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BusinessWeek just published an article about how groups around the world are preparing for the Knowledge Economy.

Notice the focus on the design of the physical space that they’re proposing and how that will help foster the necessary community that will be required for collaboration, learning and innovation.

Now I’m clearly a little biased in my support for this message – but that bias first came from all of the other sources that turned me on to this trend.

Using the ideas in the article, what can your organization do to prepare for the knowledge economy?  How can your workspace be configured to best support the way work happens?  How can you integrate the collaboration of your customers, suppliers and employees into the learning and innovation that will drive your organization forward?

At Dell Inc., a corporation that has scooped up many awards for its commitment to diversity, leaders understand the importance of fostering an affirming diversity climate. Thurmond Woodward, Dell’s VP of global diversity said, “We don’t want to focus only on representation, because representation without the right culture leads to a revolving door, and that is not what we were looking to do.”

Within the last fifteen years or so, the workplace has become increasingly diverse along dimensions such as race, gender, age, and nationality. Most business leaders recognize that, by introducing greater diversity into their organizations, they have the potential to gain a strong competitive advantage. At the same time, though, they recognize that this demographic shift is accompanied by pretty big challenges. In fact, organizational diversity doesn’t always work—merging people with different backgrounds and worldviews has the potential for both positive and negative outcomes. For example, diverse organizations have been associated with more effective problem-solving abilities and greater innovation, but also intergroup friction, higher turnover rates, and lower productivity.

What makes diversity work

In order to get the benefits of diversity and minimize its potential negative consequences, it’s not enough to simply implement a couple of diversity-related training programs. Becoming a truly successful multicultural organization requires starting at a deeper level. It requires cultivating a climate where people genuinely value diversity, rather than see it as a moral imperative or as a means of accessing wider markets.
After a yearlong assessment of their diversity climate, Dell put forward a variety of initiatives that would contribute to what they call a “cultural evolution.” These initiatives included sponsoring networking groups for different minority groups, career management programs, cross-cultural training for leaders and employees alike, and diversity focused recruiting. Their efforts were well worth the rewards –now, over half of their employees are minorities and they report higher levels of inclusion and identity freedom. Woodward states that, in terms of the bottom line, their climate has improved customer service experiences and powered their globalization effort.
Dell’s example highlights the fact that climate change is a difficult and long process and that, in order for it to be successful, business-leaders need a multipronged approach to diversity. Taylor Cox, a widely known author in organizational psychology and the founding father of the theoretical model of the multicultural organization, offers some suggestions towards this end. He argues that in order to make this transition into an organization that is truly multicultural and values diversity, efforts must be made in the following areas:

1. Leadership

When leaders become advocates for the importance of diversity, when they demonstrate how diversity is related to broader strategic objectives, and when they model the behaviors they wish to see in the organization, they can have profound effects on the diversity climate. This might mean that the CEO presents the results of a company-wide survey related to diversity issues, makes a video to be delivered to each unit in which he outlines his vision for diversity management, and kicks off and closes diversity seminars. Taylor boldly insists that strong leadership is the single most important element in managing diversity –this type of effort is “doomed to failure” if diversity officers and human resources staff are the only ones taking charge of it.

2. Continuous research and measurement of diversity-related matters

The creation of a diversity climate needs to be data driven. That is, organizations need to be able to diagnose the climate for diversity, measure progress, and tweak diversity initiatives accordingly. In my research, I’ve found evidence that, compared to white employees, racial minorities may have a more negative perception of the organizational climate for diversity. If this is the case in your organization, you may seek out the opinions of minority employees through surveys or focus groups, determine the reason for this perceptual gap, implement a solution, and importantly, continually collect data to monitor the situation.

3. Education

Cultivating an affirming diversity climate also requires an ongoing commitment to education on diversity. Note that this is different from a “one-shot” diversity-training program. These training programs can be used to develop specific communication and leadership skills as well as to help employees understand their responsibilities in the cultural change process. The important element here is that these programs are continually offered and available for employees.

4. Follow-Up

This component is linked to the research and measurement described earlier. It emphasizes that some form of accountability needs to be built into this cultural evolution. By holding quarterly meetings to assess the progress of diversity-related goals, providing incentives to managers and employees for these goals, and managing the sharing of knowledge about diversity efforts, accountability can be strengthened.

So these are the areas where attention should be focused, particularly as our economy is in a tailspin. Studies show that in times of economic instability, individuals go into a self-protective mode, isolating themselves and their socio-cultural group, and this may lead to an increase in workplace discrimination. During this recession, it is perhaps most important to be attentive to and nurture your company’s diversity climate to gain that competitive edge.

BusinessWeek just published an article that talks about incorporating people that aren’t formally part of your organization into it’s methods for innovating.  The article profiles a video game company that leveraged a fan-base on Facebook to create a new game – and along the way they slashed development costs and even a hired a few top coders.

This philosophy of ‘crowdsourcing’ will be critical as we get further into the knowledge economy.  I encourage organizations to assess who they count on for success and then develop strategies to incorporate all of those groups into their learning/innovation pipeline.  [Note: a value network analysis is a great tool to help visualize this.]

Who does your organization count on for success [i.e. suppliers, consultants, customers,...]?  How can you incorporate their insight and suggestions into your next big idea?

The New York Times recently published this map which shows data searches where users jumped from journal to journal as part of the knowledge they were seeking.  What a great visual of knowledge networks in action…

What would a map of your workforce look like as they went after the knowledge they needed to do their job?  Does your current learning and development/training strategy support it?

Many organizations are recognizing that the picture above resembles how work gets done in their workforce and leveraging tools such as social or organizational network analysis and value network analysis to create a strategy to support these knowledge networks as ways of transferring knowledge, improving performance and increasing innovation.  How about yours?

I just signed up to participate in a project going on at KM.gov – their aim [informally] is to bring knowledge management to the U.S. government so that collaboration, lessons learned, innovation, etc. can all help with the implementation and long-term success of the major changes our country will be undergoing as a result of the coming stimulus bill.

Here’s their mission as they say it:

Inform and support federal government departments, agencies, organizations, and  their constituencies in the research, development, identification, and implementation of knowledge management (KM) activities, practices, lessons learned, and technologies.

To accomplish this mission, the Federal KMWG will mobilize and leverage thought leaders and KM practitioners from government, quasi-government, academia, non-government, non-profit, and the private sector around the globe.

Anyone can sign-up and contribute – go to the site to request an account and you’ll soon have a voice in helping shape the [hopeful] future of how our government operates in our knowledge society.