I had a fascinating ad hoc meeting with various US Army KM people in Washington just over a week ago discussing some of the new capabilities and understandings we have gained over the last few years. Military people tend to learn fast, and one of the key findings from Iraq (My report from a prior meeting here) was that Platoon Commanders blogging had a higher impact than doctrine. The fragmented micro-narratives of day to day living are a more valuable form of knowledge than synthesised and aggregated data. Close connections there with a project I am running for West Point to move on the highly successful experience of Company Commander into a full use of micro-narrative, potentially leading to peer to peer knowledge flows without mediation.
I'm also starting to think through some new material to summarise the last five years of learning in preparation for an open (but limited places)morning seminar on KM that I will be running in Newcastle on the 24th May. In effect my seven basic principles stand, but there are a few things that we need to emphasise and here are three to be going on with.
- For the best part of a century we have been trying to move data into information. Some people have then tried to make information into knowledge and a few charlatans have attempted a transformation to wisdom, thus marking themselves out as the antithesis of the wise. With the capability of modern technology to augment human intelligence (but not replace it), we are increasingly moving in the other direction. Breaking up information into its source data and allowing messy, but coherent real time assembly in the context of need. Information carries too many assumptions to allow it to be context free, while data has more fluidity and adaptability. This is a huge change, partly enabled, heralded and driven by the rise of social computing but it is far more than that. It changes the way we think about the world, increases the focus on concrete, embodied knowledge that was achieved through apprentice systems such as the knowledge boys in the London Taxi service. Technology augmentation reduces the cost and time to achieve these results, however the engineering focus on treating humans as widgets and trying to replace rather than augment explains many of the KM failures (and there have been a lot).
- One consequence of this shift is that we increase the ability of an organisation to absorb rather than reduce uncertainty. I briefly mentioned this the other day in the context of arguing for a switch from strategies focused on robustness to ones that emphasis resilience. We need to ability to rapidly adapt, blending material with contextual triggers. We should modularize to encourage exaptation, a point brilliantly made by Brian Arthur in his book The Nature of Technology. but if we put into too much structure (increase the constraints) then we loose adaptive capacity.
- Collective intelligence, knowledge existing in the flows between people and objects, has been neglected for far too long. Successful knowledge sharing has always been a characteristic of crews, but attempts to transfer that into a more tradition organisation focus on the form of the practice, rather than the emergent nature of the structure. Its the big mistake in Weick and Sutcliffe's Managing the Unexpected . Crews work because people are trained into role and role expectation and occupy those roles for limited periods of time. The transfer into role is highly ritualised which changes the cognitive processing function of the brain. A crew has more cognitive capacity than its individuals possess of themselves, and prior knowledge of people is not a necessity. The focus on behaviour, which KM inherited from organisation change is a fundamental and distracting error.
I should have this worked up by Newcastle and will aim (subject to agreement with the sponsor) to podcast it. For the moment all comments welcome.
Comments (5)
Your insight "Breaking up information into its source data and allowing messy, but coherent real time assembly in the context of need" is closely related to thinking on how the brain works - that is putting together fragments within our memory in response to a new situation we face or question we have been asked. Beyond having the source data in small segments, it also seems necessary to have a variety of models or frameworks that we draw on in order to put those fragments into a whole. Cognitive diversity provides variety in those frameworks, as does reading widely so one has frameworks from other disciplines to draw upon.
Nancy
Posted by Nancy Dixon | May 13, 2010 1:22 PM
Posted on May 13, 2010 13:22
A few things that come to mind that would be interesting for further thought:
- great points, furthering for me the notion of moving towards "right-brained" approaches
- your comment regarding "real time assembly in the context of need" is interesting regarding that what we choose to hold on to defines the problems we will face (because problems represents threats to the security of holding on)... we think we need to make sense of it, as if it mattered separately from us, but few recognize that the fact we recognized some particular need reveals certain PERSONAL desires
- "Fragmented micro-narratives" could be thought of as the informal or black market, requiring less investment, resulting in related pros and cons (the ease of the tools of expression negate the need for formalism)
- "Synthesized aggregated data" requires calibrated investment in representation, expression, and understanding systems
- The reason why micronarratives might work better, might have something to do with social reasons of feeling close to the source, as opposed to heirarchical formal structures... requiring less investment, because their is internal desire for motivation
- When discussing DIKW, aggregated data, micronarratives, fragments, etc... we are talking about "recognized identities" or paradigmatic and syntagmatic points whereby individuals recognize one thing as being different (smaller or larger) than other things... so you can always go more "micro", making what you thought was once micro, to now be macro... (you have had a paradigmatic/syntagmatic transformation)
- I often say that we desire ourselves into the future... freedom is what we let go of, security is what we hold on to... so problems arise because of a desire to continue to hold on to (some recognized identity??)... lose the desire, and lost the problem... solve the problem and perpetuate the desire... (this derives from the buddhist notion of the "myth of permanence")
- bottomline, nothing is permanent, all is conditioned... even what we are talking about now with such conviction as if it truly werein
Posted by Mark Spviey | May 13, 2010 11:28 PM
Posted on May 13, 2010 23:28
Thanks Nancy - and will be in touch soon as the project is finally active! The key principle of SenseMaker® and Cognitive Edge in general is to try and replicate natural processes. I think the difference technology, treated as augmentation, can make is to allow a shift to optimization from satisfising.
Mark - I know the right/left brain myth is a popular one, but its not the case. The left brain handles autonomic response, the right novelty its not rational/emotional and we need to design systems that handle both. Triggering awareness states in humans for example will change cognitive processing and that is a part of the approach we are using. Otherwise get the points and will try and expand on them soon, otherwise I would say "things are rarely permanent, value lies in flow". Conditioning is important, but I think its better described as "entrainment" (but that really does need a longer post)
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May 14, 2010 5:47 AM
Posted on May 14, 2010 05:47
Your comments related to the contextual nature of the recall of knowledge is important to plant, personal, and nuclear safety in nuclear power plants. I consult with managers at commercial and government nuclear facilities in the area of human performance.
Anticipating and recognizing "critical steps" before acting (touching) is an important to safety as well as producting. A critical step is an "action that will trigger immediate and irreversible harm if that act or previous acts were performed incorrectly (including acts of omission).
How would you "contextualize" work in a planning and preparation phase of work to help the front-line worker recognize a critical step before taking the action to manipulate an object (valve, switch, circuit breaker, Send (email), etc.)?
Posted by Tony Muschara | May 14, 2010 1:50 PM
Posted on May 14, 2010 13:50
I agree with you on the left/right brain... I dont subscribe so much to the simplicity regarding focusing on one over the other.
Most of my point is in regards to recognizing the inherent novelty in everything, even that which we may feel to be so familiar. I think the point at which novelty is recognized in comparison to identity being recognized is an extremely interesting area (commutation tests).
I like the idea of triggering awareness states... and most especially getting people to see the reality of conditioning (entrainment/calibration), rather than thinking there is inherent value in the thing itself (which semiotics enlightened me about).
Language is one of the best metaphors I have found... two people must be able to use the same language in the same way for it to be meaningful, but at some point that language did not exist and had to be conditioned, and the people entrained... and all the while, every part about it is continuing to evolve with each interactive use.
I don't know if you have ever thought much about your work in regards to data modeling, information architecture, and knowledge representation, but that is an area I am attempting to apply complexity to now. (model vs. non-model approaches).
C5 is a company I follow which has a great resource on "autopoietic databases" which I think resonates greatly with CogEdge methodology.
Posted by Mark Spivey | May 14, 2010 7:31 PM
Posted on May 14, 2010 19:31