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Knowledge As Emerging Patterns Of Interaction

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Knowledge as Emerging Patterns of Interaction

1 Introduction

This paper examines how knowledge can be seen as continuously emerging patterns of interactions between individuals. It particularly focuses the nature of human organisations and how that nature affects the learning in individuals and -as a consequence- the continuous emergence of organisational knowledge. In order to do this, we will first look at the nature of organisations. This by examining what we see is the most helpful way to characterise organisations, clearly offsetting organisations as ‘systems’ versus ‘processes’. It will be clarified that knowledge may exist only in the interaction between people and can therefore not simply be reified as ‘tangible’, ‘tacit’ or ‘explicit’. We propose it exists in context and only in context. Thus, we consider knowledge as intrinsically social. Also, we consider knowledge as something that emerges only ‘from within’. There are no outsiders. Someone with information that exists in total isolation without the possibility to act cannot generate knowledge. This makes knowledge inherently ‘local’. ‘Global knowledge’, as in ‘best practices’ or ‘business processes’ are an illusion if they do not resonate with the experience of people in local interactions. We will use recent insights from the complexity sciences to examine the interactions and hence the continuous emergence of knowledge. It will become clear that ‘knowledge’ and ‘organising’ are ‘complicitly’ linked.

In the quote above from the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, this is illustrated with the illustrated with an interesting philosophical undertone, despite its inherent humour. The supercomputer Deep Tought took seven and a half million years to some up with the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything as the world-famous ‘42′. In the next chapter from the book the immediate implication is that we then first (sic!) have to know the ‘Ultimate Question’ (Adams, 1995: 128). It then is decided to build the Earth as the next generation supercomputer to find that Ultimate Question. Later in the book it becomes clear that the Ultimate Question is ‘six by nine’ (Adams, 1995: 305). At least, in base thirteen. All is contextual, you see.

2 Are organisations systems or processes?

The complexity sciences have emerged mainly from the natural sciences like physics, chemistry and biology. It has shown tremendous power in helping these sciences forward and explaining complex phenomena that previously could not be described adequately. These were those situations where the sheer number of interactions between particles or smaller units (the ‘local’) led to unpredictable behaviour on a global level. The complexity sciences were able to convincingly explain why simple global patterns emerge out of complex local interactions. Because of these successes, and the many complex issues that human organisations, and particularly business organisations, face complexity theory has often been used successfully as a metaphor to help organisations forward (see for instance Zimmerman, Lindberg & Plsek, 1998: 4-18). Understandably. Human organisations consist of many ‘agents’ interacting and display very complex and unpredictable behaviour. So much is not disputed. In order to be able to describe many of the observed behaviour people resorted to complexity theory. In natural systems, a very useful idea has been the definition of these bounded systems as ‘complex adaptive systems’ or CAS. The theory being that because of the complex interactions the system is ‘coupled’ to the external environment (perhaps via semi-permeable boundaries) so that they ‘adapt’ to it. Thus viewed, each system is ‘nested’ in a larger (‘higher’) system. Therefore it is a small step to then see human organisations as systems and consequently as complex adaptive systems, in parallel with the natural sciences. This view then logically leads to teams, departments, organisations, etc., being seen as ‘nested systems’ (Kelly & Allison, 1999: 12-13, 19). The next step is to realise that human organisations may not simply ‘adapt’ to the environment. Perhaps what they do is co-evolve in that environment. We may see them as Complex Evolving Systems, or CES. (See for instance Heylighen, 1997).

These metaphors are powerful ways to look at human organisations. The principles of self-organisations, emergence, ‘edge of chaos’, etc., from the complexity sciences can provide interesting new insights in issues that organisations face. Given the constant struggle in business organisations to find ways to ‘cope’ with the inherent uncertainty they face, these relatively new theories help to make sense. But, as with all metaphors, there is a risk that we take them too far. People started to have conversations on whether or not organisations are a CAS or CES. Then, by inference, we start to say that organisations therefore must comply with this and that observation for a CAS. An interesting example, for instance, is the debate between organizational professionals whether or not ‘therefore’ (sic!) ‘human systems’ emerge from ‘simple rules’. This, in turn, is inferred from simple computer based systems in which ‘boids’, having been programmed with three ‘simple rules’ start displaying behaviour that has been characterised as ‘flocking’, very much like a 2D projection of flocks of birds. But please note that in reality, these boids are just computer blips on a screen. The ‘simple rules’ can adequately describe the behaviour of those ‘blips’ on the screen. But that is all they can do! They cannot describe any real life flocking behaviour at all. Let alone describe how birds reproduce or multiply. Hardly a rich description of something as complex as a

living creature. But, since the observed ‘flocks’ were so convincing, it has been assumed most complex systems are somehow emerging from simple rules. Since a CAS can emerge from simple rules, so must human organisations, so people claim. That is why some people with some (but no more) notion of complexity theory state that what we have to do is ‘just find the simple rules’. These often are typified as ‘values’. Stating the simple rules than becomes ‘defining the values’ of the organisation. This is reverse logic. An Organisation is not a CAS. It may be modelled as a CAS, and as a metaphor that can give really powerful insights. But what are organisations, really? It may be helpful to start by what we know ‘for sure’ about human organisations. They consist of people interacting in their daily (working) practices. Therefore for the purpose of this paper we will start with that: the interaction between people in organisation that we will call ‘the social’. My claim in this paper is that a metaphor different from a ‘system’ may be more helpful to describe (the evolution of) organisational knowledge. The recent thinking from Ralph Stacey on complex responsive processes sees organisations not as systems, but rather chooses to pay attention to the interaction between people (Stacey, 2000). This view emphasises that organisations are not systems as such but looks as them as processes of people interacting. For the purpose of this paper I see this as a very helpful approach. These processes consist of ‘the narrative-like sequences of gesture and response between human bodies’ (Stacey, 2000: 146-148). In these interactions people continuously reinterpret their own experiences (‘past’) in order to act (‘gesture’) to achieve some future expected state. This expectation, in turn, feeds back on the interpretation of the past experiences. Each gesture triggers a similar process in other people who then ‘respond’ with a new gesture. With many interactions this is a highly complex process (hence the term ‘complex responsive processes of relating’).

With continued interaction, as is happening in organisations some ‘themes’ will

emerge. These themes emerge because of some common intention of the

future, real and existing differences in experience and intentions and real and

existing issues that exist in order to achieve this desired future. This

emergence is self-organising in nature. This is where insights from complexity

theory are very helpful indeed.

For the purpose of this paper I will call this process of emerging themes

‘patterning’ of the interaction between people.

There are a few implications that are paramount in this process.

For one, we need to realise that not all participants of this process are equally

‘autonomous’. Crucial, as pointed out also by Stacey c.s. (Stacey, 2000: 213-4),

are the power relations that exist in all interactions. ‘Some people are more

autonomous than others’.

Secondly, all action is action that is interpreted by each individual differently.

There is no ‘knowable truth’ other than what resonates with each individual’s

past experiences (sic!) and their individual intentions (sic!). Since all individual

past experiences as well as their individual intentions are different, so is each

individual’s ‘truth’.

Also, importantly, there is no guarantee that people will speak ‘the truth’. All

people will ‘gesture’ as to achieve their own desired future. In many

organisations not open and honestly sharing information is the norm rather

than the exception. Often, this is due to expected repercussions if the truth be

spoken. This means that conversations, as we can observe in all organisations,

are in fact the continuous negotiation of each person’s ‘intention’ and

‘expectations’. Thus, other people’s intentions become ‘enabling constraints’

(Stacey, 2000: 151-3) for these negotiations.

Richard Knowles (2002) has developed structured ways to examine the

processes of interaction and the emergent patterns. The combination of

Stacey’s complex responsive processes theory with Knowles’ self-organising

leadership theories could form a sound basis for studying knowledge

processes.

3 What is knowledge?

This is a paper about knowledge processes in organisations. We looked at

organisations as processes above.

I would like to use a definition from Dee Hock (1999), emeritus-CEO of VISA for

‘knowledge’ and the hierarchy he puts in it.

Noise

Data

Information

Knowledge

Understanding

Wisdom

Noise is the undifferentiated stuff happening all around us;

Data is the first level of organisation of the noise. It can be discerned and

differentiated by the human mind

Information is the next level of organisation of the data. Patterns and

relationships are starting to add meaning (Bateson’s ‘difference that

makes a difference’)

Knowledge is the organisation of the information in a way that in the

right context it becomes useful to act, decide or create new knowledge.

Understanding is organisation of knowledge by individuals in a manner

useful for conceiving, anticipating, evaluating and judging. This is a

unique, personal experience.

Wisdom is achieved when the understanding is informed by intention,

ethics, principle, memory of the past and projection into the future.

Science, including organisational science, has traditionally focused on data,

information and knowledge and has largely ignored Understanding and

Wisdom. In the context of this paper I would like to maintain that Knowledge

without Understanding is not useful for the sustainability of organisations. In

the context of complex responsive processes a deep understanding, as wisdom

in the above definitions, is paramount.

For long term survival and health of organisations knowledge processes should

recognise the need for understanding and wisdom.

This is an important statement.

If we analyse it a few things jump out:

Information as such is not knowledge; just having information is not

enough. ‘Just a book’ is not enough. That is ‘just’ information;

Knowledge is where pieces of information have been integrated;

knowledge, in that sense, has the potential to be novel. It also says that

more that one piece of information is required. This means at least a

form of diversity;

This combination has to happen in ‘the right context’. So, without the

combination happening the real world (context) there is no knowledge

just pieces of information;

This knowledge must be applied. Crucial. If we cannot use the combined

pieces of information to act it is -by definition- useless;

This knowledge in itself can then act as a new piece of information to

create new knowledge. This is the ‘recursiveness’ in this definition.

Understanding happens when individuals are able to project and apply

Seeing the importance of understanding, thus paying attention to

intention, ethics and principles, will lead to ‘organisational wisdom’ that

is seated in the individuals!

Thus phrased, ‘knowledge’ is continuously emerging where the context

requires the combination of pieces of available information in order to ‘act’.

In this definition knowledge is not something tangible. It can not be codified or

taken away. Information can. We can store information in databases. Knowledge

has to be contextual. Since the context exists only where and when people

apply the knowledge it can not be codified.

So, books or papers or databases are ways of codifying information. By reading

we start ‘contextualising’ this information in our heads. In this process we start

to create our own interpretation of this information. This interpretation is

dependent on our own personal past experiences and our own individual

expectations of the future. It either ‘resonates’ with our experience or it does

not. The information distilled from a book or paper or any other source will -by

default- always be different for the reader than from the writer. Meaning, thus,

is being created by the ‘responder’ not by the ‘gesturer’.

Reading it a second time around will again give different interpretations and -

hence- different pieces of information. Even the writer will interpret his/her own

writings differently a next time round.

This has as an implication that each piece of information will, by default,

already have in it a level of diversity if more than one person at any one time is

interacting round this piece of information. Stacey (2000: 202-6) quite

convincingly points out that it is this very diversity that makes that ‘novelty’ can

emerge out of the interactions. Without it, no novelty can occur. Put in a more

lyrical way, some one on his/her own in some remote and isolated desert can

acquire a massive amount of information (from books, etc.), without interaction

(diversity) true novelty will not occur.

If people interact they do that in a certain context. They will ‘be’ at a certain

time and at a certain place. People’s individual experiences are continuously

being recreated in that context. This context is the perceived (!) issue around

which people may interact. Hence the pieces of information will continuously

change. Therefore, reflecting the ideas of complex responsive processes of

relating in organisations, their gestures and responses will continuously

change.

This is another way of saying that each action people make, decisions they take,

information they create will change in each different circumstance.

Knowledge emerges in the gesture/response process as a social act.

Since these gestures and responses are the complex result of the many

individual’s past experiences and future expectations, so will the knowledge be

emerging out of those past experiences and future expectations in the context

of the perceived issue at hand.

Referring to paragraph 2 above, with continued interaction the expectations

and experiences will start to display complex themes or ‘patterns’.

Knowledge can thus be seen as a pattern that emerges out of these

interactions.

People’s actions are, in turn, governed by the emerging pattern thus closing the

loop. This loop helps us understand knowledge processes in organisations.

4 How organisations learn…

What we can learn from the paragraph 3 is that organisations don’t learn.

People as individuals learn.

Organisations are forums for people to interact. Organisations have been given

some form of intention by the people that work in/for them.

These people, though, are not isolated from the rest of their lives and context

outside of the organisation. If we mention a person’s individual past

experiences we mean all their individual experiences, in the business

organisation, at home, at their sports clubs, universities, on holiday, etc.

The processes of organising are these processes of interaction that we called

complex responsive processes of relating.

In the previous paragraph we described that ‘knowledge’ is one of the emerging

patterns in that process of organising.

But, at the same time, this patterning forms the process of interaction! Action

emerges out of the interactions whilst using the knowledge that emerges out of

that very action!

Cohen and Stewart (1997: 414-22) call such a relationship as here between

organising and knowledge a ‘complicit’ relationship.

Processes of organising Knowledge

ACTION EMERGES

Figure 3 – Action emerges, complicitly, out of organising and knowledge processes

Action emerges out of the coevolving relationship between knowledge and

organising. It is therefore inherently impossible to decouple knowledge from

the organising process. Since the entity of an organisation emerges out of this

complicit relationship, the complicit knowledge and organising processes are

‘the organisation’.

This has some major consequences for how we see organisational learning.

We can describe the learning in organisations as the continuous patterning that

is happening in the process of interactions.

Knowles (2002: 107-23) introduces the model of the Process EnneagramTM.

This model is a way to show the perspectives of the interactions as process

patterns. It does that via multiple (nine, ‘ennea’ (?????) is ‘nine’ in Greek)

unique perspectives.

In the interactions, people go through all perspectives all at the same time. This

is not a linear process at all. All nine elements are connected, but some

connections between elements will be stronger than others. That depends on

which people are interacting where and at what time. Thus, these patterns

reflect the collective histories of the interacting people, often organisations.

By paying attention to those connections we can see the patterns emerge.

People in organisations are thus given an insight in those patterns that they can

then internalise and use as pieces of information for their gestures and

responses.

Time

Patterns as shown in

Process Enneagram ©

People interacting via

continuous gesturing

and responding

Emergence

Figure 4 – Making emerging patterns visible

They will only ‘internalise’ those patterns if they see that these patterns

sufficiently resonate with their individual experience and intention. In other

words, the issue at hand (context) must be compelling enough for individuals

to want to engage in this way. Thus the interaction becomes the continuous

negotiation of what is and what is not compelling for individuals.

It is a very important leadership skill to be able to act (gesture) in ways that will

help people see the importance of the emerging theme. If the gesture is

compelling, people will respond to it in ways coherent with the leader’s

intention. The mentioned power relations may distort this view, because people

may act not because the issue is compelling, but because the potential

consequence of not acting the way a leader wants is compelling enough.

It is obvious that thus people do not internalise the emerging ‘knowledge’

pattern as part of their experience, but rather the ‘fear’ for repercussions. This

in turn becomes part of the organising pattern and hence organisational

‘action’!

It seems to me that this has significant implications for ‘organisational

learning’.

By internalising these emerging patterns as part of the interacting processes

this internalisation itself will become part of the patterns thus potentially

transforming the identity and intention of the interacting individuals.

Their individual transformation means they will act differently to the contextual

issues than they would have otherwise. Over time, we suggest that the

individual and collective identity and intention will converge since more and

more of the patterns will be internalised in each individual. They will never be

the same because each individual will still have an individual past experience

and future intention.

If the pattern that people make part of their individual identity and intention is

around the issue at hand than the action that people will take is important for

the organisation. People will have learned coherent action that will be ‘helpful’.

Applied to the issue this is knowledge creation in the definition above. Thus the

process of learning is the process of evolving new patterns.

If, on the other hand, people internalise the ‘fear’ pattern, than the individual

learning will be entirely different. There will be very little connection between

the issue and people’s actions and -hence- the knowledge pattern. Very little

has been learned. Evolution is not linked to real life issues, but rather to people

avoiding other people’s actions (the boss’s actions!). Our experience shows

clearly that this happens in organisations.

We already established that the process of organising and knowledge creating

are complicitly linked.

From the reasoning above we can see that organisational learning as emerging

patterns of knowledge happens when people chose to interact around issues

that are important to them as individuals. The process of organising, including

the importance of power relations, can help or work against this process.

Leaders, therefore, have the choice how to ‘gesture’ in organisations realising

that their gestures may carry more ‘weight’ than that of others.

Without leaders seeing the importance of truly involving their people by

appreciating that their gestures somehow will have to resonate with people’s

authentic experience, very little knowledge creation will happen.

We have to think about how certain ‘best practices’, defined as actions that

elsewhere have led to perceived positive (business) results, may or may not

resonate with people’s experience in the organisation where we work.

Actions, emerging from local interactions, are by definition local. ‘Best

Practices’ are therefore global patterns from specific local interactions. There is

little reason to see that they therefore will -automatically- resonate with other

people interacting locally.

In the words from above, practices need to evolve as patterns in organisations.

In the evolution metaphor, one can also not simply ‘plant’ a new species

somewhere and expect it to flourish.

Evolution of knowledge happens complicitly with the evolution of the

organising patterns. That is a major insight that surely must have major

implication on how organisations treat ‘managing knowledge’ and looking at

‘knowledge processes’.

5 A Story: ‘Sphinx’

We will now look at an example from all this in action. The particular story I will

use is about a business change management company I used to work for. Let’s

call the company Sphinx for the purpose of this paper. It is not the real name.

Knowledge as emerging patterns of interaction.doc © 2003, Symphoenix Ltd Page 12 of 15

Founders

‘Leadership team’

Sectors

Services

Knowledge Groups

Back-Office

Others

Figure 5 – Sphinx’s emergent structure (2000)

Sphinx has always been an organisation that relied on people organising

themselves in helping its clients through complex change programmes. In order

to do this, the creation of novel and creative ways to help the clients is of

paramount importance. It is clear that the success of Sphinx’s business is firmly

based on knowledge (in the definition of this paper) and creativity. The way

Sphinx was organised was truly an emergent effect of the interaction between

people. In Figure 5 this is depicted as a series of ‘cells’. Usually people were

part of 2-3 cells at least. Some cells were permanent, others much more

transient, depending on the nature of it.

The ‘Knowledge groups’ were groups of people coming together to share ideas

and learning in areas that the people found important. The emergent nature of

it was that knowledge was being created when needed as perceived by the

group.

This is very consistent with the model described above, where the ‘organising’

process and the ‘knowledge’ process happen ‘complicitly’. Effective action (i.e.

helping the client) emerged. And, interestingly, there was no-one steering this.

People’s deliverables with clients were placed on a ‘Knowledge Database’, in the

language of this paper containing Information and Data about work that people

had done. In the Knowledge groups (either the more permanent ones or the ad

hoc ones) people would then refer others to material on that database that

seemed to fit into the emerging theme. These other could then ‘contextualise’

(read: create knowledge of these themes) in their own client environment.

The way of working was very successful and the company achieved very large

organic growth percentages year on year. The latter was of course not just due

to the way knowledge processes worked, but it certainly played a pivotal role.

Building on its success, the company decided on some aggressive growth plans.

The growth plans unfortunately coincided with an unforeseen sharp down-turn

in the consulting market in 2001-2. The company’s ‘management team’

decided that more structure was needed and imposed (sic!) that structure based

on its views. This happens in many organisations because often ‘structure’ is

associated with ‘control’. In my experience this is a flawed concept where,

despite this flaw, many organisations are based on. It ignores the resonance

with people other than the managers.

One of the structural components that were introduced was that a ‘Sphinx Way’

was developed. This meant to be an Approach (certainly not a detailed

methodology) that all in Sphinx would use as part of their ‘knowledge’.

‘Knowledge Teams’ were instated (as opposed to: ‘encouraged to emerge’) to

cover the subsets of this Approach, enabling management to control were

money would be spent on.

This had as a consequence that the Knowledge database was ‘restructured’ to

reflect the new Approach and the new Knowledge Teams were set up to

populate and maintain the database and proliferate the knowledge. Although

there are apparent advantages in doing that (for instance: common language)

the richness of the emergent knowledge groups was lost. More importantly,

‘knowledge’ was now reified and thought to be ‘transferable’. This did not

resonate with people’s experience at all! The Knowledge Teams very much

became mechanical groups and the Sphinx Way a management tool for

budgeting purposes. The database was no longer a source for conversation but

something that needed to be ‘populated’. Much money was spent on people

doing just that: populate it.

In the mean time, other changes happened and the company has since been

shrinking significantly. This might well be worsened because the main asset,

conversations that created novelty and new knowledge, was unwittingly

inhibited.

6 Conclusion

We cannot segregate the creation of knowledge from the organising processes

that happen in organisations (as in the Sphinx story). A helpful way of looking

at those organising processes is the relatively new idea of complex responsive

processes of relating. Using principles from the complexity sciences we can see

that out of the many complex interactions of gesture and response, patterns

will emerge in a self-organised way.

These patterns are leadership themes, reconciled individual intentions, etc. The

patterns make that people in organisation can act in a meaningful way.

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If we define knowledge as integrated pieces of knowledge in the ‘right’ context,

we can clearly see that knowledge can only be created in context. Without an

appropriate shared view of the context in which individuals act, knowledge is

not a meaningful concept since it cannot lead to effective action.

There is an all important leadership task to be able to help people see the

issues at hand (context) in a way that is important enough for those people to

choose to engage in the process of organising and -hence- in the process of

knowledge creation.

If people see the context too differently, actions will be ‘incoherent’ and no

positive knowledge creation and hence coherent action can happen.

The ideas of ‘best practice’ proliferation as ways to share information and

‘manage’ knowledge, has the potential of working counter productive if the

context in which it is being applied varies significantly from the originating

context. Chances are that they will be quite different on a global level. In that

case the information does not resonate with people’s experience and no

positive action can emerge out of the organising processes. This may explain

the difficulty in proliferating best practices in large organisations.

The codification of information (via databases, memos, books, procedures, etc.)

surely is an important part of the knowledge processes in organisations. But

without the facilitation of open and honest interaction between individuals in

organisations and the presence of leadership skills to help people ‘see’ the

emerging patterns and shared context there is very little knowledge creation

happening.

Sadly, in many organisations the emphasis of knowledge processes is focused

on capturing information, rather at this all important element of open, honest

and direct interaction.

Our suggestion is that leaders use structured conversations, for instance as

proposed by Knowles (2002) by using the Process EnneagramTM. This model

allows people to ‘see’ the emerging patterns as well as provides with a coherent

forum (‘map’) for sharing context and learning.

(Frank Smits, © February 2003)

References

Adams, D. (1995). The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts.

London: Random House.

Cohen, J. and Stewart, I. (1994). The Collapse of Chaos, London: Penguin Books.

Heylighen, F. (1997). Classic Publications on Complex, Evolving Systems: a

citation-based survey, Principia Cybernetica Web,

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/EVOCOPUB.html

Hock, D. (1999). The Birth of the Chaordic Age, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-

Koehler Publishers

Kelly, S. and Allison, M.A. (1998). The Complexity Advantage, Boston, Mass:

McGraw Hill

Knowles, R.N. (2002). The Leadership Dance, Niagara Falls, NY: The Center for

Self-Organizing Leadership

Stacey, R. (2000). Complex Responsive Processes in Organisations, London:

Routledge.

Zimmerman, B., Lindberg, C. and Plsek, P. (1998), Edgeware, Irving, Tx.: VHA,

Inc.

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