Firstly, to support effective decision making. That has historically been regarded as getting the right information at the right time to the right people who also have the right training. Now the multiple "right" statements starts in supply chain logistics and stands for products but its inadequate for decision support. Sometime ago during an extended project with Gary Klein in Singapore I came up with the See-Attend-Act model of sense-making. Whether I physically see data that is presented to me is one issue (and normally we scan out what we are not expecting to see), if I pay attention to it even if I see it is another process altogether and acting on what I see is a different level of magnitude all together. Good screen design can trigger attention by focusing on outliers, triggering the right patterns etc. but leading to action is harder. Self discovery counts there, but also trust validation within human networks is key. If someone I trust suggests I look at something then I do, if someone I trust asks me to take a second look I will. Get the picture? Its not enough to manage the information system, you have to manage the ecology of knowledge flow within an organisation. Secondly, we need to create the conditions for innovation. Now critically that means that we need to focus on a degree of inefficiency. Innovation never happens within a formal highly efficient system. Yes, when the informal system makes the bureaucracy work despite itself you get considerable innovation. However this is generally invisible to the formal system. A key concept in evolutionary biology is exaption. Adaption (the more familiar word) is where a trait develops for a specific purpose, but then accidentally gets used for something else instead which proves more advantageous. Brian Arthur in a brilliant book, shows the degree to which technology innovation depends on exaption rather than adaption. My favorite example is the way Apple took technology deign to detect movement (in order to life the heads from your hard disk) to create screens that re-orientated according to their position. That got a lot more money, but it was not a defined need, it was a finding a new or novel use. Managing for exaption requires a degree of mess, something that the sick staggered will find it difficult to comprehend. Thirdly, knowledge management is all about communication and that doesn't just meant the top down focus that is all too common place, although it does permit it. Dealing with uncertainty often focus on things like values and mission statements. However riting your values down means that you have just lost them. All you have done is teach people the language of power and it will come back to you in slide presentations and proposals. The Bible teaches through parables, stories that carry necessary ambiguity and hence adaptability but you can't talk your way out of their message. This is the key switch from managing rule base cultures, to enabling an ideation culture. That means understanding the micro-narratives of day to day conversations, sensing the evolutionary potential of the system. It can also involve the use of metaphor. Like the parables referenced above, metaphors carry with them essential ambiguity and adaptability which paradoxically allows them to me more precise in day to day communication both up and down. Narrative is a broad field that too many people seek to narrow and its a lot more sophisticated in both theory and practice than many pe
↧
What is the function of KM?
↧