Learning

Learning

PKM in 2010

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Personal Knowledge Management

Updated 5 Feb 2010: changed “Filter” to “Understand”

[This post is a continuation of Sense-making with PKM (March, 2009)]

Personal = according to one’s abilities, interests and motivation (not directed by external forces)

Knowledge = the capacity for effective action (know how)

Management = how to get things done

What is PKM?

PKM is an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval.

The Web has given us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of our digital society. Engaging others can actually make it easier to learn and not become overwhelmed. Effective learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them.

PKM can be looked at as three types of activities [note: I’ve reduced this from seven activities in my previous articles on PKM as I believe that a simpler process is easier to teach and to begin with].

Aggregate

Filter

Understand

Connect
Observations & Notes

Information

Knowledge

Sources of Info & Knowledge

 Annotate, Tag,

List, File,

Classify, Clarify,

Expand, Question

 People – People


Ideas – Ideas


People – Ideas

Why PKM?

Human knowledge currently doubles about every year and personal knowledge management is one way of addressing the issue of TMI (too much information).

PKM is of little value unless the results are shared by connecting to others and contributing to meaningful conversations. Informal, social learning is the primary way that knowledge is created in the workplace. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts as we build on the knowledge of others. As knowledge workers or citizens, PKM is our part of the social learning contract. Without effective PKM at the individual level, social learning has less value.

A Model

There is more than one PKM process but here is a basic structure that works for me and makes sense to many others I show it to. This post is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Take what you need, as there are no best practices for complex and personal learning processes.

Aggregate Understand Connect

PKM in the context of work:

Individuals have their unique methods of sense-making and by sharing cooperatively or working collaboratively they contribute to the social learning mosaic that creates organizational knowledge.

Aggregate – looking for good sources of information (people) – noting or tagging pieces of information while working collaboratively.

Filter Understand – saving information for later – considering how it may be useful in various contexts – making sense of it – finding the right information, at the right time, in the right format,  from the information repositories of our subject matter networks.

Connect – ongoing conversations while learning and working including connecting ideas and people.

Enhanced Serendipity – PKM increases the chances of serendipitous learning. and as Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favours the prepared mind”. According to Ross Dawson: “You cannot control serendipity. However you can certainly enhance it, act to increase the likelihood of happy and unexpected discoveries and connections. That’s is what many of us do day by day, contributing to others like us by sharing what we find interesting.”

Getting to work

One of the difficult aspects of PKM is triage, or sorting. It’s the ability to separate the important from the useless. Unfortunately, what we view as useless today could be quite important tomorrow. Developing good triage techniques takes time and practice. It depends on the depth and breath of our sources (aggregation), as well as the effectiveness of our filters.

When we find something of interest or value, we need to do something with it. Either file it, save it, add to it, send it on or discard it. Discarding or missing something is becoming less of a problem online because we have powerful search tools and if we participate in cooperative networks, more than one person will notice items of significance. This process also gives us time to make sense of things, to understand.

All of this aggregation and filtering isn’t of much use if we can’t find things later. Putting our knowledge online, in databases that enable tagging, filtering and searching makes it much easier to retrieve it when we need it. For example, I use this blog as a knowledge repository. It is searchable and I’ve added tags and categories. With over 1,500 posts and +4,000 comments, I have a an excellent tool for managing what I’ve learned. Add to this almost 2,000 online social bookmarks and weekly summaries of what I learn on Twitter and I’ve created an outboard brain.

The most important aspect of PKM is making our knowledge not only explicit but public. This is part of connecting. Going public means looking both inward and outward. However, let me add one caveat. Sometimes, just publishing online for our own learning and perhaps later retrieval, is enough. It doesn’t matter if nobody links to it. If we get too focused on what others think, we won’t become good critical thinkers.

Net Work Learning article

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Net Work LearningThe New Security Learning  Foundation held its conference just prior to Online Educa last year in Berlin. I wrote an article, called Net Work Learning, for the journal that is distributed to members and conference attendees. Parts of it have appeared on this site but here is the complete unabridged version as a PDF:

Net Work Learning 2009

I just received a few copies of the print version in the mail this week. Believe it or not, what I really like about print publishing is that an editor makes changes and also decides what to highlight or what works best as a call-out. It’s very good feedback on my writing.

Here are the call-outs from the journal article:

Individuals can act both locally and globally without the aid of formal organizations. That means that the traditional command and control organizational pyramid is getting much more porous.

Change begins when ideas meet new technology.

Command and control matters less and less on the business fringes. Look to business models that understand the importance of community as we become a global village.

If training departments want to remain relevant in this kind of environment, they will need to reconsider their role. In order to help organizations evolve in a networked environment they have to move away from training delivery and focus on connecting and communicating.

No single, sure-fire, cookie-cutter approach can be implemented in a top-down or consultant-driven manner to create a networked workplace performance model that works. No single method will work.

With hyper-linked information and access to expertise, not only are internal departments of less value, they can subvert the organization’s future by not responding quickly and appropriately.

PKM: aggregate, filter, connect

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Knowledge Squared equals Power Squared, says Craig Thomler:

However the knowledge hoarding model begins to fail when it becomes cheap and easy to share and when the knowledge required to complete a task exceeds an individual’s capability to learn in the time available.

This has been reflected in a longitudinal study of knowledge workers that Robert Kelley of Carnegie-Mellon University conducted over more than twenty years. He asked professionals “What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?”

In 1986 the answer was typically about 75%. By 1997 workers estimated that they had only about 15% to 20% of the knowledge needed in their own mind. Kelley estimated that by 2006 the answer was only 8% to 10%.

Given that professionals now need to draw 90% or more of the knowledge they need to do their jobs from others, in my view ‘Knowledge equals Power’ is no longer true.

I believe it is now more accurate to state Knowledge Shared equals Power Squared.

I see the basis for sharing knowledge in the connected workplace is personal knowledge management or what I’ve called our part of the social learning contract. You need to have something to share in the first place and that happens when you make your work transparent. This means showing your sources (aggregation) and then what you find important (filtering) and sharing that with others (connecting).

In my case I use Google Reader as a feed aggregator, with shared items public. I also share articles with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues using Posterous. I filter more with this blog by writing about and commenting on much of what I have read and learned. I also filter information with Twitter and my weekly Friday’s Finds. I connect through this blog and the comments left by others, by leaving comments, via Twitter and in the increasing number of web conferences and discussions becoming available. Essential in all of this are the tracks I’ve left for others and for myself to retrieve as necessary, as I do during my frequent searches of this blog, Twitter favourites and my social bookmarks.

None of this is new, but I think that the three-step process of Aggregate/Filter/Connect is much simpler than my previous model of four internal actions and three external ones.

pkm-flow

A simpler model, inspired by Ross Dawson’s post on enhanced serendipity, may be easier to communicate (and remember).

You cannot control serendipity. However you can certainly enhance it, act to increase the likelihood of happy and unexpected discoveries and connections. That’s what many of us do day by day, contributing to others like us by sharing what we find interesting.

I’ve found that this diagram works better in explaining my PKM process and how it relates to other people, all engaged in similar, but not identical, sense-making endeavours [Updated here: PKM in 2010].

PKM-AFC

Learning socially and being social

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Some of the interesting things I found on Twitter this past week.

Diffusion By Learning. Innovation by Social Learning. via @charlesjennings

3. Social learning. People adopt once they see enough empirical evidence to convince them that the innovation is worth adopting, where the evidence is generated by the outcomes among prior adopters. Individuals may adopt at different times due to differences in their prior beliefs, amount of information gathered, and idiosyncratic costs.

@oscarberg “Organizations can own communities, but nobody can own social networks. They gather on purpose, and interact on the edge of chaos.”

@BFchirpy “The killer learning management system is the Web – silly” [in case anyone is still wondering]

Pondering complexity. Good MIT Sloan article on managing complexity. via @rossdawson

What can we do, the executives asked us, to manage complexity more effectively?

Our advice: Focus on the issues that are making it hard for your employees to get things done, and on building the ability of your work force to cope with the complexity in their roles. For most workers, complications arising from increased M&A activity and regulation matter less than having a simplified organization with clear roles and accountabilities.

Are we too professional: has professionalism gone too far? An excellent read via @AmirKassaei

Over-professionalism is everywhere. Teachers in England are trained to plan lessons in segments of three minutes, a theory which leaves little room for spontaneity in the classroom. They are also often exhausted before term even starts because of the endemic pressure to plan every lesson weeks in advance. It is all too tempting for teachers to sacrifice freshness–which is impossible to measure or record on paper–in favour of form-filling. But can education ever be mapped out in such prescriptive terms? Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, thinks not: “The erosion of trust in education is sucking the life out of classrooms, teachers and students. You can tick all the boxes under the sun and still be a lousy teacher. You cannot encapsulate the human experience of learning in some mechanistic pedantry.”

Great slide presentation by @sachac on how to be a shy connector – Shows that it’s not necessary to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks:

The Shy Connector

View more documents from Sacha Chua.

Connect, aggregate, filter; then train

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The primary role of the “training” department [or whatever it becomes] for any knowledge-based business is to Connect & Communicate. As workers co-develop emergent processes they need to be supported through updated information, tools and processes to do their work. This model looks at knowledge flows inside the organization:

invert pyramid

Looking at knowledge flows outside the organization, Tim Kastelle says that successful businesses in digital environments need to Aggregate, Filter & Connect:

Connecting is critically important both in journalism and in education. So that makes three value adding activities in the digital economy: aggregating, filtering, and connecting. The lesson to take from the current states of both the music industry and journalism is that you have to have a clear understanding of how you’re creating value so that you build and protect the correct parts of your business model. Perhaps universities can learn this lesson before educational business models are disrupted as well.

Information-based businesses, like education, media, research or consulting organizations, are in the business of working with both information Stocks & Flows. Where revenue is made depends on several changing factors, as many industries are discovering. Understanding the overall flow of sense-making and intangible value creation is important and one framework for success in a digital universe is to create learning networks using social media.

Social media are also the means by which we can share our tacit knowledge through conversations to co-develop emergent work practices. Connecting, aggregating and filtering can be used to describe the cycle of workplace informal learning. This business process does not require formal training other than as a supplementary input. Training is only beneficial when it addresses a clear lack of skills or knowledge, not as a replacement for better work practices.

Informal, social learning is the primary way that knowledge is created in the workplace. The graphic below is a start to “put the horse before the cart” and situate training in the supportive role where it should be.

Connect – ongoing conversations while working collaboratively.

Aggregate – tracking, noting or tagging pieces of information while working collaboratively.

Filter – finding the right information, at the right time, in the right format,  from the information repositories of our subject matter networks.

Training – when there is an identified gap in knowledge and skills, then training can augment collaborative work practices and this can inform the conversations of workers.

A-F-C

Social learning and social networking are growing in importance for many businesses, often as customer support, branding or marketing initiatives. However, HR or T&D are not driving social media use in most organizations. Learning through social networks is becoming an integral part of business and many learning professionals are missing out on it.

There is an opportunity for those who can combine an understanding of business, communication technologies and human learning to develop better social business models. We are in a period when learning professionals are needed more than ever but many lack technology and business skills and cannot help their organizations. The challenge is to get out of the traditional training mindset and open up to the 92% of the business that is currently being ignored.

Work is learning, learning work

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My Twitter bio reads, “Work is learning, learning work – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know [apologies to Keats]. That’s pretty much what I believe will be a necessity for the post-industrial and post-information era that we are beginning to enter. Some call it the knowledge economy or perhaps even the learning age. Whatever it will be called, our networks of networks are making life and work more complex. We need to adapt to better ways of working with abundant information and expanding connections, as I said in sharing tacit knowledge:

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

Emergent practices are developed collaboratively while solving problems for which there are no definitive answers. For instance, what’s the “best” Internet business model? Where once we could document knowledge and develop guidelines and practices followed by most workers, we now need to let workers develop their own practices, according to their particular context, which is constantly in flux. This is a very different approach from the way we designed jobs and training in the past.

Social media are the tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. The organizing framework for using social media for business is the learning network. Learning networks are not just for what we used to call training & development, but can also help us engage (not target) our markets. Chris Koch, marketing and sales strategist, shows no doubt with: There is only one objective in social media: create learning networks

The purpose of social media is to create learning networks that buyers want to join. The enticements are ideas and education. That means social media are extensions of our content development and dissemination processes. By creating content that offers relevant, timely, and useful ideas and education for buyers at all stages of the buying process, we create the incentives for buyers to engage with us in conversation and community. Whether it’s blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, or private communities that we build ourselves, the common thread is that by focusing on learning we build and retain buyers’ interest.

Social media are the vehicles by which we can share our tacit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices.

emergent practices

Context and Community

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Wayne Hodgins raises the issue that information can be both a product and a service.

Information is a noun/product when it is in the form of a report or document created on spec or in advance of a specific use or client. Whereas it is a verb/service when it is a collection of “just the right” information matched to a specific person/group and context. I would posit that information in and of itself has little to no value.  The value of information comes when it is Snowflaked or “just right” as in just the right information for just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right context on just the right medium/device, etc.

Lee Lefever described this product/service aspect of information as Stocks & Flows:

Flows = Timely & Engaging (e.g. radio, speeches, email, blogs)

Stocks = Archived, Organized for Reference (e.g. web site, database, book, voice mail)

In my experience, I’ve seen that with ‘products’, price tends to zero; or that the same item will continue to get cheaper over time. Services, on the other hand, remain stable, and may even go up in price as they become more popular. Note how famous speakers and consultants charge more money.

For example, generic educational course content keeps getting cheaper, with many free options now available, like wiki-how. Content (information as a product) is no longer king in the online learning world.

For a successful business model, content needs to be combined with both Community and Context — two critical factors in supporting learning environments. For example:

  • Online Courses where Community = your cohort & Context = a relevant (to you) credential
  • Performance Support where Community = your co-workers & Context = current need
  • Knowledge Management (and PKM) where Community = those with shared interests & Context = sense of belonging to a community.

The Chinese Pod model gets this right by understanding the user/learner. Their three step model is a good one for Web learning businesses — Reward Attention, Support the Community, & Keep Tweaking the Business Model.

Taking Wayne’s advice could be the first step in creating a successful online learning business model, by providing “just the right information for just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right context on just the right medium/device”.

Social learning in the enterprise

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This past year, my Internet Time Alliance colleague Jane Hart changed her title to Social Learning Consultant. Why?

Whereas early e-learning was all about delivering content, primarily in the form of online courses, produced by experts and managed via learning management systems, Social Learning is about creating and sharing information and knowledge with other people using (often free) social media tools that support a collaborative approach to learning.

Social Learning is fast becoming recognised as a valuable way of supporting formal learning and enabling informal learning within an organisation (something that has been overlooked for far too long). The use of online communities and networks, where employees are encouraged to co-create content, collaborate, share knowledge and fully participate in their own learning, is helping to create far more enduring learning experiences.

As Jon Husband says, “everyone in almost all enterprises is using the Internet all day long, participating in exchanges and flows of information”. This is networked business reality. If the learning/training department remains focused on content delivery it will miss the greatest opportunity for organizational performance – social learning.

I’ve put together a short slide presentation that covers some of the factors driving us towards social learning in the enterprise.

1. This is inspired by a year of discussions and conversations, especially with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, with whom I’m grateful to collaborate and learn.

2. I start with McLuhan’s Laws of Media because this lens has proved useful over the years. For more information, read McLuhan for Managers.

3. We are only starting to see the enormous impact of the Internet on how we work. It is changing everything. I have yet to be swayed from this opinion.

4. We are seeing a shift in how we view knowledge, as Charles Jennings wrote on Social Learning:

We are moving to the world of the sons of Socrates, where dialogue and guidance are key competencies. It is a world where the capability to find information and turn it into knowledge at the point-of-need provides the key competitive advantage, where knowing the right people to ask the right questions of is more likely to lead to success than any amount of internally-held knowledge and skill.

5. Jay Cross has riffed on the changing nature of work, based on Thomas Malone’s The Future of Work.

6. Our current work structures are based on last century’s models of scientific management, sparked by F.W. Taylor.

7. Networks are draining the organizational pyramid, as the Cluetrain highlighted a decade ago.

8. We need to look at work differently and the nature of the job has fundamentally changed as passion & initiative replace diligence & obedience in the creative economy.  Wirearchy is a new framework for work in this economy.

9. None of this is new, it is part of our continuing need to adapt to change.

10. We need to look at learning as a core part of our work, and Jane Hart describes how workplace learning is more than just formal training.

11. When we need help at work, we turn to our friends and trusted colleagues with whom we’ve shared experiences. However, our closest friends may not be our best source of knowledge. We need to grow our trusted networks by sharing our work experiences so that we have more people to learn from when the need arises.

12. Social learning is critical for networked organizational effectiveness.

Enterprise Social Learning

View more documents from Harold Jarche.

2009: year of the tweet

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Twitter has significantly changed how I communicate online. Though I registered in 2007, after having tried out Jaiku, I didn’t really adopt micro-blogging until mid 2008. This past year I made around 5,000 Tweets or about 13 a day.

Twitter’s constraint of 140 characters is its greatest asset. You can only get one thought or comment out at a time. Once you get used to the medium, it’s much easier than trying to write a blog post, which of course is easier than writing a feature article, let alone a book. In some ways, it’s communication for the masses, due to the low barrier to entry. As a blogger, it’s even easier to jump onto Twitter because you are used to publishing in public and you’re probably connected to a lot of people online. Charlene Croft explains how Twitter is especially good for:

Connectors are individuals who know lots of people and who use those connections to their advantage.  Connectors are people who have invested in social, cultural and identity capital and who can convert those intangible resources into pretty much whatever they decide to.

Mavens are the senders and receivers of information.  They are the people who always have the pulse on the good deals and breaking stories of the day.  Mavens are the trendsetters and the people who you turn to to find out about this thing or that.  Citizen Journalists are types of Mavens, often scooping the mainstream media in reporting “from the ground”

Salesmen are the persuaders of society.  They are the people who dedicate a great deal of their lives to selling people on their ideas.

lawfew

It seems that everyone is a Maven today, as @amandachapel recently tweeted that “self-proclaimed Social Media Gurus on Twitter are multiplying like rabbits”. About 16,000 people on Twitter say they are social media specialists, indicating that being a Maven in this space has some perceived value.

Connectors bring ideas and people together. One of my favourites is @valdiskrebs who is not only an expert in social network analysis (a real Maven) but makes an effort to introduce people and sends out ideas like confetti. I like to follow Connectors because they share a lot. I no longer read BoingBoing or SlashDot or several other media sources because I know that if something interesting is published, someone in my network will post it. Choosing the right mix of Mavens & Connectors to follow can increase serendipitous learning opportunities, without being overwhelmed by noise.

The truly effective Salespeople on Twitter are not selling things but building relationships. For instance, following @kanter keeps me in touch with many social and non-profit causes. Given the number of followers that Beth Kanter has (+250,000), it’s obvious she’s a Maven, Connector and a Salesperson.

Twitter has connected me to more people and ideas than several years of blogging could possibly do. My blog still has immense value as part of my personal knowledge mastery process, but Twitter has a greater reach to more, and more varied, communities. For example:

I met @fdomon through Twitter and we have subsequently launched Entreprise Collaborative.

Through Twitter I can follow Canadian writer @MargaretAtwood; cycling professional @LanceArmstrong or Tehran-based @ThinkIran.

I can talk in public about things that would not go on my blog, either because they are off-topic or I don’t have time for a full blog post.

I learn an enormous amount from Twitter and for the past several months have summarized this with my weekly Friday’s Finds posts [due for a format change in 2010].

Twitter may not be for you and it’s probably not going to save the world, but I am certain the format of micro-blogging will be around for at least as long as blogging.

On knowledge

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Some things I learned about knowledge this past year.

About  knowledge management: Codified knowledge (documents, lists, reports, best practices) is effective in organizations that have mostly new staff or high turnover, like a pizza franchise. It does not help teams to produce any better unless the team is rather inexperienced. Interpersonal sharing can be more effective for some teams but it is time-consuming and requires “slack time” for experienced team members to take advantage of it. Lesson: You cannot run your senior staff at full-steam all the time and no amount of electronic documentation is going to help except to get inexperienced people up to speed.

From Peter Senge:

The average life expectancy of large companies is about 30 years, but some are over 200 years old. What is the reason for this? Organizational learning! Basically, individual learning in organizations is irrelevant. Work is almost never done by one person alone. Almost all value is created by teams and networks of people.

Knowledge is the capacity for effective action (know how) and it is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in life. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks [in French, this is the difference between connaissance and savoir faire].

A few decades ago the field of knowledge management was co-opted by information technology vendors, and became useless for organizational learning.

How does personal knowledge management relate to social learning?

PKM is an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas. In the past it may have been keeping a journal, writing letters or having conversations. These are still valid, but with digital media we can add context by categorizing, commenting or even remixing it. We can also store digital media for easy retrieval. However, PKM is of little value unless the results are shared by connecting to others and contributing to meaningful conversations. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts as we build on the knowledge of others. As knowledge workers or citizens, PKM is our part of the social learning contract. Without effective PKM at the individual level, social learning has less value.

Managing what matters.

Learning and becoming knowledge-able are now basic requirements for every worker. These are also basic requirements for life, as much as food and water. We don’t manage what or how our employees eat and we don’t need to manage their knowledge or learning. We can make it easier for them to learn and share knowledge though, just like putting in a cafeteria or a water fountain. Workers need support and tools to develop these personal processes but the organization should stay out of the business of knowledge and learning and instead focus on collaboration.