Steve Barth | Reflexions

Is there learning “beyond science”?

Recently, but not for the first time, I found myself struggling to articulate why something as useful and reliable as science could sometimes be a dangerous distraction from the real answers to important questions—and why, as a visible and explicit process, science often requires too much bandwidth for effective communication. Then I came across this passage from Francisco José Ayala's 2007 Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion:

Science is a way of knowing, but it is not the only way. Knowledge also derives from other sources, such as common sense, artistic and religious experience, and philosophical reflection.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, the great French writer Albert Camus asserted that we learn more about ourselves and the world from a relaxed evening's perception of the starry heavens and the scents of grass than from science's reductive ways.

The anthropologist Loren Eiseley wrote: "The world without Shakespeare's insights is a lesser world, our griefs shut more inarticulately in upon themselves. We grow mute at the thought—just as an element seems to disappear from sunlight without Van Gogh."

Astonishing to me is the assertion made by some scientists and others that there is no valid knowledge outside science. I respond with a witticism that I once heard from a friend: "In matters of values, meaning, and purpose, science has all the answers, except the interesting ones."

KM Platforms and Programs in International NGOs

Large international non-governmental organizations face extra challenges in knowledge sharing and organizational learning.

1. They pursue important goals that are simultaneously urgent and elusive, such as maintaining peace and security in conflict zones; alleviating poverty, hunger and disease; or building sustainable economic and political structures in transitional or post-conflict societies.
2. NGOs often operate in harsh or hostile environments and with constrained resources, ad-hoc multicultural teams and complex interdependencies between actors and agencies.
3. The largest of these organizations achieve economies of scale by operating globally in diverse locations.
4. NGOs typically enjoy exceptionally committed employees, leading to strong informal networks, but internal and external dynamics can create highly bureaucratic organizational structures that discourage use of formal knowledge-sharing systems.
5. Above all, NGOs constantly need to demonstrate results based on intangible outcomes.

I will be leading a workshop at KMWorld 2010 called KM Platforms and Programs in International NGOs on Monday, November 15 from 1:30-4:30pm at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC. My colleagues and I will bring lessons learned from three prominent organizations: the Open Society Institute, Oxfam Great Britain and UN Peacekeeping.

We are inviting other NGOs to bring their experiences to share in an interactive, facilitated session and collaborate on shared sense-making and knowledge creation about effective knowledge and learning strategies optimized for their activities.

Psychological Safety and Team Learning

A critical key to learning from experience is the ability to openly and honestly discuss the risks, errors, mistakes, variations, surprises and even failures that inevitably occur in any complex or difficult activity. Such honesty requires courage in any organizational setting, especially if people are afraid they'll be fired for either screwing up or speaking up. The question is, what can you do to facilitate, stimulate, protect and reward such courage so that knowledge workers can trust that their honesty will not be used against them?

Harvard professor Amy Edmonson developed the concept of "psychological safety," to explain how individuals perceive the consequences of interpersonal risks in the workplace. Psychological safety governs specific, short-term, micro-behavioral decisions based on self-preservation. As such, it complements related concepts such as trust (giving others the benefit of the doubt over time), group cohesion (maintaining a comfortable social ambience), or emotional intelligence (productively managing one's own or others' emotions). Edmonson boils these down to three elements: the timeframe (immediate), the object of focus (self), and the level of analysis (peers and supervisors).

Managing Knowledge across Borders

A recent discussion at The Braintrust Knowledge Management Group asked how cultural dimensions affect learning and knowledge sharing. I really like Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars' book "Building Cross-Cultural Competence" as a basis for understanding the challenges and opportunities you face and Hall's "Values Technology" approach to leveraging the differences.

This issue is further complicated, complexified and/or mitigated by the uniqueness of organizational, professional and departmental cultures—and don't forget that there are often nested subcultures to these as well. For example, Japanese are said to have a very unique and cohesive culture that permeates their corporate behaviors. However, when I studied Japanese corporations invested in the US, I found huge differences between, say, Hitachi, Ricoh, Toyota and Seiko. I also found every site and subsidiary had unique attributes based on the character of the managers, the local staff, the region, etc., as all these agents and communities "co-evolve."

I used to write extensively about such issues in global business and focused on the KM angle in a 1999 article for Knowledge Management magazine called "Managing Knowledge Across Borders," which I will repost here.

A Reading List for Personal Knowledge Management

I recently created a reading list of materials on PKM. The idea of a "personal" approach to knowledge management has been a focus of my work for more than 10 years now. Originally there were very few of us writing about this topic (Pollard, Skyrme, Cope, Frand, Dorsey, etc) while the idea had some vocal critics (you know who you are). In the past few years, the subject has become both popular and socially acceptable. Along the way, my own views have evolved considerably.

In general, I'm interested in how the individual fits into increasingly social, collaborative and networked views of knowledge, learning and work. On one hand, I have explored the principles, values, skills and tools necessary for each of us to make our best contributions to collective efforts. On the other hand, I have increasingly focused on the notion of "citizenship"as it relates to cognition, cultures and craft in organizations.

You can filter my blogged posts under the category "self-organization" to see thoughts as they emerge. However I have also published dozens of articles on PKM in books, magazines and journals. Here is a brief list (under construction), along with another list of articles by others that I have found useful.

NOTE: My first pass at this page is basically a drag-drop from my citation manager, Mendeley, so apologies for the appalling format and links. I see that there are also many of my favorite references still missing (filed elsewhere), along with dozens of my own articles. I’ll clean it up as soon as I have more time. The best references are highlighted in bold. All of my “Personal Toolkit” columns are still available from KMWorld. My articles from Knowledge Management magazine and destinationKM are not currently online, which I hope to rectify soon.

Please send your suggestions!

How to Treat Best Practices

Writing for the New York Times, Bruce Buschel is compiling a list of "100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do" for his new seafood restaurant:

Veteran waiters, moonlighting actresses, libertarians and baristas will no doubt protest some or most of what follows. They will claim it homogenizes them or stifles their true nature. And yet, if 100 different actors play Hamlet, hitting all the same marks, reciting all the same lines, cannot each one bring something unique to that role?

He makes a great point. Working with organizations that want to document and replicate "best practices" I always struggle to balance the advantages of efficiency with the danger of stifling adaptation or innovation. One way is to focus on "worst practices," not best. This warns people away from behaviors or processes that tend not to work, but also encourages them to think about why while giving them more freedom about how to proceed and letting them take ownership of positive actions.

Digitizing or Indigenizing Knowledge?

Comparing "traditional knowledge" (as in indigenous communities) to "traditional science" (as in scientific method) offers a useful metaphor—and perhaps a better model—for the problem of constructing KM solutions, which are typically approached as an extension of "scientific management" even though organizational interventions respond better to anthropological approaches rather than technological ones.

Knowledge in the Wild

The International Council for Science defines traditional knowledge as the accumulated learning, skills, and practices maintained by communities with long experience in their environments. That knowledge informs day-to-day decisions and long-term worldviews on practical and fundamental aspects of a group's practices.

"Traditional knowledge" suggests (wrongly) that this knowledge is rooted in the past without necessarily renewing itself, which it does. "Indigenous knowledge" is a better term, emphasizing the situation of knowledge: its inextricable link to place and context. This situated knowledge is almost always framed by social responsibility and long-term sustainability. Nevertheless, it tends to sound like "common sense" (which it is, literally) about practical advice and everyday reality, albeit based on a long view stretching back generations, centuries or longer. It also balances collective and individual stewardship for the knowledge that is vital if the group is to survive and thrive.

Organisms, Organizations and Systems

We are each organisms inside of organizations, simultaneously independent agents and components of larger systems. We co-evolve reacting to each other and together are incremental creators—and creations—of the system.

Sensing our environment is information. Reacting to our environment is learning. Repeating the reaction is called knowledge. Knowledge is more efficient than learning. However, adapting to changes in the environment requires learning.

The simplest organism capable of responding to its environment makes that environment a complex adaptive system. The only difference for humans is an awareness of systems and selves. All organisms operate in systems where many factors are beyond their control. All systems are parts of larger systems, subject to conditions beyond their control.

 

Unfilling the Cup

Learning is harder than knowing. It requires effort both to grasp and to release previously held beliefs…

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (Tuttle)

The Neuroscience of Insight

"In our fables of science and discovery, the crucial role of insight is a cherished theme. To these epiphanies, we owe the concept of alternating electrical current, the discovery of penicillin, and on a less lofty note, the invention of Post-its, ice-cream cones, and Velcro," writes Robert Lee Hotz. "In today's innovation economy, engineers, economists and policy makers are eager to foster creative thinking among knowledge workers."

I spend a lot of time looking at how information overload is largely a matter of forcing cognition into conscious and explicit processes rather than leaving them at the level of sub- or pre-conscious sense-making, where bandwidth is about 800,000 times greater. "A Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight," a great article in Friday's Wall Street Journal, covers new discoveries in the neuroscience of insight.

Sudden insights are unconscious shifts in perceptions or perspectives about something or someone. What research has discovered is that insights are also the result of brain activity that is more intense and patterned differently from the neural resources used for deliberate, conscious analysis.

By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.

Studies cited by Hotz also found that people in a positive mood were more likely to experience an insight.

Connecting the Dots at Homeland Security

"Connecting the Dot-Govs" is a new article on knowledge sharing in the Department of Homeland Security I wrote for the June issue of KMWorld. Available HERE.

It was perhaps the most ambitious reorganization in the history of government. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 22 agencies were wrested from their traditional places in the U.S. government hierarchy and reassembled block by block into a massive new pyramid with over 200,000 personnel and more than $50 billion in resources. Created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and officially inaugurated March 1, 2003, to great fanfare and greater controversy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) incorporated federal functions as disparate as border patrols, customs, immigration, disaster relief, emergency response, anti-counterfeiting, presidential protection, transportation safety, health inspection, cybercrime, nuclear detection and maritime rescue. All of those components, moreover, are still tasked with their original missions, but prioritized on one goal more than any other: anticipating and preventing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

The logic of DHS was that government responses could not be delayed or diluted by failures of communication or coordination between federal agencies or between federal efforts and state and local governments. In other words, share knowledge and information. A new administration is a good time to look at what DHS has learned in its first six years by pursuing both the social and technical aspects of knowledge management. Sharing of such massive scope and scale brings tremendous opportunities and challenges in equal measure—complicated by the disparate organizational cultures in DHS and further by the sensitive and secure nature of information in many of the agencies’ jurisdictions.

Wolfram|Alpha Confuses Answers and Facts

Everybody's googley-eyed about the long-anticipated first-coming of Wolfram|Alpha, launched yesterday. Already, the system claims 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. But can it cook?

Stephen Wolfram gives a very impressive demo. He should: he's both an acknowledged genius and simultaneously a guy who acts like he's pretending to be a genius. W|A stands as a milestone in The Quest for Computable Knowledge and is based on Wolfram's single-handed invention of A New Kind of Science (irrespective of previous work in chaos and complexity research).

A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over …. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic…

Now, a Message from the Minister for Digital Engagement

This blog doesn't normally reprint press releases, but this was pretty engaging as is:

Cabinet Office names Director of Digital Engagement M2 Presswire May 13 2009

The Cabinet Office has appointed Andrew Stott to the new role of Director of Digital Engagement, a position created to take forward the Power of Information agenda. The Director of Digital Engagement will be based in Government Communications at the Cabinet Office and will work across Government departments to encourage, support and challenge them in moving from communicating to citizens on the web to conversing and collaborating with them through digital technology. The Director will:

Koan Zero?

Learning is breathing in

Creating is breathing out

Knowing is holding your breath

I've always been most interested in how knowledge management can facilitate personal and organizational learning as a way to improve understanding, decisions, actions and outcomes.

Although I've never seen it defined that way, I think that's the good intention behind most of our efforts. Too quickly, however, expedience redefines KM as analysis and explication, economics reduces KM to technology, rhetoric deludes us to believe that rules can change cultures and behaviors, and we forget that the quest to master knowledge is as old as consciousness itself.

Without being able to articulate the reasons why, I was increasingly uncomfortable with the goal of "knowledge creation" (so creating, above, would be creating value, I suspect). In fact, using the word "knowledge" makes me uncomfortable. For one thing, I don't think people actually act on what they know so much as on what they believe to be true (objectivity is overrated). But more importantly, I've come to believe that knowledge and learning are less interrelated than opposite and mutually exclusive concepts.

Novice and Master

Reading today about "conscious competence" made me cranky. But then I stumbled on this in my own slides:

The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.

Christopher Alexander A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction 1977

Intelligence Unplugged

Robert K. Ackerman at SIGNAL Magazine has been tracking how virtual collaboration tools and methods are faring in the intelligence community.

Users set free to explore these new cyberspace systems have uncovered new capabilities and have driven the introduction of still more collaborative systems. The result is that finished intelligence reports now are richer than before virtual collaboration was adopted. An issue is viewed through more than one perspective; and the overall effect is timelier, more agile and more accurate intelligence reporting to decision makers.

He notes that projects based on instant messaging, social bookmarking and enterprise blogging have developed quickly because of only limited upfront structure, forcing users to take responsibility and adapt the tools to their needs.

62 KM Defintions are better than 1

Last year, Ray Sims compiled a discriminating list of 62 KM definitions (and counting). I think 62 definitions is a great start. As far as I'm concerned, the more the better—and much better than just one definition of knowledge management that tries to please everybody.

Best of all, many of these definitions are very different from how I see KM. For example:

"…the process of improving the job performance of knowledge workers by eliminating relevant ignorance and inability as quickly and inexpensively as possible…"

Why are multiple, bad definitions of KM better than one definition, even if it's really good?

What’s Wrong with KM Definitions

I think there are at least four problems with defining knowledge management:

1. The more definitions the better. Ambiguity forces people to negotiate meaning rather than assume they have shared understanding (when in fact they really don't).
2. A definition is worthless without defining knowledge, knowledge work, knowledge worker, knowledge economy, knowledge economics, learning, learning organizations, information, information management, etc.
3. On the other hand, I'm not sure that knowledge is what really matters. People act on what they believe, not what they know.
4. You never want to call it KM anyway. Many programs inculcate KM principles and values in every functional corner of the organization. But the best ones help people rediscover and then enhance every craft or culture's existing traditions of sharing and stewarding their expertise.

14 Koans of Knowledge Management

1. We arrived at the "Age of Knowledge" at exactly the same moment we reached the end of certainty. This might not be a coincidence.
2. To capture, compress and convey knowledge, why do we waste time writing software? Why aren't we writing poetry?
3. If work is more collaborative than ever, why do I have to work so much harder and learn so many new things myself?
4. We think knowledge workers use their heads more than their hands, but we ''know" by doing more than by thinking.
5. If we share knowledge because of its value, sometimes we need to steward that value by not sharing.
6. We think technology makes it possible, but it's all about tools.
7. Knowledge is personal. Knowledge is social.
8. Knowledge does not accrete in the mind. It is apprehended by the heart.
9. We are drowning in information and knowledge, but starved for meaning and actionable belief.
10. If people really act, not on what they know, but what they believe, why aren't we belief managers?
11. KM relies on trust, but trust is inevitably unreliable.
12. KM relies on leadership, but ultimately leadership has to emerge from everyone.
13. KM doesn't work, but the reasons KM doesn't work have nothing to do with KM.
14. KM doesn't work. But it has to.

Adapted from a talk at the Southern California KM Cluster, 2003

From Technologies to Tools

Think about the relationships we have to our communication and information tools, not just through our tools.

Have we gone too far distinguishing knowledge work from manual labor, so that we disconnect knowledge workers from the tools of their trade—and in doing so disrupt their sense of identity?

There is an affective connection between individuals and their tools that is vital to maintain both the productivity and the passion of knowledge work. But there is also a distinction between "tools" and "technologies" that is often missed in the modern workplace.

"Technologies" are systems imposed by the organization that often constrain, disempower and depersonalize knowledge work. "Tools" are extensions of our hands, as much as the hammers or knives of traditional work. They reinforce ownership, craftsmanship, stewardship and professional identity.

Read the article: The Difference between Tools and Technologies

NOTE: Preparing to relaunch my website, I'm designing a reprint template for my old articles. I believe if you want people to learn from any document longer than a few paragraphs, there should be a version that can be printed, read and annotated away from the computer (and recycled later). So I'm creating a template based on my article "Maintaining the integrity of design in a digital world: What is the role of real typographic design in knowledge work?" (still online only).

Please download the attached PDF and let me know what you think about both form and content. Thx.