KM and Friendships - Blogging, Listservs, Forums, Moderation, etc.

Dave Snowden has been wondering out loud, in public … and making up his mind conversation by conversation, link by link … about the process (moderation or not, for example) and the relative utility and effectiveness of various forms of online exchange, with respect to knowledge construction and knowledge management dynamics.

I think it’s clear that he’s come down on the side of the purposeful and responsible use of blogging as fundamentally effective, for all the reasons many bloggers know … free, unmoderated flow of ideas, ability to easily link to source or reference material, personal sculpting of the use of RSS aggregation, the formation and deepening and broadening of social and professional connection that blogs effectuate like nothing else, really … at least in today’s post he says he will talk about Knowledge Management and Sin at an ARK conference today in London.

In perusing the post and the comments, I found this delicious comment by Dennis Howlett:

KM = hierarchical straitjacket about which no-one cares

Social Software = freedom to choose - everyone cares

I started paying attention to knowledge management (KM) in 1990, as part of my career-long interest in the nature of work and the structure of organizations .. this combined with a growing awareness of the impact of IT and (eventually) the Web on work and organizations is what led to wirearchy in 1999, and my ready adoption of blogging in the middle of 2002.

In the fall of 2002 I had been in conversation about KM and blogging with a few people, and because of the social nature of blogging I was thinking about the development of trust and openness.  It struck me back then, as it has any number of times since, that we learn a great deal about trust and openness in our primary friendships.

I believe that there are few deep friendships which do not go through periods of testing and friction … and it’s important to note as well that friendships, especially professional ones, aren’t always about blind support, loyalty and being nice, but as often are about honesty, directness, usefulness, pertinence … but they all follow similar dynamics on the way to deep trust.  It is in the way these tests are approached and resolved (or not) that define and deepen the friendship, helping to create solid bonds that enable even deeper trust and exploration, and yield richer fruits.

So, during that period of wondering 5 years ago, I wrote the following post.  I began to believe then, and still believe today, that the sociality that blogging enables and creates is a critical component of the effective construction, exchange and use of knowledge, and I truly believe that many if not most organizations should move more quickly and more seriously to experiment on purpose with ways to use blogging (inside and outside the firewall) to enhance responsiveness, effectiveness, productivity and innovation.

I hope this November 2002 post reflect that .. please bear in mind that I, as well as any of you that are interested in KM, will have learned much about it in the past five years, so what I reserve the right to update what I wrote back then.

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Sunday, November 03, 2002

Following on Chris’s notes below on conversation and KM -

I’ve often thought about this. There’s a core issue in KM - that of the gulf separating Tacit Knowledge (TK) and Explicit Knowledge (EK), with proponents arguing that TK is only really shareable ("manageable" ??) via conversation, dialogue, communities of practice, and so on.

I tend to agree. At the same time I believe that in a wirearchical world there are emerging tools that allow for sharing, building, using, re-using and adding to knowledge - tools that don’t have to necessarily replicate the synchronous, face-to-face aspects of conversation. This emergent phenomenon called blogging is a key example … to me it represents state-of–the-art in 2002 of how KM could be handled, with perhaps links to a larger database if lots of documents need storage.

What IS problematic are the other aspects of communications that are involved - culture, structure, body language, attention.

Attention, in particular, holds my fascination these days. I’m continually amazed at how hard it often is to have a fully-fleshed-out conversation with people - we are overrun with "get to the point", "make it tangible", "what’s your value proposition" (which is OK in and of itself) without - often - the participants in a conversation taking the time and expending the mental and attentional effort to define and understand the context. Specialization is in, generalization is out.

This has utility, in an era defined by time pressures, but I think it’s dangerous not taking the time or making the effort to listen to each other long enough to share a common field of understanding and meaning. As things get more uncertain, and compelxity accelerates, people want clear and simple answers. Hmmm….

From David Weinberger

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 - The opposite of machine is voice

 - The opposite of information is trust

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I have been thinking for a while about how understanding knowledge "management" could benefit from exploring the dynamics of friendship. If we are to develop and share useful knowledge, we need to trust each other.

Do you trust "instant friends", or a transaction where someone else you don’t know says "this is what you need to know - here it is". How do they know that’s what you need to know?

On the other hand, you trust a friend. Why? Because you’ve been down several roads together, you’ve gotten to know each others’ characters and contexts, and you’ve probably had instances where boundaries have been crossed - and the friendship has survived. They’ve made mistakes - given you the wrong info, so to speak - but you’ve cut them some slack, probably found a way to communicate to each other about that, and as a result the context and trust have grown "deeper and wider". You’ve yelled at them, stopped speaking to them for a while - someone (one of you) reaches out, issues are reviewed and clarified, a negative feeling is lifted, and you go on to share more, learn more, develop more.

Passing this puck over to KM - tools exist to "share" information and knowledge, but adoption has been relatively slow. Sure, there are big integrated sysytems that are like warehouses. Sure, there’s Lotus Notes. Sure, there’s Groove. And so on….

Yet, the potential for sharing knowledge and starting to really cook has only just started to scratch the surface of possibility.

As I’m writing this, I recognize the distinction of  inside organizations versus outside organizations. Blogging is knowledge sharing, isn’t it? Why does it seem to work well? Because it’s the sharing of points of view without an ulterior motive - the receiver can decide what’s useful, interesting, outrageous, incorrect (from their POV), and so on…

So, back to the slowish adoption of tools and sharing … Inside an organization, there’s competition, territoriality, punishment for irrelevance or irreverence (at least in the formal sense). People at work are, for the most part, constrained and held hostage by structures that are often outdated, too rigid to accommodate true creative and constructive conversation. Interesting conversations happen, anyway…it’s just that they have to find some other "time and place".

There’s always been lots of "jazz" conversations that transfer and share lots of knowledge - but it’s almost always been on the QT when it’s not structured, formal and "on the agenda", as it were.

My belief is that wirearchy is clearly leading to the necessity for more open workplace cultures. What a polarity, eh - a greater drive for efficiency, more demand for results, six sigma, specialization, cost clampdowns, layoffs, longer work weeks, juxtaposed by the pressing need for greater flexibility, responsiveness, innovation, integration.

I think we’re clearly seeing the leading edge of these issues and dynamics emerging, what with all the consulting in employee engagement, emotional intelligence, participative management, coaching, real-time employee input, employee relationship management, etc. The old structures and assumptions are eroding in effectiveness, the new approach(es) aren’t yet clear.

However, it’s clear (to me) that mass customization - of work, and of learning - is on it’s way into the workplace and into our society. It has been for a while, and the marketers have understood this for some time (One-to-One), but it hasn’t really been framed in this context for the world of work. I’m pretty sure it will be, soon.

Back to KM, and the mass customization of sharing knowledge - IMO, Knowledge Management will never be fully addressed by having an integrated information system that makes whatever you need accessible when you need it - context, questioning, interpretation and fit-for-purpose will always have an essential role to play, and so what better than a Knowledge Buddy - a collaborator - with whom to have an argument, or with whom you can share a major breakthrough.

What about looking to the dynamics of effective friendships to inform this dialogue further?

Hey, and while we’re at it, there’s the whole (similar) fields of Family Systems dynamics from which to obtain additional useful insights. The OD word has been onto this for some time - and I’ve personally used Virginia Satir’s work in a number of my interventions over the years.

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