Existing With Knowledge

I recently attended a lecture during which the lecturer discussed a quote from Franz Kafka. The lecture was unrelated to the topics of this blog. Nevertheless, I started to see some connections.

The quote from Kafka is:

"Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally, it can be calculated in advance, and becomes part of the ceremony."

(Franz Kafka, "Leopards in the Temple," Parables and Paradoxes, 93.)

The lecturer pointed out the good news and the bad news reflected in this quote.

The good news is that the wild leopards loose in the temple have been tamed or at least have been made predictable. The disturbing image represented in this quote no longer has the power to disturb.

The bad news is that we have lost touch with that wildness, unpredictability and excitement and the creative moment when this adventure was first unfolding.

It was at this point that my mind went back to the world of Knowledge Management.

Traditional Knowledge Management

A good deal of what I read about "traditional" Knowledge Management, i.e. KM 1.0 has to do with taming and controlling. We develop structures and procedures to share knowledge. We ask people to follow them. We also develop structures, procedures and methods of categorization to enable retaining knowledge for a future date when someone also using structures and following procedures will seek to access that knowledge. I have in my mind at this moment, the image of a vault - deep underground - to which we return on occasion to retrieve knowledge that has been rigorously cataloged and stored away. The expression "capturing" knowledge seems to reflect this view of dealing with knowledge.

How did we get to the point of talking and thinking about "capturing" knowledge? Is it just a harmless expression or does it tell us something about our underlying assumptions regarding our approach to knowledge?

I have a memory of myself as a child walking along the boardwalk in Atlantic City. At that point in time, years before there was even a thought of casinos, there was a certain honky tonk aura to the boardwalk. Every once in a while, there would be a storefront open to the sea air and the passing vacationers where someone would be hawking the latest kitchen appliance. I recall the sound of the person saying, "Buy this kitchen gadget. It slices. It dices." At some point these boardwalk hawkers migrated to late night T.V.

I am wondering if this gadget might be of use in the world of Knowledge Management. It slices. It dices. And once it does, you can neatly bag and store each separate quanta of knowledge until such time as someone wants to again access it.

Existing With Knowledge

I wonder what would have happened in the Kafka quote if the leopards never became part of the ritual. What if they remained totally unpredictable as to when they would enter the temple and what they would do. And, even if they did arrive with some frequency, I wonder whether the onlooker could maintain "the beginners mind" to see the event anew and fresh each time.

This second leopard image seems to collide with our Western-Aristotelian tradition of breaking up and categorizing and making the world more knowable and predictable through this process.

What if we were developing an approach called "Existing With Knowledge" based on the perspective in the second image. You will note, I can no longer utilize the phase "Knowledge Management" since that is part of the "capturing" paradigm.

I think the definition of traditional Knowledge Management at least partly survives this change to "Existing With Knowledge." We certainly can create new knowledge. We can in the moment transfer and absorb knowledge. We can still make use of knowledge. We can still have a robust after-action review in which we attain insights as to what happened. And, we can instantaneously share these insights with others.

We do run into a problem with the part of the definition that addresses knowledge retention. Once we slice and dice, separate and categorize, and lock knowledge away in our deep freeze, the creative juices that were part of this knowledge are also frozen. The immediacy of our interaction with the knowledge and the creativity that goes with that - the spirit of innovation and adventure dissipates. In this case we are back to "capturing" knowledge.

Web 2.0

On a global scale, the Internet and its interactivity referred to as Web 2.0 provides an alternative to the paradigm of capturing knowledge. Knowledge rather than being stored away is cast out into the Internet and is always at play somewhere in some context or has the potential to be immediately in play. It is accessible at a moment's notice via vehicles such as search engines, bookmarks and hyperlinks.

Knowledge on a wiki such as wikipedia is in play or potentially in play. It is subject at any moment to be supplemented, modified, reinterpreted or to serve as a catalyst for the creation of new knowledge. Knowledge on a blog is also in play. What I am now writing is not being locked away inside a book, a magazine or in a file drawer or hard drive. It is out there for all of you to look at, react to, send on to others and the potential is always there for that. The people who hold knowledge are accessible via social networking.

I wonder whether this remains the case inside an organization where the size of the population is smaller and the occasions for interaction with the knowledge may be correspondingly less. I think to a large extent, wikis, blogs and other types of Internet or Intranet applications can ensure in this environment that knowledge is always in play or potentially in play. This is assuming that the organization, itself, has not sliced and diced itself into different silos. And, hopefully the members of an organization and their knowledge can on an ongoing basis interact with people and knowledge outside the organization. This becomes even easier when an organization is not sliced and diced apart from its environment.

The Unfolding Mystery Of The Leopards

I have a third image arising from the Kafka quote. In this image, the onlooker resists the temptation to reduce the comings and going of the leopards to a schedule and certainly resists making the actions of the leopards part of a ritual. The onlooker may realize that from a larger perspective - a global perspective, there may be a variety of patterns or non-patterns exhibited by the leopards in interaction with this larger environment. The onlooker may be in a state of high curiosity to see how the mystery of the leopards continues to unfold. In this image, the onlooker says, "I don't know when the leopards will next be here or what the leopards will do, but I am looking forward to engaging with the leopards when they do arrive and I will invite others to do so as well."

I am going to continue to think about this and I am hoping you might do so as well,. Please share your ideas and reactions.

Comments

[Katrina Pugh]

Barry - This image is very rich. It touches me for two reasons -- one is that Doris Hunter, unitarian minister, talked last weekend about the pausity of rituals in our liberal religion. I frankly said, "who cares?" (I know, I'm not a very good church goer.) Maybe I was resisting the idea that rituals dull our senses...takes the curiosity and judgment out of what we do. The lack of ritual is, in fact, the hallmark of the Unitarian-Universalists.

Second, today Andrew Gent, former HP KM'er, presented at SI KM leaders CoP monthly meeting. He talked about how the KM'ers decided to shift toward an adaptive KM architecture. It was brilliant, and it was rejected by management. Mgt. wanted to control the content structure and access, whereas the KM team saw that the obstacles created by the existing structure had seriously dimished the KM ecosystem. It's as if the control dulled everyone's senses. (I'll send Andrew your blog and see what his take is. I think he's a philosopher.)