I’ve been sitting on this one for quite some time now and, before the spark dies out completely, I want to draw your attention to Dave Snowden’s closing keynote speech at KMW08.
I invite everyone to download a podcast of Snowden’s speech and try giving it a listen starting about 22 minutes and 20 seconds into the recording. Its at this point in his presentation that Snowden provides a fascinating analogy to describe chaotic, ordered, and complex adaptive systems.
Using the example of a children’s birthday party, Snowden demonstrates how utterly silly and futile it is to try and apply closed manufacturing environment principles towards human interaction. Instead, Snowden argues for managed emergence. Set boundaries around what you can control and then provide probes that can either elicit positive or negative patterns of behaviour. Observe the behaviours closely and endorse those probes that elicit positive patterns and downplay or remove those that elicit negative patterns.
I would argue that knowledge management is very much about trying to manage or harness the power of very a complex organic system. Rather than create a completely ordered system, I think the key is to start off with simple to understand barriers that keep all information safe and then provide opportunities for people to exchange knowledge and information freely. You provide tools that promote a culture of sharing, collaboration, personal and professional development and you rebuke siloed thinking, turf wars, and hoarding.
#1 by Dale Arseneault - November 4th, 2008 at 10:37
That’s a funny story.. I first read it in his paper “Being Efficient Does Not Always Mean Being Effective – A New Perspective on Cultural Issues in Organizations” (http://www.cognitive-edge.com/ceresources/articles/42_new_perspective_on_culture_final.pdf“).
I like the conclusion he draws – the need to focus on pattern management in complex unordered systems v.s. the futiilty of trying to engineer towards an outcome.
Despite all valid reasons to the contrary, we humans can be very unpredictable and are most often our own worst enemy. Plus we each have our own unique set of cognitive biases and experiences that filter what we hear and experience. How can groups of people be successfully engineered or micro managed? As Dave suggests, self organization within boundaries set by management and communicated effectively appears to be a more valid approach mobilizing knowledge / effort towards common organizational goals.