Knowledge and Belief

Knowledge is an amorphous concept, difficult to pin down. Belief is an equally difficult concept. Yet, since Plato conceptualized knowledge as justified true belief, this particular definition has been the most widely accepted. To know something it must be true, the knower must believe it is true and have evidence (justification) that supports the claim to truthfulness. This was almost universally accepted until Gettier came along in 1963 and through counterexamples showed that this particular view of knowledge does not always hold.

But let us for argument's sake accept knowledge as true justified belief. What then is belief? Is knowledge belief with proof? Is belief knowledge without proof? Neither knowledge nor belief needs to be rational or bear any resemblance to rationality (if that exists). Is knowledge or belief (or both) the way we make sense of things? I'd like to venture that the latter is the crucial question! Knowledge and belief have a lot to do with sensemaking. We construct a plausible reality by generating both knowledge and beliefs.

Sovereignty

The idea of sovereignty may have been the most profound organizational innovation in history. It tied space to legitimacy creating very durable structure.

Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge. How does this happen? There are of course the generally accepted processes of appropriating existing knowledge through absorbing already codified knowledge by reading or being taught in some fashion.

The process that interests me is where something in the ordinary course of events strikes a false note. The normal flow of things is interrupted. Something happens that does not make sense. There is cognitive dissonance - events do not fit into one's mental model of the world. And then, suddenly, there is an insight, a new realisation that offers an explanation for that which made no sense - a wow moment. This is the creation of new knowledge, perhaps often only new to the individual, but sometimes an insight is uncovered that is new to humanity. This is the source of creativity.

Introducing ambiguity into a situation may lead to exactly the process described. This might be a valuable insight for those leading organizations - an enabler for creativity.

Structure and fear

Linking control and fear is no new insight. I don't promise that. What I would like to point out is that hierachies not only operate through fear, needing it for control, but they also seek out social orders wherein fear can be sustainable. That is, one must worry about boundary crossing and its risks continuously just to survive.

I live on an island now. In island cultures large and small, social order must be fairly rigid because anonymity is very hard to realize. That is, borders of a certain sort are essentially a given. But what then do we do with globalization especially through the Internet? We melt of course.

But how can a physical border as definitive as those of an island melt? Through internal segmentation first, and ultimately through loss of common identity and purpose as an island. One sees this to some degree in all islands--Britain for instance. Japan perhaps less so, but it is emerging as globalization rises. Do smaller islands melt slower? Unclear.

Learning forces us to engage across boundaries. Blur results and identities must become patchwork.

Jon Husband has been writing about Management 1.0 and Management 2.0 at his wonderful blog called Wirearchy. I highly recommend it. Not sure how it relates, but I think there is a tipping point rather than a constant tension between Management 1.0 and Management 2.0. That tension plays out in crises. Crisis and structure is an essential topic I hope to explore further soon.

What causes change?

Economists speak of "shocks." Ecologists speak of the unexpected. What is expected? Time is a boundary for our expectations. We expect to not be living on the planet when we are 100 years old. Many of us expect to be here when we would be 75.

Some of that is statistics. We use averages as expectations and yet we are constantly warned by stock brokers not to do so.

Planning is our brain's and culture's response to the unexpected. We predict and try to define path dependencies...that is, force a limited set of outcomes. Still, unexpected consequences are rife.

All this has been summarized as the convenient term "chaos." I'm not sure the term is helpful. It is a bit of a retreat. Where I suspect we need to go is to have a more real-time planning capacity that is informed so we can make decisions with models, past responses and SWOT type inputs rapidly--and without institutional guidelines. That is leading at its pinnacle. We go on, but we spend the bulk of our time enabling action when the stakes are high.

How would one teach a child to be "ready." An adult?