How great that you could put a report of this workshop onto the blog so quickly. Terrific. I look forward to the other photos and videos etc when they are ready.

As you will have seen, I have now embedded the video from bliptv. I’m afraid this took a few minutes of puzzling and at some point I uploaded another video – I couldn’t find the permalink for the other one – but going by the pictures it was a environmentally sensitive band and nothing offensive (thank goodness!) This caused me some palpitations!

For those of us who are not fluent in French, I have used Google translate to translate the blog posting by Benoît Diouf. You can see the link here and although it is automatically translated, it is possible to understand:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flouisar.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F06%2F06%2Fn%25C2%25B0-38-toujours-du-web-2-0%2F&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0=

I don’t know if Peter told you but I had a brainwave – well, I thought so – a few weeks ago about creating a web interface for providing the aggregated information and knowledge management for development blogs so this is a really great example, of course. Something for Working Group 2?

Best wishes

Sarah

It sounds like you had excellent discussions on the realities of mobilising and sharing the multiple knowledges that we dream of…

Am really encouraged to see the blogs you link to (http://louisar.wordpress.com/) and on to http://afriquedeveloppement.wordpress.com

Any chance some of these folks will be at the KM4Dev africa meeting in Brussels – http://www.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Francophone_KM4DEV ?

My blog post on “12 Types of Learning” explains why debate and criticism tend to be less productive modes of learning compared to studying results of an action or statement, and examining the mindsets/past experiences that led to the action or statement.

I wrote about my views on KM and power in the next blog post on “Q24- KM and Power: Constant Bed Fellows.”

Apin

No offence taken and no offence meant, Chris. Maybe I come across too strong because I feel strongly about some experiences that I value – and it comes across when I write about them.

Anyway, from one academic to another, it looks like we both love to engage in inquiry.

Cheers!

Apin

I am not in a position to comment on Fidel Ramos since I know nothing of the history of the Philippines. He is/was clearly a remarkable man.

However, I do know a little bit about the history of S Africa and a little bit about complexity theory, or perhaps calling them theories is more accurate. So let’s take one of the best known examples from discussions of complexity that a butterfly flapping its wings over Manila can cause a storm over New York as a way of contextualising Kahane’s work. The idea, then, is that phenomena are so inter-related that our conventional understanding of if-then causality informed by the natural sciences breaks down. We cannot see exactly what leads to what. To extend this to the social field would mean accepting that the emergence of social phenomena, the beginning of apartheid, the collapse of apartheid, arise in ways which are unpredictable, even if it were remotely possible to ‘get all the facts in the room’ so to speak.

Since I have not read the book I am not sure whether Kahane is making radical claims for his method or whether you are making them on his behalf. However, if one were to draw an analogy of the butterfly effect to S Africa the claim that what he was doing produced ‘dramatic and radical results’ seems to me to be rather a grand one. He may well have made a signficant contribution at an important time: however for me it would demand a quantum leap to deduce the causal significance that you do. His method may have much to recommend it, and I admire anyone who is going to put themselves in the way of danger as he did and does. But even when all the history books have been written I guess we will never know for sure what led to what.

I am not quite sure I understand your last paragraph and why you have a difficulty with debate. I think I am with Wittgenstein on this one, that it is impossible to climb out of one’s own skin and not judge on the basis of our beliefs. To do otherwise is to try and stand outside yourself. As one makes one way through life one is continuously called upon to make judgement, choosing this and not that. And I still think that ‘what works’ is a little more problematic than you seem to be acknowleding.

As I said previously, Apin, I look forward to your posting on power and continue to engage in the spirit of academic enquiry.

With best wishes,
Chris

I “ditto” your last statement. In fact, I started my Q Series of blogs with the questions: What works for Al Qaeda? What works for the Pentagon? KM is for whom?

However, instead of being drawn and trapped into a debate about concepts and labels, and quick judgments arising therefrom, allow me to tell you two stories about what worked in terms of real-world achievements, one I personally observed and participated, and the other I only read admiringly from a book.

1 – About Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos

Around 1993, President Ramos was chairing a meeting of “Cluster E” about how to proceed with the peace process with one of the Philippine insurgent groups (the Philippines had to grapple with four insurgencies/separatist groups at that time). Cluster E consists of Secretaries or Undersecretaries from the departments of defense, local governments and interior (police), foreign affairs and the National Security Council (where I served then). The task was complex enough, but the executives around the table were displaying biases that seem to cloud their perceptions and therefore their capacity to creatively come up with workable options. At one point in the meeting the President reminded everyone, referring to the leader of the insurgent group: “He may be an SOB, but we want to make him OUR SOB!”

This remark revealed the inclusivity in the mindset of President Ramos, an example of a bridging leader. To make the long story short, the peace process was eventually concluded successfully, and the rebel leader eventually became an elected governor. President Ramos, despite his “managerialist” perspective towards this complex problem (the President of any country HAS to be a “managerialist”) was able to defuse years of armed conflict, stem further bloodshed and resume development in the region. It worked.

President Ramos’ first state visit abroad was to erstwhile Philippine “enemy” during the cold war, Vietnam. This was followed by a Manila conference, in which Vietnam participated, to discuss the option of Vietnam joining ASEAN. Next, a Manila meeting of top political advisers to ASEAN presidents or prime ministers crafted a recommendation for ASEAN to be expanded from 6 to 10 countries, to include Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. This recommendation was subsequently adopted in the Bangkok Summit of ASEAN heads of state in following year. Afterwards, I was sent as part of an ASEAN advisory team to help the four countries through the process of joining ASEAN. ASEAN 10 has become a vibrant regional grouping of countries that were “enemies” 2-3 decades ago. Now, that shows the exceptional quality of bridging leadership in President Fidel V. Ramos! It worked.

2 – About Adam Kahane

Kahane, in his book “Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities,” narrates how he was requested by the University of the Western Cape in 1991 (when apartheid was still reigning in the country) to facilitate a series of three dialogue-workshops among warring political leaders – black as well as white – in South Africa to explore various future scenarios for their country. The dialogue came up with an illustrative metaphor to describe each scenario: “Ostrich”, “Lame Duck”, “Icarus” and “Flight of the Flamingoes”. The metaphors conveyed clearly the major political choices in an otherwise bewildering and complex national context. These unusual dialogues proved fateful; subsequent events used the metaphors to generate national awareness and discussion on strategic political choices facing all South Africans, and eventually paving the way to the historic end of apartheid and the rise of Nelson Mandela. It worked.

Kahane may have indeed “watered down…the radical implications of complexity theory” but he and his approach to generative dialogue contributed to producing dramatic and radical results in South Africa that most everyone in the world, and especially in the African continent, have been celebrating.

My blog on “KM and political power: constant bedfellows” will be the third from the last one I posted yesterday, so it will be out a little over a week from today. In this blog post, I will present a simple framework which makes it easy to appreciate why explaining where one is coming from (understanding how the experiences of a person led to his present beliefs) and looking at what works (operational outcomes of actions sponsored by the beliefs) — which is what I am trying to illustrate in this entire comment — is preferable to debate (e.g. judging someone else’s statements on the basis of your own beliefs and values).

Cheers!

Apin

My difficulty with Kahane’s categorising of types of complexity is that it has a tendency to water down what i consider to be the radical implications of complexity theory. It suggests that you can still control it with ‘if-then’ causality: i.e. if it’s this sort of complexity then do this, and if it’s another type of complexity then do something else. I have written about different ways of understanding complexity theory on my blog http://reflexivepractice.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/3-ways-of-thinking-about-complexity/ . Kahane’s way of understanding it fits very much within the first school, ie an instrumentalist understanding, that we simply treat complexity like we do everything else, with tools and frameworks.

Looking forward to your posting on power.

In KM, as in most things, the question ‘what works?’ depends on who is asking the question and from what perspective.

Best,
Chris

I adopt the KM practitioners’ meaning of the term “knowledge” – namely, capacity for effective (individual or group) action. I wrote about this operational definition of “knowledge” among KM practitioners in my blog post F5- A Proposed KM Framework.

What I like with the classification of complexity proposed by Kahane, is the rather neat operational implication of the 3 categories. As Kahane suggested, an appropriate solution to dynamic complexity is systems thinking; for generative complexity it is sensing the emergent; and for social complexity it is participatory processes.

Yes, it is too early to say how far Obama’s style of leadersip works in the real world, or how what he wrote in his book is applied or made to work in the context of Washington DC politics. I am basically an academic but I was also lucky to have experienced a decade in the “political snakepit” as a government executive in the Philippines working under former President Fidel Ramos (1988-1998) and I can say how different are these two worlds. The world of concepts and the real world of power and action are so far apart. There are many things I cannot yet publicly reveal about this episode in my professional career but I wrote in our NGO website a glimpse of my learnings of what works, under the innocuous term “change management”.

I agree with you: there are many factors that constrain the power of even the President of a country. It is also among the best places to be for someone who sincerely wants to make a difference.

In my Q Series of blogs, I have scheduled myself to write on KM and political power (Q24 in the series). In that coming blog post I will explain why I think debate is unproductive and why I think it is more productive to ask “where am I coming from?” and “what works better?”

The Center for Bridging Societal Divides of the Asian Institute of Management is a young institution. I am interested to find out whether their training course for mayors and governors really works. I want to see the “proof of the pudding.” Mayors are mayors because they have proven their skills in getting votes, but once elected into office, developing the town and getting its constituencies to work effectively together require a different set of competencies. What is the solution(s) to this gap? A training course? I don’t know. I want to watch and see what works in actual practice. I like KM because in the end it is what works – or what works better – that matters in KM.

Thanks for your comments Chris. They helped me see different ways of seeing what I am looking at.

Please do continue to browse my blog site and make comments as you see fit.

Apin
(That’s my Tagalog nickname for my Spanish given name “Serafin”)

PS
I embedded links in this comment that can be clicked to jump to the websites pointed to.