Points of Contexture

To Study, Perchance to Dream?

I was reading in my den a few nights ago and realized I had stacks of papers, articles, books and magazines lying in a semi-circle around my chair.  Looking around, I noticed that I had two “current reading” folders of things printed off the Web (I still like to read off paper) brought down from my upstairs office.

And these weren’t just the typical current reading one usually has lying around the favorite chair – some of them were more than three months old.  I realized this when my wife hinted rather subtly that perhaps it was time to shorten the stacks, or better yet, move them to the upstairs office – something about dusting and vacuuming being hindered by the piles (now no longer “stacks”).

I thought I should go upstairs and make room before I started the heavy lifting (yep, there was that much).  To my surprise, I had no reading of any kind on my desk, only client, project and other files I was working on.  Even I could see that something’s going on here I hadn’t thought about before.

The Pervasive Expectations of Instantaneous Response

As communications speed up, driven by technology advancements, there is always a trade off - detail for speed, or speed for detail.  Most people opt for speed, which of course means little time for context and understanding.  And one thing critical for tight and concise communication and understanding over time, exformation (explicitly discarded information) doesn't really occur.

 

This means that the biggest issue for technology improved communications (more speed seems to be the choice and  emphasis),  is that there is less and less understanding of what is being communicated faster and faster, with still the expectation of instantaneous response.

 

This is just one of the implications of the pervasive pressure of Expectations of Instantaneous Response.

Knowledge Tense: Past, Present and Future

One of the concepts Steve Barth and I have been developing is the idea of Knowledge Tense. We spoke to it at KM World in 2007, and then again I used it in the context of innovation at KM World 2008 in a workshop.

We wanted to distinguish between past, present and future tense knowledge, not having seen or heard this distinction before. Needless to say, we are just beginning to think about knowledge this way. 

Inutition's Role in Decision Making-Redux

At KM World 2007 last week, after my presentation with Steve Barth, I was asked about an apparent conflict in the way intuitive sensing, sense making and decision making works compared to decision making using business intelligence (BI) systems. Actually they don't conflict at all, unless we make or let them - they all work together!

Accelerating Decisions and Innovations

Steve Barth and I will be presenting our latest work and thoughts on Sensing and Sense Making at our sesison at the 11th annual KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exhibition on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:30am. We'll be focusing on the practical implications and applications for Innovation with some new ideas on Decision Making:

This session draws on insights from cognitive psychology and complexity science to reconsider how knowledge workers individually and collectively interact with their information environments and share their perceptions and opinions with important implications for how to support knowledge work. Knowledge, information and data are everywhere in business ecosystems, but the challenge of synthesizing fragmentary signals into actionable intelligence is really more about human cognition and organizational culture than business technologies and organizational structures.

The conference and exhibition runs November 6-8, 2007, at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

Early Warning Signals: A Conversation for Exploration - Part 1

From 2005, but even more relevant today:
In the past four years (Author's note: now 6-1/2 years since September 11, 2001) we have been inundated with variations on the theme of “early warning signals”, “connecting the dots”, “hindsight” and “foresight”. We see and hear them almost daily – in newspapers, magazines, learned journals, books, television news and shows (24, anyone?).
What we really want from information, intelligence and knowledge is asymmetry. We want to know things others don’t, or at least to know things before others do. We want and need early warning signals to be able to connect the dots and provide foresight of future events and the early identification of threat.

Workshop at SCIP: "Accelerating Decisions and Innovation through Sense-Making"

This workshop has been cancelled for SCIP, but check here for the next upcoming date.

Steve Barth ( see Steve at Reflexions) and I will be conducting a workshop at SCIP's 2007 International Annual Conference and Exhibition.(SCIP site) The meeting will be in New York City April 30-May 3, 2007.
The workshop includes three mission-critical Learning Objectives:
1. Understand the cognitive and cultural dynamics of sense- and decision-making, and how to increase the bandwidth of organizational awareness.
2. Discover how to improve the flow actionable intelligence by using existing characteristics and behaviors in your organization and networks.
3. Explore structures, practices and tools that support sense-making and leverage intellectual and information resources for better business outcomes.