What we know in University - and in other places

HOW DO  WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW IN UNIVERSITY - AND IN OTHER PLACES

How we know what we know? Are we interested to examine how we know what we know? Is the real basis of our knowledge actually an understanding on how our knowledge is developed? How would our knowledge change if we really started to think together - if we started to know together?

Let us focus on one concrete situation. Now we go in to University but this setting is certainly somewhat analogical everywhere - whenever any of us does something, how do we know what we do? Do we decide to do something or do we just do it? And in case we deliberately decide to do something special, how do we know what we choose to do?

Picture 1. How do you know what you know (blackboard in Agora building, University campus, Jyväskylä Finland)

The picture above is bit blurry, sorry about that, but it is an authenting representation of a new framework which saw it's daylight 22nd of May 2012. On that exceptionally beautiful morning I had a privilege to speak in our program, University in Change, which we have tailored for the leaders in University of Jyväskylä.

In that picture a person (marked with letter H) develops and lectures a course (L) in the University setting. The question here is that how she knows what she does? How she knows, if she has freedom to develop her course,  what should be the topic and substance of her course. And in any case she has more or less freedom to choose what that course includes - how she knows what that are the particular issues she will discuss during different sessions?

Part of the new framework,  "How do you know what you know", is the age of the person. Is she just graduated and for instance 25 years old, or is she 30 years old who is doing or is just done her PhD dissertation. Or is she 40 years old researcher or professor or in some other position or is she 50+ years old an even more experienced person in some position. May I ask you to pause here for a moment and reflect your own experiences and observations. What is your understanding how different people know what they know, and how experience change this setting. It is interesting topic to ponder, or what do you think? I will not elaborate this perspective of age and experience any further in this blog because I wish to focus here on connection between person and people around her. The nature of that connection is very important - it may be a mark of a living disciple

Hence, let us concentrate to the connection between a person H and the people around her, they are marked with letter P in the framework. My bold proposal here is that we have failed to appreciate how crucial this connection could be both in creating most important knowledge which we can use in our work and in giving the reason for whole idea of working together in any organization. I would even suggest that the well developed and truly working connection between a person and people around her could actually be a basis of an living discipline.

The concept "living discipline" is new one and thus deserves a short discussion. Living discipline means that key people (H and P together) are willing and able share with each other an understanding what is most important knowledge at the certain point of time. Certainly people will have different views, perspectives and understanding, but this is seen more as a beneficial source than a hindrance for an active dialogue and knowing together.

I would argue that we can even test whether some unit (department, faculty, etc.) could claim that it has achieved the level of a living discipline as a modus operandi. The test is simple. When a person H goes in the classroom to do her work L, does she share what happens in the classroom with people around her?

This sounds deceivingly easy and many would probably hasten to say that: sure I tell what happens; some would probably say: I talk about those events rarely, anectodically and with few people. This is, however, not quite the essence of my point here. The essence is following: are people  (H and P together) creating in active collaboration an understanding what should be discussed in the classroom today (today means here, often, continuously)?

In case H and P are thinking together and they are trying to understand together what is most crucial knowledge today, this will mean that they are deeply interested to know all the time what happens in any classroom where anyone of the group (H and P) is doing her work. The living discipline is tested every day, the living discipline develops everyday.

It is surprising to realize how little people seem to need each other in any organization, Universities included. For me the way how social media works and how people share experiences together has opened an angle to examine organizations and the way how organizations and in particular how people within organizations operate. In many cases there are already technologies in place which would, at least in principle, create a basis for thinking and knowing together, but these systems and technologies are often utilized rather scarcely.

Perhaps we have not really paused to think how absolutely crucial it is how we connect with each other. Hence I decided to write this blog and suggest the idea of a living discipline. What we are talking here would be a huge change. In living disciple the people in any giving setting would really be in a position of creating and constantly developing relevant knowledge together. They would not work in any kind of isolation, far from it, all the active connections with researchers world wide, all the connections and experiments with practical organizations and all the knowledge of existing doctrines would be seen as an elementary building block in creating a living discipline.

Let us develop ourselves in our ways of knowing together.

Share your wisdom - tranparency in organizations

Share your wisdom - transparency in organizations

The hottest topic in organizational development today is transparency. It means that can you really think together with your colleagues and coworkers. Are you really willing to think together, are the others willing to think with you - these are crucial questions. The tools, technologies and equipments are here (and already in use in some organizations), but how we decide to work together - that is the question.

The question of transparency and working and thinking together is pivotal in every organization - however organizations are different and these issues manifest themselves differently in every organization. In this blog I will focus on University. It is a very special organization and certainly also Universities are different but I do believe that a lot what I talk here is relevent in many organizations and in particular in many highly professional organization.

I use as a background my experence when I worked as a teacher and as an acting associate professor in Finnish Universities. A lot may have changed during the last years but I would imagine that my experience is still relevant for our purposes here when we examine the issue of transparency.


It is intriguing to realize how the emerging topic of transparency changes to way how you see your work. I remember how I experienced my everyday job as an acting associate professor. It was most interesting work but from the point of view of the transparency I would see the challenges and possibilities of that work rather differently now than how I saw them back then without this transparency framework and without these tools and equipments which we can nowadays use (eg. this blogging system is fabulous)




Could our opening motto here be something like:

the transparency on overhead projector does not cover the whole area of tranparency 

(this tries to be humorous quatation).




Let us take three viewpoints: 1) classroom, 2) organization and 3) network. What the work was like and what would be different when looked through the transparency framework. What follows is an extremely brief elaboration, food for thought kind of discussion.

1) Classroom

The professor went in the classroom and gave his lecture.The students listened (discussed and learned) and then proved their learninng through some exams. The modus operandi at that time, which nicely illuminates how things were seen back then, was that in case someone was absent from some session his friends could deliver him the material (copies and/or notes of the lecture) so that he could also succeed in the exam.

What could be new:

The perspective of transparency makes us think how closed any setting really is and how rapidly and widely the information could/should flow. Perhaps these questions may not appear at the first glance highly relevant for degree students but these are higly relevant issues for executive students. It is important how rapidly and widely the executives are able to share the relevant issues which are discussed in the classroom within their own organizations. We are actually witnessing a period where a transformation is just happening - what is examined in the classroom is almost simultaneously shared in those organizations and in those networks where the executives work.


Of course what we are witnessing here is not a passive delivery of classroom material to a wider audience. Instead, executives play a very active and highly challenging role here. They are transforming the classroom wisdom into wisdom which is relevant in their organization and they also decide to who and to whom that transformed wisdom must be delivered immediately. It is interesting to think what actually constitutes excellent student work nowadays in this world.

The above said should make us think that how we create settings where also the degree students could find as many uses as possible for the knowledge which they get in the classroom. Rewriting the old Las Vegas mantra we could say that what happens in classroon should not stay in the classroom (or in a hermetic setting: input during the lecture - output in the exam = success / mark of wisdom).

2) Organization

The University is professional organization where experts cover certain areas, someone is a marketing professor, the other is strategy professor and some exceptionally lucky fellow is an accounting professor and so on. In hospital someone is expert on some part of human body and other one knows the other part, etc. (By the way Mintzberg's discussion on organizational structures is magnificent work).

What could be new:

Here the perspective of tranparency proposes nothing less than a Copernican Revolution in particular when we examine how we might see the collaboration in the professional organization. In the old world the coordination between experts was accomplished roughly speaking so that everybody knew somehow what was everybody elses area of expertise (what he had studied in his salad days). So everybody did their share in serving customers (students) and some people tried to look after the big picture so that somehow the "whole" customer need was covered. From the perspective of the transparency what was lacking was a continuous dialogue between experts where experts would learn from each other all the time.

Here we are talking about a special attitude towards work where you would all the time think what should I share with my colleagues, what would be most relevant to them to know just now. At least in the past the setting which I encountered was not a living and continuously developing conversation between colleagues which would aim to help each other and the whole organization to achieve even higher level of customer service and expertice. There was excellent discussions but they were sporadic in nature. How these excellent discussions could become the modus operandi? We now have technologies and equipments for that.

3) Network

A scholar makes research and he publishes his work in seminars and through journals and other outlets.

What could be new:

Also here the transparency makes us to think that collaboration could be wider and more intensive than what was/is often the case. One might think that modern technologies would open excellent possibilities to gather goups of colleagues from all over the world to examine certain topics. This is something what certainly happes a lot already, but I would assume that there is still a lot of  new possibilities to share wisdom and to create wisdom in a shared way. We have to be ready to rethink continuously who is close and who could be close, no matter whether he works on the other side of the globe or in the same building. Whether someone is truly approachable may relate a lot on his attitude whereas the role and importance of the physical distance is on the decline.

This is a hot topic - how to become better in thinking together. Let us work with this issue together.

Sunny days,

Ari