Introduction
Intellectual capital audit (ICA) is one of the main strategic tools which help HR management to assess and evaluate human potential and knowledge, skills, and creativity. Creativity and productivity are important attributes of a person, a group of people, or an organization. The balance and focus of an organization on these two attributes determine what an organization can accomplish. Typically, at various stages in the life of an organization or person, there is a natural focus on one or the other. Creativity is the driving force of an organization. It causes growth to occur. Without creativity, there can be no productivity. Productivity results from the exploitation of the creativity of an organization.
This is Taking into account a person’s deep smartness, it is possible to say that ICA is not applicable because it cannot record all activities and adequately evaluate the knowledge and skills of a creative person.
Main body
The uniqueness of a deep smart person is that he/she possesses outstanding skills and knowledge, thinking, and decision-making skills. The creativity of an organization does not have to totally exist within the organization, however. An organization’s productivity can be built on others’ creativity as a base or through injection for creativity at any point in the productivity process. But an organization has to have some lead of internal creativity or it wins stagnate and die. ICA can be applied to common employees and organizations in general, but it will not reflect the analytical and information-gathering skills of a deep-smart person (Mullins, 1993).
A deep smart person can easily extrapolate information, considering unique context and settings, make unusual and even odd decisions and establish the rule of the game. Any of the ICA can assess and evaluate these skills and knowledge. For a deep smart person, the formation of ideas is driven by interaction with the marketplace (customers, technology, and competition). The organization is small; the ideas being tested can reside in the mind of one individual.
That individual can look at the issues of the marketplace and the business, and can develop the vision. The pull of the market comes from current customers and known and unknown potential customers. Market push comes from the technology-direct technology, supportive technology, and enabling technology. The clash in the marketplace comes from competitors–direct, indirect, and structural (Baron and Kreps 1999).
Taking into account communication theories, it is possible o say that face-to-face and online communication differs greatly. A person can have excellent face-to-face communication skills, but it will be difficult to assess them during online communication. The communication process is rich with sense-making. Words and other forms of communication are symbols that evoke images that represent relationships and promote understanding.
All managers are part of a total system of information management in the organization. Managers generate and receive information that makes the organization operate. By using sense-making a manager can better see a role in the total information management process in the organization. Sense-making can have a major impact on improving creativity through such techniques as brainstorming and other free-forms of thinking. Sense-making can help to take off blinders and expand horizons to come up with new and creative solutions. Sense-making can also help better achieve employee participation and divergent thinking.
Employees are a rich source of ideas for solving problems. By Sense-making, this participation and divergent thinking can be channeled and tied to group-based creative solutions to problems. Every manager must cope with uncertainty and an unstable environment when solving problems and making decisions. Sense-making can assist in recognizing and reducing uncertainty and instability (Baron and Kreps 1999).
When decisions are made and problems solved, negotiation is often required to get the solution accepted and implemented. Sense-making has a major part to play in the negotiating process in order to establish and bargain on positions, use power tactics, and reach mutually beneficial agreements often based on symbols and image. A systematic search through these elements of the market will identify the innovation opportunity.
Ideally, it would be preferable to pinpoint an area where customers want innovation, where the technology has the potential to provide it, and where there is little competition. To understand the market, then, is to develop a description of the innovation opportunity. If this vision encompasses the commitment to leadership and embraces innovation, it can be used to develop the innovation strategy that results from the innovation opportunity developed through understanding the markets (Mullins, 1993).
Most human resource professionals admit that it is difficult to audit knowledge and sense-making in organizations (Baron and Kreps 1999). Since most human resource functions are supportive, human resource professionals have a staff or advisory authority over line management. They do not have direct authority over line managers, rather they exist to help line managers in such areas as hiring, training, rewarding, counseling, and discipline.
Often it is in the establishment of the vision that organizations lose sight of the customers (Mullins, 1993). They get caught up in their own perspectives, and grind their own axes instead of clearly seeing the market opportunity and responding to it. It is here that the image of the lone wolf inventor or entrepreneur flourishes. After committing to leadership, the projects must be executed with excellence to gain the leadership desired–and to have a satisfied customer.
Three innovation program elements must be considered: projects, resources, and culture. The first step is to take an inventory of each of these elements and match the results to the innovation strategy. The difference is the innovation gap. This gap determines what needs change (Mullins, 1993).
The modern human resource professional plays a similar role. Working with line managers, human resource professionals try to improve the performance of both the managers and the entire organization. They do this by serving as instructors, helping line managers to instruct their subordinates, arranging for outside people to come into the organization, and by sending people to workshops, seminars, and universities. They are just as concerned with the development of the organizational team as is a coach. The techniques of visualization and sense-making are conducive for use in the facilitative role played by human resource professionals.
Managers often believe that merely changing the projects will produce the desired innovation, but changes to resources must accompany changes in the project mix. Then, to assure the effectiveness of the project and resource change, the organizational culture must be changed, too. A time scale is implicit in these efforts: It is easier and faster to change the project mix than it is the resources. And, it is easier and faster to change the resources than it is the culture (Baron and Kreps 1999).
The direction and control of any effective management information system must start at the top. First of all, it is of the essence that everyone on the management team knows that the management information system is supported by top management. Second, strategic planning and other conceptual managerial activities, in order to be successful, must be conducted realizing that it will be necessary to enhance and expand the management information system accordingly.
As other levels of management try to see how to accomplish shorter-range goals, they should also try to envision what MIS projects are necessary to support the short-term goals of the organization. They need to see what projects should be integrated with ongoing systems and what other projects are necessary to result in an integrated system of information management that is designed around the fundamental activities of the organization (Baron and Kreps 1999).
Conclusion
In sum, since the problems we will face in the future are likely to be unique and novel, convergent problem-solving skills may not be so useful as they have been in the relatively stable and predictable past. Convergent problem-solving may also lack power in the future because intuitive processes are ignored in lieu of rational and empirical approaches to problem-solving. Since sense-making and decision-making are closely linked to creativity, the convergent problem-solver may be inhibiting his/her ability to think creatively. Organizational creativity and innovation in designing products and services as well as in making any business decision can greatly benefit from marketing concepts and methods.
In this context, marketing is not only a function but also a management perspective and philosophy that offers a set of concepts and tools that can help an organization enhance its creativity and innovation. In particular, the concepts and approaches have focused on the establishment of an innovative learning organization. These concepts and approaches help meet the research challenges outlined by Mullins (1993) the need to offer new methods and provide stimulants for rethinking, realigning, and restructuring.
Bibliography
Baron, J., Kreps, K. 1999, Strategic Human Resources; Frameworks for General Managers. Wiley; 1 edition.
Mullins, L.J. 1993, Management and Organizational Behavior. PITMAN publishing. 3d edn.