John, as a participant in the work being done by the Knowledge Management
Consortium (KMC), I found your remarks concerning the shortcomings of
anthropology as an approach to knowledge management to be quite
fascinating. Very insightful. But it's equally clear to me that there
are several other aspects of what we're doing, and the approach we're
taking, that need more amplification and emphasis in this forum. I'm sure
Ed Swanstrom will provide us with his own response to your comments, but
mine are as follows.
First, I must tell you that the anthropological perspective we're taking
does not carry the description-only baggage that you referred to. In
fact, the KMC's approach to knowledge management is the ONLY one that I
know of that explicitly embraces system dynamics and a process-based view
of the subject as its principal theoretical basis. If there's one thing
that we've wrestled with repeatedly in terms of how we "pitch" our brand
of KM to the outside world, it's how much of an up-front emphasis do we
publicly place on what, in fact, is our most fundamental belief: That
human organizations are indeed subject to the behaviors of nonlinear,
complex adaptive systems, and that understanding and managing the role of
cognition (i.e., knowledge) should be approached accordingly. But that
is, indeed, what we believe and it serves as our most critical first
principle. I believe that all competing points of view on the subject
should be held equally to the same test of declaring their first
principles.
In any case, the KMC's view of knowledge in human organizations, how it
evolves, how it is produced, acquired and transferred, is heavily inspired
by precisely the opposite view of that which you cautioned us to avoid.
Not only are we NOT taking a static, descriptive view of the subject, but
we've also agreed to reject the traditional process-oriented view of human
organizations because of its misleadingly linear, mechanistic bias. To
your point, John, business processes and the very nature of work itself
are nonlinear in form. In fact, I will take the caution you expressed one
step further: Not only is the static or state-based view of an enterprise
woefully inadequate as the basis of a management discipline, so are
traditional process-based views just as misleading.
What makes the KMC's approach to this subject so powerful is its
fundamental recognition of the fact that we live in a nonlinear world.
Therefore, we need management disciplines that have been crafted
accordingly. The emergence and propagation of new knowledge in human
organizations is a fundamentally nonlinear phenomenon. Complex adaptive
systems theory, which deals explicitly with the ontology of knowledge and
cognition in living, adaptive systems, is a branch of the study of chaotic
and complex systems, and is decidedly systems-based in its orientation.
Knowledge management, in my view, is a profoundly insightful application
of chaos and complexity theory! Think about that for minute.
I would not be the first person to say that in spite of my admiration for
the work done by Peter Senge and other proponents of learning
organizations, that what we all find most frustrating in these adventures
is not knowing exactly what to do about it on Monday morning. Every one
of us on this listserv wants to know how to do it! What we all desperately
need and want is an executable model. Give me a blueprint, a strategy, a
learning organization's operators manual, anything, but tell me/us how to
get there from here!
This is precisely the promise of the work we're doing at the KMC. I truly
see our work as one of the best potential sources of an executable model
for how to achieve learning organization status. Human organizations are
complex adaptive systems (nonlinear, rule-driven, agent-based,
learning/adaptive systems). For the past thirty years, the functioning of
knowledge and cognition in such systems has been studied intensively under
the label of complex adaptive systems theory. There's no need to reinvent
any of it, or any other perspective on the subject of how knowledge
happens in living systems. It's already out there. The KMC is simply
working on an adaptation of an existing theory of knowledge to human
organizations. This is what we're doing at the KMC, and we invite all of
you to participate. This is not your grandfather's brand of anthropology!
Mark W. McElroy
KM Modeling Committee Chair
The Knowledge Management Consortium
--"Mark W. McElroy" <mmcelroy@vermontel.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>