Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

"Knowledge Is The Beginning"

 

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to witness an extraordinary program at Lincoln Center in New York City. This program illustrated how having a commonality in music and the shared experience of performing music can act as a bridge across differing cultures and political orientations. The Lincoln Center program was focused on an effort that has been going on to build understanding across Israeli and Palestinian cultures through the vehicle of a joint Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra. During the movie, I felt that I was immersed in the experience along with all of the participants in the orchestra.

Open Government IS Cultural Change

I recently delivered a training program for the U.S. Intelligence Community on how to effectively transfer knowledge. This program was delivered during the period of time when the Intelligence Community was migrating from the Cold War mentality of "need to know" to the 21st century mentality of "need to share." 

Government as a whole is about to embark upon a similar change to that which the Intelligence Community encountered. This is as a result of the President's Memorandum on Open Government. The President's Memorandum calls for openness, participation and collaboration in government organizations. The culture of government organizations will have to change. This cultural change includes the behaviors, attitudes, assumptions, values and norms of these organizations. The President's Memorandum on Open government makes tangible what will be required for government to succeed in the future.

"Back To The Future" - Collaboration In The 21st Century

I have been reading up on Cisco Systems and its CEO, John Chambers lately. This was prompted by references to Cisco's leadership in utilizing Web 2.0 tools at Cisco. What I have been learning about in addition is how Chambers is transforming the Cisco organization in the direction of what some have called Management 2.0 with very positive results.

People, Cultures and Context

Every once in a while, I stumble across something which appears to be just a simple part of daily life but which turns out to still be quite profound. What I "stumbled" across most recently was a group conversation which again showed me the power of a cross-cultural group to arrive at and understand the deeper meaning of knowledge.

All of this occurred when I recently delivered a presentation to an interesting group of Knowledge Management professionals. My topic was the transfer and absorption of knowledge across cultures. As I usually like to do when dealing with this topic, I showed up with several examples of music designed to be familiar to some and quite unfamiliar or even strange to others. For me, music is a form of knowledge and also knowledge which strongly reflects its cultural context. I like to say that the content knowledge of music is integrated with its cultural context.

Collaboration Then And Now

Is the practice of collaboration the same today as it was ten years ago? Will it be the same next year or the year after? I am coming to the conclusion that "yes," in fact, collaboration is different today and will be different next year as well. How it is different and how to make explicit that difference is the challenging part.

Collaboration remains a major key to our existence as a living and working society. It has become more a part of daily life. What is different is the path to collaboration.

Transparency and Openness in Government

In my work with a variety of Federal Government clients over the last several years, I have noticed the desire for more transparency and openness at many organizational levels. Organization leaders and members have become aware of the negative impact to organizational operations and morale when important decisions impacting the organization are handed down without setting out cogent reasons or made without some forum for input, clarification and feedback.

I am heartened by President Obama's "Memorandum For The Heads Of Executive Departments And Agencies" which sets out his goals for a more transparent and open government. The President stated, "We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration." The initiatives by the Obama Administration are very timely for organizations that already recognize the improved performance and organizational well-being that can result.

Experience As A Teacher In Improving Knowledge Management

When I was first asked by the Knowledge Lab at the Defense Inteligence Agency (DIA) to develop and deliver a workshop on Cross-Cultural Knowledge Management, I was told of the importance of making the workshop experiential. Rather than utilizing stand-up training in which participants are lectured to about sharing knowledge across cultures, they wanted something that would provide unique experiences to people that would advance their learning and improve their future actions. The ultimate workshop did just that. It provided a variety of experiences to people that helped in a deep way to improve their skills in the realm of what I call sharing and absorbing knowledge across cultures.

The experiences in the workshop were developed to respond to issues identified in our data gathering in DIA as well as in a number of other US intelligence agencies. This post will refer to specific issues identified in the diagnosis, the experience that people gained at the workshop and how those experiences have enhanced knowledge sharing and absorption capabilities among participants.

A Bifurcated Relationship

The integrated focus on content and personal interaction in traditional collaboration is changing to a more bifurcated focus in a Web 2.0 environment where sharing content and personal interaction can exist separately. This has ramifications in terms of what are appropriate actions to support collaboration in a Web 2.0 environment.

Optimizing Enterprise Collaboration Software

Introduction

Enterprise collaboration software has the potential for enabling an organization to take a quantum leap in terms of collaboration, knowledge sharing and performance. Much of the benefit with regard to collaboration is inherent in the technology itself. However, to optimize the technology and achieve improvements in organizational effectiveness and collaboration, a focus on the overall organization is important. This will ensure a sound foundation for the technology.

The Web 2.0 Organization Of The Future

Does structure drive knowledge or does or should knowledge drive structure? This interesting question was raised in an email response to my previous post on organizational networks. I will address this question in this post by looking at our contemporary reality and what a new paradigm of "knowledge driving structure" might look like.