Conversations
with Stephen Denning
Editor's
note:
Following is an edited and sumarized transcript of a discussion
conducted in the Knowledge Management/Strategy Community of Practice
(CoP) of the  Association of Knowledgework.
As in most of our lengthy documents, we have used a system of
"anchors" to help you go directly to specific subjects
while reading it online.
The discussion
follows the publication of "The Laws
of Knowledge Management" contributed originally to the
AOK White Papers section by Stephen Denning, Michel Pommier,
and Lesley Shneier, all of the World Bank.
If you
haven't yet purchased The Springboard, please do it
now through the AOK Bookstore.
 Welcome by Jerry
Ash, AOK chief executive
It is my pleasure
to welcome Stephen Denning, Program Manager, Knowledge Management,
The World Bank, as AOK's inaugural guest moderator of an AOK
Community of Practice Forum.
Steve and his colleagues
at the World Bank are taking significant steps in translating
the complex concepts of knowledge strategies into understandable,
practical and useful messages.
This forum closely
follows one Steve hosted for the New York Times over the New
Year - that one focused on the value of gossip, itself a natural
human form of storytelling.
Larry Prusak, himself
an icon in the KM movement, had this to say about Stephen Denning's
new book, The Springboard:
"Stephen Denning
has written one of the more interesting and creative management
books of the past few years. The Springboard reflects
Denning's strong belief in stories as encapsulated knowledge
and his own stories about the World Bank are strongly illustrative
of his own passion and knowledge. This is the first book to give
to anyone interested in storytelling for organizational change.
Read it, and learn from it, and enjoy it!"
For the next several
days, members of the AOK KM/Strategy Community of Practice will
have the exceptional opportunity to discuss with Steve the ideas
presented in the just-posted AOK White Paper "Are
There Laws of Knowledge Management?"
Now I'll use the
words of Larry Prusak to entreat you to take full advantage of
this e-mail forum: "Read it, and learn from it, and enjoy
it!"
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'Laws' inspired while
lunching with Larry Prusak
Jerry
Ash: Now,
Steve, I welcome you to this virtual meeting place.
I'd like to begin
the dialogue by asking a question and suggesting an addition
to the possible "Laws of KM."
The question:
What inspired you,
Michel and Lesley to begin compiling such laws? And, as a follow-up,
do you think KM has matured to a point where universal truths
are emerging?
Stephen
Denning: Thanks
for the warm welcome! I am delighted to be joining you all in
this dialogue. It feels like a trip back to my home country,
Australia!
Jerry asks: "What
us to begin compiling the "laws?" And, as a follow-up,
do I think KM has matured to a point where universal truths are
emerging?"
Well, as often happens,
it occurred over a meal. I was having lunch with Michel Pommier
and Larry Prusak in New York, getting ready to meet with a group
of managers and staff in a large public sector organization,
and we were talking about knowledge programs in different companies.
We discussed how,
back in the mid 1990s, it had often seemed as though the companies
that were talking about knowledge management were discussing
very different concepts and approaches and emphases, so that
it almost seemed like a number of different subjects. More recently
we were noticing how much convergence there was, and how there
seemed to be an increasing degree of consensus about what worked
and what didn't. And we kept running into many of the same problems
in all the organizations that we were familiar with. I think
that we were talking about the pervasive phenomenon of resistance
of a section of the middle management to KM when Larry Prusak
suddenly said, "You know, it's as though there are laws
which all organizations seem to be obeying. Wouldn't it be interesting
to try to write down what these laws are and see whether people
agree?"
By ourselves, I
am not sure that we would have had courage - or foolhardiness
- to think that we could identify universal laws, as we were
only familiar with perhaps a score of organizations in addition
to our own organization, the World Bank. But Larry Prusak had
a much broader experience and knew what was going on in several
hundred organizations. It was this breadth of knowledge that
confirmed what we were seeing in a few organizations was a set
of patterns that was occurring over essentially the whole field
of late 20th century organizations.
Michel and I agreed
that it was an exciting idea and so we asked Lesley to join us
in trying to write down what are these phenomena that are common
among organizations. We shared them with Larry and he encouraged
us to continue and share them with others and get reactions.
And so here we are.
At this point, what
we have put forward are not so much laws, as hypotheses as to
what appear to be very widely observable phenomena in organizations
approaching knowledge management. They are also an invitation
to anyone who knows an organization where these phenomena are
not occurring to let us know and we can see about revising the
hypotheses to reflect a more nuanced picture. If no, or few,
such exceptions emerge, then the hypotheses might move towards
being accepted as universally accepted characteristics of knowledge
management programs.
What do others think?
I am almost tempted
to add a corollary to this experience: most innovation occurs
in the vicinity of food. It is amazing how much creativity and
innovation occurs over meals, in snack bars, in coffee shops.
There is something about sharing food with people that gets the
creative juices flowing. I wouldn't like to suggest that all
innovation occurs here, but in my experience, it is quite a lot.
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Decentralized decision
making inspires innovation or despotism?
Jerry
Ash: Now
my suggestion: In my recent AOK K-Net EZine I told the story
of a California pastor who empowered individual members of his
flock to make personal decisions about how to distribute some
of the church's money. In addition to the minister's lesson of
stewardship, I thought it was also a lesson in decentralized
decision-making. So, I propose Law # 8: Decentralized decision-making
ignites innovative thinking and multiplies the outcome.
Stephen
Denning: As
a way of getting into this issue, I would say that I certainly
agree with the converse. Centralized decision-making, i.e.,
decision making based on hierarchy and command-and-control rather
than on expertise, seems unlikely to ignite innovative thinking.
The very nature of hierarchy and control is to ensure conformity
and compliance with existing ideas, rather than create new ones.
This doesn't mean to say that innovation will not occur at all
in top-down hierarchies, but I would agree that the top-down
dynamic may not encouraging it much.
Decentralized decision-making
would imply an element of empowerment to local managers to innovate
and implement new approaches. If these local managers have adequate
access to expertise and themselves encourage and take advantage
of the opportunity to empower their own staffs, then decentralized
decision-making could be seen as encouraging innovation.
But I have also
seen situations where there was decentralized decision-making,
but the local manager, instead of using it to encourage innovation,
simply became a small-scale centralized decision-making, a local
despot, with the result that innovation did not flourish, any
more than in a wholly centralized organization. Not always, of
course, but sometimes.
My sense is that
we have two related but different domains here. On the one hand,
we have the domain of power and hierarchy and decision making
and control. On the other hand, we have the domain of knowledge
and expertise and creativity and innovation. The former domain
is ruled by, who's calling the shots? The latter domain is ruled
by, who's got the smarts? Occasionally, it is the same person
who is calling the shots and who has got the smarts, but not
too often. The person calling the shots can do things to enable
or disable the person with the smarts.
If you look at organizations
in the 20th century, the emphasis has been on who's calling the
shots,and trying to arrange, and rearrange, things so that the
guy who's calling the shots can get better control. This has
been a game of diminishing returns. And with explosive and rapid
transformations occurring across the world economy, the viability
of these approaches is becoming less and less evident.
Hence the emphasis
on sharing knowledge as a way of surviving, on communities where
know-how can be pooled and new insights ignited, on creating
work environments where personal interest and enthusiasm can
be unleashed and so on. In other words, the rise of knowledge
management as a central preoccupation of organizations in the
21st Century.
Jack
Vinson: Much
of the KM literature rails against hierarchical bureaucracies
for exactly the reasons Stephen Denning mentions (inefficient,
too rigid, lost information). It is very difficult to "think
outside the box" when following rules designed to keep you
in the box. The KM literature is also full of examples where
people circumvent the official lines of communication and set
up their own. Thus, we have a trade in "knowledge mapping"
consultancies.
Why not change the
way we think about bureaucracies? Let's change the name too.
Instead of forcing information up and down branches of the hierarchy,
why not change the job of the manager from "knowledge collector"
to "knowledge distributor." The new manager's job becomes
a task of making sure that her people have everything they need
to move the company forward. This is not a new idea, but it needs
to be reiterated.
Stephen
Denning: I
would say that the introduction of communities of practice into
organizations is changing them quite dramatically and if persisted
in, will change the very nature of organizations. I wouldn't
see the existing role of manager as a knowledge collector, as
usually the knowledge never flows to the manager but is rather
something embedded in the way the work gets done. The manager
tends to collect information of a certain type, such as budgets,
outputs, schedules and the rest of the regular bureaucratic stuff,
in order to control the work. In the new environment, the manager
will still go on collecting this stuff, but will be more of a
coach, and facilitator, and catalyst for the communities. A big
problem with managers today is that they feel threatened by the
untidy and cross cutting nature of communities which could undermine
their control. If they can learn to see their role as catalyzing
rather than controlling, this tension will diminish.
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Squeezing knowledge
into or out of the business process?
Denham Grey asks
a question on the role, importance and returns from adopting
a process for knowledge generation.
Denham
Grey: Is
knowledge really something you can squeeze into a business process?
Somehow, this seems
the wrong metaphor to use; it is far too "engineering"
and '"systems'" oriented for knowledge which is tender,
fuzzy, dynamic, people oriented and morphing all the time. When
you move too far along the process line you may over reach the
reification of knowledge, turning your attention to explicit
stuff that can be captured, validated, stored, sold.
Knowledge, I believe,
is best appracted from a 'practice' POV - set the principles
for cultivating an environment where knowledge can flourish,
pay attention to recognition, identity, language, reflection,
meaning, inquiry. Knowledge will create its own workflows and
validation is a natural emergent property of dialogue. Are you
a knowledge process or practice person?"
Stephen
Denning:
My own take is that there is no such thing as a knowledge process
person. Processes are about conformity and compliance with predetermined
repetitive routines. Such processes do not generate knowledge.
Knowledge may occur, almost by accident in the interstices of
such processes, but the processes themselves are deadening and
the antithesis of innovation and creativity.
Further material
on this issue from John Seely Brown and the Institute for the
Future can be found at:
http://www.stevedenning.com/engineering_ecological.html
So I come down clearly
on the side of saying that no, you can't squeeze knowledge generation
into a business process. It's a different thing altogether.
Are there are any
knowledge process persons out there?
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Relationship
Between Springboards and Patterns?
Stephen
Denning: Thanks
to Denham Grey for the nice comments about The Springboard.
Denham
Grey: Do
you have any ideas to share around stories as memes and the relationship
between a springboard story and a pattern? Seems they address
much the same areas i.e.,, define and forces at play,
specify the context, gather the solution steps, test the package,
release the pattern / story."
Stephen
Denning: On
memes: my understanding is that this is a (fancy jargon) term
invented by the biologist Richard Dawkins to mean an idea that
spreads.
Editor's note:
Thanks for
defining it, Steve.
I don't happen to
have the book at hand where he introduced the term but my recollection
is that he didn't distinguish between ideas expressed in abstract
form and ideas expressed in narrative form. My own experience
is that ideas in narrative form can travel an awful lot faster
than abstract ideas, if you can launch the narrative in the right
format.
The "springboard
story" is one kind of narrative that does seem to travel
easily and fast, and its characteristics are spelt out elsewhere
on my
web site and in my book, The Springboard, i.e.,
comprehensible, told from the perspective of a single protagonist;
prototypical of the organization's business, has a degree of
strangeness or incongruity, plausible, embody the change idea
as fully as possible, recent and true, told as simply as possible,
and has a happy ending. Stories that have this pattern and that
are performed in the right way can travel easy and fast.
On patterns: The
process you describe - i.e., "define the forces at
play, specify the context, gather the solution steps, test the
package, release the pattern" is a model that describes
an approach to problem solving that is not unrelated to what
I have been describing, though my experience is that innovation
doesn't usually occur in this simple linear pattern. The linear
model sounds good in a classroom or on paper, is very appealing
to someone setting out, but in real life things are more complicated.
Thus as I describe
in The Springboard, when I was launching KM back in 1996
at the World Bank I did set out to "define the forces at
play, specify the context, gather the solution steps, test the
package" but I found that the package" I was using
didn't work, so I was back at square one again. The linear approach
got me nowhere. It was subsequently through stumbling on help
from an unexpected source - storytelling - where I certainly
wasn't looking for it, that I began to make progress. Further
experimentation, further interferences, further evolution of
the response - all of this led to change in ways that were not
linear.
So my suspicion
based on this and other experiences is that the actual process
or pattern of change is rarely a simple linear model and instead
has all kinds of setbacks, loops, reverses, serendipitous discoveries,
diversions, false trails, interferences. We need to keep this
kind of more complex reality steadily in mind, particularly when
we are presenting to those who are setting out on this journey,
so that we don't mislead them as to what's involved. I know the
demand for a simple cookbook is out there (step one, step two,
step three and so on), but if we offer these simple recipes,
we need also to be stressing the caveats, and the difficulties
that people will run into in real life. It is even possible,
given that serendipitous nature of innovation, that the more
people follow a formal structured process, the less they are
likely to innovate.
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Using
Stories to Explain Transition
Chris
McEntee: I
am a great believer in stories. When we had a major transition
about a year and half ago - rearranging some roles and responsibilities
- we wanted to make sure that staff understood that our core
values were remaining the same. We had the entire staff get together
in round tables of 10 and asked each table to recount their favorite
stories that illustrated our values and then pick one to share
with the entire staff. The stories were great - inspiring, funny
at times, and made the point. I am personally trying to use more
and more stories in meetings, presentations etc.
Underutilized
Teams and Job Rotation
Larry
Rosenthal: "Let
me weigh in here. Could part of the problem be the way we are
used to looking at organizational structure. We still try to
look at it with the old industrial model with tight vertical
integration. In our structure we call them "silos."
And, this is what we are trying to break down. Our thoughts are
if you break down the silos, knowledge will be able to more easily
flow and find those who need it. If we continue to take a vertical
view of our organizations we will be exactly where we are now;
requiring another layer to try to move the knowledge around into
and out of our respective silos."
David
Skyrme: Structure
is an important element of any KM strategy. Stephen Denning rightly
points out the value of communities of practice, and I still
find that some very well known techniques are not used as much
as they should be. Two that I find time and time again are underutilized
are multi-disciplinary task (project) teams and job rotation
or secondment across functions.
What many organizations
(or senior managers) find difficult is, to let knowledgeable
individuals in communities or task teams take authority and responsibility
for decisions. Too many managers go in for micro-management -
wanting to make decisions on fine detail, rather than setting
some simple ground rules, objectives and giving professionals
autonomy. Yes - there has to be some top view and coherence about
all the micro-decisions, but properly recorded with assumptions
(as should happen in a good KM system), a small independent review
panel can achieve a lot - and senior managers can always drop
in when they need to, and monitor through their executive portals
all the micro-decisions that are being taken.
Stephen
Denning: I
agree with David that multidisciplinary teams and job rotation
or secondment across functions can encourage knowledge sharing,
although there are also limitations in these approaches.
In multidisciplinary
teams, you only get the expertise of the people who happen to
be assigned to the team. In today's complicated multifaceted
problems, unless those team members can reach out to others inside
or even outside the organization to get additional expertise,
a sub-optimal approach can easily result. And unless there is
a framework for capturing what the team learnt and sharing that
with others, then wheels can be reinvented many times by successive
teams.
With job rotation
or secondment across functions, the forced juxtaposition of people
with different backgrounds can create those serendipitous encounters
from which innovation emerges. If only a few people move around,
then the interchanges are limited. The cost of shuffling large
numbers of people around an organization can be extremely high.
If a lot of people are moving around with new assignments all
the time, they may never get to learn any one job well. And yet
even with a lot of rotation, the pace of the interchange, viewed
from the entire organization, can be painfully slow, compared
to the urgent demands of the marketplace.
These limitations
have pushed organizations to nurture communities of practitioners,
where you can get wide-ranging interchange of know-how across
the entire organization, on the fly, without people having to
change jobs or organizational units. But as David points out,
it does require a certain maturity in the management to accept
and encourage and empower such communities which can easily be
seen as a threat to the traditionalist manager.
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Views
exchanged on the seven 'Laws'
Joe Katzman and
Stephen Denning exchanged their views on the "laws of KM."
About Law #1:
Knowledge sharing is essential to economic survival. Traditional
hierarchical organizations cannot cope with fast changing client
demands.
Joe
Katzman: Depends
in what industry. Some are very well suited to that hierarchical
approach - indeed, you wouldn't want to run your Wendy's any
other way. Not all client demands are fast-changing.
Stephen
Denning: My
sense is that the imperative of sharing knowledge is largely
independent of industry because it is driven by economic factors
which underlie all industries; namely, that the unit costs of
computing, communications and transactions are falling towards
zero. These simultaneous changes create new opportunities in
all industries. Companies that fail to respond will sooner or
later succumb. In industries where the current knowledge content
is less obvious (e.g., hamburgers, cement, casinos), the
evolution of the change may come from unexpected directions but
is equally inevitable.
About Law #2:
Communities of practice are the heart and soul of knowledge sharing.
Formation of professional groupings where people come voluntarily
together to share common interests and learn from the skills
of others has become the common feature of knowledge organizations.
Joe
Katzman: Some
take a people-centric model, others take a document-centric model.
CoPs often accelerate the process, but they aren't the defining
feature or even always necessary. TelTech has built a whole business
based on a very good directory that makes individual connections
in real time. This does not create communities, nor is it intended
to. It does result in a lot of knowledge sharing, however.
Stephen
Denning: Having
a good information system is a good thing in itself as TelTech
appears to have. I don't know it directly and so cannot comment
on its particular implementation, but thanks for pointing it
out to me.
What I would suggest
is that corporate environments today are mostly low trust environments
generally speaking. As a result, not much sharing happens across
boundaries because of the lack of trust unless some kind of communities
are in place. If substantial sharing is occurring in the absence
of communities, it may suggest an exception that there is a high
trust environment which is fortunate but quite rare perhaps.
About Law #3:
Virtual community members also need physical interactions. While
technology has provided the possibility of virtual communities,
many organizations have found it difficult without initial face-to-face
meetings.
Joe
Katzman: This
one goes back to Howard Rheingold's experience at the WELL, and
continues to be demonstrated by experience. But the emphasis
needs to shift - groups CAN get going under these circumstances,
but without F2F meetings, they won't last.
Stephen
Denning: We
seem to agree on this one.
About Law #4:
Passion is the driving force behind communities of practice.
Communities of practice only flourish when their members are
passionately committed to a common purpose.
Joe
Katzman: Not
so much a common purpose, as a common interest. Purposes will
differ within every CoP, sometimes fairly considerably. Those
sub-groups are important, and sometimes the differences and debate
are productive. Sometimes, too, they fracture the community beyond
repair. A real law would help people tell which is which.
Stephen
Denning: The
law is not directed at distinguishing healthy from unhealthy
communities. A separate law would be needed for that, if such
a law could be formulated.
It is suggesting
that passion among members is a common thread in healthy communities.
The "purpose"
indicated here is implicitly the purpose of sharing knowledge
in the topic in which members have chosen. My sense is that if
none of the members of the communities have more than an interest,
then there is no passion and the energy level of the community
is not high enough to ensure longevity.
Not all members
may be passionate about it, and some may merely lurk out of interest.
About Law #5:
Communities enrich organizations and personal lives. Building
on positive human emotions in the workplace provides a key to
creating and developing healthier forms of organizations.
Joe
Katzman: This
springs from a rather idealized notion of community. Think of
them like small towns. You have the petty arguments, the outright
vendettas, and the rumour mill as well as all the healthy components.
Communities may provide some positive emotions with a release
they don't usually get in the workplace, but they don't always
work out that way and can "turn to the dark side" or
at least show darker aspects of human nature as well.
Stephen
Denning: I
agree that communities have a dark side as well as a positive
side.
However, the interconnectedness
of a community is normally an enriching feature for most members,
as compared to the solitary individual working alone without
friends or connections. Aristotle noted that man is a social
animal, and the knowledge sharing experience simply underlines
the importance of that insight. Equally interesting, the research
on emotions shows that emotions are also largely social phenomena.
The difference between
a small town community and a community of practice is that in
the latter, the member can generally withdraw and cease to be
part of the community, whereas in the small town, the inhabitants
may not have this choice without leaving the town. However, withdrawal
is not the only solution to dealing with the dark side of community,
and learning to deal with it in more positive ways can also be
enriching.
About Law #6:
Knowledge sharing has both an inside-out and outside-in dynamic.
Insiders must "own" the process, be involved in it,
make changes happen, encourage others. Outsiders validate and
"push" the agenda forward.
Joe
Katzman: Regular
contact with and feedback from outsiders will help, and avoiding
insularity is a key commandment. Groups that don't pull knowledge
and ideas from outside will wither. But the notion that some
outside agency must always provide the validation or forward
push doesn't strike me as a law so much as a probability.
Stephen
Denning: I
would agree that outside push is a helpful probability. Where
it occurs it is helpful. Where it does not occur, there is a
lost opportunity. What seems to me is that the probability is
high enough that it is worth formulating as a hypothesis to determine
whether there are any exceptions.
Editor's note:
As a reminder,
Stephen Denning previously suggested that the "laws"
are in some ways "hypotheses" which are to be tested.
About Law #7:
Storytelling ignites knowledge sharing. Telling stories that
build on real knowledge sharing situations enables individuals
to understand complicated and abstract ideas.
Joe
Katzman: Mostly,
what it enables them to understand is that their workplace supports
knowledge sharing and here's how we go about it here. That's
usually about three times as valuable as any specific ideas conveyed.
Stephen
Denning: While
storytelling can (1) communicate the importance of knowledge
sharing and (2) can catalyze communities into existence, it is
also the form in which most knowledge is embedded, and hence
storytelling is also key to (3) knowledge transfer.
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Views Exchanged on
the Corollaries of the Seven 'Laws'
Joe Katzman's views
on the corollaries of the Laws of KM and Stephen Denning's responses:
About Corollary
#1. Knowledge sharing is at some point confused with IT. Web
sites and IT tools neither create nor transfer knowledge by itself.
Joe
Katzman: No,
but they're a measurable implementation, unlike most other activities
touted as KM. Since managers must justify their budgets and expenditures,
they naturally prefer things that produce either observable end
products or measurable results. KM still does a poor job here,
which is why IT is used as a proxy measure.
Stephen
Denning: The
point of the corollary is not so much that it is used as a measure
for KM (i.e., one thing used as a measure of something
else) but rather that it is actually confused with, or equated
with, KM. Building a website is equated with KM, for instance.
Merely building a website doesn't necessarily lead to sharing
of knowledge, although it may be a necessary step towards it.
Unless the organization that makes this confusion transcends
it, that may not succeed in knowledge sharing.
About Corollary
#2. Middle management resists. Knowledge sharing appeals to chief
executives and front-line employees, while middle managers have
built their careers on mastering hierarchical pathways.
Joe
Katzman: Sometimes.
This still doesn't make resistance in their interest, and broad
characterizations like this aren't helpful. See an article called
"Converting Middle Powerlessness to Middle Power: A Systems
Approach" by Barry Oshry.
Stephen
Denning: I
agree that resistance is not in the interest of middle management.
It isn't much of a surprise that it occurs very widely, since
KM generally involves taking an organization that has been working
in a vertical mode and adding a horizontal mode to it. Upper
middle management, whose function in the existing organization
is to preserve the vertical "order" will naturally
tend to see the horizontal pathways as disorder, and hence tend
to resist. Some organizations overcome this resistance. Others
are still struggling with it.
Since the resistance
of a portion of upper middle management seems to be such a widespread
phenomenon, it was thought to be helpful to point it out to organizations
starting down this path so that they can expect it, plan for
it and ultimately deal with it.
About Corollary
# 3. Vibrant communities of practice attract new talents. In
an environment of turnover, organizations that nurture communities
of practice and let positive passion permeate the workplace are
more attractive to the best talents.
Joe
Katzman: Generally
true, but the best people are mostly attracted by the opportunity
to work with other "stars" they recognize. Communities
spread out that contact among more people, but a roster with
1-2 stars will consistently be more attractive to good people
coming in from outside than a pitch talking about a vibrant community
of one's peers.
Stephen
Denning: The
presence of "stars" obviously can draw members in,
but my experience with the communities that I know is that the
presence of stars is not a necessary or even a common feature
of a vibrant community. The more essential characteristic seems
to be the presence of active practitioners - people who are actually
doing things on a day to day basis, who have some depth and breadth
of experience, and who exhibit passion in their work. The very
nature of a "star" may reflect more of an interest
in personal promotion or media attention than the real learning,
and could in some circumstances be a constraint on sharing.
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Force
Fed KM Doomed to Failure
Paul
Cripwell: I
read your seven laws with great interest. I have always imaged
KM as a somewhat amorphous entity with no clear boundaries or
structure. These seven laws have provided some structure to my
thinking.
My experience with
KM suggests another law, or maybe a truism. KM installed as a
rigorous process is doomed to failure. Or, attempts to force
KM will be met with resistance.
Instead KM must
be implemented so that knowledge transfer potential is made available.
My experience suggests that schemes along this line are usually
cheaper and easier.
To put a story to
it:
The other day I
was at the Travel Clinic for an update dose of shots for my African
excursions and on the wall was a map of the world with a little
sign encouraging patients to put a dot on the country they are
visiting. I asked the doctor about this. He said that the staff
had found the waiting area was always dull and boring with no
lively activity. Putting up a map "might" create a
meeting between two people with a common country interest. There
are now occasional lively discussions in the waiting area.
He has created a
situation where knowledge transfer can occur.
In relation to my
earlier comments, this is an easy and cheap approach. No one
is "required" to talk about their trip.
Stephen
Denning: I
would tend to agree that KM installed as a rigid process would
be doomed to failure (a rigorous process could perhaps be flexible
and I'd be less sure about that.)
And attempts to
force KM - without people agreeing that it makes sense - will
be met with resistance and almost certain failure. Nevertheless
I would also say that there is a role for leadership in marking
the path for the future and communicating that persuasively to
the organization so that managers and staff genuinely see this
as a better way. As I have argued in my book, The Springboard,
and on my website, the most effective way to achieve this is
through storytelling.
And yes, I love
your story about the Travel Clinic! It neatly captures the way
in which an ingenious manager can through the simplest of tools
create an environment where sharing occurs naturally and easily
without a whole lot of expenditure and fuss. Thanks for sharing
this story!
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Knowledge:
Linear Flow or Whirl of Serendipity?
Jerry
Ash: In
another forum I have been lurking in, I have been observing a
debate about whether or not there is a "knowledge chain"
just as there is/was a "supply chain" in the old economics.
I admit I've only been scanning this discussion, but in my mind
it becomes a question of whether or not the knowledge asset flows
in a sequence - down, up, horizontally, diagonally, or along
the lines of an organizational chart? Or, does knowledge whirl
about in a pool of serendipity?
Stephen
Denning: When
we are talking about deep or complex knowledge, I am inclined
to think that it is more generally the latter than the former.
Knowledge comes from unexpected sources in unexpected sequences,
and grows in the course of interaction, rather than in any simple
linear flow. Certainly with innovation, serendipity is going
to be a big part of it.
Whether it "whirls
about," I'm not sure about the image as I can't quite visualize
the whirling as it kind of implies that the knowledge is whirling
on its own rather than as part of an interaction between people.
Are there other
ways to describe it?
John Seely Brown
talks about two people in a dialogue where the conversation "spirals
up" to a new level of understanding, in which the outcome
is neither the tacit knowledge of one person or the other but
is, in fact, some new understanding which is the joint product
of the conversation, i.e., some new knowledge is created
in the process of interaction. I kind of like the "spiraling
up" image, although it's the conversation that spirals up,
not the knowledge. Maybe the problem is in thinking or speaking
of knowledge as a substance that flows about an organization.
It's not that kind of thing.
With simpler kinds
of knowledge, the situation might be more linear. For instance,
if you want to know when do trains leave from London to Devon,
the question is directed to British Rail and the answer comes
back in a predictable linear fashion. No one else knows and there
is (hopefully) no serendipity involved.
Jerry
Ash: If
the flow of knowledge isn't always linear, then, does "knowledge
mapping" make any sense at all?
Stephen
Denning:
Knowledge mapping may make more sense when the knowledge is about
simple information, but much less when the knowledge is deep
or complex. My own experience with knowledge mapping generally
is that as an activity, the knowledge mapper learns a great deal,
but the resulting map is generally not very useful to anyone
else, because the map is so complicated that it is hard for someone
to understand who didn't go through the process of mapping the
knowledge. As a result, the usefulness of knowledge mapping is
often overestimated.
Jerry
Ash: If
you can't map it, how can you "manage" it?
Stephen
Denning:
My own take is that you can no more manage knowledge anyway -
any more than you can manage love or friendship or courage or
piety. You can manage people and you can organize environments
where knowledge sharing is encouraged, but strictly speaking
you can't manage knowledge. That's why in the World Bank we have
shifted away from the term, "knowledge management"
and use "knowledge sharing" instead. Other companies
have made similar moves.
Jerry
Ash: I share
your view of the futility of managing knowledge and now you know
why we call ourselves the Association of Knowledgework,
not Knowledge Management. Still, if knowledge is our most
valuable asset, companies who have danced around the term KM,
still identify their knowledge assets, organize them and develop
strategies for converting them into real value. That's management.
Seems to me our
rejection of the term "knowledge management" is more
political than actual. Seems to me it's not the idea of "managing"
we need to worry about as much as how we "manage"
our intellectual assets. I know the "spin" is important,
but I keep thinking spin is not quite as important as the way
we manage - oops, I mean - share our intellectual assets.
Steve, I really
do mean that, but I am being a bit of a "devil's advocate
here.
Tornado
a Good Metaphor for Knowledge
Hock-Seng
Tay writes:
"At one time, I used the tornado as an example. What is
at the center of the spiral or core is very clean and unlike
that on the circumference. If you watch a twister, at one scene
toward the end when the tornado crosses the path of the victim,
the camera looks up into the sky and it is a clear tunnel, with
a very nice feeling."
Stephen
Denning
comments: I like the tornado image a lot and I agree that the
center of knowledge sharing in an organization may be much calmer
than the front lines where knowledge sharing takes place, where
there will be many unexpected interactions and phase changes.
Hock-Seng
Tay describes
three steps toward "wisdom management."
- We learn something
new and understand and form or create certain competencies (Information
world).
- We share what we
have learned to strengthen it and often under control, as the
driving force is in place, depending on the step 1, (this is)
how information is absorbed (Knowledge Domain).
- We teach (that
we should) put sharing back into the cycle and repeat the whole
thing all over again from step 1. This is the part I have been
working on for many years, as Wisdom Management.
Stephen
Denning:
Wisdom can be defined as a kind of "knowledge about knowledge
management," although there are other uses of the word.
Some use it in the sense of an attitude towards the world. An
interesting book on the subject of wisdom is "Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins and Development"
edited by Robert Sternberg, Cambridge UP, 1990.
Hock-Seng
Tay writes
that when he started KM within his group (more than) eight years
ago his organization branded him crazy! And mad!
Stephen
Denning:
Join the club. You are in good company. I like Albert Einstein's
quote: "If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no
hope for it." What Einstein is implying is that any genuinely
new and valuable idea is going to seem absurd to people when
they first hear it. One implication is that if an idea that comes
along doesn't seem absurd, then one can suspect that the idea
is either not genuinely new or not valuable.
Hock-Seng
Tay: Have
you looked at MG Taylor Corporation"s work? There are a
number of diagrams there that I used to move my group into KM
(much) faster, as I used them as tools. Go to their website.
Stephen
Denning:
Thanks for the reference. I went to the site and it does have
some interesting material. Its discussion of the difference between
zero-sum game into an infinite game draws on James Carse's wonderful
book on Finite and Infinite Games, published in 1986. Although
written in a somewhat different context, the spirit is the same.
I tended to find
the diagrams somewhat less informative than the prose, as it
is difficult to depict complicated ideas in diagrams. I agree
that the overlapping circles and curves (which imply ecology)
are better than the straight line drawings with boxes and arrows
(which imply that the organization functions like an engineered
machine), but even the circular drawings tend to oversimplify
a good deal.
Hock-Seng
Tay: To
me, knowledge is changing so fast; so, why map it? Lots of energy
is wasted in this. Why (not) direct this (energy toward) some
other areas that can be of better use? It will map itself automatically
if the force behind the KM is in place and is spiraling. I spend
only about 10% of my overall KM time on this.
Stephen
Denning:
As you will have seen from my earlier postings, I agree that
knowledge mapping often has somewhat limited returns and so I
agree with the priority that you assign to it.
Hock-Seng
Tay: Now
I manage and control the knowledge and do gain some leadership
in this and make sharing unconsciously happen. But the moment
I make this known, the whole process stops. This is part of the
chaos that is in place. Never change or touch the strange attractor,
unless it wants changes.
Stephen
Denning:
The zen-like wisdom of these thoughts is a hard thing to communicate
in organizations in the West today without sounding obscure or
inscrutable, but I agree with the thrust of what you are saying.
Thanks, Hock-Seng,
for such a wonderfully rich contribution to this dialogue!
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Storytelling
Must Be Truthtelling
Carol
Tucker writes:
An awful lot can be learned about an organization by listening
to the stories that are being told. It is a time honored practice
to regale the new employee with tales of "stuff" that
has happened in the past; it is how the corporate culture is
transmitted to newcomers. Stories are the track record of past
actions, and they speak much louder than words.
And when the stories
do not match the declared values, it is the perception created
by the stories that will take precedence and linger. If the president/CEO
tells you that s/he is interested in his/her people taking risks
and growing by learning from their mistakes - that is an expression
of value. But if the story you hear from the EVP/COO is how that
VP in sales was let go after the new product line flopped, how
willing are you going to be to take a risk?
Stephen
Denning:
I agree completely with the primacy that people give to stories
over abstract declarations of "values." Narrative is
something we master at the age of about two years old and we
use it throughout our life as a kind of native language. We have
abstract language beaten into us around the age of eight, and
we learn it as a kind of foreign language. But we generally remain
faithful to our native language and understand the world through
the stories that we hear or that we tell. We tend to find abstract
language tiring and boring whereas we find stories refreshing
and energizing because stories focus on what is new and unexpected.
We tend to translate what we hear in the (foreign) abstract language
into our native narrative language, i.e. stories.
Hence if the president/CEO
wants the message about innovation to stick, he/she needs to
tell a true story about how innovation and risktaking were truly
rewarded in that organization. If there is no such true story
to tell, then he/she is wasting his/her breath in talking about
the value placed on innovation. He/she needs to get out and change
the organizational environment so that there are true stories
to tell about the value placed on innovation. Actions speak louder
than words and once the actions occur, stories will start to
spread spontaneously on the underground current of storytelling
which is the lifeblood of corporate culture.
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Size
Limits for Effective CoPs
Noreen
Kelly writes:
A key consideration in Charles Ehin's "Unleashing Intellectual
Capital" is that humans are physiologically incapable of
developing and maintaining mutually beneficial voluntary collaborative
relationships within groups much larger than 150 people. The
author points out that in larger groups, relationships become
fragmented, ties of common interest cannot be adequately sustained,
and hierarchical structures begin to prevail. He concludes that,from
a human nature perspective, small size is absolutely essential
for the generation of high levels of social and intellectual
capital in organizations.
The author goes
on to state that communities should be formed around core competencies.
Steve, this author's model seems to be in line with your "laws
of KM." Thoughts?
Stephen
Denning:
I agree that there are limits to the size of viable communities.
This is related to the fact that there are limits on how many
people you can get to know and trust. I know that people like
Malcolm Gladwell and others argue that the limit is around 150
people. I wonder whether the upper limit is not closer to 500,
at least where efforts are made to enhance trust and where technology
is used to make people more accessible than they would be if
they had to meet physically to communicate every time. My guess
is that where trust levels are very low, it may be that the limit
may be quite a bit smaller than 150 people. But in any event,
I agree that there is a limit, whatever the actual size might
turn out to be.
And yes, I agree
that communities should generally be formed around core competencies,
although there may also be areas other than competency around
which communities can be usefully formed, e.g. areas of
interest and areas which are cross-cutting in nature (e.g.
environmental issues). Communities that cut across disciplines
may in fact turn out to be among the high value communities,
since major innovations often come from outside any specific
discipline, not from within the discipline. People within the
same discipline tend to share the same professional assumptions
and so can be blind to what may be apparent to "outsiders"
or those from a different discipline.
Editor's Note: This exchange led to a
new thread in the AOK Knowledge Management/Strategy Community
of Practice Discussion Group, which may be synthesized later
into a separate white paper.
Thank
You
Jerry
Ash: This
concludes the "Conversation with Stephen Denning,"
an icon of best practices in knowledge leadership at the World
Bank and author of "The
Springboard," a wonderful book that shares the journey
Steve took in transforming a world financial institution into
a repository of knowledge assets to the benefit of developing
countries throughout the world.
On behalf of the
members of the Association of Knowledgework, I thank you Steve,
for the valuable time and knowledge you have shared with us these
three weeks. It is significant - in and of itself, and it is
significant in that it has catapulted AOK into a monthly program
of appearances from "stars" and "rising stars"
in our three Communities of Practice (CoPs).
We also thank your
World Bank colleague and our AOK fellow member Michel Pommier
for the idea of this exchange and Lesley Shneier, the third author
of the draft "Laws of Knowledge Management"
for permission to reproduce this draft in the AOK White Papers.
I want to encourage
the three of you to continue the task of developing something
so simple as the "Laws of Knowledge Management." While
we all understand that there can be no cookbook, we are in deep
need of a primer that will lay out for all of us (veteran and
newbie alike), and in the simplest terms, the basics of a knowledge-driven
strategy. We need a definition of knowledge management that will
roll off our tongues smoothly and with such confidence that our
audiences have no doubt that this is not just another management
fad and that we are clear as to our meaning. And we need to develop
the skill of storytelling, to transform the complex terms of
knowledge work into understandable and embraceable concepts.
Proceed with your
"Laws," and we will follow by memorizing and repeating
every word!
It is also a great
thrill for me to announce that Stephen Denning has become a full
member of AOK. So, we are not saying goodbye to Steve. We're
saying "hello, and welcome as a fellow AOKer." It also
means, that the dialogue is not totally closed. Anyone who wishes
to return to the subject matter of this conversation, will be
able to do so in open forums. I know Steve plans to be one of
our most valued and active members. Thank you, Steve.
Thanks also to those
members who have engaged in the "Conversation with Stephen
Denning."
And finally, I want
to remind you that the next "Conversation" begins February
12, 2001, with Debra M. Amidon, founder of Entovation International.
I have been privileged to synthesize several of Debra's works
into a paper which has now been published as an
AOK White Paper. Go "do your homework now," and
get ready to engage in the conversation.
She will be with
us for three weeks in the Knowledge Architecture/Structure CoP,
and her vision of Knowledge-Innovation Architecture will frame
the scope of content for the KA/Structure CoP for the foreseeable
future. If you are not a member of AOK, join
now.
Participants
Our thanks also
go to the participants in the Conversations with Stephen Denning:
- Jerry Ash, AOK
chief executive
- Paul Cripwell,
J.P. Cripwell Associates, Canada
- Denham Grey, CEO,
Grey Matter, Inc.
- Joe Katzman, Senior
Consultant, KPMG Consulting LP, Canada
- Noreen Kelly, Knowledge
Management Specialist, Baxter Healthcare
- Cris McEntee, EVP,
American College of Cardiology
- Larry Rosenthal,
PhD, Deputy EVP and COO, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons
- David Skyrme, Principal,
Entovation International, UK
- Hock Seng Tay,
Head, Business Knowledge Group, Singapore Economic Development
Group
- Jack Vinson, Engineering
Knowledge Strategist, Pharmacia Corporation
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