This is an article I’ve been working on drawn from client experiences and recent research into the areas of knowledge management leading to workforce integration and connected business strategy. Written for business leaders who are strategizing ways to leverage company knowledge, mitigate the risks of a retiring or transient workforce and build a more agile workplace this article discusses some key concepts to help with an approach.

I’ll break the article down into a multi-part posting… and I welcome your feedback……. 

3 - Know what capabilities enable a Connected Business

For the Connected Business to execute a knowledge sharing strategy there are five themes of capabilities that must be developed. Those are:

Communicative capabilities: Do you receive the right message at the right time through the correct medium(eg: email, phone, instant message, notice board)? Are you overwhelmed with messages through any one communication medium? Are you sending the right messages? The ability for workers to be highly effective in their communications is a core requirement of a Connected Business.

Collaborative Capabilities: Do you use a common set of tools and methods when you’re collaborating with co-workers or do you simply email back and forth your work? Do you have access to your work outside of the office? Do business partners you’re collaborating with have access to the same work and information your using? Depending on where workers are collaborating will impact the collaborative approach, a Connected Business enables workers with the most appropriate approach given their working environment.

Innovative Capabilities: are you encouraged to contribute to innovation? When you have a great idea that will improve the way you do your work where do you take that idea? How do elicit feedback, evaluate and improve the idea? How do you gain management support for implementing your idea and finally what’s the process for implementing your idea? Connected Businesses have mechanisms in place to leverage the ideas of their workers and are constantly seeking out improvements, big and small, to operational activities.

Engaging Capabilities: Do you have quantifiable objectives and understand how they are aligned with the goals of your company? With the goals of the company’s stakeholders? Customers? Are you rewarded for behavior that supports the goals of your company? Workers in a Connected Business understand how their effort contributes towards propelling the company towards a common goal.

Trusting Capabilities: Do you trust your manager is supporting you with best intentions when he gives you responsibility? Do you trust your co-workers will not attempt to pass off your work as theirs? When collaborating with business partners do you withhold information? Does your company trust its suppliers? Without trust at all levels of a company knowledge and information does not flow. Trust is therefore a very important ingredient to successfully building a Connected Business.

If you were to assess your company’s maturity along these capability themes what would be the results? Is your company developing the capabilities it requires to become a Connected Business or not?

Next Part: Conclusions

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