Free Flow vs. Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge Sharing is a voluntary action. It fails to be a process designed for achieving specific ends, in particular understanding the internal and external environments. Thus, it may by-pass the need to work smarter: (Drucker, 1992) “The first question in raising productivity in knowledge and service work has to be: What is the task? What do we try to accomplish? Why do it at all? The easiest – but perhaps also the greatest – increases in productivity in such work comes from redefining the task, and also from eliminating what needs not to be done.” In addition to its limited focus, Sharing ignores the need to understand how one’s own actions contribute to problems. Sharing asssumes that the participant will self-organize and can surmount biases at will to pursue a well informed motive at all times. Leaders have revealed themselves to be rather avaricious and deceitful. Besides, the time and energy available to busy administrators rarely permits this approach.

The natural questioning of generalizations, assumptions and goals in free flow of knowledge reveals the defensive reactions that protect from threat and embarrassment, and learning disabilities that confound reality. Free flow is a process that emerges the reality, aligns team thinking, opens minds, promotes application of knowledge free of personal biases and drives comprehensive thinking. It has to be organized and practiced for development of skills to stretch team members beyond their comfort zones. Only then can learning, superior definition of reality and an effective response o it progress.

Today systematic knowledge flow and the need to interact do not converge. Knowledge Sharing is the best that Knowledge Management ambitions for. This best is not enough for effective application of knowledge. It is perhaps responsible for the failure of Knowledge Management even where it has been pursued with diligence as in case of Enron.

The Process Of Truth

At the outset I clarify that presently my blog is not based on evidence. At one time I thought the writings of Peter Senge, Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and their kind were evidence enough but the editors of major Journals were quick to point out they were popular writers while rejecting my efforts to publish my work. The best I can say about my views is that they are supported by my experience, remarkable success of my prototype on the departmental scale, and can be inferred from the writings of acknowledged sages of management.

Per Senge mankind now creates far more information than any­one can absorb, fosters far greater interdependency than any­one can manage, and accelerates change far faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace. Yet, today, busy personnel are the only source of energy for driving knowledge flows. This over-aged and over-burdened paradigm for the driving energy develops an intricate web of downstream human problems that simple sharing of knowledge with normal language rarely penetrates. The web of problems obfuscates operation of the comfort zone.

Senge identifies greater pressure promotes defensive routines and learning disabilities to keep the demand on personnel energy, responsibility, time, and risk bearable. The pressure in effect discourages learning that unsettles the beliefs and actions one is comfortable with, i.e., questions the comfort zone. Submission to comfort denies success by lowering team ability.

Knowledge Management does not address the comfort zone. It only responds to events like mistakes, and to symptoms like the Knowing-Doing gap. They divert attention from the root causes of problems.

Free flow with its controlled process of disagreement strips away the defensive routines that mask reality to avoid pain; the learning disabilities like fixation on the obvious, dodging decisions, enemy-is-out-there and unconscious obsessions stand revealed. Personnel get a passage to the reality behind the obvious. The truth emerges.

The Power Of A Law

Warren Buffet saved his investment firm Hathaway from the sub-prime induced ruin by categorically ordering it to withdraw from sub-prime investments even as the market was heating up. He perceived the reality that investments could not be safely anchored on hollow promises. Big investment firms that lacked the discipline to perceive the reality behind the windfall opportunity for profits went on to perish with the crash of the real estate market. It was a classic case of system forces at play: the blame lay not in the crash of real estate, i.e., out there, but in the avarice induced blindness of the leaders that made a mockery of the financial system.

In a sense the ruin was predicted by Sun Tzu thousands of years ago (~500BC):

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."