Knowledge Matters™

A colleague has completed an analysis, using my RAAKERS™ framework, of two organisations which are located on different continents from the parent organisation. The results are very interesting. Just to refresh your memory RAAKERS™ is a risk and knowledge management framework to assess where an organisation’s weaknesses might be.

RAAKERS™ is an acronym for responsibility, authority, accountability, knowledge, experience, resources and systems. The first three attributes - responsibility, authority, and accountability – are essential for individual and organisation success. A weakness in one or more of these components diminishes the strength of the others, so the first precondition is they must be in alignment. Too often I see people given the responsibility for an outcome, but they don’t have the organisational authority to make it happen, or worse still are not accountable even if they have the authority. I have also seen the paradox where a sub-department is accountable for a series of outcomes, but doesn’t have the authority or agreement to implement them in other sub-departments, and so is not responsible for the foreign sub-department implementation. Equally one can be responsible to implement an outcome, but not have the authority to implement it, and ultimately not be accountable for the success or failure of the initiative. Task and outcome success are therefore dependent on responsibility, authority and accountability alignment, both at the individual and organisational level.

If responsibility, authority and accountability are in alignment then we are on the path to success, but the next four attributes - knowledge, experience, resources and systems - are also needed in various degrees. Now we can get into an argument about what knowledge is or is not, but that is a blog for another day. Suffice it to say I think one can have the knowledge to do something, but not the experience to do it efficiently or to understand the pitfalls. Equally one can have lots of departmental experience, but little knowledge of the task at hand. If enough and proper resources are not assigned failure is assured. And finally one can have the knowledge, experience, and some resources, but no system or systems to make it all happen. Now that you have some background consider the graph below.

The dark green bars are the possible scores for RAAKERS™ components in this order – responsibility, authority, accountability, knowledge, experience, resources and systems. The coloured bars indicate the strength of the component. Red bars are a score of less than four. Orange bars are a score between four and nine. Light green bars are a score greater than nine.

The RAAKERS™ framework immediately highlights problems with the resources component of this organisation. There are a number of reasons for this mainly associated with cultural, logistic and communication difficulties. Note also there is only one bar – experience – which is green, although most other bars are on the cusp. This organisation is out of balance. Balance might be restored by in-sourcing resource acquisition and distribution. Now consider the graph below.

Note this time there are two green bars – authority and experience – with most other bars on the cusp of becoming green. Interestingly the knowledge component is the weakest, but all other bars have an equal to or better score than the first organisation. All in all this organisation is well balanced but has room for improvement. It might be strengthened by assigning some people with knowledge of other methods and approaches of its core business.

The RAAKERS™ framework is still a bit raw and requires further development and refinement. I invite your thoughts and comments. In particular I am interested in how you think it might be improved, what its deficiencies are, and how it might be illustrated. Your comments and thoughts matter to me.

Regards Graham