the force of knowledge: a case study of km implementation in the department of the navy

CHAPTER 53

The Force of Knowledge: A Case Study of KM Implementation in the Department of the Navy

by Alex Bennet1 and Dan Porter2 1U. S. Department of Navy Deputy Chief Information Officer for Enterprise Integration 1 Co-Chair, Federal Knowledge Management Working Group 2U.S. Department of Navy Chief Information Officer

The Department of the Navy is a recognized leader in the implementation of knowledge management. The DON's multifaceted change strategy is discussed in terms of twelve elements: creating a shared vision; building the business case; demonstrating leadership commitment; facilitating a common understanding; setting limits; sharing new ideas, words, and behaviors; identifying the strategic approach; developing the infrastructure; measuring and incentivizing; providing tools; promoting learning; and visioning an even greater future. In summary, a model of the change strategy which creates growth of knowledge and sharing is presented as the theoretical force behind this change strategy.

Keywords: Business Case; Change Strategy; Department of the Navy; Leadership; Learning; Limits; Measuring; Shared Vision; Tools

1 Introduction

Three years into the fully aware and conscious process of becoming knowledge centric, the Department of the Navy (DON) is emerging as a world leader in the implementation of knowledge management (KM) in a complex United States government organization. The Department's multifaceted change strategy will serve as a structured framework for exploring the initiatives, measures, and incentives that are making the vision of a knowledge centric organization a reality.

Entering the Fall of 2001, the Department of the Navy - comprised of both civilian and military personnel in the Navy Department, the Marine Corps, and the Secretariat - consisted of over 700,000 direct-report personnel. These included 373 thousand in the active-duty Navy and 171 thousand in the Navy Ready Reserve; and 172 thousand in the active-duty Marine Corps and 39 thousand in the MC Selected Reserve. At any point in time, you might find 36% of the 317 ships in the total force on deployment and underway. That means approximately 46 thousand Navy officers and sailors and 34 thousand Marines are away from their families and homeland in Defense of their country.

But the Department of the Navy is larger still, with a diverse support organization scattered throughout government, industry, and academia around the world.

This network of people and knowledge in support of Defense has become more and more interconnected, and more and more complex as the years have passed. And the decisions emerging from this interconnectedness are affecting the course of history.

So how do we change this complex organization that is the Department of the Navy to meet the challenges of this new world of exploding information, increasing uncertainty, and ever-increasing complexity. This chapter takes a complex change strategy and distills it down to a dozen major change elements, sharing examples from the journey the U.S. Department of the Navy began three years ago toward becoming a knowledge-centric organization. While change is a product of combining, integrating, and correlating these elements, each of these change elements is addressed separately to facilitate understanding. Finally, we present a top-level model of the growth of knowledge and sharing that is the theoretical force behind the change strategy implemented.

2 The DON Change Strategy

The DON Change Strategy can be viewed in terms of orchestrating and implementing 12 specific elements. These elements, detailed below, include creating a shared vision; building the business case; demonstrating leadership commitment; facilitating a common understanding; setting limits; sharing new ideas, words, and behaviors; identifying the strategic approach; developing the infrastructure; measuring and incentivizing; providing tools; promoting learning; and visioning an even greater future.

2.1 Create a Shared Vision

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge emphasizes the importance of a shared vision where employees participate in the development of a corporate vision, and can then make decisions and take actions consistent with the directions set by senior leadership through the shared visioning process. In their research on consciousness, Edelman and Tononi identify the mechanism that provides unity to consciousness, thereby creating a continuous history of thought and a consistency of identity and action. This ability to maintain different parts of the brain in harmony and to pull them together in an organization is facilitated by constant and widespread communication.

The DON journey toward becoming a knowledge-centric organization began with development of the Information Management (IM)/Information Technology (IT) Strategic Plan. This plan was developed over a six-month period by hundreds of people who represented the different organizations and functional areas of the Department, and worked at every level of the enterprise. The vision of the future presented in this first Strategic Plan was:

• An integrated, results-oriented Navy and Marine Corps team characterized by strategic leadership, ubiquitous communication, and invisible technology.

A Case Study of KM Implementation in the Department of the Navy 469

• An effective, flexible, and sustainable DON enterprise-wide information and technology environment that enables our people to make and imple ment efficient and agile decisions.

• A Knowledge-Centric culture where trust and respect facilitate informa tion sharing and organizational learning.

Nine strategic goals led the way for achieving this vision. In the development process, the goals were worked and reworked to assure the right set was addressed at a low enough level to make them real and viable, and a high enough level to provide flexibility and tailoring at the organizational level, where implementation decision must be made. The first four addressed how to build the infrastructure to ensure information superiority and connectivity, reengineering of warfighting and core business processes in parallel with technology infusion, managing the risk associated with IT investments, and implementing strategies that facilitate the creation and sharing of knowledge. Additional goals addressed the critical issues of information security, the workforce and cultural change. The Plan brings the DON collective vision of the future into clear focus, and communicates its commitment to putting information to work for sailors, marines, civilians, and reservists, in operational, headquarters, and field organizations.

The Plan included what were called "Path Finders," success stories from the field. Over a hundred stories were submitted during the Plan development cycle. Not only did this process identify innovations underway, but it facilitated ownership of the plan, and encouraged organizations to understand and begin implementation of the plan prior to its distribution. By the time the Plan was submitted to Congress, it had been staffed through the Secretariat, Chief of Naval Operations and Commandant of the Marine Corps, and had been signed by their representative CIO organizations. The Department was aligned, senior leadership was committed, and implementation had already begun.

2.2 Build the Business Case

The starting point for the Department of the Navy is the Naval mission. Information and knowledge have been critical to both the prevention and success of war since the beginning of man. Sun Tzu, the early authority on warfare strategy, said that what enables an intelligent government and a wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishments is knowledge. In the introduction to Sun Tzu, The Art of War, B. H. Liddell Hart states: "Sun Tzu believed that the moral strength and intellectual faculty of man were decisive in war, and that if these were properly applied war could be waged with certain success."

In the fall of 1999, senior military and civilian personnel met at the U.S. Naval Academy for an intensive six days focused on what knowledge management could contribute to the Sailors and Marines on the front lines, and how the Department could ensure knowledge superiority. Knowledge Superiority means achieving sustainable competitive advantage over our adversaries by dramatically enhancing knowledge of the battlespace. Knowledge Superiority, building on the integration and interoperability of the Navy's warfighters, means real-time access to the knowledge required by commanders to accelerate the decision-making process,

improve decision quality and maneuver to effectively "lock-out" a foe's intended actions. This forward-thinking, eclectic leadership group dialoguing at the Naval Academy framed

the challenge of Knowledge Superiority in this way:

More than any other nation, more than any other Navy, and more than ever before, we rely on the creativity, ingenuity, and intellect of our people. As we cross the threshold of the Information Age, we intend to realize this awesome potential in every corner of our Navy, by every person, as a highly interactive total team. Transcending even our current advantage in physical firepower, our Navy will be alive with the fire of shared understanding. We will do this because we must for our Navy's relevance and readiness in this new era. No foe, present or future, will match our knowledge or our ability to apply it. Indeed, just as forward presence has become a way of life for us, so too will knowledge superiority become a Navy way of life.

The realization of the value of KM to Naval warfighters at every level - from sailors to civil servants to ship's captains to flag and senior executives - coupled with the historically-given culture and respect for teamwork and unity, quickly validated the business case for KM. Today Knowledge Superiority is the second plank in the Defense maritime strategy, right beside the rigor of forward presence that has been so important for the past 30 years.

2.3 Demonstrate Leadership Commitment

By 1999, following the Knowledge Superiority dialogue at the Naval Academy, knowledge management champions were rapidly emerging across the Department. An early champion and leader in KM implementation was the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, a four-star admiral out on the front lines. As he began to demonstrate and communicate his KM successes, other leaders recognized the potential value of KM to their organizations. A KM leadership network quickly spread across the enterprise.

Quotes from early champions were shared through presentations, video cameos were captured for wide distribution via Internet and computer disks, and the language of KM began to creep into everyday conversation. In the late summer of 2000, the Department held Knowledge Fair 2000, the first enterprise-wide event focused on knowledge sharing. Over 75 projects representing Navy and Marine Corps organizations around the world were exhibited. The event was co-hosted by the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. As more than 3,000 visitors created a continuous flow of energy throughout the day, there was a groundswell of exchange and sharing. Briefings and demonstrations attended by hundreds of interested and enthusiastic people were each followed by a round of in-depth questions and answers. The sharing did not stop with the event. The Department created a virtual reference tool that included video clips from each exhibitor, coupled with text and graphic presentations, and including candid remarks by dozens of senior leaders who attended this seminal event. A second event was held in 2001.


The role of Chief Knowledge Officer was placed at the highest level of the Secretariat as a direct report to the Department's Chief Information Officer. This strategic placement provided the visibility and funding necessary to champion this rising management discipline, and placed KM as integral to successful Information Technology and Information Management.

The KM community of Practice (CoP), the first formal community in the DON, evolved from two KM conferences sponsored by the Navy in late 1998 and early 1999. Facilitated by the Navy's Post-Graduate School in Monterey, these conferences brought together early KM champions and innovative thinkers who recognized the opportunity KM offered. From these beginnings, the KM CoP has grown to include over 300 members representing 60 different DON organizations, and a KM Community of Interest (Col) of 600 has emerged. The KM CoP and Col are focused around knowledge - knowledge of KM - and built on developing relationships among participants. The KM CoP is supported by a virtual support system that brings the latest findings of the Institute for Knowledge Management (a group of 40 industry and government organizations focused on KM research and run by IBM) and the American Productivity Quality Center (APQC) into the hands of Community members.

2.4 Facilitate a Common Understanding

So often we, as human beings, leap forward with little thought for the consequences. While a shared vision certainly helps define the direction we are leaping, for a large, complex organization it is imperative to develop a shared understanding of the reasons behind the movement toward that vision to ensure a connectedness of choices. This connectedness of choices means that decisions made at all levels of the organization, while different, are clearly made based on not only a clear vision of the future, and made in a cohesive fashion based on an understanding of why that future is desirable and the role that the decisions play with respect to immediate objectives and their support of the shared vision.

Words and visuals are the tools of trade for facilitating common understanding. Early DON models addressed those areas needing the greatest clarity. The first model began the journey to move the bureaucratically-imbedded concept of "knowledge is power" to the emerging concept of "knowledge shared is power squared." The Knowledge Life Cycle model (see Figure 1) generated dialogue on the relationship among data, information and knowledge; the reality of information decay (information has the potential to become less important over time); and the effects as knowledge spread across the competitive base.

While the intent of this model was to engage response - thereby generating focused thought - there were common themes. For example, as knowledge is shared across organizations, it becomes more widely used. On the negative side, this means that competitors now have the same opportunities; on the positive side, because ideas generate ideas, everyone has a greater opportunity to build new knowledge. What becomes of paramount importance is how those ideas are used. Another common dialogue that emerged from looking at the model, focused on creativity. Because all people are creative, and everyone in today's world has access to an almost exponentially increasing amount of information, then it is likely that any given creative idea will emerge in more than one place. Once again, what is paramount in a competitive market is continuous learning (creation of new ideas) and the ability to effectively act on those ideas.

To build a common understanding of "knowledge," a simple visual of a red apple with a bite taken out of it was used (see Figure 2). Within the apple are listed many of the IT advances important to success. The word "knowledge" streams out of the empty space where the bite was taken. The message delivered with this


visual was simple and straightforward. While all that we are doing in information management is critically important, it is not until information is bitten, chewed, digested, and acted upon that it becomes knowledge. Knowledge is created within the individual, and is actionable.

Knowledge management in DON is viewed as a process for optimizing the effective application of intellectual capital to achieve organizational objectives. To build an understanding of what that means to DON, the visual in Figure 3 was used to explore the meaning of "intellectual capital."

The message associated with this visual goes something like this: The essence of knowledge management is built on intellectual capital, which includes Human Capital, Social Capital, and Corporate Capital. All three are essential components of enterprise knowledge. Human Capital is our greatest resource. It is made up of an individual's past, present and future experience and knowledge. Each of us brings a unique set of characteristics and values from the past. These include expertise, education and experience. Built on these characteristics and values from the past, are a set of capabilities and ways of seeing and living in the world (such as creativity and adaptability). Just as important as things from the past and skills of the present, we each have an image of the future capacity and the potential for learning. Social Capital is the stuff of communications. It includes human and virtual networks, relationships and the interactions across these networks built on those relationships. Social Capital also includes language - with "language" defined in the fullest sense of the word, ranging from context to tonality, including verbal and nonverbal exchange and inference.

Also added to this grouping something called patterning, which deals with timing, depth and sequencing of communication. Corporate Capital, which is also often called structural capital or organizational capital, includes intellectual property, both formal and informal (e.g., patents, ideas, etc.), and corporate functional and organizational processes. It also includes all the data and information captured in corporate databases, all that which has been made explicit.

Because the role of the Chief Knowledge Officer was embedded in the DON Chief Information Office, it was critical to develop an understanding of the relationship among KM, IM, and IT. A model was developed that built on the understanding of intellectual capital discussed above. (See Figure 4.)

The message associated with this visual begins by reminding us that the role of IT is to support the infrastructure; that IT in and of itself exists to facilitate the management of information; and that the management of information is in support of decision makers - people. KM cannot be effective without IM, which must be supported by good IT, which is embedded in the infrastructure. Additionally, KM, IM, IT, and the infrastructure all have elements of Human Capital, Social Capital and Corporate Capital. For example, the social element of IM is relationships among data and information; and the social element of IT is connectivity (through hardware and software).

Finally, getting down to the tactical level, a template was developed to emphasize critical concepts that needed to be addressed. As portrayed in Figure 5, the template frames a balanced KM system focusing on the five core areas: technology, content, process, culture, and learning.


When a potential knowledge system or process is looked at through this template, the concepts drive the questions that need to be asked. For example, questions under content would include: How does this system ensure content value? In what ways will it ensure currency and credibility of the data and information it provides? How will the system address the relevancy of content? How will context be added? Will links to people who have needed expertise be available? In like manner, key concepts under process include capturing, categorizing, cluster-ing, clumping, mapping, analyzing, and disseminating. The concepts of clustering and clumping are discussed in 2.6 below. Because the concept of how and what to make explicit can be viewed as part of the process put in place to capture knowledge, it falls under the process category, along with the presentation of data and information.

Key concepts under culture are sharing, exchanging, communicating, building relationships (among data, information, and people), commitment, and verication (discussed under 2.6 below). Learning must occur for a distributed knowledge system to be effective over time. Knowledge cannot safely reside in a node somewhere in the system; it needs to be flowing in currents throughout the system, being used where it makes sense, and building organizational memory. Key concepts under learning include creating, sense-making, innovating, and experimenting. Other concepts important to learning are strategic thinking, feedback loops and storytelling. How does the system facilitate strategic thinking? Are feedback loops built in? Does the system take advantage of the learning embedded in storytelling? How noisy is the system? The optimum use of technology is a core element for success.

Questions around technology must address its ability to enable, facilitate, empower, and promote innovation.

The concept of balance is continually addressed in KM implementation. In any organization, there are dynamic tensions between how much risk we are willing to take to leverage how much information and knowledge; how much data and information should remain local and how much should be available globally; how much data and information should remain tacit (within the individual), with an expert management system in place, and how much should (and can) be made explicit; and how much exchange should be encouraged informally versus how much should be captured in a formal manner.

2.5 Set Limits

All of the models discussed above limit the field of the possible in order to focus on a concept, facilitate a deeper understanding of that concept, and provide a mechanism for communicating that concept. We also set limits (provide focus) through developing and refining descriptions and definitions. Focusing on a concept in this manner provides the opportunity for developing new ideas, new thinking. The Department of the Navy worked with the Federal Chief Information Council to focus on what knowledge management meant to the Federal government. The results of this partnering were a clearer understanding of the role of Chief Knowledge Officers in the U.S. government, and definition of the 14 learning objectives for a government KM certification course. These learning objectives in essence define the scope of KM for the Federal government as seen at the present time.

With the emergence of e-Business (eB) concepts, the DON clearly built the relationships between KM and e-Business to harness the synergy between these two management focus areas. An article published in the Fall 2000 DON IM/IT magazine, co-authored by the Chief Information Officer and the Chief Knowledge Officer, limited - or focused - KM and eB through the expansion and comparison of definitions. The focus of KM on intellectual capital - with KM viewed as a process for optimizing the effective application of intellectual capital to achieve organizational objectives - means people; while eB is the interchange and processing of information via electronic techniques for accomplishing transactions based upon the application of commercial standards and practices. These definitions reflected a common focus viewed through different lenses. Continuing the analogy, both eB and KM bring with them a focus on processes. KM provides a methodology for creating processes within the organization to promote knowledge creation and sharing - processes that build on total quality and business process reengineering concepts. In like manner, an integral part of implementing eB is the application of business process improvement or reengineering to streamline business processes prior to the incorporation of technologies facilitating the electronic exchange of business information. KM, implemented by and at the organizational level, and supporting empowerment and responsibility at the individual level, focuses on understanding the knowledge needs of an organization and the sharing and creation of knowledge through communities and Web-enabled collaboration -connecting people. The knowledge systems supporting these communities, based


on interoperability concepts to ensure enterprise-wide sharing, build on information management, taking into account the human factor. While both KM and eB are in the business of information exchange, the KM focus is specifically on the knowledge sharing aspect of this exchange. This focusing of KM and eB - or setting of limits — provided a rich fabric for the two strategic efforts to compliment each other and for the organization to recognize that both efforts offered opportunities for long-term success.

2.6 Share New Ideas, Words, and Behaviors

Thinking in new ways demands new words, or putting old words together in new ways, to communicate that thinking; and those new words (or combinations of old words) drive new behaviors. In like manner, new behaviors drive new thinking and new words. As early as 1784, Hugh Blair identified a clear, close alliance between thought and language, "Thought and Language act and re-act upon each other mutually." Later theorists such as Brown, Black, Bloomfield, Skinner, and Quine regarded language as a major form of behavior, a significant entity in its own right. In a writing text published in 1983, Emig contended that language is a powerful, if not unique, way of constructing reality and acting on the world. While the theoretical tapestry that builds relationships among thinking, language, and actions is varied and inconclusive, it is clear that there is a relationship, and that effective use of words and understanding the concepts those words represent have the potential to affect thoughts and behaviors.

As an example, take the concepts of clustering and clumping. While these words have long been a part of Webster's collection, the way they are used in KM drives a necessary change in behavior. Clustering and clumping define different ways to access data and information. Clustering is how data and information are usually organized, bringing together those things that are similar or related. This way of organizing is driven by the data and information itself. Clumping is driven by the decisions that need to be made. At the enterprise level, those authoritative data fields that are needed for decision-making are identified and connected to provide real-time input to emerging decision-making requirements. In a system, that means linking secondary data and information needed by the individual who will use the primary information for decision-making. For example, if a sailor has repeated failure of an engine part that is only periodically used, not only is it important to know how to fix it, but it would save considerable time, effort and dollars if he had the knowledge that the engine was going to be replaced during the next port visit. There are often pieces of information that if known would change the decisions we make on a daily basis.

A second concept that is included on the DON template discussed in 2.4 above, under culture, is verication. Verication is the process of consulting a trusted ally. When you do not have explicit evidence to verify the correctness of a decision, or you question the explicit evidence you do have because of your "gut" feeling, you can vericate the decision. This means going to a recognized expert with whom you have a relationship - a trusted ally - to get their opinion, i.e., grounding your decision through implicit data and information. How many times have you per-sonally picked up the phone or sent an email to someone you know could help you

answer a question? This process of verication is consistently used by both individuals and organizations in the decision-making process.

An important concept here is, of course, the sharing of those new ideas, words, and behaviors. An aggressive, comprehensive communications strategy, both internal and external, is essential to ensure the connectedness of choices discussed in 2.4. Internal successes and external validation provide strong explicit evidence in support of the business case. The use of teams and communities — an important KM strategy — helps facilitate the flow of information and knowledge across the organization. As the DON recognized the value and opportunity offered by this new approach to communicating sharing, and innovation, communities have emerged across the DON enterprise.

2.7 Identify the Strategic Approach

The DON has taken a distributed approach to the implementation of KM, encouraging and building on the many champions emerging throughout the system. At the secretariat level, DON KM implementation is built on a systems model that addresses decision-making capability at the individual, organizational, and enterprise levels. The continued surge of information technology investments over the past few years has significantly increased the amount of data and information DON decision-makers have available, thereby increasing the complexity of decision-making. As this complexity increases, DON has invested more and more in information technology to help solve the problem, thereby further increasing the amount of data and information available and decision-making complexity. This reinforcing cycle continues. Applying the systems thinking approach coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's work on learning organizations, the DON began creating balancing loops to break this vicious cycle. These balancing loops addressed the systemic issue at the individual, organizational, and enterprise levels.

At the individual level, as decision-making complexity increases, new cognitive skills are needed that will allow each of us to do more with our innate capabilities. Systems thinking skills are one way to achieve that. Systems thinking is a diagnostic methodology for understanding and assessing cause-and-effect relationships and identifying leverage points. It enables a clearer perception of the full patterns of change and the structure of systems to better comprehend their behavior and make appropriate responses. As the individual learns and applies systems thinking, individual decision-making capability increases by focusing on leverage points, thereby reducing decision-making complexity and breaking the cycle de-scribed above. The DON has developed a systems thinking virtual training package to facilitate learning that is available to every sailor, Marine, and DON civilian via compact disc or the Chief of Naval Education and Training portal.

At the organizational level, increased decision-making complexity drives the need for KM systems. As new and improved processes are put into place, bringing tacit knowledge into the explicit realm and connecting critical data for decision-makers, decision-making capability improves, thereby reducing decision-making complexity and helping to break the cycle defined above. The DON developed a knowledge centric organization (KCO) toolkit to facilitate KM imple-


mentation at the organizational level. Knowledge-centric organizations are able to leverage their personnel and critical technology assets jointly, creating knowledge and then communicating it to the right person at the right time to solve problems. Ultimately, KM strategies facilitate collaborative information sharing which optimizes strategic and tactical decision-making, resulting in more effective action.

A good example of collaboration at sea is the Stennis Battle Group project. A battle group is an aircraft carrier accompanied by a group of escort and support vessels. Collaborating at sea is difficult. Limited bandwidth impairs the ability to connect a large group of worldwide users to massive amounts of information with sufficient speed and accuracy. Historically, Battle Groups have struggled with the need to capture, archive, and later access key data and unique processes associated with repetitive operational deployments. It has been difficult to transfer lessons learned from one battle group exercise to another, and almost impossible to transfer and leverage knowledge efficiently. The Stennis Battle Group Project developed the capability for rapid and flexible collaboration, planning and execution of all Carrier Battle Group operations. The use of commercial off-the-shelf products ensured industry standards and leveraged industry investment, avoiding the lifecycle costs of owning the equipment. The use of a common taxonomy developed an instantaneous, context-oriented communications capability including audio, video and applications sharing. The bottom line is that the Project team was able to establish a classified Battle Group collaboration environment as a repository of the current tactical picture, forming the basis for an expansive implementation of KM that included development of the knowledge-centric concept of operations. Because of its success, the Stennis Battle Group Project is being emulated by other battle groups in both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.

Implementation at the enterprise level must be discussed in terms of connectivity and flow. While connectivity certainly relies on the hardware and software infrastructure provided by IT (see the discussion of the Naval Marine Corps Intranet in 2.8), it goes beyond the wires and bytes to connecting people and facilitating understanding. With enterprise connectivity comes a massive proliferation in the quantity of electronically available information, creating an information overload on network systems that makes it very difficult for users to find necessary information in the time they have available. Information is commonly organized within an enterprise's repositories with classification systems designed within a conceptual framework. These frameworks allow the information to be consistently classified to make it easier for users to know where to look for various types of documents and records. This framework is translated into a hierarchy of descriptive categories that form the taxonomic schema used to control the classification process. Integrated with data management and interoperability metadata standards, the DON developed a framework for its enterprise taxonomy that builds on lessons learned from organizational content management projects and technology tool performance tests to incorporate sufficient flexibility and adaptability, facilitating flow and thereby allowing all users to operate as efficiently as possible.

2.8 Develop the Infrastructure

As technology advances, seamless infrastructure is essential to facilitate the collaboration and free flow of information that enable effective decision-making. A first step to achieving this infrastructure was development of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. The overarching importance of information management and knowledge management to improve decision-making led DON to conclude that managing information, and creating and sharing knowledge - rather than owning the necessary technology - were the primary IM/IT business of the Department. If the information technology infrastructure used did not need to be owned, it could be treated as a service, much like the telephone.

In October 2000, after a year-long exploration of the feasibility of this approach, the DON awarded a seat management contract to Electronic Data Systems to provide an all-encompassing information/communications technology solution. This solution, the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), gives civilians, sailors and Marines access to the rich intellectual resources that extend throughout the Naval enterprise. Replacing the Navy's numerous shore-based networks, NMCI as a technology infrastructure provides data, video, and voice services to Navy and Marine Corps personnel, to ensure access, interoperability, and security for information and communications needs. Coupled with the Navy's shipboard system and the Marines' tactical network, the intranet gives sailors and Marines forward-deployed around the world direct access to the network of people, information and knowledge available in government, industry and academia. NMCI makes connectivity transparent; with forward-deployed forces having immediate access to the best resources available, a "reachback" capability that provides the knowledge they need to make critical mission decisions.

With the advances in technology such as NMCI that the DON is embracing, it was imperative that the Department have a workforce able to cope with the new technologies. In the Summer of 2001, the DON issued a call for action for both civilian and military workforce planning to ensure that the DON can meet its future IM/IT missions. The report presents the results of an IM/IT workforce gap analysis conducted at the DON level which addresses (1) the estimated number of civilian workers required in FY2005; (2) the competencies necessary to achieve projected IM/IT missions; and (3) strategies and initiatives to help the DON attract new personnel and sustain the capabilities to accomplish its missions. A DON Workforce Strategic Plan for 2001-2006 requires Department Chief Information Officers to develop strategies and specific plans for hiring, training, and professional development, with the goal to promote IM/IT and KM competencies throughout the workforce. Thoughtful, visionary and forward-thinking, this plan lays the foundation for positive organizational transformation, with the potential to benefit the entire DON.

A Career Path Guide (CPG) was developed to provide individual guidance to employees in meeting the continuing challenges of technological change. The CPG offers guidance to Knowledge Management practitioners, establishing KM capabilities for the DON to employ in pursuit of becoming a knowledge centric organization. The KM career area includes the following roles: Chief Knowledge Officer, Knowledge Manager, Knowledge Systems Engineer, Knowledge Process


Manager (for larger organizations broken down into the three roles of Knowledge Transfer Engineer, Knowledge Research Engineer and Knowledge Life-Cycle Engineer), Knowledge Community Leader, Intellectual Capital Manager, Performance Measurement Engineer, Knowledge Assurance Manager and Knowledge Assistant. Explication of these roles and related learning objectives are available from the Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer. The CPG also addresses the issue of outsourcing government positions, addressing those jobs better suited to the private sector.

A Workforce virtual resource was developed in the Spring of 2001 that includes the DON Civilian Career Path Guide for Management of Technology, Information and Knowledge and a Career Planning Tool, an interactive tool that helps civilian IM/IT and KM workforce assess their current and required competencies and generates a Career Progression plan to attain competencies needed for future job assignments based on individual, long-term goals. The virtual resource includes the Workforce Strategic Plan, Inherently Governmental Guidance, and Call for Action and Gap Analysis discussed above.

2.9 Measure and Incentivize

In a survey conducted in 2000, a DON organization implementing a KM pilot (approximately 250 people) identified the most important factors in successful KM implementation as in this relative order: culture (29%), processes (21%), metrics (19%), content (17%), leadership (10%), and technology (4%). What is fascinating, and a product of the DON culture and well as many organizations in industry, is that metrics (how success is measured and communicated) appeared more important than content (that which is in the system itself). The bottom line is that metrics are an important aspect of the DON culture.

In August 2001 the DON published a Metrics Guide for Knowledge Management Initiatives. The guide focuses on three types of specific measures to monitor KM initiatives from different perspectives: outcome metrics (concerning the overall organization and measuring large-scale characteristics such as increased productivity or revenue for the enterprise); output metrics (measuring project level characteristics such as the effectiveness of lessons learned information to capturing new business); and system metrics (monitoring the usefulness and responsiveness of the supporting technology tools. The guide includes a discussion of qualitative and quantitative measures, a KM maturity model and case studies.

As successes began to emerge, the Secretary of the Navy established awards to recognize those teams who were increasing effectiveness and achieving efficiencies through knowledge sharing. These included awards ranging from the "Outstanding Knowledge Expert System" presented to Virtual Naval Hospital for its delivery of expert medical information to the "Operationalizing KM Concepts" award presented to the Naval War College Global War Game KM/IT Team for implementing processes to exploit and distribute information and share knowledge that dramatically improved decision-making. Clearly, KM was moving through the infrastructure.

2.10 Provide Tools

Buckminster Fuller once said that if you want to change a culture, provide tools. The DON approach to change recognizes the truth of this statement. As guidance and policy is issued, tools that provide approaches to and resources for accomplishing that guidance and policy are distributed. These toolkits are published on compact discs and made freely available to all government, academia, and industry support organizations, with the understanding that change in a complex organization must be validated externally while driven internally. Forward-thinking and forward-movement in other government organizations, and by our industry partners, supports and promotes DON forward-thinking.

These virtual resources, which have been distributed by the tens of thousands, include: The Knowledge Centric Organization toolkit, the Workforce resource, a compendium of eB and KM systems (extending the sharing begun at each Knowledge Fair world-wide), the Community of Practice toolkit and the Information Literacy toolkit.

Communities of Practice and Interest build on the rich tradition of professionals joining together to share skills and resources. The first government-wide virtual resource for Communities was developed in the Summer of 2001 by a team comprised of KM leaders from across government, industry and academia. This resource lays the groundwork for practitioners to build and sustain communities of practice and interest. It also provides sections on quick starting a CoP, facilitating flow, and tools and resources.

Information Literacy (IL) is a set of information and knowledge age skills that enable individuals to recognize when information is and is not needed and how to locate, evaluate, integrate, use and effectively communicate needed information. A simple analogy can be made with the development of a process for pulp paper-making in the 1840's. The new process was both economic and scalable, but only five percent of the U.S. could read and write! Today, we have the Internet and wireless, with prices becoming affordable for the common man. Literally everything is becoming available to anyone at any time. But how many people in the world know how to find it or use it? Information Literacy focuses on this void. IL skills include how to search the Internet, select and evaluate resources, and validate those resources. It also includes information ethics in the virtual world, virtual communications, and what is referred to as Knowing. Knowing is seeing beyond images, hearing beyond words and sensing beyond appearances. That means using our sensory inputs to the fullest, and interpreting and integrating those inputs with the sum of our tacit and explicit knowledge to understand and respond to a situation.

2.11 Promote Learning

You cannot change without learning, nor once you have changed can you continue to function and be of value in a changing environment without continuous learning. Though this important concept emerged a dozen years ago in the Total Quality environment, we're just beginning to realize the importance of it, and putting systems in place to help facilitate learning in a virtual world.


In 1999 the DON issued its first continuous learning guidance for the core IM/IT work force. This guidance placed increased responsibility on employees to remain current by taking advantage of new ways of learning. Distributed learning technologies, experiential learning, and other nontraditional approaches to education and training were rapidly supplementing the traditional classroom student/instructor approach. With these new approaches, the DON valued the ability of learners to take responsibility for and direct their own learning and development in a variety of ways, and on a continual basis, throughout their careers. The guidance set the expectation that all civilian and military IM/IT core work force professionals participate in 80 hours of continuous learning activities each year to augment the minimum competencies established in their career fields and required for specific work force assignments. The core IM/IT workforce was defined as those personnel who are focused on military and civilian IM/IT careers. This groundbreaking document was a precursor to the first IM/IT workforce strategic plan, which widened and broadened the definition of the IM/IT workforce beyond the core mentioned above. The bottom line is that every person who uses IM/IT -and that's nearly everyone in the DON, or should be - needs to become a continuous learner to move the DON toward becoming a learning organization.

Recognizing the importance of being a learning organization to become knowledge-centric, in the winter of 2001 the DON developed an Organization Learning toolkit. The toolkit focuses on learning in a virtual world, defining learning and exploring aspects of virtual learning and its relationships with KM, intellectual capital, and communities and teams. It includes assessing individual and organizational readiness for virtual learning, a model for developing effective virtual learning courses, an information technology support matrix, and a compendium of virtual learning courses available across the Department. The toolkit paves the way for building a larger understanding of the value and importance of virtual learning to the future success of the defense of our nation.

2.12 Vision an Even Greater Future

The place from which we currently act and respond, our point of reference, is reflective of the bureaucratic model upon which our organizational structures were grounded. As a groundswell of change is created through the strategy shared above, the Department's point of reference also changes. To ensure the process of continuous improvement, new ideas and new thoughts need to come into focus and enlarge the future vision. This, of course, is the role played by new management movements, as organizations in the Western world moved through Total Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering, and now eBusiness and Knowledge Management. What is critical for future success is an organization's ability to take the best each new focus area, determine fit, and integrate that best into the organization in a way that makes sense.

In the complex world in which we live, there is no lack of new management approaches, and assuredly each approach offers potential value. What is difficult is to achieve the balance between recognizing and sustaining that which is good in an organization, embedding that which has been determined valuable and is currently being implemented, and embracing the value offered by new management

approaches. What is that balance? What are the potential gains and losses from this approach? How do we facilitate the gains and mitigate the losses? Finally, since a complex organization cannot be controlled in the classical meaning of the term - nor should it be - how do we ensure that value, as it emerges, is shared across the organization?

This dilemma of balance extends through every aspect of an organization. A visible example is the insertion of new information technology such as wireless. At what point does the organization wishing to succeed in the future global world embrace wireless technology? How fast should this transition move? What mindsets and strategies (such as moving the security focus from technology to information) need to be changed?

As with other organizations, the U.S. Navy is moving forward at a fast pace, with a vision and strategy, but without a predetermined path. The path has been and will continue to be forged by thousands of dedicated professionals, working individually and collectively, but always keeping in mind the final measure, achieving Knowledge Superiority for Defense of the country.

3 The Growth of Knowledge and Sharing

What we know today (and tomorrow) will never be enough, because where we're headed tomorrow is continuously changing, so that learning and growth and right action from that learning and growth will determine future success in an uncertain, chaotic world. Learning and growth are more than the accumulation and application of knowledge. Knowledge itself has no inherent goodness or badness, i.e., its application can create both negative and positive events (however those terms are culturally defined), and its value is time sensitive and situation dependent.

Implementation of KM across the DON follows the growth path of knowledge and sharing. When exploring a new idea - whether within an individual or in an organization as a whole - closed structured concepts are first created. As these concepts germinate, some focused but limited sharing of these concepts occurs. Slowly, over time, particularly if positive feedback occurs during the limited sharing, there is increased sharing and a deeper awareness and connectedness through sharing occurs, i.e., a common understanding of the concept emerges across a number of people. From this framework, individuals and organizations participating in this sharing create new concepts and purposefully share them across and beyond the framework. As connectedness increases, there is also heightened awareness, or consciousness, of the potential value of these concepts to a larger audience, leading motivated individuals and organizations to advance these concepts further and share them with humanity at large.

Wisdom occurs when knowledge is integrated with a strong value set and acted upon with courage. Through leading and teaching (leadership and education), this wisdom facilitates the growth of new concepts, and an expanded connectedness with individuals and organizations around the world. It is at this level in the growth of knowledge and sharing where we have enough wisdom and knowledge to create and share new thoughts in a fully aware and conscious process, i.e., to


purposefully strategize what concepts to share and how to share them, consciously contributing to world growth.

The growth of knowledge and sharing used for implementation of KM in the DON is modeled in Figure 6.

4 Conclusions

The Department of the Navy's approach to creating an enterprise Intranet - treating the information technology infrastructure as a service - provided the opportunity for the Department of the Navy to focus on managing information and knowledge, facilitating the decision maker's use of the information enabled by information technology. Thus, KM has been effectively married to an aggressive IM/IT program, providing the value that links effective information technology and information management to the people who use that information. This focus on people has been holistic, ranging from the creation of theory and building of shared understanding to the development of infrastructure to support individual and organizational learning. Enterprise-level leadership ranges from promulgating guidance and policy, to providing tools, to rewarding success. Effectively, this complex change strategy has encouraged the natural progression of KM across the Department and across the U.S. government, contributing to the cultural change essential to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by KM, and facilitating a connectedness of choices through the sharing of new thought in a fully aware and conscious process.

References

Bennet, A., "Building the Knowledge Force of the Future: A Case Study of Knowledge Management at the Department of the Navy", in Barquin, R. C, A. Bennet and S. G. Remez, Building Knowledge Management Environments for Electronic Government, Vienna, VA: Management Concepts, 2001, 291-311.

Bennet, A., "Knowledge Management: Unlocking the Potential of Our Intellectual Capital", CHIPS Magazine, Department of the Navy Publication, Winter 2000.

Bennet, A., "Knowledge Superiority as a Navy Way of Life", Knowledge Directions: The Journal of the Institute for Knowledge Management, 3, 1, 2001, 46-57.

Bennet, A., "Managing Change in a Knowledge Environment", in Barquin, R.C., A. Bennet and S. G. Remez: Knowledge Management: The Catalyst for Electronic Government, Vienna, VA: Management Concepts, 2001, 335-360.

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the force of knowledge: a case study of km implementation in the department of the navy

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