Storytelling (2)
http://www.sethkahan.com/Resources_0RoryChase.html
RORY CHASE
Interviewed by Seth Kahan
February 11, 2003
In San Francisco, at the Braintrust 2003 knowledge summit, Seth Kahan interviewed Rory Chase about trends in the knowledge field and his view on the contribution of storytelling. Rory is Managing Director of Teleos, which conducts the internationally recognized Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises - MAKE - research program. More information about both Rory and Seth is located at the end of the text.
Seth: Rory, as
someone who is familiar with major advances in knowledge management
on a global scale, where are we?
Rory: If you look at
the history there was focus on people and cultures initially. Then
in the late 1990s, because of questions on efficiency,
effectiveness, and IT becoming more accessible, there was a greater
dependency on the use of various software tools and techniques used
for collection and transfer. We're now looking back to the people
issues, bringing in cognitive and social scientists. The other
thing that is interesting is that academia has trailed this quite a
bit. If we look toward research programs going on, especially the
multi-disciplinary programs, we're going to see some interesting
thinking.
There's a certain
level of maturity in the field. This concept of "knowledge
management" is an oxymoron. It makes it difficult to convince
somebody at the top. They might say, "Well, it's a fuzzy term. I
can't easily define what it is we're talking about." There may be
some thinking in terms of re-branding. What is it that we're
really doing? Is this actually innovation? Is this actually
addressing workplace organization to free the individual to work
within a different collaborative environment? It's more than a
philosophical question. We need to answer the question, "How does
one plot the direction of this evolution now?"
Seth: You've done a
lot of work in terms of setting up a framework for knowledge
management. You have much of this on your website, which is very
helpful. While it is true that the term, knowledge management, is
ambiguous and people have expressed discomfort with it, it is also
true that it has denoted a particular set of activities. The things
you are mentioning seem so wide ranging. how will we maintain focus
as we go through this evolution?
Rory: This will be
difficult because, by its nature, knowledge management brings in
many disciplines. We've got anthropologists, cognitive scientists,
behavioral scientists, and specialists in learning. It's too broad
for any one group to control. This is a result of many of the early
consulting companies. They set up their own knowledge management
departments, like IBM and KPMG. They found it was more than just a
simple model or a set of tools and techniques.
By the late 1990s
knowledge management practices were merged into change and
transformation practices, business and logistics practices. There
was recognition that this wasn't sufficient. Other disciplines
needed to be brought in. The question became, "How do we transform
the way our organization does its business activity?" Change
mechanisms were required. If you look at many of the MAKE
organizations, they used knowledge management as the change
mechanism. They might have called it other names, but it was the
mechanism by which they achieved tremendous change.
In some ways the
western world has a difficulty with the paradox of "eitheror" and
"and/nor." Some of the Asian countries and companies will have a
lead on us for awhile. They live with paradox. As a result,
certainly from the MAKE research, we're seeing a large number of
Asian based companies starting to take innovative initiatives.
There's going to be a learning opportunity coming from the east in
terms of how they're viewing these tensions between the individual
and the collective, between requirements for private space and
space in which you're linked 24 hours a day through a wired world.
These are the tensions that organizations and cultures need to
address. There will be opportunities for a greater sharing of those
insights.
Seth: That's very
helpful. These are significant.
Rory: Yes. In the
last two to three years I have spent more time in Asia than I have
anywhere else. Within the Asian culture there is a thirst for
learning. There is a great desire to understand and comprehend.
There is a greater ability to adapt to a particular local culture.
It isn't about buying something off the shelf and implementing.
It's about taking the concepts, reworking them and bringing them
out again.
Here is what I
found when I looked at regional differences. North America tends to
put a lot of emphasis in KM on technology. It's almost a platform
on IT. If you look to Europe, there's a healthy skepticism of KM.
"We'll use it, but we're really quite leery of jumping in all the
way." So, there's a balance between the KM people concepts and the
KM IT concepts. The only caveat is that certain European companies
have great links with American companies and they, too, tip over to
the IT side. But, when you go to Asia you find that the IT part is
the lesser of the equation. In Asia, because of the importance of
tacit, individual knowledge, consensus, community, and
collectiveness, they put more emphasis on face-to-face meetings and
bridge building, and then back that up with IT.
We're looking at balance. Look at how important face-to-face
networking is at this conference and imagine trying to do the same
thing through video-conferencing and email technologies. Look at it
from that point of view, and add the tacit dimension to it, which
we still struggle with in the west. as well as the idea of paradox.
How can we achieve two goals at the same time or three goals at the
same time? There are lessons to be learned.
Seth: The
individual's goals may seem to conflict with the corporate
goals.
Rory: Yes, I think
those are the more difficult issues. For example, look at Western
Europe and North America. Because of humanism and secularism,
there's a growing tendency toward the individual. "How does the
work fit around me? How does it affect my particular wants and
desires?" At the same time there are the important questions to be
answered, "How does this support community? How do I support the
village? How do I support the group?" Asia emphasizes individual
success within the context of societal success. Here we give up one
for the other. This conflict needs to be resolved. The Asians can
help us to understand this better.
Seth: Listening to
John Seely Brown, I gained an appreciation for how innovation
happens where conflict occurs.
Rory: I think he
made a very good point about the periphery as a source of
innovation. This is true. Once you've created a core set of
competencies and created a mindset, it's very difficult to look
outside. This holds true in the research I've done on
organizational change. Very few companies voluntarily make change.
It has to be done under external pressure. The pressure has to be
so significant that you need to make a radical change. It's a bit
like the Japanese society. Only twice in modern history have they
made significant major changes. Once it was the Meiji Restoration
when the country was not working and they realized they had to
adopt western practices to be competitive. World isolation didn't
work. The other time was after the Second World War when they
realized they had to change their institutions to be competitive in
the post war world.
These are extreme
cases of waiting until the crisis is upon you, but to a greater or
lesser degree it's that fear factor that motivates organizations.
This fear comes from losing market share or losing investor
confidence. This idea is something that organizations need to think
more about. How do you build in the scenario planning and trend
analysis so that you constantly challenge who you are? It's very,
very difficult to do. Even on an individual level, when you think
about making career changes, or go through a midlife crisis, there
are external factors that come to play and it's a brave person who
can actually confront these.
Seth: Based on your
experience, where do you see storytelling popping up? What are the
applications?
Rory: Storytelling
has always been with us. If you look at cultures, that's how basic
messages are passed from generation to generation. During the Age
of Enlightenment we started to disassociate myths from the great
cultural stories. These stories are actually representations of
very important things. We said, "We don't believe in the fairies
anymore. We don't believe in the gods and goddesses." Rationalism
disputed the mythical approach. Look at the literature. From about
1500-1600 and onward, you see this change. We still have some fairy
tales and the like, but they are now allegories and don't carry
the great meanings they once did. That is symptomatic of
storytelling becoming entertainment rather than being about life
and existence
There were many
storytelling collections that were put together after the Second
World War. When other cultures started to imbibe western society
through television and radio, people realized that there was
something important to be preserved. That movement reinvigorated
the understanding that storytelling is more than entertainment.
It's actually a method whereby we transmit behavior and values
that better the individual, the group, the society. This is an age
where we disbelieve so much, especially in business culture. It is
so cost conscious, so bottom line driven. There is a growing
appreciation that through this fuzzy-feely thing called
storytelling messages actually get through. We actually change
behaviors and change cultures. That is a very positive sign. Even
in our age of skepticism there is something deep down that tells us
storytelling is a very positive mechanism by which we transmit
value.
The danger is that
we mechanize storytelling to the point that we believe it has to
follow a certain procedure. We can kill the things we love. If
we're not careful, we'll say it has to be done a certain way. It
has to have five lines, or three syllables, or it has to take on a
particular form. We need to recognize the variety and the richness
of storytelling, whether it's in a poetic form, as in a saga, or
some sort of a crystallized, little gem of an idea. We can
appreciate the diversity. We can encourage people to take the oral
tradition as a way of importance. It is a way in which we continue
to enrich individual and societal lives.
Seth: There have
been applications of storytelling that you're familiar with:
Denning's Springboard stories, Snowden's use of narrative
databases and so on. Are there any that stand out for you or that
you would like to keep an eye on in the times ahead?
Rory: I really
can't say one is more or less superior. What I would say is that
we need to sensitize individuals to be receptive. My background is
science and my wife writes novels. Sometimes our worlds collide
because she comes from a creative world and I come from a very
logical world. Storytelling gives us the ears to hear the richness
of our separate worlds.
Knowledge
management creates individual and organizational wealth, improving
the standard of living. This is the enrichment of society. I want
to know how we can use stories to move the individual, the
organization, and society as a whole, providing a better framework
for life.
-----------------------------------------
Rory L. Chase, Managing Director of Teleos, is an advisor, author and researcher in the development and implementation of knowledge management strategies and approaches. He is active in both formal and informal knowledge networks. He is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Knowledge Management and the Journal of Intellectual Capital. He received the 2001 Outstanding Editor of the Year award from MCB University Press for his contributions to these journals. Mr. Chase is a well-known author of numerous articles and papers on knowledge management, best practices, benchmarking and organizational excellence. He has served as Editor of journals and magazines on business transformation, service excellence, new product development and total quality, as well as editing business and technical books and reports. He is the author of Creating a Knowledge Management Business Strategy and the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises Report.
Rory can be
reached via email at [email protected]
Teleos can be
found on the web at: http://www.knowledgebusiness.com
Seth Kahan is an
Organizational Storytelling specialist and keynote speaker. His
presentations make conferences and conventions more effective by
establishing an atmosphere of collegiate collaboration in the
opening session. He has successfully used storytelling and
community building to lead change and improve performance in
organizations for over 14 years. He helped spearhead the World
Bank's enterprise-wide knowledge management initiative in 1996 and
built communities of practice among the 1100 information service
providers in 2001. Seth has been selected by the Center for
Association Leadership in Washington, DC to serve as a Business
Visionary for his pioneering work. As a Distinguished Fellow of the
Center for Narrative Studies, he is writing a book on the
applications and use of storytelling to increase organizational
effectiveness.
Copyright 2003 Seth Kahan. Reprint with attribution allowed.
Seth Kahan
consults and speaks on topics that include: communities of
practice, business performance, collective intelligence, tacit
knowledge, business collaboration, business learning, knowledge
management, business storytelling, organizational storytelling,
business community, business communities, organizational community,
knowledge and learning, knowledge and community, knowledge
community, knowledge communities, performance improvement,
visionary leadership, social potential, institutional community
building, and internal communications.
ความเห็น (3)
ขจิต ฝอยทอง
- ขอบคุณอาจารย์มากครับที่นำมาให้อ่าน ปกติไม่ได้มีเวลาให้ค้นคว้าหามาอ่านมากนัก
- ประเทศไทยมีผู้ทำ storytelling มากไหมครับ
หน่วยงานที่ทำ KM แบบ สคส. ใช้เป็นประจำ สคส. ใช้ทุกวัน แต่เราไม่มีการวิจัยลงลึกครับ
วิจารณ์
ขจิต ฝอยทอง
- ขอบคุณคุณหมอมากครับ
- น่าจะมีการทำวิจัยลงลึกนะครับ