Curiouser and Curiouser! on cynefin_centre http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic cynefin_centre Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Dave Snowden Wed, 18 Jun 2003 14:13:57 +0100 <P>Dave Snowden thanks David Gurteen for his work connecting so many people via the GKN.</P> <P>"Radical Welsh philosopher"</P> <P>The basis of successful KM is understanding of the philosophy and cognitive psychology.&nbsp; More important than CS or business management.&nbsp; "Dead disciplines."&nbsp;&nbsp; Understanding of human nature is the gateway to the future.&nbsp; "Re-establishing the importance of human beings."&nbsp; Optimist.&nbsp; Not there but moving in the right direction.&nbsp; Poindexter: "IBM makes government look...."</P> <P>Large companies are able to innovate:&nbsp; You can hide away.&nbsp; No tight management.&nbsp; Go under the radar.&nbsp; Don't argue with the process.&nbsp; (Human knowledge at work here)</P> <P>Training top 100 of IBM.&nbsp; New initiative.&nbsp; Hard work.&nbsp;&nbsp; =>&nbsp; Cynefin centre.&nbsp;&nbsp; A joint project between IBM and the Uni. of Cardiff.&nbsp;&nbsp; Bridging the academic/practioner divide.</P> <P>Confusion of properties with qualities.&nbsp; Cannot generalise from a hypothesis about a company:&nbsp; e.g. 'flat management structure'&nbsp;&nbsp; =>&nbsp; Logically incoherent.&nbsp; "Not all french man wear glasses."&nbsp;&nbsp; "Assumes wearing glasses will make you french."&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It's too complex.&nbsp; Imitiation of "best practice".&nbsp;&nbsp; Ban the term.&nbsp;&nbsp; Best practice is past practice, i.e. a bad thing.&nbsp;&nbsp; (Proof: Market for management consultants is shrinking, funding is shrinking).&nbsp;&nbsp; Government should not copy industry, no profitive motive (balanced score card / profit pressure).&nbsp; No pressure to force things that don't work out of the system.&nbsp;&nbsp; Service culture that does not apply to industry.&nbsp; Government nearly always copy things that industry is abandoning.&nbsp; Consultant sales "who CAN we sell this shit too!"&nbsp; No credibility.</P> <P>Major consultancies know that knowledge transfers through informal networks!</P> <P>Cynefin.&nbsp; "Language that only a few other million gifted people speaks"&nbsp; =>&nbsp; Meaning is not confused.&nbsp; "The place of your multiple belongings" (Literal/Trivial: Habitat or place).&nbsp; Multple paths with profoundly influenec who you are but about which you are only dimly aware.&nbsp; Never hope to fully understand.&nbsp;&nbsp; Cause & effect prescripture future methods are fundamentally flawed because you are dealing with uncertain pasts.</P> <P>Spritual/Empircal.</P> <P>3 approaches to life:</P> <P>techno-fetishing school of management: people are data entry units.&nbsp; Everyone wants to spend all their time in virtual chatrooms.<BR>new age "fluffy bunnies".&nbsp; Technology is the spawn of satan.&nbsp; Go back to hugging at the start of each meeting.&nbsp; Talking stick, etc...<BR>Holistic view is important.&nbsp; Technology is a useful tool (fits the hand, can be used).&nbsp; If you have to reengineer your hand to fit the tool then something is wrong.&nbsp; Avoid extremes.</P> <P>Applying real scientific rigour to soft aspects of organisiations.&nbsp;&nbsp; New science from biology & chem: Complexity and chaos.</P> <P>Systems thinking / Complexity / Chaos;&nbsp; fundamentally different approaches.</P> <P>Mulla Nasrudin (Idries Shah).&nbsp; The exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin.&nbsp; Sufi stories.&nbsp; (Octagon Press, London, 1985).&nbsp; "Nasrudin found a weary falcon"&nbsp;&nbsp; What people do in organisations when faced with things they don't understand but have to pay attention to.&nbsp; When you're successful people want to make you look like something familar => where everything goes wrong.</P> <P>Worst practice systems are far more useful than best practice.&nbsp; What spreads fastest: stories of success or stories of failure?&nbsp; Spreading stories of failure is a more important learning exercise.&nbsp; Wea re cognitively detruned to stories of success.&nbsp;&nbsp; Best practice doesn't work!!!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Narrative databases create learning environments based upon serendipitous encounter.&nbsp;&nbsp; Spread the net wide to get at experience.&nbsp; Not directive.</P> <P>Why are we building other types of systems when they do not work?</P> <P>Manage:&nbsp; Comes from the French.&nbsp; Ability to ride a horse in a dressage event.&nbsp; Horse executes perfect movements.&nbsp; </P> <P>Managing complex knowledge requires disruption of expectations.&nbsp; Difference between categorization & sense making (Imprtant)</P> <P>Why do we do KM?&nbsp; To improve effectiveness of decision making and create conditions for innovation.&nbsp; (Action & Innovation).&nbsp; To many in the field have lost sight of this.&nbsp; Blind leading the blind.&nbsp; KM is a transformatory process shifting from Taylorism to the "new age".&nbsp;&nbsp; Title will change over time.&nbsp;&nbsp; Shift from KM to Cynefin centre which looks across all discliplines.</P> <P>How do you improve decision making in conditions of extreme uncertainty and change.&nbsp; How do you avoid the talon clipping problem?</P> <P>For 20-30 years we've operated a model of the human brain closer to cybernetics than neuroscience.&nbsp; Assumption: logical, rational, linear process.&nbsp; This is WRONG.&nbsp; Myers-Brigs.&nbsp; Brave New World "I'm so glad to be a beta."&nbsp; Putting people in boxes.&nbsp; The human brain is adaptive.&nbsp; The way we see the world changes according to context.&nbsp; Disruption changes brain patterns.</P> <P>Key thing in human intelligence is patterns.&nbsp; Match stimulus against patterns to know how to act.&nbsp;&nbsp; Brain creates patterns.&nbsp; KM problem: Cannot codify patterns for use in text books.</P> <P>Stuck in the mid west with macho developers.&nbsp; Brisih never say no.&nbsp; £5000+1st class fair. </P> <P>Nonaka;&nbsp; the model that launched a thousand failed KM projects.&nbsp; Google Translations English => French => English => French => English.&nbsp; Gives you gobbledegook.&nbsp; Process of making explicit loses context.</P> <P>"Story virus"</P> <P>Never get a celt angry: Blood unto the 7th generation.</P> <P>1 day with the exec team.&nbsp; Refund the fee / Double the fee.&nbsp; Angry.&nbsp; 2 days later, exec board.&nbsp; All the tools a plasterer needs + 10 easy steps to plastering wall.&nbsp; Good book.&nbsp; Told them to plaster the wall.&nbsp;&nbsp; Far too many management programmes.&nbsp; More plaster on the wall than on them & the ground but a close run thing.&nbsp; Old guy plastered it, yard went silent.&nbsp; 40 minutes a fully flat wall.&nbsp;&nbsp; Is it ethical to bring in a sanding machine.&nbsp; Fee got doubled.</P> <P>Human knowledge is stored in patterns far more than raw skills and artifacts.&nbsp; Knowledge is in the fingertips and needs to managed in a different way.&nbsp; Both our power & our downfall.</P> <P>I only know what I know when I need to know it (interviews don't work in KM audit)<BR>the way we know things is not the way we think we do things (interviews don't work)<BR>knowledge can only be volunteers it can't be conscripted (camouflage behaviour)&nbsp; => no incentives, produces wrong behaviour.<BR>"I know more than I can say.&nbsp; I will always say more than I can write down."</P> <P>3rd generation of KM (regretable title):&nbsp; Numbers is a mistake.</P> <P>Post-SETI generation.&nbsp; (Nonaki SETI).&nbsp; Separate knowledge into</P> <P>context<BR>narrative<BR>content<BR>management.</P> <P>Content: Very high cost associated with proper codifications.&nbsp; Only where it's needed and we have stablity of knowledge.&nbsp; Knowledge goes out of date before you complete the documentation process.&nbsp; (Problem in government).</P> <P>Narrative: What I can speak but not write down.</P> <P>Context: What I can neither "say down", nor write down.&nbsp; Apprentice schemes.&nbsp; Most effective way of doing complex knowledge transfer.&nbsp; Being introduced into Cynefin "IBM inside".&nbsp;&nbsp; Master agrees you've got it, exams are not enough.&nbsp; Social network stimulation.&nbsp;&nbsp; Design the informal network of an organisation for use in mergers (most beauracratic dominates) => create common process.&nbsp; i.e the organisation with the most rigid process will dominate - a bad thing.&nbsp; Explicit stuff is more visible.&nbsp; All informal networks get destroyed.&nbsp; Takes 4-5 years to build the network back.&nbsp; i.e. stimulate this network quickly.&nbsp; volunteer network.</P> <P>You need all 3 pieces.&nbsp; Current KM are content management systems.</P> <P>Electrons are particles, so we look for particles.&nbsp; We find particles.&nbsp; Now waves.&nbsp; Find waves.</P> <P>Knowledge is paradoxically both a things and a flow.&nbsp; Content manages flows.</P> <P>Expertise management systems are effective.&nbsp; Connect people when they need to be connected.&nbsp;&nbsp; If we are asked a question about something which we know we respond with honesty: </P> <P>An old friend asks you a question (you know what they mean by the question and how they will understand the answer).<BR>Unknown colleague asks the same question: Normally you help them.&nbsp; Inhibited.&nbsp; Not sure about it.&nbsp; Valuable knowledge concern of abuse.<BR>idiot CKO wants to "know what you know."<BR>(Knowledge is power motive not that strong.&nbsp; Fear is stronger)</P> <P>How did KM throw common sense out the window?</P> <P>Nobody makes rational decisions.&nbsp; Actually first fit pattern match with previous experience.&nbsp; 2 minutes later you have rationalised it retrospectively.&nbsp; (Key in complexity).&nbsp; Nature of<BR>the decision is pattern match.&nbsp; Not best fit, but first fit.&nbsp; No pattern?&nbsp; Hypothesise patterns until you find a first pattern that fits.&nbsp; Post 9-11, no patterns.</P> <P>Stories we develop as children & grow up with a very dominant.&nbsp; Didn't occupy at least once per term you weren't a real revolutionary.&nbsp; Differentiate 16 types of<BR>marxist.&nbsp; Washington:&nbsp; Slightly to the left of Tony Blair is a raging communist.&nbsp; 16 varieties of the religous right.&nbsp; Patterns based upon stories which determine<BR>how we see things.</P> <P>PERSPECTIVE IS SO IMPORTANT.&nbsp; Pattern entrainment. (Thug|Rent Collector|Pull into the doorway to save his life) 3 point story "You know there is another thing coming."&nbsp; See things<BR>from a differnt perspective, read the guardian!&nbsp;&nbsp; Faced with a thug you don't rationalise.&nbsp; Issue in decision theory "when do you stand still?"&nbsp; "when do you rationalise"<BR>Patterns allow faster processing.&nbsp; Human language is not a serial change from animal languages.&nbsp; Chomksky: Bigger vocabulary, more complexity.&nbsp;&nbsp; We know now that we<BR>start with abstractions and then move to "real world."&nbsp;&nbsp; Human beings are permanatly in a phenomenological state.&nbsp; When the patterns go wrong there is disaster but the<BR>next group learns from this.&nbsp; Decision making requires learning about patterns.</P> <P>It's wrong to take more time to understand patterns.</P> <P>How do you tell if someone has winked? or blinked?&nbsp; Very important question:&nbsp; In a bar late at night you can get your face slapped.&nbsp; In international dimplomancy is can be<BR>the difference between war & peace.&nbsp; Cuban missile crisis.&nbsp; Is behaviour intentional or unintentional.&nbsp; Assumption: Other people do things intentionally we do things by<BR>accident.&nbsp; Leads to creating circumstances you try to avoid.&nbsp; Accidental results of pattern entrainment, not rational intentional acts.&nbsp; Affects KM.</P> <P>Blair can do no wrong.&nbsp; Blair is a spin doctor.&nbsp; Blair is a liar.&nbsp; Patterns.&nbsp; How human work.</P> <P>Human beings don't have unitary identity.&nbsp; We are not ants.&nbsp; We all have multiple identities which we move between without thinking about it.&nbsp; Not mental ill health.&nbsp; It's<BR>fundamentally how we work.&nbsp; Dependent upon the context we will see the world a differnet way (father, son, husband, lover).</P> <P>Fluid identities, non-rational thinking.&nbsp;&nbsp; In contrast with current management thinking which assumes rational behaviour and unitary identity.</P> <P>Strong attractors create patterns around themselves & the patterns create meaning.&nbsp; Gas under pressure, becomes vapour.&nbsp; Phase shifts.&nbsp; To water.&nbsp; Phase shift (suddenly happens).&nbsp; Stability. Same thing in<BR>human interactions.&nbsp; Not pre-ordained.</P> <P>Distinction between ordered systems (targets, be careful what you optimize, cause & effect) and **unorder**.&nbsp; Possibilities & inconceivability.&nbsp; Complex systems.&nbsp; Unorder "there<BR>is order there Jim but it is not order as we know it."&nbsp; Non-repeating relationships between cause & effect.</P> <P>Things repeat as long as they repeat until they dont.&nbsp; Leads to shocks.&nbsp; Asymettic collapse (once you go over a phase shift the energy to go back is too high to ever do<BR>it).&nbsp; Blair, infallible to not infallible.&nbsp; Working on the past doesn't work because the patterns have changed.&nbsp; You are learning the wrong lessons.&nbsp;&nbsp; Terrorists<BR>next time they will do something different.&nbsp; Human dynamics: Conflict is critical to detecting weak signals.&nbsp; Without conflict you end up with follow the leader and destroy<BR>the capability for innovation.&nbsp; Unordered systems are matters of managing patterns.&nbsp; Key to survival.</P> <P>Tom stewart.&nbsp; Managing with your gut (business 2.0)&nbsp; There is a science behind 'gut feel'&nbsp; The way we manage a complex space is the way we manage a party of 12 yr olds.<BR>Do you have a process plan and incentive schemes.&nbsp; If you do you're a very sad individual.&nbsp; Line in the sand "Cross it or die" with multiple interventions to stimulate<BR>the creation of beneficial patterns.&nbsp; You manage a complex space by managing the patterns.&nbsp; Create boundaries, do interventions, stimulate attractors.</P> <P>Not the same as managing order but not abrogating managing.</P> <P>Disorder:&nbsp; The state of not knowing where you are.</P> <P>From here to the basic Cynefin framework:&nbsp;&nbsp; A sense making framework not a 2x2 consultantany model.&nbsp;&nbsp; 500 items, only 200 fit in the 2x2.&nbsp; The consultants made all of<BR>them fit and believed that they did.&nbsp; Closed down to new opportunities.&nbsp; Tendencies to categorisation is rigid in management science.&nbsp;&nbsp; Sensemaking is the process of creating boundaries<BR>between things so you can make sense of them.&nbsp; Definied by their own histories and futures.&nbsp; Boundaries emerge from context and are not pre-given.</P> <P>Ordered domains<BR>BR: Emperically known.&nbsp; The domain of the actual.&nbsp; The only place where best practice makes sense.&nbsp; Inappropriate in other domains.<BR>TR: Empirically knowable: The domain of the probable.&nbsp; Cause & effect separated over time but repeat.&nbsp; The domain of experts.</P> <P>Unordered domains:<BR>TL: Complex: The domain of many possibilities: Cause and effect coherent in retrospect, repeat accidentally.&nbsp; Looks like TR from the past.&nbsp; Average life span of a Fortune 500<BR>CEO is now 11 months.&nbsp; Have you just been lucky.&nbsp; The spam approach.&nbsp; 50% up, 50% down.&nbsp; IT goes up so they go back to the 50% and do again..&nbsp; eventually 5% get scammed.<BR>BL: Chaos; The domain of the inconceivable:&nbsp; No Cause & effect visible.&nbsp; You have to do something.</P> <P>Decision models.</P> <P>PROBE SENSE RESPOND&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;SENSE ANALYSE RESPOND<BR>-----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>ACT SENSE RESPOND&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;SENSE CATEGORISE RESPOND</P> <P><BR>Understanding the phases is key, knowing whether you are in complexity or chaos.&nbsp; The framework leads to you being able to make the right decisions.&nbsp; Many<BR>corporations don't understand the left hand side and treat everything as belonging to the right hand side.&nbsp; Anti-terrorism is the same as emerging market opportunties<BR>from a management perspective.</P> <P>Network linkages:</P> <P>WEAK CENTRAL&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;STROING DISTRIBUTED<BR>STRONG DISTRIBUTED&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;STRONG CENTRAL (Beauracy)<BR>-----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>WEAK CENTRAL&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;STRIBG CENTrAL<BR>WEAK DISTRIBUTED&nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;WEAK DISTRIBUTED</P> <P><BR>chaos => complex => knowable.&nbsp; watchfully.<BR>&nbsp;putting out multiple probes<BR>&nbsp;watch the results</P> <P>Patterns we don't like disrupt.<BR>Patterns we like we reinforce.<BR>Shift to the left to exploit it.</P> <P>Mathematical approaches to complexity fail.&nbsp; Humans can impose order, ants are condemned to be constantly complex.&nbsp; Don't understand this point.</P> <P>Shifts to the right are temporary expediencies.</P> <P>Most organisations oscillate between BL & BR.</P> <P>Creativity is not innovation.&nbsp; C is neither necessary nor sufficient for innovation.</P> <P>Trust is not a property.&nbsp; It's an emergent property.&nbsp; You can't make people trust each other.&nbsp;&nbsp; You can train people to have qualities.&nbsp; It doesn't work.</P> <P>CoP: Regular sheep dipping into Chaos.&nbsp; Destroy a CoP after 12 months.&nbsp; If it's valuable it will go underground and reemerge. Funded CoP's become a huge<BR>conservative force.&nbsp; Look at the histroy of science.&nbsp; Tesla.&nbsp; Innovation is not a logically planned process.&nbsp; Dipping into chaos to create new complex patterns.</P> <P>Cynefin dynamics:&nbsp; Innovation cycles.&nbsp; JIT KM focuses on creating environments that allow complex systems to emerge and move into expert environments.<BR>Complex acts of knowing.</P> <P>Rounding level in large organisations is $250M.&nbsp; $49M gets rounded down to 0.&nbsp; A different world!</P> <P>Shifting consultancy to a utilization model to a software model.&nbsp; Fed up with teams of consultants.&nbsp; Email detoxification: Cold turkey organisations to get them out<BR>of bad email habits.&nbsp; Grendel game.&nbsp; Surving in their own environement represented as a metaphorical model.&nbsp;&nbsp; Sensing organisational structures whcih will work<BR>post-merger.</P> <P>Culture. Trust. Collaboration.&nbsp; Problems that companies have but don't know how to solve.&nbsp; 1 problem per year.&nbsp; Big problems.</P> <P>Looking at things through a complexity lense puts things into a context where you can shift R->L.</P> <P>Western canada is a fabulous example of aborigine integration.&nbsp; Shamans are heart surgeons and nurses.</P> <P>PERSPECTIVE. PERSPECTIVE. PERSPECTIVE.</P> <P>New patterns emerge from complexity.</P> <P>Flagship discovery program.&nbsp; A huge mutli cultural experiment.</P> <P>Corporate values.&nbsp; Rituals in absence of belief.&nbsp; Singing the company song.&nbsp; Create rituals that align people with belief systems.</P> <P>I got caught up at the end.</P> <P>&nbsp;</P> <P><BR>PATTERNS => PATTERN LANGUAGES</P> <P>Questions: Paradox program.<BR>Questions: Knowledge Audits.&nbsp; Never ask a direct question.&nbsp; Identify knowledge use (decision, judgements, resolutions). Cluster to entities to create a meaningful context.<BR>&nbsp;Heuristics are more common than explicit knowledge.&nbsp; What experience is vital to what you do?<BR>&nbsp;Create coherent knowledge objects which can be managed and organised to affect core processes & activities.<BR>&nbsp;Portofoli of knowledge managament (amortises risky projects in terms of the tangible benefits of low risk activies)<BR>&nbsp;2-stage emergence:&nbsp; Dissolve patterns in the spce.&nbsp; Stimulate the space to form new patterns.&nbsp; Rinse & repeat.<BR>&nbsp;Never tackle the low hanging fruit in KM.&nbsp; Tackle high vulnerabilit to loss of knowledge areas which core processes depend upon<BR>Questions: <BR></P> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001490.html