Bridges To Knowledge: A Blog by Barry Camson

Integrating Ecosystem and Value Chain Design in Sustainability Efforts, Revisited

How can one use the practice of design to implement sustainability approaches in organizations and in their surrounding ecosystems?

This is a daunting challenge especially with regard to ecosystems because the ecosystem of even a small polluter can be inhabitants of the entire planet or certainly a region of the globe.

One really needs to take a whole-earth perspective to fully comprehend this. This is vividly demonstrated in the recent "school-strike" catalyzed by Greta Thunberg of Sweden which involved 1.6 million young people in almost 1700 cities and towns in over 123 countries in every continent.

We do have to start somewhere in terms of organizations and one place to start is to gain a concept of the system with which we are dealing. This involves viewing the organization in terms of what may be a more linear, value-chain as well as seeing the organization as part of a larger ecosystem.

Building A Networked Shared Society

Being in a network opens up the possibility of living with a number of different perspectives, world views, mental models - essentially a number of differing realities. At the same time, being in a network also carries with it the possibility of creating shared space among these many differing realities. The issue in a network is determining what exactly is shared and how much is shared.

Actualizing The Network Within

I was speaking with leaders of an organization who would like to see their organization move towards greater cross-organizational collaboration. The organization in question has traditional vertical structures that we might consider silos. The organization has a reasonable degree of trust and goodwill among its members.

Another organization has been a bricks and mortar organization with regular convenings of leaders, offerings of workshops and trainings and with an email list of members and past participants. This organization talks about getting more people involved in doing the work of the organization and participating in events.

By utilizing more of a network approach both organizations can meet their goals for collaboration and greater participation. How could both organizations accomplish this?

Open Government Event at NASA

Today, I attended via the Internet an Open Government event held at NASA in Washington, D.C. The speakers included an astronaut and representatives from the Department of Transportation and the Department of Agriculture.

The speakers spoke about Open government in terms of the three pillars of technology, policy and culture. Both technology and culture were described as force multipliers. Particular attention was directed at the need to focus on culture. Open Government was described as much about culture change which is seen as the hardest factor to effect.

It was suggested that for some organizations that have difficulty relating to the concept of Open Government, initiatives be set in the context of innovation. One piece of advice is to seek out innovation champions within an organization.

There was a discussion of the importance of enabling the voices of employees to be heard and that there are tools that can accomplish this. People should be empowered who have stories to tell so that they can connect with the public in conversations. In fact, the future of Open Government was described as allowing seamless conversations to occur between thousands of government employees and thousands of others.

Social media technologies could be utilized to have these conversations without having to create gigantic infrastructures. It was suggested probably regarding managers and the IT function that no one stand in the way of inspired employees willing to use technology. The overall goal is to leverage the media to connect though the form that channels of communication could take, e.g. twitter, facebook cannot be anticipated.

There was discussion of how to communicate with those outside of the organization. Organization should have open and collaborative conversations with stakeholders. Efforts shold be made to connect with school kids and the public. Relationships sould be established with partners.

I like this image of Open Government or government in general as seamless conversations between government employees and others. I don't know what models of doing business or governing this would lead to, but it seems to me that this would be an exciting exploration.

"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.

"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.

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.

The Cultivation of Curiosity

 

Sequel to "Knowledge And The Clash Of Cultures"

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.