The Conductive Organization: Building Beyond Sustainability

Hubert Saint-Onge, Charles Armstrong075067735X, 9780750677356, 9781417536924

An organization’s culture lies at the heart of its ability to perform. In the knowledge economy, new rules are emerging and organizations must rethink how they will compete by leveraging their tacit knowledge – their intangible assets – in order to create and sustain a strategic advantage. In this book, Hubert Saint-Onge and Charles Armstrong, two corporate leaders who have been in the forefront of using knowledge management to gain strategic advantage, focus on knowledge-based customer relationships, innovative internal structures, and self-initiated learning cultures, in order to explain the building blocks that must be in place to create and sustain a knowledge-based culture within organizations-a culture that they argue is integral to a high-performance organization.An organization’s culture lies at the heart of its ability to perform. In the knowledge economy, new rules are emerging and organizations must rethink how they will compete by leveraging their tacit knowledge – their intangible assets – in order to create and sustain a strategic advantage. In this book, Hubert Saint-Onge and Charles Armstrong, two corporate leaders who have been in the forefront of using knowledge management to gain strategic advantage, focus on knowledge-based customer relationships, innovative internal structures, and self-initiated learning cultures, in order to explain the building blocks that must be in place to create and sustain a knowledge-based culture within organizations-a culture that they argue is integral to a high-performance organization.This book provides a blueprint for creating and leading organizations with strong knowledge-based cultures to achieve breakthroughperformance. Using the idea of conductivity, the authors describe the successful organization of the future as one that increases the quality and flow of knowledge within the organization and within its network of suppliers, customers, and other collaborators. The narrative is based on the thoughts, experience, and models of Hubert Saint-Onge and Charles Armstrong, who have successfully led high-performance companies in the financial services sector and the engineering and manufacturing sector. Each chapter includes practical examples from their experience and from other successful leaders.

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Table of contents :
Team DDU……Page 1
Contents……Page 10
Preface……Page 12
Acknowledgements……Page 18
1 The Conductive Organization……Page 20
2 The Customer Imperative……Page 42
3 The Knowledge Capital Model……Page 54
4 Customer Calibration……Page 72
5 The Strategy-Making Perspective of the Conductive Organization……Page 94
6 Internal and External Branding: The Character of the Conductive Organization……Page 116
7 Culture: The Collective Mindsets of the Conductive Organization……Page 132
8 Structure: The Custodians of Conductivity……Page 156
9 Systems: Generating Capabilities……Page 174
10 A New Leadership Agenda for the Conductive Organization……Page 202
11 From Conductive to Highly Conductive-The Evolving Organization……Page 226
Glossary……Page 250
About the Authors……Page 254
Index……Page 258