Posted by Unfortunately Anonymous on December 12, 1999 at 13:31:22:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge Elicitation & Resistant Culture posted by alla taylor on December 08, 1999 at 10:22:21:

I agree. In my organization, one of the most resistant departments is the IT department itself. They give nothing, want me to advise them of my every move (on the premise that it requires their resources and support). I was stonewalled when I asked for information to allow me to learn more about content management on the intranet system. Yet, they have not even considered getting the tools necessary for a content management or document management system. I literally have to wait for the Machivellian manager to take a vacation before I can hopefully get what I need.

The people promoted to head our e-business group fight suggestions. They were promoted because they were yes people to the senior manager. The senior manger had absolutely zero experience in e-business but he had "project experience". This group is hiring and supervising our e-business programmers. Not a one of these managers even knows what XML is even though we under way in a huge project to revamp our supply chain. They will succeed in developing a very functional e-commerce site in a short time frame but they have wasted literally millions of dollars along they way, they will still not know our customers or the value of the system they are creating, and they will continue to waste valuable resources. They are all very hard working and intelligent people but they are competitors in a hierchical system. They are primarily interested in developing a department and their careers yet I will be the suspect one.

Our Operations Dept. controls the call center and they want their budget increased at the expense of other departments before they will share their resources. They also think that anyone outside the Operations Dept. should report to Operations if they were going to coordinate "outside" corporate use of the call center. They do not hide their disdain for other department.

Additionally, many in senior management pay lip service to best practice concepts. It should be no surprise that our intranet lacks even some of the basic tools for knowledge sharing and retention.

Of course these remarks are meant to highlight our culture. These are not true of many employees.

I have begun a subtle awareness program outside the approved process. I will have to raise true awareness with successful projects on a "zero-based" budget. Sooner or later it will become painfully obvious for those that don't begin to cooperate. I have absolute confidence that I will ultimately get top-level approval. I wouldn't be so confident if I wasn't in a position that allows me to cross departments and I had not taken over responsibility for my department's web page. I am thankful that there is not an awareness of the possibilities at the moment because KM efforts would be stifled by our hierarchy upon that realization.

Carpe diem.

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• Re: Knowledge Elicitation & Resistant Culture - The Real World Reilly Atkinson 13:58:02 12/13/99 (0)

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