Page 231 - DCAP208_Management Support Systems

Management Support Systems

Notes A “socio-technical” type strategy is necessary. One can build a new type of project strategy,
radically opposite to the “roadmap” one. It may be called the “water lily strategy”. This term
expresses the idea of steady organic growth, that designates the cell growing process (meiosis in
morphogenesis), that processes by successive cellular divisions to create some viable and complex
structures. The water lily evokes a well known childish riddle: a water lily doubles its surface
every day, if it already took forty days to cover half of the pond, how many days are needed to
cover the entire pond? An imprudent and too fast answer would be eighty days while considering
that as much time is necessary to cover one half that the other. This answer neglects the water lily
nature and the initial hypothesis! If one transcribes this riddle in term of project management, it
may be: a KM project is expensive, if the project costs 40 M€ to cover the needs for managing half
of the Knowledge Capital, how much will be needed for managing the entire Knowledge Capital?
The linear extrapolation of costs will answer undoubtedly rather toward 80 M€ than 41M€! One
doesn’t have the habit to evoke the hypothesis of the water lily in this kind of problem.
It is yet “water lily” strategy that is the most adequate for a Knowledge Management project.
It is the best way to include the change process, incentive factors, and the emergence phenomenon
in complex systems. The water lily strategy is a strategy of constant effort and cumulative effect,
which perfectly suits the cumulative economic nature of knowledge. It indicates notably that if
efforts can be considerable to start the project (from a human or other resources point of views),
they will not be necessarily multiplied during the project spreading. Incentive factors being
essential, one benefits from a leadership effect. The material costs are not necessarily the most
important; they don’t grow therefore linearly etc. One of the big interests of this project
management type is to minimize costs and risks. The first water lilies are not too expensive.
Stops, often unavoidable on medium-term projects, are not damaging. Failures don’t necessarily
imply to completely revise the entire approach.
The water lily strategy usually comprises three phases. These phrases are discussed below:

The Pilot Project(s)

The first water lilies are persuasive projects. They are autonomous projects, concerning a restricted
part of the knowledge capital. It is often possible to identify such projects that already emerged
spontaneously (often long time ago) in the enterprise: it’s indeed true that the knowledge is
(fortunately!) a common and pragmatic practice for a long time. These pilot projects, concerned
with knowledge capitalization, sharing or creation can be revealed or initialized by knowledge
cartography. Some of their features are:
They concern a small knowledge domain (too small), but meaningful.
They are performed by people convinced of the necessity to act on their knowledge, and
that are therefore susceptible to have a leadership action in a general approach.
They are settled and achieved locally in units. They are not necessarily supported by the
management (it is necessary however, to get an “understanding neutrality” from the
management). This allows avoiding the considerable effort to get, from the first beginning,
the “top management commitment”, that is often a prerequisite for strategic projects, but
that is sometimes a delaying or even blocking factor.
They show real life examples as for the possibility to manage the knowledge capital.
The pilot project(s) are the ferments of a global and strategic Knowledge Management approach.
They are significant of a bottom up approach where people who produce and use knowledge in
their daily practice (Knowledge Workers) prove the need and the possibility to capitalize, to
share or to make evolve this knowledge in their context. A pilot project must show that it is
useful to work on knowledge, and to show an original added value compared with a more
classic project (quality, documentation, data processing…). It is one concrete and pragmatic

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