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.
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.
Encountering knowledge of someone from another culture can be exciting as well as challenging. We often don't know what we don't know and as a result the knowledge that we "hear" can be a distortion of the knowledge that the other intended to share. When interacting with a person from another culture or visiting another culture (even if it is only in the next neighborhood), it is easy to miss the nuances and meaning of the behavior of others. When someone is inviting you to stay for dinner, are they just being "polite" expecting you to say "no" or are they offering you the gift of their hospitality in which case a refusal could be seen as an insult.
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.
The cultivation of our own curiosity is one action that each of us can take to build bridges to knowledge that resides in other people and in other cultures and, thus, to enhance our understanding of others. Curiosity is an innate ability that we all have. I would like to explore how we can bring this ability into our current work and personal life.
The book "The Mexican Dream" by J.M.G. Le Clezio deals with the confrontation of the Renaissance, European, Spanish Conquerors with the Amerindian civilizations in what is now called Mexico. In reading this book, I was impacted by the description of the huge differences between the two civilizations. These differences were in many ways beyond the ability of the other to grasp. I see parallels in our contemporary societies and organizations.
Deciding what is or is not knowledge is a very important matter in our efforts to absorb knowledge from others. This decision can be made explicitly or implicitly. It can be made as a conscious decision or can occur outside of our conscious awareness. The result of this decision can impact individual and group creativity as well as the soundness of problem solving solutions that are developed.
Ellen Langer: "Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility" This book discusses how we mindlessly accept cues from our environment about our health. Sometimes the cues are subtle and sometimes in the form of diagnosis they are overt. The result is that we may limit our own possibilities through our attitudes and actions. The books suggests taking a more mindful approach to our health, being careful what we accept as facts and looking at the times when we reflect health rather than totally focusing on a diagnosis of disease.
