Category: writings

The Challenge of Collective Enablement (old)

Society is facing a dual challenge.
On the one hand, it is facing the challenge of transforming the conditions in which it lives – poverty, hunger, infrastructure, roads, sustained economic and social transformation, dealing with the effects human prosperity such as climate change, rising inequality, etc.
On the other hand, it is facing the challenge of ‘internal transformation’ – creating the human capacity to deal with these challenges.

Society is facing a dual challenge.

On the one hand, it is facing the challenge of transforming the conditions in which it lives – poverty, hunger, infrastructure, roads, sustained economic and social transformation, dealing with the effects human prosperity such as climate change, rising inequality, etc.

On the other hand, it is facing the challenge of ‘internal transformation’ – creating the human capacity to deal with these challenges.

None of the external challenges can be addressed unless individuals and groups (communities and institutions) develop the intentionality, the will, the self-confidence, the capacity to work together, to be able to deal with these challenges.

abcIf individuals or communities remain indifferent to a challenge – they may be unable to even recognize its ramifications or awaken to its consequences in time.

If individuals do not develop the will to deal with a problem, then they will not do what is necessary to solve our problems even if they recognize it and appreciate its importance.

If individuals or collectives do not have the self-confidence or belief that they can indeed solve a problem then they will wait for solutions from outside – become dependent on aid or foreign help or on “leadership” and “technology” to solve their challenges.

And if individuals and collectives don’t learn to overcome their narrow self-interest and come together, work together, accepting a shared destiny, then many problems will remain unsolved even if the recognition/ intentionality, will, and self-confidence exists within specific stakeholders or members of a group.

Thus, the challenge of external transformation can be solved through leadership, innovation, resources and engagement.

abcBut, mankind will not even harness its assets and deal with ‘external transformation’ because it is disabled
– by absence of shared recognition and collective intentionality
– by absence of collective will that transcends preoccupation with personal objectives alone
– by the lack of the self-confidence or self-belief – not necessarily in the leaders – but deep within the collective, leading to excessive dependence on the ‘other’ to solve the community’s own challenges
– by the unwillingness to bury egos, personal agendas, groupism, and a ‘not invented here’ attitude in order to solve a common shared challenge.
These disablers together represent the challenge of internal transformation that faces mankind.

abcIt’s time we wake up to this enablement challenge if we are to address our external challenges effectively.

Combining Craft with Scale– The notion of Integrity to Method

World-class knowledge organizations attempt to address a unique dichotomy – between great pride of personal craft and demonstrable logistical/ service delivery assurance.

The dichotomy between knowledge craft and delivery assurance is non-trivial. Craft is born of the personal. Assurance of the impersonal. Integrating the personal and impersonal into a single “whole” is not possible without a complete transcendence of both.

How does this transcendence – leading to integration of the personal and impersonal actually take place?

The answer lies in the concept of “Integrity to Method”.

“Integrity to Method” is the master idea of a scalable, world-class knowledge organization. It represents the integration of a “way” into the warp and weft of one’s work and life context.

“Integrity to Method” is the essence of the entire scientific community and its long term capacity to include and evolve globally – across cultures, motives, and contexts.

What is “Integrity to Method” in terms of day-to-day action?

“Integrity to Method” represents not adherence to process but adherence to model. In any “model of living” lies inherently a set of sustainability measures. Identifying those sustainability measures and ensuring that all actions support and reinforce the model and its success, is the key task of the leader – from the business success point of view.

The notion of an enabling economy

While the production roles in an economy are well understood, the enabling roles of the economy are not well understood, and in fact, many of the enabling roles have themselves become production roles instead of remaining enabling roles. The challenge before us is how do we create systems that combine economic value-addition along with enablement of the individual.

The two building block ideas (i) socio-economic deliverables having two kinds of value (economic and enablement value), and (ii) enabling systems which look at creating both economic value-addition combined with enablement of the individual, together point to a new vision of the enabling economy.

Let us understand this idea a little differently. The more industrialized a country gets, the more production and value-addition capacity an economy creates at a scale level, the more we will face a situation of ‘growth without jobs’. Technology innovations such as AI, for example, may relentlessly replace human activity so that productivity improves without corresponding growth in jobs.

Yet we see even in industrialized nations, a huge number of ‘vacancies’ in enabling roles such as childcare, healthcare, personal counseling, etc.

All these enabling roles have high enablement value but often very low economic (and in some cases societal) value, leading to these roles being played by individuals who seek to ‘serve’ or earn a little extra, or individuals less ‘qualified’ for more value-adding activities.

This happens primarily because of a blind spot in the collective mind that places a greater price-tag on economic value than on enablement value.

Similarly, in the Indian context, we find that there are a range of enabling roles – some of them physical enablement, functional enablement, knowledge enablement, (such as nurses, physiotherapists, gym trainers, household help, etc. etc.), all of which provide help in various ways to other human beings.

Put another way, an economy has two types of roles

While the production roles in an economy are well understood, the enabling roles of the economy are not well understood, and in fact, many of the enabling roles have themselves become production roles instead of remaining enabling roles. And the reason for this is because we know and understand economic systems, the importance of economic value-addition, and the relative importance of various roles within these systems, while we do not know much about, nor do we understand how enabling systems are designed, the importance of enablement value to human beings and to human collectives, and the fact that many enabling roles are not played in society.

Invoking and Sustaining Excellence (old)

1.0 In almost every community we have worked with or visited, there has been one common problem, one theme, that has run through all developmental efforts.  The problem of excellence.  A company seeks to introduce Quality Programs, people ask why.  A leader wants her team to learn more and adapt to new technologies, people silently resist it.  A government seeks to lay out an exciting vision of global leadership, people (in their minds!) wonder if it is possible.

2.0 In other words, people are finding it difficult to relate abstract ‘good ideas’ like excellence, quality, faith, growth, achievement with the day-to-day personal and professional concerns that constitute their lives.

3.0 On deeper thought, it can be seen that the same issues underlie the problems faced by three distinct groups of people (i) those who are seeking to build superior institutions, (ii) those who are seeking to compete better, or (iii) those who are simply trying to question and challenge the status quo in their individual areas of endeavour.

4.0 What is the bridge between excellence and one’s own life? It appears that the bridge cannot be “external motivation” but is “internal motivation”.

5.0 Put another way, one become excellent because one chooses to be excellent. When one chooses to be excellent, the result is an interest in all things associated with excellence.

6.0 When do individuals choose excellence in their lives? When they see the relationship between quality of output and significance of life, when they recognize the meaning of performance, and when they come to recognize that learning and growing is an end in itself.

7.0 What then is the “trigger” that enables individuals to embark as this cycle of growth and excellence?

8.0 The trigger appears to be an encounter with quality: when individuals come face to face with people or situations or events where the value of great performance, of raw professional competence, of true meaningful effort, becomes obvious to them.  This encounter could be with role models or aspirational figures, with people who are known to have excelled, or even with powerful books or films.  The important thing is the encounter. But the encounter is not enough.

9.0 What is also needed is reflection, (the availability of conceptual models and frameworks of learning that allow these encounters to be truly assimilated)

10.0 Equally important is the necessity of practice. The opportunity to test and refine ones own understanding withinn the warp and weft of real world action. Put another way, there must be at least one or more “zone of excellence” in one’s life where one is willing to make the choices and sacrifices needed to encounter and realize excellence.

11.0 Finally, what is also needed is a group of people who are willing to provide the moorings for the emotional and self-esteem related changes that such a journey involves – the enabling environment.

12.0 Putting these four elements together – the encounters, the tools and models for reflection, the opportunities for translating these ideas into action, and the enabling environment of role-models – constitutes the ingredients of excellence in human systems.

13.0 Most important, these four elements – the presence of encounters, the opportunities and models for reflection, the availability of “zone of excellence” and the presence of an enabling psycho-social environment – are seen to be mutually reinforcing if we seek sustainable interest in human excellence from ourselves and our people.

‘Enabling Knowledge’ –An Introduction

The need for Enabling Knowledge

With the advent of the internet and the increased use of information technologies, it has been found, that there is a dramatic increase in the quantity and variety of information that is available to professionals operating in various Communities of Practice.

Communities of Practice (henceforward referred to as CoP), comprise of any group of people who are engaged in a similar set of activities either consciously or unconsciously. CoPs can include professional communities like lawyers, doctors, etc., as also organizational communities such as a sales force, call-center executives, corporate finance professionals, etc.1

However, it is found that this increase in the quantity of information available, does not necessarily mean that the quality of decision-making and learning in the CoP improves correspondingly. This phenomenon is referred to as ‘Absorptive Capacity’. ‘Absorptive Capacity’ impacts the ability of members of a CoP to recognize the value of new external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. Thus the premise of the notion of ‘Absorptive Capacity’ is that an organization (or CoP) needs prior related knowledge to assimilate and use new knowledge.2

What is Enabling Knowledge?

‘Enabling Knowledge’ refers to the prior related knowledge of a CoP that enables the members of the community to improve or enhance their absorption of new knowledge in relation to the changing circumstances. The criticality of ‘Enabling Knowledge’ cannot be over emphasized. Its relationship to existing forms of knowledge may be understood through the concept of the “Ladder of Business Intelligence”, in which the bottom rung is disparate data sources or facts; Data are organized facts; Information is organized data; Knowledge is organized information; and Understanding is organized knowledge; this Understanding leading to creative thinking in individuals.6 ‘Enabling Knowledge’ is at the level of “Understanding”, within this “Ladder of Business Intelligence”.

‘Enabling Knowledge’ derives from multiple sources within an organization.

A part of ‘Enabling Knowledge’ refers to the intermediary practices in a CoP, which previously depended wholly on human relationships and judgment, but has now become increasingly open to codification and mechanization9.

‘Enabling Knowledge’ also refers to the current state of accepted truths, scientific knowledge, and assumptions, used by the community in order to understand and appreciate new theories and knowledge being encountered by the community, these being called the paradigms of the community5.

‘Enabling Knowledge’ also refers to the high level business design of the organization or community, which refers to the way the members of the community work with each other and stipulates the outcomes that are owed by one another, and to the customer. It does not show ‘who reports to whom’ as organization charts do, nor does it codify the ‘flow of work’ as do process maps. The high level business design originates in the firm’s ‘reason for being’ and the stated purpose that the system exists to achieve.4

‘Enabling Knowledge’ also refers to the embedded knowledge also called ‘tacit knowledge’7

Need for a formal approach to Enabling Knowledge

The value of a formal approach is that practitioners can

(i) make explicit and organized, the ‘Enabling Knowledge’ of a Community of Practice, which at present is available in disparate locations and in disparate forms (tacit and explicit i.e. both in formal documents and as accepted but non-codified ways of thinking about and arriving at various outputs in the Community of Practice)

(ii) specify the ‘Enabling Knowledge’ of a Community of Practice, so that the Community of Practice is able to effectively use such knowledge for (a) development of new members of the Community of Practice (b) use the specification to track and assimilate new knowledge effectively (c) use such elements of the specification so as to improve the quality of information use and decision-making by various members of the Community of Practice.

References

1. Brown.J.S. and Duguid.P. (2000); The Social Life of Information; Harvard Business School Press (pages 141, 142-143; 125-127).

2. Cross.R. and Israelit.S. (2000, 2001); Strategic Learning in a Knowledge Economy; Butterworth Heinemann (pages 39-41).

3. Despres.C. and Chauvel.D. (2000, 2001); A Thematic Analysis of the Thinking in Knowledge Management – Knowledge Horizons; Butterworth Heinemann.

4. Haeckel, Stephan H. Adaptive Enterprise Creating and Leading Sense-and-Respond Organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.

5. Kuhn.T.S.(1962, 1970); The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; The University of Chicago Press (pages 43-51)

6. Mckenna.R. (2002); Total Access; Harvard Business School Press (page 158)

7. Myers.P.S. (1996, 2001); Knowledge Management and Organizational Design; Butterworth; Heinemann.

8. Snowden.D. (2000, 2001); The Social Ecology of Knowledge Management – Knowledge Horizons; Butterworth Heinemann.

9. Wilhelm.W.J. and Downing.J.D. (2001); Information Markets – What Businesses Can Learn from Financial Innovation; Harvard Business School Press (preface page. ix)

10. Geus, Arie De. The Living Company, Growth, Learning and Longevity in Business. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1999.

From Ideas to Ideals – The Citizen-SBI Intervention

First published by the International School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad in the seminar proceedings of “Igniting the genius within”, October 2009.

First published by the International School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad in the seminar proceedings of “Igniting the genius within”, October 2009.

 

Abstract

State Bank of India has undertaken a massive “human transformation exercise” – perhaps the largest of its kind – across its 200,000 employees.

The basis of this exercise is a recognition that individuals can and do operate from multiple states of mind such as a “victimized and powerless state of mind”, a “rule and process-driven state of mind” or a “positive and contributive state of mind”.

The goal of the intervention is to enable State Bankers as a community to live in and practice a positive, self-enabling, and other-enabling state of mind. This state of mind leads to enhanced personal and team effectiveness, ability to find solutions where others see problems, and creates the urge to be a better human being – both in the workplace and in one’s personal life.

This is where ideas alone cease to have the ‘power to change’. What is needed is the transmission of a new ideal of living that speaks to the heart and mind of an institutional collective.

How this is being done is the Citizen-SBI Story.

I

In September 2007, State Bank of India launched an envisioning exercise that spanned more than 1000 State Bankers across levels of hierarchy, across functional roles, and across various geographies in the country.

The purpose: identify the underlying value structure of State Bank of India, map out the deepest aspirations of its employees, and chart out a roadmap for renewal of its own two-century old identity as India’s largest bank and one of the largest employers in India’s public and private sectors.

Over the next 7 months, the picture that emerged from the study involving scores of envisioning workshops, one-one meetings, design sessions, and indepth interviews – was powerful: State Bank of India is both unique and universal, at the same time! Unique because of its size, scale, complexity as the largest financial institution in India; Universal because the values that  its 200,000 employees seek to live by represent a microcosm of Indian society in transition.

The story of SBI is about social values seeking to find equilibrium with modern commercial and business imperatives of a globalizing marketplace.

The story of SBI is also about deep-rooted mental models in conflict with the pressures of market share and customer responsiveness.

The story of SBI is, most important, about individuals seeking to find reconciliation between their own search for personal meaning with the deadening impact of organizational process.

The challenge before SBI and Illumine, the consultants who carried out the envisioning exercise, was: How to create/ discover a “living equilibrium space” where these dichotomies are fruitfully resolved?

The answer was not a set of concepts or ideas, nor was it a set of recommendations emerging from an external consultant group. The vision that emerged from the SBI collective was a target “state of living” that State Bankers sought. This “state of living” harmonizes meaning, purpose, and effectiveness, both at an institutional level and individual level.

II

What is a target “state of living”?

First and foremost a target “state of living” is largely non-verbal, and intuitive – a state is to be perceived and lived in, nor articulated and analyzed. Thus, the description of such a “state of living” comes from tacit (and often commonly held) knowledge of how role model individuals act and behave. (As an aside, an organization which powerfully role models individuals who seek only external effectiveness without inner fulfilment is likely to institutionalize disharmony in its people).

Second, the target “state of living” does not seek to condemn or praise individuals in their current “state of living” – it only provides a shared goal of “how to be and how to act”. To that extent, it is enabling, non-threatening, and capable of being inspiring more that being demanding in its impact.

Third, the target “state of living” inspires practice and experience – not words and analysis. Any conversation on values and ethics can lead to controversies and “theoretical vs. practical”, “should vs. could”, and “words vs. actions”. On the other hand, a conversation, if any, around “state of living” quickly leads to the question of how to practice and experience (anubhav) that “state of living”

III

This “state of living” we call an ideal. An ideal is a synthesis of a number of ideas as lived and practiced by individuals in a collective.

It is our experience that ideas and concepts prove to be deeply ineffective until and unless they are embodied in an ideal. When embodied in an ideal – the ideas take on a form and context that allows them to become “real” and “personally significant” to the individuals.

Why are ideals more effective than ideas in a change context?

  • Life requires us to reconcile and synthesize often conflicting ideas such as freedom and structure, boundaries and expansion, etc. An ideal allows us to find the equilibrium-spaces where these ideas are reconciled in practice.
  • Secondly, ideas can be endlessly explained, on the other hand, ideals demand commitment and choice. From the viewpoint of change, this commitment in central to success.
  • Third, ideals are necessarily centered around individuals – keeps the being and becoming of the individual as the basis for existence. Ideas on the other hand, can be centered around one of many dimensions at multiple levels of abstraction.
  • Fourth, and most important, ideas are assimilated through long periods of study and reflection; ideals can be assimilated faster by practice and imitation of role models.

Thus, ideals are far more effective as change enablers than mere ideas and their dissemination.

IV

Ideals are of two kinds – personal and personal-impersonal.

  1. By personal we mean a specific individual- who embodies within himself or herself a cluster of ideas. For example, the concepts of satyagraha and self reliance were embodied in Mahatma Gandhi. In the Indian tradition, concepts of devotion and infinite courage are embedded in the ideal called Hanuman or Mahavira; the concepts of discipleship and personal competence are embodied in the ideal of Arjuna, and so on.
    In India, personal ideals have always been extremely powerful. However, they suffer from a phenomenon we call “idolization of an ideal”. In the process of idolization – a role model slowly ceases to inspire others to act. And instead becomes a solitary object of worship. The distance between the ideal and day to day life becomes a gulf that can be crossed only by blind devotion rather than conscious practice. Idolization, especially in the modern organizational context is dangerous because the gap between precept and practice goes on widening instead of narrowing.
  2. There is a second kind of ideal – the personal-impersonal ideal. This kind of ideal is not frozen or captured wholly in narratives, visual forms, and arguments. Instead, the ideal is kept open as a “state of living” that is practiced and interpreted in many different ways, thereby leading to great diversity in interpretation and multiple role-models using different strategies for realization of that ideal.
    Examples of such a personal-impersonal ideal include the “Brahminical Ideal” in ancient India, the “Samurai Ideal” in Japan, “the heroic ideal” in “scientific endeavors” manifest in lives like Pierre and Marie Curie, the “Bodhisattva Ideal” in the Buddhist tradition, etc.
    Each of these ideals was flexible and evolved for extended periods of time. It is true that some of them have become redundant in the past couple of centuries – but that merely points to the need for constant reinterpretation, constant reassessment, and most important, constant active practice by a diversity of role models within the collective – at any point in time.

V

State Bank of India needs such a powerful personal-impersonal ideal that meets the aspirations of not just its 200,000 employees but also, in some parts, the aspirations of 140 million customers across the country.

At this scale, the ideal that will inspire and engage individuals has to be one which has deep philosophical and spiritual foundations on one hand, and which allows for tremendous interpretability at the level of personal roles and shared collective identities.

The philosophical and spiritual foundation was discovered in the writings and talks given by Revered Swami Ranganathananda, who was the President and spiritual head of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, worldwide from 1998-2005.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Swami Ranganathananda had given a series of talks on “enlightened citizenship”. He spoke of enlightened citizenship as a “state of living” where our inner being flows into our functional roles thereby transforming the quality and motivations of work – and leading us beyond narrow self interest and transactional success to a larger enlightened self interest and deeper fulfilment in life.

Enlightened Citizenship speaks of an intermediate state between man’s relationship (often empty) with external rewards alone and a final relationship (rich, but inaccessible to most) with the Divine. In between these two stages, lies a stage of comprehensive fulfilment – inner fulfilment and outer fulfilment – which is the target “state of living” for most individuals, particularly in the Indian context.

VI

Keeping this philosophical and spiritual framework as the basis, the Citizen SBI Ideal has been formulated as follows:

This ideal is embodied in a “state of living” we call the Citizen State of Mind. This is the impersonal view of the ideal.

The personal view of the Citizen SBI Ideal is an individual – joyful, free, and capable of responding effectively to life’s challenges.

In the SBI context, this is embodied in the symbol:

VII

In May 2009, State Bank of India with the help of Illumine – the designers of this change journey, embarked on a 24 month journey that will help State Bankers practice and realize this Citizen state of mind – both at an individual level, and at a collective level.

This journey is organized into four critical interventions. The interventions are architected towards enabling the shift from ‘employee to citizen’ at a personal and institutional level – simultaneously.

Intervention One: The Citizenship Orientation Program: – focused on invoking the citizenship ideal within each individual and enabling each one to develop the strategy to climb the ladder towards citizenship in the warp and weft of his/her day-to-day work. This intervention puts in place the seed crystal for human transformation in the bank.

Intervention Two: The Customer Fulfilment Program – focused on changing the way the customer-facing units engage with customers, in order to deliver fulfilment to them. This will be achieved by building ‘solutioning’ capabilities and transforming branch managers into ‘change leaders’.

Intervention Three: The Market Engagement Program – focused on investing into ‘connecting with customers’ in the spirit of ‘contribution and enlightened self interest’.  This will be done by creating a ‘comprehensive market engagement approach’ for building deep-rooted relationships with local communities and sharing successful models with other regions.

Intervention Four: The Senior Management Citizenship Vision Program – focused on envisioning an enabling environment so that the change brought about by the previous three interventions can be sustained and strengthened in the system over time.

Together these interventions represent perhaps one of the largest and deepest ever human transformation initiatives carried out in a commercial organization.

Further Readings

Swami Ranganathananda. 1993. Eternal Values for changing society (4th Vol.). Mumbai: Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan.
Srinivas. V. 2004. Measuring success in terms of organizational purpose. Unpublished. Available on request.

Srinivas. V. 2004. Sustainable excellence: A model. Unpublished. Available on request.

Srinivas. V. 2004. Transformational Programs. Illumine.info.  http://www.illumine.info/method/03.htm

Srinivas. V. 2005. Collective aspiration. Illumine.info. http://www.illumine.info/essay/04.htm

Srinivas. V. 2006. Building one’s life in the ideal of fulfillment. Illumine.info. http://www.illumine.info/essay/05.pdf

Srinivas. V.2009. Enlightened citizenship. Mumbai: Citizenship Series Publications; Illumine Knowledge Resources Pvt. Ltd.

Education as the development of Human Fulfillment

1.0   The purpose of education is to enable human beings to be fulfilled themselves, and to invest in them the capacity to help others around them find fulfillment.

2.0   This can be accomplished only if we understand what the dimensions of the challenges are.

3.0   This challenge may be described in a four-stage Journey.

Stage 1: Fulfillment at the level of personal welfare

In this stage, man seeks to achieve his own personal welfare. The very seeking of “personal” welfare implies that he sees himself as a psycho-social creature primarily, with intellectual capacities in the service of acquisition of psycho-social benefits.

Further, he may at this stage view himself as within the broad control of a Creator/ Intelligent Universe and may seek to be in harmony with that larger Good while pursuing his personal welfare.

Stage 2: Fulfillment at the level of knowledge

In this stage man seeks to understand what lies beneath the evanescent behavior of life.  This “seeking to understand” becomes man’s search for greater and deeper perception of reality.  Through this perception, he hopes to find his true identity and relationship with the universe.

In this journey, he gradually recognizes that the existing order of things are “not quite what they appear”. First he sees that beneath “matter” lies a deeper order of “knowledge/ models that drive matter”. Beneath models that drive reality lies an even deeper order of spiritual ideas that give birth to these models and organize themselves in multiple ways to “manifest as reality”.

As this journey comes to a close, the true order of reality manifests itself wholly to the seeker.

Stage 3: Fulfillment at the stage of “living”

As the assimilation of knowledge becomes complete, man begins to discover for himself that the product of education is not knowledge but the “science of engagement” – engagement with life, engagement with matter, engagement with other human beings, and engagement with one’s own desires and values.

As the human being comes face to face with this “science of engagement”, he becomes as it were, capable of a state of continuous education or evolution. At this point of time, he or she is no longer “seeking” knowledge or attempting to “apply” knowledge. He or she is now capable of engaging through knowledge with himself, society, and other dimensions of an ever complex universe. In this state, there is no distinction between education and the human being.

Stage 4: Fulfillment at the level Enablement

As one lives in the ideal, one also seeks to enable others to live in the ideal. One lives by the maxim of “be and make”.

In this state one does not “calculate” knowledge in terms of a distinct quantity. One has transcended knowledge and now sees it as a “living quality” to be lived oneself and transmitted to those around by one’s action and character.

4.0   This transition of a human being from Levels 1 to 4 is the purpose of secular education.

A society which masters an education that accomplishes this transition on a “mass basis” will be a society that will also destroy the bondages of both poverty at one end, and incapacity to enjoy wealth effectively at the other.

University of the Future Some Initial Ideas

What is the (i) role of university education, (ii) form of university education in terms of structure, process, and content, and (iii) integration of the university into an evolving society?

The role of the university over the years has been studied extensively – whether as a provider of the ‘knowledge craftsmen’ to society, or as a center for new knowledge creation, or as a vehicle for cultural and social evolution in society.

Be it as it may, the university has all along been seen as a distinct institutional form that performs the ‘knowledge’ function in society as much as the modern corporation performs the ‘wealth and product creation’ function of society.

What if the university is no longer seen as an entity ‘away’ from life and is instead seen as ‘deeply embedded’ into the architecture and flow of social, cultural, and productive life of society?

What if we envisage a new role for the university as a research design lab embedded right in the heart of community and economic life,

  • providing a new ‘response capability’, a new ‘self-awareness capability’, and collective engagement capability to society,
  • and at the same time performing the ‘universalization’ function –deriving insights from its deep engagements with context, and universalizing them,

so that society can evolve more fluidly instead of lurching from one crisis to another.

We envisage, therefore, a university in a radically  different form – deeply rooted and contexted in communities enabling them to face challenges, engage with new realities, create a new breed of ‘knowledge craftsmen’, and yet capable of economies of scale and scope – straddling geographies, domains and disciplines, and integrating the best thinking and research around a challenge.

But this will not be enough; the output of the university of the future may not be limited to knowledge. Rather its primary output will need to be human beings who are capable of facing challenges dynamically, capable of real-time innovation and response, capable of self-awareness and growth; capable, in short, of far greater dynamism and resilience, integrity and change, reflection and action, than what we are producing today – individuals who can envision and actualize a new society, instead of ‘conforming to and confirming’ an existing world.

This means new curricula, new pedagogies, new teaching paradigms; this means new relationships between local community, university, and institutional structures in government and business. This also means rethinking the notion of an academic, as a new kind of ‘evolutionary catalyst’ in society.

This university of the future is not located in the future but needs to reorient society from past to future.

This reorientation of society is not ‘out there’ in the realm of technology, innovation, and ideas; but is ‘right here’ in the realm of community life; transforming ideals, and building society’s immune system so that it is able to not just cope with a new world but transcend it in fresh new ways.

Beyond Physical Infrastructure – The challenge of creating universal cognitive access [OLD]

2001

This essay puts forward the thesis that the central challenge in the knowledge age is not universal physical access to information but universal cognitive access to knowledge.This essay puts forward the thesis that the central challenge in the knowledge age is not universal physical access to information but universal cognitive access to knowledge.

1.0  After 500 years of information distribution: the next challenge…
The central challenge facing most knowledge-based institutional systems – education, health, knowledge-driven industries, communications, etc. is the paradigm shift in man’s relationship to knowledge and its use.

2.0  For nearly 500 years now, there has been an increasing distribution of knowledge (in the form of information embodied in newspapers, books, magazines, and in the 20th century – films and television and, of course, the Internet and computer based communications).  This 500 year march has been marked by an increasingly intense drive to reduce communication costs, increase reach and lower the cost to user of entertainment and information.

3.0  In the past decade, particularly since the rapid growth of the www, the quantum and range of information available to users has gone up dramatically – leading to a new situation unseen before in man’s relationship with information – too much access to knowledge.
It is at this juncture, that man faces a new challenge, which he has not encountered meaningfully in his history.  The challenge of making sense of it all: the challenge of meaningful utilization of knowledge for productive use – the challenge of assimilating that information not at a societal level alone but also at an individual level.

4.0  This challenge – the challenge of assimilation can be called the last 12 inches problem.  The distance between the PC Screen and the user’s head. This is the cognitive distance between information and understanding which needs to be crossed after crossing the geographical distance between creator of knowledge and user of knowledge.

5.0  The limits of physical access to information…
This is a new problem.  Man has never faced the problem of ‘use’ – whether food, clothing, shelter or even primary education – availability has implied use of these resources.  If food is made available then it follows that people have the capacity to consume it.
If clothing is made available, it is taken for granted that people will be able to use them.  In fact these are all physical access goods, wherein, the problem of ‘capacity to use’ is never brought up as an issue in distribution.

6.0  At a superficial level, information is perceived as no different from these ‘physical access’ goods.  If there is more information distributed more widely, then it apparently ‘follows’ that it will be used effectively by receivers of that information.
But study after study, some notable work being that of Paul Strassman (a leading analyst of the cost-effectiveness of IT Systems) and Richard Saul Wurman (who coined the term Information Anxiety and defined it as the black hole between data and knowledge) have shown this is not necessarily true.  More information does not lead to better understanding and more ‘informed’ action.

7.0  Ensuring cognitive access: why it is critical to our future…
Physical access to information, like access to roads, is a necessary physical infrastructure that must be laid as a foundation for man’s progress.  But the real challenge before mankind will be in creating universal access to understanding – cognitive access – enabling the common man to fruitfully and meaningfully use information in a manner that will result in tangible improvements in the way he works and the way he lives.

8.0  Creating cognitive access is not an easy terrain to cross.  Assimilating information depends upon the users ability to understand; the context for the information; and the link between the new information and the existing knowledge base already in the head.  Creating cognitive access is clearly an individual – centric, difficult to measure, complex concept. It is related to creating the optimal conditions for users to understand and assimilate knowledge easily.
Correspondingly, creating universal cognitive access, i.e. creating optimal conditions for the easy and effective use of available knowledge by all those who receive it is the key challenge intrinsic to the goal of creating universal access to knowledge.

9.0  If we are to be content with allowing each individual to gain cognitive access based only on his or her individual capability then we are opening the doorway to a problem that has already ravaged this country once and has the capacity to destroy it again: the understanding divide – which creates a knowledge rich ruling class that control access to the very source of all progress; only this time it will not be physical access to information but access to the benefits of that information.

As more and more information is made available as a result of fiber optic highways and the widespread availability of communication infrastructure, we will see the contours of the understanding divide become clearer.

Those who understand will benefit immensely from the investments we are making in information and its availability. Those who don’t will be left further behind than they were before.