Tag Archives: Dialogue

How To Tell Your Story Visually, Using Social Network Analysis (SNA)

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In my previous blog post, I mentioned about the importance of analysing social network to design better knowledge management initiative and collaboration. In this post, as promised, I’m going to reveal how to administer social network analysis (SNA) without conducting the dreaded SNA survey.

Before I begin, I would like you to cast away your natural tendency, or should I say the academic-beast within you?, to get optimal and all-encompassing results. SNA, in my opinion, is not about maximising the result, but it is about satisficing – that is getting adequate result that meets our needs. What I’m trying to say here, is this: there is no point of administering SNA in a grand-scale and generic way! You would encounter difficulties in interpreting various relationships among the people, since relationship evolves over time while SNA is nothing but a static snapshot of relationships.

To pin-down the meaning of relationships so that you could analyse it before it evolves, you need to specify the context for the SNA. Think about your own work environment, or a situation that you are familiar with. Which collaboration that doesn’t makes sense to you? Be specific on this. Identify: (a) What you are trying to accomplish; (b) Who the collaborators are and their skills; (c) What tasks are involved.

Once you have done that, the next thing you need to do, is to change your perspective from SNA as an analytical tool, to SNA as a design tool. This has two big implications:

  1. Storytelling. Rather than administering SNA from a third-party eye, why not using SNA as a means to tell your story? That implies, you don’t have to come up with questions that suit  everybody’s work environment. Heck, you don’t even need to get accurate depiction of the social network. It doesn’t matter! You just need to draw up the social network from your perspective. Your story!
  2. Building collaboration prototypes. Once your story is out, you could get others to tell their story. Once everyone’s story is heard, the collaborators should engage in dialogue on how to collaborate better (build collaboration prototypes), by taking into consideration: (a) the team’s resources; (b) the members’ expertise; and (c) the role of influential members. For example, you could get better collaboration by building capacity, or increasing the influence of a certain member.

Let me illustrate what I meant, using a personal example.

I was in a team that tasked to build a website for an organisation-wide learning event. Now, as we all know, website requires planning, content writing and programming skills. It so happened that, in our team, only me (R) had the programming skills (ok, it is not programming skills, it is a skill to use adobe dreamweaver). But, there were two of us – J and R – who had the software installed on our laptop.

So, I thought (remember, I’m talking about my perspective here) the collaboration that happened did not make any sense, because the two persons-in-charge of the project: J and K, should be empowered to upload the content to the website directly. Getting me as the “content uploader guy” (as mentioned, I’m the only person who knows how to do it), would increase the cost of the collaboration. In other words, the collaboration could be done without me, if someone else in the team knew how to use the software. Lesser collaborators, same result. Definitely, an increase in team’s productivity!

Ok, the only problem was: how to communicate this to my boss. Imagine me saying: “boss, can you exclude me from this project? I’ve got more important thing to do”. I think she would kill me. So, I decided to use SNA as a visual storytelling technique. First, I drew this up:

The light blue arrows represented reporting lines. The red arrows represented the content flow. The brown arrows represented the ideas flow. The green arrows represented planning and decision making. The orange arrows represented access to software.

Second, I defined influence in this social network as the number of inward light blue arrows. So, YY was very influential, since she had 5 inward light blue arrows (guess, who my boss is). The second most-influential person was K, since she had 2 inward light blue arrows. The third most-influential person was R (that is, me). Although R didn’t have anybody reporting to him, he could consider adobe dreamweaver reporting to him, since he was the only one who knew how to use it. The rest of the team had equal influence.

Third, I downloaded and installed a free SNA software – SocNetV. To depict the social network in the software, I defined influence as the node’s size. So the more influential a person was, the bigger his/her node was, in the social network. And then I merged the other arrows into one line.

Here was my social network:

I used yellow color for K and J node, because they were the persons-in-charge of the project. While I depicted adobe dreamweaver, as a green square, because it is a software not a person.

The good thing about having social network nicely drawn-up was, my colleagues and I could immediately saw that the collaboration wasn’t an effective one, because:

  • J, as one of the persons-in-charge of the project, should be more empowered. In other words, J ought to have more influence in the team.
  • R could take more responsibilities, considering he was the third most-influential team member.
  • If R left the team, nobody would be able to utilise adobe dreamweaver. R had an important knowledge that he ought to share with the rest of the team.

Of course, there were many other things that I could interpret from the above social network. But that’s outside the scope of this blog post.

Most importantly, I have shown you that you can use SNA as a visual storytelling tool and prototyping tool to design better collaboration. That way, you can use SNA as a conversation (dialogue) starter.

How to have a quality conversation and preserve relationship

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As Knowledge Management (KM) professionals, we have to converse and build relationship with people. This may not be easy for most of us – as we need to juggle between various roles / identities. We need to be a friend, so that we know what our colleagues’ knowledge needs are. And we also need to be a gardener, to cultivate knowledge sharing and learning culture (as a gardener, we may need to removes some weeds). Therein lies the problem – conflict may arise and relationships may turn sour.

How can we maintain positive relationship? can we have a quality conversation with our colleagues? I believe we can.  To do so, we must have a keen insight on people’s characters (I’ll offer some tips on how we may do so in later paragraph). Once we know ’how people perceive the world’, we will be able to manage perceptions. We need to manage perceptions to ensure that conversations do not take the wrong turn and become heated debate.

Although, debate, or conflict, sometimes is necessary to spot the ‘error of our judgment’ and thus allows us to gain insight through conversations, we should be cautious not to let a debate becomes a heated debate. We do not want a heated debate because it will cultivate an ‘us-against-them’ mentality – and once this mentality forms, opportunity to build trust and gain common understanding will be lost.

It worth underlining that conflict – whether it is small or big - is risky and potentially detrimental to relationship buildings. But, we also know that it is impossible to avoid conflict entirely. So what should we do to manage conflict and preserve relationship? Let’s take a clue from how Singapore manages her relationship with China. As PM Lee Hsien Loong described it:

“It’s not possible for your relationship with China to be uncomplicated. There will be tensions, there will be differences from time to time, frictions. But it’s vital to avoid a clash and both sides have a lot to gain by working together and should manage issues with a view to the longer term.” (taken from Channel News Asia, 13 July 2010).

The key learning point here is: disagreements and tensions are ok, but avoid clash at all cost.  This holds true not only for the asian people, but also for the western folks. As Dale Carnegie described it in his classic bestseller ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ ,

Criticizing people won’t get you anywhere.  Naturally, people don’t blame themselves for anything – no matter how wrong they may be.

But what about all those advices that say ‘debate should be encouraged’ or ‘conflict is good’? They are good advices. BUT you need to know that debate, and especially conflict, takes a toll on relationship. So before you engage in a debate, you should have a strong relationship with the person, i.e. never debate with people you’ve just met – unless you have no interest in building relationship with that person. And after the debate, remember to ‘patch back’ your relationship.

Let’s return to the point on having a keen insight on people’s character. The thing about ‘seeing the world through the other’s lenses’ is - it has to be quick. This means we can rule out getting people to do personality tests like Myers-Biggs so that we can ‘understand them better’. Personally, I think it’s hard for people (other than the HR folks) to ask others to spend some time doing a personality test. Moreover, we can always ‘game’ the personality test so that it reflects who we want to be, instead of who we are.

I believe people’s character is not fixed, but rather it is always changing from time to time depending on the situational context. So people may change their character, especially if there is a disconfirmation (shock). There are plenty of examples of a criminal (bad character) who becomes a pastor (good character) after he serves his jail time (disconfirmation). In this example, the situational context changes too, he may meet pastors (who evangelize in jails) and is away from his partner-in-crime (who gives bad influence).

Though people may change their character, it does not mean we can change people’s characters by ‘sitting down and having a quality conservation with them’. Only disconfirmation (shock) can propels change in people’s characters / attitudes / behaviors. Having a quality conversation with people is definitely not a disconfirmation.

So, here are two tips on how we can ‘see people’s character’ and thus allows us to have a quality conversation and steer clear from heated debate and conflict.

  • Observe repeated words, behaviors, or habits. If you can find a pattern, then it pretty much describes who that person really is.
  • Notice their choice of words, especially when they are using ‘loaded’ words – those are words with strong emotions. For example, a colleague of mine said, “we should do something to shut her (another colleague in other department) mouth up“. The underlined words are the ‘loaded’ words as they reflect a strong emotion to avoid criticisms from a colleague in other department. The ‘loaded’ words also hint that the person who said them, is someone who has strong concern of ‘not looking bad in front of others.’

How to Learn from Mistakes

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We can learn from mistakes as we can from successes. This is a conventional wisdom espoused in many Knowledge Management (KM) textbooks. And, as Jim Collins – the author of Good to Great puts it: ‘Good is the enemy of great’, therefore there is no doubt that mistakes carry important lessons. However, capturing knowledge from mistakes is not easy – as nobody wants to admit their failure. And to complicate matters, it is not always obvious who (or what) is at fault. The key here, to capture knowledge from mistakes, is  conducting dialogue among parties involved. But it is going to be difficult primarily because of two main reasons:

  1. Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). It is our tendency to blame people than system – and none of us is immune to this tendency. Consider the following scenario: If a new staff make a mistake, then it is his / her fault. The new person ‘should be more pro-active’ and ‘show interest in the job’ - by ‘asking questions’ to their seniors. The new person ‘should read’ the standard operating procedures (SoPs). And the list of ‘shoulds’ can go on (all of the ‘shoulds’ are pointing to the new guy). But, what seems obvious to the seniors may not be the case for the new staff. See if the new person know what to ask, or where the SoPs are located. Chances are, he / she may not know.  So, the problem may not lie with the new staff, but with the system that does not allow new staff to quickly learn ‘how people do things around here.’ The company may want to re-examine their mentoring scheme.
  2. We attach different meanings to words (or events). We see things differently because of our education, experience, family, religious and cultural background. Consider the following words: integrity, bad person, and innovation. We may think we understand what these words means, and others have the same ‘interpretations’ of the words as we have. But, as the online feud between Elvin Ng and Guo Liang (both are well known TV personalities in Singapore) illustrates, people may have different interpretations of the same words. What ‘integrity’ and ‘bad person’ means for Elvin are not what they means for Guo Liang.

So, what can KM professionals do? To get around FAE, we need to separate people from problem by asking ourselves ‘sack test’. Ask ourselves, ‘if we get rid of this person, will his / her replacement likely to repeat the mistake?’ if yes, then the system may be at fault (and for majority of problems, the root cause is the system). To prevent disagreements around ‘different meanings to words’, we – at all cost – should do two things: (1) refrain from judging another person’s character and challenging their understanding of the event (or words); (2) explore how the other person ‘see the world’. Telling another person that they are ‘bad’ or have ‘no integrity’ – for example – is not going to ‘put us in the other person’s shoes’. So does, for example, commenting that a process is not innovative when someone think it is.

In short, if we are serious about learning from mistake, we need to:

  • Separate people from problem. Applying systems thinking can help us to see the whole issue in a more holistic manner.
  • refrain from judging, and see ‘the world through the other person’ eyes’

The above points are easier said than done. But here is the thing: knowledge sticks in people’s head. And as KM professionals, we need to extract knowledge from people’s head. And this means we need to engage in a dialogue to build common ground, i.e. if there is no common ground, then there is no knowledge to capture. Dialogue is messy and it is certainly not easy, but knowing and practicing its principles can help us to communicate better and build trust.

Lessons from the Times Square Failed Bomb Attempt

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Recently we learned a failed act of terrorism in New York in the Unites States of America. The paragraph below summarizes the incident.

On 1st May, a crude car bomb was discovered in the Times Square in New York. Fortunately, the bomb did not ignite. On 3rd May, a naturalised United States (US) citizen of Pakistani descent – Faisal Shahzad – was held responsible for the Times Square failed bomb attempt. He was taken off from a Dubai-bound airline at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

During the frantic 53 hours that the authorities spent to make sense of the clues, four important facts stand out:

  1. Shahzad did not know that the M88 fireworks – one of the components he used to assemble the car bomb – would not ignite one another. Thus, the bomb failed to detonate.
  2. As a routine procedure, the Custom and Border Protection recorded Shahzad’s unregistered prepaid phone number when he returned from Pakistan. The agency shared this information with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As a result the investigators were able to trace the number’s owner – Shahzad – after they learned about the number from a woman who sold her car to Shahzad.
  3. The airline he was flying, Emirates, failed to act on an electronic message notifying all carriers to check the no-fly list for an important added name. That meant lost opportunities to flag him when he made a reservation and paid for his ticket in cash several hours before departure.
  4. An FBI surveillance team had lost track of him, before he drove to the airport. As a result, the investigators did not aware that Shahzad was planning to fly abroad until a final passage list was sent to the Customs and Border Protection agency minutes before takeoff.

The incident had a happy ending – no one was injured, the Times Square was not damaged and the officials managed to identify and eventually capture Shahzad before he left the US. It was a triumph for the US government and a defeat for terrorism.

However, this did not mean we could assume that we are in safe hands and can carry on with our ‘business-as-usual’ attitude.  It is important to treat the incident as a near-miss incident since Shahzad nearly got away. Any near-miss incident carries valuable lessons which we can learn from.

Clearly, there is a mixture of luck, good collaboration, and a missed opportunity. The New York residents are lucky because Shahzad could have used a more ‘deadly’ component than M88 fireworks to assemble the car bomb and he could have changed his phone number. In addition, the government officials collaborate well because they shared important information like Shahzad’s unregistered phone number and the no-fly list. On a less positive note, the Emirates staff could have checked the no-fly list more often.

Implications for Knowledge Workers

It is conspicuous to say that there is a room for improvement in the way the US government officials handled the incident. What may not seem obvious are the implications of the incident for the citizens of the world, including knowledge workers. As we move towards knowledge-based economy, the incident teaches us (the knowledge workers) several obvious, but often forgotten, lessons:

  • Don’t assume that we ‘know everything’. Thankfully, the bomb did not ignite because Shahzad used the wrong component, and he did not consult an expert in bomb making. Shahzad ‘thought’ he knew how to make a car bomb. This did not mean that terrorists like Shahzad ought to learn proper knowledge transfer techniques, but rather knowledge workers should learn from all mistakes, regardless who committed them.
  • Share information, no matter how trivial, with others. Who could have foreseen that seemingly innocuous sharing of phone number of people returning from Pakistan, would lead to the failed Times Square bomber’s identity.
  • Make use of shared information. Shahzad managed to board the plane because the Emirates staff did not cross-check his name with the names of people on the no fly list. Luckily, as is routine, an analyst in the Custom and Border Protection did so and informed the relevant authority.

Furthermore, there is a need to expunge the finger-pointing habit and inculcate the learning culture, which would allow us to learn not only from the good stuff, but also from the sore points. A good way to start is through dialogue – a conversation among equals that allows all parties involved to discuss ideas and solve problem together. Unfortunately, in the Times Square failed car bomb incident, there is no dialogue among the officials – which could have explained security lapses that allowed Shahzad to board the plane. Instead of conducting fruitful dialogue sessions, the officials are either busy ‘defending’ themselves, or focusing only on the positive side of the story.

If we are serious about capturing knowledge and learning from past experience, then we need to conduct dialogue sessions. Capturing knowledge via dialogue is not going to be easy, and as a matter of fact, Dialogue is perilous, especially when accountability is required. However, there is no better alternative to capture tacit knowledge, since it is embedded in people’s head. Thus, getting people to converse and to exchange their thoughts openly in a safe environment is more important than ever.

Reference:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/times_square_bomb_attempt_may_1_2010/index.html

Social Identity, Debate, and Dialogue

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There are various reasons of why people form groups, however it can be argued that the main reason is the satisfaction of needs. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illuminates the breadth of human needs.

While forming a group implies an effort to fulfill human needs,  groups formation correlates with inter-group conflicts. Some of these conflicts are due to limited resources that are shared among the groups. But, a more interesting type of group conflicts is conflict, or to a lesser extent – disagreement due to perceived differences in identity.

Identity Crisis in France

In France – a nation with one of the finest records in defending equality and racial harmony, its citizens are debating on national identity, and the meaning of being a French. At the center of the debate is the French Muslims who regard themselves as loyal to France, but less than half of the other Frenchmen believe in these professions of loyalty.  It is worth to underline that France’s national identity is a matter of perception – the in-group (Non-muslims France) sees the out-group (Muslims France) as not being French enough. The debate on “burka” illustrates this point. Sarkozy, in a recent speech, stated that “burka” in not welcomed in France.

Social Identity Theory

The disagreement on national identity that sparked heated debate among the Frenchmen could be rationalized by Social Identity Theory, which states that people are willing to give up their personal value in order to be identified with their group. But along with this acquired social identity – that promotes “we” instead of “I”, the in-group members will tend to stereotype and degrade out-group members, in order to elevate their group status, i.e. perceive their group as superior to others.

Debate or Dialogue?

Jonathan Eyal in recent Straits Times article (refer to ref no 1) suggested that the current nation-wide debate is beneficial for France, because by avoiding any discussion on the subject (of national identity), France’s ruling class has allowed extremist political parties to use the country’s national symbols as part of their campaign of hate. However, I beg to differ. A debate is focused on finding who is right and it is not constructive. A more effective form of conversation that can bridge differences is a dialogue. Unlike a debate, a dialogue is focused on building common grounds, collaborative, and assuming that many people have pieces of the answer.

Conducting a successful dialogue by no means an easy task, especially if each party has strong “us (in-group) against them (out-group)” mentality. However, a regular “forced” interaction though common activities, and an appeal to superordinate goals may reinforce common ground among the parties and therefore, increase the likelihood of successful dialogue. It takes time and resources to reap the benefits of of a dialogue.

References:

  1. Eyal, J. (2009). Colour-Blind France Faces Identity Crisis. Straits Times, 14 Nov 09.
  2. Korte, R. F. (2007). A Review of Social Identity Theory with Implications for Training and Development. Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol 31, No 3, pp 166 – 180.
  3. Gerzon, M. (2006). Moving Beyong Debate: Start a Dialogue. Taken 29 Nov 09, from: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5351.html