“Nearly 60 percent of projects aimed at achieving business change do not fully meet their objectives.” – IBM, 2008.

Why does this happen? As many working in Knowledge Management and related fields understand, it’s all about people and complexity. Organisations are increasingly dependent on people and what they know in order to operate successfully in today’s environment. It is no longer sufficient for organisational change to be driven by a small handful of people – there is no monopoly on ideas.

This is the topic of the presentation I delivered last Wednesday night at the Melbourne KMLF.  The slide pack is now available on SlideShare.

I have posted on this topic here before, and delivered an earlier version of the presentation at trampoline.  

Key points in this presentation are:

• Recent insights into effective organisational change.
• The impact of complexity and the importance of engaging people. 
• Creativity and the wisdom of crowds. 
• Social Media – the power of trust and openness.

For more background on the topics covered, here are some links to the material referenced:

• See the Wikipedia entry for Cynefin.
• Read more about Teresa Amabile’s work in an earlier post here – or see the original Harvard Business School article.
• See the RSA Animate overview of Dan Pink’s Drive on YouTube – The surprising truth about what motivates us.
• Read Greg Lloyd’s blog post about Drucker – Enterprise 2.0 Schism.
• See John Smythe’s Engage for Change site.
• See the Wikipedia entry for The Wisdom of Crowds.

For more on the change management tools and approaches mentioned, see these sites:

• Cognitive Edge - David Snowden’s site  – for Cynefin and complexity tools.
• Anecdote - Shawn Callahan and Mark Schenk’s site – for business storytelling, change and anecdote circles.
• Gurteen Knowledge - David Gurteen’s site – for knowledge cafés.
• Change Management Toolbox – Michelle Lambert’s site - for the change management cards..
• The Organizational Zoo – Arthur Shelley’s site – for the book The Organizational Zoo and the matching zoo cards.

Finally, see “How to organise a children’s party” on YouTube.

I finally had a chance to use them in a guest lecture I delivered recently at Victoria University (where my son was doing a KM unit as part of his business Master’s degree).

The game is described in full on the methodcards.net wiki site. 

In essence, it was used to support a presentation on KM technology, tools and techniques.  The full slide pack for the lecture is on SlideShare.

The first part of the lecture gave a general overview of KM tools and a case study scenario – an outline of the environment and cultures of a business where a KM program was introduced.  The students were then split into four groups, and cards were distributed to the groups.  Each group was then asked to select the approaches, methods or tools that they considered would be the most appropriate to address the case study scenario. 

After the selections were made and presented, the choices were then discussed.  The remainder of the lecture covered the tools actually used in the case study, with further discussion of how the students’ choices matched the real-world example.

Of course, there are no absolute “right” or “wrong” answers in this exercise – it’s the conversation that is most important! The main point is for the students to become more familiar with KM approaches, methods and tools, and to think through which would be most helpful in a given scenario.

For the full details, see the description on the wiki.

Have ready some stoned olives, filled with stiffly-whipped cream flavoured with Coralline pepper, and put on the top of each little mound a little round of egg white encircling each olive.

From the Wool Wool Cookery Book, 1903.

Is it just me, or have tastes changed somewhat in the last 100 years?

This work describes national cultural patterns, and how they affect knowledge sharing.  Here is a simple summary diagram I have put together of the four basic types they described:

Both types of culture in the left column are independent and individualist, and predominantly Western. 

The top left quadrant is the domain of the rugged individualists.  They are mostly found in France, Germany, the UK and USA.  These people see each other as unique, and accept inequalities.  Thus they can naturally accept a social class structure.  They tend to hoard knowledge, and see this knowledge hoarding as power.  They like theoretical analysis.

The horizontal individualists in the bottom left domain see themselves as equal in status with each other.  Bhagat et al state that they also have “a relatively high tolerance for ambiguity and complexity”.   They are mostly found in Denmark, Sweden and Australia.  This is of particular interest, and will be discussed further.

The collectivist cultures represented in the right column are mostly Eastern.  These collectivists are interdependent, and tend to be much better at sharing knowledge than the individualists.  They historically share knowledge by storytelling, and have persistence – they are happy to let time take its course. 

At the top right, we have the culture of duty and conformity found in China, Korea, Singapore and India.  People in this cultural pattern respond to hierarchy and authority, and believe in service and sacrifice for the benefit of the group.  At the same time, individuals still see themselves as different from each other. This pattern is particularly evident in the caste system in India.  Another feature of this cultural type is favouritism shown to family members – seen in some developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Finally – and perhaps most interestingly – is the horizontal-collective pattern, shown in Japan and the kibbutzim in Israel.  People in this pattern tend to have similar tastes and preferences, and strong group customs and relationships.  They have an ideal of equality as “oneness” with the group.  They are independent thinkers, yet prefer to make decisions by consensus.

Individualist cultures prefer working with explicit knowledge; collectivist cultures are comfortable with tacit knowledge.  There may also be a left brain – right brain analogy here as well.

Application of the model

I would suggest that this particular view is a somewhat blunt instrument – there are many other distinctions between cultures.  However, George Box’s maxim “all models are wrong, but some are useful” applies here.  Even at this coarse level, this model is useful for increasing our understanding of the impact of basic cultural types not only on knowledge sharing, but on many aspects of how the world operates.

The main intent of the model was to understand the barriers to knowledge sharing between different cultures.  Knowledge sharing between the cultural domains is easiest up and down the diagram (individualist to individualist or collectivist to collectivist), more difficult across the diagram (individualist to collectivist or vice-versa) but most difficult along the diagonals.

Looking at the nationalities exhibiting these cultural patterns, this highlights the great difficulties involved when attempting to take knowledge across some borders, such as, between Japan and the USA.  Similarly, it may also explain that even though Australia may be geographically part of Asia, we struggle to be seen as culturally belonging.

It is also useful in attempting to understand some of the basic differences in cultural context – the differences that cause global conflict.  People in one culture have difficulty with even a basic understanding of how people in another culture view themselves and the world.  This shows why attempts to impose universal moral standards generally fail.  

For instance, the concept of democracy is attractive to some cultural groups; less so to others.  It is not that some people “like” it more than others; it just makes more sense in some contexts than others.  Democratic cultural groups see democracy as an absolute, to be sought after regardless of context.  They cannot understand why people in other parts of the world would not want to be democratic, nor can they understand that these people may not see democracy as an absolute, but only as another aspect of a foreign culture – as much to be sought after as fast food restaurant chains.

I also find the impact of these cultural types on knowledge sharing and other activities within the culture just as interesting.

It is interesting to look at the model through the Cynefin lens.  Individualist cultures in general are represented as having an affinity for ordered systems, and collectivists as more comfortable with complexity.  This is perhaps reflected in the problems that Western cultures have in coping with complexity.  It seems that we still persist in attempting to use analysis and other ordered systems approaches to solve complex problems.

Down under

So how well does Australia fit into the horizontal individualist pattern?  “Australian culture” can be interpreted in a number of different ways.  There are also people who would claim that the term itself is an oxymoron.

Traditional Australian culture, as typified by “bush” culture or the Anzac legends, is the culture of mateship, of the “fair go”, of “she’ll be right”.  It is the culture of the larrikin or ocker, with scant respect for authority – or at least for authoritarians.  This is horizontal individualism at its purest – “I’m just as good as you are”.  (Even the grammar defies conventions!)

It is the dry, black humour born of the hardship of the pioneering days.  The original title of this blog was based on a typical Australian story dating from World War II.  It is interesting that this culture of equality was born out of a rigid class system – the history of squatters (landed gentry) and convicts.

Even the exalted position of the Anzac in Australian culture is interesting.  The Anzac legend was born from the crushing World War I military defeat at Gallipoli.  Even though the Anzac spirit is all about the sacrifice and the journey, the stories of the time are full of irony and self-deprecation.  Today’s pomp and ceremony seem a little out of place when you read these stories.

The Australian sense of equality is so ingrained that whenever people from vertical individualist cultures address me as “sir” I feel slightly offended, and find it hard to take them seriously. 

Successive waves of immigration have also added to and strengthened an amazingly rich multicultural nation.  Where else can you walk into your local Turkish restaurant to see a wedding reception in progress where the groom is Maltese and the bride Malaysian?

This culture has many laudable characteristics, but it is a coin with two sides.  It can also be racist (even if usually in an offhand, non-malicious way); it can also be misogynist.  It has historically ignored the existence of the indigenous inhabitants of the country that gave it birth – or looked on them with misguided pity or worse.  The concept of universal equality gives rise to the “tall poppy” syndrome, where even our loved heroes are eventually torn down to same level as the rest of us.  This indicates a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.  In some ways, maybe we are still not comfortable with who we are.

On its brighter side, though, this typical Australian culture should give us some potential advantages in the knowledge age.  It is a beneficial environment for knowledge sharing, and a natural habitat for social media.  All tweets are equal.

But is this the whole story?  The culture that we see around us in organisations in Australia today seems to be much more vertical individualist in nature.  We have adopted much from the business culture of the USA and UK.  This may have been a good idea during the industrial age, but it no longer serves us well.

We have just been celebrating Anzac Day a week or so ago.  Let’s see if we can bring back some of the best aspects of the Anzac spirit and strengthen the collaboration in our organisations!

It was interesting seeing a photo of this painting after all these years.  I can recall my mother using the technique at the time, but oddly I have no recollection of seeing this particular piece before:

Now if we could only get governments to pay some real attention to this…

The issues

There are four Mega-trends in the world at the moment: Climate change, Demographic change, Urbanisation and Globalisation.  Energy is linked to all four, and water plays a role in two of the four.

Although we definitely have a number of crises on our hands in Australia, we sometimes forget that we are amazingly well-off compared to many parts of the world – for now.  We have plenty of water in Australia; it’s just not all in the right places.  We have excellent access to all known forms of energy; we are currently relying too much on coal & oil, the sources with the highest per capita emissions.  Our immediate survival is not under threat.  However, the time to act is now – before things get worse.  The “do nothing” option means that we can expect an increase in emissions of 50% over the same 50 year period.

We also often tend to see only the costs of the solutions. We need to remember that new technologies also create more jobs. There are sound economic reasons for changing the game. However, “changing our view of the future can be unsettling”. It would be much better for our economy to invest in technology rather than buying in offshore CO2 certificates!

What kind of future do you want?

Siemens have applied their “Picture the Future” innovation approach to these issues; this approach is:

Concept > Research > Scenario >Validation >Picture

The validation component is where they bring in partners, such as the CSIRO and university researchers – there were representatives from both of these presenting on the day.

Some of the key items presented were as follows:

Energy

• Energy production in Australia is currently responsible for 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions.
• The blueprint calls for the electrification of all road transport (bad news for petrol-heads, perhaps).
• We need to move to more renewable energy sources – for instance, geothermal has to become a major source of power generation.
• We also need to improve distribution technology. High-voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is the power transmission technology of the future, & could allow power sales to Asia.
• With the right technology, Australia’s daylight electricity demand could be met by a desert collector area of 30 x 30 km. Big, but a number that can be visualised!
• Electricity price will increase by 30%; but if household power efficiency can improve by 30%, then it means no change.

Water

• Australia’s water use exceeded our natural supply in the mid-90s.
• Some of our water assets were built in the 19th century – this is an industry that only changes slowly.
• Change also requires major change in community values & expectations – how much recycled water can we accept in our supply?
• Waste water “factories” can extract chemicals to produce fertiliser.
• We can be more efficient – for instance, Sydney today uses the same total amount of water that was used in the 70s, but with 1 million more people.
• Water usage reduction also reduces the power consumption required to distribute that water.
• We need a target of 65% power reduction for desalination plants by 2030.
• We need flexibility and adaptability – no single solution will meet all needs, and “formulaic approaches” are unsustainable.

How can it happen?

Now the tricky part. Siemens have “painted the picture” – the technology is here, but now it is ”up to the legislators to determine how it can be managed and paid for”.  We need a better regulatory & legislative framework to make it happen. Do our governments have the will to do this? Siemens also suggest that the “power generators have to contribute”. 

Imposing a pricing regime alone should not be expected to change behaviour – it certainly hasn’t worked for petrol – we need other solutions. 

What can we do?

What can we each do to encourage real change? Can individuals make a difference?  For one thing, we need to tell our political parties that our voting depends on them taking the right steps.

The success of “Earth Hour” was quoted as an example of how rapidly people can become engaged in a change initiative.  Over just two years, Earth Hour has grown from just one city to over 4000 cities in 88 countries.  From the Earth Hour site:

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4,000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

* For more information, download the resources from Picture the Future here.

The 3e Factor is an innovative management consultancy specialising in business transformation, leadership development, and recruitment services, with its head office in Melbourne, Australia. Our focus is: Transforming Strategic Thinking into Reality by Developing Corporate Capability.

Have a look at the site, and browse the capabilities of the consultants working with the group.

Please feel free to contact me or The 3e Factor  if you would like to know more.

Adventures are not adventures if there isn’t a degree of danger and uncertainty about them. – Ewan McGregor

Adventure

While in Blackwood this weekend, we drove into Trentham for a visit.

There was a group of motorcyclists in town, and I struck up a conversation with one (who was riding a very nice touring BMW). He was preparing to take part in the “2010 Long Ride”, an event to raise funds for prostate cancer research in Australia, in which he and others will be riding from Melbourne to Darwin via New South Wales and Queensland – a distance of over 4,000 km.

I talked about my 1980 trip across the Nullarbor from Melbourne to Karratha, WA. On this trip, I travelled 5,000 km in six days on a GSX 750 Suzuki (and home again at a slightly slower rate).

This put me in mind of “Long Way Round” – Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s epic 2004 motorcycle ride across Europe, Russia and North America. I have recently watched this on DVD, and have now just started reading the book. Inspiring stuff!

Thinking about this on the way home, I also thought about some of the other things I had heard about adventuring from Nick Farr at a recent CPX meeting.

Climbing Everest is pretty serious stuff. Here are some of the thoughts that I tweeted from Nick’s presentation:

• The number of deaths on Everest is 8% of the number of summiteers.
• A dream becomes a goal when you start actively planning it.
• Success requires taking risks.
• Failure teaches that taking risks is crucial.
• Failure provides an experience you can’t buy.

Sort of makes my adventuring pale into insignificance. My 2002 ascent of Mt Kosciuszko (2,228 m) isn’t much in comparison. And then most of my ascent was by cable car. Maybe a riskier achievement was hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up in the one day in 1983. That was a round trip of over 25 km, with a fall and rise (in that order) of around 1,400 m. This was on the way home from six months backpacking around Europe with a 20 kg pack; that was probably the fittest that I’ve ever been in my life. The signs there now apparently warn:

“Danger! Do not attempt to hike from the canyon rim to the river and back in one day. Each year hikers suffer serious illness or death from exhaustion.”

Nick Farr’s key principle in his (more serious) mountaineering is “entitlement”. If you have done the preparation, then you are entitled to achieve your goal. In the “Long Way Round” book, Charley Boorman quotes the former SAS officer that took them through survival training: “If you can survive the prep, the mission will be fine”.

Business

I have been operating AcKnowledge Consulting for nearly 2 years now, and greatly enjoying the experience of being a freelancer. I also had the luxury of starting out with a fairly comfortable package from my former employer. I have worked with some great clients, and had some interesting projects. Things were a little tight in early 2009, but I have generally done a lot better so far in this financial year than in my first full year of business.

However, this can be a feast or famine game. I am working on some new potential opportunities to pick up after my current major project finishes, but there is nothing locked in yet. There is not as much of the original package left as a backstop now, either.

As much as I have enjoyed the business so far, I am now also realising that I have not had any major projects that have been focussed on my main consultancy offering – knowledge transfer to a non-technical audience.

So it occurs to me know that I am feeling a bit like I did when I arrived at Northam on the Suzuki in 1980.

Getting past the two-thirds barrier

Northam is a town 100 km from Perth in Western Australia. When I reached there at the end of the fourth day’s travel out of Melbourne, I was on schedule to reach Karratha in the planned six days. I had covered two-thirds of the distance. This was the point where I turned north for the trip up the west coast via Geraldton and Carnarvon.

However, it had been a difficult day. The first two days through Victoria and South Australia were fine. The third day started well, but as I was riding over the Nullarbor Plain, I was heading into increasingly strong head-winds. Once I crossed the border into Western Australia, the road edges were wider than the South Australian side, and much clearer of vegetation. The wind was picking up loose sand and throwing it at me.

I tucked in under the windscreen on the sports fairing, and tried travelling a little faster to get through this stage a bit quicker. This actually seemed to make it even more demanding, however. I camped that night in the tent for the third night. The gravel tent site at Balladonia roadhouse was so hard that the alloy tent pegs would not penetrate it at all. I tied one rope to the centre-stand of the bike, and used a screwdriver for another peg.  The bathroom was unpleasantly dirty and shabby, with a door hanging off its hinges. The water was hard, and my soap would not lather. (I learned about soap for hard water later in the trip.)

On day four, I thought I was going crazy. The road and weather conditions were fine, but I was talking to myself, and shifting position on the seat every five minutes; moving my feet to the pillion foot-pegs and back again.

Guessing that I would have had enough of camping by this stage, I had planned to stay at a motel in Northam. It was a relief to arrive there, and sleep in a real bed for the night. At this point, I was just not sure how I was going to cope with the rest of the trip.

I woke refreshed in the morning, and headed off happily. Regardless of my fears, I just ate up the distance all that day, and covered the 950 km to Carnarvon as if it was a jaunt down the road to the shop. It was probably the most enjoyable day’s ride I have ever had. The last 650 km to Karratha on day 6 was even easier.

So what had happened at the end of day four? It was like I had broken through some sort of barrier of pain and frustration, and come out the other side. I had prepared for the trip, and faced the barriers and the risk of failure – so I was entitled to achieve the goal I had set.

I can take the same approach to my business. I have been working towards this point for some time, preparing my path, building the network, and addressing the risks. Now is the time to face the uncertainty, move forward and achieve the goal.

Time to get back on the bike.

Some of these systems allow you to take control of your profile, and edit and update it.  The business models used by these sites can also be interesting.  Some are free, and offer premium services for a fee.  Some only allow you to take control of your profile for a certain fee. The information collated on the site may include details that are correct or incorrect; and the information may be current or out of date.

One that I have registered with is ZoomInfo, which allows me to log in and take control of my profile free of charge. I have been able to clean up the information there – although since my first clean-up, a heap more out-of-date info has been added, and a second profile created based on a mere mention of my name on another site with a link to a blog post here.  I have been able to easily merge this in to my existing profile. (Although some of the changes I made today may still take some time to appear on the site!) The site also keeps cached copy of the content that they found my name in – some of which is now up to four years old, and no longer exists at the original site. It seems that although I can edit my profile, I have no control over what out-of-date info they store about me in their cache. 

This has mostly been a positive experience, although I don’t remember seeing a lot of security to stop anyone else (whether of the same name or not) taking control of a profile.

I did once have a similar experience with a site called “Spock”, which seems to now have been subsumed into “Intelius“, purporting to be “The world’s largest and most accurate public record source.”  Although this does still provide links to some relevant sites on the search results, it no longer gives me any control over a profile, and all of the  “more detail” links refer to a name only vaguely like mine, and all results are within the USA. This seems to me to be a rather limited view of “the world” – as I understand it, the USA only accounts for 4.5% of the world’s population (according to the US Census Bureau).  However, for those in the USA, the sort of information stored here can supposedly include criminal records and “background checks”, which you have no apparent control over. 

This trend highlights the great benefit of occasionally searching for your own name on the net – that’s how I found out about ZoomInfo. It’s worth occasionally finding out what others are saying about you online. However, this is easy for someone with a name like mine – a Scottish first name and a French surname. So far as I know, I am still the only “Keith De La Rue” on the net. I pity all the “John Smiths” out there, and those with names of similar popularity of other ethnicities. (The secret is to choose your parents wisely – or change your name!) 

The appearance of sites that gather personal info without allowing you any control is a disturbing trend. Given the nature of the Internet, I don’t see that an awful lot that can be done to directly stop it. I don’t believe that there is any particular “authority” that can regulate this somewhat unethical behaviour globally. Whatever happened to Identity 2.0?

In the meantime, I believe that it is worth taking control of your own online identity on these systems where possible, provided that you are not exposing yourself to other forms of unethical behaviour when you do.

Without wanting to make light of the topic, I wonder if there will be a trend in future to give children more unique names to help them to have a globally unique online identity? Maybe ICANN should take a role in personal names as well?

• Simple – It doesn’t have to be sophisticated – you hear it once and you get it.
• Unexpected – It throws you a curve ball that you weren’t expecting.
• Concrete – It has names and actual events.
• Credible – It sound real.
• Emotional – It gets you in the gut – impactful stories evoke at least one strong emotion.
• Transport – It transports you to where the story took place - you can feel the experience.
• Human – It happens with real people.

I have quoted Charles Savage here before: “Innovation is like humour – it occurs at the intersection of the expected and the unexpected.”  The same principle applies to storytelling. 

One fantastic little story I heard a while ago that embodies these principles is a vignette in Bill Bryson’s book In a Sunburned Country:

In the 1950s a friend of Catherine’s moved with her young family into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day a construction crew turned up to build a house on the lot. Catherine’s friend had a four-year-old daughter who naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door. 

She hung around on the margins and eventually the construction workers adopted her as a kind of mascot. They chatted to her and gave her little jobs to do and at the end of the week presented her with a little pay packet containing a shiny new half crown. 

She took this home to her mother, who made all the appropriate cooings of admiration and suggested that they take it to the bank next morning to deposit it in her account. 

When they went to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her own pay packet. 

‘I’ve been building a house this week,’ she replied proudly. 

‘Goodness!’ said the teller. ‘And will you be building a house next week too?’ 

The little girl answered: ‘I will; if we ever get the f***ing bricks.’