Food for Thought

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Food for Thought

• we are entering a third age in the management
  of knowledge. Furtherthe conceptual changes
  required for both academics and management are
  substantial, effectively bounding or restricting
  over a hundred years of management science in a
  similar way to the bounding of Newtonian science
  by the discoveries and conceptual insights of
  quantum mechanics et al in the middle of the last
  century.A historical equivalent is the phase
  shift from the domination of dogma in the late
  medieval period, to the Enlightenment
• (Snowden, 2002, p. 100).

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Research in a Network of Communities

• How members of Canadas ST CoPs understand their
  work
• With a focus on
• Leadership in relation to
• Complexity and
• Knowledge Management

Alice MacGillivray 2006 Please ask permission
for use
I would like to acknowledge CRTI and Fielding
Graduate University for supporting this research
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An overview of this presentation

• The research setting purpose
• Methodology, data gathering and data analysis
• Findings with focus on clusters
• What next?
• Questions/comments at any time

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Research Questions

• The Practitioner Question Is there a
  correlation between theoretical work from
  complexity theory and/or knowledge management
  and leadership effectiveness?
• The Scholar Question Can theoretical work from
  complexity and knowledge management inform
  leadership theory?

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Tech Clubs were not made into formal structures
Tech Clubs at DaimlerChrysler
They provided the connections that kept the
platforms from diverging into islands.
from Etienne Wenger
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A traditional, bounded view domains span
traditional structures to achieve efficiencies
and enhance effectiveness
A Graphic View of CRTI
Biological
Federal Ministry A
Chemical
Explosives
Radiological-Nuclear
Federal Ministry B
Federal Ministry C
Federal Ministry D
Federal Ministry E
Forensics
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Research Methodology

• Phenomenography
• Intent to deepen understanding in order to
  improve something
• Looks at qualitatively different ways of
  understanding
• Units of analysis can vary
• Potential gaps in this study
• did not include one step to maintain
  confidentiality
• Set aside data that did not group into patterns

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Plan, Population and Process

• Research plan one formal leader and at least
  one other participant per community/cluster (8
  in total)
• One pilot interview and 13 others
• Different ministries, jurisdictions, and
  geographic locations. Males and females.
• Watched network in action at national symposium
• Transcribed interviews with pseudonyms and
  confirmed with participants
• Studied patterns in relation to literature,
  including C4P model from CC

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Verbal questions others also spectrums on
paperMost questions indirect

• A few questions explicitly about theme
  (see spectrum example below)

• The leadership we have comes
• from a single cluster member

• The leadership we have comes from many cluster
  members

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Sample of Findings

• Four themes (e.g., leadership)
• Three categories per theme
• Individuals fit with categories
• Cluster patterns with categories
• Adding the satisfaction/effectiveness theme
• Generalizations about clusters

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Theme 1 Categories for Complexity E.g.,
Statements about predictability, interacting
entities

• Connecting
• Reassessing
• Focusing

• 8 from 3 clusters
• 1 formal leader
• 2 from 2 clusters
• 1 formal leader
• 3 from 2 clusters
• 2 formal leaders

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Theme 2 Categories for Boundaries E.g.,
Statements about knowledge flow, collaboration

• Integrated
• Overlapping
• Constrained

• 7 from 3 clusters
• 3 formal leaders
• 3 from 2 clusters
• no formal leaders
• 3 from 1 cluster
• 1 formal leader

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Theme 3 Categories for Knowledge
Management E.g., Statements about connections,
learning

• Free-flow
• Increasing
• Stuck

• 3 from 2 clusters
• 2 formal leaders
• 7 from 4 clusters
• 2 formal leaders
• 3 from 2 clusters
• no formal leaders

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Theme 4 Categories for Leadership E.g.,
Statements about moving ahead, strengths

• Cross-pollination
• Varied roles
• Title

• 2 from 2 clusters
• 2 formal leaders
• 7 from 4 clusters
• 2 formal leaders
• 5 from 3 clusters
• no formal leaders

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Ways of Understanding
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Ways of Understanding
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Complexity Category Connecting

• Wanted their cluster to be very ecosystem-like,
  or more ecosystem-like and less like a well-oiled
  machine than they think it is at present
• Wanted their group to be fluid and resilient for
  at least some specific aspects of their work
• Responded to at least one other question derived
  from complexity literature with responses and
  insights that suggested they saw value in
  treating the clusters as complex systems.

• Barry An ecosystem reacts to changes in
  circumstances and environment.
• Alice Uh-huh
• Barry and if the environment changes as
  threats emerge, or they back off, you really want
  to be towards this gesturing to ecosystem end of
  spectrum.
• Alice OK
• Barry Where youre reacting, youre evolving.
  Its an evolution it truly is.

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Boundaries Category Integrated

• Over 70 of their boundary-related statements
  were about permeable boundaries
• Permeability was generally seen as positive
• The type of permeable boundaries varied
  considerably and included boundaries between
  different identities, roles and perspectives the
  cluster and participating organizations between
  clusters between countries and cultures, and
  between the cluster and other communities or
  networks, including universities and
  international organizations.

• Brad I think CRTI is well placed to link
  agencies togetherwere not hampered by formality
  and structure. Its comfortably loose

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Theoretical Framework from KM

• C4P Model from CompanyCommand (Major Pete
  Kilner)

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Knowledge Management Category Free-flow

• They made statements relating to all four Cs
  context, content, connection and conversation.
• They said they interacted in many different ways
• They contextualized their responses to whether
  they focus on learning or doing with specific
  examples of where each was appropriate
• They contextualized their responses to the
  question about the nature of conversation
  (Because we are such a diverse group) with
  specific examples of where each was appropriate.

• Stan The expertise which exists within the CRTI
  lab clusters ah..is just absolutely fabulous
• Alice mmm
• Stan because not only for myselfexamples of
  groups well get an unusual type of analysis --
  will be requested from a criminal investigation
• Alice uh huh
• Stanthrough the CRTI they can simply pick up
  the phone and call somebody in the sample
  organization names and sayyou knowcan you help
  out on this?

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Leadership Category Cross-pollination

• were verbally adamant about leadership, as they
  saw it, being distributed in the group
• marked the leadership spectrum at the extreme
  distributed end
• were generous and specific in their descriptions
  of strengths within the group
• spoke specifically about their shortcomings or
  their inability to accomplish significant things
  without distributed leadership
• spoke elsewhere about things they do to support
  the group, such as enabling cross-pollination,
  but they did not mention these in the context of
  the explicit or implicit (helping the cluster
  move forward) leadership questions
• considered cluster leadership different than
  management in a hierarchy.

• Lloyd Should we be over here more gesturing to
  the single leader end of the spectrum? My
  personal opinion is no.
• Alice Uh-huh
• Lloyd In this situation. the model that has to
  work is the communities of practice model, simply
  because I don't have the line management
  authority to say go do this. And neither does
  anyone else in CRTI.
• Alice Do you think it would work any better if
  you did?
• Lloyd No to be quite honest with you. I don't
  think it necessarily would work better. Because,
  like the scope --- you want to be across these
  sorts of thingsthe communities of practice model
  is good.

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Analysis now moves up a level

• I had found that
• there are different ways of understanding these
  phenomena or themes, such as boundaries
• any given individual shows a particular way of
  understanding quite consistently, though
  occasional comments reflect a secondary way of
  understanding
• Would there be patterns at the cluster level?

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Ways of Understanding Colour Coding for Tables
with Cluster Patterns
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Ways of Understanding Cluster 1
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Ways of Understanding Cluster 3
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Ways of Understanding Cluster 4
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Theme 5 Satisfaction Effectiveness (to
explore potential patterns in relation to other
findings)

• Mutual benefit
• Shared opportunity
• Difficult

• 6 from 2 clusters
• 2 formal leaders
• 4 from 2 clusters
• 1 formal leader
• 3 from 1 cluster
• 1 formal leader

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Effectiveness Category Mutual Benefit

• Effectiveness indicators of 9 or 10
• gt 50 of statements coded by emotion are
  positive.
• described many already-achieved benefits for
  themselves personally and professionally, for
  their cluster, for their organizations, for
  government, for Canadians and for groups
  internationally.

• In the context of a presentation in an
  international forum
• Ken came up to me and said, how the devil did
  you get to do this so quickly?
• Alice Wow
• Ken We were a year, if not 18 months ahead of
  their country in getting this thing rolling.

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Ways of Understanding Cluster 1
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Ways of Understanding Cluster 3
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Ways of Understanding Cluster 4
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Contrasting two clusters Cluster I
Constrained

• Participants in Cluster 1 responded, much more
  than others, with perceptions typical of work in
  a traditional organizational structure, in which
  they
• wanted a focus on appropriate allocation of
  resources they spoke a lot about respecting
  roles, priorities, competing responsibilities and
  appropriate implementation of mandates. They
  said the cluster focuses more on doing than on
  learning
• found it difficult to get most things done
• felt constrained by a number of boundaries that
  they felt were beyond their control
• felt stuck in some ways relating to individual
  and collective identities, establishing context
  and engaging in conversation. They put
  relatively little emphasis on elements of the C4P
  model (connection, conversation, context and
  content) in their responses
• have members with varied ideas about the nature
  and effectiveness of leadership. The formal
  leader believes that helping the group reach
  consensus is an important part of leadership in
  cluster environments
• For an overall term for this clusters ways of
  understanding their work, I have selected
  constrained. All participants saw value in the
  CRTI initiative, and want the cluster work to be
  effective, but seemed to feel relatively
  powerless and constrained. In general, they did
  not feel particularly well understood, supported,
  rewarded, or satisfied with their work.

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Contrasting two clusters Cluster III
Resilient

• Participants in Cluster 3 responded, much more
  than others, with perceptions typical of work in
  a complex adaptive system, in which they
• spoke of mutual benefits, accomplishments and
  successes at many scales (e.g., personal,
  professional, for disciplines, the cluster, other
  groups, organizations, larger ST communities,
  private sector, country)
• more than all other clusters, were drawn towards
  the ecosystem metaphor much more than the
  well-oiled machine metaphor, including the idea
  of entities connecting in many ways,
  demonstrating an unusual comfort with
  non-mechanistic models
• more than other clusters, saw their group as
  potentially well-integrated with other groups.
  Often boundaries were ignored if I probed, I
  found this was sometimes because their CRTI work
  was accepted as part of their regular work --
  often because they put effort into ensuring the
  work was mutually beneficial. They found ways of
  integrating CRTI work with various aspects of
  their careers, such as membership in other
  committees, task forces and networks teaching,
  or publishing. When they spoke about
  significant issues coming from their external
  environments, better integration was sometimes
  proposed as a solution. Paradoxically, some
  individuals in this group seemed more aware of
  multiple identities and roles as ways of helping
  the cluster to move forward.
• Mentioned, but put almost no emphasis on the
  content (recorded information, best-practices,
  knowledge repositories etc.) aspects of knowledge
  management, but they did emphasize all aspects of
  the C4P model related to tacit knowledge sharing
  connections, conversation and context. They
  emphasized the learning side of the
  learning-doing spectrum.
• saw leadership as a function of the other (not
  themselves), and gave many specific examples of
  why this was the case. When probed, they gave
  examples of how they had helped the cluster move
  forward (in other words they played leadership
  roles) but they did not give themselves credit as
  leaders.

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Key Findings

• There are strong relationship amongst a
  complexity-orientation, efforts to encourage the
  flow of knowledge, and perceived satisfaction and
  effectiveness.
• Differences in perspectives between formal
  leaders and participants of a cluster do not
  appear to be problematic if the cluster leader is
  treating the environment as complex, where
  diversity and interaction are valued over
  consensus and alignment.

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Most surprising intriguing research elements

• Degree of comfort with lack of predictability
  complexity orientation
• Idea of epistemic cultures
• (Karin Knorr-Cetinabeyond scope of this study)

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Key Implications

• Ways of doing business in government grew out of
  mechanistic organizational models and assumptions
  of predictability not complexity.
• Examples include
• The visionary leader with positional authority
• The need for alignment
• Extensive planning
• Firm goals, objectives and milestones
• Focus on producing little support for informal,
  situated learning
• This study supports hypotheses from complexity
  and knowledge management literature that work
  in complex environments is different (and that
  leadership therefore takes new forms)

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The CRTI landscape is complex
A Graphic View of CRTI
Inter-organizational and inter-jurisdictional
cluster work other government initiatives
newsletters,personal networks, participants with
multiple roles and positions of formal authority,
publishing, conferences, global professional
networks, associations, layers of government,
universitiesnew links and emerging flows of
knowledge to meet needs and achieve CRTI goals.
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The CRTI landscape is complex
A Graphic View of CRTI
Biological
Chemical
Explosives
Radiological-Nuclear
Forensics
Inter-organizational and inter-jurisdictional
cluster work, other government initiatives,
newsletters,personal networks, participants with
multiple roles and positions of formal authority,
publishing, conferences, global professional
networks, associations, layers of government,
universitiesnew links and emerging flows of
knowledge to meet needs and achieve CRTI goals.
39
What next?

• Welcome feedback from today
• Working with CRTI to make report as useful as
  possible for enhancing practice
• Submission of paper(s) to journals in 2007
• CRTI Report
• Further research in dissertation and/or
  consulting to inform theory and practice
• Research question not final want to finalize soon

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