Today Seth
is a consultant and keynote speaker for conferences and conventions. As a
Distinguished Fellow of the Center for Narrative Studies, he is writing
a book on the applications of storytelling in organizations.Seth Weaver Kahan is Senior Information Officer, Internal Communications, at the World Bank.
Is knowledge management something extraordinary?
I have noticed a remarkable verve among many of my KM colleagues that
extends beyond ordinary enthusiasm. There is a feeling of being involved
in a grand adventure that mixes humanity and professional development,
as if KM is a space where business could potentially be more than just
business. Let me elaborate by starting with a story - not a case study,
but a fable.
Once upon a time…
A
spaceship lands on earth inhabited by benevolent, highly intelligent
creatures. Somehow they make it through our atmosphere without rousing
the military and land on our soil. A call goes out around the world and
the best minds of our generation are assembled to greet the aliens in
person.
One
of the aliens steps down out of the spaceship and after gracious
formalities begins the conversation: "Earthling humans, you have been a
species on this planet for thousands of years. What is your greatest
discovery? What can you share with us that will demonstrate what you
have learnt?"
A
world leader who is, of course, intimately familiar with knowledge
management, steps forward and responds: "Our knowledge is our prize
possession. Our highly developed brains are capable of synthesising
ideas and experience. For many years we have been concerned with how to
pool our collective knowledge, how to organise, manage and share
it. We have spent a great deal of time on how to cultivate our tacit
knowledge and apply it in healthy and productive ways."
The alien speaks: "So, what can you show us? Can you explain or demonstrate what you have learnt?"
The
world leader says: "Well, the truth is we have about 7,000 different
initiatives and the leaders of our primary efforts don't agree on what
knowledge management is or even if we should call it that; maybe it
should be knowledge sharing or knowledge development...or...er..."
As
it stands, the story doesn't have a satisfactory ending. But maybe
something can be done about that. Maybe, just maybe, all the various
knowledge management initiatives could be brought into some kind of
global framework.
The power of meaning
Some
of the best minds of our time believe we influence the world to a much
greater degree than most of us are aware. That is, the way we think and
what we believe about the ways of the world have a major impact on our
future. This is because we are active participants shaping the future
through the ordinary actions of our lives. David Bohm, the quantum
physicist, wrote in his book, Unfolding Meaning (Routledge,
1985): "Your world view, the way you look at things, is part of you,
just as any other thought is part of you. It will determine the way you
approach the world… What kind of world will that produce?"
Bohm
continues: "However deep or shallow one's perceptions, all one
perceives is what it means at that moment, and then intention and action
develop in accordance with this meaning."
What
he is saying here is that meaning shapes perception in fundamental
ways. Therefore, meaning is radically important. How do we begin to
understand how we create meaning? Can we consciously fashion meaning?
Isn't it interesting that most of us are not trained in how best to do
this? Many of us receive little guidance on how to create meaning
intentionally. And we certainly don't devote significant time to it in
the workplace. Yet it is shaping our perception and our future.
I
am fortunate enough to have come from a family where values were
demonstrated and obvious, if not explicit and discussed. For example, I
can remember as a small boy my father reacting angrily to a neighbour
who referred to some people down the road using a derogatory racial
term. My father's temper blew hot. After angrily denouncing our
neighbour to his face, which caught and held my attention, he huffed and
puffed as he marched around our house decrying prejudice and
insensitivity. I got the message and still remember it today: people are
people and diminishing them according to their race is unacceptable.
But
no one sat down and helped me as my little mind worked overtime to
integrate that experience into the rest of my life. In fact, other than
occasional sessions with family and school counsellors during my
childhood, personal meaning was never directly addressed in any
consistent way. I was left to my own experience and my own ad hoc
techniques.
I
recall philosophy teachers in high school and later in college
purposefully refraining from dictating any values. They often asked me
to reflect, but did they provide direction on specific values? Only by
modelling, not by articulation. In fact, it was generally frowned upon
as far as I could tell. Somehow I was expected to do my own values
clarification in the company of my friends and with whatever books I
could lay my hands on. I have an idea that a large part of the self-help
industry thrives because of this unmet need in society.
I
subsequently sought out those who were moving their lives in new
directions by locating deeper and often hidden meaning through
introspection. I found many in `personal growth' or `human potential'
organisations. One seminar company in particular grabbed my attention
(and my money and my time). I participated in as many of their events as
I could, volunteering as a way to spend more time at the seminars. I
loved to do the work myself, but I was also fascinated by watching
others go through their own inner processes. I found it moving to see
people grapple with issues, uncovering parts of themselves that brought
clarity of vision and inspiring changes in behaviour. It was like
watching flowers unfold and emerge in beautiful patterns of colour and
shape.
Eventually
I was offered a staff position with the seminar company building the
graduate community, and offering follow up seminars. I was trained in
the design and facilitation of large group events and gained plenty of
experience. I stayed with this work for years before something ancient
and primal began to rouse my curiosity.
Ancient templates for building community
I
became intrigued by how some of the world's oldest cultures ensured
continuity between generations. I started to read about aborigines and
indigenous peoples; then I began to visit some native American Indian
elders, representatives of cultures that have endured a great deal. I
turned to them for wisdom about what was most important in life.
I
was especially interested in rites of passage, designed to carry
individuals on the journey from childhood to adulthood. These ceremonies
are a form of social infrastructure designed to transform people from
dependent youngsters into mature contributors who take responsibility
for the community's well being. The transformation involves long,
complicated processes that include many members of a community, only
culminating in a ceremony.
I
did not belong to a tribe so I could not hope to truly participate in a
native American ceremony. However, I discovered there are people who
study how to appropriately introduce these ceremonies into the
mainstream. I set about looking for one of these events that straddled
the gap between the worlds, and I was not disappointed.
One
of the most ubiquitous ceremonies is the `sweat lodge'. I remember my
first experience vividly. For months I had been putting the word out
that I wanted to participate in this ancient ritual designed to help one
clarify life's purpose.
Then
one day, I received a call from a friend telling me he was leaving to
participate in a sweat lodge in the countryside. Would I care to come
along? I dropped my day's agenda and soon found myself in his car,
bumping through a farm field. We parked on the grass and began a hike in
the neighbouring woodlands.
Before
long we came to a group of men busily assembling a small hut from
saplings and blankets. This was under the direction of a strange
character, our leader, who busied himself in obscure activities that
included waving burning sticks of dried sage and chanting. Soon we
started a large bonfire. Twenty or so large boulders were placed into
the centre of the fire, where they stayed for four or five hours. In the
interim, I helped out with preparations and got to know the other
people.
When
the time came we all crawled into the hut, which had a great hollow in
the centre where the rocks were to go. We stayed in that hut, all
closely pressed together, for over two hours and it got very, very hot.
As each rock was brought in, I could feel the temperature rise
substantially. Following prayers and groans as a response to the heat,
water was poured on the rocks, resulting in some of the most intense
steam I have ever experienced, way beyond the sauna in my local gym. At
several points I had to lie down in the sweat lodge in the search of
cooler temperatures.
The
heat was so intense that I became concerned for my safety, and therein
was the doorway that led to my core values. In a single, intense moment I
became vividly aware that my life was both precious and fragile. It was
as if I had a chance to glimpse death before my time was up. From deep
within I began to question what was I doing with my life. The issue
became more than a mental hobby; it was a visceral occupation. The sweat
lodge had begun to work its magic.
Toward
the end participants shared their experiences and insights. Veterans of
the ceremony explored these, especially the insights of the newcomers.
The learning of the initiates was pulled apart and examined closely, and
treasures for the community were discovered in the process. Later, as
our story was recounted, these new treasures were incorporated.
For
years, even to this day, that ceremony holds a special place in my
memories. It anchors me to my quest seeking what is most centrally mine
and at the same time of value to my community.
Back to work
At
the same time as all of this was happening I was working at the World
Bank, training staff to use the institutional technology systems: pro-
curement, project supervision, loan disbursement, etc. Over the years I
became a local expert on technology training. I tutored vice presidents,
designed seminars for project teams and ran open classes on many
institutional programmes that relied on technology.
When
the internet became widely available I put together a presentation that
I offered during lunch and after hours to interested staff. It was a
huge success. In six months I had trained almost 2,000 staff members. I
was videotaped for global distribution and asked to design internet
seminars for sector specialists. The bank's fledgling knowledge
management initiative identified me and I was asked to put my group
facilitation skills on my CV and come along to help transform the
institution.
I
was a member of the team that built the bank's first knowledge
management system. It was based on new content management principles (in
1996) and used our intranet. The following year I went to work for
Steve Denning, our KM programme director, and joined the small team that
began to steer the large organisation to a new destination under the
president's vision: the `knowledge bank'. Steve was aware of my
experiences outside the bank, including my many years as a performance
artist and storyteller.
I
have been a professional storyteller, performing folk tales, legends and
poetry since 1978. Early on I performed folk tales from the Brothers
Grimm and heroic legends such as Beowulf and King Solomon's Adventures.
As my interest in community development grew, I experimented with
personal storytelling as a rapport-building device in community
gatherings. On the KM team, we recognised that the organisation is
largely defined by the activities of its employees. If staff members are
not sharing their learning process, the organisation is not growing.
Our
team began to use storytelling as a means to break the ice in meetings.
Denning worked, with great success, at using storytelling to evoke
systemic change in the organisation. He developed `springboard' stories
(see his book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in
Knowledge-Era Organizations, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001). I drew on the
forms I had learned in personal growth settings and ceremonies to
develop processes for staff members to share their learning processes
and interests. We didn't attempt to get people to understand
storytelling. Instead, we used storytelling as a tool to build
community.
I
began to receive requests to visit other organisations. In many
companies, I spoke about my work as a storyteller, experience in
ceremonies and brought ceremonial objects into the workplace, sharing my
symbols of community. I still work with a Cherokee `talking stick',
which symbolises the sharing of one's `truth'. That's truth with a
little t, not a big T - this truth is about personal understanding and
experience, not ultimate meaning.
Symbols
such as the talking stick are powerful stimuli. This power can be
harnessed in the spirit of knowledge sharing quite effectively. I have
used the talking stick often to generate a shared sense of community and
common purpose at gatherings. Steve referred to my presentations as
"turning suits into people". That phrase tells me that we are doing
something special here, something fundamentally human - something that
involves caring.
Who cares?
When
I think of community, three foci come to mind: groups of people, a
sense of shared purpose and caring. The first two are far easier to
realise in a business context, but the third is no less important.
One
of the more helpful writings I have come across in this regard comes
from Nonaka and Nishiguchi's recent book, Knowledge Emergence: Social,
Technical and Evolutionary Dimensions of Knowledge Creation (Oxford
University Press, 2001). There is a chapter by Von Krogh, Ichijo and
Nonaka entitled: `Bringing care into knowledge development of business
organisations'.
The
authors are very interested in human relationships inside
organisations. "We believe that knowledge development, especially social
knowledge development, of organisations, cannot be taken for granted
since knowledge is very fragile in them. Since individual knowledge can
easily be killed, organisational knowledge development as a social
activity can be quite difficult, or in the worst case, impossible. Given
this fragility, we argue that relationships in organisations must be
given more attention."
Social
knowledge can be thought of as the common knowledge that resides among
individuals, in the common space of the organisation. This has important
implications with regards to an organisation's ability to hold on to
knowledge as significant numbers of staff retire. To the extent that the
knowledge of staff can be transferred to the social space of the
organisation, there is less of a loss to the company.
Furthermore,
the quality of caring that exists in the relationships inside the
organisation has a direct impact on the quality of knowledge that
becomes social.
In
the article the authors use the term `thematisation' to explain how
explicit knowledge is developed (both individually and socially). In
thematisation, "a language is learnt, words are being carefully selected
for an experience, this linguistic choice is tested, misconceptions are
corrected in interaction with others, new words are being invented to
better convey the experiences in the eyes of the individual, and so on".
In
`low care' organisations, the process of thematisation tends to be a
private activity. Where it is not safe to share our foibles, we hide
them and share results only when we are confident they can withstand
scrutiny. These contrast with `high care' organisations in which
thematisation is a shared, group process. All of the lessons learnt and
blind alleys are explored with others. We have the benefit of many minds
to participate in thematisation, producing higher quality results.
In
addition, because much of the groundwork of our thematisation is done
in public in high care organisations, many more people are aware of what
was learnt in the process. Thus, more knowledge is available in the
organisation for others to use and apply. Importantly, it remains there
when staff members leave, thus addressing the issue of retention of
organisational knowledge.
The
authors break `care' into five explicit dimensions. The concept of care
can be vague, but their dimensions make it more tangible and much
easier to apply. The dimensions include:
This work shows how care makes a substantive contribution to knowledge development.
More than just business
Ceremonies
assist participants with their inner development. The insights that
arise from this development are shared with the community. These new
perspectives are examined and reworked by leaders who then weave the
insights into the existing social fabric. Values are not so much passed
down as they are developed jointly, adjusted and blessed by the accepted
leadership, and then integrated into the larger community.
We
have a great deal to learn from these ancient ways of working together.
I have seen some of these time-tested methods of human interaction
introduced in contemporary business environments with great success. I
can imagine bringing KM thought leaders together and weaving the fruit
of their explorations into our social fabric, generating insights that
apply to issues outside of business. As we study the myriad of ways that
people develop and share knowledge, perhaps there are applications
greater than business in store.
Imagine
my story about the alien inquisition with a happy ending. The alien
speaks: "So, what can you show us? Can you explain or demonstrate what
you have learnt?"
The
world leader replies with confidence and enthusiasm: "I was hoping you
would ask that question. Let me tell you about what our civilization has
been working on..."
Source:leader-values.com
Mark
Buchanan is a physicist and writer. He earned a PhD from the University
of Virginia in 1993, and worked for several years in the areas of
nonlinear dynamics, Hamiltonian systems theory and plasma physics. 
