Preparing for Conversations with Hubert Saint-Onge
What Worked, Didn't Work at Clarica

Message to AOK from Hubert Saint-Onge

In the knowledge era, organizations will achieve market leadership by leveraging collective knowledge to create value. As the intangible assets of an organization become the key competitive advantage, there is a compelling case for putting in place a comprehensive knowledge strategy that will enhance coherence, accelerate the generation of capability and engender greater strategic agility. Such a strategy can be the vehicle for transforming the many factors that determine how work gets done and value is created in an organization.

As the knowledge economy continues to alter the dynamics of their businesses, an increasing number of leaders have become convinced that they can create value by leveraging the collective knowledge of their organization. Based on this belief, organizations have launched knowledge initiatives and many others are considering seriously considering the idea. The results so far have been mixed at best. And everyone who has been involved in these efforts will agree that turning knowledge into value is proving to be less that a straightforward proposition. All these organizations are opening up new paths on rather difficult terrain and, by and large, there are very few maps to guide their efforts.

The realization of the knowledge strategy at Clarica continues to enhance both collaboration and capability building at Clarica. In addition to providing a platform for the exchange and accessibility of knowledge, our comprehensive approach is aimed at the transformation of our culture. We are building a culture based on self-initiation, partnership and innovation. The adoption of a more robust and systematic approach at the enterprise-wide level takes more time to put in place but, in the end, brings greater tangible results and becomes more embedded in all aspects of the organization. We have simply transformed the way working and learning happens at Clarica. Knowledge and learning have now been fully integrated on the desktop of every member of the organization.

To enhance our cultural readiness, we have had a series of initiatives under the heading of "The Power of Me" that has reinforced the perspective that Clarica offers a unique environment for our members to develop their capabilities. This progress has allowed us to make giant strides in both staking and occupying a high ground in the market place with our brand. The unparalleled success of our brand in the Canadian market attests to the power of a knowledge strategy in bringing an organization closer to its customers.

The dynamics of the competitive environment in the knowledge era will require organizations to work in close partnership with their customers to respond faster with innovative solutions to shifts in their preferences. This accelerated development of innovative, "mass customized" and integrated solutions for the customer makes it essential that the organization come closer to its customers through the proactive and systemic exchange of knowledge. In a mutually reinforcing way, the knowledge exchange contributes to build the relationship with the customer and the quality of this relationship makes it possible to exchange knowledge at a level where enhanced value can be created.

The development of organizational cultures and partnering leadership is key to the capability of an organization to enhance the level of relationship with its customers. An organization that does not have the capability for building strong partnerships internally will not be able to partner with its customers. Such strong relationships both internally and externally can only be built through the alignment of tacit knowledge, in particular as it relates to individual and organizational values. As a result, both the explicit and tacit dimensions of customer knowledge are key to build mutually rewarding relationships with customers.

While there is a great deal of prototyping taking place under the label of knowledge management, only a handful of organizations have an explicitly stated knowledge strategy. It is not surprising then that knowledge efforts tend to be "narrow and deep" in a particular aspect of knowledge management instead of taking a more comprehensive approach. The main proposition put forward in our two weeks together is that we need to be more systematic in developing knowledge initiatives based on a well-defined strategy. We will also make the case for putting in place a comprehensive knowledge strategy that will enhance coherence, accelerate the generation of capability and engender greater strategic agility. Not only will such a strategy enhance the opportunity for creating value from knowledge, it will also become a powerful vehicle for transforming the organization for business leadership.

Through our experience at Clarica, we have identified "what does not work" in a knowledge strategy:

• viewing the organization as a "make and sell" machine, which just needs energy, instead of a "sense and respond" adaptive system that learns
• managing only documents and systems but thinking this is managing knowledge
• knowledge is a thing out there to be managed
• focusing primarily internally
• making knowledge management peripheral to the firm - an initiative that starts as a peripheral effort ends that way
• not actively talking about knowledge: if you do not have leaders who actively support the effort, little is going to happen
• leaving IT, HR, and Marketing with separate knowledge mandates, disabling one another
• making the investment on knowledge conditional upon measurable impact on bottom line

and "what does work":

• embedding knowledge in the way the business is done
• an integrated enterprise-wide systematic strategy
• bringing the convergence of knowledge and learning: focusing on knowledge in action and capability acquisition
• being comfortable with ambiguity, context management, and highly purposed self-organization
• moving from the customer interface in, not from the inside out
• recognizing the interdependence between knowledge and organizational culture: shifting from dependence and entitlement to self-initiation and from turf and internal competition to collaboration
• building knowledge as a "flow" through communities characterized by stories, and sharing a high level of commitment for their purpose

As part of our knowledge strategy, we have placed a great deal of emphasis on the creation and the support of communities of practice -- the opening discussion in the STAR Series. In addition to these comments, I share with you the concluding chapter of a book I have co-writing with Deb Wallace on our experience at Clarica in building communities of practice. This chapter focuses on the role communities of practice are likely to play in the evolution of knowledge-driven enterprises.

Back to top