Guy goes to Africa

I learned today that my friend and colleage, Guy St Clair is in Nairobi on a knowledge strategizing mission. I must admit, I was a tad envious when I heard the news. I have been a little out of the knowledge loop since my foray into medical education (I know, one would not think medical education would be out of the knowledge loop, but in my experience, strangely, it was) and am anxious to return with renewed vigor and fresh insight. Guy has begun a blog on his adventure, that you can find here: Guy's Thoughts - Sharing my Journey
I am looking forward to following his take on the African experience and also to how the knowledge effort progresses. He inspires me to do more with what I know of this space as I think about where to go next in my career. Over a week ago, I lost my job and have a little time to reflect on where I really need to be making a difference these days. Not that this reflection can take long, mortgage due and all. Nor should it though. I've been thinking about where I really fit for a really long time. The answer has always been there, but not always obvious to me. Where I fit, is the very place there is usually no spot for; ie, in the space between. I love to bridge gaps, reach across disciplines, discover the assumptions that underpin the stories we well ourselves. I suspect for most of us who try to make our place sorting out the knowledge flows that circulate around problem solving and strategy development, there is no clear place to rest our hats in most organizations. Variously, we are placed under strategy, innovation, organizational design, information sciences, libraries, informatics, or even HR. But no matter which part of the organization we work from, we always end up doing the same thing; try to establish the real problem(s) to be solved, determine the necessary understandings to be made, and then set about connecting all the key players that need to know, understand, and eventually do, what needs to be done. It's a fascinating process and I love every bit of it. While knowledge management may have become unfashionable as a term, the concept is needed more that ever as the volume of data increases and the need to translate to usable knowledge becomes more critical. Maybe we need to come up with a new term, one without the baggage that KM drags around. Whatever its name, wherever I end up fitting in an organization, I look forward to helping this field evolve, adapt and continue to make a difference. Now, I just need to find a place to do it....

The value of science?

I was watching a Discovery Channel program this evening and listening to some guy pontificating about the need to bring science to the public, and even better, to school kids. I found myself nodding in agreement but at the same time felt a little unease. I was surprised at myself because I have always been an advocate for more science education for the general public. What did I find upsetting in what this guy was saying? I realized with a kind of small epiphany that my own interest in science is not in science per se, but rather in the human relationship with science. I think the two are different. I can completely get behind the notion of teaching anyone who will listen the value of applying scientific principles to everyday life, and in the process shedding some light on certain facets of the way things work. However, I'm not so sure about teaching science as an absolute methodology, or an absolute set of facts, that represent 'the way things are'. Science is useful or not depending on our relationship with it. Religion is the same way although Richard Dawkins would likely say religion is never useful. Science is one way to look at the world that has offered up incredible insights to the way our world works and the way we as humans interact with it. However, there is much that science cannot shine a light on. Yet. The science that is accepted as 'real' is that which is agreed upon by the majority, or by the key figures in a particular discipline. The science that is not accepted as real, ie quack science, is accepted by only a few and cannot as yet be properly explained by the scientific tools we have at our disposal. Rather than teach this as being bad science, it should be highlighted as an example of unrealistic expectations of science and an overzealous faith in the power of one particular way of looking at the world being unable to explain certain observations. I say, teach the public about science, but keep it in perspective. The answers science offers us are the best we can come up with at a given moment in time. We should develop expectations of science as a way to understand our place in the world in a temporary and context dependent fashion. To teach our kids to be open-minded and to think for themselves rather than jump from one dogmatic view to another, would be progress indeed.

Knowledge versus information

I am somewhat of a temporalist (yes, spellchecker caught this invented word), meaning that I like to create timelines to see how thought has changed over the years on various subjects. In other words, I am interested in what is believed at a moment in time. I do believe in ‘truth’ but I’m not sure how to define it. On the other hand, something that is ‘true’ is easy to define; a so-called fact that is commonly understood to be true according to certain conventions mainly based on science. I say mainly, because there is often general agreement that something is so, even when there is no way to prove it. That a sunset is beautiful for example, is an observation that is unverifiable scientifically because there are no criteria against which to measure the assertion other than everybody thinks so. Few would deny the beauty inherent in a good sunset, and many would even agree that it’s a fact that sunsets are beautiful. But if we try to convey that ‘fact’ to others we quickly find that it is impossible to pass on the experience. You just had to be there.
Similar problems occur when sorting out the differences with information and knowledge. In my view, the difference between information and knowledge is mainly this:
Information occurs in discrete packets that can be transferred without loss of meaning by word, in image, or by numbers. It is slightly more sophisticated than data in that there is already some context applied in the way it is packaged (eg labeled and categorized). Information can be true or false, and we can still be informed when the information is false.
Knowledge is the sum of knowing and occurs after we have received information in one form or another (experiential, or objective) and have interpreted it based on our own experience as well as the context with which it came to us, and have added it to our store of accepted wisdom (even if it is only accepted wisdom in our own heads). When we know something we accept it as true.
An example: you can have information that eating too many cherries causes Alzheimer’s Disease or you can know eating too many cherries cause Alzheimer’s. In the former you can be informed but still suspend belief; in the latter you have made your choice to accept the information as true (with or without caveats).
When you look at it this way it becomes very easy to see why institutionalized knowledge management efforts often fail. Knowledge is accepted wisdom for a moment in time. Information exists forever. Knowledge cannot be easily transferred because it requires the receiver to believe the contexts and conditions that apply to the knowledge in question. Information is easily transferred because there is little judgment involved. It is what it is. One can argue about what category it goes in, or about whether it is true or not, but information is just information at the end of the day.
Knowledge management inside corporations has historically confused information and knowledge. Sophisticated IT systems have been set up for ‘knowledge transfer’ and extensive people networks built to ‘share knowledge’. Computing is well suited to sharing information, but not to sharing knowledge unless there is a way to de-contextualize the knowledge back to data and allow re-sorting in the light of new and different contexts. This can happen with ontologically based systems that allow complex questions to be asked of the de-contextualized knowledge such that new insights can be derived. Most knowledge management initiatives within large institutions end up buried in an IT group where some system is build to store and share ‘best practices’, or to access multiple databases from a single interface in the hope of improving accessibility to knowledge deep within the organization. By ignoring the human side of KM, (ie that knowledge includes a belief element and therefore an element of trust), these initiatives cause untold political horrors and at best produce yet another data access tool that skims the surface of real knowledge while continuing to build deep silos to hold yet more information.
People networks are often used to ‘transfer knowledge’ from person to person, group to group. These approaches have yielded some genuine successes but can stumble when there is a failure to realize that transferring knowledge requires transfer of belief that the knowledge is true, or at least a forum to challenge and evolve an understanding. An open acknowledgement of the assumptions that accompany knowledge as it is passed along can alleviate the pain and create a path to success. This is a relatively simple task and I’m not sure why it is not more often undertaken.
Knowledge management is considered an old fad nowadays. It’s a shame since this is a time when organizations that deal in novelty and innovation surely need it the most.