Delta Knowledge

GO forth and Complexify!

2010-01-29T12:42:00.003+11:00

A while ago David Snowden of Cognitive Edge commented that Chess and Go can be used to highlight the differences between the “Complicated” and “Complex” domains respectively.

happyseaurchin commented that it would be good to understand more about Go and then talk about it, and I decided I was the man to make such a thing happen given I have played Go since my teen years.

This week at KMLF in Melbourne, I had the opportunity to run a session and it seems everybody enjoyed it very much. I had such a great time I am looking forward to opportunities to run another one and spread word, both about Go and Complexity theory.

Below are the slides from the presentation. Apologies for the fonts. It seems Slideshare didn't like the one I used in PowerPoint. I will post an animated version with audio in a few days when the editing is finished.

Stuart French KMLF Complexity And The Game Of Go

View more presentations from Stuart French.

For more about Go, check out the article on Wikipedia or an interactive tutorial. This 10-day introductory course is for the brave souls who would like to get a good grip on how such a simple game can be so complex!

Trust, weak ties and building effective networks

2010-01-26T11:35:00.004+11:00

The public has recently been introduced to the concept of the Dunbar number through a series of news articles about how we are all really only capable of maintaining relationships with around 150 people. Some have even suggested that we should limit our Social network connections in order to not break this number.

I read a great blog post by Jacob Morgan today that spilt some light on the way I was thinking about this issue and how networks are powerful way beyond those we actually know and interact with regularly. A response to his post by Robert Paterson claimed that Dumbar's number was still relevant because trust is critical for influence. As such I thought I would wade in with my 2 cents worth which I share with you below.

Access to a wider network of weak ties allows the "long tail" to be mined, both for information and for opportunity.

I agree with Robert in terms of trust to a certain degree, however trust takes time to develop and often it is credibility that can hold sway in a distributed network.

Each member of the network makes a value judgement as to whether their help is valuable enough to warrant their time and resources. Due to the nature of weak ties and early signal detection, sharing a very simple piece of information may have enormous impact for the searcher, giving a higher value to the effort.

Both the credibility felt by the remote giver and the indebtedness perceived (due to the effort and resources already invested into the network by the searcher) should also weigh into the value equation.

So building a network involves building credibility and indebtedness (some would say loyalty) which then through closer interaction may lead to trust and the two remote parties possibly becoming part of each other's "Dunbar group".

What do you think? Should we limit ourselves? If a valuable benefit comes to you at little cost from somebody you hardly know and share little in common with, is it any less valuable to you? And given your differences to them present a similar value, is trust as important as credibility and indebtedness at a distance?

Write your responses on $100 notes and mail then to me! I'm saving for an Apple iSlate :-)

QUiCK THiNK & CoNVeRSaTioN!

2010-01-21T10:13:00.004+11:00

Well, although I began the QUiCK THiNK idea just to get people to think for 90 secs, many wish to share their answers and discuss them with others. The resulting excellent conversations between my Facebook friends from around the world and difference backgrounds has really excited me. Not just because people are interested, but because of the diverse views that are being respectfully shared.

My Facebook profile though, is just too restricted to do this justice. I have created a Facebook Group called QUiCK THiNK so anybody who wishes to can join in even if they aren't my friend on Facebook which I keep mainly for family and very close friends.

I will still post the QUiCK THiNKs on Twitter and Facebook, but I encourage those who want to talk about them to join the QUiCK THiNK Facebook Group and see how other people THiNK too!

Take time for a QUiCK THiNK each day

2010-01-16T15:25:00.006+11:00

What is knowledge?
Wow, what a question. What an important question. And yet such a hard one to answer.

I have heard David Snowden say that we have struggled as a civilisation for thousands of years to try and define "knowledge" and failed, so I along with David are highly sceptical when some management consultant spouts out a definitive explanation. Until Cognitive Neuroscience moves down to the detail of tracking individual neurons, nerves, synapses and hormonal systems I don't think we are even capable of guessing at the answer, and even then....

But despite this I do run across people every day who make simple mistakes, in business, in hockey, in relationships, in life, because they haven't sat down and thought about what it is to know and to think.

I constantly need to remind myself to reassess assumptions, to question social norms, to overcome mental shortcuts and stupid thinking. So I thought I might at least help my readers move a little way toward understanding knowledge through a daily reminder to quickly think about a question.

Ask yourself a question
We are all capable of so much more than we actually achieve. My hope is that if everyone just takes 60-90 seconds of their day to think about something to do with how they think, both individually and as a group, then I have made a difference in the world.

So keep an eye out on my Twitter stream @DeltaKnowledge for the QUiCK THiNK tweets each day. I hope they get you thinking!

National Culture's effect on E2.0 Implementation

2009-11-10T11:55:00.005+11:00

A while ago I wrote this post about culture and its effects on Enterprise 2.0 implementations.

In the meantime, Mark Masterson wrote this cracker on his ideas about English versus German cultures and if Social Software would work the same in non-Anglo Saxon cultures.

This morning I was talking with Emanuele Quintarelli from Rome about the impact of cultures on Enterprise 2.0 success and his concerns that the local corporate culture had more impact than the national one did.

My discussion with him turned into a bit of brief description of Culture-as-Cognition and how it can be applied so I thought I would copy them here for you all.

Hofstede's work is totally brilliant, eminently usable and absolutely wrong!

Here's the thing. There is no such thing as "culture". It is not a thing in the same way that a river is not a thing. We look from a distance and see a flow of water, but actually, that water you see now will never pass that point again.

There are flows in the current that form eddies and turbulence that are static in the way they fill the space and exert forces on things that come in contact with it, like a boat.
You can describe generally how the boat will react, but there is no way of knowing for sure from minute to minute and even in 2009 we have many boating accidents.

A while ago, this site grabbed my attention. Have a read. It is about how a snow flake forms and it is almost identical to the cognitive science view of culture.

Each snow-flake is individual, however thousands can look almost identical if they individually go through the exact changes in temperature, humidity and pressure as they fall. Their life journey.

In the same way, people as just people, but they interact mentally with the world in a way that create common attributes (like the arms of a snow flake or the standing waves in a river rapid).
You can gauge these commonalities (that's what Hofstede's tools do), but in the end each individual is capable of anything, so it is easy to fall into an "ecological fallacy", where we assume the attributes of the individual based on the average of the group they belong to.

The power of the corporation is that it tapped into the large currents. The beauty of social computing is that now all those little eddies and changes in currents can be tapped into and surfed on.

What this means for me, is not that Social computing will work or not work in a given country, like Mark says, but more that how those tools are used will be different in the different environments. A different part of the river will have a totally different landscape and therefore different external forces working on the current. Likewise I have seen different companies using the exact same wiki software in TOTALLY different ways. Ways that for them make sense. That is why the concept of sense-making is far more important than outmoded concepts like Best-practice or Six Sigma when it comes to complex systems. And as Snowden says, any system with people involved is a complex system.

To use a more collectiveist defintion of the word colture. The enterprise "culture" is often stronger, especially on the negative side if there is distinct lack of trust or taboos about corporate communications at a social or informal level.

The key is not to talk about how we in engineer an E2.0 system to work in a certain culture.
The key is to talk about how we engineer an E2.0 system to adapt and evolve into whatever that microculture (using the term loosely) will find beneficial. It is about managing the evolutionary capability of the company (to quote Snowden again).
This is one of the reasons I have a problem seeing the tool and the adoption process as separate things. In my mind they are tightly coupled in a complex space. We need to focus on the adaptive capability of both which is why I tend to talk about the company rather than the tools of the projects that implement them.

So, what's wrong with Hofstede?
Well nothing for top-down strategic appraisal of national-level cultural commonalities. But the real world of culture is bottom up. Each man for themselves!

We already know that social tools like this perform sub-optimally when implemented from the top-down rather than organically from the bottom up.

The problem with generalising tools like Hofstede is that they can stop people trying in the first place because they assume the average culture will not suite the tool or system. No trying means no experimentation, no experimentation means no adaptation, no adaptation means no novel applications or beneficial outcomes.

Some of my favourite Enterprise 2.0 resources

2009-10-21T07:39:00.006+11:00

This morning I am helping run a "Discover your inner Geek" session for the KM Round Table in Melbourne.

As such I thought I would list here some of my favourite Enterprise 2.0 blogs and sites. Enjoy! It is by no means exhaustive (I have hundreds listed and I feel bad leaving so many great ones out) but this should get you started on your E2.0 journey.

Firstly the more official ones. Prof Andrew McAfee is the gentleman who came up with the concept of Enterprise 2.0 and his blog frequently discusses the definition of Enterprise 2.0, and when it is (and isn't) applicable for use.

Secondly is probably the home of natural complexity both in theory and practice. David Snowden's work on Sensemaking has helped me form an understanding of the changes in management theory and how these possibly disruptive ideas can be used to make the most of the new global business environment without simply trusting in new tools or techniques because they worked in another context. His blog is called Cognitive Edge and the site also includes podcasts to help get you up to speed as you drive/train home each night. His recent discussion about the difference between Go and Chess is a favourite.

One of the people who takes Andrew McAfee's ideas and expands on them is CNet author Dion Hinchcliffe. Great big picture guy. You will find his work at various places like the CNet site, his main blog is here and his Web2.0 blog is here. All are worth keeping a tab on every now and then.

One of the guys in this space who thinks a lot about how all this interacts with the culture of your organisation, and more importantly how you should see your organisations culture, is Stephen Billings. Check him out here.

James Dellow from Headshift is somebody with broad experience, but especially in the Intranet and Government sides of enterprise social computing. Known as Chieftech, I highly recommend his blog here.

From Canberra, Stephen Collins is more at the marketing end of Web2.0, but his thinking is deep and clear and he is a great communicator. I enjoy his blog as a way to learn how to inform business people about E2.0 and this article is one of my favourites (partially because it touches on the impact of culture & implementation and some of my thoughts on it).

Wondering about how to make a business case for Enterprise 2.0 in your organisation? Check out this nice report by Louise Ross of the CIMA.

Finally, I encourage you to start building your network of peers. Once great way is on twitter and this page has a great list of E2.0 tweeters around the world. This is a Google Docs spreadsheet and you can add your own details here so others can find and follow you.

Hey Hey! Is Harry's taboo for you!

2009-10-08T19:50:00.004+11:00

Seeing Cultural Differences
Cognitive science views culture as the combined mental maps (or schemas) built up through people's shared lives. Under this view cross-cultural interactions are a kind of collaborative, mutual learning experience. Each experience involves a learning or exchanging of ideas and maybe even social norms for both parties but it isn't a direct transfer. They are filtered by personal experiences, assumptions, taboos and world-views.

So how do you handle cultural differences that arise?

Hey Hey! We have a problem!
One example of this came up recently when Harry Connick Jnr was judging a Red Faces competition on a special comeback episode of "Hey Hey It's Saturday!" that involved a group of gentlemen (of Indian descent) with black make-up on their faces doing a terrible impersonation of the Jackson Five.

Bloggers, journalists and talk-back hosts have gone to town with their own versions of what happened, and whether it is defined as racist or not (both in Australia and the USA). You can read a few here, and the comments on this post give an idea of the American response.

One of the cultural learning mechanisms is the taboo. A topic that should be avoided if possible, or in the least approached with great sensitivity. Cultural groups not only develop different taboos (to cope with different shared traumas of their past), but they transfer these taboos in different ways.

Many Australians don't understand either the depth of racism against African-Americans in the USA, nor how recently it was still considered normal. You get a sense of of it in the movie "Remember the Titans", but a good percentage of people Down Under think racism died out soon after the American Civil War. To cope with this, several extremely strong taboos have emerged including the use of the "N" word and the practice of "Black-faced" entertainers.

The comment on this blog by toujoursdan who has lived in both New Zealand and the USA captures my thoughts nicely.

The Curse of Knowledge
The "curse of knowledge" is a concept from Chip Heaths book Made to Stick which basically states that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. This makes us bad communicators because we can't imagine others not knowing what we know either.

On "Hey Hey!" Harry took strong offense at such a taboo being played out and apparently enjoyed by the audience. Some accused him of being too politically correct, however from his culture, this was a truly offensive act and his response was proportionate and in fact I think he conducted himself with a level of dignity considering how he must have been feeling.

The "Jackson Jive" and also the shows producers had failed to take into account Harry's cultural background by allowing the act to go ahead. The Doctors, who tried to apologise afterward once they realised the offence, seem to have been unaware of their act being part of such a strong taboo.

On the other hand, Harry (and many of the US-based bloggers) seem also to have succumbed to the curse of knowledge.

They seem to consider that since it is such a powerful taboo for them then everyone in the world would know about it, and
They seem unaware of other cultures methods of transferring taboos.

The concept of the "Red Faces" segment is not a talent show (as this post suggests) but an invitation to do live skits that are socially embarrassing - thus the name. The results are often amusing to Australians not because of the content, but because they are things that aren't normally done in public. In this way, the skits actually act as a subtle social mechanism for discouraging these sorts of behaviour in normal life.

Many Australians commenting on talk-back radio today about the subject suffered the same problem, saying (from their point of view) it was inoffensive and that Harry should "lighten up" or be less politically correct.

Respect is the Key
Cultural misunderstandings like this happen all the time. The term Culture Clash is frequently used, especially in the business world where negotiations can break down over what seem to be small differences in opinion to one of the parties.

The key is Respect. Starting with an understanding that other people have different taboos and world-views helps us not be so shocked by their comments or behaviour and allows us time to find understanding and hopefully communicate our discomfort without damaging the relationship. Cultures should be seen as different, not better or one more right than another, just different.

Some say that respect must be earned. Here I tend to disagree. Trust is earned, but respect is something we bring to the table ourselves regardless of the other party. Our ability to constrain our offence and keep the lines of communication open will determine how well we interact with those of different cultural backgrounds, be it another country, a different company or the sports club down the road. Remember, the handling of the offence is a learning experience for those involved and handled well it can challenge false taboos or increase the awareness of useful ones.

All good and well. As for Daryl trying to handle such a difficult situation live in front of millions of viewers while keeping things light and funny, I take my hat off to him. I hope you do half as well next time your business negotiations run into foul weather.

Training and communicating with short videos

2009-08-06T00:30:00.003+10:00

One of the projects I am working on right now is going to require a set of training materials setup and I am working on short videos using the wonderful Camtasia Studio software.

A few days ago I came across this article discussing the use of short VoxPop type videos to sell ideas to others in your company (in this case Google). It got me thinking about the style of the videos and if I should maybe try something a bit different for the initial introduction video to get people's attention and keep them engaged.

Here are two of my favourite videos describing podcasting. Have a watch of both and then let me know what you think would be the best way to introduce a new ERP system to non-finance users.

First the fantastic Lee LeFever. Simple, eye-catching, older audience will watch it right through.

Second, something for the younger audience. Not much detail, but has great memory sticking power to add future lessons to.

I look forward to your comments.

MindTouch Deki - Opensource Wiki Project

2009-07-07T20:13:00.001+10:00

Over the past few years, the open source community has started to be noticed by the business press.

In the cyclicals, Christopher Koch's 2003 article in CIO about stumbling across Open Source POS solutions started to erode some of the mysticism for businesses to open up their options. Now CIO has a permanent section for Open Source news, covering issues like SOA and the Sun Java move as well as the impact that the Open Source movement is having on Back-Office apps.

More recently, the Ernie Ball case showed that companies could totally ditch Microsoft and survive. A proposal more than attractive to many other Small to Medium Enterprises.

Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat used several Open Source examples and made business people aware of the basic principles of Open Source software. The Apache Web Server development and the impressive growth of the Linux operating system are exciting examples of what is possible outside the normal private sector development strategy.

Clay Shirky talks on TED.com about the impact these distributed structures are having on the world and discusses these in terms of the institution versus collaboration. This video is well worth 20 minutes of your time if you haven't seen it.

Finally (and importantly for me) many of the wiki solutions we see today are either open source, were started that way, or have open source components or plug-ins. Whether it is Media-wiki (the system Wikipedia uses), the venerable TWiki, Atlassian's enterprise focused Confluence or the sexy, standards-based Mindtouch Deki, the key here isn't the software, but the community that springs up around it's design and continued development & support.

If you have a few minutes, please take the time to vote for Mindtouch and some of your other favourites in the Open Source Community Choice Awards. Many of the people involved in these great projects do so for little or no money, only the recognition and a sense of a job well done. Click on the logo above and give them a little or your recognition.

What a wonderful time to be alive!

2009-06-30T17:33:00.003+10:00

I have been fascinated over the last few weeks to see what is described here as "Twitter content or garbage", however I view it a little differently.

Most people see twitter as the technology. In fact the tech is just a communications enabler for a community. Now the Twitter community is fairly new, in a phase of high growth and as such has a loose culture. However this culture is morphing, maturing, in this case before our very eyes. Clay Shirky has discussed this in terms of the China quake in his recent TED video.

Many fell for the recent Jeff Goldblum incident by retweeting about his unconfirmed death, however they learned, etiquette has adjusted slightly. Today with rumors of a jet going down in the Indian ocean, tweets were a lot more reserved. People linked back to sources more. We are seeing a new culture develop right in front of us (or around us and in us if we are on twitter ourselves).

What a wonderful time to be alive!

Encouraging CEOs to make the leap of faith

2009-06-26T11:14:00.005+10:00

Key decision makers seem to be slowly awakening to the concept, if not the power of intangible business assets like social networks. However, they are still struggling in my view to work out how to integrate that into their current business frameworks where solid ROIs and clear, preplanned revenue paths exist before an investment of either time or money is made.

Craig Hepburn, fresh from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this week has just posted his thoughts about how this education is where a lot of our effort should be placed on the coming year. I agree.

Wikinomics goes a little way to share some of the case studies out there in CxO language. It also implies in many of them the critical message that many of these outcomes were not a stated goal at the beginning of the project, but emerged from the initiative.

In many ways, faith and creativity are required to execute a successful SM initiative. Not the blind faith of wishful thinking, but faith based on reason and an understanding of the possibilities of human interaction. In the end, any solution applied in a complex environment takes an element of faith that it will succeed. The trick is to engineer your projects such that they are designed to adapt to the successful outcomes and attenuate the negative outcomes as they arise, as David Snowden's Safe-Fail concept explains.

Evangelising social media and other KM tools doesn't mean building hype around a product or even a certain solution category. Most CEOs can smell a snake-oil salesman at 100 paces anyway. Neither is it so much about reducing uncertainty and having people ignore the complexity. A flexible/social tool like a wiki may fail at one solution but in the process be used by the same people to solve 3 other problems.

Evangelism is focused on increasing people's faith. Giving them a reason to believe that making the jump into Enterprise 2.0 will provide solid business benefits even when all of them cannot be known at the outset.

Image thanks from gamebump.com

Finding the right glove, Enterprise 2.0 Culture and Implementation

2009-05-28T11:04:00.002+10:00

For those of you who attended KMLF in Melbourne last night, thank-you for a great time.

Below is the presentation that led our discussion. I apreciate everybody's input. With people from large and small business, government and several consultants there too it was a great mix for this topic and I learned a lot too.

Lets keep the conversation going! You can always learn more about your organisational culture and how it impacts on Enterprise 2.0 planning and implementation.

Finding The Right Glove Org Culture & E2.0

View more OpenOffice presentations from Stuart French.

Watch & Learn about Confluence

2009-05-25T15:40:00.004+10:00

I have enjoyed watching Atlassian really embrace Enterprise 2.0 from within including a strong twitter presence and excellent use of their blogs and forums. I have been a user of their Confluence Enterprise Wiki product for several years and today I came across a page of videos (thanks @NeridaHart) showing some Confluence tutorials. Click here to check them out.

My favorite one, about Sun using confluence to connect their 25,000 users is below for your enjoyment. Notice the focus they have put on user reputation and how they have handled it. The next version of Confluence, v3.0 which is due out any day now, has some of these features now built in, including the ability to follow other people and see what content they are posting.

If you are new to confluence, then take 2-3 minutes to check out the video on 5 user cases here.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 9

2009-05-20T06:46:00.001+10:00

In this final section I try to draw all these parts together and quickly discuss some ideas for how they can be applied in the real world. If you have been following along I hope you have enjoyed this series as much as I have putting it together.

Thankyou for your interest in this series. Culture is a fascinating phenomenon; so hard to nail down and yet so powerful a force in both our personal and working lives. You may have already been aware of all these factors and more. Regardless, my wish is that you go away from this with a greater sensitivity to both the dangers and the opportunities inherent within the cultures around us and a greater ability to avoid and seize them respectively.

6. Creating Knowledge Cultures: Putting it into Practice
The question that remains is: Can cultures be changed and managed?

Opinions differ. From those who give an enthusiastic yes, to others who warn you can simply minimise the risk associated with culture clash and yet others who say that culture is more than the external symbols and artefacts, so managing it is akin to nailing jelly to the wall.

In fact, if by “managed” one infers that culture can be manipulated from on high like moving furniture in a mouse-cage, then I fall on the side of the nay-sayers.

Figure 3: Schein's levels of culture (Schein, 1985, p17)

Using models such as Schein's levels of culture (Figure 3) and the delineation of subcultures, some organisational leaders are encouraged to play an active part in shaping the cultural norms of the organisation. The motivation; to best serve the organisation's goals and vision. However, even if cultural manipulation techniques were 100% successful, there is a downside: yes, constant high situational strength would mean that trust is not relied upon so much, but people would also be less free to work creatively and act intuitively or their own accord. A veritable army of “Yes men”.

Conrad & Poole
Of course most anthropologists would deride the idea that leaders could create cultures anyway (Meek, 1988, p.459), however Conrad & Poole walk somewhat of a middle-line. They define culture as “a communicative creation, embedded in a history and a set of expectations about the future. They are usually heterogeneous, composed of multiple subcultures.” (1998, p.98). Meek agrees with this compromise:

“Culture as a whole cannot be manipulated, turned on and off, although it needs to be recognised that some are in a better position than others to attempt to intentionally influence aspects of it. (Meek, 1988, p.469)

Conrad and Poole (1998) see cultural strategies for organisational design and management as being superior to traditional individualistic and relational strategies. While recognizing that human beings are emotional and community-oriented, cultural strategies stop short of considering the resulting social construct as an entity unto itself.

Cultural management strategies, they argue, focus primarily on creating a sense of community within work groups as a way of "managing the tension between individual and organizational needs." This methodology considers the impressive impact that cultural regularities have on an individual's beliefs and frames of reference and thus attempts to use them in "unobtrusive" ways via the manoeuvring of cultural metaphors and artefacts. These might include:

Identification, for example the recognition and lauding of beneficial behaviours,
Instituting or modifying organisational symbols like metaphors, stories and or rituals and ceremonies, and finally
Unobtrusive emotional regulation via position, interpretation and self-control via embodied organisational values.

Whatever the form, this type of control tends to follow a similar process: induce participation, which leads to identification of the individual with the organisations accepted norms and finally, emotional commitments are willingly entered into on the individual’s part.

Conrad and Poole note the short-comings with these methods, unless it is an organisation or one, offering water-tight solutions should raise alarm bells anyway.

They note the enthusiasm with which, especially North American, managers took up these methods, assuming that if culture could be controlled then they would be the ones to control it.

This of course reveals the first flaw: The authors speak of different sub-cultures in the organisation responding uniquely to management's attempts to mould beliefs, however if culture is a cognitive process and not "a thing" (D’Andrade, 1995) then every individual employee will respond in subtly different and complex ways.

Secondly, the very beliefs, values and metaphors they seek to change often do not have a first-order effect on employee behaviour. Therefore, changing them can have unexpected results and they offer Disney's problematic usage of the family metaphor as an example of how things can go wrong dramatically if the strategy fails.

Conclusion
The key here is that while culture is not a “thing” to be managed, it is certainly undergoing constant transformation. As mentioned earlier, the real power of a cognitive view of culture comes from a change of perspective. If we can learn to see that cultural issues are complex and highly contextual and that intra- and cross-cultural interactions are actually collaborative, mutual learning experiences (Holden, 2002, p.54), then managing both the opportunities and pitfalls simply becomes an issue of knowledge management, specifically networking, knowledge sharing and collaborative (or organisational) learning (Holden, 2002, p.52).

References for the Series:

Abrams, L. C., Cross, R., Lesser, E. and Levin, D. Z. 2003, Nurturing interpersonal trust in knowledge-sharing networks, Academy of Management Executive, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. pp.64-77.
Argyris, C. 2001, Good Communication that blocks learning. in Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA, pp. 87-110.
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Bourdieu, P. 1977, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology), Cambridge University Press, Paris.
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Clarke, T. 2001, Part one - knowledge management: The knowledge economy, Education & Training, vol. 43, no. 4/5, pp. 189-196.
Conrad, C. and Poole, M. S. 1998, Strategic organizational communication: Chapter 4 - Cultural Strategies. in Strategic organizational communication: into the twenty-first century Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, pp. xiv, 479 p.
Cross, R. and Prusak, L. 2003, People who make organizations go - or stop. in Networks in the knowledge economy (Eds, Cross, R., Parker, A. and Sasson, L.) Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 248-260.
D’Andrade, R. G. 1995, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Dirks, K. T. and Ferrin, D. L. 2001, The role of trust in organizational settings, Organization Science: A Journal of the Institute of Management Sciences, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 450-467.
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Erez, M. and Gati, E. 2004, A Dynamic, Multi-Level Model of Culture: From the Micro Level of the Individual to the Macro Level of a Global Culture, Applied Psychology: an International Review, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 583-598.
Fiol, C. M. and Lyles, M. A. 1985, Organizational Learning., Academy of Management Review, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 803-813.
Garbarino, M. S. 1983, Sociocultural Theory in Anthropology: A Short History, Waveland Press, Illinois.
Garvin, D. A. 1998, Building a Learning Organisation. in Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA, pp. pp.51-69.
Geertz, C. 1973, The interpretation of cultures; selected essays, Basic Books, New York,.
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Hofstede, G. 2005, Fun and Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural Research, Guest Lecture - Emeritus Professor Geert Hofstede, Melbourne University - Architecture (Prince Philip Theatre), Friday 6-May-2005, www.hofstede.com.
Holden, N. 2002, Cross-cultural management : a knowledge management perspective, Financial Times Prentice Hall, Harlow.
Huber, G. P. 1996, Organizational learning. in Organizational Learning (Eds, Cohen, M. D. and Sproull, L. S.) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Hutchins, E. 1991, The social organization of distributed cognition. in Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (Eds, Resnick, L. B., Levine, J. M. and Teasley, S. D.) American Psychological Association, Washington , DC, pp. 283-307.
Hutchins, E. 1996, Organizing work by adaptation. in Cognition Within and Between Organizations (Eds, Meindl, J. R., Stubbart, C. and Porac, J. F.) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 368-404.
Levitt, B. and March, J. G. 1988, Organizational learning., Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 14, pp. 319-340.
Liebowitz, J. and Beckman, T. J. 1998, Knowledge Organizations - What every manager should know, CRC Press.
MathDaily.com 2005, 'Ecological Fallacy', [online article], www.MathDaily.com, viewed
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H. and Schoorman, F. D. 1995, An integrative model of organizational trust, Academy of Management Review, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 709-734.
McGill, M. E. and Slocum Jr., J. W. 1993, Unlearning the organization. in Organizational Dynamics (Autumn), pp. 67-79.
Meek, V. L. 1988, Organisational culture: origins and weaknesses, Organization Studies, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 453-473.
Mezmer 2005, 'Dr Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology', [Website], viewed 3-Jun-2005,
Mischel, W. 1977, The interaction of person and situation. in Personality at the crossroads: Current issues in interactional psychology (Eds, Magnusson, D. and Endler, N. S.) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 333-352.
Nonaka, I. and Nishiguchi, T. 2001, Knowledge emergence : social, technical, and evolutionary dimensions of knowledge creation, Oxford University Press, Oxford ; New York.
Robinson, V. M. J. 2001, Descriptive and normative research on organizational learning: locating the contribution of Argyris and Schön, International Journal of Educational Management, vol. 15, no. 2.
Rogers, Y. and Ellis, J. 1994, Distributed Cognition: an alternative framework for analysing and explaining collaborative working, Journal of Information Technology, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 119-128.
Schein, E. H. 1985, Organizational culture and leadership, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.
Schein, E. H. 1999, The corporate culture survival guide : sense and nonsense about culture change, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, Calif.
Seely Brown, J. and Duguid, P. 2001, Balancing Act: How to capture knowledge without killing it. in Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA, pp. 45-60.
Simons, T. 2002, Behavioural integrity: The perceived alignment between managers' words and deeds as a research focus, Organization Science: A Journal of the Institute of Management Sciences, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 18-35.
Snowdon, D. 2002, Complex acts of knowing: paradox and descriptive self- awareness., Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 100-111.
Sperber, D. 1985, On anthropological knowledge: three essays, Cambridge University Press; Editions de la Maison des Sciencs de l'Homme, Paris.
Sperber, D. and Hirschfeld, L. 1999, Culture, Cognition, and Evolution. vol. 2005 MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. [Online Paper].
Strauss, C. and Quinn, N. 1997, A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Swidler, A. and Arditi, J. 1994, The new sociology of knowledge, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. v20, pp. 314-323.
Theron, A. 2002, University of Pretoria – South Africa, Pretoria, pp. 32.
Tuomi, I. 2002, The future of knowledge management., Lifelong Learning in Europe, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 69-79.
Wenger, E. C. 2001, Harvard Business Review on Organizational Learning, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 8

2009-05-19T07:22:00.003+10:00

Today I am covering the critical factor of Trust. Trust is a factor of successful collaboration that is mentioned nearly as much as culture, so it’s inclusion is appropriate not just because of it’s close proximity in the literature, but also because the part trust plays in the concept of Behavioural Integrity exposes some key factors in how individuals interact with the culture around and within them.
The proposed model of trust put forward by Mayer and his colleagues has come in very handy during my own Enterprise 2.0 implementation projects and I hope it gives you greater insight if you haven’t come across it before.

5. The central ingredients (part 2)
Trust
Explicit Knowledge Stores (in the form of electronic databases) just don't work on their own. War stories abound:

… "Yet these investments have rarely had the intended impact. While databases (and staff to support them) have grown to mammoth proportions, they are often underutilised as employees are much more likely to turn to peers and colleagues than to impersonal sources for necessary knowledge. The result has been a "second wave" of knowledge management advice geared toward promoting effective collaboration and learning in strategically important groups." (Abrams et al., 2003, p.64)

Tuomi (2002) also talks about the next stage of Knowledge Management:

Towards the end of the 1990’s, social learning, organizational sense-making, and systemic innovation and change management became prominent themes in knowledge management. In the next years, knowledge management theorists and practitioners will find themselves asking how revolutions can be managed.

One key ingredient in this venture is trust, one definition of which is “a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another.” One thing almost all researchers agree on is the concept of vulnerability. The presence of trust provides conditions where cooperation and more positive attitudes lead to higher performance. This happens both directly and indirectly due to a willingness to enter into relationships that involve vulnerability. (Dirks and Ferrin, 2001, p.451,455)

There is some debate about which characteristics build or affect trust, however Mayer (et al, 1995, p.715) proposes a model of trust (Figure 2) which combines the trustor’s propensity to trust with three antecedents – integrity, ability and benevolence - that are required before trust can exist between two parties.

It is important to note that trust itself is based on perceptions. While the trustee can build trust, they do not do so directly, but may build trustworthiness by aligning their actions with these antecedents.

Behavioural Integrity
Behavioural Integrity (BI) can be defined as the perceived pattern of alignment between an actor’s words and deeds (Simons, 2002, p.19). It includes the perception of espoused values matching enacted ones. It can be damaged by the breaking of promises and psychological contracts and in the case of leaders, any actions contradictory to corporate mission and value statements. As a pattern of alignment, it is built up over time through reiterative observations, however the focus on word-deed alignment precludes any consideration of moral principles.

While all individuals develop a perception of trustworthiness over time, Leaders tend to be given less latitude in their deviations. Simons suggests a trustor’s perception of misalignments goes up with the importance of the focal issue. Leaders have control over many such issues within an organisation and are thus their actions are constantly “in the limelight” so to speak.

At another level, organisations themselves can be ascribed a level of BI by those who deal with them at arms length. In this case the pattern affects their credibility in the marketplace. Simons asserts that “BI is highly problematic in today’s managerial environment of rapid competitive, technological and organizational change…” and that “it has profound consequences for employee retention and performance…” (Simons, 2002, p32).

Simon’s model indicates that relatively small word-deed misalignments can have significant consequences, so understanding the organisational culture can aid managers in maintaining BI, especially in times of organisational change.

Figure 2: Proposed model of Trust – (Mayer, et al, 1995)

Ability
The possession of skills or expertise to carry out a task will not only affect other’s perception of trust, will also tend to limit in which domains an individual can be trusted (Mayer et al., 1995p. 717).

Benevolence
“Benevolence is the extent to which a trustee is believed to want to do good to the trustor, aside from an egocentric profit motive.” (Mayer et al., 1995, p.718). It is often linked in the literature with prior relationships and some have considered it synonymous with altruism.
It plays a large part in initial trusting relationships as there is insufficient past experience for BI to be considered, however ongoing relationships will change based on the outcomes of previous trust experiences. This is shown in Figure 2 by the feedback loop from outcomes back to the antecedents.

Situational Strength
The question of how trust affects organisational performance is considered by Dirks and Ferrin (2001, p.461-2) who argue that alongside the traditional Main Effect model where trust has a direct affect on organisational processes, a second model of Trust as a Moderator. They borrow the model of ‘situational strength’ from Mischel to provide conditions under which each model will apply to a scenario.

According to Mischel (1977, p.347), “strong” situations are those in which guidelines and incentives motivate most actors to 1) construe the situation in the same way, 2) draw similar conclusions as to appropriate responses, and 3) behave in a particular way. Depending on this strength, trust may be reduced to a moderating role, modifying interpretations and actions, or cultural norms may provide unambiguous cues, making interpretation not required and removing trust’s influence entirely.

Alternatively, “weak” situations are those that lack these traits and allow for individualised interpretation and action. In these scenarios, trust as a Main Effect holds considerable power in reducing uncertainty and supporting action (Mayer et al., 1995, p.730, Dirks and Ferrin, 2001, p.461).

Discovering an organisation’s assumed norms and values allows members to determine when trust will be a determinant factor. Furthermore, a management focus on issues of behavioural integrity will not just improve trust, but have a flow-through effect by modeling cultural standards that will lead to a greater propensity to share knowledge through the group.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 7

2009-05-18T08:01:00.000+10:00

5. The central ingredients (part 2)
A Theory of Action
Organisations are complex adaptive systems however, good models such as Argyris & Schön’s apply cognitive theory to explain how they learn, and the complex interactions between the types of learning in organisational contexts.

Figure 1: A theory of action (Argyris & Schon, 1996)

The term “espoused theory” means the theory of action which is claimed to explain or justify a given pattern of activity. The “theory-in-use” however, is a tacit theory of action implicit in the performance of the actual activity. (Argyris and Schön, 1996, p.13) As shown in Figure 1, this theory is driven by cultural norms, values, strategies and assumptions. This theory-in-use must be discovered through observation. The consequences of an activity are seen as a result of the espoused theories, seen as governing variables, as modified by the often tacit action strategy based on the theory-in-use.

Single-loop Learning
Single-loop learning is thus an active process of organisational enquiry that results in the modification of the theory-in-use to keep organisational performance within acceptable parameters based on values and accepted norms. The values and norms themselves – the governing variables – are not changed (Argyris and Schön, 1996, p.20).

Double-loop Learning
Double-loop learning (Figure 1) involves the exploring and sometimes painful reconsideration of values and strategies. This can be done individually or on behalf of an organisation when agents reassess the effectiveness of the organisational values.

Double loop learning is a critical part of an organisations culture of it is to maintain unity of vision and purpose during times of conflicting requirements or environmental change.

Deutero-learning and Unlearning
The process of managing the first two types of learning is referred to as deutero-learning. This is an acknowledgement that the organisation (or individual) must have in place learning systems that encourage inquiries about performance to be properly managed, overcoming a recognised tendency for higher level learning to be rather ill-defined and ambiguous (Fiol and Lyles, 1985, p808).

Another possible result of deutero-learning is the concept of unlearning (McGill and Slocum Jr., 1993) where old assumptions and values are challenged and replaced with new, more effective frameworks for interpretation and understanding. This concept of deutero-learning is an essential one for continuous improvement and should be encouraged within the culture of the organisation through management focus, coupled with a willingness to allow members to learn from their mistakes.

Communities of Practice and Knowledge Networks
In general, even the “top-down” experts recognise that organisational cultures are not homogenous. Both Schein and Hofstede are renowned for their ‘levels’ of culture, and concepts of sub-cultures, however a cognitive view of the organisation sees manifold, dynamic, informal links between individual actors over time. Cross & Prusak (2003) describe some excellent techniques for mapping and using these affiliations to better manage knowledge flows and detect information bottlenecks.

But for those leaders who are willing to see themselves as more sponsor than emperor, a valuable organisational form that takes advantage of knowledge networks in a more formal way is called Communities of Practice (CoP). Defined as groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for joint enterprise (Wenger, 2001, p.2), the organic and informal nature of CoPs makes them resistant to supervision and interference. However Seely-Brown & Duguid claim:

Knowledge Management focuses on effectiveness more than efficiency. It's bottom up! It assumes that managers can best foster knowledge by responding to the inventive, improvisational ways people actually get things done. (Seely Brown and Duguid, 2001, p.47)

So as an organisation develops a knowledge sharing culture, knowledge networks and the tools they offer become powerful drives for increased innovation, responsiveness and performance.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 6

2009-05-17T07:43:00.003+10:00

The big advantage to splitting a paper like this up is:

You can digest each part before moving on, and
If you fell asleep during the last post, hopefully now you are wide awake to get stuck in to this exciting chapter on the ingredients that contribute to “bottom-up” culture theory. :-)

I hope you enjoy the next few posts as much as I did investigating them. In reality they are far from forming a definitive list, but with a grasp on these key concepts, you will begin to build a toolbox of concepts that you can use in your team, department or entire organisation.

5. The central ingredients (part 1)
Distributed Cognition
Distributed cognition is defined as the distribution of cognitive labour among a group toward a common goal (Hutchins, 1991). Much the same as the distribution of labour, distributed cognition, however, has received much less attention in the literature (Ibid, p.284).

While researchers have moved forward within their own fields - social interaction in anthropology and cognitive learning in cognitive psychology and neuro-science - applying the two together is a relatively new endeavour.

Since the first wave of knowledge management back in the 1980s (Tuomi, 2002), authors like Liebowitz, Beckman (1998, p.16) and Clarke (2001, p.189) followed these thoughts about corporate memory and concepts like know-how, know-why and know-what. Liebowitz and Beckman's definition of corporate memory include the concept of "professional intellect" which attempted to include tacit areas of skills, creativity and meta-knowledge about how knowledge should be contextually applied.

Citing the works of Bougon, Weick, Binkhorst and Daft over the two decades to 1995, Tuomi summarises that “this research highlighted the fact that organizational knowledge is not something that can be objectively recorded and stored in databases; instead, organizational knowing is an active process where people try to make sense of their environment.” (Tuomi, 2002, p.6)

The concept of distributed cognition moves a step beyond this. Based on the latest advances in cognitive psychology but applied to a social (organisational) or anthropological (national) context, distributed cognition is not a new learning method, but a rethink of how we see individuals and the way they learn both individually and in groups.

In distributed cognition, groups are seen as cognitive systems, capable of adaptive responses to changes in their environment (Hutchins, 1996, p.380).

For this reason the concepts of distributed cognition and learning organisations are intimately joined and some (Hutchins, 1991, Argyris and Schön, 1996) agree with the point that while single and double loop learning certainly can be witnessed at the explicit level, more often than not, organisational learning (and unlearning) happen at the deep and often shared cognitive level. Hutchins (1996) goes further again and explains how organisations not only remember as a group, but also re-organise and adapt themselves in such a way as to improve performance using the same cognitive process – sometimes despite a managerial preference for a more traditional, hierarchical style leadership.

The result is a more organic view of the organisation which, when applied to the traditional views of organisations (and the link between structure and culture), reveals the flaws in policies based on the assumptions that top-down thinking can engender.

Learning Organisations
Organisational learning speaks of far more than employee training and skills management programs.

Organisational learning can be described as the way firm build and manage knowledge and processes around their activities to contextually adapt and develop organisational efficiency (Dodgson, 1993, p.377). It involves the concept of having all members of an organisation participate in a process of double-loop learning that encourages self-examination, personal responsibility and share first-rate information about their roles with others (Argyris, 2001).

“Learning organizations are skilled at five main activities: 1. systematic problem solving, 2. experimentation with new approaches, 3. learning from their own experience and past history, 4. learning from the experiences and best practices of others, and 5. transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organisation. Each is accompanied by a distinctive mind-set, tool kit, and pattern of behaviour." (Garvin, 1998)

Research
Robinson describes two different strands of research on organisational learning (Robinson, 2001). The Normative strand is concerned with the management of outcomes with respect to organisational improvement, as opposed to the Descriptive strand which holds a social and cognitive psychological focus on how organisations actually learn. She notes that the work of Argyris and Schön straddles these strands by providing a theory and practice of intervention (normative) plus a rigorous and useful theory of action (descriptive) which we will go further into here.

Organisational Memory
While organisations without individuals are nothing but a pile of paper and databases, it is recognised that organisations as a collective do have the capacity to learn and store information. Rules, procedures, technologies, beliefs and of course cultures are preserved over time and despite turnover of personnel (Levitt and March, 1988, p.326). Huber (1996, p.148) notes that poor organisational memory is far more complex than can be explained by the view of employees as “repositories for organisational information” and Levitt and March explain that the learning process is further complicated by the ‘simultaneously adapting behaviour’ of other agents in the process (1988, p.331).

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 5

2009-05-16T06:59:00.002+10:00

“The real difficulty in changing any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones” - John Mayand Keynes.

Today, in the 4th chapter of Creating Knowledge Cultures, I introduce a different approach to describing and understanding culture and begin to move towards how Knowledge Management can actually play a part in this process with it’s underpinnings in complexity theory and it’s openness to think beyond the logical positivism of the early and mid 20th century.

4. The new solution
Culture as cognitive process
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Mezmer defines cognitive science as a branch of psychology that aims to figuratively find out how minds work without literally having to figure out how minds work (Mezmer, 2005). Although satirical, it is somewhat appropriate when considering the application of neural cognition to the problem of culture.

The step from symbolic language-based cognition to a connectionist approach takes the study of learning and sense making to a deeper level, on both the individual and social dimensions. Laszlo noted the similarities between the brain and organisations in their roles as information processing systems, (Hedberg, 1981, p.6), however, to go all the way and model a human brain, neuron-by-neuron, is simply implausible given our current level of ability in measuring and modeling brain function.

Instead, cognitive science makes no apologies and focuses on expanding beyond the traditional cultural theories by building a set of common characteristics of the human brain to act as models that explain the creation and use cultural schemas, both at the individual and social levels. It places meaning and cultural schemas in the minds of the society’s individuals, rather than in the symbols and artefacts those individuals create. In this way, it serves to solve the paradox of culture by describing an individual’s capacity to build these schemas based on shared and similar experiences with others in their group – providing the centripetal force – while allowing the individual’s schema to be built from the ground up based on their unique set of experiences, many shared with the group and possibly some exclusive to the individual – allowing differences between individuals and groups and also the ability to change over time - thus the centrifugal force (Hoecklin cited in Holden, 2002, p.24).

Of course, this does not dismiss the extra-personal realm of culture, just as Hutchins’ work on distributed cognition did not seek to dissolve the psychology of the individual (Strauss and Quinn, 1997, p.12,42). It simply serves to give a more holistic view of culture, being the interaction of regular occurrences both in the world and in the cognitive schemas people share (Ibid, 1997, p.7).

Unfortunately this disagreement between internalists and externalists has gone on for decades and despite all this insight, we should take note of this pragmatic but disheartening remark from Sperber:

“While cognitive science has come a long way in the last 15 years, the development of a common conceptual framework between the biological, cognitive, and social sciences is still a long way off.” (Sperber and Hirschfeld, 1999).

Bottom up
The key difference is in perspective. Facets of a particular culture are now seen as tacitly learned schemas that are built from the past experiences of the individuals entire experiences, including those within the organisation. These schemas serve to provide us with guides for interpretation, negotiation and appropriate action, just as before, however a more accurate understanding of an organisation's culture can only be gained through observing the actions and interplay of the groups individuals in a wide variety of circumstances - not by applying organisation-wide interpretations from the top-down.

How Knowledge plays a part
Holden reveals that the heartland of cross-cultural management is viewed in terms of knowledge management, organizational learning and networking at both local and global levels (Holden, 2002).

We have already mentioned the problems of ‘culture-as-difference’; however Holden suggests a new viewpoint on cross-cultural issues. By recognising that culture is an organisational resource, and building cultural management factors and processes into a corporate knowledge base, resolving international management problems becomes an organisational knowledge issue and can be dealt with in terms of its benefit to the firm.

This is a powerful insight, however it tends to under-rate the reverse impact ‘Culture as Cognition’ has on the concept of knowledge itself.

Knowledge is often defined as a type of deep, sometimes tacit, information summarised by terms like know-how, know who and know-what (Clarke, 2001, p.189). Nonaka (et al, 2001, p.14) defined knowledge as “a dynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the ‘truth’”. However, knowledge is now defined as the complex and embodied effect of an individual’s life experience in its entirety. The positivistic distinction between tacit and explicit is gone and what was previously considered knowledge is simply the tip of the iceberg. The great depths of tacit knowledge now includes everything from higher thought to muscle memory to an unconscious awareness of the colour-change of ear-lobes when a person is embarrassed. Unconscious is the key here – or more correctly sub-conscious – and the tacit culture that derives from this type of knowledge is networked, tribal and fluid (Snowdon, 2002, p.103).

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 4

2009-05-15T07:12:00.000+10:00

Still here? Fantastic, this post will be brief but very important.

Today I discuss arguably the most famous (certainly the most cited) anthropologist in the field. Geert Hofstede is known for his positive approach to culture which is captured nicely in the quote "Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster."

I was privileged to attend a lecture by Mr Hofstede at Melbourne University a few years ago. He is an excellent speaker and ran an extended question time afterwards which I really appreciated. I asked him how he felt about some of his followers that apply his theories to groups smaller than nations or people groups. His response was interesting. He pointed out that his Cultural Dimensions should never be applied to groups of less than 5000 people and referred to these students as “wayward sheep”.

That said, if you haven’t heard about Hofstede’s dimensions I encourage you to spend a little time on his site and learn about them so you can be aware of their power at the international (especially marketing) level and problems when applied to smaller groups.

3. The problem with the solution (part 2)
Hofstede
Geert Hofstede is one of the most widely cited anthropologists in the last 30 years. His studies of international cultures beginning with IBM have led to models of cultural development and human mental programming that are used in sales, management, economics and the social sciences (Hofstede, 2005).

His pragmatic, “broad-stroke” style acknowledges the interplay of the brain’s learning capability with culture – which he defines as a society’s “collective programming of the mind” (Hofstede, 1984, p.13). However he greatly simplifies these interplays (perhaps this is his appeal?) in favour of more empirical models by stating “It is possible that our mental programs are physically determined by states of our brain cells. Nevertheless, we cannot directly observe mental programs. What we can observe is…words and deeds.” (Ibid, p.14)

As a behaviourist, he avoids the positivist fallacy when relating values to behaviour, however his repeated claims that culture may only ever be used in relation to nations has been often ignored by his followers {e.g. “Culture shapes the core values and norms of its members.” (Erez and Gati, 2004)}, and his own leanings are exposed when he states that “the more accurately we know a person’s mental programming…the more sure our prediction [of future behaviour] will be.” (Hofstede, 1984, p.14)

We would do well to beware of similar fallacies when investigating an organisation’s culture and not presume to understand an individual’s behaviours or motivations based on prevalent mental models observed in the group.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 3

2009-05-14T07:56:00.003+10:00

In the next two posts of creating knowledge cultures I start to critique some of the big thinkers in culture theory. It is a brave move. Many of these amazing people have contributed wonderfully in both theory development and practical methods for dealing with groups based on their described cultures and sub-cultures.

Underneath these theories though is what I believe is a serious shortcoming in the foundations upon which these theories are developed. Read on to see if you agree with the argument.

3. The problem with the solution (part 1)
Top down view of culture
While much of the work on culture has value, there are several criticisms of the traditional view of culture that need to be dealt with. Abraham Maslow said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." Armed with the predominantly externalist definition of culture, corporate leaders around the world have implemented cultural analysis and change management programs and while each author warns of potential dangers, the seemingly endless benefits to efficiency and productivity are hard to overlook.

However, the top-down view of culture tends towards generalisations and while these can hold enough weight at the national level, when applied at a group or organisational level, discrimination can often be the result for two reasons.

Firstly, using top-down averages on a heterogenous group will almost certainly overlook or alienate nonconformists.

Secondly, human beings are complex organisms. They are motivated by unique value structures that re-interpret (or miss-interpret depending on your viewpoint) management’s attempts to mould beliefs and instill corporate values (Conrad and Poole, 1998, p.100, 104-105).

It shouldn’t surprise us that people are different. Even the most altruistic want to be noticed and respected by peers and elders. Yet mankind’s need to build patterns and algorithms of understanding (or schemas to use the cognitive psychologists term) is so strong that leaders quickly accept and apply these assumed patterns in their leadership strategies simply hoping for good results.

Seely-Brown and Duguid noted the chilling affect that top-down thinking can have on organisational processes, for example creativity (2001, p.46).

Culture as Essence or Difference
Schein makes the surprising statement that leaders are distinguished from managers because the former create and change cultures while the latter simply live within them (Schein, 1985, p.5). He states that culture “is the result of a complex group learning process”, however the assumption that the culture is either the essence of the group or the difference between groups remains basically unchallenged.

As Strauss and Quinn (1997, p.12) note, each view of culture adds value to our understanding and most are not mutually exclusive, however, each theory’s individual focus usually leads to a quite different methodologies and practices. It is these methodologies that may or may not be applicable in the field of organisational design and management.

Most visible of late has been the predominance of gloom and doom statements in the culture-as-essence and culture-as-difference camps. Even the language “culture war”, “conflict of cultures”, “culture clash” reveals the underlying assumption…the personality of this group of people is fundamentally different to the personality of this other group of people so the only strategy left is damage minimisation.

I agree with Holden (2002) who argues that “the concept behind culture-as-essence and culture-as-difference has limited explanatory power”.

Flawed logic
Of course here lies the root of the problem. It may well be beneficial when dealing with a nation as a whole to base business decisions on national averages or societal means. For example if the average Bahamian wears casual attire 360 days of the year, then setting up a men’s suit store in Nassau may not be a very profitable business decision.

However, averages across a large group cannot be applied to the individuals within the group (or even sub-groups or subcultures within the group) without more information about the individual. This is a widely recognised error called an ecological fallacy (MathDaily.com, 2005, 'ecological fallacy'), and Hofstede warns against it repeatedly in his presentations (Hofstede, 2005). For example, if Class A averages 92% on their maths scores and Class B averages only 67%, it does not follow that an individual from Class A is better at maths than an individual from Class B. The student from Class A could have failed math while being surrounded by geniuses and the student from Class B might have found themselves in the opposite situation.

This error leads to discriminatory stereotypes as explained above and can destroy perceptions of benevolence and trust in the individuals concerned.

The reverse ecological fallacy, or ‘exception fallacy’ (MathDaily.com, 2005, 'exception fallacy'), raises its head frequently in top down cultural models. This occurs when a group is judged based on observations of a few individuals or exceptional cases.

This fallacy is at the root of a lot of racist assumptions and both trust and knowledge sharing will suffer if it is in evidence.

Image courtesy of "The Far Side" & Gary Larson.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 2

2009-05-13T07:59:00.002+10:00

Welcome to part two of my series on creating knowledge cultures. In this chapter I talk about the early pioneers who started to define culture from their anthropological roots by focusing on a top-down view of cultural forces within nations, people groups, communities and organisations.
This is a light treatment of these authors who have made significant contributions to theory and research in the wider social sciences.

2. The solution to the paradox of culture
Anthropology & Geertz
Arguably the best known and possibly most influential anthropologist of recent times is Clifford Geertz. His seminal work, The Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz, 1973) is still quoted by many today and played a central role in changing the definition of culture from a general catch-all term to describing a semiotic concept of social connections within which man is suspended; and the analysis of which was then redefined as an interpretive search for meaning (Ibid, p.5).

An ethnographer, Geertz claimed that ‘thick description’ was the only way to study the culture of societies. By thick, he meant a recorded enquiry that includes as many observations about a scenario as possible. For example the actor’s background, race, emotional, financial & social state, political and environmental factors, everything the ethnographer can discern. Geertz claimed that to break down such an observation into its component parts would be to rob it of its ability to function as a useful record.

This thick description is then run through a process of analysis which involves sorting out the cultural symbols and their structure and then use these to interpret the situation – if possible – without bias from one of the elements or by the ethnographers beliefs (the later leading to the most hated claim of ethnocentricity).

Of course the concept of removing the key elements via this analysis, distorts the context of the scenario, and reduces the significance and accuracy of the research. Geertz admitted this claiming that “Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete” (p.29) and went on to define cultural analysis and interpretation as more “a refinement of debate”. But being committed to this methodology meant he used the same logic to pronounce as anathema, anything that sought to crystallise cultural facets into universal principles or ascribe them to properties of the human mind (p.20).

Watching first the behaviourists, and later the lingual cognitivists and their attempt to apply privacy theory to the problem of culture, drew forth Geertz’s scorn (p.12). The assertion that to break down a scenario, for example a wink, into its component private parts, i.e. the contraction of the muscles controlling the eyelid, not only robbed it of any ability to be interpreted, but also led to the assumption that meaning, therefore, must exist externally. The obvious target for this reasoning must then be the cultural symbols that an ethnologist would be so familiar with. This is exactly where his logic took him, and the early cognitivists could offer little by way of response.

Positivistic roots
Geertz went one step further, claiming that since the study of culture could be restricted to symbols and objects – upon which men have impressed meaning – empirical studies would make ethnography “a positive science like any other.” (Strauss and Quinn, 1997, p.14)

In the early 19th century, Auguste Comte – the founder of sociology - developed a philosophy which later became known as positivism (Garbarino, 1983, p.20). The central tenant of which is “any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations.” (Britannica Online, 2005, 'positivism').

In the early 20th century Logical positivism rose to prominence in the sciences and Geertz sought to rest his ethnographic methods on its empirical credibility just as Comte had done with sociology 100 years before.

Positivism in cultural studies tends to ignore the “wet” neuro-psychological aspects, not because they don’t exist, but because they cannot be empirically measured with any level of accuracy.

Mainstream Conceptions of Culture
Common usage of the social word culture usually refers to one of two meanings:
1) The tastes in art and manners that are favoured by a social group or
2) Behaviour peculiar to Homo sapiens, together with material objects used as an integral part of this behaviour. Thus, culture includes language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, and ceremonies, among other elements (Britannica Online, 2005, 'culture')

The later is usually referring to behaviours and objects belonging to a particular nation or society, and the science of ethnographic and anthropology in general attacks this head-on. However, the definition of culture can also refer to smaller groups of people and the science of sociology (and to a lesser extent social and organisational psychology) tends to research smaller groups, such as organisations, etc (Rogers and Ellis, 1994, p.119).

Researchers and authors like Geert Hofstede, Peter Senge and Edgar Schein have had considerable influence in this area over the last twenty years. Focusing mainly on large multi-national enterprises as their in-situ laboratories, these and many others have created a plethora of books and papers on the subject of creating, analysing and changing corporate cultures. Many…from the top down.

Creating Knowledge Cultures - Post 1

2009-05-11T21:22:00.007+10:00

The DeltaKnowledge blog has been quiet for the last few months as I have started enjoying life without study on my back, but it’s time to start getting my thoughts back online again and to get things started I thought a good idea would be to do a series on organizational culture from the Knowledge Management point of view.

This series is from a paper I wrote a little while ago about the central ingredients for creating knowledge cultures and is a run-up to a discussion I am running at the Melbourne KMLF this month, so if you are coming along I hope you have a read and come prepared to participate.

In the paper I claim that in order to remain competitive in a turbulent business environment, organisations are beginning to understand the impact that culture has on every aspect of corporate life. Culture itself presents a paradox which anthropology, sociology and psychology have attempted to explain. I outline and critically review past definitions and solutions. Culture as cognitive process is then presented as an improvement. In this light, the central ingredients for the creation of knowledge cultures are presented, including distributed cognition, learning organisations, knowledge networks and the import of Trust. Finally I examine some real world applications and if and how culture can be managed is briefly discussed.

Rather than an in depth treatment, this is meant as a big picture view of the attempts to apply different cultural theories to the field of KM and touches of some of the key thinkers who have helped move this field forward to where it is today. For brevity, it ignores many other important contributors and associated theories, like Social Impact Theory, discussed recently on weknowmore.org’s theory of the week.

While “culture as an emergent property of complex environments” is not directly discussed, the discussion of distributed cognition will hopefully help dispel some of lingering ideas about the common definition of culture (especially corporate or organisational culture) as some sort of group attribute or single over-riding force.

Before I start I have to acknowledge the fantastic guidance of Professor Gabriele Lakomski of the University of Melbourne for whom I wrote this paper. I benefited greatly from her clear thinking and insistence that if the philosophical foundations were wrong, then the science could end up way off base when it comes to implementation. That said, I accept all errors and omissions as my own. The Theory of Culture is simply massive and it is with a strong sense of humility that I attempt to summarise and critique this small part of it. In fact I hope the feedback and discussion that comes from it will help me to continue learning about this important subject.

So here we go. I will post one part each day until it’s all up and if it gets done before my talk, maybe I will sum up some of the comments and answer some of the questions. Feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to answer (or to at least add to my list of discussion points for KMLF and you can come and discuss your point in person!)

1. The paradox of culture
To create knowledge cultures, one must first define what culture is. What, at first, seems like a simple task turns out to be quite a hotly debated topic, with a central paradox being enthusiastically courted by scholars of positivism, pragmatism, post-modernism and more recently naturalism and neuro-science.

This paradox is summed up thus:

“How can we explain both cultural reproduction, thematicity, and force … [centripetal forces] at work in social life – and cultural variation, inconsistency, and change … [centrifugal forces]? More plainly, how do we handle the fact this is not a homogenous world without creating separate entities … to explain the differences?”
(Strauss and Quinn, 1997)

Breaking down the paradox – the refinement of cultural definitions
As with nearly all subjective constructs, building a working model that approaches the observed nature can be a long and sometimes distributed process. This has certainly been the case with culture theory. Whether one has travelled the world, had dealings with multinational companies, or even just changed to another place of employment, the impact of different cultural norms are too obvious to reject out-of-hand. Yet individuals do seem to differ enough to make one hesitate before employing generalisations or abstracted assumptions based on the society, organisation or group they may belong to.

For this reason, researchers and practitioners in many fields have sought to define culture in ways that have enabled them to operate more efficiently where culture may impact the results of their research or change strategies. This has resulted in an omnium-gatherum of definitions with each field’s offerings slanted toward solving the problems that culture presents to them.
Coming from a sociology perspective, Swindler and Arditi (1994) remark that in previous cultural studies, “culture connotes symbolic systems that are deeply embedded, taken-for-granted, often enduring, and sometimes invisible." But go on to say, “The sociology of knowledge instead directs attention to cultural elements that are more conscious, more explicitly linked to specific institutional arenas, and more historically variable.”

Some view organisations through the metaphor of an anthropomorphic organism and speak of its culture as a collective consciousness with personality, needs and character (Meek, 1988, p.459).
In another example, Theron (2002) quotes Thurbin as follows:

“A definition of culture...is where a group of people who have worked together for some time is behaving in a consistent way. Thus, having a set of shared philosophies and common fundamental values.”

In his book, Schein, a professor of management at MIT and corporate consultant on organisational development, defines culture as follows:

"…a pattern of basic assumptions – invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration – that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems." (Schein, 1985, p.12)

Later in his guide to managerial readers, he offered a simplified version, stating, "Culture is the sum total of all the shared, taken-for-granted assumptions that a group has learned throughout its history. It is a residue of success." (Schein, 1999).

Coming from the field of traditional anthropology, but with even less regard to the cognitive side of culture, Geertz presents a highly positivist view of culture claiming that “Society’s forms are culture’s substance” (Geertz, 1973, p.28). He defines culture not as a power, but as a context within which behaviours, institutions and processes can be thickly described and interpreted (Ibid, p.14) in order to build empirical credibility upon a positivist legacy: “Only public forms are observable and we should study only what we can observe” (Strauss and Quinn, 1997, p.15).

Hofstede believes culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another” (Hofstede, 1984, p.21). He equates the culture of a group to the personality of an individual and seeks to determine the culture of a nation or organisation using personality style tests of its individual members.

Finally the cultural anthropologists weigh in with a definition that includes the internal, cognitive aspects. From previous work on schemas in the 1970s and 1980s (Sperber, 1985, D’Andrade, 1995, Bourdieu, 1977) and leaning heavily on neurally inspired connectionism, Strauss and Quinn (1997, p.7) claim that:

“Culture...consists of regular occurrences in the humanly created world, in the schemas people share as a result of these, and in the interactions between these schemas and this world. When we speak of culture, then, we do so only to summarize such regularities.”

What is collaboration software?

2009-02-02T23:46:00.004+11:00

I wrote a short reply on actKM tonight in response to Matt Moore's question about Collaboration software. It would seem my thoughts let me a little further than I expected so I thought I would share my response here too to see what others think about what defines Collaboration software.

Bon appétit!

The reason for this post is I am yet to solidify my own definition. I am formulating the idea based on a few quotes I have read lately and also my own experience with Wikis. I think the difference also speaks to the difference between communication, cooperation and collaboration.

It seems to me that two parties can cooperate in order to bring benefits to each of them which outweigh the sum of their individual results. For example the Government cooperating with a car company to build a new plant. Car company gets a cheap implementation due to tax concessions, etc. Government gets increased revenue and lowers the unemployment rate a little...But the Government doesn't make the cars.

Collaboration then is when two parties work together on a single product or project. A single outcome if you like. Customers collaborate ideas with engineers about the upcoming model - more power, better fuel economy, extra 10,000 km between services, etc. Mitsubishi designs a car that Chrysler builds the engine and drive-train for. Not just a plug in, actually using the specific expertise of those companies teams to create a car that is better than either of them could make alone.

So, collaboration software in my book would be any software that enhances multiple parties ability to work together on a single outcome.

Communications software in general can do this, yes. I actually know a person who still prefers a phone to do it. The issue is custom fit to modern collaboration techniques. Some of the early bio-tech collaboration efforts were done with phones, faxes and email. It took months or years to get a project finished, but they did actually collaborate around the world on single, amazing projects. But time moves on, after research, design & development comes efficiency and newer customer collaboration tools can allow people to do their slice of the work and resubmit it to the whole in just hours or even in real time. And now we have the social media side coming in to help communicate the often unseen cultural and contextual markers that were absent before in non-face-to-face communications.

By this definition I guess tools like twitter would not be collaboration tools. They are communications tools that communicate the context and background missing in older, more formal communications tools. Both old and new can be used to enhance collaboration, but I think we need the full gamut of IT and KM solutions, custom built to our complex environment and special needs to see the most efficient collaboration initiatives emerge.

For me, any technology that can transfer a thought, word or idea from one human being to another is communications. That is the beauty of a working wiki. It isn't that you can edit too. It is that in reading and then editing you are participating and communicating as part of a community. That might be used for collaboration, it might not. It is all communications software I think. The collaboration tag comes down to what you do with it and how well it does it.

Well, what do you think. Am I on the right track or am I crazy? Have you pulled out the dictionary and looked up "Collaboration" yet?

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks: "DNA Rendering" by ynse (Flickr)

Nice Intro to Enterprise 2.0 and BPM

2009-01-30T11:19:00.002+11:00

As you can probably see here I am always looking for good ways to explore and explain Enterprise 2.0 to people at different levels of the journey. The trick, I think, is to expand their tent a little at a time. Give them a taste of the benefits then introduce the next set of ideas.

Today I linked to Mark Masterson at Computer Sciences Corporation in their Germany office.

I came across him after his post about Enterprise 2.0 and organisational culture turned up in my weekly Google search results. I plan to continue my conversation with him next week on that subject, but it's nice to find somebody on the other side of the world with such similar interests and viewpoints.

Mark has posted some presentations on his Linked-In profile that take aim at those looking for process automation and pointing out the benefits of using (Gasp of horror!) humans instead of computers to do some tasks that - as it turns out - computers really aren't that good at doing.

So, if you are at the crux of developing business processes, or have crashed and burned a few business system projects, then have a look through. It's just 24 pages, explains itself pretty well and is definitely worth your time.

The confluence of PM and KM

2009-01-21T06:52:00.002+11:00

I have been studying informally for the CAPM exam recently and while doing so have been aware that while the PMBOK Guide discusses a "Project Management Information System", the technologies involved in this are less well described.

Last week I put a cal out on ActKM for those interested in joint developing a set of Project Management templates to be used in a wiki and I am now putting the call out here too.

There are a few reasons I think wikis would be a good tool to manage projects:

In small businesses especially, the large PM tools are way too expensive. Using Creative Commons we will make these templates free for anyone to download. All you need is a wiki to install them on.
Project Managers in general seem to be more of the box ticking type than the Barak Obama social types. As Sonal Shah points out in this nice blog post, Project Managers need to communicate more.
Many of the documents are of a collaborative nature anyway. Stakeholders especially can benefit as a recursive process of creation for the requirements document tends to jog the mind and uncover needs in respond to other stakeholders points. erfect when stakeholders are on different continents or cannot meet for other reasons.
The social nature of wikis means your team can work collaborative way. It traditional, highly siloed projects, the team members can see what the other parts of the project are up to, and in more modern projects, the Project Manager can encourage collaboration, especially around interface points.
Finally, the visible nature of the wiki means that not just Project Plans and Status Reports, are visible, but also the project process itself. People can see what comes next and make more holistic decisions.

Interested in helping out? We will be using Atlassian Confluence and it will take some time, but if you think you have something to add then fire me an email of comment on this post. I look forward to hearing from you.