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Culture - Not a Question of Sharing But of Security

Before knowledge sharing was at all possible at the Navy, a cultural shift was imperative. Gener­ally speaking, the Navy's culture, and that of other government agencies to varying degrees, is to withhold information and hoard knowledge as much as possible for counterintelligence and secu­rity purposes. The main hurdle is how to balance knowledge sharing for enhanced decision mak­ing with the critical need for information security. The dilemma is similar to that faced by private organizations in which the need to share knowledge internally and externally should be balanced with the need to protect competitively harmful information. The dilemma, of course, is of greater magnitude and more serious ramifications when it comes to the Navy. On one hand, the Navy needs to ensure that the information available to the public cannot be interpreted to result in knowledge or intelligence about classified operations. On the other hand, withholding informa­tion and knowledge can hinder and undermine learning and effective decision making. The Navy's culture of secrecy, characterized by limiting information and knowledge sharing on a need-to-know basis, intrinsically conflicts with an open knowledge-sharing approach required to attain the "knowledge superiority" vision of the Navy.

The conflict between the two sides and the need to transform the Navy's culture were appre­ciated from the start. In 2000, a pilot study of 250 people in one department identified change in the Navy's culture as the most important factor for successful KM.10 Thus, KM must be devel­oped hand in hand with information/cyber security, counterintelligence, and encryption technol­ogy. Indeed, the CIO portrayed the need for this balanced approach in the 2000 IT/IM strategic plan by recognizing both security and KM as twin strategic objectives. The CIO sent a strong message across the Navy that a balance should be struck between the two, while having the unen­viable role of guiding the balancing effort.

To do so, the CIO approached the issue methodically by showing that information decays with time and that only by sharing it in the critical time does it produce knowledge, where both time and knowledge are of the essence in the art of war. Though withholding information may seem more appropriate for the Navy's need for security, only by sharing information could successful decisions be made in the critical time. The CIO used the "knowledge life cycle model" shown in Exhibit 6.2, to communicate the idea that information gets obsolete with time. Only circulated, shared, and brainstormed information results in knowledge that can be leveraged to the benefit of everyone in the organization at the critical time. Simultaneously, advances in technology should be developed to ensure cyber security. Only when a culture of trust is cultivated, coupled with technological supremacy, will the Navy be able to strike the sensitive balance between knowl­edge sharing and security.

Knowledge Flowing

For the CIO, changing the culture of an organization is difficult, particularly for the Navy, in which an adverse culture has existed for a long time. The CIO stressed that the key to success is "consistency in approach" by aligning performance measures, accountability, incentives, and rewards with the value of knowledge sharing.11 As noted in Chapter 4, cultural change requires much more than speeches from leadership on the value of knowledge sharing to the success of the organization and statements of strategic objectives. It requires integral changes to the job design and reward and compensation systems to reflect knowledge sharing as part of the j ob, and not just a value to be revered. And that is what the Navy did.

The Navy rewarded departments that implemented KM, which sent a strong message that knowledge sharing is not only acceptable but appreciated by leadership. In the annual knowledge fair, the Navy presented a number of KM awards. Past awards included the "Outstanding Knowledge Expert System," "Outstanding Collaborative Knowledge Sharing Approach," and "Opera-tionalizing KM Concepts." The increasing number of projects and programs recommended for these awards indicates the success of the Navy in effecting the required cultural shift. Moreover, the progressive step of creating new career paths in KM made it clear that sharing knowledge is not part of the value system but part of the job.

Moving forward with enabling KM in the Navy, the CIO needed to address another very important role in operationalizing KM—the role of IT and the knowledge base.

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