T1-5 High-Octane Knowledge Products by a Development Organization

Imagine: the top managers and executives of a development-oriented organization are ready to listen to you about KM. They are open to KM but they want to be sure that KM will benefit their organization. They are all busy and although it is difficult to bring them together, you succeeded in scheduling a one-hour slot for a KM activity you will design and execute. What will you do?

I was actually faced with this situation in two instances: a regional inter-governmental organization and a United Nations regional office. What I did then I now call “Zeroing in on High-Octane Knowledge Products”.

Development-oriented organizations are after results and outcomes that are far more complex than those of private corporations. Their stakeholders (the equivalent of “customers” for private corporations) pursue varied interests and agendas, operate at different levels (some are at the community and local level, some are at the national level, and others may be at the bilateral, regional or international level) and wield different types and magnitudes of power (financial clout of donors, regulatory clout of governments, military power of rebels and militias, local monopoly power of dominant businessmen, etc.).

The process I designed and found quite effective proceeded as follows:

1. Brief lecture (5 minutes): using prepared PowerPoint presentation on what is “knowledge” (assets that enable effective action) and “knowledge management.”
2. Small-group workshop (20 minutes) on the first question: “List three of your most important stakeholders, and for each one, what important action does your organization want them to do more effectively?” The group outputs are written in large kraft or Manila paper and posted where everyone can read. If there are 5 groups, there will be 15 important stakeholder-actions (duplication can occur across small group outputs).
3. Voting (5 minutes): Each participant is given a red ball pen and he/she is asked to read all the important stakeholder-action pairs listed by all the groups. He/she selects three which he/she regards as the most important, and writes a red asterisk on each of the three.
4. Plenary discussion (15 minutes) on the following questions: “Which stakeholder-action pairs garnered the highest votes? Do you agree or disagree? Comments? Did we miss any important stakeholder-action pair?”
5. Last question followed by plenary discussion (15 minutes): “What knowledge product/service (existing or still to be innovated) of your organization can best support each of the top three stakeholder-action pair?” Those are “high-octane knowledge products” or services the organization is producing or can produce.

The logic follows from the same KM framework discussed in the F Series of my blogs (and the same color-coding also applies).

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My observations:

• The workshop illustrates the principle that knowledge enables more effective action, and makes this concrete via the concept of “knowledge product” or “knowledge service.”
• Best ideas tend to come from the topmost executives, most likely because they are the ones more familiar and concerned with stakeholders in relation to the organization’s strategic objectives.
• Development organizations often do not directly produce the desired social outcomes they aim for. What they do is to provide products/services to various development actors or stakeholders who produce or contribute to those outcomes. The workshop is a good way to prioritize and identify the greatest social value-adding outputs (or “high-octane knowledge products“) that the organization can produce.
• The exercise can lead to identifying a high-octane knowledge product/service that the organization is not yet doing, i.e. it can help them set specific targets for R&D or innovation/design of new knowledge products/services.

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Listening Where Mental Models of People Conflict

Two people with conflicting or incompatible mental models will likely:

• See different slices of the real world (read blog post “Q7- We Found the Enemy: Our Own Concepts!”);
• May be looking at the same thing but will interpret what they see differently;
• Use different language, or use the same words but with different meanings; and
• Will not be aware of all the above and will not know why they are unable to communicate productively (unless they practice internal listening and the rest of the discipline of “Mental Models” in Learning Organizations).

If they harbour mental models of each other that the other does not agree with (“On Michael Jackson, or Our Mental Models of People We Know”) then listening stops and the erosion of goodwill starts; further communication is unworkable.

What are the options in such a case?

1. Option 1: Stop communication. To preserve goodwill, an agreement to acknowledge the fact that they have basic differences and to respect each other’s mental models instead of -
2. Option 2: Use force so that the mental model of the more powerful will prevail or
3. Option 3: Agree to obey the authority and judgment of a third party or
4. Option 4: Use universally-accepted protocols for validating, eliminating or selecting mental models.

Unfortunately, protocols for Option 4 are not yet fully developed. The scientific method is a rather well-developed and tested set of protocols for validating mental models, but applied only to empirical validation or only on “what is” and “what works” (in figure below, only right side of Ken Wilber’s quadrants). Knowledge management is engaged in seeking, innovating, developing and re-using “what works”. Sustainable development criteria falls on the lower right quadrant.

Parallel protocols for validation and selection of mental models for the left side of Ken Wilber’s quadrants (see figure below) are not yet fully developed. Protocols for application to validation of experiential data (upper left quadrant) are still being developed in the discipines of transpersonal and paranormal psychology and in phenomenological research. There is no consensus on how “individual benefit” (upper left quadrant) is to be defined and assessed. What does it consist of? Money? Social opportunities? Learning and realizing human potential? Security? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a step in clarifying this area. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the slew of accessory protocols on other aspects and varieties of human rights is a notable contribution on the lower left quadrant. Surprisingly, the Rotary Club’s “Four-Way Test” fits very well with Ken Wilber’s framework and provides commonly-understandable or laymen criteria for the four quadrants:

I have written about Ken Wilber’s framework and applied it in many ways in past blogs:

• Comparing the expanded KM framework and Wilber’s framework: “Tacit-Group Processes in KM” and “Practical Exercise #15: Ingredients of Effective Group Action”
• Applied to estimation of global stocks of human capital, relationship capital, tangible assets, structural capital and natural capital: “Towards a Global Balance Sheet”
• Applied to understanding learning organizations: “Knowledge Pathways in a Learning Organization”
• Applied to classification of memory: “Four Types of Memory”
• Applied to understand societal megatrends: “Combining Megatrends #1 and #2: the Next Societal Innovations?”
• Applied to evolution of institutions: “Evolving Forms of Governance”
• On the scientific method’s bias for the external world: “A Paradox of 20th Century Scientific Practice”

Cheers!

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KM and Trans-Societal Megatrend #1

Trans-societal Megatrend #1 (see Q14- Naming trans-societal Megatrend #1: “towards yin”?) can be viewed from Ken Wilber’s framework, as in the following diagram.

When we were looking at “Tacit-Group Processes in KM” and “Gaia Consciousness”, we were in fact using Ken Wilber’s framework:

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When we were examining the global balance sheet of tangible and intangible assets (see “Towards a Global Balance Sheet”), we were also using Ken Wilber’s framework:

In fact, the expanded KM framework (see “Practical Exercise: Ingredients of Effective Group Action #15″) emerged from the simple observation that answers to “What are the ingredients of effective group action?” can be grouped in a way from where the commonly-accepted categories of intellectual capital or knowledge assets naturally emerge! Surprisingly, the grouping is consistent with Ken Wilber’s framework.

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Which falls neatly into the categories of intellectual capital:

Now, what we are observing (see Q14- Naming trans-societal Megatrend #1: “towards yin”?) is that there is a global megatrend running across many sectors of society: corporate wealth creation, global economy, community development, educational psychology, national development, national security, attitudes to environment, psychology, international conflicts, religion and organizational dynamics. In other words, the megatrend is trans-societal. It can be summarized as:

What do you think?

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Q24- KM and Power: Constant(?) Bed Fellows

When two persons of unequal power, authority or influence interact, the result is different from those described in my previous blog post (“12 Types of Learning”):

KNOWLEDGE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TWO PERSONS OF UNEQUAL POWER

The root causes of human behavior lie in past experiences (extreme left box in the diagram). Therefore the most effective (or most insidious) method of controlling human behavior over the long term is through training (from earliest childhood) and religious or political indoctrination. The social nature of knowledge implies that groupthink and imposed visions and values are the next most effective mechanisms. “Carrot and stick” (or rewards and punishments) methods achieve shorter-term results.

Power differentials exist everywhere. You see this dynamics as it occurs every day between boss and subordinate, between parent and child, between professor and student, between government and citizens, between a person pointing a gun at another person, etc. Most likely you participate in it too, both from a superordinate position and from a subordinate position in the same day and in the same organization! We are part of the problem! I label it a “problem” because vertical dynamics are easily anti-learning.

We often do the above interaction types out of unconscious habit. If we do it to another who is our equal we appear to him as arrogant, presumptuous or disrespectful. For example, criticism triggers an equally unconscious reaction from the other person of defense, counterattack and debate that result more to mutual irritation than to mutual learning. Praise could appear as patronizing.

The terms “knowledge transfer” and “learning” hardly apply to the interactions in the above diagram, unless we stretch our common understanding of those terms to apply them to hierarchical societies such as North Korea and fundamentalist religious-military groups like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. What happens in these societies is a coerced or indoctrinated replication of belief systems from parent to child, and from leader to follower.

Learning hardly happens or happens slowly. We saw in Q8 (“Wanted: Workable Tools for Voluntary Paradigm Shifting”) that in vertical or hierarchical societies, learning is extremely slow. Below I reproduce the table from Q8. Notice from the table that two factors result to mankind’s very long Unlearning Cycles: (1) institutionalized vested interests and/or (2) institutionalized rules to prevent people from thinking freely.

In real-world organizations, the knowledge dynamics is often a mix of KM-across-power-differentials and KM-across-equals, or what we can call vertical KM and horizontal KM. Leadership and culture affect this mix from organization to organization. Even in development-oriented organizations, this mix shows up clearly in how projects are evaluated. I wrote about the difference between vertical learning and horizontal learning, or between conventional project evaluation and post-project knowledge capture including lessons-learned sessions. Again, the cultural momentum and context of an organization determine how the mix is tilted between vertical and horizontal dynamics:

The challenge is how to develop perspectives and effective tools for conscious shifting of the mix away from vertical towards more of horizontal dynamics. One way is by using military force to shift a nation from dictatorship to democracy, as what President Bush started by invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Another way is to help organizations voluntarily shift towards becoming learning organizations. In Q26 I will write about how this shift has been unconsciously but inexorably taking place over the last three centuries.

What do you think? Do you agree that we may all be participating in this problem?

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12 Types of Learning

To prepare the ground for my next blog post (Q24- KM and power: constant bed fellows), we will use the KM framework introduced in F2 (Intangibles: More Essential for Value Creation) and F5 (A Proposed KM Framework) to look at different ways that we learn.

I have illustrated 10 different ways to apply the KM framework in 10 past blog posts:

• F6- “High-Octane KM” is Demand-Driven KM
• F8- Valuation of Intangible Assets
• F9- Economics of (Unconscious) Learning
• F10- Ensuring ROI of Training
• F11- Cost of Ignorance
• F12- Relationships Do Create Value
• F14- Monitoring and Evaluation of KM for Development
• D10- KM Tools: Qualitative to Quantitative
• Practice Internal Watchfulness (Hint #11)
• Practice Internal Double-Loop Learning (Hint #12)

Delineating the 12 types of learning (see diagram below) will be the 11th illustration of using the KM framework. I am using the same color codings (yellow for knowledge, crimson for action and green for results) as in the above 10 illustrations. This typology refers to the channels or modalities of learning and does not presume whether and how far in fact the knowledge receiver learned (thanks to Bill Kaplan of Washington, D.C. for pointing this out).
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Person A and Person B are co-equal in power, authority and influence. Interactions between people with unequal power are discussed in the next blog post on “KM and Power”. In the diagram, we start with Type 1 at the extreme right and proceed towards the left for Type 2 and the rest.

Type 1 is simply studying What Works Better, where A and B compare results of their actions; the two learn when they discover which action produces better results.

Type 2 or Communal Validation is similar to Type 1 but it involves a community and its protocols for knowledge validation. For example, the scientific community learns and generates new knowledge through scientific protocols on observation of results of actions/experiments up to analysis and interpretation of data. In a community of practitioners (CoP), identification, documentation and transfer of best practice follow similar protocols: results of many similar actions are compared and a “best” practice is identified, documented and shared with the rest of the community. Ken Wilber calls the steps in Type 2 learning as “three strands of valid knowing”; see his books “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” or “A Sociable God”. (Thanks to Mark Wolfe for pointing out that the feedback does reach back to enculturation and training.)

While Communal Validation is a feedback from observed results to mental models (=knowledge, beliefs, paradigms), when we rework our mental models or re-organize what we know (thanks to Katherine Bertolucci for pointing this out) we Reframe how we view the world. This learning process is the feedforward back to observation of results.

Type 3 is similar to Type 1 and 2 but Reflective Practice can involve only one person. Types 1-3 involve feedback or observation of results to improve knowledge and practice. A common variant of Type 3 is Learning from Doing, which happens largely semi-consciously. If you wish to learn more about Type 3, start by reading the book “The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action” by Donald A. Schon.

Type 4 is Presentation where A or B talks and the other listens, such as watching YouTube, listening to a lecture or reading a book. This type of learning is suited for learning concepts but not skills. Discussion occurs when participants take turns in presentation and then proceed to a mix of Type 1 and 2 learning, and oftentimes with Type 5 and 6 thrown in.

Type 5 is Criticism, Praise or Judgment where B — using his own knowledge, beliefs, interests or values — judges a statement or action of A. If A and B do not share the same knowledge, beliefs, interests or values, then A will defend himself based on his own knowledge, beliefs, interests or values. If A and B are co-equal in power, and neither will give up their own knowledge, beliefs, interests or values, or they are unable to shift their discourse towards Type 1-2 or Type 8-12, then the result is —

Type 6 is Debate. Learning can still happen through Type 5 and 6, but this learning is least likely to happen compared to other types. Unfortunately, when one or both of A and B strongly believes he is right, or avoids being proven wrong, or is unable to shift to Types 1-2 or 8-12, then each tries to convince/criticize the other but the other then digs in and defends himself, and the process can degenerate to an ugly downward spiral (I have seen this many times in one of the KM discussion lists). In a debate, the objective is no longer learning but winning, or proving the other person is wrong, or pushing for one’s pet theory or belief. In the end, people hardly learn or change their beliefs as a result of debate; and goodwill is often the casualty. It is unfortunate that many people allow themselves to be drawn into this inutile form of communication. This is common among people holding on to different religious and political beliefs, but I also see it among intelligent people holding on to different academic schools of thought. I wrote about Debate versus Discussion versus Dialogue in a previous blog post. If you want to learn more about the difference between debate, discussion and dialogue, start by reading the book “Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together” by William Isaacs.

Type 7 or Exemplar is when A through his actions and speech models, manifests, demonstrates or acts as exemplar of a knowledge, belief, interest or value such that B learns through observing A. This is the process that occurs during mentoring when the apprentice watches the mentor perform, and when a child watches her parents and teachers. The mentor initiates the learning process not through trying to convince but through demonstrating how certain actions produce desired results.

Type 8 is when A and B consciously and jointly review or revise their Mental Models, underlying assumptions or frameworks that sponsored or led to specific actions or statements. This is one of the five disciplines of a learning organization according to Peter Senge. Learning or changing one’s beliefs is more likely to happen by making our assumptions explicit and examining them together than by trying to convince, argue or attack another person (Types 5 and 6). If you have not read the landmark book “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization” by Peter M. Senge then I suggest you do. John Naisbitt’s “Mind Set! Reset Your Thinking and See the Future” is entertaining to read. A prevalent variant of Type 8 is the unplanned or semi-conscious process whereby two or more people through conversations Reconstruct their shared view of social reality.

Type 9 is Conscious Living, where a person studies why he does what he keeps doing, reflects on his own assumptions and beliefs, and consciously manages how he thinks, perceives, interprets, values and makes daily life decisions. My NGO — the Center for Conscious Living Foundation — has been developing, practicing and teaching tools under this type of learning since 1999. Check our website for more information.

Type 10 is Storytelling and Story Listening, where B shares his experiences with A. If A is able to truly listen, or to listen while suspending his judgments and beliefs, he may understand or appreciate why B thinks and believes the way he does. Then A can discover new ways of looking at the same thing they are both looking at. Check out the book by KM gurus John Seely Brown, Stephen Denning, Katalina Groh, and Laurence Prusak: “Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management.”

Type 11 is Insight or Intuition, when new ideas or thoughts emerge in one’s consciousness — through processes the thinker himself is not clear about — that can provide the basis for better action.

Type 12 or Generative Dialogue is the process where a group of people have reached a level of trust and skill in performing Types 8-11 such that they are able as a group to reflect and explore how and why they think, see and interact the way they do, consciously discover their limiting assumptions and biases, reframe a problem or issue, revise or improve their mental models, and generate new options or solutions. Learning is more likely in Types 8-12 than in Types 5-6 which are hampered by inability or unwillingness to reflect and to suspend judgment. I have written about Generative Dialog in a previous blog post. Besides Isaacs’ book mentioned above, check out also Adam Kahane’s “Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening and Creating New Realities.”

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Cutting the (Complex) Gordian Knot

According to Greek legend, when Alexander the Great was only 23 and not yet well-known, his campaign in Asia Minor brought him to the town of Gordium in 333 BC. Its former king, Gordius, tied an extremely complicated knot in the local temple to Zeus. An oracle foretold that whoever untied the knot would rule all of Asia. Many tried to untie the knot, unsuccessfully. Upon arriving at the temple, Alexander drew his sword and cut the Gordian Knot. Over the next decade, he went on to conquer Asia up to India.

By painter Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743 - 1811) -from Wikimedia Commons

An example of professionals faced with the serious responsibility and task of making sense of complexity are intelligence professionals working for national governments. When I took a temporary leave from academic life to accept appointment as Assistant Director-General of the National Security Council (NSC) of the Philippine Government in 1992-1998, I had the rare opportunity and pleasure to meet and participate in warm fraternal intelligence exchanges (=knowledge sharing) with my counterparts in the national security and intelligence establishments of the governments of Singapore, Brunei, United States, Taiwan and South Korea (=CoP or community of practice).

The task of a national intelligence analyst/security adviser is formidable. National interest is at stake. He must assist the President in:

• Discerning new global and regional patterns and trends
• Making forecasts or estimates
• Interpreting the statements and actions of actual/potential hostile groups
• Estimating next moves of major political and economic actors
• Assessing a multitude of risks and threats
• Analyzing the power relations among top government personalities of superpowers
• Assessing potentials, threats and opportunities arising from new and emerging technologies
  Etc.

Do intelligence professionals use complexity theory? Not to my knowledge.

My former NSC boss, General Jose T. Almonte, the Director-General of the National Security Council and the National Security Adviser to President Fidel V. Ramos in 1992-1998, and who has decades of achievements in intelligence work, gave me a valuable technique that is sheer simplicity itself. It seemed to me like “cutting the Gordian Knot” of complexity facing intelligence analysts. He reminded me that people, groups, corporations, political parties, nations, etc. are essentially purposive actors; and so he advised me to study only two things: CAPABILITIES and INTENTIONS of international and intranational actors.

Through this blog post, I acknowledge him as the source and inspiration of the model I proposed in my paper on “Organizational Energy” — KNOW-HOW X WILLING-TO — that I wrote about two blog posts back, as well as the MOTIVATION factor in the CCLFI expanded KM framework. My previous blog post listed research findings that motivating knowledge workers is a key success factor in KM initiatives.

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Q21- Rediscovering a Core(?) of Human Capital: “Sophia”

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In July 2006 one of the modules in a KM workshop CCLFI facilitated for top executives of a mining company in Mongolia was on “Mining Tacit Knowledge.” The workshop participants were the two senior VPs, all the VPs and senior directors.

We invited three managers who are known in the company to be excellent motivators. One of the them was the CEO. We arranged an informal setting where the three, sitting comfortably in sofas facing the participants, were asked to tell their stories on “How I motivate my people.” A Mongolian lady served as my interpreter in the course.

As their stories unfolded, I could see how interested and engaged were all the participants. The stories showed vignettes of their difficulties and victories in motivating their subordinates. From the faces of the participants and their responses (interpreted for me) the process was obviously a moving experience for everyone. At some point I asked my lady interpreter to stop and we just listened and allowed the interaction to proceed without the interruptions when she interprets for me. It was such a solemn deeply-felt group experience that the CEO later asked, “Has my management team changed so much after one workshop?”

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In January 2007 I personally met Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka. I served as Conference Rapporteur and Editor of conference proceedings for the International Productivity Conference 2007: From Brain to Business sponsored by the Asian Productivity Organization. He read a paper on “Strategy as Distributed Phronesis: Knowledge Creation for the Common Good.” He introduced a new term “phronesis” and defined it as “the virtuous habit of making decisions and taking action that serves the common good, the capability to find a “right answer in a particular context.” He added that phronesis is “practical wisdom or prudence” or the experiential knowledge to make context-specific decisions based on one’s own value or ethics (high-quality tacit knowledge).”

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In 2002, CCLFI documented best practices for UNDP in sustainable community development. Our first intention was to produce a manual or “How To” booklets (structural capital), but we discovered that manualization is not enough. The success of a sustainable community development project is also attributable to a talents of the community leader who ran the project. Now, how do one capture those talents in a document? We produced “vignettes” to accompany the “How To” manuals. A vignette consists quotations and pictures of the community leader as he or she tells stories about the project. The vignette shows glimpses or snipets of the leader’s character (human capital) that contributed to project success. We also shot videos. We invited ten of the best practitioners to a face-to-face Lessons Learned Meeting (LLM) where together they shared their stories, compared notes and learned from each other.

When you meet a best practitioner-leader of a successful sustainable community development project you notice immediately that he or she has “it” — that mix of qualities I can describe as a compelling sense of purpose, quietly inspirational, a “can do” attitude that is infectious, humble but strong in will, a deep kind of reflectiveness that shows in how he or she views the world and the people in it and a persona that naturally motivates people. It is a mix of intrapersonal and interpersonal qualities. We at CCLFI chose the term “sophia” to denote this mix of core personal qualities of a successful community leader.

From our expanded KM framework, I believe that the above stories are touching on a core of human capital and relationship capital where these two forms of capital intersect motivational factors. It consists of an inner drive or enthusiasm (an intrapersonal quality) and an ability to lead or motivate (an interpersonal quality).

Have you encountered a similar experience with exceptional leaders? Tell us about it.

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Tacit-Group Processes in KM

Tacit-group processes and factors in the lower left quadrant in the expanded KM framework (see diagram below reproduced from the previous blog post) are often the weaknesses in KM initiatives.

Expanded KM framework at the planetary level

The following are examples:

• An e-group for knowledge sharing is set up, but knowledge sharing hardly occurs because the intended users hardly know and trust each other and do not share similar goals.
• A knowledge fair organized by a vice president is hardly attended by staff under another vice president because of factionalism between the two vice presidents.
• A know-it-all CEO shoots down new ideas, generating an organizational culture of anti-suggestion and anti-innovation.
• Communication and productivity of a team suffered after an egotistical new member started to ruin the working relationships among the team members.
• An organization-wide KM program was not fully accepted by all senior managers and started to falter; a mid-course evaluation by an outside consultant diagnosed the problem as lack of change management that should have accompanied the processes of design and roll-out of the KM program.

The lower-left quadrant is about TACIT-GROUP processes and factors: trust, shared goal or mutual agreement, unity (or factionalism), shared vision (e.g. Gaia consciousness), organizational culture, teamwork, mutual understanding of a group work process, general acceptance, etc. “Ba” of Ikujiro Nonaka belongs to this quadrant.

According to philosopher Ken Wilber’s integral framework, there are four types of knowledge. There are “Four Faces of Truth.”

Compare Ken Wilber’s integral framework with the expanded KM framework. The two frameworks are consistent (I wrote about this in a paper to be published by EADI/IKM).

Now, back to the importance of tacit-group processes. Without Gaia consciousness among earth’s inhabitants, I doubt how they can solve common problems such as the global environmental crisis. Ken Wilber said that resolution of this crisis lies in tacit-group processes:

“Before we can even attempt an ecological healing, we must first reach a mutual understanding and mutual agreement among ourselves as to the best way to collectively proceed. In other words, the healing impulse comes from championing not functional fit but mutual understanding and interior qualitative distinctions. Anything short of that, no matter what the motives, perpetuates the fracture.”

Peter Senge summarized his best-seller book “The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization” by affirming the fundamental importance of tacit-group processes:

“The central message of The Fifth Discipline is… that our organizations work the way they work, ultimately, because of how we think and how we interact.”

With apologies to Peter Senge, what is the message when we replace the word “organization” with “planetary society”?

The central message of The Fifth Discipline is… that our planetary society works the way it works, ultimately, because of how we think and how we interact.

Is ours a “learning planetary society”? If not, are we getting there?

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Q17- Losses in Community Assets: the Mother is Suckling(?) from the Baby!

In Q16 I quoted Gregory Bateson,

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.”

Accordingly, the next six blog posts Q17 to Q22 will apply the expanded KM framework to several major world problems:

— Underdevelopment of communities and countries
— Corruption
— Threat of nuclear war
— Sustainable development in local communities
— Israel versus Hamas and Hezbollah
— Global financial crisis.

Before we address our first problem of underdevelopment of communities and countries, let us apply the expanded KM framework to communities:

Assets of Communities

At the conference on “Knowledge Architectures for Development” sponsored by the Singapore Management University last March 2008, we presented a paper on “Knowledge for Poverty Alleviation” or KPA framework. This framework uses the expanded KM framework. We showed that successful anti-poverty projects can be explained better using this framework. We also showed how the KPA framework can be used in looking at the flow of assets to/from a typical rural town in the Philippines:

• The brightest secondary school graduates, their valedictorians and salutatorians, migrate to Manila (loss of human capital);
• Mineral and timber resources are harvested mostly by Manila-based or companies based in developed countries (loss of natural capital) but little of the economic proceeds return back to the community. The Regalian Doctrine (state ownership of public natural resources) continues to support and perpetuate this sucking of natural resources from small rural towns to Manila or to developed countries abroad;
• A small fraction of taxes collected by the national government returns back to the community in terms of public services and infrastructures (drain in fiscal resources);
• Local branches of Manila-based banks are more deposit-takers than business lenders (net flow of private savings to Manila);
• Scientists and researchers from outside come in to study the geological, biological, sociological, cultural and other assets of the community, and publish the results outside or bring the geological, biological and cultural specimens for personal or commercial uses outside the community often without the knowledge and permission of local people (biopiracy, siphoning of sociological knowledge, stealing cultural artifacts, geological exploration without FPIC or “free, prior and informed consent”).
• Manila residents who are more knowledgeable of government procedures obtain titles/patents to local land ahead of unwitting local people who had been in traditional possession of land for decades (“land grabbing”).

All these are happening all the time and in most rural Philippine communities, yet most people hardly notice it! (because they do not have the mental model, the expanded KM framework, which enables seeing). How fantastic and unbelievable that so many people cannot see!

Galtung is right. Manila is draining assets from rural Philippine communities! The mother is suckling from the baby!

What do you think?

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Practical Hint #16: Knowledge Transfer from Retiring Senior Staff

Let us apply to a practical situation the expanded KM framework presented in the previous blog post.

Suppose that many experienced senior staff will be retiring from your organization within 12 months. Much knowledge will soon be lost from the organization. As a result, the quality of strategic decision making would deteriorate. Some risks, less visible to junior staff, could materialize to actual loses. Opportunities could be missed. Productivity and revenues would likely suffer.

To minimize loses in this situation, you can transfer knowledge from senior retiring staff. The expanded KM framework suggests that we must pay attention to five areas:

1. Human capital: Mentoring of understudy (over several months) on —

• How important decisions are made
• Practice in performing critical phases of a business process, problem solving
• “Tricks of the trade”
• “War stories” e.g. about how past crises were successfully handled

The understudy must be selected considering non-technical skills required of the job such as ability to communicate, people skills, team player, etc.

2. Structural capital: Turnover of records such as —

• Work folders and work files, emails archive, Internet bookmarks
• Manuals, work templates and tools, problem-solution logbook
• Important information sources, etc.

3. Relationship capital:

• The senior retiring staff introduces the junior understudy to important external business contacts and internal stakeholders especially through informal or social occasions; this process can be repeated over several months until the external or internal stakeholders accept and trust the junior understudy to an extent that the senior retiring staff judges as sufficient for the junior understudy to take over the performance of relevant functions.
• Turnover of telephone directory
• Confidential briefing of understudy on personalities, strengths/weaknesses and relationship styles of key business, network and internal contacts
• Membership in knowledge and other networks; log-in and password to company-owned subscriptions, networks, etc.

4. Tangible assets:

• Company laptop or work station
• Books
• Company communication devices: mobile telephone, etc.

5. Motivational factors:

• The understudy must be selected considering not only technical qualification factors but also personal interest or enthusiasm in the job, whether the job is along his chosen career path, whether the new boss and colleagues in the job are likely to support the understudy, and presence of a personal talent that will be better utilized in the new job.

The above formula must be adapted to the nature of the job. In marketing or sales, relationship capital is more important. In jobs requiring very specialized skills, human capital is important. Motivational factors are always important. In high-tech services, technology (which is part of tangible assets) is important.

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