KM Cluster
1329 Taylor Street #12
San Francisco, CA 94108
415 902 9676
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:34:19 -0700
03 00050 60 04062101
Mr. Rod Welch
rodwelch@pacbell.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496
..
Subject:
Knowledge Leadership - June 25, 2004
Dear Rod,
Thanks for
your message
[on June 20, 2004]
and nice to hear from you!
..
I must admit finding your occasional epistles jarring and a bit of an ambush.
You intransigence and dogma concerning knowledge management is also somewhat
offensive and counterproductive.
..
If you ask around, particularly with the distinguished people you mentioned and
the luminaries you CC:ed, you will probably find there is a strong consensus
that rigid, analytic and mechanistic thinking styles of the Industrial Era are
ill-suited for a knowledge-based organizations and economies.
..
At best, the industrial revolution is only 200 years old and the concept of
management is less than a 100 years old. Your remark, "...past two (2)
mellineia (sic) that guides the practice of management..." is just plain silly.
..
"I think the next century will be the century of complexity." --Stephen
Hawking
..
In fact, all one needs to do is read your disturbing message for prima facie
evidence that rigid, mechanistic and textual approaches to knowledge-based
thinking and opportunities and model are patently obsolete.
..
I rest my case.
..
Rather, it has been discovered that entirely new, holistic, social, biological,
complex, networked structures, system thinking and conversation offer far
better models of how the knowledge-based world actually works.
..
"Conversations outside the organization are the chief mechanism for making
change and renewal an ongoing part of the company culture. One of the many
paradoxes of the Knowledge Economy is that conversation -- traditionally
regarded as a waste of time -- is in fact the key resource for competing on
time. Companies that practice the art of external conversation are far better
equipped to shape the new knowledge environment to which slower competitors
must then respond." - Alan Webber, Harvard Business Review
..
Considerably value is created for people though the very specific, clearly
stated goals and objectives, themes, conversations and named speakers described
in the announcement and through the ongoing community conversation.
http://www.kmcluster.com/testimonials.htm ..
That you would say, "I object to the negative tone of the announcement that
spends a lot of time saying what will not be presented...," is just plain
counterproductive belligerence. Can you offer one specific example of
"...what will not be presented..." on Friday?
"Methinks thou protest too much." -- W. Shakespeare. ..
In other words, give me a break.
..
I urge you to suspend your disbelief and join in the conversation to unlearn
some of your discontinued notions and illegitimate beliefs of knowledge and
knowledge management.
..
For your convenience, from the announcement, here again are just some of the
specifics of future-focused material that will be covered. (You must have
missed them in the prior message...)
Agenda Highlights...
..
Bill Ives
http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/
and Adriaan Jooste of Deloitte will lead
a conversation on four specific knowledge
leadership practices:
Organizational connectors and connection places
Preventing knowledge from walking out the door
Supporting the idea practitioners
Staying out of the innovation engine room
..
They will draw on case examples to illustrate Next
Practices(tm) in these four areas. Complementary
relationships with work by Davenport & Prusak and
Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers will be
discussed.
The others sessions include:
.. Robin Athey, Deloitte Research, on Emergent Ideas
in Leadership
Michael Burtha, Applied Collaborative Strategies,
on Enterprise Knowledge Leadership
Curt Linberg, Plexus Institute, on Knowledge
Stories and Complexity
.. David Hawthorne and Richard Azzarello, on Talent
Visualization Systems
..
This will be a lively, exciting day of conversation and learning from the
future. Hope to see you and others there! (Pre-registration in advance is
required.)
http://www.mollyguard.com/event/11985850 ..
Finally, I would be delighted to offer KM methods for "solving gridlock in
transportation, technology, leadership, health care, national security." You
can start by rejecting the mechanistic, analytic, linear and reductionist,
'managerial' thinking that has created these problems. Remember, "No problem
can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
--Albert Einstein. The solutions will have little/nothing to do with adding
"intelligence to information that grows knowledge..." (?)
..
Cordially,