I started this week in Dallas with a presentation on Knowledge Management. I promised various people access to material I referenced and plan to use this blog to summarise what I said with links to said material. If it works and is generally useful I plan to do the same after other events, if only to reduce email traffic! This blog may therefore be only of interest to those who were at the event itself. I will as promised, deal with Hubert tomorrow ....
Firstly to the content of my presentation. It was an interesting audience, as they were in effect about to embark on a KM journey, but many of the issues, concerns and plans raised would also have been common a decade ago. My own belief, as previously expressed, is that the organisation imperative behind KM remains, while the name and practice are nearing the end of their utility. So what did I do?
- I started with the basket ball video by way of establishing the pattern basis of human intelligence. I made the point that rational decision making based on scanning all available data (the myth of economist and most organisational theorists) turns out to be basically wrong. Humans make decisions based on a first fit pattern match with previous direct, or narrative based experience.
- I developed this them by referencing the time I got the IT department of a company to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time before I ran an innovation workshop. It is the story of a 15 year old autistic child trying to understand in a logical way the confusion of multiple human stimuli. They all enjoyed it, but asked why they had to read it, to which my response was that is the way you treat your users, you expect them to read the documents you send them for sign off and understanding them, to scan all the data you place on screens in front of them and to follow processes that to you are logical, but which to them are counter intuitive. My friend Patrick Lambe has an excellent article The autism of KM which makes my point more directly.
- After this it was back to basics. I ran through the three generations of KM that I first described in Complex Acts of Knowing and argued that my audience had a golden opportunity to avoid the mistakes of focusing on a purely technology driven approach to taci-explicit knowledge conversion. If I did not reference SECI/BA as the model that launched a thousand failed KM initiatives then I intended to.
- This led naturally to the purpose of KM, namely to improve decision making and to create the conditions of innovation. It always amazes me that people focus on the how not the why when they start on KM. The argument is that they have to store knowledge, to ensure we do not reinvent the wheel, etc etc rather than realising these are means to an as yet undefined end …..
- I had intended to talk about Just in Time KM but I was running out of time so promised instead to use this blog to reference my article on the subject.
- The final stretch saw me talk about the critical role of narrative in KM. I used several cases and basically argued for knowledge as being represented as experience, narrative and content, rather than the normal dichotomy of tacit and explicit which confuses the container with the thing contained.
- The Children’s Party Story also featured somewhere in this discourse and as usual made the point about complexity far better than any logical argument and at some point made the key issue of focusing on effectiveness rather than efficiency when you run a KM Programme.
Now I may well have missed out the odd book, or reference. If so please add a comment and I will respond. To everyone in the audience, especially those who sought me out at the end my thanks, as to the organisers.
Comments (8)
Humans make decisions based on a first fit pattern match with previous direct, or narrative based experience.
Dave, in your experience, what is the usefulness and quality to them of such decisions so made?
At Valentine's day, millions of people, i presume, will spend billions of pounds convincing one person (?) that they scoured the world for their one, true love. I think the evidence is that sexual and life partners by and large come from a radius of less than three hundred meters of where people live or work.
Posted by andrew campbell | February 10, 2007 8:17 AM
Posted on February 10, 2007 08:17
Hi Dave - Another good post. Thought you'd like to know that the link to the Autsim of KM seems to be broken.
Posted by Johnnie Moore | February 10, 2007 10:45 AM
Posted on February 10, 2007 10:45
Hi Dave,
I hope things are going well for you!
1. I hear you are coming out to Australia shortly - if you are in Melbourne and have a half hour to catch up for a chat, I'd be interested in catching up with you if you'd like
2. In this article, you propose that the purpose of KM is to improve decision making and for innovation. Innovation is surely is one purpose for KM, but wouldn't you allow for others? For example, a community of practice could be set up to support innovation, to support knowledge sharing between subject matter experts in an organisation such as a consultancy, to steward a body of knowledge (e.g. academic knowledge around the Dead Sea Scrolls) and for other purposes. Alternatively, just determining what knowledge and capabilities you have or enabling sharing it could be a valid purpose without any futher innovation necessarily built on it. Similarly, KM initiatives such as COP could lead to many benefits without necessarily changing executive decision making at all, e.g. in the example of COP at Xerox where photocopier technicians formed COPs to assist each other to share knowledge and solve problems, but this was not driven top-down by management and did not (as far as I know) impact substantially on executive level decision making.
3. Also in this article, the link to KM and Autism seemed broken - I have a friend with an interest in relating autism to related perspectives, and if the link could be updated (or you could email me a copy) this would be much appreciated.
4. BTW, I have started Blogging for the last couple of months. At the moment it is fairly generic, but if you are interested it's at http://lauchlanmackinnon.blogspot.com/ - focused on ideas and innovations.
Regards
Lauchlan Mackinnon
Posted by Lauchlan Mackinnon | February 10, 2007 3:51 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 15:51
BTW just to add to my previous comment, I certainly agree with the broader point that an organisation should think about why they are implementing KM as well as how. A KM initiative should be tied to broader corporate goals and strategies.
Posted by Lauchlan Mackinnon | February 10, 2007 3:54 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 15:54
OK I have fixed the link to the Autism article - you will have to scroll but it is there.
Lauchlan - thanks for the commentary, but I think that the examples of purpose you cite can be directed back to decision making and innovation. The only one where I have some sympathy is the Dead Sea Scrolls - knowledge for its own sake. However in a commercial/government environment I think the two stand.
Andrew - my point was that humans make decisions based on patterns. Its not that they choose this from time to time for logical reasons, it is just the way things are.
Posted by Dave Snowden![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/nav-commenters.gif)
|
February 10, 2007 11:08 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 23:08
OK I have fixed the link to the Autism article - you will have to scroll but it is there.
Lauchlan - thanks for the commentary, but I think that the examples of purpose you cite can be directed back to decision making and innovation. The only one where I have some sympathy is the Dead Sea Scrolls - knowledge for its own sake. However in a commercial/government environment I think the two stand.
The Xerox case makes my point - it was to help the engineers make better decisions - to do their jobs. My original statement is not confined to Executive Decsion making
Andrew - my point was that humans make decisions based on patterns. Its not that they choose this from time to time for logical reasons, it is just the way things are.
Posted by Dave Snowden![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/nav-commenters.gif)
|
February 10, 2007 11:10 PM
Posted on February 10, 2007 23:10
G'day Dave,
First, thanks for the summary of the talk. Very useful, much food for thought that is relevant to me and my context.
A couple of small bugs.
The basketball video appears to have gone. The Yahoo video page is there, but if I try to play the video it's broken. I'm interested in watching it. Any pointers to alternate sources? Google wasn't helpful.
Less important, the HTML for the link around "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" has two left angle brackets which, at least in my browser, puts the rest of the text into italics.
David.
Posted by David Jones | February 11, 2007 12:30 PM
Posted on February 11, 2007 12:30
Thanks for the link to the autism article Dave - the permalink is at
http://www.greenchameleon.com/gc/article_detail/the_autism_of_knowledge_management/
Posted by Patrick Lambe | February 11, 2007 3:07 PM
Posted on February 11, 2007 15:07