All Life Is Problem Solving

In analyzing relationships among the various memes and the movements and sub-movements associated with them, we have to be clear about which definitions we’re using. The reason for that is not that we like definitions or believe that they identify Aristotelian “essences.” Instead, it’s because we want others to be able to evaluate our conjectures about relationships among the memes, and how can they do that, if they don’t even know what we mean, when we offer those conjectures?

Also, my interest here is not in analyzing the n-ary relationships among the memes, but rather the binary relationships between KM and each of the others. Of course, my specifications of the relationships will be dependent on the definitions I offered earlier, and others may provide have different views of the relationships based on the meanings they use. However, some of the relationships may be valid for classes of meanings transcending the ones I’m working with. Where I think this applies I’ll make that clear.

1. KM and Web 2.0: The Web 2.0 business revolution has no direct and obvious relationship to Knowledge Management apart from the specifics of the tools produced. As for Web 2.0 tools, they enable social networking, connectivity, distributed content creation and aggregation, self-organization, and collaboration, to a greater extent than was possible in the past. They may, also, if introduced into a social system, enhance aspects of knowledge processing including problem recognition, creating new knowledge, and knowledge integration. But the amount and nature of any such enhancement is heavily dependent on the context of applying the tools in question. And in each KM case, it’s necessary to assess what the impact of a Web 2.0 tool introduction will be and how it relates to the larger context of what one is trying to accomplish. The operative notion here is that the relationship between KM and these tools is always contextual and must be analyzed. It should not be assumed that there is a necessary and beneficial relationship between Web 2.0 tools and KM. Finally, I don’t think my account of this relationship is restricted to my specific definition of KM. Anyone who views KM as a social activity or process that uses tools will probably share this view of the relationship in some part.

2. KM and Social Software: I think we find a similar relationship between KM and social software, which is not surprising since Web 2.0 tools are instances of the more general category of social software. Again, social software is about supporting group interaction, generating emerging network effects, and enhancing self-organization. Such software can be very useful in enhancing knowledge processing since Knowledge Management certainly wants to enhance self-organization around organizational problems, efforts at generating and evaluating solutions, and then integrating the new knowledge represented by the surviving solutions. Having said that however, it’s also clear that from the general proposition that social software can enhance self-organization, we cannot infer that its application in a specific knowledge processing context will produce collaborative problem solving or effective communication of new ideas. Whether it can do this or not will depend on context, and on culture, and on other factors not directly impacted by social software. It is often thought that social software can increase trust, which is certainly necessary in some degree for effective knowledge processing. But we must also recognize that mistrust can also be produced by such software. Both trust and mistrust can go viral when we’re using social software. Which happens depends on factors beyond the control of the software itself. Lastly, some believe that KM is about increasing connectivity, collaboration, and content aggregation. For them, my analysis of the relationship between social software and KM won’t apply. Rather, they’re much more likely to view implementing social software and KM as the same thing.

3. KM and Social Media: Again, the relationship of KM to “social media” is quite similar to that of the previous two categories. The democratization of content production in the context of more intense social interaction promised and, arguably, produced by social media tools, is something that Knowledge Management should want to seek and support under the definition of KM we’re using here. That is, both more intense social interaction and distributed and more participatory content production can lead to the growth of better quality information and knowledge. Since one of the most important goals of KM is to grow higher quality knowledge over time, KM ought to be friendly to the idea of social media we’re using here. But, once again, the real story here is context, and tight coupling of increased interaction and the democratization of content production with more effective knowledge processing and the growth of higher quality knowledge. Increases in networking and distributed content production don’t guarantee in improvements in our ability to seek, recognize, and formulate problems, or to evaluate new ideas. The most such increases do is to increase the production of new ideas. But without coupling to well-formulated problems and effective evaluation of competing solutions, democratization of content production can decrease the quality of knowledge processing by creating “information glut.” So, once again, we are led back to context, and the need for KM initiatives to use social media tools in ways that discriminate based on context and that are mindful of the need to apply such tools in such a way that improvements in the area of seeing the real problems and evaluating potential solutions keep pace with the growth of alternative solutions and information and knowledge sharing that is the promise of the social media movement.

Is this analysis sensitive to my definition of KM? Yes, I think it is to some degree. In my notion of KM, enhancing problem solving is quite central and complexity theory suggests that distributing problem solving which is supported, at least in part, by democratizing content production, is an important objective of KM. But people who define KM solely in terms of knowledge sharing will not necessarily agree that social media is related to KM in this way. And also, people who think that enhancing knowledge processing is about improving the problem solving capabilities of an elite group of managers may also disagree with the thrust of social media. However, currently a very large part of KM has accepted the view that KM is about supporting both knowledge making and knowledge sharing, and also that organizational systems are complex systems. For that part of KM, the idea of distributed knowledge making is pretty important and also perfectly consistent with one of the main thrusts of the social media movement. Tomorrow I’ll finish this discussion of relationships by covering KM and Enterprise 2.0 and KM 2.0. In addition I’ll raise a couple of other issues.