Participatory Leadership – trust builder?

I attended the 2008 Annual Partnership Conference yesterday held by the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP).

The theme of the conference was “Participatory Leadership Identified as Key to Public Service Reform”.

It was set against the backdrop of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation & Development (OECD) major review of the Irish Civil Service.

My motivation for attending was to validate a hunch I had about trust. One of the biggest obstacles I encounter as a KM practitioner is people’s lack of interest, anxiousness, fear, etc. KM is often seen as a tool of management with no upside for the employee. Not an unreasonable view given that I am invariably hired by management. It is said time and again that without employee engagement you are not really doing KM. And yet, for the most part, employees have no interest in doing KM. I believe it comes down to a matter of trust. As an extreme example, an employee may well fear that they might be “downsized” once they have revealed all their valuable tacit knowledge. I can appreciate that.

Participatory leadership could be one way of resolving this issue of trust. If an organisation engages in real participatory management where all views are represented at the table and people feel they have a real input, then all initiatives that are carried out, including KM, will have the impermatur of legitimacy and trust. It’s pretty straightforward – people are more apt to cooperate and join in processes that they initiated.

I posed this question to the panel and was told that, yes, evidence has shown that participatory management has been shown to be major builder of trust in organisations.

My follow-up question was, how to get started with a participatory leadership program? I found the answer to this less satisfactory. In my mind, I thought there was a government program that an organization could sign up for. I had visions of mentors, booklets, hand-holding, etc. Instead it was recommended that the best way to get started is with “service reform”. That is, change the way you serve your customers.

For me this was a big disconnect. I thought it would have started with, say, next Monday get all employees together in the conference room and tell them, “From now on, we will be practicing participatory leadership. This means…. x, y, z. Over the coming months we will be holding lectures, workshops, forming teams, etc., etc.” Instead, the view seems to be start from the outside and work inwards. Maybe I misunderstood…

I am not an participatory management expert, but I think the process should start internally. Surely, the participation is between staff and management, not between organization and customers? An organization could always change the way it offers its services without touching participatory management.

I’ll have to do some more reading on this one. I think it holds great potential for KM. Of course, like a lot of management initiatives, it could be a fig-leaf for business as usual. A sop to the staff. That, however, is beyond the scope of this post which is, to say, if participatory management is carried out properly, one of the side benefits could be a much more positive reaction to KM.

50 Reasons Not to Change

Click to see original from M. Pam Bumsted.

Work practices – moving from analog to digital

Move staff from an analog mode to a digital mode (or from nothing to digital, i.e. create new avenues, outlets, opportunities) .

Move as much work as possible to computer in order to record and codify corporate knowledge, information and memory.”

“Social networking” tools could strongly assist/enable this movement.