Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self‐Awareness

Editor' Note: This article has been extracted and condensed from one that first appeared in the Journal of Knowledge Management , v. 6, no2 (May 2002), p. 100-111. A copy of the original article also appears on the Cynefin website (http://www-1.ibm.com/services/cynefin/). The Bulletin wishes to thank Emerald (publisher of the Journal) and the author for permission to publish this version. The contention of this paper is that we are entering a third age in the management of knowledge. Further, that the conceptual changes required for both academics and management are substantial, effectively bounding or restricting over a hundred years of management science in a way similar to the bounding of Newtonian science by the discoveries and conceptual insights of quantum mechanics. These changes are not incremental, but require a phase shift in thinking that appears problematic, but once made reveals a new simplicity without the simplistic and formulaic solutions of too much practice in this domain. The first age, prior to 1995, sees knowledge being managed, but the focus is on the appropriate structuring and flow of information to decision makers and the computerization of major business applications leading to a revolution dominated by the perceived efficiencies of process reengineering. For many, reengineering was carried out with missionary enthusiasm as managers and consultants rode roughshod across pre-existing "primitive" cultures with positive intent that too frequently degenerated into rape and pillage. By the mid- to late-90s disillusionment was creeping in. Organizations were starting to recognize that they might have achieved efficiencies at the cost of effectiveness and laid off people with experience or natural talents vital to the operation of which they had been unaware. The failure to recognize the value of knowledge gained through experience, through traditional forms of knowledge transfer such as apprentice schemes and the collective nature of much knowledge, was such that even the word knowledge became problematic. To all intents and purposes knowledge management started circa 1995 with the popularization of the SECI model (Nonaka it did not follow that all of the knowledge in the designers heads and conversations had, should or could have been made explicit. In partial contrast, early knowledge programs attempted to disembody all knowledge from its possessors to make it an organizational asset. Nonaka attempted to restate his more holistic and dialectical view of tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka it cannot be conscripted. We can always know more than we can tell, and we will always tell more than we can write down. We only know what we know when we need to know it; that is human knowledge is deeply contextual – it is triggered by circumstance. The three heuristics partially support Stacy's view of knowledge as an active process of relating. However, it does not follow that we have to abandon second-generation practice, but we must recognize its limitations. We can encompass both Stacy and Nonaka if we embrace knowledge as both a thing and a flow . In the second age we looked for things and in consequence found things; in the third age we look for both in different ways and must therefore embrace the consequent paradox. The issue of content and context, which runs through all three heuristics, is key to understanding the nature of knowledge transfer. At the highest level of abstraction, in a context where I share knowledge with myself, there is a minor cost; I may keep notes but no one else has to read them. At the other extreme if I want to share with everyone the cost becomes infinite, as the audience not only needs to share the same language, but also the same education, experience, values, etc. Abstraction is one dimension of context; the other is culture. The term culture is used both to describe socio-cultural systems, which are artifactual and knowable, and ideational systems, which are systems of shared ideas, rules and meanings that underlie and are expressed in the way that humans live (Keesing codified in textbooks. The high level of abstraction is teachable given the necessary time, intelligence and opportunity. This is one of the most important domains as knowledge communication is at its most efficient due to the high level of abstraction; in second generation thinking this is the domain of communities of practice. Informal/Interdependent : Learning , High Abstraction . In this domain we have the abstraction of shared experiences, values and beliefs. This is the domain of the shadow or informal organization, that complex network of obligations, experiences and mutual commitments without which an organization could not survive. Trust in this domain is a naturally occurring phenomenon as all collaboration is voluntary in nature. In some primitive societies the symbols are stories, often unique to a particular family who train their children to act as human repositories of complex stories that contain the wisdom of the tribe. The ability to convey high levels of complexity through story lies in the highly abstract nature of the symbol associations in the observer's mind when s/he hears the story. It triggers ideas, concepts, values and beliefs at an emotional and intellectual level simultaneously. A critical mass of such anecdotal material from a cohesive community can be used to identify and codify simple rules and values that underlie the reality of that organization's culture (Snowden, 1999). At its simplest manifestation this can be a coded reference to past experience. "You're doing a Margi" may be praise or blame – without context the phrase is meaningless, with context a dense set of experiences is communicated in a simple form. Uncharted/Innovative : Learning , Low Abstraction . We now reach a domain in which we have neither the experience nor the expertise because the situation is new, the ultimate learning environment. The organization will tend to look at such problems through the filters of past experience. But here we can act to create context to enable action through individuals or communities who have either developed specific understanding or who are comfortable in conditions of extreme uncertainty. Such individuals or communities impose patterns on chaos to make it both comprehensible and manageable. The above description of the Cynefin common-sense making model relates to its use in the context of communities. It is based on an understanding of the distinctiveness of three different types of system – complicated, complex and chaotic, best understood through two distinctions. Complex vs . Complicated . An aircraft is a complicated system; all of its thousands of components are knowable, definable and capable of being catalogued as are all of the relationships between and among those components, while human systems are complex. A complex system comprises many interacting agents, an agent being anything that has identity. We all exist in many identities in our personal and work lives. As we move among identities, we observe different rules, rituals and procedures unconsciously. In a complex system, the components and their interactions are changing and can never be quite pinned down. The system is irreducible. Cause and effect cannot be separated because they are intimately intertwined (Juarrero 1999). Two examples make this clearer: When a rumor of reorganization surfaces: the complex human system starts to mutate and change in unknowable ways; new patterns form in anticipation of the event. If you walk up to an aircraft with a box of tools in your hand, nothing changes. Another feature of a complex system is retrospective coherence in which the current state of affairs always makes logical sense, but only when we look backwards. The current pattern is logical, but is only one of many patterns that could have formed, any one of which would be equally logical. Scientific management served well in the revolutions of total quality management and business process re-engineering and continues to be applicable in the domain of the complicated; however, just as Newtonian physics was bounded by the understandings of quantum mechanics, so scientific management has been bounded by the need to manage knowledge and learning. Complex vs . Chaotic . A complex system comprises many interacting identities in which, while I cannot distinguish cause and effect relationships, I can identify and influence patterns of interactivity. With a chaotic system all connections have broken down and we are in a state of turbulence. In a complex domain we manage to recognize, disrupt, reinforce and seed the emergence of patterns; we allow the interaction of identities to create coherence and In a chaotic domain no such patterns are we to impose they will not through the interaction of The three types of system on to the Cynefin model, with a of complicated systems into those in which we know all of the cause and effect relationships and those that are if we had the and time of the domains a different model of community requires a different form of management and a different Cynefin: Making Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology is the only legitimate domain of best practice. limits we can both and can make systems that might be complex or chaotic into we impose through and that have to create the negative the can beyond its In this domain we and once we in with tends to a model, with as the is the domain of practice. 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We can also but the cost will be A of codified knowledge can be fully separated from its and to the best practice that of the a we the and of the domain of new to this we knowledge as between different with different rules, and of management. We do not have to between and but we those to their appropriate The Cynefin model the of multiple contexts. We are the of the second generation of knowledge with its focus on knowledge by the SECI model of it a first generation focus on information for decision support and in support of business process re-engineering it has to on its The third generation requires the of context, narrative and content management and the of scientific management. Complex adaptive systems has been used to create a sense-making model that of the informal communities and a natural flow model of knowledge and Knowledge is as both a thing and a flow management In the new, but not third narrative and context management a of the concepts and of both first and second By enabling within an organization, rather than a model of best practice, it a new without being enabling the emergence of new through the interaction of the formal and the formal in a complex of knowledge. Some of this paper were in the of at the of The of a from The expressed in this paper are those of the author and are not to the of either or for Knowledge of the Cynefin which on action in organizational is open to individuals and to It on action seeking new insights into the nature of and derived from that recognize the of systems interacting The of all center programs is to look at any issue from multiple new and to through multiple interactions among on a and and from of or problems to early into new and tools such as narrative network and is of created for in and was a of for is a of the Information at can be at