Neuroplasticity nirvana
English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian–you may be fortunate enough to be fluent in more than one of these languages, however, your ability to learn all of them would certainly seem a daunting task. Yet studies have shown that babies born into multilingual families, some bombarded with more than two languages including those of parents, grandparents and others, are able to easily shape and compartmentalize their minds to distinguish one language from the next–setting a natural course to understanding and speaking many languages with ease.
A decade ago, soon after the results from such linguistic studies were published, parents, with the urge to capitalize on this seeming unique putty like quality of an infant’s brain, ran out to purchase language tapes in the hopes of producing born savants. New research, by Patricia Kuhl, a professor at the University of Washington and a leading expert on early language development, demonstrates why this technique failed the enthusiastic parents. Kuhl’s research strongly suggests that emotional connections are required to shape the pliable minds of infants.
Her study put nine month olds in a room with Mandarin speaking adults who showed them toys while talking to them. After 12 sessions, she found that the babies were able to detect subtle Manderine phonetic sounds that could not be heard by a separate group of babies who were exposed only to English. Kuhl found a more revealing contrast when comparing the initial group with a group of infants exposed to Mandarin solely through the use of sound recordings and videos, without emotional interactions. This group, like those exposed to only English, failed to pickup the subtle phonetic sounds of the language. It has become clear based on this and other research that emotional interaction is required in early intellectual development; so, while an infant may seem stimulated watching Blue’s Clues, it may not have much more of an effect on their cognitive growth than running a vacuum for thirty minutes.
In a broader sense, these studies suggest that our ability to adapt our brain to the environment around us is not contingent upon the environment itself, but rather, our emotional connection to it. This is particularly important given that it is now widely accepted that our ability to shape our brain is not limited to our first few years of devolvement but in fact continues throughout our life. The challenge as we get older is finding new emotional learning experiences, which often become fewer and farther between as our world begins to shrink under the weight of past experiences and cynicism–so don’t bother with the crossword puzzles and Sudoku, they’re not going to help.
Our quest to keep our brains responsive to the changing world around us may not be bound to the world and our experience in it. A piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal explored the mind’s ability to actively shape one’s brain. The ability to adapt to the changing world and ideas around us, without having to wait for an external emotional source, looks to be a real possibility given the latest studies surrounding the emerging science of neuroplasticity. The article explores a question the Dalai Lama asked while observing a brain surgery at an American medical school: Can the mind shape brain matter? That is, in addition to the brain’s giving rise to the thoughts, hopes, and beliefs that incarnate the human mind, the mind may create physical, manipulative changes to the very matter that created it. Mind over matter…what a thought! The question, however, is not that outrageous when you consider that the Buddhist tradition honors the transcendental happiness which Siddhartha Gautama achieved in becoming Buddha; he reshaped his state of being and unlocked the true nature of reality through a deep state of meditation.
When the Dalai Lama posed this question ten years ago, it was met with a quick and firm rejection: only physical states can give rise to mental states, and a causation from the mental to the physical is impossible. Indeed, it has been found that the brain can physically alter itself based on input from the outside world; for example intensely practiced movements can alter the motor cortex of stroke patients, allowing them to move once paralyzed appendages. Today, however, it seems that the Dalai Lama was on to something.
In an attempt to see how meditation alters activities in the brain, the Dalai Lama allowed neuroscientists to observe whether the internal act of meditation leaves an enduring impact on the brain in Buddhist monks. The study conducted by the University of Wisconsin included eight adept monks (those with over 10,000 hours of meditation experience) and ten volunteers who had a crash course in meditation. The results were astonishing. Not only did the monks have a surge in gamma rays that far surpassed the novas volunteers, but the surge did not subside, even between meditation sessions. Moreover, the more meditation training a monk had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal. These gamma rays are believed to be responsible for weaving together far flung, neural activates used to differentiate features of objects such as look, feel, and sound. The study indicated that mental act of meditation, void of environmental stimulation, can leave a lasting alteration on the brains structure and abilities.
The potential for our state of consciousness to physically alter our brain’s composition is great news for all those fearing that it is too late to learn new tricks. It appears as though our ability to adapt is not restricted to our external environment and the shrinking number of novice emotional learning experiences we encounter as we age, but it is unbound by the limitless potential of ourselves.
As we design approaches for sharing and adapting knowledge, it is important that we do not underestimate our seemingly limitless potential to mold our minds to new ways of thinking, not only in a metaphorical sense but a real physical sense as well. It is also important to recognize the importance of emotional connections, whether generated from our interactions with others or internally generated through experiences like meditation.
Clicks of knowledge
Adam Sandler’s most recent adventure on the big screen, Click, was slain by critic after critic, making one wonder why anyone would invest a night on such entertainment. Last week the people overturned the critics’ voice, awarding Click the People’s Choice Award for best film comedy. Click is an example of a product that seems to defy convention with mass appeal. Tapping into the social preferences that can oppose the critical eye is what Proctor & Gamble’s People’s Choice Awards, launched a decade ago by the giant consumer goods producer, is all about. In the spirit of the awards show, P&G has launched two social-networking efforts in an attempt to better understand what best resonates with its consumer audience.
The first networking effort is an extension of the annual awards show. The People’s Choice Community site (launched last Wednesday, a day after the show) is celebrity and fan club driven. The second networking effort, Capessa, was launched last month. Designed for Yahoo’s health section, Capessa is a forum for women to discuss subjects such as parenting, pregnancy, and weight loss. According to a recent WSJ article, the marketing on Capessa will be subtle. P&G will not run ads for its products, but will occasionally offer some links to P&G experts offering tips about specific issues such as parenting or offer a P&G newsletter on a particular subject. Indeed, the only mention of P&G on the Capessa site is a line at the bottom of Web pages that identifies Capessa as being produced by P&G Productions.
These two efforts, particularly Capessa, are not about marketing to the communities, but rather learning from them. According to the article, both new sites will act as continuing focus-group-type environments where P&G–by monitoring consumer discussions on the sites–can learn more about its target audience’s likes and dislikes and what consumers in different stages of life care about; “It’s going to be one giant living dynamic learning experience about consumers,” according to Jim Stengel, P&G’s global marketing officer.
Not only does P&G stand to gain knowledge from the discussions and patterns of its users, but the communities themselves will likely benefit from the resources P&G brings. Both sites will be produced by P&G Productions, a unit that is best known for producing popular soap operas such as “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light”, and will be used to capture on film the stories of select community members. Utilizing these resources, the stories will likely be choreographed in a way that better communicates the experiences and knowledge they hold.
The resources and informative approach taken by the worlds largest marketer will allow the company to better understand the consumer preferences that can often run contrary to the beliefs and conventions of product developers’ critical eyes. P&G’s efforts stand a greater success of succeeding where others have failed (including Wal-Mart’s failed teen targeted social-networking effort, “The Hub”); the choreography and purpose they bring to the chaos that typically surrounds online communities ensures that ideas and knowledge are exchanged with the appropriate lighting.
The success of P&G in fostering online exchanges of knowledge will likely pave the way for other corporate sponsored, social-networking vehicles. Their success will rest squarely on their ability to not only interpret what’s hot and what’s not, but to provide the structure and resources to the knowledge they contain in order to set them apart from the garbage bins of MySpace, Facebook, YouTube…
iKnow
The blogosphere today was ablaze with streaming news about the iPhone, Apple’s long awaited convergence of its revolutionary iPod and mobile phone technology. Today’s unveiling at the annual Macworld conference did not disappoint. From a technological standpoint it is a new revolution and will inflict a heavy blow to the likes of Microsoft, which just launched its own “iPod”, the Zune, as well as Yahoo, Rhapsody, and Napster who are looking to gain ground on iTunes’ market share by offering exclusive music downloads to mobile phones, which, prior to today, represented an alternative to the iPod.
The iPhone, however, represents a much larger revolution. Playing music and acting as a video player, chat room, photo lab, email client, web browser, and phone, it represents a technological convergence that will empower knowledge sharing in a unique and powerful way. You may be thinking that this is nothing new with the popular use of Treos, Sidekicks, and BlackBerrys, but the iPhone stands alone. When combined, its simple interface, large screen resolution, and powerful OS orchestrate seemingly separate applications into one seamless, mobile, intuitive, sensory tool for expression.
Because of the search technologies of today, the libraries of yesterday are at our fingertips. Now with the unique web-browning feature offered in the iPhone, which allows full sized web pages to be viewed and navigated with ease on its a small mobile interface, the world’s information has the potential to be at one’s figure tips at anytime from anywhere—flattening our world and our connection with it in a dramatic way.
The ability to find information is only one part of the knowledge-sphere. Information does not become knowledge until it is adopted or adapted. Adoption is rarely successful outside of the instructional realm, which includes technical and or encyclopedic information. Adaption is where the true economies of knowledge bring the returns in our ability to evolve and innovate. Yet, adapting posses much greater hurdles than adopting. Adapting requires the translation of information and ideas into a language that is practically unique to each individual. Adaption requires the recognition of patterns that create an adaptable story that fits one’s own paradigm; success requires the ability to communicate in multiple mediums to paint a picture that can be cast under different lights as circumstances warrant.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Cave drawings in ancient times were used to tell stories, today they continue to tell their stories and are relied upon to unveil the intricacies of the human dialogue from times long past. iPhone’s ability to bring picture text, sound , and even video to the dialogue’s of today go a long way to unveiling the stories behind the fury of information that is constantly inundating our ears and eyes.
Apple’s latest offering represents the birth of a new design mindset. The iPhone does not simply extend our accessibility and exposure to busy information, but rather it is a tool that extends our accessibility and exposure to stories. This makes the iPhone a launching pad to having not only information at one’s figure tips but knowledge as well.
No time to talk
The Wall Street Journal announced that Wal-Mart would be moving many of its 1.3 million employees from predictable schedules to flex based shifts early this year. The world’s largest retailer will join the company of K-Mart, Target, and RadioShack who are already on their way to transforming their workforces into lean, variable costs by using systems from companies like Kronos, Workbrain, and Cybershift to predict the peeks and troughs of customer activities. A culture of flex staffing, requiring employees to take up odd shift durations and rotations at the big-box stores, will likely have a broader impact on the expectations of the American service worker.
Though this seems certain to improve productivity standards, there are costs that should be considered that could offset any gains, the least of which is impact on the informal knowledge sharing that occurs during the “unproductive” hours of a shift. Consider what happened in the early 1990’s when executives at London’s water supplier sought to improve productivity by providing its inspectors with hand-held computers and eliminating the central dispatching station. It turned out that the use of the technology to eliminate the time spent by inspectors changing cloths, having a cup of morning coffee, and picking up their trucks at the dispatch center eliminated much more. The depot played a key role in facilitating the informal exchange of vital tricks of the trade among inspectors. The need for this knowledge exchange was so great that Dave Snowden, then a knowledge-management consultant for IBM, found that the inspectors were meeting on their own time at a local restaurant to jot down tips.
While the idea of employees sitting around a table to exchange ideas is quaint, the sure disruption from the mix and churning of staff in and out the door with each ebb-and-flow of customer demand is certain to breakdown the informal conversations that naturally occur during traditional shift hours. Furthermore, there will likely be erosion in relationships and familiarity among employees who could expect to be among new faces at any given time during working hours. According to Thomas Davenport, a professor of information management at Babson College, “employees rarely learn from colleagues they don’t already know”. Working among strangers would be detrimental.
The extent to which Wal-Mart is able to transform labor into a truly variable cost will be interesting to watch, especially as productivity factors such as the employees’ knowledgebase, low turnover, and employee loyalty stand to diminish. We could see the net effect of such productivity systems having a null or even negative impact on the bottom-line.
Picasso by numbers
Knowledge Management (KM) represents an opportunity to incorporate the human element into performance management, something that has been sorely lacking in the exhaustive progression of management tools that have attempted to sterilize the human art of business into bytes of ones and zeros. Touted as the cure, each new tool begs the attention of heart broken executives on the rebound–from TQM to Six Sigma to Lean–when in reality, it’s just a repackaging of predecessors with a few new bells and whistles. The opportunity to incorporate the human element, however, will be spoiled by the misdirected resources and technologies being sunk into KM that threaten to define it as nothing more than an a demented Alex Trebek who seems to know everything and nothing at the same time.
In response to Bain & Company’s latest Management Tools and Trends survey, which reflected the responses of 960 global executives, Darrell Rigby, senior partner and founder of the survey, said that the results showed that “technology’s influence on management tools is maturing”. Rigby found that nine in ten executives felt that information technology created significant competitive advantages. Surely KM was one of the management tools on the mind of executives when expressing the significant impact of technology. Yet, the IT advantages seem elusive; while the survey reflected substantial gains in the usage of KM (now nearing 55%), its satisfaction score ranked near the bottom of the group (fourth lowest). If the disparity between use and satisfaction widens, as the trend seems to suggest, this critical management tool is likely to experience the same fate as the many forgotten tools littering the PI landscape.
For years companies have deployed KM technologies focused on building repositories of knowledge. These dumping grounds have proven difficult to populate primarily due to the unnatural activity of recording for others what one already knows. Bain & Company, for example, created a system in the late 1980s, asking consultants to write one-page summaries of their projects. Yet, after 20 years it was only able to achieve 40% compliance in this initiative. Not until Bain hired and unleashed 20 knowledge “brokers”, charged with the task of encouraging and aiding consultants to write summaries, did a user base begin to establish itself. Raytheon and Xerox have encountered similar hurdles trying to extricate knowledge from their technicians. Raytheon used knowledge “coaches” to help guide input from its technicians’ experiences. Xerox seeded their Eureka system with ideas from management and gave rewards to those technicians that submitted tips.
In an attempt to circumvent the resources required to “broker” knowledge, organizations rely upon technology (the genie in the bottle) to effectively cloud the complicated human issues in learning and teaching. Big players, like Microsoft, which is rumored to be adding “expertise location” as future feature in its office suite (utilizing contextual interpretation of documents and the interconnectivity between people to locate expertise) are poised to create obscure oracles. AskMe Corp. has been engaged by the Commerce Department to create an expertise database. To navigate around the human “broker”, AskMe “simply” asks end users to build a profile by uploading their resume, a list of frequently asked questions, and other documents. The final component of AskMe’s database is an interface that allows knowledge seekers to request information from a list of individuals the system has defined as experts. Furthermore, it records all interaction–further refining expertise based on the participation rate of knowledge providers.
I have no doubt that this approach has “allowed experts to flourish and shine” as the Commerce Department claims. But what does it really buy an organization if those who ultimately engage the knowledge provider, the knowledge seeker, lacks the judgment to distinguish a true expert within a sea of Alex Trebeks? What defines an “expert”? Is it someone who is passionate and prolific? Is it someone who has an impeccable resume?
There is a place for the current pursuits in building KM repositories, but we need to be careful in setting our expectations for the returns on the knowledge found within them. Xerox estimates its Eureka database, with over 70,000 suggestions, cuts costs by 10%, saving millions in repairs. Technical repositories like Eureka effectively use technologies to simplify and distill activities often too complex to fit in a standard set of instructions but are repeated, with variations, again and again. Instructional KM systems like Eureka often meet expectations because the technical knowledge they hold is bite size, contextual, and well defined, requiring less effort to adopt. For the most ardent users of KM, however, many interrelated factors are at play. From subject-area expertise to tactical organizational intelligence, this complex kaleidoscope of knowledge cannot be simply replicated onto the paint-by-number canvas which current technological pursuits provide.
The underlying misalignment between the huge investments in KM technology and their required return is that it is ultimately not about refined expert and knowledge search technologies, save instructional knowledge; it’s about translating the universe of ideas into the adaptable folk taxonomy of the knowledge seeker. The gap between use and usefulness of KM will not only remain but will likely widen as technological answers by Microsoft and others pander to the notion that knowledge only needs to be searchable and accessible to be useful. Latching onto these initial technological answers will only bring disappointment to management and delay progress until a new sexier rendition builds enough momentum to woo the broken hearts of executives once again.