Reflexions

Maintaining the Bandwidth of Virtual Conversations

I’ve talked a lot about the bandwidth differences between conscious and non-conscious sense-making and decision-making, as well as the bandwidth difference between verbal and non-verbal communication. It’s not the 9 to 1 ratio that you sometimes hear bandied about as the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge. According to brain research, it’s more like 800,000 to 1.

Carol Kinsey Goman’s latest book is The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work. In a new essay called “Face to Face,” She reminds us how much of that bandwidth is used to read body language for all the context that it adds to the explicit text of conversations. It’s why we start learning to read body language much earlier in childhood than we learn spoken language.

The Agile Warrior

In 2001 I wrote an article, "The Agile Warrior," about how the US military was pouring billions into research about knowledge management, organizational learning, and related topics such as leadership and teamwork. Much of what they have learned is available and adaptable to other industries, organizations and activities. The article had very bad timing, as it was scheduled to run in the October issue and the magazine closed its print publication on September 6. A few days after that, everything changed. Download the article here.

First, we’ll fire all the introverts!

A friend of mine was telling me yesterday how people are inevitably attracted to social networks, social media and social tools because humans are social creatures. Obviously, if work is going to be more social and collaborative, then knowledge workers certainly need to pay more attention to social and collaboration norms, skills and behaviors.

But what are you going to do, fire all the introverts? We should be very, very skeptical of the social enterprise if it doesn't recognize that a lot of your most valuable and talented employees aren't the ones chatting around the water cooler. Introverts are very often the low maintenance people quietly getting things done, bringing a sudden insight or innovation to the team, or watching your back while you make an ass of yourself at the staff meeting.

I also feel really, really strongly that all of the critical, creative conversations are wasted when people do not balance the increased social time with an equal increase in quiet reflective time to absorb and process new information and ideas. Even extroverts need to sit quietly by themselves every now and then. Conrad said, "We live, as we dream—alone." No matter what anybody says, I still believe that we also learn alone just as much as we learn together. The wisdom of crowds depends not on us all knowing the same things, but on all knowing something that others don't.

My take on the social enterprise is that collaborative work can be more valuable but at the same time, it's often less productive in the short term. I think that successful collaboration in business environments really comes down to two complementary sets of issues.

Intuition's Role in Decisions & Innovation

Last week, Richard Marrs and I presented at KMWorld about "Intuition's Role in Decisions and Innovation." DOWNLOAD THE SLIDES. The Corporate Librarian also posted an excellent summary of our talk.

The ideas behind the presentation evolved dramatically between the time our abstract was accepted (over the summer) and our preparations were finalized (an hour before the session).

Much of our collaboration over the past few years has focused on the role of intuition in sense- and decision-making, with an assumption that intuition is the way that "tacit" expertise expresses itself in practice. That is, it operates at the pre-conscious level, which has been shown to have an information processing bandwidth of about 11 million bits per second, compared to only 16-40bps for conscious awareness and explicit communication. (See our article for Competitive Intelligence magazine: "Intuition's Role in Making Decisions.")

In the end, we also focused quite a bit on some ideas that were new to us...

Knowledge Worker Productivity: Strategies & Techniques

KM World & Intranets 2007 November 5-8

San Jose McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, CA

In collaboration with Richard Marrs and Eric Mack, I'll be presenting two new sessions on accelerating decisions and innovations and boosting knowledge worker productivity.  Details after the jump...

Tribute to Melissie Rumizen

As I look back on those days spent with you in the community, they have been some of the best gifts.

—Melissie Rumizen

Community was everything to Melissie. It was the thing I loved most about her; not just what a good friend she could be, but how fiercely loyal she was about her friendships. She didn't just expect her friends to be loyal to her in return. She expected them to be loyal to each other. If she deemed someone worthy to be her friend, she held them to a very high standard forever. If someone in her circle needed a job, a plug or a hug, Melissie made it happen.

Last week should have been Melissie's 52nd birthday. Next week in San Jose, we will pay tribute to our friend during KMWorld, one of the knowledge management conferences at which Melissie's community was always brightened by her presence. We are asking her friends to send short thoughts and photos that we will assemble for a brief presentation on Tuesday morning, November 6. The collection will also be posted on the Web and given to Melissie's family.

If you have memories or reflections about Melissie that you would like to share, please email them to me. If you have any good photos in digital form, please send those as well. Finally, feel free to forward this message to any of Melissie's friends and colleagues who might like to contribute. stevebarth --at-- earthlink --dot-- net

Web 2.0 for Mass Sense and Respond?

What can organizations do to increase the bandwidth of community and team sense-making? The LA Fire Dept. is tapping into the collection of one-one and one-many applications in the Web 2.0 arena. A story from Computerworld describes how they were inspired by the communications collapse during Hurricane Katrina.

The fire department uses Twitter to post information about fires or other emergencies that it is responding to. These messages are then sent to users signed up to receive the information on their mobile devices...Government agencies are not usually known using cutting-edge technology, but the LAFD has immersed itself in various Web 2.0 projects, including a blog, a real-time alert service, a Flickr photo site and a live Internet radio show...

"We can no longer afford to work at the speed of government," [said the LAFD's public information officer]. "We have responsibilities to the public to move the information as quickly as possible ... so that they can make key decisions."

Intuition’s Role in Making Decisions

With the help of Richard Marrs and Nancy Mayes, “Intuition’s Role in Making Decisions” will be published in the July/August 2007 issue of Competitive Intelligence Magazine. It’s a preview of my long-awaited (by me) white paper, “Forest and Trees: Learning and Innovation in Real-time Sense-making and Decision-making”

Even at the level of the expert or the executive, the human brain is capable of reaching conclusions and finding solutions to difficult problems by using and trusting “gut” feelings. When these decisions are based on deep background knowledge and experience, intuition can be just as effective a tool as analysis—and considerably faster.

The article is available in PDF for download here.

Accelerating Decisions and Innovations

Supporting better, faster decision-making is a major imperative for KM practice. Richard Marrs and I will present our work on Sense-Making at the 11th annual KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exhibition Nov. 6-8, 2007. "Accelerating Decisions and Innovations through Sense-Making" is scheduled for Nov 7. The venue is the McEnery Convention Center, in San Jose, California.

This session draws on insights from cognitive psychology and complexity science to reconsider how knowledge workers individually and collectively interact with their information environments and share their perceptions and opinions, with important implications for how to support knowledge work. Research suggests that in real-time, real-world settings, neither executives nor experts really depend on the kinds of rational, deliberate analysis supported by KM systems and practices. Because of these mistaken assumptions, many current technologies and business processes actually suppress rather than support evolved human mechanisms for real-time sensing and responding. Structured hierarchies prevent the social construction of organizational knowledge. Technologies and techniques designed to manage bandwidth instead constrict perception. Information overload, paralysis-by-analysis, costly mistakes and bad judgment are the inevitable result.

Stories of Old, Stories of New

A great quote from Euan Semple: “Science and religion are both collections of stories that work to varying degrees at any particular time.”

Some people seem to want to force you to choose sides. I remain militantly agnostic about both, so reading the exchange that promped Euan’s post, I was thinking in more anthropological terms about the stories we use to simplify the present by making sense of the past and predicting the future.

Whether your faith is based on evidence or its absence, I think it’s important to remember (especially in knowledge management) that people act on what they “believe” rather than on what they “know.” The narrative dynamics of science and religion are with us in our daily lives even if we are not aware of our devotion to their stories.

“Claiming either of them is ultimate and unchanging truth seems naive and dangerous. They ought to change over time in order to stay relevant,” Euan rightly says. But I have to disagree with his critique of religion when he adds, “The fact that science works hard at changing its stories and religion has failed to come up with any new ones for nearly 2000 years give science the edge in my book!”

Meditation Increases Attention

In our sense-making work, we have been looking at the relationship between different approaches in eastern meditation practices that result in or involve tranquility, insight and mindfulness.

Now a scientific study recently published points to increased attention to fast-changing stimuli when subjects practice meditation.

Meditation teachers such as Gil Fronsdal would point out that there are differences between attention, awareness and mindfulness. (See Fronsdal’s talk on mindfulness here.)

These three concepts are often used interchangeably, but the differnces need to be better explored. For example, attention--as concentration--can cause tunnel vision that misses threats coming from unexpected angles. Whereas awareness can be seen as an improvement in peripheral vision.

PowerPoint when Thinking is Critical

The year I worked for Dave Snowden’s IBM Cynefin Centre, I was required to use the official Big Blue PowerPoint template. Based on 12pt Arial, the template was impossible to read, even close to the screen. The year after, when Cynefin went independent (eventually as Cognitive Edge Pte.), Dave used my presentation font, Marker Felt Wide, at a minimum of 18pt (but usually 28-36pt). You decide:

Dave has since moved on, but Marker remains my signature font for presentations.

46 Essential KM Sites

Lucas McDonnell at Uncommon Knowledge has compiled a growing list of almost 50 essential knowledge management sites — and I was honored to find Reflexions on the list (guess I'd better get busy blogging again!).

Workshop: Accelerating Decisions and Innovation

UPDATE: Unfortunately, this workshop has been cancelled. Stay tuned for future dates.

Richard Marrs and I will present a half-day workshop, "Accelerating Decisions and Innovation through Sense-Making" at the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals' 2007 International Annual Conference and Exhibition. The meeting will be in New York City April 30-May 3.

Supporting better, faster decision-making is a major imperative for CI practice. Organizations in many industries and markets face more dynamic and complex environments than ever before, driven by accelerated change, globalized competition, unexpected technologies, complicated sociopolitical influences and disruptive business models.

New Coffee Buzz

Coffee doesn't just make you smarter, it can also make you more open minded, according to research.

Hearing important voices online

"Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism:" is a brilliant and important essay by Jaron Lanier published last month in Edge The Third Culture.

Autism in its own Words

Via reddit, found this fascinating profile of autistic savant Daniel Tammet. "A Genius Explains" by Richard Johnson, from the February 12, 2005 issue of The Guardian.

He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.

Why are online game environments so much more compelling than our office collaboration environments?

Last November I offered a session about online games at KM World 2005 in San Jose. It has seemed to me that the question the knowledge management community needs to consider is this:

“Why are online game environments so much more compelling than our office collaboration environments?”

Clearly the session hit a nerve. In fact, I was surprised to see the room completely packed when I began my presentation.

Turning Information Overload into Intelligence Advantage

I will be speaking at Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ 2006 International Annual Conference & Exhibition Thursday, April 27, 2:15 PM-3:15 PM in Orlando, with co-Presenter Richard Marrs of Coemergence, Inc. Attached is a brief article from a related talk at another conference last year (a longer white paper is in the works).

'Mental typewriter'

Will Knight of NewScientist.com news service reports on a new interface that can control computer programs by the power of thought. Excerpts:

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.