Open knowledge, working out loud, sharing ideas and our mind at large

A simple and small shoot: to open our mind out large…

Opening our mind, such a simple complicated thing… (Credits – Tanyew Wei)

I always wanted (and still do) to try the experiment of accepting with one or more persons – for a given limited time – to give each other the option to check at absolutely any time what the other is thinking about and to accept sharing it. A risky experiment, I agree, but what a fabulous shortcut to each other’s mind and ideas this would be too. The power of Open, in all its terror.

Another experiment I always wanted to do is to share what we are working on as we are working on it: opening Pandora’s box of our half-baked thinking, our weak reflections, our incomplete search for evidence, our half-started/half-aborted attempt at revisiting good sources from the past and combining new ideas. Now that is not too risky an experiment, and it’s a direct contribution to ‘working out loud‘, with perhaps even wider implications for the audience we might influence at large.

My colleague Peter Ballantyne recently wrote this excellent blog piece from a recent trip he did to Michigan State University to attend an ‘Open Knowledge for Agricultural Development Convening’ and he’s also sharing views about the importance of collective work using e.g. wikis. Have a peek at the presentation, it’s really worth it!

Even before we reach that collective stage, we can open up our working cabinet to let others in on our thinking, on the ideas that are crossing our mind. Blogging is a way to do this of course; yet, however draft-like our thought pieces become, they are already polished one level further compared with the moment when we get struck by an idea…

Tweets are another point in case. We can reveal what’s crossing our mind on a tweet – but rarely do we end up exploring this with our Twitter crowd much further than another tweet or two.

One piece is missing thus. John Tropea has got it: with his ‘snippets’ TumblR, he’s keeping track of some useful fragments of text that strike a cord with him and that he might want to come back to.

I have just decided to start my own TumblR as an experiment – as an antechamber and experimental springboard to this blog. On that TumblR I plan to keep fragments of writing that I find interesting and want to come back to later. I will also share simple ideas that I may come back to on this blog for (slightly) more elaborate thoughts. I might start by pasting the list of blogging ideas I have on the side (about 50 or so ideas for possible blog posts).

The idea is simple: the earlier we share our ideas, the earlier others can use those ideas, reflect and comment on them, and the more likely we are all better off with enriched ideas, good conversations and stronger relations. And better suggestions for the next blog posts…

Let’s see where this leads me…  and you!

Related blog posts:

• Blogging for what? For reflecting, for sharing, for learning, for synthesising, for…
  
• The birth of a thought and the life-times of a concept
• KM=CDL, on the journey to universal sense-making
• Stop judging and move on, because we all do (follow the seeds of change)

The constant knowledge gardener

If we live in a true knowledge ecology (and the idea is not new as you can see here and there), nature lets its children grow naturally. Yet gardening can help boost some results – without going into the ins and outs of a possible knowledge conservation agriculture.

Knowledge is not just a tree but a whole orchard – it can blossom and give, or rot and doom us

Time to revisit the gardening metaphor perhaps and to think about cultivating knowledge? This is the job of the constant knowledge gardener, a job whose demand is in constant progression.

Gardening knowledge means cherishing certain varieties or ‘cultivars‘, that is the general strands of knowledge and specific themes that matter to us (as individuals, groups or initiatives such as projects). What are the areas we want to see blossom? These varieties and cultivars may become tall trees under which we rest, smaller and fluffier bushes that bring about a diverse biodiversity or beautiful flowers that come and go.

Planting knowledge seeds means actively labeling the themes we want to keep abreast of by thinking about it, conceptualising it (by means of describing that field and why it matters to us), referring to it with keywords and meta-tags and inviting others to visit those knowledge cultivars. And as much as seeds require careful attention as they are too fragile to be left on their own, these new cultivars need to be attended to carefully or they may never see the light.

It further requires trimming and weeding. To keep the cultivars blossoming throughout the years, we need to keep the stems strong and to manicure our knowledge flowers, bushes and trees and get rid of dead leaves: data management, information management, personal knowledge management are all manifestations of that. We need to keep the information that is out there clean and easy to process – for us and for others – and to remove the ‘noise’ that we have created (dead links, bugs, out-of-date information, untagged products, uncontextualised information). This allows us to keep focusing on the gems of the garden rather than lose focus in the clutter of an organic mess.

For the more innovative knowledge gardeners it means to take cuttings and cross breed cultivars. Replicating the themes that matter in other areas of an organisation can be a useful way to create clout for those themes and to ensure more people are on board. Bringing the edge of our themes close to one another allows new connections and is the basis for innovation.

For even more effective results, we can try and fertilise the varieties and cultivars. This can be done by pouring in some fertiliser (additional expertise from a recognised source – though which source will really strengthen our knowledge plants might be difficult to assess). It can also be done very effectively by mixing and mingling cultivars. Some plants grow better when brought closer to certain trees. There are natural ways to fortify our garden. Mixing fields of expertise and themes together is a great way to innovate too and to re-instill vigour in a specific theme and in the conversations that go around it.

If we want to keep our garden beautiful for a long time, we probably need more than one gardener to do all of the above and contribute to a year-round show of nature. In our knowledge garden, this means working in teams and with networks, keeping our edge sharp and expanding the base of people who care about that knowledge garden.

However, and perhaps most importantly, a knowledge garden – whether humanly manicured or otherwise – requires a soil that is appropriate for it. The graft of knowledge seeds does not always work out. And the reason is that certain knowledge plants are not appropriate for a given soil. Certain themes are not adequate for some areas, certain conversations are not ripe yet for a certain crowd, certain contexts are not ready to work around new ideas. The knowledge garden soil needs careful preparation and has to work symbiotically with the themes that are put onto it. This will make or break the planting of knowledge seeds. We may plant these seeds anyhow but they may never bloom – or they might but then wilt and vanish only a tad later. The context of knowledge interactions is key and should be prepared with extreme precaution. This is the essence of successful development interventions too.

As we experience different gardening seasons, we also need to remain critical and focused on what we are learning from our interventions with the garden. It is what will allow us to make the right dosing, cutting, weeding and breeding. A strong learning focus is essential for knowledge gardeners to remain good, and that usually happens more easily in combination with other knowledge gardeners.

If our constant knowledge gardeners bring love (the passion and energy for the field or theme) and expertise in paying attention to the above, then our knowledge garden is likely to remain strong and giving, with the capacity to renew itself continually and to reveal the full potential of knowledge ecology, combined with the beauty of dedication.

Shame though it is for a frog like me, I have to confess I am more inclined towards English gardens and their careful mimicking of nature’s organised chaos, rather than the pompous vanity of ‘jardins à la française‘. And my observation of those French knowledge gardens confirms what sounds true in my own heart of constant knowledge gardener: our garden needs a sensible dose of ‘let it be’.

Related blog posts:

• Go organic, go civic! #KMalreadyHappensAnyways
• Gardening in organisations: how to cultivate expertise and make it blossom
• Knowledge management, social media and ecology – the complexity of three sessions (218, 206 & 173)
• Development, between results and relationships
• G(r)o(w)ing organically and the future of monitoring

Social media: why bother? A French misunderstanding

I spent last Chrismas holiday in France, my birthplace, my homeland, a place that I am so estranged from in many respects. A people for which social media sound so strange too – apart from a few isolated voices and some interesting articles. Among others, Jay Cross also found out about the chasm between France and the rest of the world in terms of  learning, social media, agile KM and so on.

Social media face skeptics, in France and elsewhere (credits – Spiral16)

This post is addressing some criticism I heard in my own country about social media, more as an illustration of how they miss the point about it rather than about bashing France at that.

In Voltaire’s craddle, social media are portrayed – particularly by traditional media – like futile media where ego-maniacs describe every second of their mundane habits (all the way down to toilet matters) and spurt out the dirt and stupidity of the narcissistic divas and divos that form the ranks of the French social media fans.

Why do the media miss the point so entirely about social media and why do I believe in them?

I find the gems of the world on the social web

Clay Shirky got it right, in this age of knowledge, we don’t have problems with information overload but with filter failure. Social media are extremely precious to make out the wheat from the chaff and to find the gems of the web brought forward by my online friends. Mind that gardening your social network is key to make it work though. A lot of the key information in my field (knowledge management, learning, communication etc.) I  actually find through Twitter and Yammer. The system of retweets and likes does wonders to single out great stuff passing by.

Others can find the gems of the world thanks to social media through me

If I come across great stuff, others can benefit from it too, since everything is transparent and easily accessible. A lot of us can simultaneously benefit from social media, including (and particularly) Twitter… Be around, engage and you will also come across wonderful finds. The online content curation trend means that it’s super easy for others to find stuff that we have all been finding, collecting, saving, collating, tagging, documenting, commenting etc.

I reflect and get better thanks to the social media

I hear and read a lot that social media are fastening the pace of information sharing and consumption, and therefore reducing our space and time for genuine engagement and reflection. That is true. For some social media. Blogs are part of social media, however, and they really stimulate our reflection and sense of deeper connection with matters that indeed matter to us. Paradoxically, even micro-blogging platforms force us to reflect and synthesise information so they help reflect too.

In addition to reflecting on our own, the social nature of social media means that we get more feedback more often. That is a true foundation for reflection and improvement.

Social media help me strive ever more for excellence and relevance

As I explained in a previous post about knowledge ego-logy, the very fact that we are attracted by social feedback is a key factor to make us want to get better. If we want comments, ratings, retweets and the likes, we need to deliver good content. On the contrary, every egomaniac ego-logist will harvest the scorn that their narcissism sowed.

I keep track of my assets much more explicitly

This is the benefit of information management. By saving information in social repositories such as del.icio.us, Pinterest, YouTube, wikis, Slideshare etc. I can always find back information that matters to me. It’s much easier to build upon it and reuse it ad infinitum, than reinventing the wheel.

And my assets are not just the information I have, they’re also my expertise (LinkedIn), my network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) and my personal outputs (Mendeley, Zotero, del.icio.us)… What is the alternative?

What about the skeptics?

Granted, the egocentric nature of social media is plaguing some parts of that sphere and too many people probably use social media for very futile purposes. But perhaps it’s part of their trajectory of development in using social media (remember: don’t be too quick to judge).

To let the French (and other skeptics) understand how social media can work, here are some of my guiding principles:

• Care for your network. relentlessly – prune it and expand it where you see pockets of (ir)relevance and energy (sucking) pop up;
• Use social networks professionally before you judge them personally;
• Take some time to explore and accept it’s not perfect straight away. Social media (and any new activity for that matter) always take a bit of time to get the hang of. Networks also take time to grow and reach relevant proportions and depth;
• Accept that there’s no blue print for us all. Social media don’t work for everyone. We all need to give different social media a try, see what works or not for us and adapt our practice accordingly – and certainly to do that before we feel free to judge if theyr work or not;
• Reflect and improve: As for pretty much anything, ongoing reflection about social media is what makes the difference between good and bad practice…

History shows that every great empire that started to shut its interest and borders to external influence lost its edge (medieval Japan, feudal China, The United States of America in the 1920′s). This holds wider lessons – something that many of my fellow countrymen would be well advised to remember, in a phase when France clearly shows all the signs of decline and over-anxiousness and might be about to miss out on the biggest (r)evolution since Gutenberg’s press.

Related blog posts:

• From ego-tripping to ego-rippling: the knowledge ego-logy paradigm 
• Question your education and educate your questions

Through the blissful darkness of ignorance, with concepts-lights at my side

Ignorance is bliss

So they say, and truly I can relate to this saying. Knowing all the details of sordid stories, knowing all the issues that await us when tackling a problem is not always the best guarantee for action. Sometimes it causes the paralysis of fear or concern…

Ignorance is also the mother of curiosity, which gives the greatest push towards learning. So it’s not all that bad to ignore a few things…

The Johari window (from Peter Dorrington’s article about “unknown unknowns and risk”)

…that is, if you know that you ignore them, and want to do something about them. In the proverbial Johari window, there are a few things that caution tells us we don’t know – the real key to learning evoked above.

But there are also things we don’t know that we don’t know and those are the things that through experimentation, individual and social learning, we will hopefully find out that we don’t know. It’s that little extra information that gives us the depth of details we were not yet aware of – which makes also the difference between the caution of an experienced person and the over-confidence of a lay person.

There are gazillions of things that I do not know of course, but there are also a few concepts that are currently my guiding lights in my own learning experience around the fascinating ‘knowledge realm’ and moving around my own Johari window – hoping I will never end up in a real bad case of amnesia

A few concepts as lights in the knowledge realm

What follows here is a rather mixed bag but these concepts definitely relate to one another and sometimes originate from the same authors or sources…

Knowledge work

To start, ‘knowledge work’ is the mother of all other concepts here, as it relates to the overall umbrella of concepts that relate to learning, knowledge management and communication (in its engaging side, not its messaging tradition – see the happy families of engagement). Knowledge work is quite vague but simultaneously it stresses the importance of knowledge in all its relations. Knowledge work is not (just) about information, it’s not just about management (like some takes on KM), it’s not just about learning, it’s about all these areas of work that contribute to this ‘knowledge era’ we are in, where knowledge, its development, sharing, exploitation and ongoing transformation are seen as assets to give us an edge. This, by the way, is just an observation, not necessarily my opinion: I think the next frontier will be about harnessing the power of feelings and intuition, not just cognition.

Working out loud

I came across this concept only a few months ago in John Stepper’s post ‘Working out loud: your personal content strategy‘ and it has taken my mental world by storm. Working out loud is quite simple: journalling your work and sharing it – but the three words contain a lot of challenges and opportunities of (agile) knowledge management and learning. The simplicity of this concept and its appeal to working in a smarter way are nothing short of genius for us all knowledge workers, seeking ways to get our perspective acknowledged and valued. Working out loud also resonates with my blogging practice and all the great things it has given me - which are echoed and amplified in another author’s blogging experience (see which author in the para below).

Personal knowledge management

This topic is closely related to the former. Working out loud fuels personal knowledge management. But personal knowledge management (PKM) goes also into the personal use of information management: it’s not just about journaling but also about organising our knowledge and learning work. I first became acquainted with this concept on Harold Jarche’s blog.

Personal knowledge management or PKM (credits: Jane Hart)

What I like about this concept is that it is about using structure to free yourself from structure: Personal structure and discipline to use and learn from social networks to subvert hierarchies and other structures imposed from outside. And even if you work for an organisation, PKM is something that your firm should be paying attention to, as a foundation to improve organisational KM and learning… No organisation can hope to thrive at ‘organisational learning’ if its individual employees do not see the value of applying it to their personal needs and aspirations. Long live the age of individualism where it reinforces collective dynamics…

Retrospective and inquisitive coherence

This is a lesser concept perhaps but it is relevant to think about learning and what we think about when looking back at the things we didn’t know before. Analysing a complex chain of events and how they led to a certain result -ex-post- makes so much sense all of a sudden: it is retrospectively coherent. Yet, when first confronted with a complex issue at hand, we often have no idea about the way forward. What is useful here is first and foremost to keep some modesty as to what we know or not; it’s also about embracing complexity to look at the bigger picture – the best bet to pave the ways toward inquisitive (forward-looking) coherence. Retrospective coherence was, I believe, developed by the Welshman Dave Snowden.

Positive deviants

Positive deviance was brought to my knowledge via the excellent IKM-Emergent project (closed now) and the work around disruption of systems. Positive deviants are people who follow a successful – albeit uncommon – behaviour, with usually the result of disrupting the foundations of the environment which they challenge with their atypical approach. In knowledge work, where so much relates to behaviour change, incentives and the systemic dynamics that plays around knowledge initiatives (i.e. the enabling or disabling environment and organisation or set of organisations involved), positive deviance is an enlightening concept to explore new pathways of change through the actions of single agents. Local agents affecting the global system: a true characteristic of a complex adaptive system, which will be one of the objects of my next blog post.

Disruptive technology

Not only people (individual positive deviants) can have a profound ‘change’ effect, technology can also play that role. And indeed social media, smartphones, the internet generally and soon cyborg-type implants and other smart devices are or will be totally transforming our lives. But let’s park the sci-fi fantasy for now and focus on the here and now of. When cynics doubt about the value of social media without having really tried them out, it strikes me that this is a typical Johari window example of not knowing what you don’t know, or perhaps not knowing what you might need next. Ditto with a smartphone: until you have it, you cannot imagine what it can do for you. And to you.  We live in a highly techno-driven world of perpetual evolution. Understanding technology is essential: it allows us to understand how it could give new possibilities for our behaviour, but also to know  how we might or should keep control over that technology. A fine balance… and an illustration of how important this concept of disruptive technology has become.

Cynefin framework

Another invention of Dave Snowden, the Cynefin framework is a five-slot framework to understand in what kind of environment we are – or are facing an issue. It could be either simple, complicated, complex, chaotic or unordered.

The Cynefin Framework – where complexity is but one possibility

This framework has been referred to many times and for good reasons, as it is quite intuitive and has been declined in various renditions. Like any framework it doesn’t hold all the truth and it has been criticised in the past, but this framework makes us think about the interactions and types of learning and action approaches best suited to deal with any issue. I also my reservations about the framework but find it a fascinating tool to keep thinking about complexity in a rather simple way but with wide-reaching and sometimes very complex implications.

Empowered listener

We are part of various online and offline communities. Increasingly so. And we cannot invest as much time as we would like in being active in each of them. But we nonetheless choose to be present in those communities. We decide actively what we are listening to because we think we might gain from it. So we all are lurkers in some communities, or as I recently suggested, ‘empowered listeners’. And I believe this is not a trend that will wane all too quickly.

Agility

This is the last but not the least on this list, as it led me to rebaptise my blog ‘Agile KM for me and you’. Jennifer Sertl recently shared with me her definition of what agility means (see image above). In reaction, Dave Snowden (him again) recently put some words of caution to the agile crowd to avoid the past mistakes of the KM clique – and most likely rightly so. However I like the emphasis of this approach towards a more dynamic approach to learning and knowledge work, which is not just about innovation or just about managing assets or solving today’s problems. It reflects the dynamism of the world we live in and the added imperative to think and act increasingly proactively and reflexively.

With such guiding lights, I surely should be able to quickly highlight many other areas of my own ignorance. Phew! To learning there is really no end – but learning also is bliss…

Related blog posts:

• New words for a new world (of networked learning)
• At the IKM Table (2): individual agency vs. organisational remit, accountability and impact pathways for the future of IKM-Emergent
• Harvesting insights (3): Agile KM, between stealth and big bang
• Life after KM?
• Blogging for what? For reflecting, for sharing, for learning, for synthesising, for…
• Me? A lurker? How ignorant of you! I am an empowered listener!

Welcome to the UN-world! (Let’s rewire it)

(And – for your pleasure or your disappointment – this is not about the United Nations, although  there is much to blog about the UN system too, on KM and other issues).

This is one post I meant to draft a long time ago, but my question is still here: why are we creating this UN-world?

Why so much UN-doing?

Rather than focusing on un-learning, let’s re-think, dynamically and together (Credits: HNBD / FlickR)

We are living in a negative polaroid of our world: We don’t do conferences anymore, we do ‘un-conferences’; We don’t do learning now, we do ‘un-learning’; We don’t write books any longer, we write ‘un-books’. I guess with the criticism about social media getting us  connected by our disconnection to reality, some would probably even argue we live an un-life without realizing…

What is it really? The urge to come up with alternative and punchy marketing in our 2-second-attention-span world? The quest for immortality that drives us (sometimes) to reinvent the wheel?

The necessity to deconstruct what we have been doing so far to rediscover the true meaning?

Perhaps a mix of it all.

A few ideas emerge:

• We have seen the limitations of ‘doing business as usual’: same old conferences, same old books, same old ideas.
• We probably live indeed in the permanent beta state that Harold Jarche refers to.
• We have long held assumptions and we therefore need to challenge these assumptions, much like an adolescent all of sudden realizes that the world is not the way his/her parents always portrayed it when s/he was a child;
• Our society is interconnected in ways unimaginable before, which creates unequalled possibilities to reinvent and recreate endless combinations of ideas, activities and people;
• But the point is not so much that books, learning or conferences are intrinsically bad – the way they are used is just (sometimes) not creative and pertinent enough… It’s now time to connect our creativity and unlock the power of the collective, the promise of symbiotic holism which combines and transcends all other knowledges (as seen on this presentation by Valerie Brown which I already introduced on this blog in the past).

What seems important for agile KM to be effective, given these considerations, is: to challenge everyone’s pre-conceptions (question your education and educate your questions, a tabula rasa), to think in dynamic and ever-changing terms rather than in the security and comfort of fixed plans and guarantees (which simply don’t work in the world of social change) and to actively work on connecting ourselves to others.

And rather than focus on what we are doing badly (which all these un-items react against), I would rather rewire the un-world and focus on what we are not doing enough of: re-consider, re-adapt, re-learn, re-think, re-connect…

The world ruled yesterday, the un-world runs today, the re-world might be tomorrow’s zeitgeist. Let’s open to the RE-(e)volution of our connected creativity…

Related blog posts:

• Question your education and educate your questions
• Reinventing the wheel: it’s ok… kind of…
• Stop judging and move on, because we all do (follow the seeds of change)
• The 50-cent and 2-second immortality syndrom
• Look beyond WHAT to do: WHY and HOW lead to WHO
• KM=CDL, on the journey to universal sense-making

Life after KM?

After so many years working on knowledge management I have grown tired of the term (and even finding it an oxymoron). I like to refer to ‘KM’ because it rolls easily in the tongue, but when I look around at other people that also work explicitly on KM, it gives me the impression that we are a bunch of stuffy dinosaurs fighting an old war.

So what is it that KM really means to me? What could be a better term to describe this?

What’s my next destination on this KM sense-making journey? (Credits: James Jordan / FlickR)

Recently I suggested that KM was the combination of conversations, documentation and learning. Conversations and documentation are the means. Learning is the end. Is it really? Learning for the sake of it is irrelevant too. It’s learning for action. But what action?

Learning for change perhaps? We mean to change our actions, be more relevant. But sometimes change is not the best pursuit either. Change for the sake of it is no more worthy of attention than learning for the sake of it. Remember the baby with the bathwater?

Ha! I know: Innovation! This surely is the holy grail. But (constant) innovation is yet another fantasy to chase. There is a time for innovation. And that time is not ‘all the time’. Same case as change. Nothing should motivate this innovation hype I already talked about.

Adaptive management is perhaps more accurate? We want to be able to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Yeah, but what about being proactive rather than adapting reactively? And most importantly, it’s not just about ‘management’, it’s about all of us, whether in managing positions or not. I care about empowerment. I want everyone to be part of the movement, each at their scale and pace.

Perhaps it is indeed what Jennifer Sertl refers to when talking about ‘agility’. I haven’t read her book but what I like about that concept of ‘agility’ is that it focuses on a general state of flexibility and for that it encompasses learning (you need to master learning to be agile – you need to practice it in tacit ways); potential change and innovation (if you are agile you can change and innovate); adaptation but also proactive preparation for the next changes; and it doesn’t just emphasise management, it is for everyone – so it implies the use of personal learning/knowledge/networks to amplify the capacity of a group of people to act more effectively and dynamically (i.e. to remain most effective at all times).

The only thing is: agility might be Jennifer’s trademark and I’m not necessarily using it along her understanding. So for now let me stick to KM and just say I work on agile KM… Check this blog header’s title, it’s just started another little life of its own…

Related blog posts:

• KM=CDL, on the journey to universal sense-making
• Communication, KM, monitoring, learning – The happy families of engagement
• What the heck is knowledge anyways: from commodity to capacity and insights
• Believe in empowerment? Then just do it!
• New words for a new world (of networked learning)
• The birth of a thought and the life-times of a concept

New words for a new world (of networked learning)

New words can act like lenses to see the world from a new perspective (Credits: Ben Christensen / FlickR)

A language is a very strong indicator of the vibrancy of its community: if it evolves, it indicates that there are very active elements in the community which push it forward and keep it alive. On the other hand, reactionary forces (like the Académie Française) try to maintain the ‘purity’ of a language. This is a dangerous and meaningless stance though, as no language would have come out of our ancestors’ borborygms, hadn’t it been for attempts at changing our language.

The new words we come up with usually reflect needs, within our language community, to describe new phenomena that are affecting us, new realities we wish to depict. It is in this spirit that I’d like to share some ‘new words for a new world’ which might help us make sense of our changing networked learning world.

Some of these terms were coined a while ago (and by others), some I just thought about recently. See what you think…

• Confusiasm: (coined by Riff Fullan at a KM4Dev meeting). We are learning specialists. We don’t settle for answers, we want to have more questions, deeper questions. We can cope with paradox and the discomfort of not having a silver bullet. We are enthusiastic about being confused, that means we are learning and questioning. We are confusiasts…
• Facipulation: (coined by Carl Jackson?) Facilitation is about creating the space for others to engage meaningfully. Yet simple and subtle arrangements (the venue set-up, facilitation method etc.) can influence the dynamics. In that way you can facipulate a crowd towards its mutual engagement. This does not mean you actually create the results, the conversations should remain owned by the participants, but you create good conditions for this to happen, you facipulate for a better common good.
• N-gagement: Engagement can come with just one other person, and that is arguably the best scale of engagement possible, with more time and capacity for listening and talking deeply. For social change to happen, however, we need to have engagement with multiple parties, through structured multi-stakeholder engagement processes or bursts of interaction with them. This is N-gagement: engagement with N people to bring more insights and capacities to the mix.
• Netlurking: I last blogged about banning the term ‘lurking’ and I stand by my ground on this. However this Netlurking term comes to mind when thinking about all these networks that we are so easily getting into nowadays (LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages, other discussion gruops etc.) in which we are just testing the waters before deciding whether we feel like taking a deeper swim. This is thus not a good term but an easy term to catch.
• Peerspectives: We need to hear perspectives from various people. But sometimes the best way to get advices and useful conversations is from our peers. They are different perspectives to ours, but they share a lot of common history and understanding. Peerspectives help us improve our practice.

In the future I will try to add new terms to this list as and when. For now, do these words make any sense in your world?

Related blog posts:

• The birth of a thought and the life-times of a concept 
• Me? A lurker? How ignorant of you! I am an empowered listener!
• Share your questions: The personal effectiveness and knowledge survey

In a complex world, it’s all about process… or is it?

The phenomenon of crowd-sourcing has made it practically useless to learn a lot about any given field. The fame and importance of the specialist, the expert, has somewhat waned in favour of the ‘wisdom of the crowds’. This is connected to the shifting dominant perspective of the world.

The Newtonian model of physics which has ruled for long puts strong emphasis on unpacking and dismantling the world around us into particles of observable and explainable phenomenons. It is being increasingly criticised. Complexity theories are increasingly making a dent into this paradigm and adjusting the focus from the nodes (these observable micro-phenomenons) to the interrelations between the nodes and the bigger picture that these inter-connected nodes make up.

Specialised generalists, the necessary new breed? (credits: Anitakhart / FlickR)

In this shifting world, knowing one thing is subsequently less important and less pertinent than knowing how to connect different things together, connecting knowledges, connecting know-hows, connecting people that have knowledge and know-how.

This means that wide-spectrum generalists who do tend to have a better capacity at connecting fields together, are perhaps valued more than ever before. Connectors, mavens etc. are the new heroes. They are at the bleeding edge of change and innovation. And their source of power, process is perhaps becoming the main object of science, as we are trying to understand how change is really happening in a process-focused, interconnected manner.

Is it really so? Is this definitely and ultimately the age of generalists? Is connecting fields of knowledge the final truth of this era? Or is this not yet another baby-out-with-the-bathwater-syndrome?

I am a generalist and have suffered for a long time of not finding my place, space and faith (in the virtues of the process) in a world that venerated specialists. Yet, or perhaps because I wouldn’t want the opposite to happen, I do not feel totally comfortable with the process backlash that is happening now.

At a workshop icebreaker in October last year, I asked participants to put themselves on a continuum from specialists to generalists and one thoughtful person mention that one needed both: the capacity to connect fields but also some more in-depth understanding of a given field.

Why do we need to be specialists (or have some at hand at least)?

• Because process can also be superficial if not applied to a specific context or purpose (as much as, in communication, content and process are two wings of a bird). In contrast, specialisation means one can distinguish deeper patterns and layers of complexity much more precisely than a generalist would;
• Because even process expertise can become a field of specialisation (as demonstrated by the flurry of change management and innovation process consultants);
• Because knowing a field more in-depth gives mastery and mastery is apparently one of the three decisively motivating elements in generating self-accomplishment and deep happiness – as shown on the RSAnimate video below;
• Because knowing a field in detail also helps connect with a specific specialist crowd which becomes a support network with the deep connections that come from going through intense experiences together;
• Because knowing people that know a field in detail adds depth to the colourful but watered down picture of life that a generalist might have, it makes certain elements spicier by zooming in on details (the spicy devil is in the details);
• Because in a complex world, micro-phenomenons can explain macro-events and zooming in detail on these phenomenons holds keys to the process too…

So, while I appreciate this due focus on process, as much as I hated being stigmatised as ‘someone that doesn’t know what he’s doing’ in a world of specialists, I wouldn’t want generalists to chase away the importance of mastery and specialisation as part of their new exclusive dogma.

Related blog posts:

• Alignment and authenticity
• Radical ideals and fluffy bunnies

Alignment and authenticity

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. I alluded to it in ‘Radical ideals and fluffy bunnies’ and in ‘Using dissent as a driver’ but not head-on. Here is a shoot that I hope will settle this matter for a while, for me at least, but I hope it also resonates with you (1).

In work, in any work that puts your personality on the line, and clearly in facilitation – where so much of your personality potentially affects the works - should we remain true to ourselves, or align with the wider agenda or other concerns?

You might think: “easy, just be yourself”. But the reality is more complicated, as we know we sometimes have to deal with another agenda – in facilitation that would be the bossy part of the BOSSY HERALD. We have to perform in different working cultures and we cannot be obsessed with doing things the way we like all the time. Or can we?

A practical example of this dilemma might be to respect hierarchy in e.g. a workshop. Will you challenge it or respect it? Tough call.

I absolutely don’t pretend to hold any truth here, just offering my views: On the alignment vs. authenticity spectrum, I place myself on the latter and try to bend towards the former. I start with being authentic with myself. The more I can be myself, the more I will be at ease and perform well, add humour (which is a great way to release tensions of this vein) and arguably the more I make others also comfortable because my behaviour does not display tensions.

Alignment or authenticity? Alignment with your authenticity it seems (Credits: PhotoBucket)

In the process, I keep open to differences of views and practices and I have to remain astute to the specific issues where authenticity becomes awkward. Then I have to peddle back and adjust, (re-)align to reach out.

Perhaps the trick I have found here is to stretch authenticity as much as I can without upsetting anyone, following the proverbial French statement ‘Jusqu’où peut-on aller trop loin?‘ (until where can we get too far’)? In my philosophy, I’d rather let people be. A lot of respect, a bit of fun and you erase any risk of ‘your freedom infringing on mine’. So, alignment or authenticity? Judy Garland, among many others, reminds us:

“Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”

I’ve made up my mind. And there are two interesting parallels here:

• One is with our work-life personalities: how much of yourself, of your real personality do you reveal at work? How much connection between these two poles of your life can you cope with (particularly if you are not self-employed)? I have found that being myself at work makes it all the more enjoyable, so while I try and preserve my personal and family life from too much travelling and over-work, I tend to not act so differently at the office or at home. I’ve found that in any occasion, thinking, feeling, talking and acting in the same perspective makes me happier and grounds me much more than entertaining split personaliities. But everyone has their own coping mechanisms…
• The other is with intercultural communications: how much do you adapt to a culture and remain true to yours? This is a tricky one. Yet again, perhaps openness and humour are the best weapons against the tricks and traps of intercultural communication. I personally feel that since I cannot become someone with a totally different culture overnight, I’d rather stick to who I am, with all my sub-cultural backgrounds. I definitely try to understand, and I remain open to other cultures, but will not pretend I am someone else – while recognising that I am in a dynamic process of change where my culture(s) will be affected too.

How do YOU cope with alignment and authenticity?

Notes:

(1) Funny enough, someone just wrote another post a few days back, titled ‘alignment and authenticity’ – serendipity, that’s another topic worth blogging about…

Related blog posts:

• Radical ideals and fluffy bunnies
• Using dissent as a driver
• From evil-inflexible to fantastic-elastic, the not-so-simple shades of willingness to change
• Development, between results and relationships
• A new year of fun, focus, feedback and some new ideas
• The chemistry of magical facilitation (1) – mind the BOSSY HERALD

International (knowledge sharing) Women’s Day

Today, 8 March, as every year, it is International Women’s Day. It’s only one day in the year and that’s little. It’s also too much: Why do we need a special day for women? There is a subtle implication – wanted or not – that the remaining 364 days of the year (365 in 2012) are for men? Regarding this International Women’s Day I feel a bit like Morgan Freeman about Black History Month…

Morgan Freeman on Black History Month: Nonsense!

Yet there is also the ‘affirmative action’ argument about this day and it makes sense. There is so little sharing of decision-making power and overall empowerment effectively happening for women worldwide. This is true from the bottom poorest in development to the top (less than 1% of billionaires worldwide are women as I found out in this article in Le Monde this morning).

In this post I just want to celebrate the great contributions of women in the knowledge sharing/management and learning environment – in development and I am sure in the corporate world too. A former colleague of mine, surprised by my enthusiasm for KM4Dev, also thought that it was a community of practice for middle-aged male nerds. She was stupefied to find out that a lot of them are women, and some of the more influential ones (10 out of 19 KM4Dev core group members are women, and 9 out of 17 potential volunteers).

And it makes sense – not based on scientific studies but on my own personal experience, not claiming any universal rule here:

• Women in my life have been natural knowledge-sharers, from simple (and sometimes silly, however) gossiping to discussing really personal issues;
• By resorting to their feelings perhaps more naturally, they have a wider repertoire for international and intercultural sharing and learning – where the world of mind and ideas sometimes finds its limits for lack of language to interpret concepts;
• Perhaps because they doubt more about themselves (arguably as a result of being in a traditionally male-dominated world) they have more tendency to listen carefully than many men;
• As a result of these two characteristics, they are able to connect at a deep level with other people – something highly desirable in the development work’s quest for trust as the cement of sustainblee achievements;
• They are also able to interconnect thoughts and ideas perhaps much more so than men – as portrayed comically in the video below;
• They are natural learners, as they have had to seizeany opportunity to counter the power challenges they are facing everywhere;
• They are natural communicators, not just because they have biologically better communication means but also because they have had to make a stronger case to be heard than men and to present their ideas with a high degree of seriousness and professional credibility;
• Women tend to focus on the cooperation and collaboration, a natural self-defence mechanism for any community somewhat deprived of political capital and one which is embedded in the ways girls play with another another when they  are young;
• By extension of this they also are more geared towards negotiation and consensus than men;
• The apprenticeship model is also more natural for many women, with respect to the importance of role modelling to believe that they can make it (get to a higher level, break the glass ceiling);
• Women (again, in my life) have usually less time to dedicate to work as they also pay close attention to their family life, tend to be quite pragmatic rather than theoretical – they seem to want to see results and practical actions, not just talk;
• Perhaps as a result of their own struggle and their need to readjust and try different approaches to counter negative power play, they may be in a better position to look carefully at the process involved, not just at the results and big ideas but also at the nitty-gritty ‘how do we get there’.

Women sharing and gathering - the natural born social learners? (Credits: Indhslf72/FlickR)

If you take all these characteristics into account, you get a fabulous knowledge worker and learner from the 21st century – one that is truly able to act effectively in the networked age, to connect and engage at a deeper level and to make people feel good about joining hands and working towards a common goal.

This is not to undermine the role of men – if anything, I support a conception of gender that is all about men and women working and living better together, not women vs. men – nor to recognise that I am depicting an ideal image of women here. But that ideal is based on the extraordinary facets of courage, determination, professionalism and kindness of the women that I have been fortunate to work with in knowledge sharing and management for development.

This day is for you, ladies! But also for all of us. May we all share, learn and improve ourselves, our actions and our world together following the best of your examples.

With lots of love, happy International Womens’ Day!!!

Related blog posts:

• Development, between results and relationships
• Get personal: KM closer, together, for the bigger picture
• Look beyond WHAT to do: WHY and HOW lead to WHO