Practice Makes ___________!

Practice Makes ___________!

Michael Kaethler

There’s a lot of hullabaloo these days around topics of collaboration, collectives, co­production and so forth. It’s a pretty safe bet that these are being framed normatively, as ‘good’ in and of themselves. After all, there’s that classic piece of wisdom, ‘two heads are better than one’, which from the outset is rather difficult to argue against. But in what way are two heads better than one? And is it really this easy?

In the forgotten and neglected universe of ‘organisation studies’ (clearly the least sexy of disciplinary titles), there have been over two decades of discussions on questions quite similar to our ‘two heads’ quandary. What these scholars are hung­up on is how does one begin to organise how these two heads can interact, share knowledge and ultimately work as one head. Because, after all, the assumption is that two heads are working together and not ‘apart’ (bickering like unhappy pensioners).

Can we re­conceive this phrase? Are two mouths better than one? Certainly not at communicating if they are both speaking at the same time. Synchronicity of speech or developing a way for two to speak simultaneously and not over each other might then make two mouths better than one. But why is it that with heads we are so willing to accept congruence and communication of thinking as natural?

Humans are cultural beings; we view the world according to multiple overlapping narratives, which gives meaning and sense to our lives. We construct an understanding of the world based on these narratives and the singular causation therein. Knowledge, as that which motivates action and justifies belief, is rooted in an invariable amount of assumptions about the world and constructed in coordination with those who share the world around us. From young on, we build an epistemic platform, upon which we stand and from where we look out at the world. These platforms are being continuously renegotiated.

When we communicate with someone we use shared language as a way of mediating what we know into a comprehensible form. Much of what is communicated is misunderstood in the process of being translated from one epistemic platform to the next. This happens on an individual level and also between epistemic ​ cultures​ , as is evident between disciplines today, whereby we find severe discordances in understandings of the world and whereby we can observe that language itself has evolved in very different manners according to disciplinary logics. An easy example would be the word ‘development’ as understood between economics, humanities, and the sciences, each demonstrating a broad disparity of contextual and conceptual recognition.

In design, language is problematic. By and large, content­creating design, involves a logic that includes types of knowledge as pre­cognitive, intuitive, non­objective, embedded or embodied. Articulating this type of knowing, through codification in language, is deeply problematic. This type of knowledge is wrapped up in the ontology of the designer.

Communicating this across design or with those outside of the discipline/practice of design requires more than just translation from experiential and intuitive knowledge into a codifiable form (language) but actually a type of transformation.

Now we return to the ‘two heads’ quandary and the illustriously named ‘organisational studies’. Given the difficulty in communicating design, how can designers work collaboratively? How can epistemic parcels from different design traditions and experiences come together to communicate the knowledge they have—a knowledge rooted in inexplicable processes?

Social constuctionists argue that, because knowledge is not about an objective truth but the shared creation of accepted truths, we can jointly create new knowledge. This new knowledge resides in and between the members of a ‘community’.Using this, certain organisational theorists argue that to transfer our individual knowledge we first need to develop a shared platform of knowledge (the transformation element). To do this involves a social interaction (identity) in participating collectively in an endeavour of practice (reifying ideas into thingness).

This, as a result, begins to tie together those involved into a shared sense of identity with practice as a powerful medium through which we negotiate meaning. Joint­enterprise results in shared repertoire (the common knowledge basis). Collaboration in this regard is based on a sense of mutual recognition and shared understanding mediated by joint practice. This can occur between two heads or between multiple heads, depending on the types of practice and content.

Somehow over the past century the focus has been diverted from practice­based knowing (knowing ​ how) ​ to abstract knowing (knowing ​ that)​ . Yet practice remains a powerful tool in rooting knowledge in to the everyday; it involves taking information or different forms of tacit knowledge and conceiving its relevance and how to apply it. Collecting information is the easy part, knowing its purpose and how to ​ appropriately​ apply it proves considerably more difficult.

This has huge ramifications for how we think about collaboration in today’s work environments. In the entangled understandings of what constitutes, multi/inter/or trans­disciplinarity, designers and other disciplines rely heavily on codified forms of communication—written and spoken language. It is the quickest and easiest way to communicate, but much complexity is lost. Nevertheless, we continue to insist that talking about, say, ‘development’ will in the end rectify any incongruent lexicons. There is, even in inter and trans disciplinary efforts a failure to recognise the different underlying epistemic platforms from which the different actors view the world and conduct their activities. What we call collective work today rarely involves the intimacy of sharing in joint practices.

And this is where I make my entreaty. I ask that designers and non­designers alike begin thinking of collective or collaborative work as an integration of words ​ and​ , importantly, of practice. I see it time and time again, collaboration as a series of emails, a few skype calls and then each contributing their own part in a bricolage of individuality. Do not hide in the shadows but bring your own inspiration into a collective act of ​ making​ . Discuss and debate and then turn these into actions, reifying and experimenting with ideas in an act of collective­hand­dirtying. Practice is not something to be done in the privacy of your own home, bring together the collective, eat, drink, participate, do, think, reify. In this you create the shared knowledge that resides in a collective or collaborative grouping, forging new epistemic connections. Without this, collectives and collaborations become flatulent self­help groups, postured verbosity trying, in vain, to untangle complex semantic variances. Indeed, two heads are better than one, but only if they learn to work (​ practice​ ) together.

­­­­­ For further reading:

Carlile, P. R. (2004). Transferring, translating, and transforming: An integrative framework for managing knowledge across boundaries. ​ Organization science​ , ​ 15​ (5), 555­568.

Gherardi, S., Nicolini, D., & Odella, F. (1998). Toward a Social Understanding of How People Learn in Organizations The Notion of Situated Curriculum. ​ Management learning​ , ​ 29​ (3), 273­297.

Gherardi, S., & Nicolini, D. (2000). The organizational learning of safety in communities of practice. ​ Journal of management Inquiry​ , ​ 9​ (1), 7­18.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). ​ Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation​ . Cambridge university press.

Lindkvist, L. (2005). Knowledge Communities and Knowledge Collectivities: A Typology of Knowledge Work in Groups*. ​ Journal of Management Studies​ , ​ 42​ (6), 1189­1210.

Mørk, B. E., Aanestad, M., Hanseth, O., & Grisot, M. (2008). Conflicting epistemic cultures and obstacles for learning across communities of practice. ​ Knowledge and Process Management​ , ​ 15​ (1), 12­23.

Nicolini, D., Gherardi, S., & Yanow, D. (Eds.). (2003). ​ Knowing in organizations: A practice­based approach​ .

ME Sharpe.

Rowland, G. (2004). Shall we dance? A design epistemology for organizational learning and performance.

Educational technology research and development​ , ​ 52​ (1), 33­48.

Wenger, E. (1999). ​ Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity​ . Cambridge university press.

Wood, D. J., & Gray, B. (1991). Toward a comprehensive theory of collaboration. ​ The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science​ , ​ 27​ (2), 139­162.

Yanow, D. (2000). Seeing Organizational Learning: ACultural'View. ​ Organization​ , ​ 7​ (2), 247­268.