The "knowledge manager" of the third millennium

The "knowledge manager" of the third millennium: consciousness and knowledge in the global network era

Marco Lisi

Present times are witnessing an exponential growth in the quantity of information available as a whole for human beings and its distribution at a global level by an increasingly sophisticated "mass media". The quantity of information in a broad sense (technical, scientific, literary, etc.) produced in the last twenty years of history, is equivalent to all the previous millennia combined. In the coming decades this quantity will double again. This enormous, almost disheartening mass of data, which could not be explored even in several lifetimes, is now available to anyone owning a computer and connected to the telephone network by the touch of a button. Paradoxically, this abundance of data, information, facts and figures which surrounds us and permeates our existence, further highlights our growing incapacity to finding a unifying thread to help us understand reality and guide our actions. Economic reality in particular is becoming more dynamic and competitive, and requires fast and proactive decisions. This is so important that we feel the need for a tool that can aid us in passing from the overabundance of useless information to the essence of real knowledge. "Knowledge management", meaning the ability to extract operational knowledge (economically assessable) from the data available, is a great challenge which every company faces at the dawn of the third millennium.

The evolution of work and economic assets
An exponentially evolving situation entails radical social changes and more especially a different conception of work and the economic assets associated with it. Throughout history, the concept of work and associated social systems have continuously evolved since the "invention" of agriculture, about 6,000 years before Christ and, even more significantly, since the introduction of the plough around 2,000 B.C. Since then there has been a continuous, accelerated rate of innovation, which has taken humanity from an economy based on hunting to an agricultural economy, and finally to an industrial economy. However, the transition to a knowledge based economy has begun for the nations of the developed and developing world at least. A range of expressions (like "know-how", "knowledge management", "knowledge worker") have become commonplace and show the importance given to knowledge as an economic "asset" of a company (often the most important asset). The transition to the era of knowledge and a global knowledge based economy is being accelerated by the convergence of telecommunications, television and computers, i.e. the so called multimedia technologies. The Internet phenomenon can be viewed as a paradigm for this.

Knowledge as a product and its economic content
Speaking of a knowledge-based economy is equal to defining knowledge as a real product, equipped with economic content and value on the financial markets. But what does this "knowledge" product effectively comprise? And what do the so-called "knowledge workers" actually produce? An initial concise answer could be that the value of knowledge is linked to the value of creativity. Creativity in turn allows us to save the only truly non-renewable resource we have: our time. More precisely, knowledge work is creativity applied to the sea of information, in an analytic-synthetic way that creates new perspectives and in sum, more efficient actions. Knowledge workers, avoid the gravitational attraction of rigidly deductive speculation, and use unconventional thought mechanisms instead (e.g. "lateral thinking"). They can therefore free themselves from the mass of information and "invent" new perspectives, to then communicate to others. The cultural tools of the knowledge worker are typically those of inductive and lateral (rather than deductive) thinking: analogies, myths, metaphors, dreamy images. At this point we should be reminded of the story of one of the fathers of organic chemistry, the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulè, who defined the circular structure of the benzene molecule after having dreamt of a snake grasping its tail and forming a ring (the archetypical symbol of the "uroboros"). Even Albert Einstein often admitted using scientific metaphors as instruments to stimulate his creativity. He said that his first insight into the theory of relativity came by imagining himself "riding" a ray of light. Metaphors and metaphoric language are also highly evocative means by which the knowledge worker manages to communicate the fruits of his/her creative work to others.

The McLuhan prophecy
Back in 1964 McLuhan, in his famous book "Understanding Media", described the arrival of the Internet and World Wide Web within thirty years with amazing accurateness: "Today, after using electricity for more than a century, we have extended our central nervous system to encompass the globe, which abolishes time as well as space, at least for our planet. We are quickly reaching the final phase of the extension of man: that is, the phase in which, through technological simulation, the creative process of knowledge will be collectively extended to the entire human race, just as we have extended our senses and nerves through various means". And if it is true that, continuing to cite McLuhan, "the medium is the message", then, beyond an apparently specialised and immensely parcelled message, the "medium" represented by modern IT, on the contrary, is highly unifying and suggests a holistic approach to knowledge which is almost shamanic.

Cyberspace, virtual reality and shamanism
The metaphor of the shaman is often associated with the experience of navigating in cyberspace. In the state of altered conscience with which one is immersed in virtual reality, the modern navigator of knowledge enters into a light trance that is similar to the shamanic experience. Just like the shaman of the Andes and the Amazon rainforests who leaves the earth to blend with it by temporarily cancelling the individual "ego" (and far from being possessed by it eventually ends up possessing it), the virtual reality navigator in cybernetic space achieves a direct experience in the world of information and data, and an empathetic, non analytical approach to knowledge. The altered (but not suppressed) state of consciousness induced by the immersion in virtual reality seems to reawaken the sedated force of the concerted and holistic Dionysian myth, under the surface of our Apollonian-Platonic cultural training which is monodic and individual. It is the overcoming of the classical Cartesian duality between subject and object that reminds us of the direct experience of the truth told by the mystics and sung by poets such as Dante. It is not by chance that Mircea Eliade, in his book on shamanism, defines the shamanic experience as more similar to ecstasy than a dream. Virtual reality must not be interpreted as a world of dreams, but rather as a new "medium", whose message is that of the multi-sensorial approach and fundamentally syncretistic to knowledge.

Consciousness and knowledge in the global network era
An evolution of the cognitive experience can only imply parallel evolution of the concept of consciousness. Roy Ascott, a forerunner of cybernet and Internet art, announced the arrival of "noetic networks" which can merge individual neural networks, i.e. our brains, through a global network, and thereby creating a new dimension of the conscience, comparable to Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere or the futurologist Peter Russell's "global brain". The new culture of consciousness has been defined as "technoethical" culture from the Greek words "techne" (technical, technology) and "noetikos". The term "noetikos" derives from the words "nous" (mind), "noein" (think) and "noesis" (intuitive knowledge). The technoethical culture studies the interaction between technology and consciousness and the evolution of a global conscience, with associated new paradigms of acquisition and management of knowledge. A paradoxical countertrend is confirmed again: in parallel to an exponential growth of specialist information, the need for a more global approach to knowledge emerges, just as our individual consciences tend to converge in a global conscience.

"Renaissance man" as the model for the "knowledge manager"
A knowledge manager's mind type is that of the insatiable intellect along with the desire to learn new things, but at the same time resist the Faustian temptation of achieving omniscience, and knowing how to extract a global vision from the specialist knowledge. The term "Renaissance Man" is used, especially in English speaking cultures, to indicate a polyhedric minded person ("polùtropon andra" in the definition that Homer gives Ulysses) who can move freely through the entire spectrum of human knowledge in a critical manner, without necessarily being an expert in any specific discipline. The concept dates back to Aristotle who, in his treatise "on the parts of animals", makes a distinction between a subject having "scientific knowledge" and being "culturally familiar" with it. The educated familiarity to which Aristotle refers is that of someone who has received an education aimed at providing him/her with methodology and concepts, rather than details and particulars. According to Aristotle, this person will be able to discuss specific matters critically, and often with more creative results than experts. It is like wanting to judge the beauty of a tapestry or carpet by observing the weave too closely: only at a certain distance it is possible to see and appreciate the design as a whole. For Aristotle a person with a universal education was one who had been educated in all the branches of knowledge in a critical manner. In the Renaissance, Aristotle's model of universal education fascinated the best engineers of the time and was adopted by men like Leonardo da Vinci, Pico della Mirandola, Francesco Bacone, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More. His friend Erasmus coined the Latin definition "omnium horarum homo" to describe Thomas More who was a humanist, statesman, and orthodox Catholic martyr, which was then translated as "a man for all seasons". "A man for all seasons": a concise definition which summarises the cultural and human behaviour which the "knowledge manager" of the third millennium should have, although from a different perspective. A man for all seasons, but also a man for all seasons of the human soul. A person with vast horizons, and who is non prejudiced; a person of vision with deep intuition, a person who empathises with others. An authentic Renaissance Man.

The (so-called) Pareto principle

“Vital few and trivial many”: a few important causes, and a host of lesser, insignificant causes. This is the Pareto principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. Pareto analysis is one of the most widely used instruments in the modern branch of Quality Management, called Statistical Process Control.

Marco Lisi

“Vital few and trivial many”: a few important causes, and a host of lesser, insignificant causes. This is the Pareto principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. The principle, the basis of many contemporary theories on company management and quality control, states that in every organised system, in which a collection of elements contributes to a common effect, most of the final effect (for example, 80%) is due to a relatively small percentage of the contributions (20%).
From this general principle a very powerful analytical method has been derived which, starting with experimental statistical data, enables the main causes of a problem to be identified and thus to focus efforts on these causes.
Pareto analysis (based on the diagram from which it takes its name) is in fact one of the most widely used instruments in the modern branch of Quality Management, called Statistical Process Control or SPC.

A question of fatherhood
The Pareto principle takes its name from Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. Pareto, a creative and, before its time, “system” thinker, noted that in the Italy of the day around eighty percent of wealth was held by twenty percent of the population and vice versa. Subsequently, he undertook more detailed studies on the phenomenon of the unequal distribution of goods (the issue was topical as it was at the heart of newly created Marxism) and confirmed its fundamental existence in all societies during human history, developing a complex mathematical model to describe it.
Nonetheless, we must thank Joseph Juran, the founder of the modern theory of Quality Management, for recognising the Pareto principle’s universal validity, applicable to business organisations and, more generally, to the physical and biological world.
Juran’s intuition derived from a series of studies conducted in the Thirties on the distribution of salaries among workers at General Motors, during which he confirmed that this distribution followed, with surprising accuracy, the mathematical models developed by Pareto.
In 1951, with the first edition of his “Quality Control Handbook” (Ref. 1), Juran recorded in graphs numerous examples of statistical distributions of quality losses, comparing them to Pareto models on the distribution of wealth. The footnote in the text read: “the Pareto principle of unequal distribution applied to the distribution of wealth and the distribution of losses”.
In a subsequent article (Ref. 2) Juran also used for the first time the expression “Vital few and trivial many” in his list of “universal” principles underpinning the theory of “management”.

Vilfredo Pareto: engineer, economist, and sociologist
The due attribution to J. Juran of the 80/20 rule does not detract in the slightest from the creative originality of Pareto’s work, but rather it confirms its modernity and its prophetic foreshadowing of many of the latest economic and sociological theories.
This observation has a point if we consider the not always sufficient level of attention paid to Pareto’s scientific work, above all in Italy. In that Italy where some like to play the snob by giving a French pronunciation to the “o” in Pareto, ignoring the fact that he was in fact Italian and certainly had an Italian surname.
Vilfredo Pareto was born in Paris in 1848, the son of the Genovese Marquis Raffaele Pareto, a civil engineer, and a French mother. The family settled in Italy in 1852, first in Genoa and then in Casal Monferrato. Vilfredo, like his father, studied engineering at Turin University and graduated in 1870. Between 1870 and 1893 he worked as an engineer and lived in Florence.
In sophisticated Florence, which had just experienced the fleeting dream of being the capital of Italy, Pareto studied philosophy and economics in those years and wrote numerous articles in which he first proposed to analyse economic problems through mathematics.
In 1893, Pareto was chosen to take over from Léon Walras (known to the history of economics for his theory on economic equilibrium and for the law which takes it name from him) in the prestigious chair of political economics at Lausanne University in Switzerland. Among his students it is worth recalling a young Italian emigrant who was unknown at the time, but who would soon make a name for himself: Benito Mussolini.
Pareto lived in Switzerland until his death in 1923 at Céligny, in the Canton of Geneva.
Vilfredo Pareto was thus an engineer, economist and sociologist. A renaissance man with an eclectic spirit, an authentic pioneer in the modern theory of systems, with his application of mathematics to economic analysis and the introduction of the mathematical model concept to represent economic and social phenomena, Pareto fully deserves a place in the history of human knowledge.

Increasing productivity is possible
Returning to what we should now perhaps call the Pareto-Juran principle, its application to business organisations leads us to the conclusion, confirmed by statistics and even more so by everyday experience, that only a minority of people (twenty percent or whatever, it is not the precise percentage which is important) are actively and creatively involved in resolving most problems and thus really contribute to increasing productivity; most of the organisation, on the other hand, is rather victim to these problems and dissipates its efforts by fighting against the manifold obstacles of an omnipresent bureaucracy.
At this stage it is worth pointing out that the phenomenon is only partly due to a different level of professional motivation at an individual level; often in fact the opposite is true, i.e. that work motivation is low for those who feel in some way excluded from the most efficient part of the organisation and who sometimes think they are wasting their time.
The phenomenon is in reality more complex and can perhaps be best understood by means of a “thermodynamic” parallel. Thus it would seem that the organisations, just like thermodynamic systems, tend by the laws of nature to see their internal “disorder” grow (this is the well-known concept of entropy); even if wishing to act from within to re-establish the lost order, climbing back, as it were, to the top and fighting against the natural tendency, the success of the effort is destined to be partial and limited (this is the second principle of thermodynamics which defines the maximum efficiency of a thermal machine and shows that it is always well below 100 percent).
It should be noted that in this, perhaps forced, parallel bureaucracy, resistance to change, lack of responsibility and lack of motivation represent in the organisation what attrition represents in the physical world: a force which always opposes, which produces heat, i.e. disorder, inefficiency.
At this point the scenario would seem to paint a bleak picture of impotent pessimism, given the apparent ineluctability of the mechanism described.
And here is a good point at which to abandon the analogy with the world of inanimate objects and to remember that organisations, even the largest and most bureaucratic of them, are in any case always made up of human beings, i.e. individuals endowed (to a greater or lesser extent) with intellect and will.
Using the metaphor of the glass being half full or half empty, the Pareto principle leads us to state that, with the right strategies, productivity and efficiency can and must increase. A few simple lines of arithmetic would enable us to support this conclusion as well as to demonstrate that the margins for potential improvement are surprisingly wide.

Great ambitions, small changes
As we have already stated, productivity and efficiency, therefore, can and must improve. And the awareness of the possible improvement must lead us, beyond pointless and impromptu euphoria, to be ambitious.
It is, moreover, a well-known empirical rule of human psychology that great ambitions can be achieved more readily than small ones. However, great ambitions and great challenges require magnanimous managers who are capable of entertaining them. In fact it is a characteristic of real leaders to be able to conceive of almost unreachable goals, as Bill Hewlett (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard) did when he conceived and obtained in a short period an improvement in overall performance of 50 percent.
Every improvement requires transformation and change. Great improvements will require substantial, sometimes even radical, changes, but, it is worth stressing, not necessarily sudden ones.
It is typical of the Western mentality to associate the concept of innovation with an almost instant change, a great leap forward.
Until a decade ago, Japan was the model to follow in terms of production methods and business management. Today that trend has ended, but it is perhaps wrong to transform into negatives, from the highly-praised positives that they were, all the principles of Japanese managerial culture.
Of these the Eastern concept of “kaizen”, i.e. continuous improvement, is still valid.
The great battle against organisational ”entropy”, against the chaotic and Brownian motion of bureaucracy, against the “attrition” of intellectual schematics, will probably be won by sowing and planting in the organisation a culture based on the concepts of quality, excellence, readiness for change and continuous learning, and, why not, on some essential work ethics.
Pareto perhaps could not imagine how far his studies would have brought us.

References
1. Juran, J.M., Editor, Quality Control Handbook, First Edition, McGraw-Hill Company, New York, 1951, pages 37-41.
2. Juran, J.M., “Universals in Management Planning and Controlling”, The Management Review, November 1954.