About two months before I joined IBM in August 2006, I had the opportunity to attend a Cognitive Edge Accreditation program, conducted by David Snowden of Cognitive Edge, in Vancouver. Patti Anklam, an ex-colleague from Digital and Compaq, who has subsequently written a book on SNA, put me in touch with David, which led to my knowing about the program he was offering, and so on...
http://www.cognitive-edge.com/
It was one of the most intellectually stimulating and life-changing events I had experienced in a long while. Those of you who know me, know also of my unabashed admiration and passion for Dave’s work. (He does not know this, which is good! – He might not agree with what I have come to understand.)
Now, some of you know David, from his having been an IBMer, Director of the now-defunct Institute of Knowledge Management. Those who do, also know, that while he can be described as interesting, stimulating, often provocative and a maverick, he can also be rather abstruse and difficult to understand. One would think though, that he would be kinder to people attending his class, who were hoping to be practitioners of his methods, laying out his ideas in ways that one could take back with some deeper understanding. That did not happen for me at least. I however made a resolution, that I would deconstruct him completely within a year - actually I took it on as a challenge. I was not going to let him get away with this.
In one of the most dedicated efforts of my intellectual life, that is exactly what I did (I in fact put a Master’s degree in Studies of the Future, which I was working on, on the back burner, which now I am mentally available to complete). I dug deeper into everything that Dave threw out there, sometimes barely in the passing – a mention here, a thrown-away statement there. It turned out to be a labyrinth of sorts – one thing would lead to another, and then yet another. If it had not been so deliciously fascinating, I might have abandoned the idea - but in some ways, the challenge of breaking through his inscrutability combined with the intrigue of the worlds that were opening up, kept me going.
Finally, after several months, or just about within the year I had given myself, I was able to start pulling the threads together. A coherence emerged out of all that babble. I had discovered new ways of looking at the world and thinking about it.
Dave talks about needing new ways to tackle intractable problems, and why we are not able to solve them. His contention, quite rightly being that we are not able to solve these because we use inappropriate methods, because our understanding of these situations is flawed. He superficially seems to focus on cognition, though buried in his methods are ways of dealing with situations related to sense-making, decision-making, cultural change and innovation, just to list a few, and the one I think is most important to me which he does not mention - systems thinking. ( I think he does not like that term due to his differences with Senge - ask him!)
I now stand on my own feet - more or less. I have through this journey discovered, that a lot of what Dave teaches is already out there in different forms. His genius I think is in pulling it all together ‘coherently’! I am very happy that I had this opportunity, and am personally deeply indebted ( I did pay to attend his course) to Dave for lending me his shoulders even briefly to stand on. The world looks very different now than it did two years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment