Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

Wonderful Opportunities

 

I recently ran a workshop for a client on the topic of "Networking." This workshop was for a group of people whose jobs will be impacted by an organizational reorganization and who, therefore, need to be adept at identifying future work opportunities.

One topic that we discussed was the upside of having to look for a new job after fifteen or twenty years in the current job.

A Thought About Context

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.

Behaviors of Cultural Mindfulness

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.

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.