01-12-2012, 11:52 AM
ITM313 Knowledge Management Assignment No.I
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Case Study
Who is leading knowledge Management? When Raylene Ridges was appointed to SimCo as the inaugural chief information officer, the whole organization inhaled in horror. This was the woman, who, in 5 years at CorpEx, had not managed to create an effective IT system. Her ex-colleagues had indicated that she had few leadership skills of any sort, and tended to rely on others to get things done. They wish SimCo well while expressing relief and incredulity that any organization might see her as a potential CIO. The SimCo work community was appalled. They had awaited the appointee to this new role with great enthusiasm.
The CEO was inundated with veiled or very direct queries from the employees as to why Raylene was seen to have the desirable attributes to support this key strategic role. ‘We went through due processes, her responded. ‘We used a head hunter, and gave a very detailed outline of all the tasks which needed to be done.’
‘But did you think about the leadership needed?’ asked his frantic employees. ‘Well, of course,’ he replied. ‘That goes without saying.
And that was exactly the case. As the employees further explored the selection criteria, they realized there was no mention of leadership, or vision or strategic focus. Raylene Ridges had been appointed to set up a system for knowledge management. The CEO wanted a knowledge environment where knowledge was captured and clearly available through an integrated system-just as his colleague in Smitties was developing.
Key leaders of the SimCo community met to discuss how they could work around and through Raylene. The mangers of Human Resources, Staff Development, Business Services, and Information Service reviewed their approach to integration and knowledge sharing. They agreed they were all supportive of the process and recognized the need for some preparatory work before Ridges arrived. Following extensive and very constructive negotiations, they arranged a meeting with the CEO where they presented a clear review of the key elements for knowledge management leadership which they believed needed to be integrated into any planned process. They proposed that an Executive Knowledge Leadership Committee should be formed to enable coherent development of the knowledge management context and to support the new CIO on her arrival.
The CEO listened carefully to their arguments for the committee’s formation. He could appreciated their case for knowledge integration and felt that they committee had potential. On the other hand, he felt that committees often failed to achieve anything, particularly managerial committees where each stakeholder might seek to control the overall agenda. After considerable reflection, he suggested that the group should redevelop the proposal to emphasize how they would operate as an executive knowledge team to build a coherent knowledge strategy. He also asked them to present a plan for the overall integration of the knowledge philosophy to the company Board in 6 weeks time- 2 weeks after Ridges takes up her position. At this presentation, they were to particularly explore the leadership mechanisms which would be integrated into the proposed process. A review of the knowledge leadership composition would then be done if their case was sufficiently persuasive.