Han van Loon, 19-Apr-04 @ 13:41PM

Cultural models

Hi
to all of you who asked, I have loaded the cultural models to my website:

www.starswebworx.ch/starsweb

Follow the balls to Improvement Books page.

Pierre-Yves Cornélis, 19-Apr-04 @ 11:54AM

Working together in a multi-languages & country environment

Hi, I am reacting here to Raniera Gioacchini on 08 March 2004 who asked "Now, imagine having to coordinate and involve a multicultural team. Which meaning will every person give to the words used? How will each person interpret the aim of the team or organization, when facts and figures are not the only ones to count? "
Making a multi-cultural (15 European countries) & language (10) team work together has actually been my challenging job at least for the last 2 years for a multinational company. It was called Change management activities, but Trust Building would actually have been more appropriate. To start with, we spend a long time telling, discussing and retelling what the aim of the organisation was. After, most time has actually been spent
1) making sure all sides understood what each other truly meant, and then
2) making sure it was actually delivered (this is the fundament for building trust).
Because the end results needs to be obtained under an always-shrinking timeline, the following steps were undertaken.
- Organising face-to-face meetings: it tremendously facilitated it all as it allowed people to know each other a minimum.
- Holding regular (weekly) meetings (or phone conference): it is all about making sure communication channels remain open (both nominally (I reserve some time in my agenda to talk to you) and actually (we discuss the stuff which really matters to BOTH of us)
- Demonstrating the dominant group (and culture and language) was genuinely open to discussion. We did this by organising ad hoc “busting issues” session where everyone could come and present his arguments, on condition the group left with a consensus on the way forward (we were stung here once by culture & language, but it worked extremely well overall).
Actually the biggest obstacle we met were the people leaving the project: this whole exercise of trust building had to be restarted from scratch. It seems a single person is much more trustworthy than any organisation (and the bigger the organisation the less trust it gets to start with).
Hope this sheds some practical insights on this debate.

PYC

Nikolai Krjachkov, 17-Apr-04 @ 12:37PM

E-commerce and Life Ltd.

Yes, Mei-Yu,

‘clear instruction of merchandising and easy contact of customer services will be much more important in this business area’. But why do you say ‘will be’, what is the obstacle to have clear instruction now?

Ran,

you say: ‘Belief as a textvirus…what is a text virus?’ and belief ‘is linked to cultural and personal system’. But who is the creator of the personal system? If person has personal system that is managed from outside (not by this person) and it works against this person making his/her life shorter - this person deals with textvirus problem. So life can be measured (time) by taking into account who and why uses your life. In other words if someone doesn’t check his/her understanding of wording of action he/she can catch a textvirus – a hidden meaning of wording of action. The cultural content gives knowledge for authors of textual viruses what meaning to use. Seems you faced the problem – as you said: ‘When I write “Personally I believe in people and in their actions, not in ads and words written on a website”, I mean results count more than intentions.’

‘Life Ltd.’ takes place when people are used as resources and the authors/managers of this ‘company’ have limited responsibility.

But I asked about how to overcome ‘the measurement monopoly’ in corporate accounting.

Raniera Gioacchini, 16-Apr-04 @ 21:19PM

onion society

Han,
I’d like to see the slides too, please. I'm curios.

Ran

Raniera Gioacchini, 16-Apr-04 @ 21:13PM

Life Ltd.??? Don’t know this organization… How many people there? :-)

Hi people,

Nik,
Belief as a textvirus…what is a text virus? (Chris, I read the link u gave, but didn't understand)

I agree ‘belief’ is “accepted as true, often without proof.” Or until next proof. I agree then we tend to see, notice and believe what we want to. It is linked to cultural and personal system.
When I write “Personally I believe in people and in their actions, not in ads and words written on a website”, I mean results count more than intentions.
What is the solution for ‘the measurement monopoly’?
I’ll tell you a story about what I just experienced during the presentation of a state statistical research on women occupation. The research was leading to not-representative image of what was declared in the “title” of the research itself. And I just experienced the people presenting the research (mostly institutional people), recognizing all its limits and evident errors (quantitative and especially qualitative) and, at the same time, getting so upset when I said “I have difficulties, I cannot interpret this research and use it for information. It is not relevant and not representative. I don’t know what to say, after all I heard here from you, if I understood well, we know nothing about women work occupation”. Some of them were really irritated. But at the end of the debate, the technician who had elaborated the data, concluded saying “yes, this research doesn’t make us understand women work and occupation”. Which I interpreted as a “nice and clear move”. Then two persons offered to compare other data and research to get more representative information and a more qualitative research. And that’s another “nice move”.
That’s a good game to play. Use their energy.
So what’s the solution for the “measurement monopoly”? The people themselves. I guess those people there in the debate were already realizing it, but it’s hard to say it and move on (and there’s groupthinking also). Especially because, as you also say, there’s no evident alternative, for the moment. I like to break groupthinking, when I recognize it. Don’t know if it’s a solution, I cannot measure it ;-) but it’s fun…how can you say life is limited? You measured it? ;-)

Ran

Chris Macrae, 16-Apr-04 @ 12:26PM

query

You almost prposed that the traditional commercial way is more trustworthy than new ways

If so, what do you mean?

As it happens I have at least as high a trust relationship with Amazon and with web-based low-cost air flights than theior more traditional competitors

Frankly I want to see innovation of the best of real and virtual worlds; and I mistrust business plans who make it an either, or

lets have some examples- maybe we are thinking very different contexts; yet it is sad if we are hypothesising that computers can never support better quality relationships than people alone could in days when they were without clued conversational access to customers?

Mei-Yu Pan, 16-Apr-04 @ 11:38AM

The vitual trend of e-commerce

Due to the common usage and progressive development of telecommunication, e-commerce is getting more popular now. We can often hear that people admire many advantages of e-commerce, but we have to also admit that: we are also getting lazier then before. What we can’t ignore is: it is pretty hard to build trust in e-commerce because it is not the traditional commercial way of doing business. In fact, we are doing business through a piece of machine, a computer. Thus, clear instruction of merchandising and easy contact of customer services will be much more important in this business area. They will be the determinant factors if the company can catch the customer and if it can succeed.

Chris Macrae, 16-Apr-04 @ 07:47AM

thanks

Han - I'd love to see some slides

Nikolai - yes -on guilty - my apologies, I was using the word sloppily ; whilst adhering to your idea that we should take text virus out of formal communications,
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?maxhits=5&s=3007&dateformat=%25d-%25m-%25Y&d=1&sec=28
I insist its better we chat (even with my slop) than not converse

All- as it happens there's a deeply related thread on whether cultures live their values being conversed here http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=123793&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Han van Loon, 16-Apr-04 @ 07:18AM

Values and belief

Hi
your discussion on values and belief perked up my response mechanism again...

I have created a model of culture - based upon an pre-existing 'onion skin' model that shows the various aspects, but have added another dimension.

From outside to in, the model comprises:
Explicit cultural artefacts - e.g. language, fashion, architecture, etc.
Behaviour - i.e. actions and reactions
Norms - group or team standards.
Values - personal or team shared beliefs (& goals).
Assumptions - basic beliefs we rarely question and alter.
Core Beliefs - the most basic beliefs that we almost never question.

Each of these in my model has different depths of personal association and resistance to change. Obviously (I hope), the depth increases as we progress inwards (otherwise my model fails to be relevant). The model depicts the various aspects as a set on concentric cylinders with increasing height as you progress inward. The idea is that people willingly and easily change the outer layers, but less easily change the layers heading towards core beliefs.
In reality the change in association is more progressive and somewhat irregular. In simple terms the strength of belief varies per person for each aspect.

Hence Raniera, what might be written as an organisation's values is adopted to varying degrees by different people. This is one reason why written values (BTW, I had someone show me an organisation's Core Beliefs recently?!?) often have less meaning than personal values. Each person interprets them a bit differently and has greater or less strength of association with them.

If you want a couple of slides of the model, I can email it separately.

cheers. Han

Nikolai Krjachkov, 16-Apr-04 @ 05:40AM

What is the solution?

Chris,
I did not say ‘guilty’, I said ‘it looks like ... principle’. Now your thought is clear for me. Let’s smile and go ahead. I agree, we need ‘KM as different from old M’ and we discussed a variant at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=124049&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y.

Raniera,
when I say ‘values don't work’ I mean a problem with ‘belief’- accepted as true, often without proof. Very often people use the word ‘to believe’ and perhaps that means they don’t understand what they deal with … and others can abuse their ‘belief’.

You prove it when say: ‘Personally I believe in people and in their actions, not in ads and words written on a website’.

From my practice I can say that written and real actions have the same content. This content exists in many variants of its understanding but usually people can see only one variant that corresponds with their belief. Unfortunately it turns out illusion and an unexpected variant really acts as textvirus (belief could be a textvirus too). That is why I prefer ‘understanding of variants’ and personal KM first of all – organizations are people.

OK. Values come from people (or values are people) and we face as Chris said: ‘the measurement monopoly’.

What is the solution:
1) to spend time convincing monopolists to lose the monopoly (I agree life is limited)
OR
2) maybe you (and other people) can see another solution?

Raniera Gioacchini, 15-Apr-04 @ 11:19AM

values are people

values come from people.
e.g. yesterday I was reading the values of a large organization and they were: innovation, creativity, sustainable development, sustainable ecological impact, economic growth linked to social evolution, etc.
Who's the author of these values, you ask.
I guess it's the people. Of course, the people have a cost. And this cost must also be sustainable.

Then you say- who is personally responsible when values don't work?
People are personally responsible for LIVING the values they say to believe in.
If they don't live them they get no credit from other people, no matter how much money the organization spends in advertizing.
Personally I believe in people and in their actions, not in ads and words written on a website.
But what do you mean exactly when you say "when values don't work"?

Groucho Marx once said: "These are my values, if you don't like them, I have others"
;-)

ran

PS: values can be learnt

Chris Macrae, 15-Apr-04 @ 07:47AM

not guilty nikolai

The goal is to get organisations to understand both:
- what value muliplies because it is governed systemically through trust connections of human relationships

-and what value adds because it can be modelled by seprating the counting the transactions of lifeless things (the Edvinnson metaphor for tangible accounting)

Unfortunately, the measurement monopoly that rules corporations hasnt changed in 100 years in enforcing separability/extraction and treating all people (knowledge) as costs. While you live in a world where big decisions are made by people who only know how to add and subtract bottom lines, (and have no respect for the value multipliers that people bring) it is necessary to champion multiplcation - especially as most of the future's value, must human learning and most purpsoe is a copounding and non-zero sum game. If it wasn't we would need KM as different from old M - would we?

Nikolai Krjachkov, 15-Apr-04 @ 05:40AM

Let’s make the problem clear

Hi Raniera,

Tell me please where do values come from (?) if, as you say, ‘You cannot create and consume a “value”, you can only share it and spread it (or keep it and lose it)’.

If values are static/was defined in the past:
- who is their author,
- how can we change things or KM is only a sort of fiction,
- who is personally responsible when values don’t work?

Chris,

why do you divide money and other things about knowledge issue? It looks like ‘divide and rule’ principle. Let’s integrate things!

Chris Macrae, 14-Apr-04 @ 07:49AM

a lateral inquiry

Ran

Your post (and some other stuff in my inbox) stimulated a lateral idea- why dont we survey what are THE CONTEXTS of the most important work in world and primary KM to practice in each context ?

http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=125277&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

My idea for the next month at this thread is to see if anyone posts, and I'll edit the scoreboard of what contexts people vote as biggest

Let's see which of these 2 opposite cases members believe in:
-all knowledge sharing revolves round money and commercial products

-knowledge sharing has as much to do with multiplying human education and wider ways of judging the lot of our human race at every locality of the globe

Raniera Gioacchini, 13-Apr-04 @ 14:25PM

who has interest in sharing?

Hi Nikolai,
we can share ideas and values, without having interest in them, e.g. I can share the idea of better salaries for cleaners, even if I’m not a cleaner and none of my friends/relatives are. We cannot create and consume ideas and values: they are not in the mainstream business logic of creator vs consumer. This logic is apparently dualistic: from one side people who create (and their right to get something in exchange), on the other side people who consume, and their duty to give something in exchange of what they are consuming. I agree money is a common means of exchange (even if not the only one; access, visibility are others). In any case, things creators and things consumers are on the same level, whatever means they chose to use for their exchanges: they are linked to one another, they are peers. But I wonder who else is in the system? Who is living only on interest, without creating or consuming? Whose interest are you really working for? Those people are not peers. Therefore, why should I do their interest?
I’ll tell you more. Lots of people are reducing consume because of economical recession; lots of people are creating less, for the same reason. Some are moving to other potential “markets”, where to create again the system creator vs consumer vs ??? Some are trying to “sell” ideas and values as if they were things (bound to fail!). Some are trying to create a new system.
I agree with you “the current loan-credit financial system based on the interest of the elite is out of date and generates inequality (the value of one quantity or expression is not equal to another)”. Interest, as you say is something that grows on money. What grows on ideas?
Now we’re talking about values, intangibles, ethics…ok, these are in people, not in goods. So, how can we apply the same system with these? You cannot create and consume a “value”, you can only share it and spread it (or keep it and lose it). Who has interest in this? I still cannot answer…but I’m letting words dance in my mind.
Ran

Nikolai Krjachkov, 11-Apr-04 @ 07:05AM

Business without interest?

Raniera,

you are saying: ‘I'm trying to delete the word "interest/interested" from my vocabulary. Where we usually would say "I'm interested in it", I want to say "I share it". Reprogramming the language we speak is very effective on our behavior (NLP was right). And it's contagoius...you read Mind Virus by Richard Brodie?'

Could you explain how to run business without the word ‘interest’ – for example if to understand:
- ‘interest’ as ‘money paid for the use of credit or borrowed money’;
- ‘credit’ as ‘reputation for trustworthiness in paying debts’ or ‘a sum of money or equivalent purchasing power, available for a person's use’.

What is the EQUAL (having identical rights) if to understand ‘to share’ as ‘to join with another or others in the use of something’ – i.e. what those who create ‘something’ can get in exchange when others consume (use) this ‘something’?

I think money is about communication too, also I think that the current loan-credit financial system based on the interest of the elite is out of date and generates inequality (the value of one quantity or expression is not equal to another).

But what is your suggestion for business if to delete the word ‘interest’?

Thanks.

Raniera Gioacchini, 10-Apr-04 @ 17:37PM

condivisione

by the way, to share in Italian is condividere, that means to divide with (dividere con) and comes from Latin communicare (to communicate).

ciao

Raniera Gioacchini, 10-Apr-04 @ 17:22PM

Alfa Generation

Ciao people of the earth, hi Chris.
At first I didn't understand well, then I took time and "let words dance" in my mind. Now it's clear and I basically share your vision of "a chain of trust".
I couldn't enter http://www.enetrpriseforall.info
If I understood well, I think I'm already facilitating some people here to organize similar events. I'll try to enter the site again to get more inspiration. The word REGENERATION is exactly what we want. In the radio I'm now we are the ALFA GENERATION, or second generation of Rete Alfa (the name of our radio, it means Alfa Net). One of our program is called New Generation. I think Regeneration conveys the idea of circularity and no fracture (different from old vs new, first vs second, life vs death, man vs woman that are a dualistic system).
I also share http://www.simpol.org
I'm taking my time to "let words dance" before deciding. Meanwhile, I'll talk about it here.
I'm trying to delete the word "interest/interested" from my vocabulary. Where we usually would say "I'm interested in it", I want to say "I share it". Reprogramming the language we speak is very effective on our behavior (NLP was right). And it's contagoius...you read Mind Virus by Richard Brodie?
ciao

Chris Macrae, 07-Apr-04 @ 14:03PM

ho!

Intriguing as this is, what really opened my eyes was a briefing 50 youth gave me last saturday week as to how they are trialling a community in London using logics very similar to these - way to go youth!

Assessments of others
(here (x) is a variable, as in mathematics)
Each member of the network can make statements about people he (or she) knows (and should at least make one such positive statement, in order to allow transmission of his capabilities, as will become clear) - he may choose the members of this list freely. About each member "x" on the list, he will indicate whether he considers (x) honest or not and whether he trusts (x) or not, not only personally, but most of all in terms of (x)'s respect for others and the commonwealth; and whether he considers (x) reliable and responsible in (x)'s activities. He will also indicate if he trusts (x)'s assessments of others (positively, negatively, or neutrally - neutrally signifying an absence of opinion in order to avoid conflict). Everyone is responsible for his own statements, and if he doesn't have a clear and certain opinion about someone of interest to the community (of use to the commonwealth), he should abstain from any assessment rather than risking a mistake.
Consequently, the list given by a member can usually be reduced to two or three people of whom he has a definite opinion. This opinion can comprise standard options (multiple nuances and possible additional information within a list), processable by computer, but also containing comments intended for specialists (or maybe lay people) who will undertake the human aspects of data processing.
The logic is this:
- If x is honest and x says that y is honest then probably y is honest
- If x is honest and x says that y is dishonest then probably y is dishonest

Discrediting
One can expect that any two honest individuals in such a world will be connected to each other by chains of trust, i.e. that one declares one's trust in A, who declares his trust in B, who declares his trust in C, who (...) who declares his trust in the other. It will be said that an individual is discredited if no chain of trust reaches from honest people to him, and if at least one honest person has declared
him dishonest

more theory http://spoirier.lautre.net/trick.html

Chris Macrae, 07-Apr-04 @ 08:03AM

han what do you mean?

Of course honesty can be clarified

all the leading religions of the world write up great stories on what has been called the golden rule (relationship reciprocity) - do unto other what you would like them to do unto you- where you meet in communities know (action learn) faith, hope and love and why love is the greatest of these 3. I am sure everyone has a similar text albeit often worded to associate with a different bible of stories.

The contexts of translating that into systems over time may be complex, the idea of honesty is simple to define. Anyone who acts as a parent has to believe so.

Chris Macrae, 07-Apr-04 @ 07:46AM

ideas

Raniera, your post provokes various ideas in my mind; if you see one that you would like more detail on say

1) in the uk there is a term regeneration (eg I participated at one regenration event of http://www.enetrpriseforall.info which involves an interesting mix of the people's views, a leading bank's views, and the UK government (Treasury) listening!);

generally the idea regeneration means in cities or other regions where all sorts of different racial groups have mixed together and the area has a poor infrastructure, how do we get these people to see common grassroots interest in getting along and improving the whole place; over and over people say they need spaces where they can meet each other, have time to understand; sometimes these spaces are created by food festivals or something humanly experiential where the diversity actually brings the enjoyment which opens space for relationships of trust across different peoples; over and over we find that modern life (supermarkets, big businesses etc) in cities has destroyed a lot of these social capital communion centres for starting to respect each other

2) the more difficult 1) is the more finding a group eg youth who will take on convening open space is the only solution I know to work; that's because open space has now been used 50000 times in the last 25 years and is based on the communing respects of hope, faith, love of each other as well as giving everyone who particuipates equality of raising issues

3) Experimenting in every simple conversational way, I believe we need to socially network emerging hubs for new action locally and internationally; by new action I mean grouops who are asembling an idea that can change the usual types of organsiations; I do not believe that all solutions of the kind of problems you mention are going to come from the estanblished typologies of government, corporate , NGO- so who are these new groups; locally I am sure you can make your own list; globally I would love to hear people's views but for example http://www.simpol.org is one and if anyone wants to start a dialogue as to how to start simpol in Italy- let me put in you direct contact with the open human source of Simpol; ditto if anyone is coming from a similar perspective to Rianiera in another country. chris wcbn007@easynet.co.uk

Raniera Gioacchini, 06-Apr-04 @ 16:10PM

trust reinforce trust

Hi people of the earth :-)
Ok, let’s start from integrity and equity.
I agree with Han when u say, it is related to cultural conventions, which are so different moving from country to country (even from region to region) – and to the clarity of the event (and to the language u speak).
I live in North-Eastern Italy, we are receiving lots of people coming fron southern Italy and lots of Non-European citizens and we’re learning to merge different ethics and languages. It’s so difficult sometimes. Visiting a country and noticing that they have “different values” is one thing (it’s recognizing we and them/others); having to share the same place day after day and to co-evolve with different values is another thing (it’s recognizing there’s no “other”, there’s only “us” and no more place to “expand our world or vision of the world”).

Then Equity. It has to do with expectations. That are often tacit or given for granted.
Not trusting each other was a common attitude in my country, at the point that those who chose trust were said to be “stupid” (at least “naïf”) and not trusted, consequently. Those who chose trust then, in the long run, were expecting nothing more from others, thus being demotivated. Or changing their vision and making a different choice for the future (to survive). We, younger generations are obliged to make different choices if we want to survive.

“Value is perception subjective, influenced by culture. But even though, there is core part where every body agree at all point of time”, sorry Vrajlal, I can’t agree with that: everybody who?
Honesty and trust are convenient conventions for “tribe” or "species" survival.
So, that’s how I came to think that no-one can define honesty, when we speak different languages and (consequently) experience different realities. But then I’m still here talking about it and trying to live it ;-)

VRAJLAL SAPOVADIA, 26-Mar-04 @ 05:55AM

Trust in full..

I do not agree that trust is limited to product, in fact it should be in full operation. creating trust consumes resources and hence it has a cost, trust in product and operation pays to organisation. Builded trust, reputation require less marketing expenses. Some one defined honesty and trust in its dictionery meaning. It is more than that. Even as some one rightly mentioned that it is subjective and differs spatial and in time, even in person. Value is perception subjective, influenced by culture. But even though, there is core part where every body agree at all point of time. Radford considered this part of honesty as STATIC HONESTY. Honesty can be viewed as EQUITY. What I expect from others, I have to give same, nothing less. Trust building is not merely required to earn more, but to preserve and improve cultural value too. It is social responsibility of any organisation to upheld trust and honesty.

Han van Loon, 15-Mar-04 @ 12:21PM

Honesty

Hi Raniera
you don't honestly think anyone can define honesty do you? Sorry ;-)

In Dictionary.com, it provides:
# The quality or condition of being honest; integrity.
# Truthfulness; sincerity: in all honesty.
# Archaic. Chastity.
# Botany. A European plant (Lunaria annua) cultivated for its fragrant purplish flowers and round, flat, papery, silver-white seedpods.

Ignoring the archaic and botanic definitions, I still have problems....

The problem is that it is related to ethics and cultural norms and values. This varies by nation/region/organizations etc..

It also depends upon the clarity of the event/matter that requires human judgement - what happens when there are many possible interpretations?

The integrity and sincerity values mentioned in the dictionary are very culturally dependent - in some countries if your friend is in trouble, being sincere means supporting your friend, even if his/her perceived version of events is different to all other observers of that event. The more trouble they are in, the more you should support them.
In some countries, one would avoid commenting, while in other countries you would give your version of events which may create problems for the (former?) friend. One could see this as an example of 'tribal' behaviour - you support members of your tribe.

As I have travelled around the world (as limited as that is), I have observed many different interpretations of honest behaviour.
So sorry - my answer is that there is no (consistent) answer :-)
best regards
Han

Nikolai Krjachkov, 10-Mar-04 @ 05:54AM

Re

Raniera,

the same problem takes place in mono cultural teams too (when people use native language) because words usually have various meanings. But the quantity of meanings is limited and gives opportunity to ask people what meaning they really use when communicate. This approach works at my Laboratory of textual viruses http://www.tvl.ton.net.ru
for finding risks in textual documents and their normalization, but I work with Russian texts.

When you translate texts and can not ask authors what the meaning they use the choice of the meaning is yours. I think this is the reason for author of the translation to take out a copyright on the translation.

Raniera Gioacchini, 08-Mar-04 @ 19:54PM

please define honesty

I just scanned all the comments (didn't have time to read all of them). So, maybe I'm going to say something already said before. Or maybe this is not the right thread...anyway, I've been working on trust all of my life, so...

I don't usually trust large organizations.
I have the feeling that it is difficult for people to really share the same aim there.
I also have doubts on the meaning of honesty.
Think about point of views that change with time, age, and the rest of people' identity.
Someone define honesty please.
I sometimes work in translation and have learned a lot from this work. When we deal with different cultures (especially non-Western), translators really have difficulties in being "honest". The translated word loses its original meaning and change. In Italian language, traduttore (translator) sounds similar to traditore (betrayer), and this really gives the strong feeling to how difficult is to be faithful to original meaning.
Now, imagine having to coordinate and involve a multicultural team. Which meaning will every person give to the words used? How will each person interpret the aim of the team or organization, when facts and figures are not the only ones to count?
My point is not ethical, but purely linguistic and cultural.
Shall we need to learn to communicate beyond (or despite) words to create a base for trust?

That's all.
and please, define honesty, I really need that.

Raniera

Chris Macrae, 05-Mar-04 @ 13:05PM

looking deeper

I was intereted in what the Time article didnt say about who or what has been the cause of social decay of trust

Three I would include in this background are:
the management culture of big business

the culture and double loop non-transparencies of big governments - do the Europan people understand how their name is being used to ruin the poor world in GATTS negotiations?

and especially in the US the big mass media

doubtless there are others; but if you want to turn The System round that is causing inhuman ways of relating to each other then why not assume each of these types of organisation is currently guilty of compounding distrust unless it can transparently show us how its context is trustworthy

Is this not a big challenge for knwoledge management to intervene in. Where do we find discussions of how to intervene:

NEW KM http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=122546&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
OPEN SPACE http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?forum=1&topic=66&comment=2029
Critical Therapy http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=122949&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
Separating doing & knowing http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=123353&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
and where else

Jacques SOUILLOT, 04-Mar-04 @ 17:51PM

Trust: the more we talk about it, the less I see it... What a strange world!!!

I had thought of posting the following in the "Quotes" thread of the H-SIG. However it could be useful to archive it in this thread about "trust".

Trust is the bedrock upon which social and economic exchange is built. Where trust is absent, suspicion rules; you deal only with those you know firsthand, which atomizes society and diminishes the range of human experience.

The Uses of Civility
How to deconstruct the strange case of Janet Jackson's breast
by Michael Eliott
TIME columnist
Monday, Feb. 09, 2004

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/elliott/article/0,9565,589086,00.html?cnn=yes

It could also inspire a few other comments from our readers!

Han van Loon, 04-Feb-04 @ 17:19PM

Hi-Lo Trust

Hi Chris
my tuppennies worth....

Hi-trust organisations where people share values, norms, power, knowledge, they value purposeful behaviours (positive politics) and act/react positively to internal and external environment changes.

VERSUS

Low-trust organisations where lots of negative politics (destructive, obstructive and defensive power games/activities) are played between people, or there is a lack of required actions/sharing.

----------------------

Crucially when an error is made or the environment changes, nobody has the courage to pass this knowledge up the organisation, nor would such messengers be rewarded.

Hi-Trust organisations allow people to contribute or aks others to contribute without a need to constantly check that other are 'doing the right thing'.

Han van Loon, 04-Feb-04 @ 12:46PM

SME agol

Hi Jacques
I can't find my comments about SMEs in the thread (you can't trust anyone these days.... LOL!) but from memory I was referring to the EU FP6 project proposal in which negotiating in dynamic networks was one research theme.
There are several aspects that we were interested in researching between SMEs and including micro-enterprises [mMEs] (which I think of as less than 5 people) when trying to establish cooperation with other enterprises.
1. Large enterprises tend to dictate terms, SMEs and mMEs are rarely so lucky.
2. Large enterprises use contract/legal specialists to make ageements, SMEs and mMEs don't have these resources.
3. mMEs and to a lesser extent SMEs are resource bound for many tasks and cannot research alternative arrangements and partners.
4. mMEs and SMEs have little power to change the terms of an agreement with more powerful and larger (potential) partners.

Internally, SMEs and mMEs often do not have formal structures and detailed roles for the people (defined pattern of power sharing), so senior managers/owners can more easily over-rule or change decisions (for better, for worse..). If communications are good, then this may not a problem, if communications are bad, this causes a lot of stress to the 'downtrodden' (those without the power to take decisions and implement them).
In SMEs such as consulting firms when the staff are dispersed to client sites (so limited opportunity to engage in informal communication) people tend not to interact and communicate enough to build trust (and lots of other KM issues). So co-location (or the opposite) is an important factor for opportunities to build trust.
Relying upon contractural basis for trust does not work within an organisation, it is a substitute for trust between organisations (as our thread initiator mentions).

Opposite side of this argument:

A. When power sharing is really implemented within a team then trust can become a powerful motivator. In a previous firm I implemented a rotating departmental chairmanship amongst my staff for our monthly meetings. The chair could direct anyone to do tasks for the next meeting, so of course I was given several tasks to do. The cynics expected the idea of rotating chairmanship to fail, but when I did what was asked they realised I was serious and their level of trust increased dramatically as they realised they had real power. When I moved to Sweden, the team were given (by the CEO) a new department head who did not believe in these meetings. The team made a decision to continue the meetings without their boss, who gave in after 6 months and joined the meetings!!

My point here is that trust and power have to balance in some manner, if there is no balance then trust can evaporate quickly.

Communication can act as a moderator when there is unequal/inconsistent power sharing but not as a substitute for trust.

Hmmm, enough rambling from smeagol.....

Chris Macrae, 04-Feb-04 @ 12:31PM

organisational typologies

We are developing the conversational idea that:
-we all spend our lifetimes serving and being served by organisations

-perhaps we need to make a typology of the stark contrasts we can choose between in organisations, and only then clarify which knowledge method works for which typology

would anyone passionate about trust like to help me re-word the trust-typology? Provisional wording :

Hi-trust organisations where people share the most vital news and value purposeful behaviours
VERSUS
Low-trust organisations where lots of politics is played between people. Crucially when an error is made or the environment changes, nobody has the courage to pass this knowledge up the organisation, nor would such messengers be rewarded.

Thread discussing further typologies is http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=122616&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Jacques SOUILLOT, 03-Feb-04 @ 22:34PM

Thanks Han van Loon

Thanks Han van Loon for the message you posted 18 January.

Your contribution is quite refreshing and realistic, in particular since it is the perspective of someone in charge of KM in the private sector. So it means you bring more to the subject than theoretical speculations.

The thing one might not perfectly understand is why trust would be more difficult to establish in a small or medium enterprise than in a big or gigantic multinational company. It looks counter-intuitive. Could you enlarge on the theme, please?

But then are you talking of the trust "you" and the CEOs place in the work-force, or are you talking of the trust the workers are ready to put in the "boss" and the board of directors?

It could be that you have arisen a rich question here.

Jacques

chris macrae, 26-Jan-04 @ 20:16PM

time & trust

yes researchers have been finding lots of connections between t&T

at http://www.simplerwork.com, Bill Jensen has found that all knowledge workers are getting twice as much information passing through them every 3 years; unless the organisation can help them select what matters (or permit them more time to self-organise), trust me we'll drown in info

at claremont, professors have found that joy of accomplishment is the number 1 sustainer of human capital - organising this properly is more important than monetary rewards; this goes to time as the one finite resource we all have

I wonder what your definition of slavery is; perhaps never having any free time nor access to organisations with transparent purposes to make the most of your unique talents; as the net develops this also goes to the transparency of agents and the communal connections they search for you

trust and time are very close bedfelows in the systemic way of life and nature of organisation-yet managers are not accountable for burning people's time relative to money; this is very odd as the intangible age increasingly makes time capital at least as vital as finacial capital- do you want to work in an organisation where everyone is left to reinvent the wheel over and over? or one where great practical ideas are shared systemically and people are rewarded when they save someone else's time?

Ben Goodson, 26-Jan-04 @ 16:27PM

Late to the table again!

I love knowledgeboard sometimes. You stop lurking for a bit and then all of a sudden you find a topic like this that really gets the fires burning! In fact I think the last thread I posted in dealt with the nature of human (and therefore organisational) trust. In some ways I'm quite "Ho Hum" about the whole thing. Let me qualify that. If you speak to anyone in any management position today and ask them "is trust important?" they'll nod their head officiously and agree whole heartedly. When you ask them "why?" you'll get lots of different answers centered around some key themes. Notably, that trust bonds the manager and employee together almost symbiotically.

Trust is a feeling. Hard to quantify at the best of times and extremely tough to qualify because *STOP PRESS* people think and feel differently. There are some very academically minded individuals on these boards and I'm sure that the complex analysis of what human trust is and how it develops has been and is being done.

In the work place I'd make one very basic observation. Organisational trust is difficult to engender in small to medium enterprises simply because people do not spend enough time with one another. Whist the rise in collaborative technology and email is unsuprising and incredibly useful, human beings need to spend time with other human beings in order to evaluate them properly. I raised the issue at a recent easyJet away day. I don't have accountability for organisational workplace culture but, both as knowledge manager and as a rower of the boat, I have an input. For me it's the most important thing. Fortunately our work place culture is excellent and supports learning, development and awareness. So I don't have to shout and stamp my feet very much. At our away day I knew three people very well, three people less well and three people hardly at all. For me to trust someone, I need to know some basic things about them. I need to feel that they know what they're talking about. I need to know that they are open to other ways of thinking. I need to know that they can deliver what they say they can deliver. Let's not mistake trust for leadership or a system of belief - I'd say trust was an integral part of those concepts. For me to trust them, I need to be with them, to hear them speak, to read their body langauge. I want to KNOW them.

The old addage is that Trust is earned. If it is earned then it can also be lost or broken and then rebuilt.

Miguel Cornejo, 19-Jan-04 @ 12:46PM

Not just B2C

Hi, Han,

thanks. I agree with your precison, if I understand your use of acronyms :-). When using B2C I only refer to e-business between companies and consumers (online retailing). It is small by comparison with normal retailing, and by comparison with online wholesaling (B2B).

This is not only due to a matter of trust :-), since online access, online offer, convenience and habit do affect e-sales.

As an online-intermediated exchange of valuable assets, done (on one side at least) by individuals, B2C has a strong parallel with KM. Still e-business is not just about B2C :-), but mostly about B2B. This raises a couple of specific parallels:

- Trust-building through familiar measures. Companies are even more dependent than individuals on clear, well-crafted terms and contracts before trading online: the effects and obligatios created from posting a price in an exchange need to be very clear; the binding effect of an email needs to have legal backing.

- Inter-company or virtual-company KM needs to take that into account. Think of the difficulties of sharing sensitive information within an industry collaboration initiative (for instance), or any partnership, unless the ownership and allowed usage of the exchanged information is well established and agreed upon: it's not just enough to satisfy participants, you need to satisfy the companies they work for. In virtual companies the problem is the same: the roles and rights of every participant need to be very clear, or the component companies won't allow knowledge exchange.

It happens even within organizations, across divisions, that managers won't allow knowledge exchange when they don't trust that it will be used in ways they approve of. And that can only be assured by the equivalent to contracts: company rules, regulations and (clear, consistent) policy.

Best regards,

Miguel

Chris Macrae, 18-Jan-04 @ 12:28PM

Landscape of Trust isnt truly about quick, dirty or precedent

I was editing this extract for another space, when the "euro dropped". Anyone talking about trust in a specialist area of execution is likely to be talking across purposes with the widest concerns on how trust changes the valuation of everything human, unless we can conversationally discuss the big picture until most of the landscape of trust is at least recogised as existing, however you construe its immediate import. So some may find this extract valuable since it reports on well over 500 experts' views from our transparency networks of excellence at http://www.valuetrue.com.

Trustworthy owners help an organisation’s proactive investment in the next big social change that is ‘compounding all’ around it. To achieve this the system dynamics of compound change and the big change diffusing its way through every element of society needs to be iteratively identified. Future trend experts have been suggesting for 2 decades that a once in several centuries change is evolving – the transparency dynamics of networking will turn out to have more revolutionary impacts on society and hence its big organisations as institutions of society than any previous invention including the steam engine which caused society’s industrial age revolution. To understand why transparency of networking is compounding as a change of unparalleled human experience it is necessary to connect many subsidiary aspects, such as:
-The medium of digital is different from writing on paper or talking in the ether
(nothing’s wholly private – don’t criticise unless you are happy for that to be published everywhere; don’t destroy another's passion unless you are happy for that to be known everywhere- (which are your favourite references? Mine include Boone’s managing interactively; Gates- make sure bad news travels up faster than it travels anywhere else!)
-Networking connects every dynamic and challenge associated with globalisation and worldwide local responsibilities (no company can now be sustained as an island without partners both business and social)
-Valuation of the majority of most big companies assets has changed from being tangible to overwhelmingly intangible. Intangible was better understood when the word goodwill was more common because its system dynamic is primarily about how the whole future relationships are compounding not how the past can be scored and balanced in separate transactional parts. See http:/www.euintangibles.net
-A company can be brought down by wholly losing trust of any one stakeholder. None of these trust interactions are wholly command and control any more. Think first of business partners- they need your openness on key truths to survive and vice versa so do you. Swissair was bankrupted by a non-transparent partner

Han van Loon, 18-Jan-04 @ 11:18AM

Trust and eCommerce

Hi Miguel
I like your article but one little point - the amount of eCommerce for B2C (last time I checked) was less than 1% of the total B2C commerce in the US (probably the leading country in B2C). So there is still a long way to go before the trust issue is solved for the majority of people.
Han

Chris Macrae, 16-Jan-04 @ 21:06PM

How to organise the triangle of distrust

The Dynamic Organisational Triangle of Distrust

Imagine this: a triangle of organisational architecture whose apexes are labelled:
1.Hierarchy
2.Self-Organise
3.Network Open (with organisational partners)

Lemma 1: Unless open proof is available to the contrary most organisations today are governed in such a way as to spin and compound distrust between these apexes. This wasn’t knowingly planned this way; it’s just –as reported by Eu intangibles research http://www.euintangibles.net that the service, knowledge and networked economy have creeped up for a few decades on all measurable aspects of organisational systems and the mathematicians (ie accountants, economists, rational strategists) haven’t moved much from the industrial management age neatly summarised in the BSI standards document on KM and culture http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121482&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y by the following sentence: When you're managing subordinates who know how to do what they're doing better than you, you don't manage what they do, but manage the way they interact".

Trust Triangle Community Exercise 1:

What is that each apex must transparently understand and measurably act on to start spinning trust instead of distrust

My first responses are (would love to hear yours)

1. If we value having knowledge workers we must increase the self-organising systems organised for them. If we value partners, we need to understand how to blend open collaboration with closed competition starting from the top then all the way down then all the way round in terms of knowledge-sharing and behavioural loops.

3 Before we enter partnerships, part of our due diligence should test how open the knowledge practices of a candidate partner are. There must be an openness or transparency IQ test that enables us to rule out partnering an organisation that might appear perfect in every other business criteria but not on open networking

2 If our hierarchy is to make investments that value knowledge work and network partners then there must be a way of appraising whether they lead this. Why wouldn’t they want to join in the same trust or emotional IQ test that we would gladly take in open response mode if they would too. We also need to which measures come first in this organisation’s system and have a fearless and continuing open communal discussion on this since all other cultural aspects of Km gravitate here.

Chris Macrae, 16-Jan-04 @ 16:25PM

awesome

I could spend a whole day posting why this bookmark is awesome, and all about the architecture of human hope for virtual community and winning back lost trust spaces-but may the bookmark an extract suffice for those who will...Jan 16 blog at http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/

The Death of the "Third Place" and the Birth of Vitual Community
Why is virtual community becoming so important? Maybe this piece talking about Ray Oldenburg gives us a clue.

"Ray Oldenburg believes that the demise of community can be blamed upon the loss of what he calls the "Great Good Place ." Oldenburg's Great Good Place is the third place which is important to us in our everyday lives
after home and work. In this third place, we meet members of our community on neutral ground, leaving possible divisions such as class or industrial rank at the door in the spirit of inclusion rather than exclusivity.

These third places are described by Oldenburg as "the core settings of informal public life". (Oldenburg, 16) As the pub, church, and other free or inexpensive local
third places have disappeared, for many of us the feeling that community is lacking has increased. Third places, according to Oldenburg, are necessary for
community to arise. They are places where members of a community interact with others and come to know the ties which they have in common. (Oldenburg, xxiii & 72)

Looking at the definition of community used in this paper, it is clear that the existence of the third place is necessary for the building of community.

Oldenburg notes that cities of the Western world have seen a decline of such third places. This is especially true in America, where most of the population lives in
suburbs, far from within walking distance to a shops and businesses, a local pub or coffee shop, or other community centres which bring populations together. In the words of Oldenburg, "Houses alone do not a community
make, and the typical subdivision proved hostile to the emergence of any structure or space utilisation beyond
the uniform houses and streets that characterised it.
(Oldenburg, 4) Or, as Richard Goodwin complained, in the suburbs "there is virtual no place where neighbours can
anticipate unplanned meetings - no pub or corner store or park." ( Richard N. Goodwin, "The American
Condition," The New Yorker (28 January, 1974), 38 ) In
fact, it has been demonstrated that even the
architecture of our cities discourages free association amongst members of the community ( Davis, Harvey ).

Because of the lack of third places ...the educated are flocking to new social formation called the virtual community. Howard Rheingold argues that the development
of virtual communities is "in part a response to the hunger for community that has followed the disintegration of traditional communities around the world." (418)

Olaf Brugman, 16-Jan-04 @ 14:05PM

platinum rule

Thanks for your vitalsmarts reference Chris. I especially liked this quote:

"So here’s the take-away. When it comes to offering rewards, we need to follow the “platinum rule” (or actually understand the golden rule). That is, we need to give unto others what they would have us give unto themselves. So, when you’re looking to select something special to honor a person for his or her excellence, start with what he or she might enjoy."

Chris Macrae, 15-Jan-04 @ 18:34PM

light relief anyone?

Do com e and share in the marshmallow massacre
http://www.vitalsmarts.com/KerryingOn/Article.php
- a sort of rights of passage to any full frontal trust community

“Demand is merely a reflection of millions and millions of individual decisions. And market forces are the most powerful faith of our times…Choices that once converged in the age of collectivism are now diverging.

Preferences are also increasingly personal. The compromise is on the verge of extinction. Average customers or normal colleagues are on the list of endangered species. From freedom follows fragmentation…

Companies are getting the message. The new top-of-the-line Volkswagen Phaeton comes with individualised climate zones. The driver may be in the desert, while the passengers are in Patagonia. You decide.

Unit-linked savings enable us to be our own personal investment managers. Soon we may have ‘personalized medicine’ where each patient will receive individualized treatment based on genetically-determined drug responses.

At Spanish conglomerate Mondragon, individual employees have a say in everything from how work is conducted to the selection of the CEO.

Today, everything is individualized. An open world requires open systems and an open architecture.

Pick up a piece of paper and write down the words ‘open’ and ‘transparent’. Put it right next to your bed and look at these words every evening and each morning. Engrave them on your mind. Work against openness at your own peril.”

- Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordstrom, from their new book, Karaoke Capitalism- via http://www.ecustomerserviceworld.com/newsletter.asp

Chris Macrae, 15-Jan-04 @ 17:19PM

what is trustworthy web conversation?

Reminded of a theme have had to rehearse (with quite hostile managers) over 50 times the first 10 years of practicising virtual communications and community and networking

You can make the most of virtual correspondence if you openly ask what is the best of talking and writing?. You will make the least if you rush in assuming you know where this miracle conversation form leads. email is not writing and it is not talking it is -and compounds - an entirely different world of human communion. One which my friend at The Economist in 1984 forecast would progressively make the invention of the printing press look like small change economically and socially. And no globalisation would really be happening without email and its digital friends. see ICN's biggest winners http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121706&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Sample some startling realisations that come from this motion after iterative debate

1) Some people impose on reading this here text what they historically expect of the written word: tidied up, linear, thought boxed into exact subject areas. They will miss a lot. After all, most people who contribute here are doing it spontaneously (I doubt if anyone has spent an hour composing a post to a 2000 character web box); non-linearly - previous click may have been very lateral, previous real moment before interacting virtually situated in very different contexts; in different time zones; someone reading this thread now will be doing so for the first time all in one, others may have seen it post by post. To assume linearity of any contributor in such an open membership forum as KB and on such a big theme as: what are the basic emotions/actions of human trust? is contra-indicative to what the founders of this space told me they have intended in multiple face to face conversations in Brussels and further afield.

2) Look at something another way. If you had a transcript of every talking conversation you had during the day, a lot of it in retrospect would look very low on content. It is extremely prejudicial to wine that 6 emails in your inbox this day have taken up a lot of your time versus how much real time waste of talk you have done today. At another level, much of your real-talk wasn't a waste but it wasnt content either - it was all part of the socialisation of community or network of people around you- working out who you trust on what to go back to, your tacit way of doing SNA maps and multiplying emotional intelligence flows. If you deny equal rights to parsing what you learn in virtual correspondence then I would suggest that you are not an open user of virtual community and will never enjoy of it what you could. At this point, if you want to imagine what I might mean by that I suggest you have a click to the 12 grades of email usgae at http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmei.html

Helen Martin, 15-Jan-04 @ 14:54PM

Patents and copyright

The discussion has moved on since Cindy’s comment about patents and copy right - and, it seems to me, away from the initial issue of trust.
Patents differ from copyright – they are granted to protect the inventor’s idea or process, but the main purpose of a patent is to prevent others from making, using or offering for sale the idea or process. The patent can be freely distributed without requiring permission from the inventor.

As far as copyright issues are concerned, the matter is much more complex. The British Patent office (www.patent.gov.uk) offers the following information:
“Under UK law (the position in other countries may differ) copyright material sent over the Internet or stored on web servers will generally be protected in the same way as material in other media. So anyone wishing to put copyright material on the Internet, or further distribute or download such material that others have placed on the Internet, should ensure that they have the permission of the owners of rights in the material.
Generally, when you put your work on a web site, it is probably a good idea to mark each page of the web site with the international © mark followed by the name of the copyright owner and year of publication. In addition, you could include information on your web site about the extent to which you are content for others to use your copyright material without permission. Although material on a web site is protected by copyright in the same way as material in other media, you should bear in mind that web sites are accessible from all over the world and, if material on your web site is used without your permission, you would generally need to take action for copyright infringement where this use occurs.”
Helen

Chris Macrae, 15-Jan-04 @ 14:33PM

important clues beyond matters of controling where to say what

I believe this parallel conversation
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121320&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
raises a very important clue- essentially how can we trust each other if we haven't agreed the term KM?

What we find today is a repeated pattern: someone coins a new term because they want to scope some area of practice that isnt (at that time) transparently known or done; the first few people who are passionate about that idea put huge efforts into clarifying why the topic has huge human gravity and often needs the coming togheher of interdisciplinary common sense that hasn't previously existed. Then if the term resonates with lots of people, some big business interest then tries to take over the word both claiming its human common sense but perverting its function at least as far as the co-creators of the term , and all their community of interest (often the 100 people that think most like them and are known to them and in a networked age many other hundreds of hundreds)

This seem to be what happened to KM. I am not completely sure who the main co-creators were but why don't people reply to this thread. My understanding is that 3 of the co-creators were:

• 
  Peter Drucker, whose spent 80 years on the management link to everything and most of the last 30 on the management link to the knowledge worker which includes many self-organising system terms relevant to service and learning and net economies my family has helped to popularise including entrepreneur (The Coming Entrepreneurial Revolution once translated into Italian by Romano Prodi) , Intrepreneurial now
• Karl Wiig and the E100 net
• Nonaka and the Japanese school of KM which has always been transparently embedded in people to people relationship systemisation and unique identity of the organsiation's gravity as having an almost religious honor and grabvity for all leaders to respect

It is clear too that almost all the people who passionately connected their practice beliefs with this people-up systemisation or organisation (and economic and social policies) regard IT industries as having tried to hijack the term KM, aided and abetted by big management consultancies whose only business interest is in hierarchical models of organisation. This is the transparent back-stage on which every KM conversation revolves before it spins; in other words you read anyone's comments in any threads in this space work out whether they are coming from the KM co-creation school or some other side. That is probably also the fundamental first skill of Tacit KM at least from conversations I had when working in Tokyo for a year during the late eighties

Miguel Cornejo, 15-Jan-04 @ 11:02AM

Chris, are you with us :-D ?

Hi again,

this matter needs addressing.

It is a basic point of netiquette when using forums (and usually in mail lists too) to open a different thread when shifting the conversation on a different topic.

As Anne suggested, discussing matters that exceed the scope of the article is just the type of thing that merits its own thread. As this KB page says, these are supposed to be "comments" about the article and the ideas in it. Flooding it with general trust subjects, proclamations and links does not fit the bill.

And I regard "attention-grabbing" by climbing on other subject's shoulders as very bad netiquette, or worse.

Chris, I would personally appreciate your opening a new thread wherever you see fit, editing out your last messages here and copying and pasting them over there, so our conversation on basic trust-building mechanisms can continue, if desired.

Also, I have already asked for admin authorisation to do it myself if needed. It is part of a moderator's role in every smooth-working forum, as this should be.

Best regards,

Miguel

Nick Kings, 15-Jan-04 @ 10:51AM

(being quiet)

My apologies for not contributing to the discussion so far. It has been hectic the past few days, and I'm about to be off-line until the end of next week (due to participation in several 6th Framework projects).

I am following all the comments though :-)

Thanks to everyone!!

Nick

Chris Macrae, 14-Jan-04 @ 18:07PM

learn from mechanics of kids trust

When I want to revisit trust , I always start with kids- here's a favourite reading space Olaf http://espoonkirjasto.wysiwyg.fi/kirjaleikki/bookgame/equality/index.htm
extract:

The traditional situation of submission between child and adult is not just a problem of the individual. Of course, adults often fail to remember their own childhood and therefore misunderstand children. However, the basic structures in our society are such that they are difficult for an individual to break. In many institutions, adults have been given the keys to exercise all power.

All of us desire to be equal, very few would confess having a will to be a tyrant. That is why it is so difficult to admit to having unequal behavior.

Unequality hinders the development of the ability to think. A prerequisite for delightful learning is that the children, along with their knowledge and experience, are much appreciated. In a situation where all are equals, everyone can learn from each other. Each individual has permission to explore, try and fail. Even adults have the right to fail, and examine their point of view.

The rhythm of interaction is a fundamental ingredient in treating children as equals. However, sometimes children are so very quick that it seems as if there is no chance of being able to recognize all of their needs. We have also oftentimes noticed that, instead of lengthy answers, children await response in the form of action.

Another aspect concerning the rhythm of interaction is not rushing things. There must be plenty of time to spend with the children. An entire visit may be used up trying to figure out a single matter. It may be difficult to accept that it is better for the kids to learn one interesting thing well than it is to have them hear an entire lecture on the functions of a library, but it is worth pondering which of the two alternatives benefits the little visitors more.

In traditional teaching, a certain unequal practice is widely used. It has to do with making questions and answering children´s inquiries. The children are asked questions to which the person asking knows the answer. Because the kids know this is so, they feel the situation is degrading. How we handle children´s questions tells a great deal about how equally we treat them.

Olaf Brugman, 14-Jan-04 @ 14:35PM

meta meta meta

Seems we are back to discussing the rules of conversation, the places where to best post our conversations, repeating views without attempts to 'test' our models and revise/improve them.

Are we still discussing trust issues??

Chris Macrae, 14-Jan-04 @ 13:50PM

jacques let's be specific

Give us some examples of which posts you regard as spam. Historically there has been clear evidence that the community of sig editors etc hold 2 opposite schools of thought: too many people lurk and are put off by every judgement call , the opposite view of too much email/posts.

Trouble with such a big compass as KM and trust is one person's greatest learning point may be another person's spam but let's at least learn what you want less of and more of.

In another space Miguel & Chris write:

From: Cornejo Castro, Miguel
To: com-prac@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [cp] WIFM factor

Hi Andy,

you've found it. You said:

"I am not a lazy person, and will put the effort in to respond to a query or
answer a question put out to the audience but where that response I feel
will take so much effort and Whats in for them (the people running the
community) is greater than what is in for me and what is in for person I am
responding to I can't see why I would.

Another little aside is that, there are actually a few informal very human
mechanisms at play in influencing when I make postings. A number of times I
will talk to people also on this forum who will say, did you see the
discussion on such topic, I thought you would have a reply to that or what
did you think of that. From time to time these gentle nudges help you to
steer your participation and will effect the success of any platform
regardless of how clever the technology is or isn't."

Could be that be called a "fair exchange requirement" and a "personal involvement requirement"?

People like to help out: they just don't like to feel fleeced or short-changed. And they like to know there is someone who personally appreciates their contribution.

Best regards,

Miguel
CM write-
I agree with this entirely. What's interesting in this voice of human participation is that there are many systematic practices based on it - try the list in Debra Amidon's chapter http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=98621&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y on Peter Drucker's knowledge worker, or facilitation methods to what are variously called self-organising or complex systems

So are we or are we not agreeing that community design works when it interact with community or networks of the individual up?

I have always through that whether we use the CoP, Social network languages or KM language, this is the big hidden agenda. Are we up for politely and openly facilitating understanding with hierarchical management that if they want community or knowledge-sharing to multiply then at least within the situated context that evokes deeper personal emotional intelligences, inquiry, knowledge sharing than hierarchy can culturalise they must install metrics (in the widest sense eg social maps) and managing practices that are the opposite way round from 100% command and control

Jacques SOUILLOT, 13-Jan-04 @ 21:32PM

Stop the spamming!

Some people acknowledge that there is an overflooding of "blogging" on KB.

On the other hand "sharing" has been said to be no synonym for imposing.

Furthermore something like nétiquette suggests that discussion, interaction, should be the rule.

Let people participate. No one is supposed to monopolise speech in the whole of KB.

Jacques

Chris Macrae, 13-Jan-04 @ 18:44PM

let's debate your suggestion of order

Given the way Knowledgeboard is structured (every thread starts subscription anew) if Anne's topic is buried away where you suggest Miguel, it will probably not get much of an audience even though at a rough count of the people who have entered this thread its at least a big a topic they want to discuss as the one of your order

Incidentally whilst on the line lets mention some of the major trust threads which preceded this one because in any half way normal platform one might expect that their conversationalists would have user-friendly ways in

12239 sightings and 121 posts at Value of Trust http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=86659&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

1322 sightings and 28 posts & 20+ asynchronous participants at the Big Trust debate http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=118204&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

the KM & Trust sig http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmt.html

the EI sig which parented trust as the first emotional intelligence http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmei.html

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong, 13-Jan-04 @ 18:30PM

Navigation

You are absolute right, Miguel.

I can just see the same nightmare we have been expriencing to follow dicussion threads within KB.

Cindy

Miguel Cornejo, 13-Jan-04 @ 18:04PM

A forum for a thread

Hi Anne, Chris,

before other comments :-), I'd like to suggest that the best way to discuss a parallel topic may be to open a new thread in the brand new forum just opened for these matters here:

http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?forum=24

That'd help to keep the discussions ordered :-).

Best regards,

Miguel

Chris Macrae, 13-Jan-04 @ 15:33PM

Contexts of Trust - General Trust Network

This might be an appropriate place to check that you know that when John and I first introduced trust conversations to knowledgeboard nearly 2 years ago, we set up the General Trust Network
http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm?letter=g

Its aim to communally record where people were developing curricula of trust and what contexts each learning agent came from

To understand neighbouring vocabularies - Transparency is the keyword of trust in valuation and governance circles; open is the keyword of trust dynamics in developing networking models that are more than their organisations' parts. Open Space is the gateway to the family of techniques facilitators use to maximise everyone's voice in a community, network or around an issue of huge change and innovation dynamics.

To invite Professions to join in professional retreats two or more professions at a time , such as this week's Amsterdam Retreat of http://www.medinge.org to understand how we can put humanity back into our professional practices and join up in the meta-disciplinary ways advocated by the EU commissioner of Employment who also leads the Knowledge Society vision http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=95100&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Anyone can join up (eg just email me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk) provided they are prepared to be named as a contact point interested in discussing trust from their place locality and up to 2 chose contexts which they name in their own ways. A sample of our members is at http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm?letter=g

There is also a major series of system/corporate governance fieldbooks coming out this year. The first is the Naked Corporation, details at http://www.dontapscott.com or the keynote talk of this week's McMaster World Congress.
Our communities stake the claim to 2004, Year of Transparency at http://www.valuetrue.com

Chris Macrae, 12-Jan-04 @ 23:59PM

trust as part of KM & Culture BSi report

There were four one-page sections in the recent British Standards report on Km & Culture:
-The process of Trust Development
-Integrating Trust & Distrust: Social Realities
-Trust Networks
-Building on trust & Hofstede's cultural factors

Perhaps someone could get permission for Kboard to publish them as part of a conversational process. Meanwhile, I will put some short notes up at the thread discussing this report http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121482&d=1&h=417&f=418&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

Anne Jubert, 12-Jan-04 @ 21:41PM

Being of value...

Miguel,
Thanks for your response.
Don't you think that the reasons you mention are valuable enogh for you to take part in
the communities?
Explore relationships - a subjective value.
Practical for other contexts that you are involved in - for sure you can count on the people with whom you have experienced real dialogue on KB or elsewhere.
Your employer - I do not know you or him that well, but in general it is a plus to have motivated and well connected people to work with, especially if you want more than what is specified in the work contract.
Yes, I know that I'm priviledged- to a certain degree I have shaped my own jobs, both in the Commission together with Paul (Paul Hearn if you are new to KnowledgeBoard)- because we just went the extra mile that nobody asked for at work, but we did was we felt was really important , that the Commission should take responsibility for- and now somewhat similar in Ecole Centrale what I just have a moral contract to support the research labs, get visibility and find new opportunities for our researchers at the EU level. Real trust from the employers- definitely a win and a challenge for me to merit this,- but hopefully also a win for my employers.
But trusting people pays off- really.

Nick and Chris , I have not started the new thread yet, but this is a forerunner in a way.
Let's go ahead!

Best regards
Anne

Chris Macrae, 12-Jan-04 @ 18:07PM

anne's thread

Anne where do you want to start it? I am interested in cataloguing all such hi-trust methods openly.

Here is a survey we are running
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?comment=2097&topic=
Since I have been searching for at least 10 years to an answer to Anne's question, I believe this will work as a first benchmark will repay your visit. Many thousands of expert faciliators start with the method surveyed as the simplest before they make more complex contextual adaptations.What's great is that these alumni - should you earn their trust - now have over 100000 case stories to retell , many which started with huge conflict areas where respect needed to be repaired before trust could begin to breathe again. If you wish to value trust you need first to have a very clear picture of all ssytems that have led people to where they are at regarding:
1) conflict, gravity of deep passions with oposite views
2) change forces, usualy what have been stirring for many periods, and the route cause of how something that may once have had culturally harmony became conflict ridden
3) confusion in the snse that the worst possible way ahead is to assume one side can rule all the rest - that's not what you can sustain around any deep conflict gravity, even if a short-term fix makes it look as it a ruler has paper over the cracks

(heavens knows Brits (eg me) have this questioning of confusion-as-ruling-class in our genes to want to rectify, - our darn empire stirred the flames of more route cause conflicts and tragic future distress than any other nation, at least up to the start of this century)

Equally let's see more surveys of hi-trust methods. There are many professions I am helping to address parallel ways of open cataloguing methods.

Chris Macrae, 12-Jan-04 @ 17:56PM

crossed lines

Miguel - here is a paragraph of yours that my mail on lawyers was replying to:
MC: "I'd go as far as saying that business practice teaches to enforce agreements with contracts (or legal notices) quite fast. But I believe standard administrative practice in any civil service does too: decisions and responsibilities that are not documented are hardly relevant or implementable."

Taken, as a recommendation of a general sort, I do not believe my reply was an over-simplification.

If however your recommendation was being made specifically to the smallprint that any communications medium makes including this web, which I now realise that Cindy introduced as a topic you may have been minded about, then that is quite a complex topic

Personally I believe some human common sense is needed on all side of anything that is mainly a medium. Since Sift nor the EU or whomever legally owns knowledgeboard doesnt want to be sued for a libellous of obscene remark made within these virtual walls, I can understand why it should have a clause saying views expressed belong to the individuals who contribute them and where offensive etc will be removed as soon as we can. Maybe there are one or two other simple caluses, but why do we need lawyers each time for that? Heavens there must be hundereds of thousands of conversation boards out there on www- cant we have one simple text to start with that is taken as the standard wherevee people discuss stuff on the web? Does the EU's knowledgeboard need expensive lawyer minutiae on top of such a standard - I doubt it, or would start mistrusting this space if it did.

Vincent Vella, 12-Jan-04 @ 17:29PM

Formal vs Informal

I agree with both of you Miguel and Chris and the reason is that it depends on the particular context you are speaking about. Let me start by saying that it is impossible to imagine a world without contracts or lawyers (not that I'm a lawyers fan :) ) so here we are mostly speaking about finding the right balance. Normally in each company you will find 2 frameworks governing its behaviour - a legal, structured, visible framework/structure (contracts, company agreements, organigrams, etc) and a more invisible one that is mostly based on social, informal relationships. So typically we find these two intertwined frameworks. Now, on both ends of the spectru you can find the following scenarios:

(i) Too much formal, lack of informal: Knowledge exchange is minimal, work is mostly routine stuff, little innovation
(ii) Lack of formal, too much informal: Knowledge exchange is high, innovation is key, however sometimes you find problems related to project management, deviation from company strategy.

So here we are speaking about finding the right balance between the formal (maybe contractual) framework and the informal ¡K and I must say the balance is not the same for all businesses but depends on the characteristics and demands of each particular business ¡K in my research I found successful businesses that practice very little of KM so I must say that KM has not to be seen as the holy grail to success.

It is very difficult to find a simple clean cut scenario ¡K even in the same organization you might find departments, hierarchies, social groups, contexts (e.g. successful period or else during a period of layoffs) that exhibit different scenarios.

On another note I have to say that even KM in itself demands some form of control ¡K however control has to be in the form of aligning to strategic values and objectives, and empowering people rather than limiting participation. Trust is a very important factor in the informal structures. Obviously if someone is just governed by the formal structures he has to just follow the rules and thus trust is not really a requirement. Strategic alignment is very important (thus some sort of formal rules must exist). We have to remember that at the end of the day companies exist to make profit and not just to build piles of knowledge. I dont know if you recall the NASA story of the mid century ... the one about the one million dollar pen :)

Miguel Cornejo, 12-Jan-04 @ 16:23PM

What?

Chris,

you're making a gross oversimplification that IMHO invalidates your point.

I don't think the terms of use or contract on a website can be accurately described as "governing by fear [by legislating] every creative possiblity to interact".

Nor does it describe any other usual contract, for that matter.

The lack of a clear, flexible but well-delimited agreement or contract is the cause for most of the "conflict resolution procedures" in this world.

And your paragraph: "the very static terms and assumptions lawyers bud with have become meaningless anyway, in that change has overtaken the eventualities they wrote up - requring mediators to even work out whet the lawyers though they meant" may apply to lawmakers, but to very few modern contracts.

I'm afraid I'm not buying into systematically trusting anybody who can't be enforced to perform as agreed, just because being trustworthy is in their apparent best interest. No matter how "transparent" they are.

And I don't believe in the usefulness of comparisons in hypothetical "transparent, networked world". Such a thing does not exist, nor probably will.

The world does not work that way. It never has.

Humans don't work that way (all the time). That is the reason for laws, judiciary and law enforcement: a precaution to facilitate trust, cheaper than guarantees and pignorations... and much cheaper than not trusting.

This kind of overblown proclamations based on scant facts is what made me think that you regard this matter more as ethics or morals (politics?) than as business practices.
Best regards,

Miguel

Chris Macrae, 12-Jan-04 @ 16:02PM

the lawyer circle - spirals viciously into short-term transactions and closedness

Its not for nowt that the greatest academics (Fukuyama,Castells,Putnam,Drucker, Fuller...) of the 1990s rehearsing the emerging idea of virtual life worldwide as well as locally live physically pondered over whether we had enough social capital and trust in our cultures. That said...

Quite simply if big companies who are considering developing partnerships can't establish trust-levels between their top people before calling in the lawyers then they shouldn't go with those partners

I probably spent more of 2003 with conflict resolution mediators than any other type of profession. Reasons for making the above claim are multifold, and include:

Its like giving up on trust & EI and open knowledge sharing anyway if every relationship needs to read the lawyers' smallprint first- what better way is there of governing by fear than to legislate every creative possiblity to interact?

All the biggest innovations of the last 20 years have been beyond any single corporation and required top people to meet in trust, and only after they've rehearsed the possibilities does a light lawyer's charter have a place

Increasingly the very static terms and assumptions lawyers build the image of ptrecision with have become meaningless anyway, in that change has overtaken the eventualities they wrote up - requring mediators to even work out whet the lawyers though they meant.

Most inhuman of all, major risk-tragedies are being serially repeated because lawyers and insurers block learning around any disaster area so it doesnt happen next time. What we need is a justice system that works out who was guilty in big disasters within 12 months (preferably sharing out liability in a mediated way rather than the absurd loser loses all) and then opens up all the knowledge so the chances of the same system disaster destroying human life again are minimised insetad of maximised

I cant think of any growing alive community -that's prospered and sustained over generations - that was founded on the crutch of lawyers rather than the transparency of the human spirit. Can you?

Miguel Cornejo, 12-Jan-04 @ 15:59PM

Bad interpretation?

So I was wrong again, Chris :-). Sorry.

I'm afraid I have a lot of trouble interpreting your arguments (I have a hard time translating them to the world I know), but your zeal shows through when you talk of the subject :-). Probably that led me to the wrong impression.

So we're all basically in the same camp?

Best regards,

Miguel

Chris Macrae, 12-Jan-04 @ 14:50PM

Trust me- Its a good idea not to paraphrase someone wrongly

Miguel says Chris: As usual, I'm afraid, our views are different. I'm talking about trust as a tool, as an environment in which business transactions, including knowledge exchange, can work. You still seem bent on talking about it as an ethics subject. I agree that both subjects overlap, but they are not the same.

The truth is I am co-authoring a book that uses trust-flow as a meta-tool (actually I would say a system infrastructure mapping open source methodology) complimenting everything that is wrong mathematically, systemically with believing that transactional numbers alone provide any way of governing a corporation's future. Take this test : which is more valuable to the sustainability of an organisation seen as an a human relationship infrastructure (of knowledge productivity subsystems and stakeholder value demands) in a transparently networked world: cashflow or trustflow?

Whilst I'd rather not run out of either (and indeed running out of cash is pretty careless if ever you were big and profitable) the truth is that an organisation that has lost all trust-flow has no way back; it is below zero on value; whereas a hi-trust system that runs out of cash can always be refinanced.

We need to re-catalogue every management method ever used on its trust-flow systemisation ratings as well as its cashflow ones http://www.knowledgeboard.com/download/3247/cataloguevt.doc

Of course the tooling of trust-flow needs a lot more participation by everyone; it cant be governed just by 10 people at the top of a company of 50000 knowledge networkers. It needs metadisciplinary interfacing of all sorts of facilitation tools and relentless conflict resolution auditing. So if you will re-read every trust debate I have helped to co-launch in knowledgeboard, you will see that is also I who am talking about trust as a tool, as an environment in which business transactions, including knowledge exchange, can work. And this Thursday I have been referred to talk about that at the corporate governance track of the 2004 World Congress at McMaster, Ontario. Chris Macrae, ICU

Miguel Cornejo, 12-Jan-04 @ 11:33AM

Agreed

Hi Anne,

then I misunderstood you :-). Yes, we agree.

You said "if you contribute as a volonteer , that your contributions are not part of your paid job, I think that you do so because you feel this is of value , not only for the KB community, but also for yourself, and your employer indirectly- otherwise you would not do it, I think."

Being "of value" is a very wide concept, and an interesting one in this thread. About your example: I confess :-) I do it because I feel that by sharing insights and sparring with other practitioners and researchers, I learn a lot and tread new(ish) fields.

Sating my curiosity is about seven-tenths of the value I get out of KB; it may be subjective but it's great. I do believe it may have a practical usefulness for my work in the Macuarium CoP system too. Since I do that for free as well, I doubt these contributions are likely to be of material use to me.

And my employer... well, let's say that they have no interest whatsoever in CoPs, right now :-).

Being "of value" to a volunteer is probably not a very good reference for the "value" required for a professional to give to his/her employer more than was specified in his/her contract: namely, ceding exclusive working knowledge that would enhance his/her value if held.

"I'm (...) so lucky to work in organisations where we are/were trusted and with people where relationship and trust was a sine qua none."

Lucky indeed, if the degree of trust was high, and the things you were trusted with were ones you were happy with.

Best regards,

Miguel

Anne Jubert, 12-Jan-04 @ 11:08AM

Trust and rewards

Miguel I do believe that we agree on the second point- even if you said the contrary.
In your job, if you contribute as a volonteer , that your contributions are not part of your paid job, I think that you do so because you feel this is of value , not only for the KB community, but also for yourself, and your employer indirectly- otherwise you would not do it, I think.
When we discuss volontary work, it is not ONLY the work we are doing late evenings and during the week-ends. The limits of work and our own time start to become get blurred. This is the case for me at least- maybe because I'm and have been so lucky to work in organisations where we are/were trusted and with people where relationship and trust was a sine qua none.

The discussion is now focussing on break of trust.
I would like to start another "thread" on how trust can change your work and your relationships. Who wants to join this?

Miguel Cornejo, 12-Jan-04 @ 10:18AM

A lot of interesting ideas (II)

(continued from last post)

Ivo: As stated before, of course there are different degrees (and maybe types) of trust. I'd say again that trust is limited: it is given "to do" something. I may trust you to speak the truth, but not to drive my car. I may trust you to do business with, but not to keep trade secrets. And I make my mind up every instant, reevaluating your reaction to new events. Trust is therefore infinitely variable.

As for examples. Every person involved for any length of time in business transactions will eventually find that some party breaks his/her trust. I have seen people split from a society and take both business practices and contacts with them: no contract, no penalty. I have seen people take content from my old portal and put it on theirs without consent: I mentioned their (different) country's laws on intellectual rights, and they retired my content from they pages.

I'd go as far as saying that business practice teaches to enforce agreements with contracts (or legal notices) quite fast. But I believe standard administrative practice in any civil service does too: decisions and responsibilities that are not documented are hardly relevant or implementable.

Olaf: Very well put :-). I'd just add that sharing knowledge for nothing is an euphemism for giving something away. Unusual.

Cindy 2: A very good example.

Thanks again to everyone :-). This gets more and more interesting.

Best regards,

Miguel

Miguel Cornejo, 12-Jan-04 @ 10:18AM

A lot of interesting ideas (I)

Hi all,

I'm glad the subject sparks such a lot of debate. I'll try to connect a few points and answer questions and comments.

Ben: thanks for your comment. That's exactly what I meant.

Anne: thank you too :-). I have no issue with KB/KB2 ownership or management; I was stressing that it failed to use a trust-generating factor effectively (two, actually, since KB/KB2 transition was not very transparent either: I still don't know who will pay some KB expenses already billed :-)).

We do disagree in something: investing time and effort in adding to your organization's knowledge base is a quite value-related transaction. The worker adds value, and expects reward, in a way no more indirect than during the rest of the tasks of his/her job.

On the other hand, your example on Enron is perfect. It did have an effective, prize-winning KM system, and yet evidently the company could not be transparent and trustworthy as a whole. In other words, it generated enough trust for the KM machinery to work. As far as operational KM was concerned, it did the right things.

Chris: As usual, I'm afraid, our views are different. I'm talking about trust as a tool, as an environment in which business transactions, including knowledge exchange, can work. You still seem bent on talking about it as an ethics subject. I agree that both subjects overlap, but they are not the same.

Cindy: That's the point. The legal notice is there because it is needed to start building trust. It's a recognized, familiar, construct of law-abiding societies... and tries to express that a site is also law-abiding and trustworthy.

Vincent: Yes, indeed. I completely agree with your (i) proposition linking knowledge exchange, trust generation and value realization. I would only stress that the first step is a feebly-supported decision to start trusting and sharing, and only then the spiral kicks into work.

About (ii), it's a very interesting take on one of my favourite ideas. Please have a look at this for an exploration of the matter (I'd appreciate comments):
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=116398&d=pnd

And (iii) is just perfect, IMHO :-).

(Continues...)

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong, 11-Jan-04 @ 12:53PM

Yes. Sometime we do questions, Ivo.

Hi Ivo,

Yes. It is interesting to see so many aspects of TRUST discussed here.

Interesting enough you post these questions:
Do I trust this person; is he/she using my knowledge in the way I intend or believe it should be used? Any disappointments in this regard, and what consequences did that have for your attitude?

Yesterday I met with my professor and touched on the same subject when we discussed setting up an e-Learning project. Can we make e-learning more flexible by providing instructors the ease of selecting and mixing modules to create a lesson? We both admitted, we ourselves, have problems with others using our materials, or we use others' materials. It has nothing to do with not willing to share. But it touches on the delicate balance of how much trust that I can be assured my materials are used in the way they should be? Or would I damange the trust given to me by the creator of the materials?

Each individual has his/her own reasons of presenting materials in a different way. Based on his/her knowledge and preferences. For example. A set of power-power slides. The thought processes the creator puts in this ppt can never be duplicated. Therefore another person using the same ppt to present the materials can damaged or improved the presentation. Damaged is bad. Improvment can be bad too, because improving someone's work can bring bad publicities to the creator. Agreement ok? Trust ok? What levels?

Tedious.

Now is it important to KM sharing? To me yes. Especially when e-learning is concern. I think we can solve some of the technical portion of learning objects standards. But is the human-side that would hinder the idea of sharing courseware. We like to be able to provide as uniformed a training/teaching to the learners as possible. So as learners can walk away with almost the same level of knowledge.

In reality it is not that simple. Even with the profession where the main objective is to 'unload' knowledge.

Cindy

Olaf Brugman, 11-Jan-04 @ 12:07PM

Trust is all about dealing with expectation and agreement

Why is trust so important, and what is behind it?

1. To trust someone is to create the expectation that the other will behave according to the social norms of the relationship both are part of: that the other will not steal your bread, represent you in a way that does not damage your position etc etc
2. To not trust someone implies the expectation that a) the other will behave against the existing social agreements, b) that social agreements are absent, c) that the person not trusting does not know what the social norms, expectations (and risks) are (The latter issue is a possible explanation of non-participation in CoPs).

In all cases, trust relates to expectations regarding norms, agreements, ways of working do's and don'ts, or - in other words - to MUTUALITY.

Sharing (publishing etc) knowledge without expecting anything from anyone in return is not an act of trust. Since it does not generate expectations. Sharing without expectation means the person sharing doesn't care what happens next. This is sheer charity and total unselfishness.

If people or parties are together, but don't mutually expect anything from each other, there is no relationship, and trust does not play anyrole. Ships passing by in the night or walking past strangers on the sidewalk are better analogies to describe those situations: fysical proximity, and that's all.

Many KM initiatives break down on lack of trust - or don't get initiated at all - 'because lack of trust'. If that happens, looking at the social expectations, norms, rules, agreements - including their absence - are likely to be the heart of the matter.

Ivo Snijders, 11-Jan-04 @ 11:39AM

Experiences

Dear all,

Wonderful to see that the discussion is getting underway. I totally agree with Anne Jubert comments regarding trusty within organizations. And that is where in my opinion the crux of the matters lies. Again I state that trust is earned and given. In our lives we award different levels of trust to people and organizations (including governments). We trust our banks, retailers to provide is with goods and services that are good and or healthy.
Within KM trust is of an other dimension. And here there are also different levels to overcome or achieve. Face to face KM interaction is of a different level than interactions through the telephone, internet/intranet.

It would interesting to hear experiences you have where you were confronted with a ‘question of trust’. Do I trust this person; is he/she using my knowledge in the way I intend or believe it should be used?
Any disappointments in this regard, and what consequences did that have for your attitude?
For myself I can say that, in KM matters, my trust has not yet been ‘violated’ in such a way that I have changed my attitude in sharing knowledge. It would be interesting to create a sort of collection of circumstances/situations that are examples of misuse of trust. Do you have any experiences in this regard your self?

What are your ideas on that?

Ivo

Chris Macrae, 11-Jan-04 @ 03:04AM

why stop at transactions

The last post ended with the extract below in italics. I would hope that KM was more systemic in understanding compound impacts than bit by bit transactions. Certainly the kind of understanding being developed at www.euintangibles.net is - thank our lucky stars.

After all the more risk involved in a "transaction" the higher the level of trust that is required by the players involved. So linking again to some ideas brought forward by Davenport and Prusak I think the level of trust depends on the Pricing Model involved. They particulary mention payment mechanisms like reciprocity, repute and altruism. So from a KM perspective one has to make sure that the correct pricing scheme exists to ensure and encourage the efficient exchange of knowledge ... the riskier the transaction, the higher the level of trust that has to be established, the higher the price required

Vincent Vella, 10-Jan-04 @ 19:03PM

Some other comments ...

(i) Trust is based on current/past experiences, relationships and actions/outcomes. So defining “Justified True Belief” as experiences, lessons learned and proven actions one can propose the following relationship:

Justified true belief -> Trust -> Knowledge Exchange (enabling creation of new knowledge) -> Value

Obviously this can be seen as a circular relationship i.e.

Generation of value from Knowledge exchange -> inspires more Knowledge Exchange -> builds trust -> strengthens the fact that knowledge exchange realizes value.

(ii) Although cash is not usually involved in a KM environment Davenport and Prusak propose the idea of knowledge markets. This highlights important players in the trust building goal –
(a) Knowledge buyers
(b) Knowledge sellers
(c) Knowledge Brokers
I think it is important that one analyses each trust building “transaction” from from these three different aspects. For example the trigger points that establish trust from a buyer perspective can be valued differently from a broker perspective because their aims and objectives are different. Using the same model one can say that trust is like a “double-entry transaction” and one has to analyze the transaction from both ends … to establish trust the transaction has to be successful from both ends.

(iii) I agree with many of you that state that there are different levels of trust. After all the more risk involved in a "transaction" the higher the level of trust that is required by the players involved. So linking again to some ideas brought forward by Davenport and Prusak I think the level of trust depends on the Pricing Model involved. They particulary mention payment mechanisms like reciprocity, repute and altruism. So from a KM perspective one has to make sure that the correct pricing scheme exists to ensure and encourage the efficient exchange of knowledge ... the riskier the transaction, the higher the level of trust that has to be established, the higher the price required.

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong, 10-Jan-04 @ 10:46AM

IF

I just want to add a little to my last response.

I think if we never have that legal notice to start with, we would not have this conversation here. We would have just get on with our world come what may.

Precisely by putting a legal note there, indicates the trust is gone. Rightly so in a certain respect. I can understand perfectly well that the site has to be 'legally' protected from some unwanted writings. After all it is One against MANY millions. But I just wonder if we could have done it differently?

It is true that many websites are doing the same. Authours do not have the right to their own publications. But we also see that authours are no longer willing to accept that. Perhaps they find out the hard way. One other thought: would a scientific inventor gives up his or her rights so easily? There are patent laws to protect them. So why a piece of writing is treated differently? Isn't it a 'creation/invention'? It would be interesting to hear something from Helen Martin who is a researcher specializing in patents.

Cindy

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong, 10-Jan-04 @ 02:18AM

Copy Right vs Democracy

In this part of the world, we very much say what we like because we TRUST our governments would be just. Some countries are not that lucky. Writing or speaking exactly what one wishes can mean jail or even death sometime. They do not have their RIGHTS to freedom of speech.

If all these internet publishing legal rights issues are not important, then why put it there the first place? To protect whom? To benefit whom?

Cindy

Chris Macrae, 10-Jan-04 @ 01:47AM

the organising of trust

I think we can go back 2000 years or so - eg what does it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36). More to the point , the golden rule of relationship reciprocity is the one uniting all the world's main religions - so just about our best chance of surviving the current distrust between East & West

Lest this seem whimsical, let's move forward to 1950s for 2 insights. Jean Monnet's - that without which there would be no EU : http://www.eurplace.org/federal/monnet.html "What I undertook in every important phase of my life proceeded from one choice and one alone: to make all men work together, to show them that beyond their divergences or over and above frontiers, they have a common interest"

and Peter Drucker whom in the Practice of Management declared only 2 things organise value: researching trust by always asking what people outside the organisation want (the knowledge so that employees could act on it) and innovation. In those days you branded trust before you branded promises http://www.medinge/org , and the integrity of organsiational communications was much the better wherever that was done.

Which brings us to our a little valuation problem we currently suffer from: if you run out of cash-flow that can be serious, but you run out of trust-flow and your orgamnisation is less than wothless. Now why is it the the Big 5 accountant that had the most influence on the e-economy 1997-2002 did not know that?
Because the maths of valuation of companies in service/knowledge economies has become wholly wrong, and unless we learn the understanding on intangible capitals that is being pioneered at http://www.euintangibles.net then most organisations are not yet systematically being governed in a ways that earns trust.

Picture this
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?forum=1&topic=66&comment=2088
Ask me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk for my full presenation on lost corporate goverance at next week's Canadian World Congress if you want it.

Anne Jubert, 09-Jan-04 @ 16:18PM

Limited trust- in organisations and in an open community

Dear Miguel,

Your input and the comments to it are raising important issues.
I think the there is a big difference between trust in e-commerce and trust in KM.
E-commerce is based on monetary transactions- KM is in general not. To trust that you get value for money in a commercial setting , is very different from trusting that your contributions/knowledge is used to create value, not only for the person using it but for a benefit for science, the community etc with a recognition to the original author.
This leads to your example KB. The contributions in KnowledgeBoard belongs to the author, but the community has the right to use the information posted in the portal with the mention of the origin- otherwise why should you post your contributions if nobody can use the work?
Sift is responsible for the portal and has to ensure that the publications are not offensive ,breaking the law in any sense etc. But Sift is not owning the content in a sense that they can sell it to third parties, or publish it in other media without the authorisation of the author.
Concerning selling. None of us can sell KnowledgeBoard. KnowledgeBoard belongs to the Commission. The Commission is not making business, so if the community will keep KnowledgeBoard alive after the end of the funding, the project partners need to find a solution for this. But in any case nobody can sell the community. Sift owns the software and has an interest in the survival of this community, like many other of us. So we have to find a solution, together.But let us first get KB2.0 started!

A comment on your phrase
"organisations need to inspire trust in their Knowledge Management, not in their full operations" - I completely disagree.
Do you remember that Enron was praised and rewarded for their KM just before it cracked?
I know it is trivial to mention this example, but it is true. Other big companies have also great KM -processes and systems, but if their people do not have a shared vision, feel trust , believe in the organisation and the management it does not help. You can write a success story and still the business will fail.

To link the two examples, I believe that trust is an either or. Limited trust is not an option neither in a community like ours, nor in our organisation. At least I myself need to trust people fully in all my relationships - or choose different ones if I do not succeed.

Ben Heald, 09-Jan-04 @ 16:15PM

KB and Sift

Just to clarify things. KB is not owned by Sift, there is no sense in which we can 'sell it'. I agree however, that the Terms & Conditions on the site are not clear - hopefully we will get these fixed in the next few days.

Miguel Cornejo, 09-Jan-04 @ 13:06PM

Different terms

Hi again,

and keeping the matter in focus :-). The point in the article is that the terms need to be clear, appropriate and enforceable. KB's example was put because they are not: according to the project managers' words and to SIFT's, they contain gross errors. KB is not SIFT's.

On the other hand, I disagree that the specific terms (in general) are irrelevant. I've found that terms and conditions on CoPs do affect how people contribute. Not just for articles but even for posts.

It's not the same to know that the site's publisher is requesting blanket exclusive republishing rights, than to know that it only asks for limited reproduction rights, for instance.

The first case enable the publisher to reproduce articles in other media without additional consent, and even to forbid the author to do so. The second gives them only the rights needed to operate the KM system.

Needless to say, the first type of agreement will not generate enthusiastic writing from valued experts (it may generate it from us simply enthusiasts :-)). The second might.

The fact that the system does not usually stretch the limits is not enough to generate trust: as long as it give itself the legal right, it can't be trusted not to do it.

In one CoP that I manage, literary writers show each other original stuff. They only started doing so after a careful discussion of the details of the site's terms of use... which is only logical.

Best regards,

Miguel

Ivo Snijders, 09-Jan-04 @ 10:40AM

Terms and conditions

Hi Cindy and Miguel,

I am not easily scared, so I would not be that bothered when Swift sells KB. If the new owner has other intentions (darker??) we will soon find out. It is everybody’s privilege to walk away. Without participants there is no KB, just a shell. A “good” owner can make the stay pleasant a bad one unpleasant. Just like in shopping, some stores you don’t like others you do. You still might buy in both.

If you put things on here, someone might start a lawsuit over, I guess it is either offensive or ‘stolen intellectual property’. It not only reflects on the operator of the site but also on the users, as dealers , buyers of stolen goods. Again, I still would like to believe that within KM, KB especially maybe, we are here because we want to share and learn. And I know there are more “buyers” then “sellers” here. That seems to be the nature of this game.

You have made me look at the “terms and conditions” of KB. They are like so many of these, I guess. If something goes wrong KB/Swift is not to blame and the user has to grin and bear it. So, what else is new? (Am I being cynical here…. Maybe… Yes….). If my contributions on KB are reproduced I hope that correct references are made. If not it not only damages me but also KB/Swift. And KB/Swift will have a larger problem with it because their intentions and integrity will come into doubt. I am sure they won’t risk it.

And there comes Microsoft, everyone’s pet hate, a dominant force with a flawed product. Bill Gates as Henry Ford, with his T-Model: “you can have your car in any colour you like as long as it’s black”; “you can have any PC you like, just as long as it has Windows on it”. Do I like that? No.

Does any one have any problem with the terms and conditions of KB? If so what, why?

But let’s not deviate too much from the subject of trust in KM, which I think is one of it’s the most important aspects. Without it there can be no KM.

Best regards
Ivo

P.S.
Interestingly, I see that Miguel only gives “limited reproduction rights” to KB

Cindy Lemcke-Hoong, 08-Jan-04 @ 20:22PM

What if KB is sold to another company?

Hi Ivo,

I trust KB, and I trust SIFT, and I trust the people that I know from KB, SIFT etc. But what if KB is taken over by another company. Contract signed between SIFT and the new company. This new company enforces the fine prints of the legal notice that we all 'ignored'.

There is such thing as gentlemen's agreement. Still practices in many part of the world. No written agreement is necessary for any transactions. A hand-shake is all one needs to close the deal. That hand-shake is 'TRUST' that both parties adhere to.

We have withnessed people got shot in enough cowboy films. Just because one party refused to acknowledge this 'honourable' hand-shake!

OF course I am painting this picture just to scare you. But what if it happens and I am sue for things that I write here? Such as what I am doing now. Legally it is possible.

So where should I put my trust?

Cindy

Miguel Cornejo, 08-Jan-04 @ 17:56PM

Lots of good points

Hi Ivo,

thanks for your comments :-). You make a lot of good points. I'll try to revisit some of them:

1. Different levels of trust. Yes, there are, and that is exactly what the paragraph about "trust is limited" intends to convey. A KM system (defined as a KM initiative, with people, processes, rules and tools) needs to inspire trust in its own workings, not in anything else. It must do what it says it does, and must show that it does it.

In other words: I don't trust Microsoft to benefit innovation, but I trust it to honour a service contract... including that on its knowledgebases.

2. Terms of service. Simplifying, they are the online (i.e., non-presential) equivalent of a signed contract. Contracts were invented to back up spoken words, and to establish a solid base of trust on which to cooperate. Terms of service tell you about a site's management of your personal data. Terms of service tell you about who owns the KB and what they can do with your work.

In other words, terms of service are the real meat in the agreement between the management of a KM systems and its users. It's what they can trust it to do, because a pre-trusted third party (judiciary) will enforce it.

It's just like offline: you generate trust by getting some trusted third party to back your claims, or through a transparent and consistent execution on your promises.

Best regards,

Miguel

PS - In a different line... What exactly is the EU's effective role in the correct management of this website, in practice? You trust it to arbitrate, because you've seen the logo: a proxy for it's participation and backing. But you should see the terms of service.

Ivo Snijders, 08-Jan-04 @ 13:48PM

The Feeling of Trust

Dear Miguel,

You have brought a subject to the surface again that we discussed a few ago also.
This time you try to bring in new experiences and the practice of KM. Fundamental to KM is people and the trust people place in each other.

As you state also, to me trust is earned/ given. it is not something that can be generated, bought sold or bartered. "You earn my trust", you can hope to get it but only what you do/say will make it happen. In the paragraph Trust is limited you say that trust can be generated through tools and programs. If so, that trust will very short term/ lived. And I wonder if that is in any way what KM is about. Visible results are only visible through people. People give and receive trust. Systems do very little in that regard as far as I am concerned.

And also good "terms of service" do in my opinion not signal trust. What they are an indication of is that the seller takes the buyer serious. And it constitutes a legal safeguard, that will be introduced into may national (European)legislations anyway.

The first trust component of KB is the fact that it is aligned with the European Union. For me that is enough as a level of trustworthiness. I also believe that the success of and the trust within a KM environment (like KnowlwegdeBoard) is not dependant on 'the terms of use' but on the interaction between the participants. I haven't read the terms of use of KB, nothing I say here is copyrighted or needs to be protected. I assume (trust) that what I say here will be treated with respect.
Establishing and maintaining trust is the key driver for success of KM, only people can do that.

Best regards

Ivo Snijders

P.S.

I can not get away from the nagging feeling that in the article different forms of trust are used and compared. For instance:
- economic exchanges
- exchange of knowledge
- use of systems
I believe that trust here is NOT comparable, they are of different standards/levels.