NCVO Christine van Winkelen presentation

© Henley KM Forum 2010 www.henley.reading.ac.uk

Knowledge Management Forum

Improving organisational decision makingDr Christine van Winkelen

Henley Business School

© 2011 Henley KM Forum

Plan for this session• Putting a focus on

decision making• The investigation• Framework to build

decision making capability

• Using the maturity model

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In a time of cutbacks, reprioritising focus areas.

How best to downsize a department.

Prioritising access to limited resources in an organisation.

Creating a regional structure for the organisation.

Merging with another organisation.

Renegotiating a major contract with a key supplier.

Changing a process so that adaptability is built in.

“Joining up” expertise in a specific area across a distributed organisation.

Formulating the company’s climate change policy3


“We are told over and over again, that if anything is central to the new, global information economy it is knowledge…. One of the most critical question any organization can raise is “How do we decide what we should use in order to decide?”” (Mitroff 2008)

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What is a “good” decision?

A “decision” is a commitment to a course of action that is intended to yield results that are satisfying for specified individuals. (Yates and

Tschirhart 2006, p422).

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Adopting a capability-based approach to decision-making

Our objective: Identify factors that will enable managers to help build decision-making capability in their organizations as the internal and external environment evolves. 6


Human decision making

• We adopt heuristics to speed up decision making, but these create traps. A large number of cognitive and emotional biases have been identified – mitigating the risks of these biases involves improving access to knowledge or increasing individual or organisational reflection. (Tetlock, 1991) (Hammond, 2006)

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• Flawed people with incomplete information seek to make good enough decisions through negotiation with others. (Cyert and March 1963)

• The organisational environment influences responses – highly turbulent environments can mean that decision traps potentially have an even greater effect. (Eisenhardt 1999)


The context for decision making

Decision making context

Characteristic Decision making

approach in this domain

Indicative contributors to effective decision making

Simple Clear cause and effect relationships are evident. Right answers exist.

Best practice

Decision support technology systems and processes.

Complicated

Cause and effect relationships can be discovered. Expert diagnosis is required and more than one right answer is possible.

Expertise Using experts effectively. Developing expertise. Technology based expert systems.

Complex There are no right answers, but emergent and instructive patterns can be seen in retrospect. Efforts need to be made to probe the situation and sense what is happening to find the patterns of relationships.

Emergence

Considering multiple perspectives, including using new collaboration technologies, collective learning about decision making in this context.

Chaotic The relationships between cause and effect are impossible to determine: no manageable patterns exist.

Rapid response

Acting to establish order is needed through directive leadership.

8(Categorisation: Snowden and Boone, 2007)


The investigation• Extensive literature review to create the

framework of five factors. • Exploratory research: interviews with 19

senior decision-makers in ten public and private sector organisations, exploring a significant decision with each and considering how these factors were enacted.

• A maturity model for the factors was created using focus groups of knowledge managers. This was tested through interviews with knowledge managers in nine further organisations.

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© 2011 Henley KM Forum 10

Working Group• Tim Andrews Stretch Learning• Noelle Brelsford PHSO• David Bruce British Council• Roger Darby Cranfield University• Mollie Dickenson Henley Business School• Susan Frost Ministry of Defence• John Haskey/ Mark Field DCSF• Alex Goodall Friend of the Forum• Sindy Grewal Audit Commission (Co-champion)• Anna Last Information Centre for Health and Social Care• Professor Jane McKenzie Henley Business School (Co-champion)• Dr Christine van Winkelen Henley Business School (Co-champion)• Darryn Warner Balfour Beatty

The organisations who contributed to the interviews:

From the public sector: Audit Commission, HMRC, Ministry of Defence,

Foreign & Commonwealth Office, National College

From the private sector: Mills & Reeve, MWH, Permira, Qatar Gas, Syngenta


Human capital

Identifying experts and developing expertise

Developing individual’s decision making capacity by supporting reflective practice

Structural capital

Using technology to structure, integrate and provide access to explicit knowledge resources

Decision review process to learn about better decision making

Relational capital

Adopting an integrated approach to internal and external collaboration

A framework for building organisational decision-making capability


KM factors Most significant contributions

Identifying experts and developing expertise

Decision making in complicated situations. Sense-making and identifying options.

Supporting reflective practice for individual learning

Managing cognitive bias, increasing range and depth of experience, increasing debate, challenge and openness. Developing expertise. Reflection on practice and self‑awareness to develop strategic decision making skills.

Human capital


Important KM factors

Most significant contributions

Using technology to structure, integrate and provide access to explicit knowledge resources

Access to current and well-structured explicit knowledge to provide input for simple decision making. Support expert decision making. Support data collection and selection phases of complex decision making.

Developing decision review processes for organisational learning

Recognising different kinds of decision- making situations. Investing in the development of an appropriate repertoire of decision-making modes to suit the context.

Structural capital


Important KM factors

Most significant contributions

Adopting an integrated approach to internal and external collaboration

Gathering intelligence. Accessing multiple perspectives to formulate the decision to be made in complex contexts. Making connections to create knowledge to generate new options.

Relational capital


Constructing a maturity modelFactor

Level

Using experts Using technology

Using internal and external collaboration

Organisational learning

about decision making

Developing individuals as

decision makers

Ambient

Accepted

Applied

Ad-Hoc

Aware

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Different organisations place named post-itson their current capability level.

AB A

B

B

B

A

AB

A


Use colour to reveal the “river” – the gap between the “banks” is the learning opportunity.

AB A

B

B

B

A

AB

A

See “Learning to Fly” by Collison and Parcellfor more details of this approach.


Identify opportunities for peer learning

AB A

B

B

B

A

AB

A


Contact details

This work was carried out as part of the research agenda of the Henley Knowledge Management Forum based at Henley Management College in the UK.

www.henleymc.ac.uk/kmforum

For further information contact:

[email protected]

[email protected]

http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/kmforum

mailto:[email protected]




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NCVO Christine van Winkelen presentation

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