I just spent three wonderful days as a participant and speaker the 2nd
world Congress on the Management of Intellectual Capital at McMaster
University. It was nice to meet some people from this list.
One topic area got increasing attention from several
speakers-sense-making.
It was touched on by all of the following speakers to a lesser or greater
degree including Hubert St.Onge, Debra Amidon, Leif Edvinsson, Anne
Brookings, Joequim Vila, Sharon Oriel, Michael Zack, Stuart Sanderson and
myself. (other speakers likely addressed it as well, but the ones above
were the ones I heard.
After various delightful discussions with old and new colleagues, here is
my new sense on sense-making:
More and more organizations are particularly interested in the whole area
of sense-making and constructing meaning, especially when it relates to
strategic planning, opportunity creation and environmental scanning.
Both claims in the literature and my experience with clients tells me that
this is one of the weakest underexplored links in the knowledge management
process network. One SR VP asked why everyone sees every change as a
problem ?
On reflection, my response was: "that's how we were all taught". But
problem-solving (P-S) and finding (P-F) is useful at the department and
tactical level. You have an established norm or goal line and something
takes you off track A different kind of cognitive process is more
appropriate in many case in the executive suite. N. B. I'm not dismissing
P-S but often it's the wrong tool to use.
Here's an example that I've run across numerous times with clients: Most
executives seem to frame everything as "tactical problems" and use that
cognitive problem "lens" to surface and compare new data (i.e. does it fit
what I know and does it eliminate this deviation from the norm-according
to my problem-definition statement).
Often, when you actually explore the situation and ask in retrospect if
indeed it was a problem-in the true sense, you find in many cases that it
was not. This addressed Stafford Beer's rule of requisite variety-match
external variety to internal variety.
In some cases it was a latent opportunity. (N.B. I define a problem as
something that you want to do and can't - due to some deviation from the
norm. An opportunity on the otherh and is something that you can do and
don't yet realize you can. It may only lead to action if only you can
sense it. I believe that managers and executives structure their
world-views through cognitive lenses or frameworks as many speakers put
it, in various ways.
Depending on which frame you pick, the cognitive and perception skills you
use are very different and lead you to different end-points, a solution,
an opportunity space or scenario, a situation clarification etc.
I believe that apart from threats (problems, conflicts and crisis) and
opportunities( I have over 100 generic scenarios catalogued in our
Opportunity Clinic workshop) we can have prerequisite stages before you
even recognize which camp you fall into.The time span for this can be
instantaneous or agonizingly long. I call this the proto-problem and
proto-opportunity or in general the proto-recognition stage.
In the proto-recognition stage, we we often face times and situations of
ambiguity ( lack of any framework), uncertainty ( lack of data or even
which questions to ask to find the information), complexity (too many
interrelated components or events to manage or understand the specific
workings of i.e. our body) and what happens I think the most is
equivocality( multiple interpretations of same events or data).
Sense-making occurs when we consciously or unconsciously compare new
knowledge with our existing mindset-assumptions, norms and values and see
what's changed, challenged, dismissed or reinforced ( usually a process
that shifts back and forth from tacit to explicit knowledge creation and
back). Many executives have never asked themselves: "what are my
assumptions here and how do I surface them ?
The Creativity Consortium co-sponsored Debra Amidon in a one day Knowledge
Management workshop on Tuesday Jan 20 in Toronto. At the end of the day I
gave the 37 participants who were there a half hour
practicum. They were presented with one new piece of research information
that affects their industry and asked them to make sense of it and
determine what questions they would have to ask themselves to explore the
depth and breadth of the new issue and generate opportunities from this
new previously unknown knowledge. We got some interesting expected and
unexpected results ! I expected experienced SR managers to be able to
easily surface what the don't know and what strategic questions to ask.
Most found this step difficult. Most said that they do not have formal
mechanisms for opportunity sensing, spotting or tracking at work and have
never practiced it or been taught it.
So what's your sense of sense-making ?
Regards
Walter Derzko
Founder of the
Creativity Consortium
Director Idea Lab
Toronto
(416) 588-1122
wderzko@pathcom.com
--"Walter Derzko" <wderzko@pathcom.com>
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