David is a new member of a team of analysts in an intelligence agency. The team has been discussing the build-up of soldiers and weapons on the Southern border of an important country. The team is getting ready to send a report to the Pentagon about the build-up which will influence the decisions that Generals at the Pentagon might make. David has intelligence, from sources he used before joining the new team. His sources indicate that although there has been troop movement, it is not specific to the Southern border. The other team members are in agreement about the danger and are discussing the wording of the report. David says to himself, “I think they are wrong.” But being new, he feels he needs to be seen as a “team player.” So he keeps this contrary knowledge to himself.
The problem in this incident is that the team decides without all the available information. Another problem is that David feels uncomfortable about betraying himself by withholding what may be pertinent knowledge.
Melissa is a member of the HR team in a large organization. She has just received a memo from her boss, Sara, that asks Melissa to immediately initiate a recruitment process because of a new initiative that is being planned. After reading the memo, Melissa calls Sara to explain that there are already adequate names in the pipeline to draw from for the upcoming initiative without starting another costly recruitment drive. But Sara responds, “We can’t tell the big boss that he’s wrong, so go ahead and start the new recruitment process.”
The problem in this incident is that management does not get all the knowledge needed to make a decision that will cost the organization a considerable amount of money. It is also problematic because Melissa finds herself laboring over a task that she knows is not useful, which results in feelings of frustration and helplessness.
Such incidents may seem trivial, but my research shows that such actions are ubiquitous across all levels of organizations. They result in poor decision making due to the lack of accurate and full knowledge. The players in these incidents are, however, not intentionally being obstructive; instead, their behavior is the way that staff, and management alike, protect themselves and others from embarrassment and conflict and ensure that they are viewed favorably in the eyes of others. Argyris called such incidences "defensive routines". They are routines or patterns embedded in the culture of the organization. They are so much a part of the culture that employees lose the recognition and significance of their actions, writing them off as “just the way it is around here.” For example:
- employees and managers frequently modify information that they send up the organization so that it appears to be more favorable than it is
- subordinates often agree to carry out tasks or processes that they believe will not work
- when a colleague wants something from another colleague, they often act like it would be in the other’s best interest, while hiding their own interest
- team members repeatedly withhold information (about mistakes, or misjudgments they have made) that would make them look bad in the eyes of other team members or their manager
- both employees and managers periodically say something publicly that they realize they do not really believe, it is said “for just for show”
- team members fail to ask for help from other team members, even when they recognize that others in the group have insights or knowledge they need, resulting in slower team learning and a great deal of re-inventing the wheel
Defensive routines work, in the sense that they prevent embarrassment and conflict but in so doing they also prevent the organization from learning about challenges, which if faced directly, could lead to needed correction or new ways of thinking that could generate useful development.
Similarly, top management hides knowledge from staff. The recent revelation that the Pharma industry has been incentivizing doctors and pharmacist to promote opioids which they knew were addictive, and which resulted in thousands of deaths is an example. The VW emissions scandal is another example. It is hard to imagine that such actions, if openly discussed with staff, would not have been reconsidered. And there are undoubtedly many more such instances that are not so public.
Over the last 20 plus years, KM has been primarily concerned with the creation, maintenance, distribution, and access to organizational knowledge. KM has been much less concerned with the most critical knowledge problem organizations face, which is that at all levels, staff hide and distort knowledge from each other.
KM should also take responsibility for the quality and accuracy of the knowledge in the organizations they serve or at the least, for the reduction in behaviors that distort or hide knowledge. How to accomplish that is known, but not easy.
Just conducting training programs is not the answer because defensive routines are embedded in the culture, as evidenced by similar routines found at all levels of an organization. Those routines are so ubiquitous that they are largely invisible. Moreover, the problem is not a lack of skill; everyone knows how to say clearly what they mean and how to acknowledge their own mistakes. Rather, it is the culture of fear, protection, the competition to get ahead, game playing, and fragmentation that prevents accurate and full knowledge from reaching those who need it.
What KM needs to take responsibility for is changing the way people talk with each other. Organizations need to engage in two types of talking. The first is dialogue, a kind of talk where all the organizational members related to a specific organizational issue, think together about how they understand a problem and offer their different perspectives that bring fresh insights to the topic. The second is discussion, where those impacted by the issue make decisions about what actions to take based on their joint understanding. However, as noted in the incidents described above, discussion is often fraught with members withholding knowledge from each other and attempting to get their way by not fully saying what they mean.
Dialogue, where members do not try to solve a problem, rather work to understand the problem they are jointly facing, is a necessary precursor to discussion. Dialogue requires us to listen respectfully to others, cultivate and speak in our own voice, and suspend our opinions about others and their ideas. It is the precursor because until all members come to a common understanding of a problem, any discussion just becomes a power struggle. Dialogue is the precursor because it develops the needed relationships and trust between those who are talking together. And most importantly, it is the precursor because, over time, holding dialogues changes the culture of an organization to one in which, even when in discussion, it is possible to maintain trust and relationship with others.
For dialogue to change the way organizational members routinely talk to each other, it has to become the expected mindset at every level of the organization, e.g. "the way we do things around here".
There are organizations that have accomplished this, for example, The Decurion Corporation, a developer of theatre chains, Bill Isaacs’ work in South Asia, Harold Clarke’s work leading the Virginia Department of Corrections and my work with the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Implementing dialogue across an organization is a big task, but one where KM could make a profound difference in the quality of knowledge in organizations.