Dave Snowden

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 14:13:57 +0100

Dave Snowden thanks David Gurteen for his work connecting so many people via the GKN.

"Radical Welsh philosopher"

The basis of successful KM is understanding of the philosophy and cognitive psychology. More important than CS or business management. "Dead disciplines." Understanding of human nature is the gateway to the future. "Re-establishing the importance of human beings." Optimist. Not there but moving in the right direction. Poindexter: "IBM makes government look...."

Large companies are able to innovate: You can hide away. No tight management. Go under the radar. Don't argue with the process. (Human knowledge at work here)

Training top 100 of IBM. New initiative. Hard work. => Cynefin centre. A joint project between IBM and the Uni. of Cardiff. Bridging the academic/practioner divide.

Confusion of properties with qualities. Cannot generalise from a hypothesis about a company: e.g. 'flat management structure' => Logically incoherent. "Not all french man wear glasses." "Assumes wearing glasses will make you french." It's too complex. Imitiation of "best practice". Ban the term. Best practice is past practice, i.e. a bad thing. (Proof: Market for management consultants is shrinking, funding is shrinking). Government should not copy industry, no profitive motive (balanced score card / profit pressure). No pressure to force things that don't work out of the system. Service culture that does not apply to industry. Government nearly always copy things that industry is abandoning. Consultant sales "who CAN we sell this shit too!" No credibility.

Major consultancies know that knowledge transfers through informal networks!

Cynefin. "Language that only a few other million gifted people speaks" => Meaning is not confused. "The place of your multiple belongings" (Literal/Trivial: Habitat or place). Multple paths with profoundly influenec who you are but about which you are only dimly aware. Never hope to fully understand. Cause & effect prescripture future methods are fundamentally flawed because you are dealing with uncertain pasts.

Spritual/Empircal.

3 approaches to life:

techno-fetishing school of management: people are data entry units. Everyone wants to spend all their time in virtual chatrooms.
new age "fluffy bunnies". Technology is the spawn of satan. Go back to hugging at the start of each meeting. Talking stick, etc...
Holistic view is important. Technology is a useful tool (fits the hand, can be used). If you have to reengineer your hand to fit the tool then something is wrong. Avoid extremes.

Applying real scientific rigour to soft aspects of organisiations. New science from biology & chem: Complexity and chaos.

Systems thinking / Complexity / Chaos; fundamentally different approaches.

Mulla Nasrudin (Idries Shah). The exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin. Sufi stories. (Octagon Press, London, 1985). "Nasrudin found a weary falcon" What people do in organisations when faced with things they don't understand but have to pay attention to. When you're successful people want to make you look like something familar => where everything goes wrong.

Worst practice systems are far more useful than best practice. What spreads fastest: stories of success or stories of failure? Spreading stories of failure is a more important learning exercise. Wea re cognitively detruned to stories of success. Best practice doesn't work!!! Narrative databases create learning environments based upon serendipitous encounter. Spread the net wide to get at experience. Not directive.

Why are we building other types of systems when they do not work?

Manage: Comes from the French. Ability to ride a horse in a dressage event. Horse executes perfect movements.

Managing complex knowledge requires disruption of expectations. Difference between categorization & sense making (Imprtant)

Why do we do KM? To improve effectiveness of decision making and create conditions for innovation. (Action & Innovation). To many in the field have lost sight of this. Blind leading the blind. KM is a transformatory process shifting from Taylorism to the "new age". Title will change over time. Shift from KM to Cynefin centre which looks across all discliplines.

How do you improve decision making in conditions of extreme uncertainty and change. How do you avoid the talon clipping problem?

For 20-30 years we've operated a model of the human brain closer to cybernetics than neuroscience. Assumption: logical, rational, linear process. This is WRONG. Myers-Brigs. Brave New World "I'm so glad to be a beta." Putting people in boxes. The human brain is adaptive. The way we see the world changes according to context. Disruption changes brain patterns.

Key thing in human intelligence is patterns. Match stimulus against patterns to know how to act. Brain creates patterns. KM problem: Cannot codify patterns for use in text books.

Stuck in the mid west with macho developers. Brisih never say no. £5000+1st class fair.

Nonaka; the model that launched a thousand failed KM projects. Google Translations English => French => English => French => English. Gives you gobbledegook. Process of making explicit loses context.

"Story virus"

Never get a celt angry: Blood unto the 7th generation.

1 day with the exec team. Refund the fee / Double the fee. Angry. 2 days later, exec board. All the tools a plasterer needs + 10 easy steps to plastering wall. Good book. Told them to plaster the wall. Far too many management programmes. More plaster on the wall than on them & the ground but a close run thing. Old guy plastered it, yard went silent. 40 minutes a fully flat wall. Is it ethical to bring in a sanding machine. Fee got doubled.

Human knowledge is stored in patterns far more than raw skills and artifacts. Knowledge is in the fingertips and needs to managed in a different way. Both our power & our downfall.

I only know what I know when I need to know it (interviews don't work in KM audit)
the way we know things is not the way we think we do things (interviews don't work)
knowledge can only be volunteers it can't be conscripted (camouflage behaviour) => no incentives, produces wrong behaviour.
"I know more than I can say. I will always say more than I can write down."

3rd generation of KM (regretable title): Numbers is a mistake.

Post-SETI generation. (Nonaki SETI). Separate knowledge into

context
narrative
content
management.

Content: Very high cost associated with proper codifications. Only where it's needed and we have stablity of knowledge. Knowledge goes out of date before you complete the documentation process. (Problem in government).

Narrative: What I can speak but not write down.

Context: What I can neither "say down", nor write down. Apprentice schemes. Most effective way of doing complex knowledge transfer. Being introduced into Cynefin "IBM inside". Master agrees you've got it, exams are not enough. Social network stimulation. Design the informal network of an organisation for use in mergers (most beauracratic dominates) => create common process. i.e the organisation with the most rigid process will dominate - a bad thing. Explicit stuff is more visible. All informal networks get destroyed. Takes 4-5 years to build the network back. i.e. stimulate this network quickly. volunteer network.

You need all 3 pieces. Current KM are content management systems.

Electrons are particles, so we look for particles. We find particles. Now waves. Find waves.

Knowledge is paradoxically both a things and a flow. Content manages flows.

Expertise management systems are effective. Connect people when they need to be connected. If we are asked a question about something which we know we respond with honesty:

An old friend asks you a question (you know what they mean by the question and how they will understand the answer).
Unknown colleague asks the same question: Normally you help them. Inhibited. Not sure about it. Valuable knowledge concern of abuse.
idiot CKO wants to "know what you know."
(Knowledge is power motive not that strong. Fear is stronger)

How did KM throw common sense out the window?

Nobody makes rational decisions. Actually first fit pattern match with previous experience. 2 minutes later you have rationalised it retrospectively. (Key in complexity). Nature of
the decision is pattern match. Not best fit, but first fit. No pattern? Hypothesise patterns until you find a first pattern that fits. Post 9-11, no patterns.

Stories we develop as children & grow up with a very dominant. Didn't occupy at least once per term you weren't a real revolutionary. Differentiate 16 types of
marxist. Washington: Slightly to the left of Tony Blair is a raging communist. 16 varieties of the religous right. Patterns based upon stories which determine
how we see things.

PERSPECTIVE IS SO IMPORTANT. Pattern entrainment. (Thug|Rent Collector|Pull into the doorway to save his life) 3 point story "You know there is another thing coming." See things
from a differnt perspective, read the guardian!   Faced with a thug you don't rationalise. Issue in decision theory "when do you stand still?" "when do you rationalise"
Patterns allow faster processing. Human language is not a serial change from animal languages. Chomksky: Bigger vocabulary, more complexity.   We know now that we
start with abstractions and then move to "real world."   Human beings are permanatly in a phenomenological state. When the patterns go wrong there is disaster but the
next group learns from this. Decision making requires learning about patterns.

It's wrong to take more time to understand patterns.

How do you tell if someone has winked? or blinked? Very important question: In a bar late at night you can get your face slapped. In international dimplomancy is can be
the difference between war & peace. Cuban missile crisis. Is behaviour intentional or unintentional. Assumption: Other people do things intentionally we do things by
accident. Leads to creating circumstances you try to avoid. Accidental results of pattern entrainment, not rational intentional acts. Affects KM.

Blair can do no wrong. Blair is a spin doctor. Blair is a liar. Patterns. How human work.

Human beings don't have unitary identity. We are not ants. We all have multiple identities which we move between without thinking about it. Not mental ill health. It's
fundamentally how we work. Dependent upon the context we will see the world a differnet way (father, son, husband, lover).

Fluid identities, non-rational thinking. In contrast with current management thinking which assumes rational behaviour and unitary identity.

Strong attractors create patterns around themselves & the patterns create meaning. Gas under pressure, becomes vapour. Phase shifts. To water. Phase shift (suddenly happens). Stability. Same thing in
human interactions. Not pre-ordained.

Distinction between ordered systems (targets, be careful what you optimize, cause & effect) and **unorder**. Possibilities & inconceivability. Complex systems. Unorder "there
is order there Jim but it is not order as we know it." Non-repeating relationships between cause & effect.

Things repeat as long as they repeat until they dont. Leads to shocks. Asymettic collapse (once you go over a phase shift the energy to go back is too high to ever do
it). Blair, infallible to not infallible. Working on the past doesn't work because the patterns have changed. You are learning the wrong lessons. Terrorists
next time they will do something different. Human dynamics: Conflict is critical to detecting weak signals. Without conflict you end up with follow the leader and destroy
the capability for innovation. Unordered systems are matters of managing patterns. Key to survival.

Tom stewart. Managing with your gut (business 2.0) There is a science behind 'gut feel' The way we manage a complex space is the way we manage a party of 12 yr olds.
Do you have a process plan and incentive schemes. If you do you're a very sad individual. Line in the sand "Cross it or die" with multiple interventions to stimulate
the creation of beneficial patterns. You manage a complex space by managing the patterns. Create boundaries, do interventions, stimulate attractors.

Not the same as managing order but not abrogating managing.

Disorder: The state of not knowing where you are.

From here to the basic Cynefin framework: A sense making framework not a 2x2 consultantany model. 500 items, only 200 fit in the 2x2. The consultants made all of
them fit and believed that they did. Closed down to new opportunities. Tendencies to categorisation is rigid in management science. Sensemaking is the process of creating boundaries
between things so you can make sense of them. Definied by their own histories and futures. Boundaries emerge from context and are not pre-given.

Ordered domains
BR: Emperically known. The domain of the actual. The only place where best practice makes sense. Inappropriate in other domains.
TR: Empirically knowable: The domain of the probable. Cause & effect separated over time but repeat. The domain of experts.

Unordered domains:
TL: Complex: The domain of many possibilities: Cause and effect coherent in retrospect, repeat accidentally. Looks like TR from the past. Average life span of a Fortune 500
CEO is now 11 months. Have you just been lucky. The spam approach. 50% up, 50% down. IT goes up so they go back to the 50% and do again.. eventually 5% get scammed.
BL: Chaos; The domain of the inconceivable: No Cause & effect visible. You have to do something.

Decision models.

PROBE SENSE RESPOND | SENSE ANALYSE RESPOND
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ACT SENSE RESPOND | SENSE CATEGORISE RESPOND

Understanding the phases is key, knowing whether you are in complexity or chaos. The framework leads to you being able to make the right decisions. Many
corporations don't understand the left hand side and treat everything as belonging to the right hand side. Anti-terrorism is the same as emerging market opportunties
from a management perspective.

Network linkages:

WEAK CENTRAL    STROING DISTRIBUTED
STRONG DISTRIBUTED  | STRONG CENTRAL (Beauracy)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
WEAK CENTRAL   | STRIBG CENTrAL
WEAK DISTRIBUTED  | WEAK DISTRIBUTED

chaos => complex => knowable. watchfully.
putting out multiple probes
watch the results

Patterns we don't like disrupt.
Patterns we like we reinforce.
Shift to the left to exploit it.

Mathematical approaches to complexity fail. Humans can impose order, ants are condemned to be constantly complex. Don't understand this point.

Shifts to the right are temporary expediencies.

Most organisations oscillate between BL & BR.

Creativity is not innovation. C is neither necessary nor sufficient for innovation.

Trust is not a property. It's an emergent property. You can't make people trust each other. You can train people to have qualities. It doesn't work.

CoP: Regular sheep dipping into Chaos. Destroy a CoP after 12 months. If it's valuable it will go underground and reemerge. Funded CoP's become a huge
conservative force. Look at the histroy of science. Tesla. Innovation is not a logically planned process. Dipping into chaos to create new complex patterns.

Cynefin dynamics: Innovation cycles. JIT KM focuses on creating environments that allow complex systems to emerge and move into expert environments.
Complex acts of knowing.

Rounding level in large organisations is $250M. $49M gets rounded down to 0. A different world!

Shifting consultancy to a utilization model to a software model. Fed up with teams of consultants. Email detoxification: Cold turkey organisations to get them out
of bad email habits. Grendel game. Surving in their own environement represented as a metaphorical model. Sensing organisational structures whcih will work
post-merger.

Culture. Trust. Collaboration. Problems that companies have but don't know how to solve. 1 problem per year. Big problems.

Looking at things through a complexity lense puts things into a context where you can shift R->L.

Western canada is a fabulous example of aborigine integration. Shamans are heart surgeons and nurses.

PERSPECTIVE. PERSPECTIVE. PERSPECTIVE.

New patterns emerge from complexity.

Flagship discovery program. A huge mutli cultural experiment.

Corporate values. Rituals in absence of belief. Singing the company song. Create rituals that align people with belief systems.

I got caught up at the end.

PATTERNS => PATTERN LANGUAGES

Questions: Paradox program.
Questions: Knowledge Audits. Never ask a direct question. Identify knowledge use (decision, judgements, resolutions). Cluster to entities to create a meaningful context.
Heuristics are more common than explicit knowledge. What experience is vital to what you do?
Create coherent knowledge objects which can be managed and organised to affect core processes & activities.
Portofoli of knowledge managament (amortises risky projects in terms of the tangible benefits of low risk activies)
2-stage emergence: Dissolve patterns in the spce. Stimulate the space to form new patterns. Rinse & repeat.
Never tackle the low hanging fruit in KM. Tackle high vulnerabilit to loss of knowledge areas which core processes depend upon
Questions:

Information Asymmetry

Thu, 11 May 2006 12:08:19 +0100

Euan's got an interesting article about information asymmetry which is the term economists use to describe the imbalance in a transaction where one party has better knowledge than the other.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on knowledge_management

Dave Snowden

Information Asymmetry