Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on June 27, 1997 at 19:34:22:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge Management and Control: Revisited posted by Mezei on June 27, 1997 at 15:33:53:

Hi Don,

I am delighted to hear this story that I have been narrating to many
people in academia over this duration trying to bridge the gap between
theory and practice... This is the most illuminating story that I read
long, long ago when I wa s too young to understand what it signified.
Some other details of the story included: the boy was eating 'excessive'
sugar and was 'very fond' of sugar. Later, when the lady returns to the
Mahatma, he replies "I am also _very fond_ of sugar... a nd had to give up
eating..." The gist being that before one can 'preach' one needs to
'practice'... about whatever... An additional aspect includes that of
'sacrificing' or 'giving up' whatever... eating sugar, ignorance, narrow
mindedness, in flexibility, ... etc. one has to feel how the shoe
pinches the wearer... by putting oneself in the other person's shoes.

Taking this a step further, to relate to someone else's knowledge, one may
need to put oneself in the other person's position [physical, psychological,
intellectual] to understand how one may relate to the other person's
mental model. Reminds me of Dale Carnegie's 'How to Influence Friends...'
story about this person who is visiting his colleague and is left for
a fe w minutes with the eleven-year old son. He asks the boy what he was
most interested in, and the boy replies: "Boats." The next 20-30 minutes
he is sitting there with the boy talking to him about boats... and the
boy could never forget that 'visit or who was really interested in boats'...
Surprisingly, as told by this person later, he didn't have much of a clue
about boats, he was interacting with the boy with 'active' interest and
was probing based on what the boy was answering: effective ly the boy was
doing most of the talking... The essence of the story being that for engaging
another person's interest, one might need to rein in the fixations of
'what I believe', 'what I think' and 'what I like' to tune into the other
perso n's responses. The most important thing is being able to 'connect',
'relate', 'understand' at some level the 'reality' of the other person's
world view... that may give one a better perspective for framing oneself
better for relating to others..

Reminds me of 'Situational Leadership' (I think authored by Ken Blanchard,
the author of One Minute Manager), ... perhaps for another day...

Just 'meta-cognizing' while writing this down... stories... aren't they
interesting creatures, just like metaphors and analogies. By providing
the canvass for framing your picture, they allow you to paint using your
own's mix of colors... perhaps that is one way of understanding the
difference between information and knowledge... information being the
blank canvas [which looks similar to everyone, at least from the
information processing view] on which one fills in the colors and
creates the 'picture' of knowledge.

Relating to Churchman:

"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of inf ormation seems to rob
the concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not
in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of
information that matters." --Churchman (1971).

Relating to Davenport:

"Success ful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor documents
but rather interactions between people."

--- Davenport, T.H. "Think Tank: The Future of Knowledge Management,"
CIO, December 15, 1995.

"The best information environments wi ll take advantage of the ability of
IT to overcome geography but will also acknowledge that the highest
bandwidth network of all is found between the water fountain and the
coffee machine."

-- Davenport, T.H. "Think Tank: The Virtual and the Ph ysical," CIO, November 15, 1995.

Relating to Stafford Beer:

"The wise see knowledge and action as one."(quoted from Bhagvad-Gita)
-- Beer, S.

And to the latest word by Karl Sveiby:

"The minute we express ourselves in words, on paper, at a Web site, or
wherever, the knowledge leaves us and the text becomes meaningless in
itself. It may sound strange to someone with another mind system, but
it’s the reader who constructs the meaning. If you and I do not share
the same context – we are from different cultures or very far from each
other’s point of view -- your knowledge will never be my knowledge. So
information is a very poor vehicle for carrying knowledge. Managers
right now are losing billions of dollars in ventures while they are
trying to base business decisions on the simple misconception about
what knowledge is, compared to information."

More on Karl Sveiby's new book is available at:

http://www.innovat ionline.com/sveiby.htm

- Yogesh

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