knowquestion :: Stephen Bounds

Dave Snowden has come up with a lot of complex and interesting ideas over the years, but often mixed up in a way that makes it difficult to tease out the individual strands.

However, a recent blog post is an excellent summary of his current state of thinking and is well worth a read. But from this and by chasing down the relevant originating blog posts, here is a summary:

The benefits of KM are:

Jurgen Appelo has put together a ripper presentation titled "Complexity Thinking or Systems Thinking++?" which does a really neat job of synthesising current and past thinking into a modern and accessible take:

1. Organisations are formed when many people voluntarily submit themselves to common arrangements on an ongoing or fixed-period basis.

2. There is a duality of individuals working together ("workers") and the gestalt entity created as a result ("the organisation").

3. There are seven key motivators for workers:
(a) GREATER GOOD – having a positive impact on society
(b) SERVICE – benefiting their organisation's customers
(c) INSTITUTION – ensuring the standing and longevity of the organisation itself
(d) RESOURCES – increasing the funds available to the organisation

The term "creed" refers to a statement of belief, perhaps most famously known as the Apostles Creed which laid out the key articles of faith of Christianity in the early Church.

Jay Rosen has noted the current explosion in popularity of a subgenre of stories he calls "Twitter Can't Topple Dictators". Read the whole thing; it's a really insightful analysis of why this kind of press article is a cop out.

However, it was two sentences near the end that really caught my attention:

Factors are not causes. It is a mystery why uprisings occur when they do.

If you are interested in systems thinking but don't read the Vanguard Newsletter penned by John Seddon, you should really start.

Vanguard is a UK-based consultancy that teaches companies how to switch from command and control structures to taking a systems approach to management. Recently I came across a nice summary of one of the key concepts expounded -- the need to aim for efficiency of flow rather than efficiency of scale:

One of the most critical tasks of a knowledge manager is the ability to effectively intervene in the functioning of complex systems. Because deterministic cause and effect of interventions is not possible in a complex environment, the basic model established by Dave Snowden and others is termed safe-fail experimentation.

To effectively perform such interventions, when dealing with complex systems there are a number of questions we need to ask such as:

With the eruption of another holy war on actKM, this time on the need to focus on networks rather than content, I can't help but feel that people are missing the point.

All of these things are important, but the primary focus always needs to be on how effectively the organisation is solving its primary problem, ie why it exists. I've previously discussed my model for a problem solving pattern:

Organisational work can be broadly classed into four categories:

• Process – work that needs to be completed in a defined manner to ensure consistency and repeatability, eg call centers, surveying, project management reporting.
• Practice – work that requires people to use their judgement to determine the appropriate method of completing a particular task.
• Discovery – innovative work that extends the range of available solutions within a field through invention or research.
• Management – oversight and ongoing improvements of organisational work undertaken

Each type of work requires a different approach to staff retention:

So, at the height of the 2010 election madness in Australia I used the Centrebet odds for each seat to model the propensity for various outcomes. This model showed a 30% propensity for delivering a hung parliament, slightly less likely than the predicted propensity for a Labor majority of 45%.

But what did these figures show us? How could they help to guide our actions?