Was KM introduced too early?

I just wrote this down after some reading. I will use it in further blog posts, but it already gives you some ideas what my thoughts are about KM

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The question is being asked every now and then. LinkedIn had a great discussion about it (more than 300 messages) some months ago and lately the website for KMers started a topic about it. And there are not so many people who have a clear answer to it. So neither me. However, I will try to make sense of the question - just like all the others who are thinking - should we have a world without knowledge management?

My answer is NO!

Probably I am not objective to mingle myself in this discussion, as I attended a MSc in KM and work as independent consultant in knowledge sharing and learning. However, I want to use some clear arguments why I think we should continue working with KM.

Cybernetics
For many years organizations have been seen as cybernetic systems. The aim of these systems is that the ability to predict is crucial to the ability to control an organization. Cybernetics is an application of the engineer’s idea of control to human activity by using negative feedback to create equilibrium. Negative feedback simply means that the outcome of a previous action is compared with some desired outcome and the difference between the two is fed back as information that guides the next action in such a way that the difference is reduced until it disappears (Stacey, 2005).

A simple example of a cybernetic system is a domestic heating system. These systems consists of an appliance and a regulator. The regulator contains a device that sense room temperature connected to a device that turns on and off the heating appliance. When the room temperature falls below this desired level, the control censor detects the discrepancy with a positive action - it turns the heat on. When the temperature rises above the desired level the opposite happens. So, the system keeps the room temperature close to a stable level over time utilizing negative feedback.

The key point about all forms of equilibrating systems is that they are regular, orderly and predictable. This means there are clear-cut links between cause and effect. And these links used to be manageable for organizations. For a long period organizations were thinking that they could keep the organization at, or near to, some desired state. That’s why the cybernetics is the science of control, and management is the profession of control. 

However, our environment that gives out the links is changing in a very fast pace (due to Internet and mobile communication) and organizations are increasingly moving from a simple/complicated organizational context to a complex/chaotic organizational context (see Cynefin framework). Cause and effect cannot be predicted and there are no right answers. It is like an emergent instructive pattern. As a result, I do think we should not think of management (as in knowledge management) as a way to control.

To come back to the question I asked in the beginning: should we have a world without knowledge management? As I just outlined, the world is changing in a fast pace. Due to Internet and mobile communication it is easier to stay connected with all the corners of the world. The has lead - among other things - to globalization. Due to globalization organizations are facing more competition from organizations located in the Americas, Asia and Europe at the same time. With such a murderous competition, it is important to be innovative. Being innovative means you should look for territory you never were before and therefore you need the latest knowledge and be able to make sense of new knowledge. This gives you an unique position in the market. But being unique, is that not the opposite of trying to get an equilibrium with the environment. Something we do when we manage in cybernetic systems? Yes! It is the opposite and therefore I think that knowledge management has a hard time to integrate well in the organizations. The organization should redevelop itself. Create a new way of thinking, a new way of working and a new way of designing. If this could be established - to create a way for organizations to make sense of complexity and chaos - the so-called knowledge management practices can be better be implemented in organizations and let organizations becoming cutting-edge with the latest knowledge. So currently, KM means change management - the change to new thinking, working and designing!




How chaos makes you smarter: an exploration in self-organized criticality and leadership

The NewScientist recently (29 June 2009) published the article 'Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain'. This article highlights a breakthrough in the current thinking of why every now and again the brain suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise and that without any clue you got that particular idea at that particular time. Researchers are starting to believe that 'neuro-chaotic states [of the brain] may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than other'.

In the article they refer this process as being on the edge of chaos, or in a state of 'self-organized criticality'. These systems are right on the boundary between stable, orderly behavior, and the unpredictable world of chaos.

Self-organized criticality' means that thoughts grow in an orderly and predicable way until these 'piles' of thoughts just collapse out of nothing. Researchers argue now that this disorder is actually essential to the brain's ability to transmit information and solve problems, because "lying at the critical point allows the brain to rapidly adapt to new circumstances

Image: interrelationships between IM and KM, SLL and DLL, customization and innovation, and ordered and disordered

This article has raised some ideas which should be explored further. Now that we know that self-organizing is essential in order to become more innovative and 'smarter', what is the role of the leader to encourage and implement self-organizing in organizations. Obviously, self-organizing will result in different leadership styles, but how will these new leadership styles look like?

Rumsfeld: A failure in sense-making

Since I read the article written by Snowden and Boone in the Harvard Business Review about the Cynefin framework - among other things a sense-making model for leaders, my interests in this model was enormously. I even successfully applied the Cynefin framework in my research dissertation for an MSc in Information and Knowledge Management in which I have discovered crucial leadership behavior and evidence of how leadership behavior enhances organizational learning processes. I was fascinated by the the various contexts with their characteristics. For instance, when operating in a simple organizational context the knowns are known, in a complicated organizational context the unknowns are known, and even in the complex organizational context the unknowns are unknown. Consequently, leaders should apply different tools and mechanisms to make sense and decide on occuring problems or opportunities, depending on organizational context.

Now I was reading The Times yesterday (October 29) and there was an article written by Rory Bremmer in which he was quoting Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary:

There are known knowns - things we know we know. There are known unknowns ... things we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - things we don't know we don't know

It is interesting that Rumsfeld had used these words, to explain why the US invaded Iraq, and that the Cynefin framework is explaining how leaders should act in these different contexts from simple to chaotic circumstances! Unfortunately I cannot recall when Rumsfeld used this quote, but if it was after the Cynefin was officially published (I think this was in 2003) he would have been a better manager than he now is! But... Is this framework applicable in traditional political frameworks? I think it is, because the approach of the Cynefin framework correspondents with the four mode framework of Choo of decision making (Choo, 2002) that consists of the boundedly rational mode, political mode, process mode, and anarchic mode, which correspondent to simple, complex, complicated, and chaotic contexts respectively.

In next blog message more about this ...