Winfried Dressler wrote:
> For me a learning organisation is something that can not be "made" or
> "constructed" or "designed", but it needs to grow. Growing needs time,
> growing can be inhibited and growing can fail. One way to fail is, to try
> to make it happen too fast.
Let's stick with the growing analogy. I think it's a good one. The
approach to KM that those of us in the Knowledge Management Consortium
(KMC) advocate is entirely consistent with your views. We do not hold the
view that learning organizations can be engineered. But it IS possible to
create the conditions in which knowledge naturally flourishes, just as it
IS possible for you, as a gardener, to nurture the conditions in your
garden that lead to the successful growth of your flowers and vegetables.
You till the soil, fertilize the garden, and weed it as well. You even
put fences around it to protect it from herbivorous creatures. But
through it all, you don't GROW the plants; they grow themselves. You, on
the other hand, "manage" the conditions in which this growth naturally
occurs. If you manage it well, your garden grows well; if you manage it
poorly, your garden grows poorly. The same goes for knowledge in human
organizations.
The growth of learning organizations is no different. Knowledge management
amounts to managing the conditions in the garden of knowledge within which
knowledge naturally occurs. To dramatize the point that we don't manage
knowledge, per se, I use the phrase Knowledge Un-Management. People
should stop trying to manage knowledge, per se, as if it were so many
widgets in a cognitive factory. What we should be managing is one step
removed from the growth of knowledge. Let me explain further.
The KMC makes the critical distinction between "natural knowledge
processes" and "artificial knowledge systems." Natural knowledge
processes are...well...natural. They account for how humans have learned
throughout the ages, and generally fall into the categopries of knowledge
production, acquisition, and transfer. The historical study of these
natural knowledge processes has been part of anthrpopology for years.
That, by the way, accounts for the interest the KMC has in work previuosly
done by anthropologists.
In business (another form of human organziations), natural knowledge
processes exist as well. But they exist to varying degrees of
effectively. Many are not realized to their full potential; others are
completely blocked, often due to corporate cultures that restrict
creativity and innovation, for example, to only the level of "top"
management. Senge makes the same point when he says that whenever we
speak of "leadership" in business, without necessarily saying so in
explicit terms, what we're all generally referring to is "top management."
That has to change.
And so rather than speak of "knowledge management" as a strategy for
achieving learning organization status, what we should be thinking of,
insetad, is "knowledge PROCESS management." Focus on managing the
processes that engender the natural growth and sharing of knowledge
throughout an organization, and the learning organization will follow. But
it follow not because we've engineered and deployed it, but, instead,
because we've managed the CONDITIONS in which its natural, emergent
properties are given the best chance to unfold.
> Leading a learning organisation requires more of a gardener than an
> engineer. May be I am wrong - I don't know much about complex adaptive
> systems apart from being one myself - but already the term complex
> adaptive systems sounds like a topic to study in order to be able to give
> the results to engineers who then can make/construct/design it.
Knowledge is an emergent property of nonlinear learning organizations.
Please do not think that the KMC is taking a reductionist, neo-engineering
view to this subject. That is just simply not the case.
As for complex adaptive systems theory, would it surprise you if I said
that the terms "learning organizations" and "complex adaptive systems"
are virtually synonymous? Complex adaptive systems are living systems
(communities, organizations, cultures, etc.) that continuosly adapt to
their environment through learning. Human organizations fit this
description. But complex adaptive systems theory is decidedly bottom-up
in its view of how learning and knowledge happen in such systems.
Knowledge emerges in such systems. It is an emergent property of learning
organizations. That means they CAN'T be engineered from the top-down.
Again, you misunderstand the KMC's views on this subject. We, too, utterly
reject the notion that knowledge or learning organizations can be
engineered. And you do complex adaptive systems theory a great disservice
by suggesting otherwise. In the process, you risk rejecting a school of
thought (complex adpative systems theory) that is arguably your most
powerful ally. I'm sure you don't mean to do that, but do yourself a
favor and look into it. Start with John Holland's book, Hidden Order.
As I go through this dialogue with you, it occurs to me that we're in
violent AGREEMENT here. Complex adaptive systems theory only adds meat to
the bones that we already agree on. Remember, it's not knowledge
management, it's knowledge PROCESS management...the conditions in the
garden are the key.
> For me the crucial question is: Do we know enough about the required time
> frames and how do we acknowledge this necessary condition in our
> management decisions - in a world where managers are not paid for being
> patient but where being destructive can be rewarded highly?
--"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>