ThinkingShift

I spent most of last week in Wellington, New Zealand running a workshop. But I had one day free and headed off to the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongawera, one of my favourite museums. I was keen to see the exhibition, Egypt: Beyond the Tomb, which is the story of Keku - a 2700 year old mummy of a young girl. The exhibition is the story of Keku’s preparation for her death and the Egyptian belief in the Afterlife. I have always been a closet Egyptologist and spent many pleasant hours looking at everyday artefacts of ancient Egyptian life.

Artefacts speak volumes about a civilisation. Embedded within ancient tools, household items and public or private buildings is knowledge wealth - craft techniques used; shared beliefs about life and death; myths and stories; use of private and public space; burial practices etc. Of particular interest was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which contained specific instructions and spells to help the deceased navigate to the Field of Reeds (the ultimate resting place). Only the correctly mummified had a hope of running free in the Field.

What I found intriguing was how the Scientific method of the past few hundred years - the gathering of observable, empirical, measurable evidence - means that Western society focuses on the NowLife rather than the Afterlife since we are not able to scientifically prove life after death . We engage in various bizarre ways to delay the onset of the inevitable or make us look younger than we care to admit - botox, plastic surgery, latest fad diets. And to help us truly side-step the inevitable, there is always cryonics where you can join a few hundred already cryropreserved humans silently waiting for resurrection at the hands of science.

Ancient Egyptians prepared for death and the Afterlife and took into the tomb funerary figurines or shabtis that would act as substitute workers for the deceased in case labour was required in the Field of Reeds.

Our obsession with youth, beauty and the immediate contrasts sharply with previous civilisations’ concept of Earthly life being but a transitory phase. Of course, various contemporary religions hold to the belief in another level of existence beyond death.

I decided to talk to my good friend, Lalida, who lives in Thailand - a country I have visited many times and particularly like. What do Buddhists believe? she shared the following with me:

There’s a wonderful Buddhist story about at a woman who lost a child, and she brings this child in her arms to the Buddha. And she begins to ask him all these questions; she wants his help. And the Buddha says to her, “Bring me back a mustard seed from a house that has not experienced death, and we will have a long conversation” And so she frantically begins to run from house to house through the village, knocking on every door. And at every door that’s opened she asks, “Have you experienced death in this family, in this home?” And exhausted at the end of the day she comes back to the Buddha open-handed and empty handed because every household had experienced one death or another. And she began to learn the nature of the impermanence of life, and began to let go so that she could fully live.

Stories as we know carry meaning. Within this story is the essence of Buddhist belief - life on Earth is but a transitionary state.

And then Lalida told me:

Good Buddhist shall always think about the death since it’s inevitable. Thinking about the death is very useful because:

• you will not be careless since you don’t know when it will come. Then you should do the right/good things now;
• you will not do bad things ie being greedy, getting angry since it’s useless;
• rich people, poor people, all of them can’t take any money with them when they die;
• when it’s time, you will face the death bravely since you understand it’s a part of life cycle
• you will not be too sad when the one you love pass away because you know everyone’s life is equal

Despite a lack of ability to scientifically prove that there is some form of life after death, Thai Buddhists share a similar belief to that of Keku and her family in ancient Egypt.

As Western society worships at the altar of youth, beauty and money, it might do us all some good to spend an afternoon in the company of ancient artefacts that remind us that, along the path of progress, we took a wrong step and ended up obsessing over the Now and not the After.

If you’ve spent the last few holidays aimlessly wandering around the Masai Mara in Kenya or the Kruger National Park in South Africa looking for that elusive cheetah or that darting shadow of a leopard, then you can look forward to a new type of holiday. Forget the cheetah and the leopard and take a tour around the Kibera slum in Kenya. Whip your digital camera out and snap poverty-stricken human animals in various stages of despair; tread the well-worn slum paths strewn with rubbish and take a whiff of that intoxicating “eau de sewerage” smell.

Honestly, I have not come across a more bizarre or disturbing article than this on slum tourism in Kenya. What on earth??? I’m not sure I can truly imagine anyone who would want to tour the slum so they could proudly say they’d been close to poverty! not to mention the embarrassment, humiliation and indignity that residents of Kibera must suffer as tourists (presumably dripping with accoutrements of global brands) rush through the area asking residents to line up so their photo can be taken.

As a quote in the article said: “…… how do Kenyans themselves feel about this back-handed compliment as the custodians of backwardness, filth, misery and absolute deprivation?”.

We can only hope slum tourism is not about to become the next big tourist thing and that people can come up with far more constructive and helpful ways to alleviate poverty.

The notion of trust is occupying my current thoughts. What does it mean to say we trust someone? or we trust a particular source? the success of knowledge management is often said to rely on a foundation of trust - trusted relationships and sources result in collaborative behaviour, mutual commitment etc which in turn lead to better knowledge sharing and transfer.

I think a number of concepts can be linked to trust (a) vulnerability - a decision to rely on another makes the trustor vulnerable to the actions of the other; (b) evaluation and prediction - the trustor comes to an assessment of how trustworthy the other person is and comes to a decision to trust or otherwise without the ongoing need to monitor the actions of the other (c) reliance - an intention to rely on and delegate to the other, which creates a relationship of willingness and intentionality; (d) risk - willingly placing oneself in a relationhip with the expectation that no harm will result (e) interdependence - creating a relationship of mutual commitment and responsibility.

A brief look at other languages surfaces further linked concepts. The Portuguese word for “trust” for example is “confiança” and the French is “confiance” - both imply the concepts of confidence; security; intimacy; familiarity; faithfulness; loyalty; dependability; or certainty. That is, a belief in somebody or something and this belief results in feelings of security, confidence etc in the strength of the trustee/trustor relationship. This relationship rests on a foundation of care and concern.

Etymologically, “trust” derives from Middle English but is more likely of Scandinavian origin, with the Old Norse word “traust” akin to “strong”.

Trust has a number of different bases I think. Trust can be knowledge-based - another person has expertise or experience that we feel can be strongly relied on; trust can be personality or character-based - the character, ability and past performance of someone leads us to place confidence in the other; trust can be legally based - a property interest held by one person on behalf of another or corporations formed by a legal agreement. Legally-based trust is confined by a legal framework that will reprimand the trustee if trust is breached.

To be in a state of trust implies I think three states (1) distrust; (2) conditional trust; or (3) unconditional trust. Is the human state to firstly distrust, then move to conditional trust (a willingness to transact with each other as long as each behaves appropriately and reliably); and finally end up in a state of unconditional trust (confidence in the other’s values that is repeatedly demonstrated by behavioural interactions that result in no harm)?

And what sort of trust does it take for knowledge management to succeed? given that contemporary organisations are more often than not “blame cultures” that are constantly restructured, does fear and uncertainty on the part of employees mean that a state of distrust is the norm? trust implies a level of risk taking (ie risking that placing your confidence in someone or something will be a positive experience) and trust reveals itself over time, through repeated behavioural interactions. Trust is fragile and can be easily destroyed by rumour, gossip, clash of values, political agendas etc.

In terms of KM and trust, I think we need to explore the target of the trust - do we trust the corporation or do we trust the individual as a human being (and disregarding job title or status)? If we look at knowledge creation; knowledge transfer; and knowledge use, we might be able to come up with some preliminary assumptions:

(1) Knowledge creation process: rests on organisational trust - a confidence that the organisation values fresh inputs and ideas; tolerates mistakes and learns from these; and that credit will be given to the knowledge creator. It also implies individual trust - the other person or team you work with will value your own body of knowledge, contribute to the stock and generate new collective knowledge.

(2) Knowledge transfer process: sharing your body of knowledge, which has accumulated over many years of failures and successes, is risky. What will other people do with it? will sharing my knowledge mean that I am no longer the ‘expert’? will the trustee (ie the person who receives the knowledge) act ethically with it? understand the context in which it was created?

There may be policies and procedures at the organisational level for knowledge transfer and to some extent an individual can rely on these eg contributions to the corporate intranet that follow a specified validation process. But at the individual level, successful knowledge transfer relies on conditional and unconditional trust. These states of trust are built in the shadows of the organisation or at the edges - in communities of practice; informal professional ties between work colleagues; shared experiences of employees.

It is here that trust in its various guises is most vulnerable. It can be betrayed by the simple act of misusing (even unintentionally) someone’s ideas or not acknowledging a team member’s contribution.

(3) knowledge use process: organisations consist of long-term and newer employees; less experienced and more experienced individuals. This milieu often results in the “not invented here” syndrome, where someone’s knowledge, perhaps derived most recently from another organisation, is regarded with suspicion or seen as competitive.

For this process, organisational trust is important. The organisation needs to accept and engage with new ideas and accept that knowledge derived from outside its boundaries is equally or more valuable than its own. Knowledge-based trust will also be important - if I am about to use someone’s stock of knowledge, has this person shown themselves and their expertise in the past to be credible?

In a further post, I will explore what the decision-making process might be when we choose to trust someone or something. In the meantime, I’ll finish this post with some questions:

• are we a more mistrustful society now than in previous times? and, if so, what is the cause?
• what level of trust will we need to place in our Governments and institutions (and even our fellow human beings) to overcome climate change?
• will the tiger in the photo accompanying this post be able to trust that mankind can save the many dwindling species of this planet?

A bit like the startled looking possum in the tree in the photo accompanying this post, I was ambushed by David Gurteen at a recent conference where I keynoted :)- While trying to summarise my thoughts on KM and corporate sustainability in 1.5 minutes, I started to think about how I might get revenge on David! you can watch the video here.

I have been exploring the linkages between KM and corporate sustainability - what might be the role KM has to play in moving an organisation towards sustainability? you can read my preliminary ideas here Corporate sustainability and KM

I have been reading Roger Atwood’s book Stealing History about the illicit trade in antiquities. Atwood, in a book that is a mix of detective work and historical facts, illuminates the little known world of tomb raiders and the international antiquities dealers who enrich themselves at the expense of humanity’s cultural heritage. Despairingly, I read about looters and plunderers who dig up ancient objects they know will fetch a high price on the black market and who tread on human bones or carelessly shatter pottery that could give archaeologists an understanding of cultural context. Not to mention Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, who spirited off with the so-called Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Greece during the 1800s. The heart-wrenching part of the book for me was reading about how archaeologist, Walter Alva, discovered tombs of the Moche elite that tomb raiders had missed after ripping apart a nearby tomb. The Moche were contemporaneous with the Mayans in Peru. Like any good archaeologist, Alva knew that excavating objects in situ and noting surrounding items is critical to the interpretation of objects and the culture that created them. Alva discovered necklaces of fanged cat’s faces; golden beads with spider web patterns; golden rattles that tinkled when worn at the waist; the body of a young girl sprawled face down in the tomb’s cold interior. They told the story of a culture that was capable of creating extraordinarily beautiful and intricate jewellery and artefacts yet, at the same time, was a society capable of bloodthirsty acts of human sacrifice. The Moche’s religious beliefs and what some of the artefacts represented may only ever be partly known to us thanks to unscrupulous and careless thieves who do their work in the shadows of the night.

This led me to reflect on how future archaeologists will view 21st Century life. As they dig up grave sites from our time period, here’s a preliminary list of what they might find and how they’ll interpret what we stood for:

* skeletons of soldiers and weapons found in the area that was known as Iraq - after thousands of years of progression, 21st C people were still war-mongering
* tattered magazines showing (mostly) women with oddly frozen faces and impossibly straight pearly white teeth - 21st C people mutilated themselves with primitive chemicals, underwent bizarre plastic surgery rituals; and worshipped at the altar of Hollywood
* large caverns of space, sometimes with multiple levels - 21st C people congregated in spaces known as “shopping malls” for “retail therapy” because they had lost connectivity with fellow humans and with nature
* a family frozen in time due to a volcanic eruption, sitting in front of a large box - 21st C people had something called a TV or plasma into which they stared for hours on end; perhaps this was a form of therapy as their world was not going so well with climate change, poverty, pollution and other assorted evils…so they had to amuse themselves somehow.

But they may also find beautiful architectural constructions like the one from Thailand in the photo accompanying this post and they’ll conclude perhaps that 21st C people were also capable of astonishing feats of beauty and gentleness when they took the time to stop, think and respect the people and nature they co-existed with.

Approximately 2500 experts, authors and reviewers from 130 countries can’t all be wrong. Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released their report “Climate Change 2007″in Paris. And guess what? it’s a 90% certainty that global warming has been caused by human activities. The report clearly demonstrates a causal link that should make the naysayers finally admit “yes” the planet is in serious trouble. The report found: 1) The temperature in the atmosphere and the oceans has grown warmer and can be expected to continue to do so. 2) The amount of greenhouse gasses, mainly CO2 and to some extent methane, have increased markedly since 1750. 3) These gasses are the most significant cause for the temperature increase. 4) Human activity is primarily responsible.

You can check out the report here. Governments of the world - are you listening?