In this episode, I address a couple of critical points that drive what information is retained and what is withheld — Who owns the information and who determines its value? And do our methods of establishing ownership and appraising knowledge make sense?
In this episode, I present the process-based meta-narrative that addresses organizational actions. Going beyond the simple models of flowcharts or sequences of steps, these metanarratives capture the ranges of possible outcomes and the paths to get there.
In this episode, I present the preference-based meta-narrative that helps explain the way that decision makers deal with complexity — both in terms of developing and selecting alternatives and in terms of the emotions that the decision generates.
In this episode, I present the stream meta-narrative that helps capture sequences of interdependent processes that naturally flow from some sort of inputs to some sort of outputs. These metanarratives help explain complex decision spaces. I’ll also give relevant examples.
In this episode, I talk about how I streamline the corporate vocabulary in the previous episode and use it to develop a meta-narrative that summarizes the full set of experiences in the organization by levels of deviation from the norm. Sound complicated, but hopefully you’ll find it isn’t.
Words matter, and sometimes the terms used in an organizational setting differ from common definitions and therefore create confusion. This is doubly difficult for an outside observer who is trying to understand the organization’s behavior. I present an icebreaker exercise in this episode I use to help expose how different people define things.
How does one tell the difference between information meant for beginners versus information meant for experts? The short answer is the level of abstraction. What is meant for beginners tends to be more detailed or more prescribed than what is meant for experts. But there is more to it as the usage of the information is equally important. In this episode I talk about how to put these two ideas together — levels of knowledge with their function.
There’s an inherent challenge between the organization’s preferred narrative that may drive how it organizes its corporate knowledge and the way individuals sort their component parts. One narrative may not fit all perspectives. What then?
When reviewing old archives, it occurred to me that the archive serves as a window into the organization’s behavior, but while the products of knowledge are present, much of the meaning behind them get lost. How did I think about rebuilding that knowledge?
Busy professionals are so awash with information, much of it irrelevant or uninteresting, that they rarely have time to go back and sort through it all and make sense of it. Instead, all this stuff ends up occupying storage space or sitting somewhere in the cloud. Well, I undertook a project to dive through an archive holding fifteen years worth of information on DVDs stored in a closet, and I learned a lot about what it means to gain, sustain and use expert knowledge.
Proposes a grand narrative approach for retaining and reusing knowledge potentially lost due to turnover and retirements.
Mandatory training serves important purposes but can be painful and ineffective in execution. Are there ways to do it better?
Sometimes change efforts success despite poor communication, or great communication doesn’t lead to successful change. Why is that?
The change management literature often focuses on how to start change, but not how to take responsibility for change efforts underway. What does one do?
Organizations face counternarratives continuously. Are there ways of defending the organization against them without resorting to defensiveness?
When change effort succeed, there is often a push to celebrate success, but is that always the best thing to do? Sometimes, no response may be better.
What happens when an organization decides that a role performed on a voluntary basis is so important that it should become a permanent position?
Given a choice, where would you more likely take a job? When you answered, did the weather or climate play a role. If so, you’re probably not alone…
Stopping something, like bad habits or change efforts is an important part of change, but is sorely overlooking in the popular change literature.
There is little question that political division is strong and inhibits dialogue. To what extent is this a problem and what should be done about it?
