Quelling the Rise of Terrorism: The KM Way

Posted on December 21, 2010

Another day and yet another news of terrorism. An Iraqi-born Swedish citizen, Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, 28, blew up his car, then himself, in Stockholm, Sweden. I think I’m starting to get used to hearing “a nice-and-quiet muslim man got radicalised and blown himself up”. This may seem as another terrorism news for you, but quelling the rise of militant islam is a wicked problem – which every KMer should be interested in.

The fact that there are: (1) ”Al-Qaeda-inspired” terrorist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiah (JI), AQAP (Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula) and (2) “self-radicalised” terrorists like Taimour – the Stockholm suicide bomber – means the rise of militant islam is a systemic problem, i.e. wicked problem, rather than contained problem.

Unfortunately, wicked problems have no clear solution. The then US president, George W. Bush, attempted to quell terrorism by “disrupting” the terrorists operations in Afghanistan. Almost 10 years passed since then, and yet terrorism remains a global threat and it is as vibrant as ever. Now, the global citizens have to contend with the growing threats of “home-grown” terrorism.

So what went wrong? sure, all of us could point finger at Bush and said “this is his fault!” But surely KMers could do better than just looking for someone to blame. For the record: I’m not a Bush fan. But, I think Bush made an “honest mistake” that all leader made at some point of their career. Many of us could share an anecdote of leaders who look for a “quick-fix”, only to discover the unintended consequences later on. If there is anything to learn from Bush’s failed war on terrorism, it would be this: Stop looking for quick fixes to solve wicked problems!

The issue of terrorism is basically a war of ideology. Having “zero tolerance” towards all non-muslims (radical islam) at one end, and living side-by-side with the non-muslims (moderate islam) at the other end. Promoting moderate Islam, is akin to promoting KM in the organisations because the change-required involves getting people to adopt a certain behaviors. So, here is how KMers would advise politicians / relevant authorities on quelling the rise of terrorism:

1. Identify champions - role models that exhibits behavior that we want to promote, for e.g. religious tolerance, knowledge sharing (in KM, we refer to them as knowledge champions). One of the criteria of champions is having wide influence. And that means, champions have to be well-respected figures in the target group. There are several ways to identify them:

check out if they have twitter account (I know this may sound silly, but nowadays everyone embraces new media. Perhaps, there are IT-savvy and influential moderate muslims out there? I’m not a terrorism expert, I’m a KM expert. So I have to start with what I know). And then use Twitalyzer to analyse their influence. The influencer type of champions are usually Trendsetters or Thought Leaders in the Twitalyzer.
use Social Network Analysis (SNA). To conduct an SNA, you would need to distribute a survey which contains questions like who do you seek advice to? from whom do you get information required to do your work? the champions profile in SNA is usually the unsung heroes (high in-degree / out-degree centrality), boundary spanners (high betweenness centrality), and information brokers (high closeness centrality). You can get a visual look of the social network by using free software like NodeXL, SocNetV, NetDraw or Pajek.
ask around and observe if the person is well respected in his / her community. Usually champions are the people who speak during community event or whose name being mentioned many times by the community members.

2. Change the incentives. Why would suicide bombers commit the act despite having a loving family? because they are promised rewards (in the afterlife). This may not make much sense, but hey, that’s beside the point. The point is, devising incentives / rewards is the most powerful means to change people’s behaviours. So, an effective counter-terrorism would offer incentives / rewards that people crave, for e.g. good reputation in the religious community, stable job.

3. Cultivate communities. There is no better way to build positive relationships and trusts other than getting involved in the communities of interests, or communities of practice (CoPs). Communities connect one champion to the others, and attract followers / lurkers. Champions spread their influence via communities – either online (for e.g. via blogs, twitter) or face-to-face (for e.g. in the professional associations, societies). Relevant authorities – either the senior management or the politicians – could put their “stamp of approval” on the communities by praising the champions (the community leaders) publicly, and giving the necessary resources such as funds, buildings, tax-free status, etc.

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8198043/Sweden-suicide-bomber-Taimur-Abdulwahab-al-Abdaly-was-living-in-Britain.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337930/Sweden-suicide-bombers-wife-I-knew-husband-terrorist.html

http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFMAC64146720101216

http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=551264

What KMers Can Learn From Coca-Cola

Posted on November 5, 2010

The above was an inspiring TED talk by Mellinda Gates. But what does Mellinda’s TED talk have to do with Knowledge Management (KM)? There are lots of similarity between non-profits work /Social Entrepreneurship and KM. For one, both areas of work are about influencing the majority to change the way they do things. That implies: coaxing, coaching, and educating the majority on a better way to live or work. Both areas of work requires behavioral / cultural changes – which means they centered around people.

The NGOs are trying to change the way people live their life, for example: using condoms for a safe sex, empowering women in patriarchal societies. While, KM professionals are influencing their colleagues / clients to capture, transfer and reuse knowledge.

Another important similarity between the two is, top-down management often leads to unintended consequences. The one-child policy in China certainly has good intention. The China government wanted to curb the population growth and to ensure families have means to support their child. However, this policy causes many families to abort or abandon baby girls, in order to have a baby boy (China is a patriarchal society where boys continue the family surname). As a result, currently there is a gender imbalance in China (119 boys born per 100 girls), which could cause social upheaval like forced prostitution.

In KM, coercing people to do After Action Reviews (AARs), when they don’t see the need to do so, could lead to unintended consequences as well. They could just capture trivial, instead of critical knowledge. They would not be motivated to dig deeper on why mistakes or successes happen (one good method to ‘dig deeper’ on a certain issue, is to ask five whys). As a result, the AARs produced are seldom reused, which defeat the purpose of doing it.

Clearly, we (the KM professionals) need a better way of rolling out KM initiatives. We can take cues from Mellinda Gates TED talk. She suggested that the NGOs can learn from the ubiquitous Coca-Cola. And like Mellinda Gates does, I also believe we can learn from Coca-cola. Here is how:

We need real-time data. Just like the NGOs were, we used to be unable to figure out the effectiveness of our KM programme until it was too late. Thankfully, Web 2.0 is going to change that. We can now get our hands on real-time data, such as the number of times documents being downloaded, site visits, the documents being “liked” or “recommended” in Facebook.
We need to engage local entrepreneurial talent. In KM lingo, our local entrepreneurial talent is the Knowledge Champions or KM evangelists. Whatever you called them, they are the folks who advocate knowledge sharing behaviors, promote KM tools and techniques, and capture knowledge in stories or AAR.
We need to have good marketing. Marketing is one area where many KM professionals are found lacking. Many of us think that by sending emails / simple notification about KM events or courses, people would form a bee line and sign up. Sadly, our target groups are usually the people who have no background or interest in KM. To roll out successful KM events / courses, we need to interpret and communicate how this KM event is relevant for their work. In other words, we need to market KM events / courses based on what people want, instead of what we think they need. To do so, we need to listen. We need empathy so that we can understand the challenges that our target group faced in the course of their work.

Thought Leadership is part of Knowledge Management

Posted on February 16, 2010

There seems to be a lot of buzz around the term “Thought Leadership”. Thought leadership is an important concept and nurturing thought leaders would impact your organization in several ways. First, thought leaders cultivate innovation culture, because they generate ideas or promote innovative ideas. Thought leaders are innovation catalysts because they could inspire others to improve on / build upon their ideas. Second, thought leaders build the organisation’s brand, because they offer solution for problems that the target audience may or may not realised. The thought leaders in the organisation would also foster reputation as experts or the authorities in the their domain of expertise. An example of this is Warren Buffet and the company that he leads, Berkshire Hathaway.

Despite the excitement around the term, it is not a new concept and it is definitely not the holy grail of management / marketing. But what is thought leadership? and who are the thought leaders? The management thinkers put forward the idea of thought leaders as people who promote new ideas through examples, demonstration, and / or logical argument. This implies that thought leaders are not necessarily wordsmiths, as long as they can convince others of their idea’s merits. Thought leaders are also people who quick to champion others’ good idea, although they may not be the ones who carry out the idea / proposal. Other than the management gurus, the marketing experts are also quick to embrace the term “Thought Leadership”. In marketing, it is defined as a marketing strategy, where thought leaders educate the potential market on the unique selling point of their products / services, via white papers, magazines articles, and new media (web 2.0), for e.g. blogs, twitter.

The essence of thought leadership, either from management perspective or marketing perspective, is about sharing information. Thus, thought leadership ends when the target group of people – fellow colleagues, bosses, or customers – accept the idea that thought leaders promote (sell). And since thought leaders are not necessarily people with exceptional communication / persuasion skills, the information that thought leaders shared needs to be palpable. It follows that in product-based industries, thought leaders are either innovators or early adopters, while in service-based industries, thought leaders are mavens – those who gather knowledge.

As interesting the concept of thought leadership as it may be, having useful information alone is not sufficient for an effective thought leadership strategy. As mentioned earlier, thought leaders also need to publicize their information, either through traditional or new media publication, for the target group consumption. Hence, thought leadership strategy consists of two parts: acquiring information and sharing information, and the strategy would be deemed successful if the target audience appreciate the value of the information.

As a corollary, thought leadership strategy depends on whether an organisation could leverage on their corporate knowledge effectively. In other words, the strategy necessitates the organisation to know what they know. If this seems like knowledge management, it is. An organisation with sound knowledge management strategy in place, would not only be able to identify their thought leaders and tap on their expertise, but also be able to safeguard the thought leaders’ expertise and promote it through communities of practice (CoPs) or knowledge portals. Thought leaders in knowledge management lingo are the core members of CoPs and the knowledge champions.

It is obvious that thought leadership is part of knowledge management. Thus thought leadership strategy needs to take knowledge management strategy into consideration.