Gurteen Knowledge-Log

• Dave Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd
• Mary Lee Kennedy, Executive Director, Knowledge and Library Services, Harvard Business School
• John Girard, Associate Professor, Minot State University

Knowledge Management should be focused on real, tangible intractable problems not aspirational goals. It should deal pragmatically with the evolutionary possibilities of the present rather then seeking idealistic solutions.

Credit: Dave Snowden

Benner suggests that decreasing your reliance on a preconceived end or means of getting there can offer a new point of departure for new possibilities that were not previously available. To me, this applies as much to individuals in their personal lives as much as it does to people in organisations.

Credit: Three Questions for Opening Up Possibility, Stephen Billing

The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and even shuts out, the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for his future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

Credit: John Dewey

1. You get what you measure, so if you set a target humans will achieve the target at all costs, ignoring context or the unstated goals that the outcome based target was attempting to achieve.
   
   
2. Outcome based measurement can make people far too comfortable. It's all to easy to achieve an explicit target, especially if you can turn off an empathy (or at least suppress it).
   
   
3. A mechanical approach is by its nature dehumanising in its effect on people and inhuman in its impact on society.
   
   
4. You waste an awful amount of resource just managing the measurement system.
   
   
5. We try and solve issues with idealistic fail-safe designs rather than allowing systems to evolve.
   
   
6. Re-organisation is a disease and an excuse. It's the knee jerk reaction to any failure that ends up breaking your jaw with the recoil.
   
   
7. Communication is all up and down the chain, ironically this mediates information to senior decision makers so they are immunised from the real data they need, and also from the consequences of their actions.

1. Work on something that matters to you more than money.
2. Create more value than you capture.
3. Take the long view.

We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.

Credit: Tim OReilly

Shared values are a complete fallacy and the pursuit of them will not help your organisation one bit.

Credit: Stephen Billing

The greatest benefit of conversation is that it produces five categories of responses (answers, meta knowledge, problem reformulation, validation and legitimization), not just the answer. We get so much more from conversation, e.g. an unexpected insight, a sense of affirmation that inspires us to new heights or, equally useful, having to confront a realization that we've been trying to avoid; deepening the relationship with a colleague or the introduction to a collaborator we would never have discovered on our own; and on and on.

Credit: Nancy Dixon

• Balanced coverage of human and IT-oriented approach to managing knowledge at the personal, group and organisational levels
• Suitable for knowledge workers in all industries and learnt concepts are widely applicable
• True multi-media delivery with games, animation, peer-to-peer interactions supplementing online content and web seminars

Smart People Magazine turns corporate knowledge management inside out, brings the power of knowledge work to the mainstream and applies it to living, learning, choosing, creating and working. The power has always been there, and the Web has multiplied your knowledge a million times through the search, communication and social network capabilities of the Internet.

Credit: Smart People Magazine

TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience through events they themselves organize, design and host. We're supporting approved organizers by offering a free toolset that includes detailed advice, the right to use recorded TEDTalks, promotion on our site, connection to other organizers, and a little piece of our brand in the form of the TEDx label.

Credit: TED

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Credit: Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

• Balanced coverage of human and IT-oriented approach to managing knowledge at the personal, group and organisational levels
• Suitable for knowledge workers in all industries and learnt concepts are widely applicable
• True multi-media delivery with games, animation, peer-to-peer interactions supplementing online content and web seminars

1. Gather evidence on the value of the site, including case studies of how the library has impacted on people's work
2. Identify people that it would be helpful to include in the lessons learned review
3. Identify people that it would be useful to involve if the library needs to look for a new home
4. Gather information that would be helpful to pitch the library to a new host or funder
5. Generally stir up support for the library

1. Gather evidence on the value of the site, including case studies of how the library has impacted on people's work
2. Identify people that it would be helpful to include in the lessons learned review
3. Identify people that it would be useful to involve if the library needs to look for a new home
4. Gather information that would be helpful to pitch the library to a new host or funder
5. Generally stir up support for the library

• The Black Knowledge Economy http://is.gd/nEZ6
• US$69 million cost overrun due to lack of KM! http://is.gd/nv6q
• RT @ConversationAge Clay Shirky's Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable http://tinyurl.com/bdy6kn
• RT @pennyedwards "The Easiest Way to Change People's Behaviour" - how actions are determined by our environment - http://is.gd/n0db
• RT @VMaryAbraham Depression? Recession? No, It's the Great Restructuring http://is.gd/mEP1
• Sergey Brin on game show "To Tell The Truth" 21 Feb 2001 http://is.gd/mkwi
• Wow! Henry David Thoreau @thoreaupage is following me! - must have wifi in his cabin in the woods :-)
• Carpe diem http://is.gd/kJn2
• RT @tonyrobbins "nothing can withstand the assault of sustained critical thinking." Voltaire
• Doodling 'may help memory recall' http://is.gd/l4Ew

You might like to note that all these articles including a short booklet containing mainly of them is available freely for re-use.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Credit: Plutarch (46 - 120) Greek Essayist

Some people know from the age of five or younger that when they grown up they want to be singers or doctors or accountants etc. I wasn't quite so lucky. My career aspirations changed every couple of years. I found lots of things interesting and could never fully commit myself to one passion. I just followed the advice my father gave me: "Do what you enjoy most" and with the back-up justification to all my interests that: "variety is the spice of life".

Credit: The Curious Cat

So, I argue that my desire for domesticity can be classed as an ambition, and it can still be feminist because it is not about women conforming to rules laid down to them by their male partners, but about the freedom they have to be able to choose and the support and means they have nowadays to achieve it. With all this talk in the media of "Broken Britain", I think it is a rather worthy ambition and may I even go as far to say that it speaks volumes about the women who choose to pursue such a life. The slight question of taboo almost creates a feeling that I am embarking on a road less travelled! (Which I certainly like the idea of!)

Credit: The Curious Cat

One of the challenges for those of us who believe that we are at the beginning of a very significant period of change in how we see ourselves, our societies and our businesses is how to imagine what the future will be like. Having grand schemes and megalomaniac designs seems out of place with something that is in essence personal and intimate.

Part of me believes that we will get somewhere worthwhile if each of us takes the small steps that seem to make sense to us and that in aggregate these small steps will achieve something significant. The other part of me believes that this will confine us to thinking small and achieving less than we could and that without some inspiring, grander and more comprehensive vision we won't make much difference at all.

This ties in with concerns I have about making things happen in a world where making things happen is associated with old values and ways of thinking. How do you bring about significant change using conversations, influence and sticky ideas rather than command and control and grand plans?

Credit: Thinking big about small pieces by Euan Semple

Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world then anyone else could make for them.

Credit: From the book How children fail by John Holt

One of the challenges for those of us who believe that we are at the beginning of a very significant period of change in how we see ourselves, our societies and our businesses is how to imagine what the future will be like. Having grand schemes and megalomaniac designs seems out of place with something that is in essence personal and intimate.

Part of me believes that we will get somewhere worthwhile if each of us takes the small steps that seem to make sense to us and that in aggregate these small steps will achieve something significant. The other part of me believes that this will confine us to thinking small and achieving less than we could and that without some inspiring, grander and more comprehensive vision we won't make much difference at all.

This ties in with concerns I have about making things happen in a world where making things happen is associated with old values and ways of thinking. How do you bring about significant change using conversations, influence and sticky ideas rather than command and control and grand plans?

Credit: Thinking big about small pieces by Euan Semple

Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world then anyone else could make for them.

Credit: From the book How children fail by John Holt

I see three key benefits of using Twitter:

• It lowers resistance to sharing information. (The 140 character limitation is now a strength.)
• It makes it easy to tap into a global mindset.
• And it provides quick recognition and feedback for what you think and know.

Credit: Eric Mack

If you change your behavior, you change your mind. This is one of those deceptively simple, profoundly important realizations. It's the "fake it till you make it" school of thought that says if you want to become something different, you have to start by behaving differently.

We tend to think the opposite, that our beliefs must change first and then our behavior will come along later.

Much of professional development is about trying to change people's attitudes by "training" them that they should think differently. This is often unsuccessful because in many cases, we need to first change our behavior before we can change our beliefs.

I'm not going to truly believe in the power of exercise until I actually begin doing it. I have to start with acting differently and it's the process of engaging in new behaviors that helps me start to develop new attitudes.

Credit: Change Your Behavior

1. Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted.
2. We only know what we know when we need to know it.
3. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge.
4. Everything is fragmented.
5. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.
6. The way we know things is not the way we report we know things.
7. We always know more than we can say, and we always say more than we can write down.

Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.

Credit: Dave Snowden.

1. Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted.
2. We only know what we know when we need to know it.
3. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge.
4. Everything is fragmented.
5. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.
6. The way we know things is not the way we report we know things.
7. We always know more than we can say, and we always say more than we can write down.

Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.

Credit: Dave Snowden.

With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
with the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.

Credit: Leonard Cohen