DaChispa

A man walked into a petshop with a parrot in a cage. ‘This parrot is dead’ he said to the man behind the counter. The shop assistant looked at the parrot said ‘So it is, let me give you your money back’. Cue hysterical laughter from the audience watching the sketch.

Why is this funny? It is only funny if you know the dead parrot sketch from Monty Python (they had to use a thesaurus for the number of ways to describe ‘dead’) and realise that this cuts it off at the knees. I think this illustrates very well the importance of context when we talk about knowledge and information. There was a whole common understanding in the audience about what was supposed to happen next, when it didn’t, that made them laugh. Similarly the making of a decision in an organisation might be obvious to those involved and the output might be a single page letter. However, without the explanation surrounding it, it will not make sense to the audience and who may miss the punch line.

I think I might use this as an illustration for KM intros – but first I will check that everyone has heard of Monty Python!

I blame the Spanish playwright, Calderon de la Barca for my constant return to the idea of illusion and reality – born out of studying his play ‘La Vida es Sueno’ (Life is a Dream). This was an obsession of the 17th century where reality was thought to be the afterlife and this life only an illusion. I remember thinking that this was re-created vividly in the 20th century in the Matrix films – where the bulk of humanity did literally dream their lives away. Now we have 2nd Life – and I have conversations with baffled friends along the lines of ‘but it isn’t real! how can you make money out of it?’ and ‘but isn’t there a danger you forget how to socialise in reality’. In addition, I had a horrible moment the other night – having seen someone replace a grey sky with a blue one in a photograph – when I finally accepted that photography as a recording medium no longer really existed. It has now become largely illusion, art not fact. Perhaps we have got better at dealing with illusion and don’t worry too much if the boundaries blur – perhaps we create illusions that become our reality. In a sense, isn’t that what memory is, as it is seldom that 2 people remember things exactly the same and we put our own spin on it, whether we know it or not. I talk a lot about records and context creating history – but although a written record could be said to be reality, it is still open to misinterpretation. Memory of the circumstances can sometimes change the meaning of content. So perhaps real knowledge is only in the moment and reality is only what you believe.

I was really chuffed when someone said to me recently that they had changed their mind about knowledge management and now understood that it didn’t just mean filing stuff, but was to do with sharing what you know. Since this has been somewhat of a mantra of mine, I felt that progress had been made. I mentioned it to some colleagues who laughed and said that the person concerned might say this, but that they didn’t practice it. My bubble was pricked but didn’t completely burst. It struck me that, although maybe the sharing wasn’t happening, the words had been said and could be fed back as truth to the person concerned to encourage them to turn them into action. There are many sayings “talk is cheap”, “put your money where your mouth is”, “actions speak louder than words” which seem to devalue the power of words. I think that words are powerful in their own right, and can lead to action, they just need to be used in the right context. So, next time I need to ask our non-sharing friend to share something, I can refer them back to their own words – how can they refuse??

At a local camera club lecture, we were shown some photos to illustrate the points and I was suddenly struck by the dangers of paying too much attention to something. The photos were perfectly fine but the hyper critical presenter (also the photographer) would constantly point out some small detail that spoiled them. It made me think that maybe this is something to be careful of – it is important to notice when people are doing things well, badly or not at all – and feed back on this. But if you take it too far, could it be de-motivating? Too much praise can sometimes lose its value as too much criticism can make people wonder why they should bother. It is important to maintain a balance.

Encouraging sometimes to meet old friends. I had lunch with a friend from university days and we realised, after we had chatted for a while, that we were actually having a similar conversation to those we had when we were setting out on our careers, even though now much nearer retirement than student age. We are both looking to the future as full of possibilities – and are slightly stunned that, at the age we are, we are still excited about what we might achieve. If you had told us that this was going to be the case back when we were starting out, I think we wouldn’t have believed it. Life is still an adventure….