jon T. • I have long watched KM projects focus on measurable ... rational processes. KM seems to value rational thinking above emotional thought. I am not sure this is right?

Phillip C. • KM is not alone in valuing rational thought Jon. It's become part of our cultural tradition ever since Galileo and his successor Descartes made us all subjects in an objective world. This is now the completely pervasive operating common sense, and it's very powerful for producing outcomes in science. in modern business it leads to the seductive illusion of "control" with all its attendant interpretations: people as "resources"; knowledge as a commodity etc.

I'm curious though, why you see KM projects as actively stopping people sharing emotions. What sort of structures do you see that expressly do this? Or is it more of a style issue?

Sometimes rational vs emotional can be a bit of a "straw man" -- setting up an opposition that doesn't need to be there. One thing that has really helped me to resolve the apparent conflict of rational vs emotional is to understand that thinking of all types (rational or otherwise) is a linguistic phenomenon; and furthermore, it's an artificial distinction to separate language from emotions. I took this insight from the work of Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana, who says that language and emotions are "braided together" and are our means of coordinating coordinations or coordinations of action (a scientifically accurate way of saying doing things together in a uniquely human way). --- which brings us back to the purpose of KM: to conserve our ability to do things together.

So now, for me, it's not a case of the rational privileged over emotional any more. Since emotions are there anyway, it's more a question of how I can add value by skilfully articulating the moods and emotions as an integral part of KM conversations; working with the braiding (love that word!) rather than the separate treatment of two highly interrelated phenomena.

Hope this is helpful. It's meant to be lol.
Cheers
Phillip

jon T. • Hi Phillip ... I guess what I have observed is that if people have bad thoughts ... they tend not to share.

It might not be work related ... it could be to do with children ... relationships ... illness ... but either way people tend not to share when they have bad thoughts.

So for me ... a key increasing to increasing the amount of knowledge shared ... is giving people an ability to get rid of negative thoughts.

Check out RespectExchange.com to see how this can be done

Does that make sense?

Cheers Jon

Phillip C. • Thanks John. I think I understand where you're coming from: Your overall
point is that people need to be in an appropriate state of mind/feeling in
order to share knowledge effectively.
In your model, as I understand it, "bad" thoughts seems to mean thoughts
that are associated with "negative" emotion. By expressing these in writing
(on your web site, for instance), a person can be said to have dealt with
them in the sense of being heard. This allows the person to then move into
a state of mind that is more conducive to the sharing practice that are
part of effective KM methods.
Did I get it right, more or less?
Cheers
Phillip

jon T. • Yes it does Phillip.

That is a great way to put it ...

Thanks

jon T. • Also ... to add ...

... that if people feel negative they tend to see people who are different to them as wrong ... so they get drawn into arguments and disputes.

So helping people remove their negative emotions seems to make it easier for people to see the good in other people's points of view. To learn from each other.

Hope that adds?

jon T. • a classic example is happening here in the UK.

the conservatives are trying to change how the NHS runs. Some people say ... the conservatives love the idea of free market so those people who have bad thoughts about this ... who see free markets as bad thing ... look for evidence that the conservatives are destroying the NHS.

Then it becomes a battle between right and wrong.

meanwhile ... some ideas that benefit the patients ... get lost in the right and wrong debate.

the truth is that both sides have some good ideas.

no-one has the absolute ownership of the 100% perfect solution.

jon T. • sorry ... I lost my internet connect there ...

So getting rid of bad thoughts makes it easier to use other people's different views ... as a source for learning ... of self development rather than a threat that must me pushed to one side.

well it works for me anyway ...

Dana W. • As I read this conversation and as I listen to the Brook's lecture, a few things strike me as interesting. First I would like to mention 4 relevant books that immediately came to mind on the subject of emotion and dialog: (1) "Descartes' Error" by Dr. Antonio Damasio, (2) "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation", Dr. Deborah Tanen (3) "5th Discipline" - Senge (the section describing Robert Fritz's Technologies for Creating and o(4) "The Black Swan" - Taleb.

I would just like draw attention to (1) the values of Western Corporate culture that KM is being "SOLD" into, (2) MEN! - they dominate the global corporate culture. Women do not have the same problem with integrating the emotional and the rational but we are very clear that we better not bring emotions or spirituality to the work place! (3) process measurement is EASIER than Creativity, Innovation and the quality of dialog necessary to Creativity and Innovation. The strength of mind necessary to deal in Current Reality concurrently with The Vision and navigate the distance between is rare. Pop culture concepts of "positive thinking" and "negative thinking" "bad thoughts" "right" "wrong" cause us to judge our thoughts and feelings such that we hide them and thereby avoid the very tension that is necessary for creativity, (4) greed/addiction to profits lead to self-deception to the degree that brought the '08 Financial Collapse and is leading to the next phase of the same by much the same behavior. Women do not participate in this mentality to the same degree that men do.

Not male bashing here:) As Camille Paglia explicitly states in Sexual Persona - men largely built the culture that makes it possible for western women to live "liberated" lives :) However, the worship of "Descartes' philosophy "I think therefore I am" is more "male" than "female" (Ayn Rand excepted - lol).

In Brook's wondrous lecture he mentioned "Tony Debrassio" so I felt validated. I have to wonder if men may have compartmentalized brains due to their smaller corpus collosum as well as due to acculturation. We have to consider the possibility that "male brains" are not able to integrate value judgments and other emotion-based thinking with left brain logic and rational thinking.

Of course is it not a polarized male-female partition - I test 50/50 on male-female thinking and have spent much of my adult life in IT system development as well as being a professional songwriter and singer. I have known a lot of creative males in the computer field - in fact musicians are well known for being excellent programmers - its about coding. The division between "arts" (Latin for skills) and "technology" is a very modern partition and seems to have been dominate since the industrial revolution. So it may turn out that this polarization between emotion and the rational, arts and technology, commercial and spiritual are all purely cultural and not intrinsic to "male brains".

Perhaps most important to the "rational" vs. "emotional" discussion is that what passes for "rational" is often highly emotional. The western financial/money system seems highly irrational; largely based on "trust", "speculation", "deception". How to understand how financial experts were blindsided by the '08 crash? I -- a financial dysfunctional - saw it coming years ahead and prepared myself accordingly and preparing myself for the follow-on. It can only be explained, as Taleb explains it, as irrational behavior and belief in "mathematical models" are reality instead of error-prone models of how people want to think reality unfolds. Surely that is the Greatest Irrationality.

-Dana

Lynda N. • Dana may be onto something here, however I would like to propose my theory which is undoubtedly less researched, but just as sinister. I believe that most KM programs just starting out are budding out of Information Management programs and carry with them the old IM paradigms like "build it and they will come", "better tools will get us better knowledge" and "focus on the process and not the people". Although these phrases are all true in some context, KM is a field where people, their perceptions of truth, eachother and the knowledge they are exchanging is critical to how well ideas flow. All of the aforementioned paradigms lead us to depersonalize KM rather than seek out and embrace the very personal nature (e.g. life experiences, mood today, personal motivations, etc...) of what we have to say and with whom we choose to share it. Dana's observations about the popular belief that we should (or even can!) keep emotions out of the workplace is (IMHO) driving both the old IM paradigms and fueling their attachment to KM processes. I recently read an excellent article in April 4th edition of TIME Magazine about how sharing emotions in the workplace can actually help your career. This is opposes my belief/experience as woman in a male dominated career field of engineering. One of the things Peter Senge teaches us that we must suspend our assumptions in order to build understanding before we can hope to build consensus.

Since our assumptions are based on our very personal view of the world, I maintain that Learning Organization and Knowledge Management theory absolutely do embrace the emotional nature of humans...it is only in practice that for whatever reasons this very important factor is lost through ignorance, not by design.

Dana W. • Lynda what you say is IMHO - true. But I think that the question is coming even against the background of those of us who are well aware of the KM=IM=IT pits falls and myths and false philosophies. Of course IM culture is rampantly "objective" but is that the driver or is IM also a victim of the overarching underpinning anti-value judgments (emotions) culture surrounding it. I tend to think the later is the case because I have experienced over the past 50 years (as a child through my father's IT career and then my own) that the information systems people were largely the most creative thinkers in any given organization and, often, artists, writers, musicians and thespians. However, whether they were male or female, they were always greatly hampered and even oppressed by the "business" environment of "objectivity" and "rationalism". later when commoditization took over as the primary drivers of what became "IT" (abandoning any pretense of IM let alone KM" the "too users" (mostly specializing in MS tools) became the most common "IT techie" due to the rampant need for people who could do the "IT" stuff. The highly intuitive and creative systems designers and developers - a small number of our population - were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the artisan techies. That is the IT culture we now see but it wasn't always so.

I assume (perhaps wrongly) that the question that originated this thread was offered in the light of KM programs that have sprung from HR or Training or BI as much as from IT. Even in situations where KM is NOT an outgrowth of IT - coming from another well spring - even from HR - the engagement in courageous dialog almost never happens. Some of the greatest workplace dialogues I have ever experienced were "system walk through" as we used to call them. I differentiate between the "good old days" of Information System - pre-MicroSoft - and the current IT environment which I believe has greatly lost the creative discipline that made it possible to produce working systems during the bi-plane days of IT. So I am persuaded to believe that rather than "IT" giving rise to dysfunctional KM, "IT" has been the victim of the same "rationalism" and "objectivity" that has made it almost impossible to implement KM. In others words the failure of KM comes from the same cause as the failure of IM and of IT - the "I think therefore I am" culture that Brooks refers to in his lecture. In this culture, hidden unacknowledged emotions and rejected beliefs form a shadow that actually drives the business culture and drives our economy. The Shadow knows... :)

Lynda N. • Perhaps what we are discussing is the next revolution in business culture??? Senge addresses the emotion issue using sytems thinking language. In the spirit of PDCA, maybe it is time for us to come full circle and check that in our efforts to implement KM methodologies that we haven't forgotten the Senge Learning Organization fundamentals??? 'Suspension of assumptions' and 'seeking first to understand before being understood' are two LO principles often overlooked in our haste to create meaningful change, yet they are two of the key components of effective up-front change management.

jon T. • a great conversation ...

I guess for me sharing knowledge is a very emotional one ... NOT rational.

To get knowledge to flow from me and to me ... requires me to be in a good place ... at an emotional level.

... I have to be emotional confident in who I am so that I can seek out people who are different to me ... without having the urge to make them think like me. I have to learn to avoid thinking there is one right answer ... and instead learn from others who are different to me ... to develop myself.

then knowledge flows from me and to me ... in a way people around me benefit.

how that fits into corporate world?

for me ... organisations can encourage their staff to develop themselves as people ... by letting them link to external sites ... designed for self improvement ... at the emotional level.

hope that adds ...

Dana W. • your comment was so powerful that I immediately investigated your profile, website and referred a friend who is in the same field of endeavor here in Kuwait.

Thank you. Your comment made me remember some recent discoveries about my own emotional needs in order to learn: safety, "hands on" (kinetic), concentration and being left alone to do trial and error learning without interruption.