Of Definitions ...

This is the season of discussing and describing some of the fundamental aspects of Knowledge Management. On similar lines is the post by Luis Suarez about using stories for defining KM and e2.0 ... interesting reading.

Beginning with the idea of definitions, there is the important part about defining KM. This is where i believe we need to do a bit of rethink. I believe that there is no single universal definition of KM, simply because there is no single, universal definition of knowledge. What i am trying to say is that if we dont know what we are managing, then the definition of the management process itself must be a little hazy. Hence, the starting point for this has to be a definition for the concept of knowledge. Now, this is not to say that i claim to have come up with a definition. And i am not even trying. All i am trying to say here is that if a universal definition eludes us, then we must look for definitions which are specific in nature, from the perspective of the world of business, and then try to build up a somewhat universal definition, which covers ample ground.

What this means is that we can define knowledge in the context of a particular scenario. Now, this definition may not be applicable outside of this context but thats ok, because if we look at a series of contexts, then every scenario, within the organization, that is, forms a context. This is akin to looking for a working definition, rather than a precse one. And once this definition can be found out, then the definition of Knowledge Management can get derived from there. Again, by definition, this definition would be contextual, but again, being a working definition, this gives us a good starting point for building up KM initiatives. And if we look at enough of these definitions, we could come up with something which is generic enough to cover ample ground, which is why i quite like the definition which Dave Snowden has given at his blog.

Having said this, this kind of working knowledge can be built up using the art of story-telling as well. However, this probably doesnt take away much from the need of a definition, because i believe that what you cannot define in two sentences is something you havent understood. But, yes, i do believe that stories can be an excellent way of building up this understanding, which in turn can be quite a good way to approach a better understanding. For example, i use stories, too, rather, examples, when trying to define Knowledge, and from there, define Knowledge Management when i am running sessions for this. I like to distinguish between three terms before proceeding:

Data: Meteorological data, collected from across the world by weather satellites.

Information: Its going to rain in Kolkata

Knowledge: Better carry an umbrella if you are travelling to Kolkata.

This also bring up the idea of relevance of knowledge, illustrating the idea that what is considered knowledge by one person may not be so by another. What i like to take as an example of this is the incident from A Study in Scarlet, where, when told by Dr Watson, that the earth revolves around the sun, Sherlock Holmes informs him that now that he knows this, he will try to forget it, because this is not relevant to him. While it is true that its very difficult to say what information, from which sphere, could lead to what new discovery, in which sphere, it is impractical to have access to all knowledge on the world, and hence, the notion of knowledge being that which is relevant comes into the picture.

These ideas can be refined by the audience to arrive at a definition of Knowledge Management, which, while being different each time, usually comes to something like:

Knowledge Management is the management discipline of facilitating the flow of knowledge in the organization, ensuring relevant information is made available to the relevant people, in a timely manner, to enable them to perform their job more effectively.

As you can see, this definition is something which is specific to the working context, like i said that probably its better to create something which is contextual, and then build upon it. Any ideas of where this definition might lead you?

Conversations ...

There is a rather interesting post by Nick Milton about the value of dialogue in KM. Nick makes a very important point about the non-clarity of the knowledge available with "suppliers", and the knowledge required by "customers". This is so because, by definition, we cannot articulate everything. And this makes conversations very important. And with conversations, i am not just talking about people talking face-to-face, but conversation as a generic presence within organizations.

Another aspect which i wanted to bring out here is that the value of conversations also comes from the fact that conversations bring out a shared context which is important for knowledge-sharing to happen. While i believe that with knowledge-sharing within the organizational context, the organization plays an important role in creating a shared context, within this larger picture, between the supplier and customer, there must be a shared understanding of what is being shared. This becomes even more important the more diverse the supplier and customer in terms of their background, whether geographic, work area, experience, etc., because the more diverse they are, the more important conversation becomes a way to bridge this contextual gap.

Lets take another step further. If we look at the KM scenario today, we find that content management is something which is already a given. Its not as though organizations are starting to implement content management. Rather, the concept of content management is already matured, with organizations already having a good understanding of what it is about, and what it entails, and the benefits they could expect from it. On the other hand, collaboration, rather, conversation, is something which is emerging as a concept in organizations. Which means that CKO's probably need to look more closely at this aspect of KM. Maybe we need, in addition to CKO, someone as CCO ... Chief Conversation Officer?

About A Story ...

My friend and ex-colleague, Nirmala, has written a nice post about The Story of a Story ... Interesting, the part she writes about what makes a story useful to people listening to it. She does have a point there. We all love to discover the meaning hidden in a story. Which is why, stories with a meaning, or a moral hidden in the story is worth so much more than just a drab statement which just tells you what the story is. This is somewhat reflected in the fact that a lot of folks dont learn from other people's mistakes ... what could be called experiential learning.

Having said that, another aspect which we might need to focus upon, is that the basic idea of the story is to appeal to the thinking processes of the listener ... it is only by doing this, that a story can actually get the listeners to gather value from it ... and the fact that the story must successfully create a context which the listeners can identify with. It is this context which creates an intersection between what the listeners already know, and what the story is trying to convey. This is something i have written about earlier ... that new knowledge is created at the intersection of two fields of knowledge. And, the most important aspect of the story is that it builds up this intersection in a way which can be identified and understood by the listener, so they can build a connect between the existing, and the new.

Learning ...

Swami Rama tells a story in the wonderful book, Living With The Himalayan Masters ... This story is about a student of a Master who had never seen a cow, nortasted milk, but wanted to, because he had heard that milk is very nutritious. He went to the Master, and asked for his help. The master described the cow in great detail, and then described milk as being white, and being very good for the health. Now, the student went to search for a cow in the nearby village, where he couldnt come across a cow, but did see a statue of a cow. Now, nearby, people were whitewashing a house, and the bucket of whitewash was kept near the statue of the cow. Seeing this, and the white liquid in the bucket, the student thought this to be milk, and drank it. Needless to say, he was taken ill, and had to be admitted to hospital.

This story tells us of the value of direct experience. This is an invaluable asset to enable us to learn. We may learn a lot of concepts, but without direct experience, this learning is at best, partial. This is really the value of Internalization, as termed by Nonaka and Takeuchi, too. And this is something which we need to keep in mind when the question of training comes up ... Usually, the concept of direct experience is not factored into the curriculum itself within the training, and this takes a bit away from the value of the training itself.

Over the weekend, i was seeing my son doing numbers. Yes, he is actually taking time off from being part-time Batman, and part-time footballer, to learn calculations using the method of the Abacus. Interestingly, he uses exactly the phrases that his teacher uses in class, to try to calculate. "Look down, is it enough?", he asks himself. "No", comes the answer, from himself, and so, he looks up to carry on the calculation. This, from his scrapbook, is the exact language his teacher, uses, too.

And this is the aspect about learning which we need to leverage with stories. Whenever i used to teach Min-Max Planning, i used to tell a story ... about Mom going to buy Rice ... buying a fixed quantity for the month, not on a daily basis, and replenishing while there is still some Rice at home. I have written about this here. This goes to illustrate the value of building a picture for learners which they can carry with them, instead of dry concepts, and which enables them to relate concepts to things in the real world.

The Knowledge Creating Company ...

This book is one of the most renowned books when it comes to the subject of knowledge. This is The Knowledge-Creating Company by Nonaka and Takeuchi. Interesting reading, no doubt. And, i am sure i am learning a lot from the book. But, having said that (and you could say this could be because of very high expectations), i find the book a bit of a disappointment. Firstly, it is a bit confusing in the way it addresses definitional issues, and secondly, it focuses on the new product development aspect, in a way which at times doesnt feel relevant in other scenarios.

Firstly, the authors mention that metaphor and analogy are tools for externalization. However, this raises the question as to whether storytelling as a means of knowledge sharing should be treated as externalization, or whether it should be treated as socialization. According to the definition in the book, it should be treated as externalization, and this somehow doesnt ring too true, because a story is not really exlicit ... By the meaning of the word, the story is really tacit, because the real meaning and moral is hidden somewhere in the story, rather than being explicitly detailed, like in in data sheet. These two are qualitatively different, and this theory doesnt seem to address this difference. In other words, there is, to my mind, a difference between specific and generic knowledge (essentially, knowledge that is presented in the context in which it was created, vis a vis knowledge that has been abstracted from its context and presented in a generalized form), and this dimension of knowledge doesnt seem to be addressed here.

Secondly, somehow, another thing doesnt really come out too well ... That socialization, externalization, and combination are modes which are primarily from the sender's perspective, and in a sense, all of these must be followed by a step of internalization, otherwise the communication is incomplete. As such, internalization should be a component of all the three steps, but this doesnt come out well. For example, if someone were to write a document (externalization), does this by itself imply knowledge sharing? Or, would someone need to read and understand this document for the knowledge sharing cycle to be completed (ok, so a rather simplistic example, but adequate to actually get the point across, i suppose)? Also, the demarcation between the different steps doesnt come out too well. Although the impression one gets is that these four are substantially different forms of knowledge sharing, this difference doesnt come out clearly, and at the same time, the idea that comes out is that demarcation between the different modes is blurred. For example, if a discussion is considered to be socialization, when does this discussion move from being socialization, to being externalization? Or, if someone is writing a document based on their experiences, and is referring to other documents, would this be in the realm of externalization, or would this be combination? Somehow, the fact that many forms of knowledge sharing are a combination of these multiple modes, and people would move seamlessly from one mode to the other (as these modes are defined) doesnt come out too clearly.

Having said this, the theory is a very useful model to understand the concepts, and it would be extremely nice if the authors had built upon it, to take the nuances to the next level.

Would welcome all your thoughts and criticisms on the topic. Please do write in ... Would help me understand the fallacies in my arguments. Thank You!

This Book I Am Reading

These days, i am reading a book titled Shadows of the Mind ... written by Roger Penrose. This is a rather interesting book ... One that i would definitely recommend to anyone who is even remotely interested in human thinking. Though, of course, you would need to make sure you are at your most alert when you are reading the book (using a language slightly closer to English would have been actually a wonderful idea ...).

Just so you know ... i am still on chapter 1. Though, soon to move to chapter 2! Now, that would be an achievement (and if you read the book, you would quite agree with me!). The basic point of the part that i am reading now, is that there is the aspect of understanding "what needs to be done", and of being aware of "why it needs to be done". And, what Sir Roger Penrose argues (to my mind, quite effectively), that while the former is something which can be easily understood by any intelligence, through the form of mathematical algorithms (i would stretch this to the hilt, and say something similar about documented information, or, if i may use the term ... explicit knowledge!), the latter, in other words, awareness of what we are doing, and why this needs to be done to achieve a particular objective is something which is the tricky part.

And this is where i would extend the logic from chapter 1 of the book, to the two aspects of Knowledge Management i deal with ...

Codification, which is my fancy word for documented information

Collaboration, which, to a lot of folks, is the "other" part of KM

And this is where i would like to make the point that while what some folks call KM 1.0 focussed on the former, it is the latter which is the trickier part. One of the points Sir Roger goes on to make ...

It also allows us to have some kind of direct route to another person's experiences, so that one can "know" what the other person must mean by a word ...

This is where i would like to bring out the importance of collaboration ... from the basic premise that there is something which is beyond the objective (i am using the term loosely here) nature of things, and this is where managerial imagination comes into the picture, to imagine an organization where this can be tapped into. And this is something which large part of web 2.0 technologies are focussing on.

This also reinforces the point that some aspects of Knowledge, and hence of Knowledge Management must remain beyond measurement, at least till such a time as we can generate a framework which is scientific, and can bring these into the scientific fold (though this is something which the book argues against ... something i would surely write about again).

Tongue in cheek ... there are always ideas relating to our field of work from domains which are not necessarily related. Something i have written about before.

Knowledge Intersection

I was reading a blog some days back (cant seem to find it now, or i am just too lazy on a Sunday morning ... not that theres anything special about Sundays) which was talking about looking outside your field to get new ideas. Usually, you been to one conference, you been to all of them. So, the novelty usually tends to be the drinks!

I have been thinking how this concept impacts the entire idea of knowledge creation. Lets take a team ... which is purely inward looking. Theoretically, if they never had any interactions with anyone from outside the team, i surmise that they would come up with ideas from within a given pool of ideas, and this pool would never grow. That the ideas and thoughts and learnings would continue to recycle from a given set, and would simply go round in circles. Anybody disagree with this premise, i would be more than happy to read more about it.

Anyway, if we build on this premise ... The logical consequence of this would be that new knowledge is generated at the intersection of existing bodies of knowledge. If we were to take two teams, or individuals, with their own given set of ideas and learnings about the world around, it is in the region of intersection of their "information sets" that new knowledge is generated. It is in this intersection that ideas are exchanged freely, and ideas of the one are understood by the other, and built upon, to create completely new ideas. If these two folks didnt have any area of intersection, they would simply be like a Hindi speaking, and a Tamil speaking man put together in the same room, neither understanding what the other is saying.

The important point i am trying to make out is that we often have certain information about the world. We have knowledge ... and, this combines with knowledge from others, to create new forms of knowledge.

One implication ... we as KM practitioners, must look outside the field at other areas to look at newer ideas of knowledge generation, discussion, and sharing.

For example, I am reading a book titled The Indus Saga written by Aitzaz Ahsan. And, i am definitely learning so much about a country we in India dont know much about ... Pakistan. So what if we are neighbours. I believe that it is at the intersection of knowledge about our respective selves and our world views that new knowledge would be created.

The question this brings out ... how best can the intersection be shared between two people. This is where the importance of "mental models" cannot be overestimated. One must understand where the other person is coming from, and where they are going. And, to illustrate their point, must relate it to the image of the world the other person is carrying. And, this is where stories play a vauable role. This is where a story, using simple language, and building the essential points, can be highly effective to create an understanding of each other. Read The Indus Saga, and you would find out.

Storytelling ...

The ToI ran an interview with Yasuno Yuushi ... A quick search on google turns up photo results. The topic is Kamishibai ... the Japanese art of story-telling. And, how the advent of television led to the decline of the art ...

Kamishibai is the art of story-telling ... story-tellers would typically roam from one town to another on bicycles, and tell stories anchored by pictures ... These stories run in episodes ... Today, you hav e an episode which follows from the previous one ... much like the television serials. Similar art forms are to be found n India as well ... Whether it be the Ram Lila that is performed in Delhi ... in the walled city of Delhi ... where the Ramlila is performed in the form of episodes. You can find a sample program here. Or, whether it be the Nautanki.

The point I am trying to make here ... there are usually important lessons that comefrom these stories ... the way these stories are performed (not told, but rather, performed, which gets the audience to connect at multiple levels with the story being told, the most valuable being the emotional connection), lends to them an aura of reality, which enables people to connect with them.

Should this be something the art of story-telling in the organization adopt? We know there are story-telling gurus, and there are concerted efforts at knowledge-sharing using story-telling. What I am trying to understand here is how we can incorporate the human touch to stories. This, at times, seems to be missing ... and, folk art forms may contain some answers.

At another level, the art of story-telling can have huge implications for training as well ... in a lot of scenarios, training is conducted using ppt (pictures?), but the fun of the story is missing. And, this is the one major disconnect between the way stories are told, and the way the connect is missing in trainings.

Paradox of Communities ...

There is a scenario that is often observed in communities ... Especially communities within the organizational perspective ... This is typically not valid in social networking scenarios on the internet, but within the corporate intranet, this is to be found quite frequently.

Communities that begin with good membership, and with a high level of participation (and I think these are among the parameters that can be applied for determining the level of activity that is happening in the community), over a period of time, tend to wither. Membership may be there ... But the conversation soon dries up. This is to be expected, too.

Lets say you meet a friend after a long time ... If you are as old as I am, it could be a really long time. You have lots to catch up on. What happened to so-and-so, where is such-and-such ... There are years to catch up on. The two of you are talking excitedly ... But there comes a point, when the conversation falls silent. When neither of you have anything to say. The pause may be short, or it may be long. It may even go on ... If this is how we as individuals interact, could we expect communities, which are, after all, made up of individuals, to behave any differently? One could say that at least someone in the community would be saying something ... But, that doesnt usually happen.

And, this is where the paradox of communities is. This is not the first time this is being written about, not the last. But, the fact is, communities, in addition to corporate sponsorship (which is something which a lot of us must have see in our experiences, that communities need some kind of encouragement from the management, and that managers have a key role to play here ... something AndrewMcAfee has written about ... and I wrote about the paper earlier), communities also need some kind of constructive intervention, to move them ... reinvigorate them, or move the conversation forward, so to say ... And, I think stories have a role to play here. A story, well told, could lead the conversation to a different plane, maybe into avenues which werent explored earlier.

"Last Mile Connectivity" and Enterprise 2.0

While discussing the idea of what is Knowledge, and hence, what is KM, and from there, the role that KM needs to play in the organization, and whether it does really have a role to play or not, I have come to a point where the perception of knowledge looks like this ...

If the cook-book is information, then the ability to cook a good meal from the cook-book is knowledge. In other words, that knowledge is the internalization, or the understanding, and the application of the information to a particular scenario. Something we could call "last mile connectivity", or the linkage between your computer monitor, and your brain. And, that this is where knowledge is actually generated. And, that managing this part is what "Knowledge Management" is all about. This brings me to something that has been written about for some time now ... that maybe, Knowledge Management may be a misnomer, and rather, Knowledge Facilitation is what we ought to look at. Because, Knowledge Management may be about managing your head, and that is something no KM practitioner would like to do.

And, herein lies the nub. How can KM ensure that the guy (ok, I am being gender neutral here, so please read this the way you would like ...) who is reading the cook-book would be able to make the dish the way it was meant to be, and that the dish would taste exactly the way the author of the cook-book wanted it to taste. While this is great from the perspective of repeatibility, and of making sure everybody is doing the same thing, this may not necessarily be what is intended to be achieved by KM. It is in the differences between perceptions and outcomes, that opportunity may lie.

Let us look at it this way ... Let us say your master craftsman is retiring (thanks to Shafnas Siddiq for the example), and you have hired a new guy to take over. Now, it is one thing to have KT processes in place, so the experiences of the retiring craftsman are written down, documentd, and can be handed over to the new guy, in the form of a set of documents so he can go through them, and is good to go. But, it just doesnt work that way. There could be two ways of looking at this:

Knowledge --> Information --> Knowledge (Externalization, followed by internalization), which would suffer from the fact that everything just cannot be documented, and hence, there would be huge experience loss with this approach.

Knowledge (of A) --> Knowledge (of B) (socialization), which is where we are looking at setting up a dialog, where the picture of the facts, and experiences, is transferred to the new guy. Now, this is easier said than done, as a lot of us would agree, but the fact remains, that this seems to be a better way of sharing experiences (as has been done down the ages ... Guru-Shishya, apprentice ...). This can also be seen from the recent surge in the use of storytelling as a tool for sharing knowledge.

And this is where the current state of technology, and technology and people thinking (aka Web 2.0, or Enterprise 2.0, or Social Computing ... to my mind, different aspects, some upstream, some downstream, of the same concept) can play a role. The way I like to put it ... collaboration, which can be augmented by codification, rather than having codification being the corner-stone of the KM strategy. There is an excellent post by Andrew McAfee, where he has built up a model for adoption of Enterprise 2.0, the theory behind it (a paper by Mark S. Granovetter, titled The Strength of Weak Ties, which even I could understand), and how organizations can analyze the need for social computing, where it should be positioned in the organization's knowledge structure (I look at this as being different from the process or hierarchy structure of the organization), and how the different tools can be leveraged.

The concern ... What the author of the cook-book intended, and what our budding cook interpreted (in terms of the mental pictures they have developed about the process and the activities in cooking the dish), could be very different. Certainly, there would be elements of the author's mental picture, which would get dropped in the process of this transfer, but at the same time, while generating a mental picture of the process, would typically be a little different from what the author tried to convey. Now, this is where opportunity lies. What this means is two things ... One, that the dish would not be an exact replica of what it would have been if the author had cooked it, and second, and more important, the differences might lead to a dish which is actually more delicious. And, this is one of the key ways in which businesses evolve. By a series of improvisations, which occur as a natural consequence of the differences in perception of the person who is speaking, and the one who is listening. This is not to say that there is no value in repatability of processes, but verbatim would mean that there is an absolute lack of variation, and that there would simply be clones ... killing the entire idea of harnessing the wisdom, and the improvisations of the people on the field. And, this would simply lead to perpetuation of a particular way, which would, typically, result in blocking any change to this, and stagnation of the organization. And, as we can see all around us, this doesnt happen, and that is one of the things that leads to evolution of things around us.

Management Thoughts ... Chak De!

A lot has been said about the teamwork ethos that Chak De! brings out. The movie is about the coach bringing together a set of individuals, who play good hockey, and transforms them into a team. There are 16 girls, who are slated to play for India at the Women's Hockey World Cup (Melbourne). How a set of individuals evolves into a world beater team. An amazing movie, and quite interesting, too. There are, however, a few things I wanted to write ... Add to the cacophony, you might say!

While the movie brings out the ethos of teamwork, and how, a set of individuals, working towards a common goal, can achieve anything, as can be seen by India beating Australia, and picking the World Cup, there are a few things which also must be considered.

First, is the leader, in this example, the coach. A brilliant man, who understands that the entire team needs to work as a single unit. That even the most experienced player must sit out a few matches, if that is going to help the team win. In other words, get the team to put the team above the individuals. However, this is easier said than done, and what a lot of folks have commented on this, ignores the fact that this can be done only, and only by developing passionate resolve. This kind of passionate resolve is usually lacking in most organizations, and a lot of leaders, while singing odes to teamwork, dont invest too much of their emotional capital into developing passion.

Another thing which needs to be brought out ... Individual brilliance. This is a given in a national team, where the best of the best come together, to play for the nation. Having said that, there is one lesson which we might want to consider ... In organizations, today, the command and control aspect of mangement is fast losing its way, and is being replaced by a more "democratized" way of doing things. Gone are the days when the managers were supposed to know everything, and the others were supposed to just follow. This is something coach Kabir Khan ably demonstrates when he tells the team to just go and play ... Chak De! The aspect of tapping into the "wisdom of the crowd" is not too apparent. Having said that, this would reflect what happens in most organizations ... Where the wisdom of the crowds is paid lip service to, and the thoughts of a set of managers are what the company is run by. This, to a lot of folks, is set to change, and change it will, considering the way social computing is putting the tools for collaboration into the hands of everyone.

Lastly, though, the point to be made is that the movie brings out the idea of a shared passion, and teamwork very well, and this also shows something else ... That a story is worth more than the number of words in it.

Comic Learning

The ToI today ran an article titled Comic Relief in History Classes for Mumbai School. A very nice article, and it displays a unique way of learning. When I was thinking of a title for this post, I was choosing between Comic Learning, and Comic Teaching, and I think the apt title was learning. As you can see from the article, this is more of a pull, rather than a push. Traditional teaching has been kind of a broadcast mode, with the teacher broadcasting thoughts to the students, and stopping to take feedback from time to time. And that has not been very interesting. There are not many dates I remember from my History class, except for 1526 (for some reason, I remember the year for the Second Battle of Panipat), and of course, 1857, and the dates related to the Freedom Struggle.

In fact, comics seem to be coming back in a new and reinvented form, as can be seen from the comic about the Ramayana. This just goes to show that the art of telling stories has not died out, and that even today, stories appeal to people, whether children, or elders. Coming from a generation when tv was a novelty, and the staple fare was Amar Chitra Katha, and Phantom and Mandrake were the norm, I think comics are a very powerful way of teaching. And this experiment in teaching History with comics, and the reaction of children to this is indeed heartening.

If we were to say that we are, at a level, grown up children, the fact is, comics, and what they stand for, a story in a non-threatening environment, in an environment which is comfortable, promote learning. This would imply that the art of storytelling can play a major role in the learning process, and there are tools which can add to the richness of the story, and enhance the learning experience.

Storytelling Interview

The ToI ran an interview with Sarah Kyankya, a writer-publisher from Uganda. The title caught my eye ... Storytelling can make a difference in conflict.

Sarah goes on to say ...

Storytelling can make a parti-cular difference when children are involved. There are many child soldiers in Uganda. When children from the north come to the south and have a chance to tell their stories, and to witness another way of life, they realise that their existence is not normal. The exchange of stories, of experiences can help children from both parts understand each other better.

What this means is that storytelling can help people who are engaged in a conflict to share each other's experiences, and this enables them to create a mutual understanding. And if this helps in bringing about an atmosphere which is a trifle less hostile, its worth it, dont you think? Sarah goes on to describe how stories are related, and make a difference to people in war-torn Uganda. She mentions that stories are used to describe the problem of HIV, and the issues surrounding it. These stories, which may take the form of plays, or songs, in addition to stories, are a very powerful tool to help people to understand the core issue by enabling them to get a better understanding of the entire scenario.

Innovation and KM

There is a rather interesting Book I am reading these days ... Marketing as Strategy by Nirmalya Kumar. I am sure you must have figured out that it is not out of any love for the subject, but out of the fact that the Exam is on Saturday.

But he writes an interesting piece about innovation. While he is writing about the idea of Breakthrough Innovation, and illustrates the point with how Sony manages it, this piece got me thinking about the applicability of KM. The following are my drowsy thoughts on the subject (ya, ya, I have been awake quite early writing this ...).

Breakthrough innovation that reshapes the industry usually occurs in bursts in an organization, and is interspersed with large extents of incremental innovation. These periods of incremental innovation can get quite prolonged, even to the extent of eliminating the innovative component of the organization, with the result that the organization, during these periods, faces the possibility of losing its competitive thrust, and move from a company that is market-driving, to a company that is market-driven.

Lot of organizations are looking for ways to prevent this. While I am not saying KM is the panacea for this (cannot be), at one level, KM is an essential ingredient of this. One could say that the key is to create a culture of innovation, but if it were that simple, we would be working with innovation 3.5 by now. But we are not.

Lets look at the transition from disruptive to incremental innovation. An organization which can drive disruptive innovation obviously has been able to achieve success with the innovation cycle. But, the challenge faced by the organization is to ingrain innovation as part of its "corporate DNA". But, in order to do this, the organization needs to understand the concept of innovation, and this understanding of innovation must permeate different parts of the organization.

What does this require?

• An understanding of what is innovation, what consitutes the phenomenon, and an understanding of the boundaries of the definition.
• An understanding of the motivation for the disruptive mode of innovation (after all, it didnt happen by chance, and even if it did, there needs to be a way to understand the chance factor, and determine how that can be leveraged repeatedly).
• An understanding of the process (in terms of people, and organizational processes). When I am talking about people processes, I am essentially talking about the thinking processes which led to the landmark.
• An understanding of the organizational structure which led to the breakthrough (though this does not necessarily mean that the same organizational structure by itself would lead to a repeat burst, but then, none of the things I am writing about would, by themselves, manage the change!).
• An understanding of the relationship of the innovation with the larger organizational context, in terms of market structures, the organizational business and strategic scenario, and related concepts which make up the business context in which the organization is operating.

As you can see, all of these ingredients which are essential chapters in the book of innovation, are not things which can be documented. Having said that, it is very improtant to have the answers to these questions, these elements of understanding, to permeate the larger organization milieu. And this is where KM needs to play role. Like I said, this is not to say that KM is driving innovation, but surely, as a management discipline, can play a facilitating role. This is something which is largely ignored from the perspective of KM practitioners, because the emphasis is not there on connecting KM with organizational processes, and even where there is the emphasis, it is more of embedding knowledge sources into transactional processes, and not tactical or strategic processes. Though, in this context, I think storytelling can play a vital role. More on this in my next post.

Chake De! and Management

The Indian women's team won the World Cup, and the movie became a runaway hit. Yes, we are talking about the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Chak De! India which is running to packed theatres across the country. I think I have figured out the reason why the halls are packed. One of the reasons, from what the press tells us, is the liking Corporate India has taken to the movie. There was an article about Mr. Narayana Murthy going to see the movie with Mrs. Murthy, and being impressed about the content of the movie.

The movie is a story about a Hockey coach who takes his team out of mediocrity, with each player identifying themselves with the state which they represented on the way to representing India at the World Cup (Melbourne, is what they showed in the movie, I think ...). There can be a number of parallels that can be drawn with the scenarios in the movie, and what can be found in offices. Apart from that, there are quite a few things to be learnt in Leadership from Kabir Khan. And, you would find that the point is driven home so well, that I found it much better than any leadership training program. More useful, more power packed, and more impact.

So how come two and a half hour in a theatre can deliver so much more about management common-sense than can be done in a day in a workshop? The way I see it, the answer is simple ... Story! Here, the concepts are not told at all. Only a story is told, which the audience can then match with their life-experiences, and develop a management parallel, or draw a management lesson from. The story brings out the emotional connection with the content, and at the same time, gets the audience to think about ideas that they can take away from the movie, rather than pushing prepackaged ideas, which they may not appreciate, or worse still, relate with, down their throats. This is a nice illustration of the power of story-telling in organizational learning.

Internal Blogs

There has been a lot written about this (including by me), and yet again, I find more being written about it. The point, however, is ... People are missing the point. Agreed ... Blogs are a great way to market ... Its a great tool available to marketeers to reach consumers or consumer groups like never before, or to PR execs making sure the company's point of view is stated clearly in the blogosphere somewhere. But, does that mean that this is all there is to blogging? I think not. Can we not have internal blogs as a tool which can be used for simple collaboration?

If there are Service Engineers geographically distributed, can they not benefit from the concept of blogs about their specific area of technology? Can not the folks from Finance host a blog where they could discuss SOX? Bottomline ... I think there is a lot more to blogs than just marketing ... Though, I do agree that this is an amazing tool for 21st century marketing, blogs can serve as a much bigger tool if used internally ...

Blogs can be used to facilitate knowledge flows within the organization. Agreed, a lot of organizations today find no practical use for changing knowledge flows (the typical reaction being that knowledge flows the way they exist today are ok), but we find that once we make knowledge freely available, people in the organization will work out innovative new ways of using the knowledge. I am not trying to make an argument for completely throwing all the windows open (thats never going to happen), but this would get the dialogue going within the organization, and who knows what might come out of this.

Another nice thing about blogs ... They can be used to replace the grapevine! We would all agree that the grapevine is not a very nice thing ... While you will find more often than not the grapevine carries facts, but then, it serves to distort the facts, too. Blogs, and their related communities can be used as an interventionist tool to counter these phenomenon.

Story-Telling and the Case Method

I found out only the other day (ok, ok, so now you know I wasnt the Quiz champ ... nowhere even close!) that Harvard pioneered the Case Method of teaching. Needless to mention, today, the Case Method is more the norm in Management teaching.

What is it that makes the Case Method so socessful, as a teaching tool? Harvard believes its very effective. And, I am not going to argue with that, for obvious reasons. Besides, with B-Schools around the world having adopted the method, there must be something there. Also, if you have been through one of the Case Sessions, you would find them very rewarding too, because you get to learn a lot more from the Case Method than you would in a cut and dried theory class.

One of the reasons for this is that the case typically enables you to apply concepts to a real-life situation. While this is the scenario at times, at others, cases are used to introduce a point. So, is application the only reason the Case Method is so successful? I think not.

The way I look at it, the Case Method is all about storytelling. A case is basically a story. Like any story, the case has a protagonist (at least one), a context (typically half the case study would be devoted to describing the context), and a situation which you have to understand, and unravel. I wouldnt say solve, because its not just about the solution, but more about being able to understand the idea. And, one of the reasons for the success is this ... It presents the concept in the form of a story.

Why do I keep harping about the story? Maybe you could read The Goal and tell me how much you gained in terms of concepts from the book.

Storytelling and Mental Models

Back to Storytelling ... I had been blogging about this some time back, and have been hopping topics (hey, this is not a book, so I can do that, cant I?). But coming to the topic of mental models, storytelling cant be far behind, or can it?

Two points to note:

1. Stories are easier to understand and appreciate by the listener, because a good story leverages the mental models of the listener to make the point, and to enable to listener to understand the point behind the story easily.
2. Stories build a shared mental model between the storyteller, and the listener. At the end of the story, there is a moral, and this moral is what builds the shared mental model.

What this means is that the major value of storytelling in management is to create mental models, or images and assumptions about concepts, among managers of the organization, and this is the starting point for creating an organization where managers are not pulling in different directions (which is a great thing!).

More on this as we go along ...

Telling Stories

I came across a small, though nice write-up about the impact Storytelling can have in the organizational context. This is at the homepage of the SIO SIG (thats Storytelling In Organizations Special Interest Group ... ever wondered why all such abbreviations are always exactly 3 letters long, not a letter more, not a letter less? I have a theory about that, but more about that later).

This is available here. One statement that caught the eye ...

Stories supply facts with meaning, and value propositions with illustrations.

As Peter Senge talks about in The Fifth Discipline, everyone has a mental model which is an aggregation of a lifetime of experiences. What this implies is that anything new we learn is filtered through this model, and we end up trying to relate the new learning to the existing nodes in this mental model.

And this is where the value of stories comes. Stories are told, and they run in that part of the context which is shared between different members of the audience, and which is at the same time shared with the storyteller. This context is the mental models of the members of the audience. Which is what gives the story the power of bringing meaning along with the facts (actually, both of the reinforce each other in the story). Take the example of Jokes. How many times have we not understood a joke because the context of the joke is alien to us? The same logic is applicable to the story.

Stories

We all would have grown up on a diet of stories. Whether Epics recounted by Grandparents, or Noddy from a book, stories are a part of any child's upbringing. Whether they be epics, fables, fairy tales ... The one mistake we assume is, that as we grow up, we outgrow stories.

That, it seems, is far from the truth. We still love stories ... aka gossip? We still love to hear about who is doing what in the Office. Who is moving into which role, who is quitting, whats the new person who joined like (there must be stories out there about me as well), and a whole lot of other stories, including soap operas.

Once we have established that we still love stories, the next thought I would like to discuss is how we can use stories for Knowledge Sharing.

Lets first see what a story does ... It educates, entertains, and inspires. This means that the story can educate and inspire in an entertaining way. And if you remember your favourite teacher in School or College, I am sure the teaching would match this description?

Which means that we should be able to educate through stories. Take this one step further, and we should be able to share knowledge through stories. But, to be able to do that, lets first look at what we think are the components of stories ... This would help us understand how storytelling can be moulded towards knowledge sharing.

Participants -- the folks who appear in the story (the Project Manager, Team Lead, and the Boss ...)

Situation -- describes the problem the participants are trying to solve (the grumpy customer)

Intentions -- the intentions of the participants (pacify the customer, and resolve the problem while de-escalating the situation)

Actions -- what they are doing (talking to customer, expediting resolution)

Tools -- the tools these folks use (Portals)

Effects -- of their actions (greater understanding of customer problem)

Context -- the details around the situation (the criticality of the problem to customer business, etc.)

Surprises -- those unexpected things ...