Corporate Training Magazine

Managing Organizational Ignorance
Vol 3 Issue 5- Sept 2007

By Mark Robbins

"Organizations must move beyond operating as though they understand who they are, what they do and what they know, to recognizing that there is always much more to learn. Knowledge management has started firms on the road to documenting and explicating what they currently know. Ignorance management will move them a stage further to managing what they don't know," purported Michael Zeck, professor at Northeastern University.

Business organizations have historically operated as though their competitive environments were known, describable and relatively stable and predictable. Even organizations that have adopted more flexible and responsive network forms to better deal with unpredictable environments still assume that the world is understandable and understood consistently and coherently across the organization. However, these assumptions are not valid when the environment and the challenges it poses are vague, inconsistent or even unknowable.

Zeck explained, "Knowledge management strives to locate, map, collect, share and exploit what the organization knows. Ignorance management, on the other hand, recognizes that it is never possible to know everything‹or even a lot of things‹well. Acting from an assumption that the organization knows enough may represent hubris at best and bad management at worst.

"Rather than recognizing the diversity of knowledge, perspectives, values and interests that may actually exist within a firm, today's approaches to knowledge management often assume that the shared understanding needed for effectively communicating knowledge exists. They focus on locating and sharing good answers rather than collectively formulating good questions. They do not address how to manage knowledge when the firm doesn't understand its problems, know what questions to ask, or even agree on what it knows. Organizations need knowledge management guidelines that help them recognize and respond to a variety of 'knowledge problems' that have to do with what they don't know or don't understand," he furthered.

Zeck defined four specific knowledge problems and showed how they form an integrated picture of an organization's state of knowing. Each problem category describes a particular form of organizational ignorance and represents a fundamental organizational or strategic management problem. Taken together, they define the range of knowledge processing capabilities an organization must have to manage its ignorance effectively.

Complexity
Complex problems have many potential and interrelated variables, solutions and methods. Complex tasks are made up of many interrelated steps and factors, and complex organizations have diverse members, functions, processes, organizational units and reporting relationships.

What constitutes manageable complexity varies by person and by organization. Likewise, what's complex for one organization may be simple for another that has greater experience or expertise. Knowledge stored as intricate but familiar procedures triggered by recognizable events provides groups and organizations the ability to perform complex processes. Bringing the appropriate level and variety of knowledge and expertise to bear on a situation helps an organization to manage its complexity.

Uncertainty
Organizations often experience uncertainty as the lack of information to make a decision or the inability to predict events upon which a decision depends. Uncertainty doesn't imply only complex or vague situations or relationships; it can exist even when the range of possibilities is small, simple and well defined. However, the context of the uncertainty is assumed to be well-defined and meaningful.

Uncertainty can be managed by reducing it or by increasing the organization's ability to tolerate it. Some even consider managing uncertainty to be the essence of strategy. It helps organizations make better decisions and take more appropriate actions than competitors can. Additionally, recognizing and dealing with environmental uncertainty can improve the long-term value of the firm and can position it to capitalize on environmental uncertainty by 'betting' on lots of choices.

To accomplish this, a set of alternative predictions about the state of the future in the form of business opportunities is proposed, funded and acted on. As more information is obtained (or eventually as the future reveals itself), it becomes possible to narrow those opportunities to a small number with increasing certainty and direct additional investment funds accordingly.

Ambiguity
Regardless of the amount of information available about them, situations or events are often neither immediately clear nor understandable. Events are perceived as so new and unfamiliar that one cannot even make a vague guess about what is important or about what may happen. If uncertainty represents not having answers, and complexity represents difficulty in finding them, then ambiguity represents not even being able to formulate the right questions.

Ambiguity is resolved either by acquiring or creating explanatory knowledge, by reinterpreting a situation to be more meaningful, or by having an interpretation externally imposed by others. Ambiguity cannot be resolved by gathering more information. It typically requires repetitive cycles of interpretation, explanation and collective agreement. Rich, interactive face-to-face conversation among a socially familiar and well-connected yet intellectually diverse set of individuals is the key organizational activity for reducing ambiguity. These interactions foster the growth of expertise and advice networks, which can be called on when needed.

The ability to make sense of the competitive environment earlier and better than competitors is an important advantage. It underlies better decision-making and better awareness of the kinds of strategic problems the organization may face. Additionally, an organization's decisions and activities‹if perceived ambiguously by competitors because they know and understand less‹can provide a key source of competitive advantage by making it difficult for competitors to understand and imitate what the organization is doing.

Equivocality
Equivocality describes situations where there is agreement on a set of descriptive criteria (i.e. selecting desirable markets) but disagreement either on their boundaries (the point at which markets go from being desirable to undesirable) or on their application to a particular situation (whether a particular market is desirable or undesirable).

Managing equivocality is an essential part of organizing and requires coordinating meaning among members of an organization. Equivocality arises because individuals and communities develop their own sets of values and beliefs and tend to interpret events differently. It may also result from unreliable or conflicting information sources, noisy communication channels, differing or ambiguous goals and preferences, vague roles and responsibilities, or disparate political interests. Unless this equivocality is managed, interpretations tend to diverge over time and the sharing of best practices in organizations may be constrained by the ability to meaningfully articulate those practices.

Equivocality requires cycles of interpretation, interactive discussion and negotiation, and converge on a definition of reality rather than create one. The goal is to achieve intellectual consensus rather than to leverage diversity. There is a danger, though, that overly precise or coherent policies, rules and procedures for coordinating or imposing interpretation may misrepresent the contradiction, confusion or diversity of views inherent in a situation. In fact, sustaining equivocality may be useful for avoiding premature closure, maintaining commitment and addressing conflicting goals.

Relationships Among the Four Problems
Extensive field observations of organizations representing a wide range of industries suggest that the four problems do exhibit a patterned sequence. Meaning must be established and then sufficiently negotiated prior to acting on information. Ambiguity must first be resolved, often leading to equivocality as multiple interpretations emerge. Resolving equivocality creates a shared context for subsequently dealing with uncertainty or complexity, and ongoing systematic learning. However, these four problems are not mutually exclusive. For example, after an ambiguous situation has been interpreted, it may reveal itself to be uncertain, complex or both.

The Role of Information Technology
Given the prominent role of information technology in providing competitive advantage generally and in managing knowledge specifically, the knowledge-problems framework can be used to identify areas where that technology may make its most useful contribution.

Information technology has proven most effective for managing uncertainty and complexity, where information is more factual, a high degree of interaction is not required, or the communicators share an understanding of the situation. Appropriate tools include decision support systems and expert systems able to process large numbers of facts, variables and relationships as well as online document repositories and computer-mediated communication systems such as e-mail and online discussions that support rapid and flexible information search, routing, and communication.

Communicating and resolving ambiguity or equivocality requires media and languages that allow for rich and varied expression in an interactive context such as face-to-face conversation rather than text-based documents. Less expressive and more structured media can communicate effectively about well-defined situations, but overly precise media might prematurely impose false clarity on equivocal or ambiguous events. Overly rich communication, on the other hand, may introduce unnecessary ambiguity or equivocality.

Ambiguity and equivocality have historically been best managed by frequent face-to-face communication and reliance on a flexible and responsive network of personal contacts to serve as a source of knowledge and expertise. However, as emergent multimedia technologies offer greater richness and interactivity, they have proven useful in moderately ambiguous or equivocal situations. Fir example, desktop videoconferencing has emerged as a complement to (and in some cases, a substitute for) spontaneous face-to-face conversation.

Information technology can also help to locate others with whom you might need to hold a conversation. It can be used to catalog the experience and expertise of organizational members, enabling easier search for the knowledge needed to make sense of something, while computer-mediated communication (e-mail or virtual conferences) can help to maintain continuity and connection between conversations, especially for those in different locations.

Regardless of how information technology is applied to resolving ambiguity and equivocality, organizations must provide ample opportunity for conversation, personal interaction and shared experience to build the social relations and provide the communication mechanisms that allow deep knowledge to be exchanged and developed.

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