Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Does Knowledge Still Set Us Free? Living In A World of "Knowledge" Overload



Weinberger (2011) said “The network can make us smarter if we want to be smarter” (p. 91) yet suggests that we are losing the ability to collect, control or predict knowledge.  My first inclination, reflecting on Russel Ackoff ‘s DIKW (data-information-knowledge–wisdom) hierarchy discussed by Weinberger, is to ask, “ How much of what we have on the network really knowledge?”  Based on this hierarchy it would seem that what we have available on the internet is data; many points of data which need to be processed and connected in order to become information.  This information then needs to be culled, prepared, judged and refined in order to filter out the non-essential and determine which information is most helpful.  The information which makes it through this filter then becomes knowledge.  In the past, because experts were always part of the filtering process, people could assume knowledge to be true and for justifiable reasons.  Such curated knowledge could help us gain a better understanding of the world.  Furthermore by comprehending and sharing knowledge we could become wise. 



Experts are no longer a guaranteed part of the knowledge formation process which still begins with connecting data points.  Now, instead of experts, networked individuals connect the dots and what was once the realm of the few becomes accessible to all.   Knowledge will never be contained again; it is free and expanding and morphing.  But since networked knowledge is no longer static – how do we ever hold onto it long enough to turn this knowledge into wisdom?  And for the same reasons how can we even begin to contemplate managing it?

Wienberger uses another pyramid analogy in discussing how we amass knowledge.  The masses are at the base  with no particular organization or focus.  However these crowds of individuals naturally come together in affinity groups (made very easy with social media) and discuss and share the data which yields information.  But the next step, where the information would become knowledge, could be perverted if our affinity groups are too homogenous.  In such cases we could instead get an echo chamber.  Since it is only under the condition of diversity of opinion that knowledge can be formed echo chambers will not result in knowledge. 

Expertise, previously so valuable in determining knowledge, loses its value because change is so rapid and also because everyone proclaims expertise.  Bill Fisher in HBR  argues that knowledge simply may no longer matter since it changes so quickly.  However,  soft skills and being human to one another will gain in importance.  Thus we see that networked knowledge is facilitated by stronger human bonds.  The focus on the importance  of the human connection  in knowledge creation and management is reinforced by Nancy Dixon in her discussion about knowledge management.   She explains that initially knowledge management was about connecting people to content.  In its next iteration it brought people together to learn from one another.  In its present phase knowledge management requires leveraging collective knowledge and derives largely from conversation both virtual and face-to-face.  



This Collective Knowledge is obtained from the convergence of varied perspectives which, through evolving conversation, come to a point of joint sensemaking - a hallmark of Leveraging Collective Knowledge.  Heifetz and Laurie in their 2001 article in HBR explain that this integrated thinking is critical to solve today’s issues, which he calls adaptive challenges – things for which there are no definitive answers.  Adaptive challenges are ideally suited for diverse conversational learning because they are unpredictable, the problem is loosely defined and there are many views on an acceptable solution.

 Davenport in Whatever Happened to Knowledge Management  explores the possibility that the web has destroyed the need for knowledge management and mentions that Google trends indicate that interest in searching for knowledge management has dropped off precipitously in the last several years. There is an irony in this fact because in so many ways Google is an incredible knowledge management system.  Considering the ways that knowledge management has evolved, rather than killing it, I feel the web has enhanced it.  The web has minimized the importance of an organization seeking to cull and store all of its data in any static form or attempting to limit access to anything other than proprietary information.   But it is certainly maintaining a very agile and diverse database and enabling us all to connect in a myriad of ways to access, share, process, and evolve that information into knowledge. 

The democratization of knowledge demands we stay connected to others in order to make sense out of the data. This reality alters the role of a leader  Nancy Dixon reminds us the leader needs to play a key role in fostering the conversation rather than providing the answer.  To help achieve this Heifetz discusses several components that leaders need to take to foster adaptive learning and effective knowledge management.   He recommends that leaders can promote conversation by helping frame the issues, challenging roles and unproductive norms, allowing flexibility, and exposing conflicts so they can be assessed and addressed by a diverse group.   

Building on Jarche’s emphasis on the importance of sharing, reflection and social learning, a leader needs to create opportunities for all levels of learning to occur; opportunities which depend on expertise as well as opportunities to co-solve problems.  Jarche refers to several elements of learning including  Intra-Organizational Learning which moves the organization from personally-directed to group-directed learning and creates strong learning networks.  These discussions reminded me of the concept of conversational space which I had featured in a class I designed a few years back.  Kolb, Baker and Jensen discuss the concept which I feel has particular relevance for leaders trying to foster networked knowledge creation and management.   A main element of conversational space focuses on a leader establishing a safe space where people with differing opinions can deepen their understanding.  How well a leader prepares the conversational space will determine the degree to which the conversation in the space promotes learning or gets in its way.  The full theory is fascinating and I believe very relevant to a discussion of present day knowledge management.  However, for this current piece I will conclude by mentioning conversational learning’s emphasis on learning occurring in the tension that exists between listening and speaking.  These tensions are created through the interface of various opposites and results in integrated knowing very similar to Heifetz’ collective knowledge mentioned earlier.    Therefore a leader will foster networked knowledge management to the extent she enables conversation, creates the space and encourages the dualities.


What is the next phase of knowledge management?  Are our brains ready to connect to the extent the network can avail? How do we select the elements of knowledge management  that will serve society tomorrow? And finally, can knowledge be managed anymore?  No complete answer to any of these but certainly some new elements to consider.

Reference

Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know: Rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books.


Thursday, January 19, 2017

Haiku-Deck: Simple But Too Simplistic?

Haiku-Deck is presentation software which, according to its website makes telling your story simple, beautiful and fun  According to Jane Hart’s listing it came into the top 200 in 2014 at number 66, dropped to 92 in 2015 and to 137 in 2016.  It is available in both free and premium versions and offers discounts for students and educators (which I took advantage of!).  Their website explains that Haiku-Deck makes it possible for anyone to easily make presentations that look as if they were created professionally by a graphics designer.  The site provides options to select layout, fonts and filters from a number of pre-designed elements as well as access to over 40 million creative commons images.  Premium members may complete decks on both PC and tablet.  Non-paying users must completed their decks on tablets via the Haiku-Deck app.

The review site Crowd Reviews  gives Haiku deck a 4.10/5 and ranks it 8/79 (Prezi is no.1).  Their reviewers particularly appreciated the ease with which the presentations could be shared and viewed on iPhones.  Several of the reviewers also appreciate how Haiku-deck  forces the user to simplify the message and communicate more through images.  The Haiku Deck website also emphasizes the opportunity to produce an Image rich more professional and consistent deck while having fun.  Although it appears that most users would want to use the millions of images available Susan Kistler  noted how easy it is to import your own images or charts quickly and easily. 

Additionally the company has introduced Haiku Deck Zuru which was reviewed in Geekwire The reviewer points out that Zuru uses AI and the results from millions of users to help the user create a new deck.  Zuru is accessible via both tablet and browser. As part of my research I signed up for a subscription.  I tried both Haiku-Deck and Haiku-Deck Zuru . Since I was really eager to learn more about how Zuru’s AI worked I tried it first and uploaded a PowerPoint deck I had created with text only – no background.  Zuru would also have enabled me to upload an outline or even an article from Wikipedia. It then brought up each slide and, based on the words on the slide, asked me to determine the most significant word or words on that slide.  Once I selected the key word it offered me a selection of images which could be inserted in each of the slides. After I had made my selections it whipped up a deck and prompted me make changes.  When I was done I downloaded the PowerPoint to my computer where I had the option to continue editing.  I was successful in my first attempt. I also tried Haiku-Deck which had similar functionality and worked on both tablet and PC.  The big difference is that you have to build your deck from scratch in Haiku-Deck and in Zuru you can import pre-existing content.  This is a big time saver.  Both my experience as well as the reviews revealed both strengths and limitations.

Haiku -Deck seems like a very simplified Power Point with better images.  There are only a few layout and font options but that makes it really quick and easy to learn.  There was also an option enabling insertion of the notes page and it was actually easier to enter the notes in Haiku-Deck because you could view the notes section more clearly than you can in Power Point.  It is really simple and did look good on the screen. I prefer creating on the PC and found the tablet creation more challenging – but the ability to create something that nice very quickly on the tablet is a plus. Positive aspects of Zuru included doing a solid job identifying the key words and providing images which supported that concept.  The process moved along quickly and there was no problem uploading my original Power Point or downloading that which was created on the site.  It was fun to see the final product.  I had some challenges logging in so sent an email describing my challenge and was contacted within two hours.  My challenge was corrected. 

Haiku Deck strikes me as a great classroom tool and I am planning to look for opportunities to use it in some upcoming training sessions. However, it would be far more effective in ILT (instructor led training) than webinar style. In an interactive session (live or virtual) the minimal slides can help foster more dialogue However for less interactive sessions, like most webinars the minimalism of the slides will make it more difficult for many people to comprehend the concept. 


For detailed financial or business updates with any degree of detail Haiku-Deck is not a good option because of its forced simplicity.   However the rich use of visuals could encourage the deck designer to think more visually.  And that change of perspective could also alter how you viewed your subject and might make you want to approach/deliver content differently.  It also forces you to use good PowerPoint design fundamentals.
There are some notable downsides to Haiku Deck and Zuru, some of which have been previously alluded to.  Fonts are one problem.  If you use Haiku Deck, when you download the presentation to your computer you are required to download fonts.  This can be problematic on a business computer whose amped up security will not allow any type of downloading.   With Zuru – the fonts are embedded but not appealing.  Therefore, after you download you will likely want to modify them all.  Although the simplicity is a plus it is also a challenge because many leaders and departments still send decks to meeting attendees as an informative tool.  People are used to reading the slide for the information (not notes page on a screen) so this presents a possible dissatisfier.

Haiku-Deck literally limits the amount of verbal content you can place on the slide and by its design tries to help you adhere to recommended PPT construction rules.  This link discusses some of the premise behind Haiku-Deck’s design rules which you are forced to follow.  Privacy is only available to premium subscribers which could be a challenge for businesses or anyone who is concerned about public availability of their content.  Not only are they publicly stored but the best decks are even featured on their gallery  and on Pinterest .
Also, because the decks in the free version are stored on their server you have to be connected to the internet in order to show your presentation.  There are times and locations where that can still be a challenge – and the photos can take a while to load.  With a premium license you can download decks in 3 forms – editable PPTX, un-editable or PDF. Consumer Advocate goes on to give  Haiku Deck Zuru a 7.7/10 emphasizing outstanding appearance but indicating challenges in being unable to add audio files or media.  Reviewer Susan Kistler pointed out limitations with the graphs – there are only 3 types, font can be small and there is minimal opportunity to manipulate them.
Overall, I think it may be too simplistic for my general use.  However, I do plan to continue playing with Haiku-Deck and will incorporate some of the photography into upcoming presentations.  At this point I don’t envision that I will be able to utilize Haiku-Deck as a substitute for Power Point but rather as an additional tool. https://www.haikudeck.com/presentations/Tricia.garwood
An area where I feel our business could use some great technology is in the virtual collaboration space.  Nothing seems ideal.  From this week’s top 200 I noted: WebEx, Zoom, Today’s Meet (with opportunities for backchannel discussion space), Team Viewer, Go to meeting, Kaltura, and Zeetings (enabling  participation from your own device).  I have used WebEx and Go to meeting but am curious to know more about any of the others or any with which you have had great experiences. Thanks!

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Who Really Knows?

Twelve years ago, Thomas Friedman, in The World is Flat (2005), warned that it was impossible to keep up with the pace at which the world was moving. In 2017 many people have accepted that any notion of “keeping up” is illusory.  Our only hope to stay afloat in the churning sea of knowledge overload is to religiously curate and prioritize. However, being able to sort and focus only helps us survive. To thrive and excel Friedman emphasizes the need for us to stay curious and innovative.  Friedman’s premise was that equal access to knowledge was causing the flattening of the world. He saw terrorists as a major disrupting factor to the natural collaboration and sharing that was possible in a flat world.  Today terrorists continue to disrupt – but so do web based elements like “fake news” – which can disrupt civil dialogue.  This inundation of content, which we cannot even begin to evaluate or sort effectively, can leave us less able to collaborate and potentially more ignorant than ever before. 

Although Friedman saw the intellectually elevating opportunity in full access to sharing and collaboration, it seems that many social collaboration tools are vastly underutilized.  At work we regularly connect via Slack or Yammer but it’s more about quick answers to technical questions. People seeking counsel on how to be better leaders is extremely rare. However, because people have broad access to information subordinates can research and identify problems with both their leaders and their organization leaving them potentially disaffected.

Friedman also discussed the importance of learning what he calls right brain skills – those which cannot be duplicated by a computer - and explores various ways to get the brain engaged in this higher order learning. So much has happened in the AI space in subsequent years that Bostrom (2015) indicated that we on the verge of something major.  Rather than reinforcing Friedman’s assumption that our right brain skills cannot be duplicated, Bostrom recognized the speed at which AI machine learning is progressing.  He pointed out that algorithms can learn cross domain and speculated that a human level of intellectual processing may be reached and surpassed in 40 years.  Bostrom calls this superintelligence and it would seem to contradict Friedman’s assumption that human creativity is not replicable by AI.

What does this mean for creativity and innovation? Speaking about just those topics, Richard Florida argued that the world is spiky rather than flat in his 2005 article from the Atlantic.  His research suggests that population concentration tends to lead to greater wealth and innovation.   Because the web connects people, ideas and finance, I wonder if it might minimize the impact of physical proximity.  Could access to a free and open internet possibly become even more important to generating innovation than concentration of wealth and people?  Florida argued that most success comes from generating innovation and pointed out the power of innovation to attract talent and create new products and industries.  Departments within my company who are innovation powerhouses do attract many people.  However, their connection is often entirely virtual, as it is with many of my partners.  Given the current approach, could access to the internet become the key differentiator rather than location and locus of wealth and population? It seems that innovative people will not need to leave their locale to go to another city/place because they can collaborate effectively from anywhere. 


And possibly your collaborator is not even human.  To this end Bostrom pointed out that the optimization process demands we use every available means to efficiently pursue a goal.  Individual humans are connecting and optimizing as never before through the web.  This connectivity represents an intelligence external to our own; one which represents one form of AI.  Bostrom believes we are on the precipice of a rapidly changing, different world; one where we are regularly surrounded by non-human intelligence, AI.  He warns that we are fooling ourselves to think we could simply turn off this switch.  Sharing Bostrom’s sense of urgency not only in recognizing the change is happening but also in ensuring society is doing all it can to ensure AI development is factoring in ethical elements a group of tech billionaire’s including Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk are establishing funds focused on overseeing value-centric AI development .

This change is happening and it alters many aspects of how we approach work; consider the 34 Japanese employees in who have just been replaced by Watson style AI.  From Friedman’s liberating view of shared information, to Florida’s contention that opportunities for innovation are lopsided to Bostrom’s assertion that AI may be calling more of the shots in our lifetimes ... it is clear that the terrain is evolving.  There is still relevancy in parts and pieces of Friedman and Florida.  However, there is less relevancy in their holistic arguments because as Bostrom points out the inadequacy of trying to understand or explain today’s world through our understanding of the world we knew even five years ago is a futile proposition.  We simply cannot perceive the world today through the filters we have used in the past.
  

Monday, January 9, 2017

Haven't posted in quite a while but will soon be adding some weekly thoughts about technology and some of its potential impacts on society, leadership, our future.