Perspective, Perception, Reality

http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html



Must-watch video. Good businesses and ideas find the sweet spot between technology, economics and psychology. 


Extract: I think it's because there's an imbalance, an asymmetry, in the way we treat creative, emotionally-driven psychological ideas versus the way we treat rational, numerical, spreadsheet-driven ideas. If you're a creative person, I think quite rightly, you have to share all your ideas for approval with people much more rational than you. You have to go in and you have to have a cost-benefit analysis, a feasibility study, an ROI study and so forth. And I think that's probably right. But this does not apply the other way around. People who have an existing framework, an economic framework, an engineering framework, feel that actually logic is its own answer. What they don't say is, "Well the numbers all seem to add up, but before I present this idea, I'll go and show it to some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something better." And so we, artificially I think, prioritize what I'd call mechanistic ideas over psychological ideas.




Extract: One of the great mistakes, I think, of economics is it fails to understand that what something is, whether it's retirement, unemployment, cost, is a function, not only of its amount, but also its meaning.


Extract: Now von Mises said that modern economists make exactly the same mistake with regard to advertising and marketing. He says, if you run a restaurant, there is no healthy distinction to be made between the value you create by cooking the food and the value you create by sweeping the floor. One of them creates, perhaps, the primary product -- the thing we think we're paying for -- the other one creates a context within which we can enjoy and appreciate that product. And the idea that one of them should actually have priority over the other is fundamentally wrong.

Knowledge and Human Stupidity

I came across this article - The basic laws of human stupidity - many weeks ago via Twitter (apologies, but I forgot who had tweeted about it. I think it might have been @beastoftraal). It took me a while to find some time to read the entire article as it is a pretty longish one. But believe me, once I started reading it, I just couldn't stop till I was done. It engaged me as much as a ball of thread might engage a curious cat - the whole experience was playful, interesting and thought-provoking. It delighted me, excited me, made me think, reintroduced me to the element of fun in Economics, and had me grinning ear to ear for quite a while. The article has flavours of social economics, psychology, human behaviour and humor. Obviously, I also attempted to relate these laws to the field of knowledge management. More on that later ;-) 


I immediately wanted to share it on this blog but then I kept procrastinating on the pretext of writing something around it rather than just sharing the raw link (for which we anyway have Twitter and FB). But I think I overestimated my creative potential. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that nothing I can ever say will add value to the brilliance, constructive sarcasm and the subtle joy that the article exudes. It is a perfect essay that leaves no point unexplored and, what's more, every bit of the exploration that the author -  Carlo M. Cipolla - engages in is a total delight to read and contemplate. Trying to interpret or comment on it would be like commenting on, say, the Himalayas. Not easy at all, uh? 


I've become as big a fan of Cipolla as of Wodehouse! :-) It's a pity Cipolla doesn't seem to have capitalized on his sense of humor and awesome thinking to write as many books or 'stories' as Plum did.

From the article link....

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I cannot, of course, avoid saying how I relate this to KM. No, you can't kill me! Shut your eyes if you don't want to read anything on KM. Here's the thing - I think knowledge management's objectives are (or should be) to get people to see the merit of remaining in or moving into the "intelligent" quadrant (you must read the article to understand what I mean) and looking for mutual benefits as both a taker and giver of knowledge.  I think it is a good example of the intention to exhibit human intelligence, as referred to in the article, because it is about yielding a gain to yourself while causing a gain to others as well and, as we know, KM revolves around the combination of sharing, learning and collaborating (working together to achieve something). 


At the risk of sounding somewhat obsessed, pursuing Knowledge Management in its truest sense, I believe, will put us all - in due course of time - in the I (Intelligent) block and help the organization and society as a whole (even though sometimes it may seem like we are in the Helpless block whenever we come across Bandits who only want to use our material but not share anything that they may have created or discovered). :-)

A *Formula* for Intellectual Infrastructure

It is amazing how you see links to what you truly believe in and are passionate about in just about everything - which at first seems unrelated - you come across. I took a break from work last week during which I caught up with a book called "Small is Beautiful" by EF Schumacher. I was thrilled to find some material for this blog therein and more importantly food for thought.

Schumacher's book was written in the early 1970s and focuses on the importance of preserving the environment through appropriate economic policies and actions. He questions the then economic policies and wonders if our obsession with economic growth at the cost of the environment and people's real needs (employment, manageable growth rate, development of rural areas) will leave us in dire straits. How true. Today, more than 3 decades later, one of the most critical issues for all governments and human beings on earth is the depletion of natural resources, global warming and unabated industrial growth that comes at severe intangible costs.

In one of the chapters, Schumacher talks about the need for an "intellectual infrastructure" strategy in order to help developing countries. And it has an uncanny resemblance to a typical knowledge management strategy, in my opinion. 

Schumacher's intellectual infrastructure plan reads as follows: (Rephrased Extracts)

1. Communication - To enable workers to know what other workers are doing and to facilitate direct exchange of information

2. Information Brokerage - To assemble and distribute relevant information. The essence being not to hold all the information in one centre but to hold information on information or know-how on know-how

3. Feed-back - Transmission of problems from the field to the groups where the solutions exist

4. Sub-structures - Creation and co-ordination of action groups and teams for assistance (champions) within the field - that is, within the target audience themselves

It takes me back to my reflection that KM strategies need the three Tipping Point Cs - Communication, Champions and Context.

What do you think? Does your KM strategy follow these principles and ideas?

Prosperity Index

The last time I got really involved and excited about deciphering and analyzing such a matrix was, I think, when I worked on some assignments in the Economics class. Thanks to MT for pointing to this intriguing report.

Believe me, this index can really challenge some of your beliefs if you're looking at it for the first time. Some of the discoveries as reflected in the Index reminds me of the proverbial battle between perception and reality (reality here means government-generated numbers and surveys which, of course, can also be challenged). I think it is fascinating to see the correlation between the last two parameters of the index - Religious Freedom vs Religious Belief. (I find the whole concept of including 'Social Supports' parameters in this index to be a very worthwhile idea.). What can possibly surprise you is the discovery that India does well on the 'Low Unemployment' column and does not do as well as we might have generally imagined on the 'Religious Belief' column.....what with India being considered the spiritual capital of the world. Australia tops the overall ranking. Singapore tops the Economic Competitiveness ranking (and, of course, the 'Commercializing Innovation' ranking). South Korea's high ranking on the 'Commercializing Innovation' column goes a long way to reiterate how the country has leaped into the limelight over the past decade or so. India does not do well in the 'Better Education' column! :-( And no surprises on discovering that European countries are great on the 'Comparative Liveability' parameters.

There's no end to the number of indirect discoveries and conclusions one can arrive at based on each of these columns and, of course, based on correlations between some of the columns. If you happen to make some interesting discoveries, please do leave your thoughts here.

PS: Can't help wondering about the direct and indirect implications of the countries' performance in the 'Better Education' and 'Community Life' columns, in the context of KM and Collaboration....! ;-)