I started writing a Radical KM blog on Simpler Media’s ReWorked website in the spring of 2023. You can find my articles here: https://www.reworked.co/author/stephanie-barnes/.
It’s an occasional series. I hope you enjoy them.
Three Often Overlooked Benefits of Arts-Based Interventions in Your Organisation
Three Often Overlooked Benefits of Arts-Based Interventions in Your Organisation:
1. Strategic Decision Making
2. Talent Management
3. Adapting to Technological Changes
You might be wondering how incorporating arts-based interventions into your organization can enhance these areas. Allow me to enlighten you.
Arts-based interventions (ABIs), when integrated into regular practices, unlock dormant skills and abilities that have been overshadowed by years of traditional education and societal expectations. Our conventional educational systems emphasize logic, rationality, rigid processes, and hierarchical thinking—a pedagogy centered around control, seeking the right answers, earning good grades, and perpetuating the past, rather than exploring and creating the future.
ABIs reignite our curiosity and playfulness, fueling a continuous desire to learn and evolve. They guide us to take measured steps, reflect on outcomes, and then take the next leap forward. By appreciating the interconnectedness of things, we start recognizing the significance of systems, networks, and connections.
Specifically, the utilization of ABIs enhances strategic decision making. When ABIs become an integral part of your routine, they enable you to see the bigger picture and the interconnected nature of things. They amplify curiosity, prompting better questions and uncovering more possibilities. ABIs facilitate diffuse thinking, enabling you to forge more connections and make decisions that align with strategic intent.
In terms of talent management, ABIs foster teamwork, communication, and collaboration. They inject fun and enjoyment into the workplace, reducing stress and boosting resilience. ABIs also empower individuals to solve problems more effectively, enhancing employee engagement and reducing turnover. Moreover, they contribute to the development of leadership skills and core transferable skills such as communication and critical thinking, while nurturing personal growth.
Lastly, ABIs help individuals adapt to change, be it technological advancements or other shifts in the landscape. By bolstering resilience and adaptability, ABIs cultivate flexibility and curiosity, enabling employees to seamlessly incorporate new technologies and ideas into their work.
Does all of this sound like some sort of magical solution? Well, ABIs indeed possess these remarkable qualities and more. We have long underestimated the potential of our brains, focusing excessively on the analytical side while neglecting the importance of balance between analytical and creative thinking. It’s time to rectify this imbalance and unleash the full power of our minds.
Radical KM: helping the humans
With so much talk of AI and how it’s going to change KM, some articles even speculate it’s the end of KM or at least the end of knowledge/help desks, I thought I would take an opposing view, well, not so much opposing, as completely different.
Knowledge is human, it has always been human, and will always be human. Computers don’t think, or create new knowledge, they copy and replicate what’s been done before, what they’re programmed to do. They can store explicit knowledge, the stuff that can be written down or somehow captured, but they don’t deal with tacit knowledge at all, and most knowledge is tacit.
Radical KM is about helping the humans, and all of their knowledge, be better.
Radical KM is about relearning our creativity, about being playful, and helping us learn and adapt to an ever changing world. It’s about tapping into our stories and emotions and building trust so that we can share them and make better organisations, purpose driven organisations.
It’s about helping the humans be better humans before it’s too late.
Radical KM, a story
Radical KM: why your organisation needs it now
Meet Sam, Chief Knowledge Officer at Widget Inc. she’s been working in knowledge management for more than 20 years, she’s passionate and knowledgeable and knows what it takes to be successful with knowledge management
Sam knows that there are lots of reasons to do knowledge management, but she also knows that her CEO’s favourite reasons are that knowledge is the only asset that grows when it’s shared—if she shares how to make a cake with you, you both now know how to make a cake, she doesn’t lose the ability to make a cake because she’s shared it with you. Tangible assets, like buildings and roads decrease in value because of wear and tear and will need to be maintained or replaced.
The second reason, and her CEOs favourite, is that knowledge management has been shown to have a positive impact on the stock market performance of an organisation. That is, the better an organisation does with its knowledge management activities, the better it performs on the stock markets.
With all the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, plus the confusion and complexity introduced with the pandemic, Sam has been wondering how to adapt her KM activities to meet the needs of these changes. She hears about VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) everywhere, and certainly her organisation is not immune to VUCA.
Sam also hears a lot about how people need to be creative, and she’s noticed that creativity underlies a lot of other in-demand skills. She knows that creativity is what differentiates humans from technology and that creative practices and attitudes support both creative and sustainable leadership behaviours.
Sam knows that creativity is something that’s been educated out of us (certainly hers was in her quest to get good marks and a good job) and yet our organisations are in dire need of it because it fuels innovation and growth. On a personal level creativity also improves resiliency and helps cope with stress, something everyone could use in the current state of the world.
Knowing all these things has resulting in Sam’s being stuck, she doesn’t know what to do; she’s trying to figure out how to support the organisation through the current upheaval caused by the pandemic and other global events but there is so much noise, and so many people trying to “get back” to how things are, but Sam knows there’s no going back, that the organisation and the world need to adapt and move forward to a new normal.
One day, Sam was scrolling through the knowledge management tag on LinkedIn and came across a post about something called Radical KM and got very curious; she read a couple of articles and watched a recording of a webinar.
She discovered that Radical knowledge management takes people, process, and technology as they have always existed in knowledge management and adds creativity, and that creativity is a multiplier. It can be included anywhere there are knowledge management activities that involve people, which is most of them.
She learned about an organisation that had implemented the ideas encapsulated in Radical KM. The organisation had improved collaboration and trust, and they had been able to solve what had seemed to be intractable problems.
Radical KM focuses on the people component of KM. The creative activities it advocates for can help build relationships and help people get out of their boxes and look at a situation differently, coming up with new connections and ideas.
The MBA in her thought that adding creativity seemed counterintuitive. After all, western society been focused on being analytical and rational for hundreds (if not thousands of years). However, being analytical and logical is what got the world into the unsustainable situation that we find ourselves in. So, while it may not be analytical and logical and it may seem counterintuitive, it also seemed to be exactly what is needed.
Sam recognised that we need space for creativity in our organisations and our lives if we are going to be balanced and sustainable. Knowledge and continuous learning needs space for reflection so that people can make different connections and come up with new, innovative ways of resolving this the unsustainable situation.
Sam recalled Einstein’s words about ‘the thinking that got us into this situation is not the thinking that will get us out’ and realised that Radical KM and creativity might just be the shift in thinking that will get us out of this mess.
Sam decided to start piloting Radical KM and gather data and success stories so that when she spoke with the CEO, at the next quarterly meeting she would have the beginnings of a great story to tell.
Be like Sam, start your Radical KM pilot now.
Radical KM: a journey
(A story about Radical KM)
Meet Sam, Chief Knowledge Officer at Widget Inc. she’s been working in knowledge management for more than 20 years, she’s passionate and knowledgeable and knows what it takes to be successful with knowledge management
Sam knows that there are lots of reasons to do knowledge management, but she also knows that her CEO’s favourite reasons are that knowledge is the only asset that grows when it’s shared—if she shares how to make a cake with you, you both now know how to make a cake, she doesn’t lose the ability to make a cake because she’s shared it with you. Tangible assets, like buildings and roads decrease in value because of wear and tear and will need to be maintained or replaced.
The second reason, and her CEOs favourite, is that knowledge management has been shown to have a positive impact on the stock market performance of an organisation. That is, the better an organisation does with its knowledge management activities, the better it performs on the stock markets.
With all the changes that have taken place in the last 20 years, plus the confusion and complexity introduced with the pandemic, Sam has been wondering how to adapt her KM activities to meet the needs of these changes. She hears about VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) everywhere, and certainly her organisation is not immune to VUCA.
Sam also hears a lot about how people need to be creative, and she’s noticed that creativity underlies a lot of other in-demand skills. She knows that creativity is what differentiates humans from technology and that creative practices and attitudes support both creative and sustainable leadership behaviours.
Sam knows that creativity is something that’s been educated out of us (certainly hers was in her quest to get good marks and a good job) and yet our organisations are in dire need of it because it fuels innovation and growth. On a personal level creativity also improves resiliency and helps cope with stress, something everyone could use in the current state of the world.
Knowing all these things has resulting in Sam’s being stuck, she doesn’t know what to do; she’s trying to figure out how to support the organisation through the current upheaval caused by the pandemic and other global events but there is so much noise, and so many people trying to “get back” to how things are, but Sam knows there’s no going back, that the organisation and the world need to adapt and move forward to a new normal.
One day, Sam was scrolling through the knowledge management tag on LinkedIn and came across a post about something called Radical KM and got very curious; she read a couple of articles and watched a recording of a webinar.
She discovered that Radical knowledge management takes people, process, and technology as they have always existed in knowledge management and adds creativity, and that creativity is a multiplier. It can be included anywhere there are knowledge management activities that involve people, which is most of them.
She learned about an organisation that had implemented the ideas encapsulated in Radical KM. The organisation had improved collaboration and trust, and they had been able to solve what had seemed to be intractable problems.
Radical KM focuses on the people component of KM. The creative activities it advocates for can help build relationships and help people get out of their boxes and look at a situation differently, coming up with new connections and ideas.
The MBA in her thought that adding creativity seemed counterintuitive. After all, western society been focused on being analytical and rational for hundreds (if not thousands of years). However, being analytical and logical is what got the world into the unsustainable situation that we find ourselves in. So, while it may not be analytical and logical and it may seem counterintuitive, it also seemed to be exactly what is needed.
Sam recognised that we need space for creativity in our organisations and our lives if we are going to be balanced and sustainable. Knowledge and continuous learning needs space for reflection so that people can make different connections and come up with new, innovative ways of resolving this the unsustainable situation.
Sam recalled Einstein’s words about ‘the thinking that got us into this situation is not the thinking that will get us out’ and realised that Radical KM and creativity might just be the shift in thinking that will get us out of this mess.
Sam decided to start piloting Radical KM and gather data and success stories so that when she spoke with the CEO, at the next quarterly meeting she would have the beginnings of a great story to tell.
Be like Sam, start your Radical KM pilot now.
Radical KM, Published Article
One of my articles on Radical KM has been published by the GfWM (Gesellschaft für Wissensmanagement) or Society for Knowledge Management here in Germany as part of a collection of articles celebrating the 20th Knowledge Camp. You can download the PDF or read it online, here.
I have another version that will be published in 2021, it’s a bit longer, and a third version that I keep adding to, and which is heading towards being a book, although it has a long ways to go.
Why RADICAL knowledge management?
Why “radical” and not something else? Which definition of radical do I mean?
Radical has three definitions that are all relevant for Radical KM (taken from Oxford Learners Dictionary):
1. relating to the most basic and important parts of something; complete and detailed
2. new, different and likely to have a great effect
3. in favour of extreme and complete political or social change
Why do all three of them apply? Because knowledge management must include all aspects of knowledge (creation, curation, learning, un-learning, re-learning, and sharing), and two of the things that are most important for this are curiosity and critical thinking. Both of these have been lost through the focus on efficiency and effectiveness, and trying to be logical/rational/analytical while ignoring the creative and emotional, but if we are truly going to manage knowledge then we need to re-introduce the creative and emotional: humans are not machines.
Bringing creativity into knowledge management and helping our organisations embrace both the creative and analytical is critical to their success and the individuals who comprise them. That is radical and will have a great effect and will bring about change in ourselves and our organisations.
In addition to the 3 meanings of radical, radical has an interesting origin. From Merriam Webster, we learn that radical originally meant “root“, so by returning creativity to our knowledge processes we can consider that we are returning to our roots. Roots, which were playful and creative: that’s how we learned when we were children. It wasn’t until later, when we went to school, that this learning by doing was replaced by learning by reading. Going back to our roots means re-learning that creativity that has been ignored. Knowledge management has a role to play in that, hence Radical Knowledge Management.
Creativity, Scrum, Agile, and Design Thinking
In the spring I completed Scrum Master certification (PSM I), and right now I am taking a design thinking course. I had delayed both of these courses because they describe the way I work anyway, and I couldn’t see the point of wasting time and money on them. So, why am I doing them now? Because they keep coming up in discussions I’m having, so I thought I would see what all the fuss is about.
They’re both frameworks/methodologies, and useful, as far as they go, but what occurred to me as I worked on the Design Thinking course, was that they are both trying to teach people to be more innovative and creative, to be more curious, however, they have taken an analytical approach to innovation and creativity, to monetize it, I suppose. These frameworks have taken the space for reflection out, the space for emotion out, just like our education systems, they have taken the creative out of being creative and made it analytical.
If we really want to be creative, we need to engage the creative parts of our brains, not the parts that do analysis and process work. We need to engage the whole person, not just half, and that’s what Radical KM does. It recognises that the creative has been disengaged and forgotten, and it needs to be re-learned and re-engaged if we are truly going to be creative and change the ways our organisations function.
If we want our organisations to reap the benefits that agile and design thinking promote, we need to make space for true creativity, not just creativity that’s been analysed to death.
What does it mean to integrate creativity with knowledge management?
What do I mean when I say, “integrate creativity with knowledge management”?
Well, the first thing I want to say is that in some cases I may use business/organisation instead of knowledge management, they are not necessarily interchangeable. I will tend to use knowledge management if it is specific to a knowledge management activity and business/organisation if it’s more general, in practice, they may look very similar and difficult to distinguish. That is due, in part, to the fact that I think knowledge management should be integrated with the business/organisational processes and activities and not something separate.
Okay, now on with the integration of creativity with KM/business/organisation.
Easy to do
In the simplest terms, this is doing things like quick creative ice breakers at the beginning of meetings. This includes things like a short meditation, or short drawing or improvisational games. There are all kinds of things that you can do, there are books available that are filled with possibilities, I have also created an online course which has 7-8 different activities in it that you can do online or in person.
Moderately integrated
At the next level there are longer activities that you can use for different purposes and longer meetings. The ones you choose really depend on what you are trying to achieve, and they can take from 30 minutes to 2 hours or more. My favourite book for these activities is Linda Naiman’s, “Orchestrating Collaboration at Work: Using music, improv, storytelling and other arts to improve teamwork“, which is available from her website or Amazon.
Advanced integration
Then we move to more advanced activities like setting up a studio in your office and staffing it with someone. The person acts as a catalyst/artist in residence and can facilitate workshops or coach individuals on a one-to-one basis.
You may also want to consider training, like Applying Creativity to Business
If you are curious about any of these options feel free to comment on this post or contact me directly at stephanie @ realisation-of-potential.com (take out the spaces).
See also: Radical KM and blog posts.
Radical KM: analytical and creative
Radical KM is the evolution of knowledge management.
Focusing on the division of labour, the compartmentalisation of knowledge, and treating knowledge work like it is part of a production line has led us to a place where work is not sustainable. It is time to do things differently, embracing the things that have been forgotten, ignored, and laid aside. Encouraging people to use all of their creative and analytical skills by incorporating art and artistic practice back into our organisations is a way of moving forward in a sustainable, wholistic way.
Adopting artistic attitudes and practices and integrating them with our knowledge age work, creates: Radical Knowledge Management. It enables the adoption of agile/flexible behaviours and culture change which in turn allows the digital transformation of our organisations, so that they are successful in our knowledge age future.
Knowledge management has a significant role to play in this future, it needs to step up and take-on this leadership role and embrace Radical Knowledge Management.
See also: Radical KM