“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.

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!

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.

The topic of organisational change – and getting people more involved in it – is something I have been becoming quite passionate about for a while now.  This presentation at trampoline will be the first time I have presented on the topic. I intend to develop this work, and its linking themes, in time to come.  I am currently playing with a new term for this – “orgsourcing”. You heard it first here!

Talking Cock (v.): A Singaporean term meaning either to talk nonsense or engage in idle banter.
 - The Coxford Singlish Dictionary

Over the last few years, I have had the privilege of traveling to Singapore on a number of occasions to speak at conferences.  I have greatly enjoyed the experience - both the conferences, and wandering around Singapore as a tourist.  I have met some fantastic people there, and have greatly enjoyed the culture – and the food!

Singapore is a land of contrasts.  It is richly multicultural, with all public signage in four languages.  The population is predominantly Chinese, yet most of the public institutions are as British as they were before independence.  It has earned a reputation as a non-democratic nation, yet the country is alive with art and innovation, and not in the least like a totalitarian state.  I feel safer walking around the streets anywhere in Singapore than I do in some parts of Melbourne.

Some would like to portray Singapore as a place where freedom of speech is suppressed by the government, yet Singapore is now becoming increasingly open. One friend I have made in Singapore is Enrico Varella.  Enrico introduced me to a fantastic local web site – Talking Cock.

This site bills itself as “Singapore’s premier satirical humour website”, and includes the delightful Coxford Singlish Dictionary.  (Singlish is the version of English spoken in Singapore.)  Talking Cock presents itself as apolitical: “Our main aim is to celebrate all the nonsensical parts of Singaporean life. We make fun of people in every sector, strata and profession in a completely democratic way.” Yet a sensitive government could easily take much of the satirical content on the site as criticism and take action against it.  The site also warns that “We have employed… language which might be upsetting to some and which some consider unsuitable for children.”

So what does this have to do with Mr. Conroy?

It appears that Australia’s Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy has proposed imposing a filtering system on the Internet.  This purports to be an attempt to shield children from inappropriate content.  A number of people have raised many problems with this.  At the very least, it would significantly slow Internet traffic for all Australians – some estimates put it as high as an 87% reduction in speed. If indeed it is primarily aimed at protecting children, then it also takes away from parents the responsibility of making their own decisions on what is suitable for their children.  There are many more arguments about this proposal – others have advanced these very eloquently.

My view on this is typified by the Talking Cock website.  Would this be one of the estimated 10,000 sites that our government is likely to block as “unsuitable”?  Would we block a site that the Singaporean government overtly allows?  If not initially, would sites such as this be blocked in future? Is it possible that our current or future governments would block sites that are deemed to be critical of the government of the day?  And if so, how would we ever know which sites were being blocked? 

This all seems like an attack on freedom of speech and access to information that is far too open to abuse.  Who will be making the decisions about which sites will be blocked, anyway?

If Talking Cock was determined to be a site that should be blocked, will my blog site also be blocked, because of this post?  As I also use this site for my business, would this expose the government to a liability for unfair restraint of trade?  Does the fact that the site you are looking at now is actually hosted on servers in the USA make me more or less likely to be subject to government scrutiny?

It seems that Mr. Conroy is attempting to use a simplistic industrial-age concept to address a very complex problem, and like most simple solutions, I believe that it is totally inappropriate.

Will we be able to say in future something like this statement on Talking Cock’s home page:

We donno how we’ve escaped the speech-smothering tentacles of the state, but we suspect it’s got a lot to do with you Singaporeans and your tremendous (and very touching) support for us since we began.

“It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problem just with potatoes.”
 - Douglas Adams

These badges have been apparently been used for some interesting investigations into free will.  By tracking individual movements and personal interactions, MIT researchers found that “we are more instinctual and a lot more like other creatures than we care to think…  a good 90 per cent of what most people do in any day follows routines.”  Interesting…

In a more recent application, as New Scientist reports, “… one of the researchers, Ben Waber, has blogged about handing out the badges to delegates meeting with their corporate sponsors.”  This application was used to develop and display a social network map, visible to the participants.  “… over the course of the day, more people became connected within the network as they met more people.”

As this was all done in near-real time, the display had an impact on the behaviour of the participants.  People could see who they had interacted with, and were then inspired to network more to modify the display.  A classic case of a measurement tool changing the subject of the measurement.  (Think of a standard tyre pressure gauge – each time you use it, you change the pressure in the tyre.)

However, this is also potentially a networking tool because of its impact on the people involved.  It was seen to be encouraging people to network more widely, and to compete with one another to be the “most connected”.  It should be noted that only code numbers were shown on the display, not individual names, but the participants were keen to identify themselves in comparisons with others. 

The event organiser saw this as a way of highlighting the benefits of MIT sponsorship – the people and organisations you can network with more effectively.  This then implies that there is a direct benefit from networking with other people.  (Intuitively true, but can it be quantified to give a Return on Investment?)

Certainly a very interesting experiment, and potentially very interesting and useful applications.  I do wonder what damage it could do in the wrong hands, though…

Another alternative view from an MSN conversation I am having as I write this: “Why do people spend so much money on useless things?  That money to make those things could have saved a few lives in Africa.”  To which I countered: “More effective use of high-tech tools to improve networking of clever people may save even more lives.”  Who knows?  (My correspondent shall remain nameless.)

“There are only two things wrong with the world today. We treat nature as if it was infinite; and we limit the immaterial world by imposing artificial scarcities (such as copyrights). Let’s swap this around. Let’s swap material accumulation for intellectual and artistic accumulation.”

See more on Michel’s site.

“When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean.” 
    – Humpty Dumpty.

There has been further discussion at actKM about the definition of “knowledge”.  One contributor gave this definition: “Knowledge is solutions to problems”.  I disagree with this definition – I see it as too narrow.

This seems to ignore the use of knowledge in creativity and innovation, but it was further stated that these can also be viewed as just a different form of problem resolution.  Joe Firestone stated that “non-routine creative learning is a response to a problem.”  I struggle to accept this point of view.  This is stretching the meaning of “problem” a long way.  I do accept that creativity in the business world may be seen to be more limited than in pure art.  (Is it always?  Should it be?)

It seems to me that “problem” is usually used as a negative term (particularly by business decision-makers). It carries the linguistic image of something unpleasant that requires (possibly unpleasant) effort to resolve.  It is because of this baggage that we come up with encouragements to see “problems as opportunities” – we need another word to help us see the potentially positive side.

Even the use of “solution” can also lead to misunderstanding.  To view all challenges as problems that require solutions is to deny the complex nature of much of our work.  This is at the heart of the Cynefin framework.  Sometimes the best application of knowledge is to make small interventions, not necessarily to provide a complete solution.

It is often difficult to precisely define words in the English language – they can be very slippery beasts.  I prefer to be less prescriptive in my definition of knowledge, and I would not want to restrict it to (my view of) the more common understanding of “problem”. 

To be useful, a word must be understood in the same way by both the speaker and the listener.  Of course, if you explain what you mean, then you can agree on definitions, but this takes time – a luxury we don’t always have…

“The chief cause of problems is solutions.” 
    – Eric Sevareid, 1970

As Shawn has explained, this seems to be more than a mechanical problem, even if a very complicated one.  As soon as you have people involved, it potentially becomes complex.

Back when I worked it the pure IT space (on a system called “EDG”), I had an interesting problem-solving experience.  The problem – and the ultimate solution – ended up being fairly simple, but actually finding the cause was a little more complicated.  However, the whole situation became more complex, due to people being involved.

I was fairly new to the team at the time, but had already become fairly familiar with the system.  However, I was still being treated as the “junior”.  Wiser heads than mine had already solved major problems on EDG; they could solve this one too. 

The unusual aspect of this particular issue was that two different things started going wrong at about the same time.  The senior people set to work, going through the usual fault diagnosis procedures.  Some were addressing one of the symptoms; some were working on the other.  I wasn’t called upon for my (fairly limited) experience.

Given that no-one was asking me to do much else at the time, I had a brief think about the problems.  They seemed to be totally unrelated, but both did eventuate at about the same time.  “If it just so happened that these two symptoms were in fact caused by the one underlying problem,” I thought, “then where would the problem be?”  I very quickly realised that the only possible link was the system console.  This was a component that apparently virtually never failed. 

I managed to grab somebody else’s attention long enough to mention my idea, and was brushed off with a brief lecture on following correct diagnostic procedures.  “If you jump to conclusions like this, you could waste hours on a wild goose chase!” 

Nevertheless, as I was once again left to my own devices, I went and had a look at the system console.  Can you guess what happened?  Yes, there is a happy ending!  The problem was in the system console, and I had it fixed within minutes, while everybody else was still busy running diagnostics on two other, unrelated parts of the system.  I do not remember receiving a lot of praise for solving the problem, however…

Of course, there could well be other cases where my approach may not have worked; but it would not necessarily mean wasting time if it didn’t. 

This reflects the complexity introduced into an otherwise simple fault repair by the unquestioning use of accepted processes.  Sometimes we need to think outside the box – or to at least check that we are following a useful train of thought…