Properly understood, knowledge management was all about improving decision making and creating the conditions for innovation. While in recent years a lot of knowledge management has focused on the technology based capture and dissemination of information those objectives have remained.
A leader not only has to make decisions, but they have to evaluate and enable the decisions of others. They have to do this within changing circumstances and in situations where there are multiple inter-dependencies and contingencies – few of which can be known in advance. Command and control structures still work, but any leader knows that merely issuing instructions and expecting compliance only works in highly stable situations.
Traditional decision theory relies on the assumption that if you get the right information to the right people at the right time and couple that with the right incentives then people will make the right decisions. In practice, this idealistic model breaks down, and increasingly, understanding gained from the cognitive sciences demonstrates that human beings make decisions based on matching literally thousands of stored patterns with a very partial scan of the information that is presented to them. Given this understanding from science, we need to radically rethink the models of decision making and communication that were good enough for a more stable age. Just as Newtownian physics provided predictive capability and remains useful, but not universal, so traditional management methods prove valid, but within boundaries.
A one-day masterclass designed to help you:
Understand the theory and practice of leadership in an age of uncertainty
Learn how to do more with significantly less
Discover the richness and possibilities of taking a scientific approach to decision making and innovation within your organisation
Harness the power of effective delegation
Know when to take expert advice
Overcome uncertainty using scenario planning techniques
Encourage innovation through applying the appropriate level of pressure
Take advantage of trends noticed through weak signals with fail-safe experimentation
Flickr Slideshow: Washington DC Knowledge Cafe, March 2007
Photo slideshow of Washington DC Knowledge Cafe, March 2007. The Knowledge Cafe was hosted by the "Federal CIO Council’s Best Practices Committee Knowledge Management Working Group" and the speaker was Zeke Wolfberg of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Knowledge Laboratory on the theme “Operationalizing Risk in Knowledge Organizations”.
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David Gurteen
Giving a talk at the Graduate School of Bangkok University, January 2008.
I help people to share their knowledge; to learn from each other; to innovate and to work together effectively to make a difference!
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