Empirical Knowing

A recent book by Patrick Kelley explores how empires know. Entitled "Imperial Secrets: Remapping The Mind of Empire", it's a fascinating and non-traditional exploration of the challenges and limitations empires face in translating data into action.

Although most organizations are not empires, many dominate a specific context in ways that create the same kind of challenges in knowing. So, it's worth at least a look if you're a student of organizational behavior.

Kelley focuses on three empires facing challenges in knowing: Rome in the first and second century AD, Ottoman Turkey, and Britain in India. He draws lessons from specific narratives, including:

• As an empire comes to dominate its time and place, it struggles to detect signals that are weak or don't fit the frames that made the empire successful. An additional complication is that an empire's dominant presence warps the information space it inhabits.


• Informal networks are often critical and unrecognized in filling in an empire's blind spots.


• Empires are occasionally surprised when actions it perceives as being ordinary provoke an extraordinary response.

Although much of this will be familiar to students of epistemological approaches to organizational sensemaking (e.g., Karl Weick), the narratives provide a framework for a nuanced explication of the concepts. And, Kelley is a thoughtful analyst. Here's a few excerpts I liked:

• "I wish to contest the unidirectional read of how 'knowing' works; i.e., that an observing subject gains ever more knowledge of some given object and consequently, power over the latter accrues to the former."
• "I propose that the Panopticon actually operates in reverse in the imperial context....empires will nearly always operate at an information deficit in relation to their subjects....The overseer is there for everyone to observe—what the empire believes, does, wants, and will do is laid out in imperial media, legal codes and judicial decisions, the conduct of its agents, and the architectural and scientific 'performances' of power—all in contrast to the 'inscrutable oriental' who resists observation physically, linguistically, and epistemologically in his capacity rather than inability to 'imagine that....' "
• "...imperial policy makers faced the problems of 'slippery' knowledge—data points collected, analyzed and presented in a context different from where they originally resided by virtue of imperial process."
• "Empire consists of a certain set of patterns that characterize the meaning and function of physical reality—Empire is information, which may almost sound like a definition, but my intent is rhetorical emphasis. Consequently, the management of information—disseminating the preferred patterns, and identifying competing patterns for elimination—becomes the core function of imperial administration."
• "The risk of drawing virtual lines and imposing order on the grand confusion of reality is not simply that our lines may be imperfect, our approximation inexact. Rather, these virtual creations can become so comfortable and accessible that we come to inhabit them as real, producing 'knowledge' about things and places that don’t actually exist. Reality as such then enters into the 'species of alterity'; it literally becomes something foreign and other—opaque, if not irrelevant, to our attempts to understand it."
• "... the strategic information most fundamental to a successful imperial order—information about beliefs, identity, authority and allegiance—does not appear as some 'golden nugget' at the end of an operational or tactical tasking order. Rather, it circulates along networks of exchange, akin to an economy in which information serves as currency."
• "The unique intelligence problem of empire, in contrast, is precisely that such distinctions [foreign-domestic] do not exist—or rather that they exist in over-abundance, with inside/outside fractures splintering and overlapping ad infinitum within and between spaces, communities and individuals under the imperial umbrella."
• "If absolute power corrupts absolutely, it also tends to isolate completely—twin tendencies any executive authority risks as it ascends to the heights of imperial power. Bureaucracies rise in tandem with that isolation, providing the intellectual equivalent of walls and gates; but subverting that intellectual structure by act of will can prove nearly as impossible as escaping from the physical walls for reasons of either status or security. "
• "Modern strategic discourse is full of discussions about decision cycles and getting inside an opponent’s OODA loop (Orient, Observe, Decide, Act). Less well explored is how to get inside or engage another’s time, as such, which may be moving at a different rate and in a different direction."
• "A key aspect of the British performance, and an enduring problem of imperial intelligence, I suggest, is not to correctly 'know' foreign minds, but to read backward, and accurately perceive how those foreign minds come to understand the apparently familiar and domestic."
• "As I have argued throughout this text, imperial intelligence is less a problem of determining the truth or falsehood of specific facts, and more an issue of negotiating how truth is constituted and what 'knowing' means. These issues leap to the fore in the contest over education, which is fundamentally a fight to frame how meaning can and will be constituted in both the past and future."
• "None of these [narrative] products would suitably respond to any conceivable state information request, and certainly would not fit into the almost infinitely replicated 'intelligence cycle' model, but they might well answer information requirements. The rhizomatic nature of information, particularly in an imperial environment, indicates that there will nearly always be connections and contexts not immediately evident to any decision-maker posing specific questions....Better still, they are quite obvious in what they leave out, and in this are less deceptive than traditional maps."
• "Th e language and image of empire is universally visible and available to its nominal subjects, while the reverse is not usually the case."
• "...the rise of imperial power creates the demand for a whole host of new government functions and institutions, which cannot be created, except with great difficulty and foresight, ex nihilo. Far easier, and more common, is to simply adapt existing institutions to new roles..."
• "Modern Americans have come to believe that the norms and values encapsulated in their form of government and their ways of conducting foreign relations are the birthright and open options for men everywhere. In accordance with this persuasion there simply can be no 'others.' " [Adda Bozeman quote]
• "...new information—in order to make sense—must fit into a narrative, a history, and this history amplifies the problem of the other/same dichotomy. 'As distinct from the present, the past is alien, exotic, or strange; as continuous with it, this past is familiar, recognizable and potentially fully knowable.' [Hayden White quote] "
• "Empires thrive despite, rather than because of, their information institutions."
• "In early days, say just after you have sacked Carthage or defeated the Nawab of Bengal, you might know very little, but you also know what you don’t know, i.e. basically everything. This makes the 'known unknowns' a very large category, but also makes the more dangerous 'unknown unknowns' very small. As imperial experience progresses, as administrators learn the languages and jurists incorporate local legal principles, the 'known known' flourishes in a rhizomatic way...For as 'known unknown' shrinks with every census and cartographic survey, the 'unknown unknown' consequently expands proportionately. While the analogy may be inexact, imperial power becomes more expert over time, and consequently more subject to the patterning and heuristic biases associated with the 'Paradox of Expertise.' "
• "My general assessment has been that empires are always at an information deficit—telling more than they hear—and the deficit over time becomes associated with a lost capacity to listen."
• "A perspective which presumes the role of an objective machine loses twice over by deliberately abjuring to assimilate the specifically human factors that only humans can collect, while making inevitable bias more difficult to detect in bureaucratically neutral discourse."

As someone who is more critical realist than postmodern, I think Kelley occasionally overstates his case. But, given the growing importance of Complex contexts and the growing number of "virtual empires", he may be right to do so.

Complex Knowing

A few miscellaneous items from the past couple of weeks that highlight the limits to and evolution of analytical approaches to decision making and decision support:

• "When Knowledge Management Hurts" - This short article by London Business School professor Freek Vermeulen discusses a study asserting that incorporating formal knowledge into decision making can actually result in worse decisions. I don't have time to discuss the actual study (link in article), but it's worth looking at if you are a KM practitioner.
• Unintended consequences are inevitable when services are made mashable. This slashdot posting discusses Google having to shut down free SMS message after a popular iPhone app overwhelmed Google's servers.
• "The Rise of The Social Network System" - a short article on social hyperconnectivity...it's about linking contexts. I'm always slightly surprised by articles like this in light of how much science fiction has explored this area in the past few years. Also, Tim O'Reilly's discussion of the article.
• Lots has been written recently about the decline of newsprint. Clay Shirky has a nice overview of the rise and decline of this particular asynchronous hardcopy Few-to-Many media channel. It's nice to see some historical perspective in something as ephemeral as a blog post.
• Finally, Deloitte has posted a study of mining safety in South Africa that was done using Cynefin. If you've found this framework a bit abstract, this study might help you better understand one way it can be used.

Those Who Can, Do...

Those who can't, scribble?

That was my initial reaction to some recent discussions of 90-9-1 as it applies to Jive. Whether my reaction makes much sense is unclear, since "doing" and "scribbling/teaching/creating/contributing" are not either-or categories. And, I'm struck at how fundamental language/conversation/writing is to the creative process. So, I'm not implying that speaking/writing is necessarily wasteful...it's just that I get the feeling that separating signal from noise is getting exponentially more difficult.

Regardless, much of the discussion of 90-9-1 is about increasing the percentage of those who contribute (vs. lurk), and not much is said about increasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

In the context of enterprise social media this distribution makes me wonder...when should we start worrying a little more about quality and a little less about quantity?...do our metrics emphasize quantity simply that's what's easy to measure?...or perhaps the emphasis on participation is simply because enterprise social media is in an orientation phase where the key challenge is getting folks to participate because they'll never "get it" until they do?

Is this the sort of space where you have to increase the noise to a tipping point before you can begin to detect really valuable signal?....or before you get emergent value?...I'm not sure anyone really knows.

Decision Contexts and Flow

This TED video is a nice example of how the "intersection of decisions and technology" is becoming ever more fractal...and why sensemaking becoming a central concern in the creation of innovative information technology.

Whether you design IT, or are simply a user, you're increasingly going to be struck by how truly innovative IT morphs itself to a decision context in a way that fits the user's decision flow...and you'll begin to notice just how much traditional IT interrupts that flow.

Overloading CASE

In the engineering arena, we think of software when we see the acronym CASE.

Barry E. White (MITRE) is using it as a combination of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Systems Engineering...Complex Adaptive Systems Engineering. I had not seen any of his work when I last visited this topic.

This presentation and paper are a recent discussion of the topic. In the presentation, I like White's highlighting of the importance of non-technical factors, and I especially like the Enterprise Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering profilers (slides 20, 21). I'm a bit puzzled by the inclusion of an Enneagram Web...its origin in what appears to be mysticism seems to clash with the rest of the presentation. The paper strikes a more serious tone...its discussion of the limits of control and the importance of context are applicable to any large scale architecting/design effort.

Regardless, it's nice to see a CAS-oriented discussion of systems engineering.

Backlash Against Process Standardization?

Joseph Hall and Eric Johnson have an article entitled "When Should a Process be Art, Not Science?" in the March 2009 Harvard Business Review. In it they discuss the fact that some contexts are too variable to allow standardized processes to be effective.

Although there are echoes of Tushman's Exploitation-Exploration contrast and Cynefin's Complicated-Complex contrast here, Hall and Johnson emphasize the need for "artistic processes" when the following condition exists:

• A variable environment (inputs, process, and/or desired outputs) - at some point, the costs of standardized processes outweigh the benefits. Costs may be real (i.e., a very complex "scientific" process that's expensive to design and maintain) and/or opportunity (i.e., the "scientific" process is either too slow and inflexible to address key customer needs).
  And, the authors rightly emphasize the fact that most real world contexts have artistic aspects and scientific aspects. Where analysis and best practices are effective they should be used (science); where they are not, a probing approach that uses qualitative metrics should be used (art).

Since the article's purpose is not to examine the sources of a focus on standardization, the authors don't have much to say about why the need to balance science and art is becoming more pressing. Here's a few snap reactions I had...I suspect you can think of a few more if you're interested in systems and their structure. These are reasons why there tends to be a bias toward "scientific processes."

• We like predictability...the more the better (up to a point, see "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" for more detail). In my more cynical moments, I wonder if American management writing might be best summarized as a continual search for the Holy Grail of "The Magical Incantation" that allows any unthinking human to mindlessly create unending value. I'm sure the authors generally don't feel that way (after all, they are innovative thinkers almost by definition), but the mass readership's appetite for the latest concept make me wonder.
• As the lower layers of various capabilities become standardized (everything from double entry accounting to gun parts to automobile designs to the IP stack), dramatically more complex capabilities are enabled...which (at least initially) have a large amount of variability as users probe the new solution space that such standardization opens up. Eventually, aspects of that solution space become standardized (sometimes de facto, sometimes de jure), and the cycle starts over. For example, in the IT arena, the emerging emphasis in services is due in large part to the increasing standardization of technologies that used to be largely artistic (trends like Moore's Law are significant drivers in enabling this standardization). And, as the standardization-complex-standardization cycle time compresses, the importance of balancing the two increases.
• Since processes attempt to interact with the world in a predictable way to achieve a desired goal, they instantiate/reflect a model of that world. Although traditional modeling may contain non-deterministic elements (e.g., events may have an associated probability distribution, etc.), the modeling mindset is primarily quantitative, deterministic, and "scientific." So, processes tend to be scientific.
• The Scientific Revolution, the subsequent Technological Revolution, and the Quality Revolution have combined, for the first time in world history, to create amazing amounts of excess wealth. Routinization of a process enables first the use of lower skill labor, then automation, of that process, resulting in lower costs for a specific capability. Ford's River Rouge complex is what I always think of. The coming worldwide demographic bust will create even more pressure for moving artistic work into scientific space.\

If you're in an environment that seems relentlessly focused on standardizing processes, this article is a nice summary of why some balance may be due.