The Fractal Enterprise

Unity of Purpose

The only unities of any durability are unities of purpose. The effects of unity, borne of a clear and substantial purpose, are exhibited in organizations and technologies. Similarly the consequences of confused goals are immediately discernable in decay, distraction and dissolution. It comes as no surprise, in retrospect, that my first web site (somewhere around 1993) included a declaration that “clarity of purpose is all”, which is obviously a variation on Hamlet’s “readiness is all”.

That an organization or system must be fastened to a sound objective is easy enough to grant. Where too many goals become intermixed and no guiding trajectory provides an organizing principle amongst these goals, barnaclization is the inevitable outcome – with this invariably leading to the collapse of any structure or system so encumbered. This all-too-common spectre proves the point through graphic contradiction.

I am put in mind of this subject because of a recollection. The recollection, in this case, is of what it was like to be part of a highly effective team, a well-oiled machine that exemplified speed, skill and symbiotic synchronization amongst team members performing their roles well and equipment components that had, over time and through gradual refinement, become exactly matched to their functions. This team was an artillery gun crew. Admittedly, this recollection immediately sets me apart from colleagues who can cite more accessible examples such as rugby sides or sales teams. It remains instructive nonetheless.

In the case of a gun crew, we note several items of interest. One is the fact that members of a gun crew undergo a fair measure of training to establish the core skills and essential discipline in order to perform the main actions quickly and, ideally, safely. Part of this training also establishes a significant level of physical dexterity in performing a wide range of tasks, with some calling upon prodigious strength, others upon painstaking attention to detail and still others upon dogged persistence. Behind many of these procedures lie, at times, hundreds of years of tradition and most of us on the guns came to appreciate the merits of even the most arcane of these formalities.

Of the equipment items used by a gun crew, some were delicate, such as the refined sighting tools that would be brought out for “danger close” missions, while others were almost comically brutal, with one being memorably called the “rammer-jammer”. Layered over these elements was an esoteric language of abbreviations and commands that to the outsider must have sounded like an alien dialect. I can distinctly recall a string of orders emerging from the command post on one occasion that strung together, in an uninterrupted sequence, at least fifteen specialized acronyms. The combination was unusual, even on a gun position, and almost everyone paused in their activities, straightened up for an instant, and acknowledged that we had become a linguistic island unto ourselves.

All this combined into a capability that was literally wired into a network of computer systems and communication devices that would hopefully provide the team with accurate instructions. When functioning well, the smooth operation of an artillery battery and all its components, including the gun crews, was a marvel of responsiveness and robustness. Many elements underlying this success had, through the refinement of equipment, procedures and skills, become unspoken and automatic – with this accounting for the tremendous speed with which new instructions could be received, understood and acted upon.

Another specific recollection that comes to mind is of being a gun detachment commander in exotic Shilo, Manitoba, and participating in a series of exercises being staged by researchers from headquarters. The researchers were armed with clipboards, stopwatches, and various devices, and their mission was to study ways in which the efficiency of a traditional battery might be improved. The recollection that regularly surfaces is that of a specific cease firing action wherein the battery vacates a position as quickly as possible. The order to cease firing was declared at an unusual juncture, and this was by design. It turned out that it was my battery and specifically my gun crew that was the first out of action. As if from nowhere, a team of researchers appeared with the news that we had scored the highest on their various measures. My team effectively threatened their lives (before being reined in) and to this day I can see the mixture of mystification and terror in the faces of researchers. Part of the terror was grounded from the shocking recognition that their studies were too remote from the historical practices and resolute dedication of the crews to carry much weight. One hopes that through a due process of informed consideration some lessons were learned and some improvements made.

Another recollection underscores an interesting aspect of how people form and sustain teams. Again, the prominence of a sound purpose seems to stand as a key ingredient and, in my experience, the process of selection and acceptance, governing who is admitted into the team, most commonly showcases novices demonstrating a willingness to assume a role that supports the common purpose.

This particular recollection stems from an arduous training program that had just ventured into what was then new territory by including women. The vision that returns is that of a patrol moving through a swamp and trying to leverage beaver dams as a bridging mechanism (a purpose, it turns out, for which the beavers had never made an allowance). When one of the female course members plunged into the water, while wearing a bulky radio set, she went straight to the bottom of a remarkably clear pool. To the amazement and nodding approval of the team, this young lady did not panic but instead could be clearly seen crawling along the bottom in the original direction the team had been trudging along. In an instant, a human chain was formed and this female gunner was fished out of the deep. From that day forward there was never a question about her being as much a part of the team as anyone else. The robust inclusiveness of this team was underscored when one of the members observed, with penetrating insight, that if someone submits to the mission and can be useful, then the team does not quibble about superficial differences – “if they are willing and able to help, they can be green with antlers for all I care” is the comment I can still hear.

The evaluation of organizations and systems, hence of unities formed by people, ultimately rests on two considerations. One pertains to the coherence and efficiency of these unities given their intended function. The second, and more challenging, consideration is the merit of the purpose itself. And this is a system unto itself and its effective operation is the most important of all.

Person of the Millennium

While this contribution comes a full decade after the topic was being debated more generally, for some reason I have found myself musing over the question of who should be declared the most influential person of the last millennium. Allowing for the fact that evaluating the influence of any one individual on history is impossible and comparing the influence of different individuals even more so, I cannot help but to venture a proposition. I would put forward Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603).

From the list of candidates, we find the names of scientists, artists, thinkers, inventors, activists and political leaders. Of these, the influence of scientists, artists, thinkers and inventors is almost universally overstated, along with the associated declarations of originality. The influence of activists has been more substantial in that the impression made on social patterns can be remarkably resilient over time. Looking into the yet earlier millennium, we would classify the founders of the major religions that grew in those years as activists whose impact has been amplified over time rather than dampened. Within the millennium in question (1001-2000), the greatest influence would appear to have been wielded by what we might term activist political leaders, people who controlled various mechanisms of power and leveraged them in an influential way. Of these, many have been influential thanks to their generally destructive exploits. Fortunately some of these activist political leaders did manage to achieve surprisingly positive effects with some of these finding their way down to the better features of the modern world. It is from this latter category that the “person of the millennium” should be chosen.

In the case of Queen Elizabeth I, the most notable feature of her besieged reign as the Queen of England is her striking a tactical balance that placed tolerance and compromise as the core building blocks of political stability. That striking and sustaining this balance was hugely difficult for her is beyond question. That it also demanded tremendous skill and strength similarly cannot be questioned. It proved to be an essential stroke and English history since that period can in many ways be seen first as a struggle to maintain this balance on a number of occasions and then as a period of growth and expansion that this balance made possible. Clearly, a great many threads fed into the circumstances that Elizabeth found herself thrust into and some of these threads in fact made this form of political balance possible. But the appearance of a character of the strength and skill of Elizabeth proved critical at this juncture and the path she chose to uphold left an indelible mark on not only English history but that of the entire world.

The elevation of Queen Elizabeth I to the place of person of the millennium thus depends on two claims. One is that the principles of tolerance and compromise have been essential to the evolution and operation of democratic government and that balanced democracy, in general, has been one of the most notable millennial accomplishments. The second claim is that the influence among nations of the United Kingdom is without equal in the latter half of the millennium - in leading the world into industrialization, in casting many features of modern globalization through the spread and evolution of its colonial empire, and in providing such resolute leadership in opposing the militant imperialism that surfaced in the twentieth century. These are two claims that can be challenged but I feel completely confident in defending them.

The fact that this claim establishes a woman as the person of the millennium is also noteworthy. It is indeed incredible that she was able to make such a mark on history as a woman at a time when the landscape of power was entirely dominated by men (substantially more so than today, without this suggesting that the playing field is now level). Turning these observations on their head, one might begin to muse about whether the particular balance that she was able to strike would have come to pass had the person of the millennium been a man.

Institutional Dissociation

While I tend to avoid topical subjects, there is a news story unfolding in the otherwise sleepy world of Ontario politics that has caught my eye. Not that the specific details of this story merit much in the way of attention, but it does provide a convenient example of a deeper problem. The story in question here is about a government agency that has found itself in hot water over contractual cronyism - the distribution of sole-source contracts to professional acquaintances as part of a strategy for restart a disasterous venture into modernizing healthcare technology. The agency in this case is called "eHealth Ontario" and its mandate is to bring health records online by 2015. The disastrous venture it has been mandated to restart was known as "Smart Systems for Health" which had burned through over $600 Million, without achieving any discernable progress, before being curtailed or at least having its name changed.

Ignoring the predictable postering of politicians, we do find interesting lessons being illustrated in this case. For one, we see in eHealth Ontario a perfect example of organizational barnaclization. For more background on barnaclization see my previous post on The Barnaclization of Systems. 

The process of barnaclization at this agency commenced with its inception. Established as a separate agency (the netherworld of government operations where oversight and responsibility can be carefully muddled), eHealth Ontario was charged with bringing technological change to an environment (healthcare) where technological advancement in the provision of actual services has historically been glacially slow. The agency was then put upon to bulk up its credibility by staffing a plethora of management positions with people drawn from that very community of healthcare technology managers who had overseen the non-adoption of technology. Still feeling a need to appear innovative, these managers then felt pressure to import expertise, from anywhere and at any price. This led to the procurement scandals that are making headlines, at least in the forgettable world of provincial politics.

What is intriguing, to me at least, is that the experts being engaged using these questionable procurement practices do not in fact appear to be experts either in the technologies that will be needed to make eHealth a reality or in the management of technological innovation. They are in fact experts in helping healthcare agencies appear innovative to their various stakeholders and constituents. These experts are consultants drawn from the standard sources of high-priced consulting support that large organizations always rely upon and who do not, in any tangible sense, have any interest, or experience, in bringing real change to fruition. So what we see is one layer of barnaclized management calling upon another - creating two layers. The interactions between these layers become self-sustaining and are guarranteed to achieve nothing except to consume resources. With this being the healthcare sector, the analogy to self-medication is irresistable. 

It gets even better, as the government minister supposedly responsible for the operation of this agency has called in independent auditors to review the procurement practices of the agency. This is funny because these auditors are comprised of individuals drawn from only two possible sources: the government itself (bringing an accounting perspective to the mechanics of procurement probity) and professional accounting agencies (bringing an accounting perspective to the accounting perspective). The likelihood that the application of this independent audit function will shed any light upon what has really been going wrong is effectively nil. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself (or herself).  

I have been heard to say that "organization happens!" and that no one usually designs institutions - they just emerge and take the form that seems to suit their environment. In some cases, this pattern of growth spirals out of control and we see layers of barnaclization accummulate so that the resulting institutions must be classified as dissociated, or more tersely, insane. Performance becomes irrelevant as all eyes turn to having a staff position to fill every imaginable function, a group working on every conceivable issue, and a statement prepared for every possible criticism. eHealth Ontario, and its defunct predecessor, have slipped into this state and a review of the gross over-compensation provided to a long list of functionary positions makes this graphically, even comically, clear.

The predictable declarations from the political level, spurred by public outrage, that more strict procedures mandating "open competitions" for all positions will be put into place is a further sign that those in charge do not get it. Another bureaucratic layer, this time an artifically open and painfully laborious competitive procurement process, will not help. On the contrary...

The Flying Island of Organizational Consultants

Encountering organizational consultants is far from unusual. Most organizations feature a cadre of preferred advisors on such topics as process change, business transformation or knowledge management. In some cases they even contribute value, or at least that is a hope we can hold out. However, there are occasions when encountering organizational consultants in the wrong context can be a jarring experience. This post recounts one such encounter.

I was participating in a governmental working group on knowledge management. On this occasion, we had a guest speaker who was to speak about a KM initiative for a inter-jurisdictional agency focused on addressing serious public emergencies. The agency, it turned out, was a component of the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND). Having some awareness of this organization and how it worked, I looked forward to the presentation.

It did not take long before my interest in the presentation began to cool. Work on the justification model used to demonstrate the value of investing in organizational learning events was covered (see my post on the KM Uncertainty Principle). Experiences were then related on the successful inter-organizational learning events that had been conducted and how they validated the justifications. I don`t think I did a very good job concealing the look of puzzlement on my face as I pondered how any of this was different from what in the military we had always called "exercises". And then the presentation took the strangest of turns.

The question, rhetorical it turns out, was posed: "Why are the insurgents winning in Afghanistan?" It was a rhetorical question because the answer followed on immediately as "Because they talk." A set piece then followed that revisited the importance of verbal communication, personal contact, team-building experiences and freedom from artificial formalizations. Throughout all of this I am sure that my mouth was simply hanging open. 

I looked around the room hoping to see a similar reaction amongst representatives from the Defence Department only to realize that those representatives were themselves civilian staff whose exposure to the military per se was effectively nil. With a substantial measure of restraint I weighed into the discussion. As luck would have it , I was able to reference a very recent event that highlighted the key omission that had been made in the thinking of these consultants. I had literally just returned from the homecoming parade for the 1st Battallion of the PPCLI as it returned from a particularly grisly tour in Afghanistan.

 

The point I managed to make, I believe, was that the entire presentation and, in particular, the comments about the value of "talking", was predicated on the faulty notion that the bureaucracy of National Defence Headquarters represented the military that was undertaking these missions. In fact, this headquarters environment could not, indeed should not, be taken as representative of the long-standing and repeatedly-proven leadership and learning practices of the field regiments - the ones who actually undertake the missions.

I took the above photo during the homecoming parade and a careful examination will show that the ranks are littered with empty spaces - of which two are plainly visible in the foreground. These are the spaces left by the fallen. In fact, the back page of the local newspaper was filled with pictures of those who had paid the ultimate price. The front row in the spectator stands was then filled with the wounded. It had been, as I noted above, a grisly tour.

Participating in this homecoming was, perhaps oddly, a hopeful affair as the young soldiers mixed with the past generations and the "regimental family" pulled even closer together the more challenging the circumstances became. The deep processes of learning and, if you will, talking, were in evidence and they were being used to address a myriad of needs.

By comparison, the facile observations of the organizational consultants seemed at best comical and at worst cold. In a way, it is difficult to judge them too harshly as the bureaucracy of headquarters was the only environment they knew and nothing in their experience would have exposed them to reality. In a very real sense, they did not know that the regiments even existed. They were, in many ways, like the distracted scientists on the flying island of Laputa in the third book of Gulliver's Travels - hopelessly out of touch and blissfully unaware of the fact.

Tinsel and the Tree

This reflection is drawn from a long time ago. Twenty-five years ago to be exact. I was attending a talk by a then (and still) famous Canadian author with this event being held in Grant Hall at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. The gathering was very well attended and Grant Hall was in fact packed to the rafters. It was something of a celebration of the success achieved by this author and it should be added that the celebration was well deserved.

There was one part of this particular evening that remains with me and it has ultimately prompted this post. As part of the talk, this author embarked on a digression that, by a backhanded route, sought to throw support behind the university's fledgling women's studies program. It was backhanded in so far as the speaker decided to contrast the virtues of this program with what would have been the male counterpart where study would have been directed to military uniforms, medals and attrocities. Many in the audience found much humour in the remarks. Being a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, I was a little less enthused but I was not especially upset. By chance however, my eyes fell on the far right of the front row of the seating area and I noticed an elder gentleman sitting quietly and attending to the speaker with evident care. The comments quickly turned stale.

The elder gentleman was Judge John Matheson, who had also been the honourary colonel of my regiment during my early years in uniform. Prior to that night, I don't think that I had ever seen Judge Matheson except when in uniform, with his numerous decorations visible to all.

The contrast between the artist making the remarks and the retired soldier was inescapably stark. Colonel Matheson, I knew full well, had been badly wounded at the battle of Ortona in the Italian Campaign of World War II. So badly wounded that he was initially triaged as "dead" and then, in hospital, he had been told that he would never walk, work or have a family. It is an understatement to say that he proved them wrong on all counts. He returned to university, married, became a Member of Parliament (PM), led the initiative to establish a new flag (he is regularly referred to as the father of the Canadian flag), initiated the Order of Canada (by which Canada recognizes civilian contributions, including ironically those by the speaker at this event), served as a court judge, and continued to actively support his military regiment and university. For the fiftieth anniversay of the battle of Ortona, he was instrumental in convening a gathering of former Canadian and German combatants so that they could bury forever the conflicts of the past. He is, in many ways, an embodiment of the very best in what people can achieve over a long and varied career.

It was in contrast to this life story that the shallow criticism of militarism looked so ridiculous. Now the speaker was unaware of his presence or his history and too much should not be made of the comments. It did not appear, from my vantage point on the balcony, that Judge Matheson was at all put out. The contrast does remind us however that there is a massive distinction to be made between those who decorate history with their artistic contributions, valuable as they are, and those who by industry and sacrifice effectively constitute history. While it rings a little too harshly in its handling of artists, and their contributions, it is difficult not to say that there is a big difference between the tinsel and the tree on which it hangs.

Looking back, I think the lingering impression of this event is entirely one of respect for the contributions of people like John Matheson and a marvelling at how any one person can undertake so much. 

"The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long." 
- King Lear

The Strength of Diversity

Canals in the University Parks

  

 

Being in Oxford has reminded me of an interesting saga that I recall watching play out in the University Parks and in particular in the area affectionately known as Mesopotamia. I used to walk although the pathway that is bounded on both sides by canals, hence the name, and a regular feature of the canals was a gaggle of around 50 Canadian Geese. Needless to say this gaggle made me feel at home and I liked to imagine that they would follow me for part of the journey. They actually did because they had long since learned to watch for free hand-outs of bread from passersby.

Now Canadian Geese are quite interesting. They are well organized, with different geese taking turns on watch while the others eat and, when flying, they regularly switch leaders to share the workload. One of their more charming traits is that they will assign two healthy geese to stay with any goose that has become ill or injured and these care-givers will stay with that goose until it recovers or dies.

All these virtues did not, however, make the Canadian Geese the lords of these particular waterways. This title went to the larger, more flashy and aggressive Swans. Any illusion one might have about the true nature of Swans is soon dispelled by regular contact. People who decide to feed the ducks from their punts on these canals soon discover which birds will take all the bread, whether it is volunteered or not. In fact, this is true throughout this particular ecosystem – the swans dominate the food harvesting process. That was until one day when a stranger came along.

This stranger was a monstrously large English Goose. At the time, I recall naming this particular animal the “Arnold Schwarzenegger of Geese”. In terms of size, it was easily twice the size of the largest Canadian Goose, its neck seemed to be thicker than its head, and, strangest of all, the end of its beak featured some form of digging appendage – a huge toe-nail of sorts. So there was no questioning the fact that this newcomer was the ugliest creature on webbed feet.

Not surprisingly the gaggle of Canadian geese wanted nothing to do with this mutant goose however much this outcast wanted to join the team. For several weeks, this grey English goose followed behind the Canadian Geese, seemingly having decided that they represented the closest thing to kin. It was, throughout, a spectacle of a homogeneous community spurning the outsider. To its enduring credit, and possibly why it earned its name, this English goose was simply too stubborn to give up and it continued to shadow it chosen clan.

Then one morning came along that stands out vividly. The gaggle of Canadian geese were drifting along the water, as usual, except this time, right in the middle could be seen the monster English goose. Something had changed and it was not long before I discovered why. There was a group of swans enjoying some nutritious find when the new, augmented gaggle of geese rounded the bend in the canal. Whereas in the past, the geese would have kept their distance from the larger swans this time they picked up speed and headed directly for the swans. It turns out that this English goose, in addition to being ugly and awkward was also totally unstoppable. I can recall the image of this particular goose crashing into the swans like a bowling ball impacting a set of pins. A tremendous racket followed and lots of wings flapping but there was no overcoming the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Geese.

There is no way of telling how long the alliance lasted but what is sure is that for a period of time on the canals of the Oxford University Parks a hodgepodge gaggle of geese enjoyed complete dominance. To this day, I cite this story as an example of how strong diversity can be. In this case it was not merely a matter of looks but a fundamental diversification of inclinations and capabilities and the lesson applies as neatly to people as it does to our feathered friends.

The Barnaclization of Systems

A strange but perhaps fitting topic for the last day of 2008.

Barnaclization is a word I started using about 10 years ago. It was introduced as a way to describe what, in my experience, tended to happen to software systems. Unlike systems in nature, where entropy inevitably leads to dissipation, software systems decline typically for the opposite reason, that of accrual, or more graphically, barnaclization. 

It is true that a form of entropy operates on software as interventions, however minor, introduce errors that slowly undo the carefully wrought structure of the system. But this represents a very small contribution to the general trend of deployed software to become unsustainable. The real source of trouble is the accrual of new requirements that lead to the introduction of various modules and interfaces with each one, like a barnacle, interacting with the system and the other additions. Like a ship left to foul, these systems eventually become so encrusted that they become grotesquely slow and inefficient to operate. Understandably, at some point the owners decide to steer the ship into the nearest scrap yard.

What is important to recognize is that each addition can be completely meritorious in its own right. The addition will address real user needs and a solid business case for the change will have been established. The real issue is that each of these additions, like a separate life form, has its own purpose and this is only partially aligned, and then only in the very best cases, with the objectives of other additions let alone that of the original system. The additions, over time, accumulate into layers until the structure of the original system is scarcely recognizable.

Barnaclization is relevant today as it helps to envision what happens to all human systems and not just software. Economies, for example, accrue layers of supporting services, abstracted rationalizations, derivative interests, rarefied specializations, disassociated oversight and the like that can come to create highly unstable structures - susceptible, for example, to unpredictable ruptures between large segments of the system. So it is that investors can find themselves divorced from businesses that actually produce value. Within organizations it is commonly found in the form of bureaucratic rigamortis, where the organization is so determined to do everything right and to address every possible good cause that they effectively cease to do anything useful at all. Government organizations are particularly susceptible to this process although they are not alone.

Again, it is not that barnaclization is a result of poor planning or execution - it just happens and usually for all the right reasons. Jumping back to software, Microsoft Windows seems to provide the perfect illustration. A large number of very smart and industrious people have been labouring for many years to improve Windows - juggling a sea of feedback from an incredibly large community of users. With all these inputs, together with a great deal of talent and the very best of intentions, 15 or so years have brought us to Windows Vista which exhibits the advanced stages of barnaclization. I have been heard to describe Vista as the Jar Jar Binks of Operating Systems - it is always doing something when you don't want it to and when you do decide to do something it is invariably in the way. I have heard people describing all of the features and functions that Microsoft had to try and work into Vista and it seems clear that the problem is one of barnaclization.

Given the inevitability of barnaclization it becomes an open question whether much can be done to redress the problem. Certainly systems can be designed in a way that makes them less susceptable to the forces of accrual. But the real response must occur at the level of organizational management and here an understanding needs to evolve of how disparate investments will interact as an accumulating system and that some investments will work together more constructively than others.

The Order of Business

It may be largely owing to naivety on my part but the current economic turmoil does not really appear to be all that baffling. Indeed, at least from one perspective, it has an air of inevitability about it. Why it seems to have sideswiped so many of those whose area of expertise was supposedly centered on this very subject might be the greater, and ultimately more interesting, mystery.

Continuing along the lines of naive economic observation, we seem to see a couple of looming realities. One is that what passes as “ownership”, through the machinations of the financial marketplace, is a special kind of ownership – one that is utterly and completely divorced from responsibility. The question that struggles to the surface, at least for some, is whether or not ownership divorced from responsibility is not a contributing factor to some of the problems being evidenced.

While it would seem ludicrously unrealistic to imagine reconnecting ownership and responsibility, at least from the perspective of the financial markets, there are other deductions that can follow from the question. One is the related question that if the shareholders in a venture are not responsible, under the model of legal independence of corporations, then who is to be held responsible? The answer usually lands somewhere between the board of directors and the upper echelons of management. Of course this is what we might term residual responsibility and the “somewhere” ensures that what residual may exist is, in most cases, impossible to find. And this is completely by design.

Rolling the tape forward, and leveraging a model of atomic agents operating based on very simple rules, it would be completely expected that shareholders would snatch up and cast away shares according to a self-generated set of dynamics and management would frame targets that loosely matched those dynamics and reward themselves when concordance occurs (and very often when it does not). That the businesses on which this dance is conducted may be an increasingly hollow shell is effectively irrelevant at least while the dance can be sustained.

If one asserts that, at least on some level, ownership conveys responsibility then considerations turn to what form this responsibility might take for the shareholders, and their representatives and management delegates. One consequence for business operations might be the introduction of more tangible oversight and this would need to stand in for any practical "presence" of these shareholders and their "ownership responsibilities". The most likely consequence of establishing any connection at all between ownership and responsibility would be the introduction of directors and management to far more concrete liabilities than have been the case in the past. This would be unwelcome, naturally, and much industry would be exercised in finding new forms of obfuscation and avoidance, but this alone would underscore the merits of this line of reasoning. And the mantra of “shareholder value” would necessarily be weighed more carefully and more completely with other considerations. Quite frankly, all this would explain why ownership, at least in the present economy, is not defined in any way that associates it with responsibility.

Now let’s insert a small example of something that feels like a contrast. In a recent visit to San Francisco, a group of us staying at the Argonaut Hotel asked the doorman for some ideas on a restaurant. This doorman launched into an extended critique of the local choices with this critique ending in a recommendation: Capurro’s. It turns out that it was an inspired recommendation and not just because it was across the street from the hotel. The food was quite good, the service was excellent and the Jazz Trio that was playing was outstanding. At two points in the evening, a gentleman came up to us to ask how we were enjoying our meal and to talk about some of the items we had ordered. As our server noted to us, this was the owner. When we returned to our Hotel, we thanked our doorman, with this being coupled with a tangible token of our gratitude, and he then summed it all up perfectly. The owner at Capurro’s makes it his business to engage the customers and, as our articulate doorman pronounced, “that’s accountability”. Although the scale presents an issue when we set out to extrapolate this example to the larger economy, this is a case where a good product was offered at a good price and delivered with good service – and with the business owner being there to make sure that we, the customers, were happy. What a novel concept!

Popular History at its Best

As any trip into a bookstore will confirm, history has become, of all things, sexy. Of course, this might be wishful thinking on my part and it might really reflect a smouldering need within me to see a subject that has absorbed so much of my energy become fashionable. But these trips into book stores do seem to indicate that the presses are churning out a significant number of historical works with some of these even becoming bestsellers.

Now, as confessed above, I am quite pleased with this trend. I have been able to pick up a great number of these popular histories and thereby supplying my reading material for long trips. These books will typically address a particular period in history and they will usually try to find a novel spin that can give well-worn facts a new significance, or at least currency. Sampling these works has uncovered some interesting, although not too surprising, observations.

One observation is that not all such works are of equal quality. Fortunately, there are a few sign posts that I have found to be helpful in separating the wheat from the chaff and to do so before you part with your money or invest any time. The works that fall into the "to be avoided" category are usually easy to spot. The authors will very often be journalists who are turning their hand to history and expressly setting out to create, and cash in upon, a provocative twist. These works can be deceptive in that the journalist will usually have been supported by some researchers so a decent array of historical details will be pulled into service. But in reading the works, and this will be especially true if you have already been corrupted by some systematic historical studies yourself, it will become increasingly clear that the authors don't in fact know very much about the period into which they are venturing. The material, as a consequence, has an effect similar to eating cotton-candy - diverting but somehow unsatisfying (or worse). So where a work of history has been composed by a professional journalist who has suddenly found an esoteric corner of history to be interesting (or potentially lucrative), then reader beware.

There have been a couple of instances, although more rare, where seasoned academic historians have been enticed to quickly repackage past works in order to tap into the growing market for works of popular history. These are more difficult to spot because it will usually be academic historians who will have the deepest reservoirs of knowledge upon which to draw and quite rightly it would be to these people we would normally turn. One clue will be if the work draws heavily from material published in the past, or if the work has been published in its entirety at some earlier date. It is not so much the prior publication that is the issue as much as the nature of the originally intended audience. If a work was originally written by an academic for academics then at issue will be the readability of the work and very often the measure of intellectual ambition displayed. Academics, within their natural habitat, will be painfully circumspect and tentative and while we applaud this as essential to the advancement of knowledge, it does tend to bleed material of most of its practical usefulness or interest.

What we are discussing here is popular history that, in its best form, will engage today's readers in part by connecting past lessons to our current trials. It should, to my mind, help to ignite the interest of readers to discover more about the past and to build up a due sense of respect, humility and caution when considering how the past relates to the present.

I have recently finished reading a book that I would hold up, with several others, as an exemplar of popular history at its very best. It is "The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World" by Matthew Stewart (See Amazon). The author, while not a practicing academic, does possess a respectable academic pedigree and clearly the work is grounded on his advanced studies of philosophy. The work bristles with the fact that he knows a great deal about his subjects and the period in which they lived. (I was further endeared to Mr. Stewart when I came across an article he wrote for the Atlantic (June 2006) entitled "The Management Myth".) This work is highly readable, engaging, instructive and at times quite entertaining (I recall laughing out loud as Leibniz pursuing his windmill project was likened to the all-too-familiar management consultant). I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in learning a little more about the intellectual landscape of the 17^th century (which I am always encouraging people to do although with only mixed success) or interested in seeing popular history at its very best.

KM Uncertainty Principle

During a Knowledge Management (KM) working group meeting at the Federal Government of Canada, I could not help but notice the length to which KM initiatives must go to justify their existence. KM initiatives will typically seek to make an improvement in how knowledge is acquired, shared and evolved within the organization. It is true that all organizational investments, or one would hope, have to follow some manner of formal process to declare their objectives and how they will know they have arrived at success. These processes usually travel, in larger institutions, under the name of an ‘accountability framework’. In smaller organizations where the tolerance for missteps is necessarily smaller, we would call it the ‘fitting your head into the noose’ framework.

So we will take it as a given that there is a cultural and, at times, an operational need to position initiatives within the accepted ‘accountability framework’ of the organization expected to make the investments. That just seems fair. But in some circumstances, this essential step may in fact eliminate the conditions for success. In these cases, it becomes a form of Catch-22. Upon hearing about a KM initiative studying the relative merits of, and selecting from amongst, various accountability frameworks, it occurred to me that KM may be such an instance.

The premise here is that if steps are taken to formalize a KM initiative specifically to sustain an accountability obligation, its formalization and the resulting investments of energy to implementing that formality, will in fact work against its potential for success.

For those who must live in this type of organizational world, or those that, in general, embrace the ‘formalization’ of business monitoring (results-based management), this premise will seem at best odd, and at worst ill-considered.

But if, as I have argued in my paper on the anatomy of knowledge, there is no deterministic causal link between knowledge and the domain of judgment and action (and therefore results), then any results-based accountability model will be, essentially, missing the point (or to be more precise, creating a fictitious one). If there are no causal links, again in a directly deterministic way, then managing initiatives by causal outcomes will be impossible. If such a management regime is forcefully adopted, then, all energies directed to its implementation will be energies away from the focus, presumably, of KM – being the creation and advancement of shared knowledge. The attempts to align with an accountability framework would, in this light, become tangible impediments to success.

So to summarize, if a KM initiative is squarely focused upon cultivating improved knowledge within a community, then it will not be possible, directly, to measure outcomes in terms of business performance changes. It would be with reference to such changes that a business justification, in the form of a Return-on-Investment (ROI) calculation, would be made. If a KM initiative is soundly structured and can be monitored with reference to these types of measurable outcomes, then it is – by definition – not directed towards knowledge but rather towards some other operational goal. It would thus cease to be a KM initiative or at least insofar as it accommodates this redirection. So in echoing the argument demonstrated by Heisenberg for sub-atomic particles, we have the “KM Uncertainty Principle”.
 
Mercifully, and again by recourse to scientific models, we can stress the complex relationship between knowledge and the emergent operational phenomena that can be measured in the domain of judgment and action where causality is at least somewhat less fundamentally problematic. If changes in knowledge still represent a change in potentiality then the indirect consequences of KM interventions will eventually become observable. But there are many other factors also influencing those observable outcomes so categorically tracing any consequence, whether good or ill, back to KM is still not possible, strictly speaking. Ideally, this should simply remind us that the prudent method for advancing a KM initiative is to position it as a longer term, strategic investment that, like hiring and developing good people, will bear fruit over time.

Image Credit: UT Health Sciences Center (Library)