Just released
Desouza, K.C., and Paquette, S. Knowledge Management: An Introduction, New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 2011.
Erik Johnston (Arizona State University), Qian Hu (University of Central Florida), and I have completed a paper for the Governance of Complex Systems: Challenges of Making Public Administration and Complexity Theory Work Workshop to be held in Rotterdam, Netherlands in June 2011.
How the Application of Complexity and Policy Informatics to Public Administration can Change the Questions we Ask and the Solutions we Discover
We argue for introducing complexity theory to public administration because it allows us to exploit new connections, to raise new questions, and to explore innovative approaches to governance and management. To support more regular, effective, and defensible use of complexity as a contribution to policy-making, public administration scholars must continue to build supporting evidence. In this paper, first, we reflect on why existing analysis frameworks create structural blind spots for understanding governance practice. Second, using examples from our own research and professional experience we demonstrate that a complexity approach allows new questions to be asked that directly connect to policy problems and facilitate decision making in a cost effective manner. Third, we explore a number of factors including practical strategies and ethical concerns that may encourage or preclude the use of a complexity framework and method in policy settings. And finally, this paper calls on public administration scholars to be thoughtfully aware of and ethically responsible for the consequences of the use of complexity methods in research and practice.
My third post on the Harvard Business Review site went live today. The post was written in collaboration with H. James Wilson and is titled, 8 Ways to Democratize Experimentation. Building on our previous post on experimentation, in this post, we offer 8 tips for organizations to consider as they try to infuse experimentation as part of every employee's work.
We would love to hear your comments on the ideas presented.
Next week, I will visit with executives, project managers, platform leaders, and employees at the Delta Faucet Company (Indianapolis, Indiana). I will be conducting an innovation audit, learning about innovation strategies employed by Delta Faucet, and making strategic recommendations on how to bolster the innovation quotient of the organization. Having just completed a book titled Intrapreneurship: Leveraging Ideas within the Organization, I am looking forward to using the models described in the book to study how ideas are generated, mobilized, advocated and screened for, experimented with, commercialized, diffused and implemented by the Delta Faucet Company.
Shh! It's vive la résistance, co-authored with Nicholas D. Sweers II, that appeared in Journal of Business Strategy, 31 (6), 2010 will re-printed in Strategic Direction.
My paper co-authored with Yuan Lin, Towards Evidence-Driven Policy Design: Complex Adaptive Systems and Computational Modeling, will appear in The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal.
My second post on the Harvard Business Review site went live today! The post was written in collaboration with H. James Wilson and is titled, Finally, A Majority of Executives Embrace Experimentation. The post outlines the value proposition of building an experimentation culture within organizations and how executives can support employee experimentation.
The post has been picked up by Bloomberg Businessweek as well.
We would love to hear your comments on the ideas presented.
Along with my doctoral student, Yuan Lin, I have co-authored an article that describes how we might move towards evidence-driven policy design. This article draws from the keynote that I have at the 2010 Computational Social Science Society Conference.
Efforts to design public policies for social systems tend to confront highly complex conditions which have a large number of potentially relevant factors to be considered and rapidly changing conditions where continuous adaptation delays or obscures the effect of policies. Given unresolvable uncertainty in policy outcomes, the optimal solution is difficult, if ever possible, to nail down. It is more reasonable to choose a solution that is robust to as many future scenarios that might ensue from the decision. Arriving at such a solution requires policy makers to actively explore and exploit rich information to support their decision making in a cost-efficient, yet rigorous manner. We name this new working style as evidence-driven policy design and outline the characteristics of favorable evidence. We then argue that computational modeling is a potential tool for implementing evidence-driven policy design. It helps the study and design of solutions by simulating various environments, interventions, and the processes in which certain outcomes emerge from the decisions of policy makers. It allows policy makers to observe both the intended and, equally important, unintended consequences of policy alternatives. It also facilitates communication and consensus-building among policy makers and diverse stakeholders.
I am a footballer first and foremost, and then, an entrepreneur, academic, or whatever else you may categorize me as. Growing up, I had the privilege of playing on some good teams and had aspirations to be a great footballer (for my American readers, I am not referring to American Football, but the rather what you call Soccer). My favorite team has always been Manchester United Football Club (MUFC), and my favorite coaches have always been Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho. The recent performance by MUFC has been far from stellar. The team has lost points on matches that they should have won, and they have allowed leads to slip by, most recently against West Bromwich Albion. One of the reasons for this has been the precarious performance of their star performer, Wayne Rooney. Wayne Rooney, if you believe the press reports, has fallen out with his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. Sir Alex had chosen to rest his superstar for several games, claiming that his player needed time to recover from an ankle injury that he sustained last season. Soon thereafter, after national team duty with England, Rooney spoke to the press and contradicted his manager. He claimed that nothing was wrong with his ankle. Today, speculation abounds that Rooney might be ready to part ways with MUFC!
I am fascinated by these developments for several reasons, and what is surprising, even to me, is that I am excited from the perspective of organizational behavior and management, rather than as a raging Red Devil. Dealing with superstars is never an easy proposition for any manager. As one colleague put it, “I love my superstars as much as I hate managing them!” Last season, Rooney carried MUFC, scoring 34 goals, a sizable proportion of which kept MUFC in the premier league title race. However, since sustaining an injury in a match against FC Bayern Munich in the Champions League, he has never really played his best. He had an awful World Cup showing, and has been insignificant for most of the season. So, what is Sir Alex to do?
In discussing this situation with several executives, I wanted to share some food for thought. First, we need to understand that all employees will have ups and downs. Rooney is now in a slump and his performance has suffered. Sir Alex may have had the right intention in benching him (i.e. giving him a break); however, maybe a better strategy would have been to let him to play. As one executive remarked to me, “the most difficult thing for superstars is to deal with lows…the only way out is to keep at it, and then witness the positive trajectory.”
Second, Sir Alex needs to take a step back and allow the team to manage Rooney. Sir Alex is a beast of manager (now reaching 70); he is probably going to go down in history as the most decorated football manager. Rooney, on the other hand, is a kid (only 24 years old). Sir Alex needs to have a conversation with Rooney to reassure him that he is committed to seeing him blossom at MUFC. Then, he needs to enlist the support of his senior players, most notably Ryan Giggs, who is MUFC and Premier League’s most decorated player, in a coaching role. Giggs, who is closing in 40, is at the tail-end of his career and has expressed an interest in coaching. I suggest that Sir Alex mentor Giggs in the art of coaching, by giving him the ‘Rooney Project.’ No matter how good a manager that he is, innovative and star players, trust other players who they have seen deliver. They trust peers who have expertise and the necessary experience. Sir Alex has at his disposal ‘the most decorated player’ in the Premier League, who could help Rooney get out of the slump. Gigg’s playing days are numbered, but he still has a lot to contribute to the game of football, and young lads still look up to him as a role-model.
Third, in dealing with Rooney, especially his behavior on and off the pitch, Sir Alex needs to carefully consider the message that his actions will send to other players. Sir Alex has been known to have a zero-tolerance policy towards player dissent (e.g. past star players, like David Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy, were shown the exit door for not abiding by their manager’s request or dissenting). On a personal level, I think Sir Alex is right to discipline players who are selfish and do not put the club before their own interests; however, in Rooney’s case, a small exception can be made, considering that he carried the club on his shoulders the previous season. Sir Alex needs to take all of this into account in making any determinations on how to proceed. One way to address this is best captured by a colleague, “superstars are individuals, and at the end, they still need a team to perform…so, if the superstar is delivering constantly that means the rest of the team is not! Eventually, the team needs to give the superstar a break and deliver on their own.” Sir Alex needs to give Rooney a break, but establish clear parameters around his behavior and professional conduct. In addition, the rest of the team needs to be scolded and shamed into increasing their level of performance so that they are a ‘team’ and not a ‘one man show.’
What do you think Sir Alex should do?
Reflect on how much of your day is spent asking questions and answering questions. How many questions do you ask a day, what kinds of questions do you ask, and why do you ask the questions you do. Try having a conversation with a colleague, or a friend, without asking questions, how long might you go without asking a question? The simple answer: not too long. Questions, and questioning, make for an integral aspect of our lives. Yet, how many of us take the time to be mindful about the questions we ask and how we answer questions. Within organizations, the asking of, and responding to, questions, makes for a critical mechanism through which we elicit information and construct dialogues. Managers that ask good, and hard, questions of their employees in an efficient, and respectful, manner are respected by their employees. Conversely, managers who ask ‘dumb’ questions (yes, there are things like dumb and stupid questions), and do not following basic etiquette when doing so, are more likely to be dismissed by their employees as being incompetent. Similarly, employees are perceived as smart (or foolish) based on the questions they ask and their ability to respond to questions. For the last few years, I have been fascinated with the concept of questions and the mechanics of questioning.
Questioning plays a critical role in organizational discourse. We often hear statement such as: ask the hard questions, question the status-quo, or there is nothing like a stupid question, among others. These statements give lip service to the concept of questioning. Managers are some of the most poorly trained questioners. Students in disciplines such as psychology, medicine, and law, are explicitly taught how to question. Business students almost never examine the art, and science, of questioning in a thoughtful manner. As a result, one of the most cited reasons for organizational failures (such as corporate scandals or committing to a failed course of action), is the inability for those who were observing the disaster unfold to be courageous enough to ask the right questions (and seek appropriate answers). Just imagine what would happen if a psychologist did not ask questions appropriately or if your physician did not ask the right questions to diagnose ailments. Would we tolerate this level of incompetency? Probably not!
Organizations need to urgently embrace the art and science of questioning. I believe that organizations will be healthier if individuals knew how to ask the ‘right’ questions and how to respond to questions. Being deliberate about the concept of questioning will lead to organizations expelling less effort in achieving their goals and objectives. I am currently beginning to write a few articles on questioning. While most of my writing will be for a business (management) audience, they are relevant to fields such as engineering, new product development, and education, among others. I want to encourage all readers to share their experiences with me on the topic. What do you think about questioning? How do you differentiate a good question from a bad one? What kinds of questions do you ask and why? Do you know of people who ask the ‘right’ questions, if so, why do you think they are successful in asking questions? These are just some of the questions that I would love to get answers to. If you have other reactions to the issue of questioning, please do share them with me.
If you would like me to come to your organization and conduct a workshop on the topic, please do not hesitate to contact me. I guarantee that if your organization gets smarter at the art and science of questioning, it will be a more ‘intelligent’ and ‘mindful’ place.