Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode eight of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the twelve future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com.
Dr. Dickson asks very provocative questions about how to create institutions that really take knowledge mobilization seriously – what kind of leadership is needed, how to create and implement explicit guidelines for behavior, how to overcome biases and create a culture that encourages real dialogue and diversity. His is very clear about the relationship between effective leadership and effective knowledge exchange and challenges us to not separate knowledge from human experience but rather that knowledge is integral to human experience.
Graham always pushes my thinking and I hope he pushes your thinking also.
Peter: I'm here in the Hampton Inn, in Vancouver with Graham Dickson – welcome Graham Graham: How are you doing there Peter? Peter: I'm great. Why don't you introduce yourself, tell us what you do, where you're located, a little bit about your Centre? Graham: Sure, I'd be happy to. Currently, I'm the Director of the Centre of Health Leadership and Research at the Royal Roads University, which is a new entity that was set up by the University because the importance of leadership in the field of health and health reform, health change if you like, was deemed to be a very high priority issue in society by our university and we felt that as a University that….essentially was in the business of generating knowledge for application purposes. That a centre that would seek out, find, distil knowledge in the field of leadership and then apply it to some of the challenges the health centre is facing today would be an appropriate contribution for our university to make. Given that the nature of the kinds of programs and kind of research that we do which is in the fields of leadership, in the fields of management, conflict resolution and environment and applied communications.
Peter: So you're all about knowledge exchange? Graham: Yes, in fact my VP once said that that's indeed the band-aid of Royal Roads University is really knowledge mobilization. Peter: Okay, so how did that come about? I mean that's an interesting perspective. What is the path that led you to the work that you do now?
Graham: Well the University came about I think ultimately because people in government at the time this university was being conceptualized, saw that there were many traditional – what I would call knowledge transfer programs in universities – the traditional kind of research that was being done – the typical one-way purveyance of that information or knowledge through a teaching medium – you know a classroom of 400 kids that 18 year olds or 19 year olds that get the information – the traditional “push” methods of publishing, of journaling, of conferencing. And this…the actual impact of a lot of that knowledge and that research in terms of changed practice or in terms of influencing practice was deemed to be somewhat minimal. So the university said “why don't we create an institution that is solely to empower and enable a career of professionals to take the burgeoning knowledge that's out there about the world of work and apply it in the context of their particular role or job?” Peter: One of the ways that knowledge exchanged is described is bringing people and evidence together to influence behavior. So what are some of the changes in behavior that you've seen by people engaging with the Centre at Royal Roads? Graham: Well I think there's changes in behavior at two or three different levels. There's individual change behavior - so what I call the micro level of change where an individual changes their view of the world or changes their skill set as they interact with the world. Then there's the, what I would call, work unit or organizational context in which those changes can be conceptualized. So someone may, for example, be the leader of a team back at work and all of a sudden realize, gees there's a whole new dynamic of engaging their team back at work as a consequence to the knowledge and the exchange that they've been engaged with in our program. And the third level is what I call the macro level, which is the systems level whereby we really need to look at complexity theory and other fields like that where we start analyzing complex adaptive systems and how those can impact the influence by knowledge and of course the concept of dialogue and the concept of facilitation in large groups, consensus building through process is a mechanism for creating change in our organizations at that kind of a level.
Peter: So how does the work that you do and the results that you're getting relate to CCL's mandate around life-long learning? How do you fit those pieces together because there's some challenges around…I mean we've gone the processes where we're thinking through is this life-long learning or teaching or is this life-long learning or knowledge exchange? How do you see CCL's mandate around life-long learning fitting into the work that you do or does it? Graham: Oh I think it does. Maybe CCL and I would have some slightly differences of views on how it might fit together but here's mine. To me learning is a very natural act. Everybody chooses to learn – it's the process by which you adapt to the surroundings around you and change or adjust in the most reasonable way to emerge in circumstance – to needs that you have. Knowledge transfer can be considered as pretty passive in the sense that you're putting it out there but no one's necessarily engaging it. It's like putting a meal in front of somebody and if they're not hungry, they won't eat it. To me, really sophisticated learning facilitation is creating and nurturing the environment such that people really want to imbibe the knowledge that's out there and it becomes a way – and a true exchange for me is where the individual and the knowledge – be that inanimate kind of knowledge that's there for the taking or being in another person. It's connected to the relevance of that individual's needs. And to me that's the whole context of creating a learning environment that we need to know and learn and share much of the knowledge we have in the learning field, with people in other environments. Peter: So how do you support that? What are the key elements of a learning environment?
Graham: I think two or three key concepts or key principles underline a learning environment. Number one is that you have to come into that environment with a predisposition towards inquiry.
In other words you don't come in to say, well I'm going to tell this environment and I'm going to push something out into the environment, because that the antithesis of learning. A learning mindset says I'm going into that environment to see what's out there and to see what I can acquire from that environment. So number one you need to create a culture – you need to have a mind set of inquiry when you go into a learning environment. Two, the environment itself must create the safe conditions such that you don't feel threatened by that environment to be inquiring in your nature. So it doesn't make sense to go into a meeting with a group of people for a knowledge exchange, for example, and then feel threatened by people in the room that if you actually put your views out, you will be considered as a buffoon or you won't…you have your ideas taken up or if you take up their ideas you might – certain ideas in the room - you might be considered to be inappropriate for the process or whatever. Peter: So there's a cultural aspect to that? Graham: Very much so.
Peter: So how do you…what's your opinion about how to create a culture that supports knowledge exchange, that supports life-long learning that creates that incentive for people, to want to put their ideas out there? To engage in the exchange – to not feel like they're going to be knocked down because they're testing something that's new. How do you…how do you do that?
Graham: I think you work very hard at establishing the ground rules for the activity that people will be a part of part of them coming.
Peter: Okay Graham: I think that you… Peter: Explicitly? Graham: Explicitly, yes. Not implicitly, explicitly. Like I'm doing a session in a couple of days where we're bringing a hundred people together who represent a large system – components of a large system. That system will not work if all the components don't interact with each other as the system is intended. But each of those people cannot see the whole system – they cannot be the other person in the system and see that other person's perspective. So we have to create from that group of people, in order to be open to seeing the system of which they are a part, to have an inquiring mind and an environment in which they feel safe to put themselves out there and for others to put…to be open to what others have to say. So we've created guidelines for interaction. So we'll be putting those up on the PowerPoint - here are some of the key ideas and principles that we'd like to have you guide your participation in this session. And we'll have discussions about that with the people. We'll ask people to hold each other accountable for this. Peter: So how do people react to that? When you put up a guideline for interaction – I mean these are all adults that you're working with – how do you lead them through that process of saying “we're going to ask you to modify your behavior because you're all going to benefit”. What's the reaction you get from people? Graham: Usually I get a pretty good one - personally, I get a pretty good reaction. I've seen it many times. It can be done in many different ways. I mean you can facilitate the creation of such rules if you've got a smaller group that's the preferred approach. When you've got a hundred people in the room, it's a little harder to have a facilitated discussion around the guidelines for the two-day interaction because you've only got them there for a period of time. So you ultimately can say, “look this is what past practice…what the literature has to say or the tools or the approaches that will generate a healthy environment for the kind of dialogue that we're having. You can have a short discussion at the table about this and if anybody has any major reservations, they are certainly welcome to express that”. We publish them and put them at the front end of the package that they get and then we explain the rational behind each of those guidelines to people, which essentially…normally, most people buy.
A third component that I think is very vital to the creation of an effective knowledge exchange environment or a learning environment if you like. And that is a sense of egalitarianism. People who come to that, regardless of their positional power in the world outside of the forum, have to be acknowledged and respected for having a piece of the knowledge that is required for the whole to be understood. And there's no hierarchy there. Peter: Well that's a perfect segue into evidence because one of the challenges around the discussion around evidence is the role of the “expert”. And the power relationships between those who are supposed to know and those who are supposed to receive – the researcher and the research user – the expert and the client right? So there's that dynamic that currently exists that what you were saying is that when you engage in knowledge exchange you have to acknowledge that everybody has a piece and if you're missing a piece in fact, you don't have the whole picture. Am I understanding that?
Graham: That's correct. Peter: Okay, so how do you react to conversations around evidence? That something's are more systematically acquired and hence are a better quality or “that's valid and this is not valid”. One of the challenges around what is good evidence or resilient evidence or rigorous evidence is an assessment process. So when you hear the word evidence what do you think and what does it bring up in your practice?
Graham: What it brings up to me is rigor in testing, if you like, the integrity of the information that is being presented as knowledge. And that's an expertise that certain people in our society develop and have and that's great. So they should have it. However, politicians have expertise and that's in dealing with complex social issues, in dealing with people and explaining issues to people and gaining support of people. It's a different expertise but they're equal in the sense of…for that knowledge sometimes to be used, the politician both has to hear it and then find out how to convince the public or engage the public in accepting that evidence as meaningful for decision making. So from the point of view, there's no hierarchy of importance between the person with expertise and other people. They're equal in that sense but each has a contribution to make that is their expertise and some people have, if you like, knowledge creation expertise. That's marvelous – it doesn't make them any better than anybody else. Peter: What I'm hearing a little bit is the concept of diversity. Graham: Very much so.
Peter: So in fact the knowledge exchange process, you have to have a diverse set of knowledges and within those knowledges there are things that are more, well known or more accepted than other things but they're still…you need to have that diversity. You need to have many different perspectives in order to have what is potentially an integrated system or an integrated perspective.
Graham: Absolutely…absolutely Peter: Okay.
