All entries for Thursday 23 May 2013

Targets that change people attitude

Today I was working on Knowledge Management program for WaveRiders. As I understand KM have two main aims, namely, deliver knowledge to employees in the company and create safe environment that enables people to share their experience with others. However, there is another critical aspect that has to be considered: how we identify what kind of knowledge person might need. How do we assess people knowledge? In that case, managers have to ensure that employees are open to discussion and earnest in answering questions about their performance. Unfortunately, in reality employees are usually assessed on meeting the targets, which actually doesn’t provide lots of information about current knowledge but puts people under pressure.

In “Fourth Generation Management” written by Brian Joiner the outcomes of such pressure described as follows:

• People either try to improve the system to meet the targets;
• They can also distort the system;
• Or, they can distort the data.

Obviously we hope to improve the system and we would like to provide confirmation shown with data. However, it can be also another way round, when people try to find a shortcut and distort the system. For example, in order to perform better person might prevent new development, as this usually results in setting higher targets. Additionally, people can distort information to present in a better perspective. All these actions actually prevent company from getting the accurate overview of existing knowledge. Therefore, before designing development program organization have to work on the attitude towards open and cooperative communication between people and managers.

Arina Borodina : 23 May 2013 21:07 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem