A fundamental cultural difference of East/West KM is the principle of love and nurturing (East) versus metrics and measurement (West).
Sadly, Western thinking, for the most part, equates ‘love’ with eroticism. Immature, sniggering dilettantes dismiss the exceptional, objective importance of love to effective knowledge creation and its critical antecedent conversation.
Rather, Western-Cartesian thinking prefers, for no good or proven reason, a clinical preoccupation with the futile notion of standards, process, measurement and discussion over authentic conversation for knowledge creation. This Western adherence to analytic reductionism and measurement attempts of complex knowledge is the root problem of most organizational knowledge failures.
If puerile dabblers summarily dismiss Love from the canon of responsible knowledge leadership the solution is simple. Just substitute oxytocin for love and reference contemporary psychoneuroendocrinology, of course.
Here’s your KM Rule: More oxytocin = better KM; less oxytocin = worse KM.
Oxytocin is a mammalian neurohypophysial hormone, secreted by the posterior pituitary gland, that acts primarily as a neuromodulator in the brain. [Wikipedia]
In short, oxytocin is the love & trust hormone.
Trust is the authentic feeling you have in the presence of a person whom your body senses is safe.
Although poets and authors have tried to describe love, in the world of neuroscience, researchers have found that the naturally occurring hormone oxytocin and love are intimately related.
And new research tells us that oxytocin can even help us to become more accepting of others. Oxytocin increases the ability to recognize differences between self and others and increases positive evaluation of others.
Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that impaired oxytocin signaling may be involved in the development and manifestation of human psychopathologies (such as overbearing standards, process and measurement for KM. -ed.) Oxytocin sharpens self-other perceptual boundary. [Journal of Psychoneuroendocrinology]
Now here’s an authentic “KM Standard” — intranasal oxytocin.
Humans that receive intranasal oxytocin share more emotional details and stories with more emotional significance. Humans also find faces more trustworthy after receiving intranasal oxytocin. [Wikipedia]
Take away? Managers Measure; Leaders Love.
