Remixing 2 articles: Wikileaks' US embassy cables and organisational design

On 28 November 2010 I read two articles. At first glance, these 2 articles were not related to each other. But by remixing them in these weblog, they now are!

-------------------------------

I just read an article in the Guardian about the leaked US embassy cables. This article is a terrifying account of current global relationships. However, it also includes an interesting passage which can be linked to the ability of organisations to share knowledge.

Many reports on how the 9/11 attacks could be avoided were emphasising on better information and knowledge sharing among the different intelligence agencies. Therefore, information and knowledge sharing became key in counter-terrorism. More than 5 years after these reports were being published, we can see how intelligent agencies try to become better in information and knowledge sharing, but completely dismiss the interwoven complexities of an environment that promotes information and knowledge sharing. One of these complexities is the culture. And it is obviously that the US intelligent agencies thought they could continue their Cold War culture in a interconnected global world where information and knowledge sharing are so important. The article describes this as follow:

Asked why such sensitive material (the US embassy cables) was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs". He added: "We have been taking aggressive action in recent weeks and months to enhance the security of our systems and to prevent the leak of information".

So, this example of leaking information and knowledge is massive failure from the US (which hopefully will not have any international consequences). It shows that it is not an easy task to just say: and now we will embrace better information and knowledge sharing. In many cases - and probably especially in the case of US governmental agencies - existing systems need to be rebooted first. These Cold War systems cannot embrace the structure and culture of an interconnected and co-evolving system. But from this article it becomes clear that the US intelligent agencies did not want to reboote their way of thinking about organisations. They continue their old thinking by programming ways to 'enhance the security of our systems' rather than that they approach their organisation as a complex system

This brings me to my final comment. At the same day I also read Dave Snowden's latest weblog post of chickens and eggs. In this post he writes:

People make bad systems work by working around them, the problem is that this disguises failure for too long. So when the system does fail, it fails catastrophically ... (and)... Systems that evolve are more successful in managing people than ones that are designed in the abstract.

I think that Dave Snowden perfectly outlines the catastrophically failure of the US intelligent agencies. Furthermore, he also writes that 'at all cost massive and complete re-organisations should be avoided in all cases other than those of catastrophic failure'. So, now that the US government made a catastrophic failure: where will the re-organisation occur?

Painful truth of knowledge management

Today I had a great meeting annex breakfast with a fellow Dutch woman (@manondejongh) who is also living in Denmark.  We met for the first time (thanks to social networking through Twitter) and we figured out we had many common grounds with respect to our professional life. @manondejongh is a communication consultant, PhD candidate in Psychology and very interested to hear more about networks and knowledge sharing.

Among other things, we talked about my background.  With a BSc in Information Communication Technologies I have been educated in the necessity of storing and sharing enterprise content.  As a result, I developed, managed and maintained several information systems. However, after finishing a MSc in Information and Knowledge Management I have specialised my in organisations as complex adaptive systems. This brings me to the point that in only the last sentence I manage to create the biggest contradiction by arguing that knowledge should be managed in complex adaptive systems.

I believe that my work will less consist of projects/initiatives that try to manage the knowledge in an organisation. My work is to facilitate the flow of knowledge through the organisation. This also correspondents with two current development in my consultancy work:

1. Moving corporate intranets to personal learning environments by letting staff members organize and use their own information sources and let them successfully participate in social networks through which they can easily share their valuable information. The biggest task in this is to mentor, support and guide staff members in the use of different tools (information literacy)
2. Examining what the role is of a leader in complex adaptive systems.  Hopefully I can soon inform you more about this research as I have submitted a research proposal to an university.

So, am I working in knowledge management, or knowledge facilitation? I still believe I work in both disciplines. However, management in knowledge management should be seen as a discipline that should be included on the agenda of top management. In order to be successful in knowledge facilitation, it is not desirable to park it as a practice for a department. It should be included from the top, seen as a part of the whole culture and therefore it is crucial to involve the management in the discipline. Perhaps we can start using the term ...? (any ideas?)