(1) Creating the World We Want; (2) OS and Knowledge Management

[Martin Leith]

Yesterday we held the second Creating the World We Want (CTWWW) gathering in
London. About 60 people took part, a very diverse group that included a
business analyst from Shell, a lot of executive coaches and organisational
change consultants, a couple of artists, a choreographer, a dancer, a
business school professor, corporate social responsibility practitioners and
all sorts of other people.  Many of the participants are activists of one
sort or another, some devoted to improving work life, some to accelerating
the evolution of human consciousness, and some, like me, to both of these.

Most of the day was spent in Open Space. One of the participants, Neil
Crofts (www.authenticbusiness.co.uk)  hosted a session on turning CTWWW into
a global movement, so that people can organise days like yesterday in their
own neighbourhoods. This has become an ongoing project and some of us are
meeting on 20 September to move the project forward.

Another participant, Chris Macrea (www.valuetrue.com) has made a posting on
the Knowledge Board website (http://www.knowledgeboard.com) entitled <Open
Space and Getting Human> in which he recounts his experience of the Open
Space process yesterday (in fact not a typical one as the OS timeslots were
just 40 minutes) and advocates the use of OS in knowledge management
endeavours. His posting is reproduced below and you can contact him at
<wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk> if you want to make any comments or suggestions.
Alternatively you can join the online discussion at
<http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=90017&d=1&h=417&f=56&date
format=%o%20%B%20%Y>.

And if you would like to become part of the CTWWW community, please send me
an email.

With warm wishes from a somewhat cool Brighton on the south coast of
England,

Martin*

Martin Leith, Catalyst
Creating a rapid shift from now to new
(Download info pack: www.martinleith.com/martin/martin.doc)
17 Bedford Street, Brighton BN2 1AN, United Kingdom
Phone 01273 675322 (+44 1273 675322)  Mobile 07808 773713 (+44 7808 773713)
email ml at martinleith.com
www.martinleith.com
_________________________________________________________

OPEN SPACE & GETTING HUMAN
There is a tacit assumption in 99% of the correspondence of KBoard that
technology is pervasive in standardising KM. Hmm I remember a wonderful
nugget of advice guru David Fahey shared with me 6 years ago : watch out how
the KM school is separating from the Learning Organisation school – another
disastrous missing link that will be perpetrated by academics and others who
are primarily rewarded for becoming grandmasters of something however
specialised, and therefore remote from the whole.

Let us be very clear in this SIG. Technology mediated KM that does not
listen and learn from every way in which humans share knowledge in the flesh
(and without any expensive mediating platforms) is economically ruinous and
socially weird.

So let’s use this space to discuss: what are the great non-technological
ways in which knowledge gets tacitly communed and mined? Over time I will
try and invite some human facilitator experts to add messages to this
article. I am turning my mind frist to Open Space having it experienced it
for the second time yesterday.

A typical Open Space event:

30-60 participants – openly sharing everything they know around an agreed
agenda for a day – in which participants create discussion forums they want
to host in the form of 40 minute group discussions ; everyone chooses 3 of
these events to participate in though they can move around during the 3
session periods if they wish.
Prior to the sessions the facilitator has devised several ways for the group
to introduce themselves personally to everyone and to use mini-assemblies to
speak up about the issue- this enabling both diversity and congruence of
understanding to start flowing.
After the sessions, an hour is spent on clarifying which sessions created an
ongoing project and who from the whole assembly wants to join up which
projects, and what more virtual method of project collaboration will be
involved now that the day’s co-location is coming to a celebratory close.

In spite of my amateur introduction, it should be clear that the difference
between great OS and one that doesn’t fly is all about real-time knowledge
managing capabilities : classifying, connecting people, managing many yin
and yangs such as creative diversity but moving forward around focal points
so that everyone’s day has been well spent and will be well spent in
whatever they opt into participating in the future.

Here I will go out on several limbs (more than I have, so this could be
uncomfy!):

If I was to set a large virtual team project (say 30 + members, 5 or more
countries, in which typical members were budgeted to spend at least 6 months
each) , I wouldn’t go ahead anyway without the resources for an early real
meeting of everyone; I wouldn’t make it less than 48 hours; and one of the
two days would be built round pen space facilitation. I would be very
surprised to hear of any large virtual team project ever working without
similar real (getting human) attention from its birth.

I would make similar remarks for webs/intranets that are intended to be a
way of globally sharing knowledge and benchmarks of how we operate branches
of our business across countries through learning of the smartest practices
from each other as well as tidying up the core body of knowledge that makes
our competences unique. If company budgets permit you to invest in the
technology but not the people preparation, ask yourself why? who divined it
so? did they have any total knowledge-managing competence to make such a
call or were they sold an impressive business case by a supplier whose
interest was selling in gadgetry and leaving humans to make of it far less
than they could if they had first made of each other.
_________________________________________________________

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html