Yes, per Bill Ives “The irony of enterprise 2.0 is that you actually get more control because the free form nature of the tools allow the business people to decide on where structure occurs, not the people who make the software.” But…there is micro and macro structure (and all sorts of stuff in-between. The technologies themselves are only the possibilities to address either, they are NOT either of these. There is still a need for someone (or a collective effort) to set up the macro-level structure that is specific to the business (this is the BIGGEST point of failure for almost every SharePoint implementation that is done).

I have been meaning to write about this excellent and comprehensive post from John Tropea for some time, Post-KM: enterprise 2.0, facilitation and complexity. I have always thought that KM and enterprise 2.0 have a lot of overlap and that…

Venkat

“The role is more one of art critic than of film director.”

What a great perspective I’ve always said director, since I once heard David Lynch (film director) compare his job to a plumber.

He said a plumber lays the pipes and directs the flow of the water, and how beautiful that was, and he saw directing as a similar thing.

When I look back I relate water flow to knowledge flow (now I remember Ray Simms with water in a slide of one of his KM presentations)

But where does the people input come into this, (where they veer from the script)
eg. does the water change color (richness), does it suddenly create a new pipe (change in the script)…

NOTE: I just refered to actors above, but lots of people (cinematographer, set design) can alter the richness and direction of a story

Personally I see film directing hard to control, it’s like everyone has a paintbrush and they are painting the same canvas, if it comes out crap, it may be because the team was not on the same page, or, it may emerge into a painting totally different than the director imagined, as they were willing to use a bottom-up approach.

So maybe it’s not the director, but their approach.

But still the emergence has to fit into the intended storyline, it may change it a little, but there is an overall storyline.

So maybe a manager is like the director facilitating and surfing the emergence, accepting what manifests, but also has to steer a bit to make sure it fits into strategy, and so it doesn’t emerge the wrong way.

Strategy (Manager) = Story line (Film Director)

Emerging wrong way
- film doesn’t make sense, and wastes money
- manager has people going off on a path that’s not adding value

So we need facilitating and harnessing and constraining

I’m not sure art critic is the right word, as a gardener/facilitator is there to empower and bring out the best in people, where as an art critic crushes ‘em…but this does explain (in a harsh way) the act of dampening negative emergence according to meeting business value.
Plus art critic doesn’t incorporate using the emergence in decision making, but then again KM people are there to create the conditions of a flow that creates a macroview in which helps managers make decisions.

I think I’ll need to post about these thoughts, I’d really like to come up with a good metaphor that can be visual and stick in people’s minds. A picture that reminds old school managers about bottom-up, emergence, and facilitation. And maybe we need to contrast this with another picture of the less effective planned outcomes top-down control.

Maybe Sam Lawrence is the man for this…

KM has a major role to play in the new information landscape. Tending an information garden requires a lot of work. But the role is more one of art critic than of film director.

(And it’s a bit off topic, but I’m proud that for once my Infovark posts got more linkage than Gordon’s. So far, he’s been winning handily!)