no value. ‘The good theory’ is the necessary premise for working hard.” That means wise leaders have to follow their hearts and find their philosophy.

The ability to perceive reality as it is need deep perception and insight. It requires leaders recognize the constantly changing situation correctly, and quickly sense what lies behind phenomena to predict the future and decide on the action to be taken. Like Jobs in 2005, the iPhone is the reflection of his insight for the future, he required only one button and also sense the intelligent phone is the future direction. This ability help him to seize this opportunity to create a new era for the cell phone market.

The ability to create Ba is the crucial part for the knowledge creating. The wise leaders need to understand other people’s minds deeply, have the empathy on them to smooth communication, and judge the best timing for interaction. Capacity to find, locate, gather, and place appropriate personnel timely, and create a Ba with empathy and resonance. In the case of IDEO，the work place have many toys and people can relax and focus on innovation here. The ability to creating a Ba is the essential step for innovation. After this, the knowledge creating will in the SECI spiral.

The ability to articulate the essence means to articulate subjective ideas in a clear language, to make the tacit knowledge vivid and interesting. Only through this, the value can be shared by many people and a new vision is accepted widely.

The ability to exercise political power means to bring people together and spur them to action, combining and synthesizing everyone’s knowledge and efforts in pursuit of the goal, by choosing and utilizing the means and rhetoric (the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing) suitable to each particular situation with shrewdness and determination. Just as Jobs is exceedingly demanding of the people who report to him, but the result is prefer products and improvement of the people.

The last ability to foster phronesis in others means transfer phronetic capabilities of individuals to others through practice to nurture their phronesis, and establish fractal and maneuver organization. This help to build a resilient organization which can respond flexibly and creatively at the right timing to any situation to pursue its own good. All the case we analyzed such as IDEO, Apple, 7-11, Nestle, Nespresso, IBM etc. I do have the impression that the leader have their phronesis and which help them to have the courage to make big reform in the crisis and revitalize the company to sustainable growth.

All in all, phronetic leadership is the