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The Dialectics of Knowledge Management
By Michael C. Gilbert, June 2006
I haven't written much about the core elements -- the values and methods and frames of reference -- of my work, although they are probably obvious, at least intuitively, to anyone who has been reading me for a while and to anyone who has been my student. My tendency is to focus on the practices and principles that are of direct use within the area of application that I'm addressing, and to leave core elements largely unspoken. In my ongoing work this year on the topic of knowledge management in civil society, I see an opportunity to address one of those core elements more directly. The element of interest to me here is the concept of dialectics.
This morning, I complimented a friend of mine on her comfort with tension. Then I said to her: We grow by becoming large enough to hold our contradictions. (She asked if she could quote me and in giving her that permission, I realized that I would quote myself as well.) That statement is a dialectical one, of course, and serves as a jumping off for the rest of this exploration.
Delightful Puzzles of Change
Almost all consulting work is an exercise in facilitating change. Because it is fundamentally about systems of learning, knowledge management consulting is an exercise in facilitating change about the facilitation of change. The self-referential layers here are more than just intriguing. It's valuable to tease them apart a little.
The essential mystery of change is the fact that it happens at all. In this moment, this sentence is unfinished, but in the next moment, it's complete, all the way up to the period. In one moment, an organization might exert tight control over staff communication and in the next moment, everyone is blogging. It may seem a naive question, but to me there is a sense of wonder in asking, how in the world does that happen?
The answer, of course, lies in the nature of complex systems. Changes that occur in the state of a system emerge from the previous state of that system. Now, we can look at that fact and reduce it to a cliche ("the change is within you" or some such thing) or we can take it seriously and figure out how to use it as the basis for change management initiatives.
I have attempted to do just that in my own work. While I doubt very much that I have "figured it out", I can say with some confidence that I have used it as the basis for a great many successful change management initiatives. In the past, when I've done career counselling, I didn't start with job listings; I started with uncovering the character and passions of my client. When I teach frictionless fundraising, I don't start with software applications and features; I start with uncovering the best insights about relationship management that are currently being practiced within an organization. And when I'm working on a knowledge management project, I don't start with new databases or procedures; I start with studying the most powerful engines of learning that are based on existing flows of communication.
Since knowledge management is about learning, a knowledge management project is really about learning to learn. But I believe that our prevailing culture is profoundly ambivalent about learning. Among other things, this ambivalence expresses itself as an attachment to the products, rather than the process, of learning. We love the state of "having learned", but sometimes we only pay lip service to learning itself.
It is this attachment to the state of having learned that is dangerous. I am completely in favor of celebrating our milestones and truly noticing and relishing when we've learned something. But when we grow attached to having learned we sadly find that we have become equally attached to our ignorance.
This is where the traditional approach to change management will often go astray. The traditional approach looks at this situation and makes these three pronouncements: (1) Change is good, but (2) people fear change. Therefore (3) we must help people overcome their fear of change.
This is nonsense! Some change is good. Some change is terrible. People don't fear change in general. It's far more interesting than that. And yet another motivational speaker, incentive plan, or other exhortation for change is not always, or even often, the answer.
Frequently, the "fear of change" rhetoric is an utter straw man that fosters resentment in the people who are made to listen to it. What makes it a straw man is that often people are not objecting to change at all; they are objecting to particular changes being proposed. Having their genuine objections absorbed under the rhetoric of "fear of change" is insulting and dismissive. The resentment that results leads, of course, to even more resistance, which in turn is often treated to even more rhetoric.
The Essential Dialectic
The way around this dilemma is a completely different attitude about the nature of change. Change is one of the fundamental, beautiful paradoxes of life. The old, itself, gives rise to the new. It's essential character is emergent.
What then, is the right attitude toward change?
The right attitude rests in what I will call "the essential dialectic". The essential dialectic concerns the paradoxical relationship between change on the one hand and acceptance on the other. The paradox is that while change and acceptance are in tension with each other, they are also intimately dependent on each other. Genuine acceptance leads to change. And it is a form of change when we come to acceptance where there was previously ignorance or delusion. This is as true for organizations as it is for individuals.
Although change is a constant (and isn't that a lovely phrase), an organization enters into a truly formal change management process whenever it embarks on a new project. This sense of the formality of change management is particularly acute when such projects that are focused inwardly, on the capacity of the organization, and when it enrolls an outsider of some kind to help them with it. This situation creates a very specific set of choices.
The first set of choices are the obvious ones and is the subject of an entire field of practice: Shall we embrace change or resist it? Shall we defend how things are currently done or shall we let go? How shall we deal with the barriers to change, especially if those barriers are embodied in our colleagues? Is change worth the cost? All of these questions and others like them are situated along a continuum or polarity: complete commitment to change on one pole and complete commitment to the status quo on the other.
Most traditional change management tactics are informed by this polarity. They often involve careful political processes which identify the leaders necessary to the change and other people whose "buy-in" is essential. They are carefully plotted to build motivation and decrease resistance. People are involved because that will help with adoption. Barriers to change are identified and removed. And so on. I am as guilty of these tactics as anyone and frankly, they are generally nothing to be ashamed of.
But there is a better way.
All those traditional tactics pit how things are against how things ought to be (at least according to leaders and consultants), and commitment to the present against commitment to the future (the future according to those leading the effort). In other words, acceptance is pitted against change.
What if we looked for a synthesis instead? It's true that this requires creativity, spaciousness, and commitment to holding the tensions of the dialectic for a period of time. Nor is there any simple formula for it. A compromise is not a synthesis, for example. It is still framed by the original polarity. But the discovery of the seeds of change within the current state of affairs might lead to a synthesis. A mindful process of such discovery could uncover new lines of continuity and get far beyond the traditional dichotomy that pits how things are against how things could be.
Implications for Knowledge Management
So far, this is abstract and philosophical. Indeed, for me this is very much a philosophical question, informed by my own affinities for Buddhist practice and the dialectics of history. Part of my objective with this piece has been to step beyond the practical applications and tools that I routinely present, to explore one of the ideas that ties it all together. But I do want to devote a moment to looking at the implications of the dialectical approach to knowledge management.
Knowledge management projects are a very interesting kind of change management. Because their focus is on the improvement of learning systems, they are in effect efforts to change an organization's relationship to change itself. They are attempts by the organization to learn about learning. The essential dialectic becomes, therefore, doubly important.
When I embark on knowledge management projects, I am profoundly aware of the dangerous ground on which I tread. (Or at least, I am more aware now than I was. I'm sure I marched with the jack boots of a know-it-all through some organizations in the past.) Organizations, I have found, are as quick to embrace the polarities of change and acceptance as consultants, often more so. But that doesn't mean that it's not still worth escaping from it in search of a larger perspective.
There are probably as many ways to find that larger perspective as their are practitioners, multiplied by the number of organizations. But there are four patterns that I have found that might be useful to others, all of which derive from an essentially dialectical frame of reference.
(1) Postures of Appropriate Ignorance: This pattern is probably the hardest to master because it turns so much on character and the details of the moment. As a change agent, it means cultivating a sense of how little we know and how much we have to learn. It doesn't mean hiding what we do know or otherwise being coy, but it does mean being aware of the opportunities for learning by the change agents themselves.
(2) Appreciation for Lingering Questions: In our rush toward answers we often trigger resistance in others, and interestingly, in ourselves. An appreciation for questions, especially those that help challenge our frames of reference (rather than just push us to one or the other corner of our existing frame), can help make the space needed to find synthesis.
(3) Investments in System Understanding: When we isolate a single tool or practice, we cloud the rest of the system from view. This can help us focus, but it can also give free reign to the ossification of positions that inhibit synthesis. When all the correct connecting pieces can be seen, then tensions unravel and transform themselves into new solutions.
(4) Faith in the Nature of Change: The seeds of changes are always present within the system that will be changed. Some of those seeds are visible and others are not. Some are about practices that are in a very early form and others are so old that they no longer have a name. But to have faith that this is the nature of change will help the practitioner escape the pull of simple contradiction and open their eyes to synthesis.
These are far more than just knowledge management lessons, but they are particularly appropriate to this field of practice. The series I have been writing recently on nonprofit knowledge management is full of dialectical methods. Communication Centered Technology Planning is a dialectical approach. So is my ubiquitous emphasis on "building on higher ground" or finding the strengths of an organization as the basis for change. My reluctance to recommend software, especially in the knowledge management field, is very much about my own path of cultivated ignorance.
Finally, because of the particular nature of knowledge management as learning about learning, we do two things when we adopt a dialectical approach. We help facilitate healthy change. And we create an example for the change process itself. It is an interesting path and I look forward to seeing you on it.
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