dave snowden

Tacit knowing for organisational resilience

... or, if you don't understand why you can never

• We always know more than we can say and we will always say more than we can write down

• Humans have evolved to sense patterns based on (very) partial data scans (but it's not mental models)

• Autonomic and novelty receptive (system 1 and system 2 in Thinking, fast and slow)

• 98% of our genetic history is as Pliocene hunter gathers; social computing works because it in part mimics that ecology

• It's not it's just about the brain, so forget "The Singularity" and think embodied and extended

• Human knowledge requires mediation through trusted networks or institutions - think apps not Web 3.0

1.4kg of jelly like fats & tissues

All cartoons courtesy of gaping void

Intrinsic and extrinsic reward

Copyright © 2012 Cognitive Edge. All Rights Reserved.

“Economists and workplace consultants regard it as almost unquestioned dogma that people are motivated by rewards, so they don’t feel the need to test this. It has the status more of religious truth than scientific hypothesis.”

“The facts are absolutely clear. There is no question that in virtually all circumstances in which people are doing things in order to get rewards, extrinsic tangible rewards undermine intrinsic motivation”

New Scientist 9th April 2011 pp 40-43


A new context: from robustness to resilience

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Range of possible outcomes

Gaussian

Low Probability High impact events�

early detection fast recovery

early exploitation Derived from material created by Max BoisotAcademy of Management Montreal 2010

Pareto

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Magnitude m=log₁₀(S)

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Research & monitoring

Derived from material created by Max BoisotAcademy of Management Montreal 2010

Log

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Log of event size

Pareto world

Gaussian world

From prediction ...

... to triggeringanticipatory awareness

Possible

Plausible

Probable

Hypothesis/inductive Non-hypothesis/

abductive


• In a complex adaptive system, constraints and agents co-evolve so we are dealing with systems that are dispositional but not causal

• Shift from closing the gap to an idealised future to managing. The evolutionary potentially the present

• Valuable knowledge is social in nature, collective use can be ritualised in crews (replace teams) and other organisational forms (but you need hierarchies)

• Exaptation is more important than adaptation and design; managing for exaption requires messy coherence

• Proactive: stimulator create networks with purpose, it's not about anarchy

• Human sensor networks, distributed cognition not crowd sourcing) within constraints ...

...think anew, act anew


Homo narrans

• Using the micro-narratives of day to day conversation that provide the patterns of meaning and culture

• Self-signification for volume, objectivity, empowerment and contiuous monitoring

• Distributed enthnography, not field anthropology or story telling

• Peer to peer knowledge flow and learning

• Research capture creates a knowledge database and enables monitoring, weak signal detection and fast response.

• .. And it also enables exaptative innovation,market discovery etc.

www.cogntiive-edge.com

dave snowden

Technology