Ian McCarthy’s paper and slide presentation on the honeycomb of social media (2011) was part of my inspiration for creating the seven facets of enterprise sensemaking. This video explains my problem-solving process in detail. The image below is the most current version, as it has been modified since 2013.
PKMastery
Personal knowledge mastery
to know is to do
Do we really understand tacit knowledge?, asks Haridimos Tsoukas in a 2002 paper. He bases his position on the work of Michael Polanyi in that all knowledge is personal and all knowing is through action. Tacit knowledge [I use the term implicit knowledge as it is easier to understand for non-native English speakers] is not merely explicit knowledge that has yet to be codified. Knowledge is personal.
Tsoukas states that:
“we do not so much need to operationalise tacit knowledge (as explained earlier, we could not do this, even if we wanted) as to find new ways of talking, fresh forms of interacting, and novel ways of distinguishing and connecting. Tacit knowledge cannot be ‘captured’, ‘translated’, or ‘converted’ but only displayed, manifested, in what we do. New knowledge comes about not when the tacit becomes explicit, but when our skilled performance – our praxis – is punctuated in new ways through social interaction.”
This is important for anyone working in training, education, knowledge management, and the various growing fields of ‘artificial intelligence’. Knowledge cannot be transferred. We can observe how people use their knowledge but even they cannot explain all of it.
“Although the expert diagnostician, taxonomist and cotton-classer can indicate their clues and formulate their maxims, they know many more things than they can tell, knowing them only in practice, as instrumental particulars, and not explicitly, as objects.”
It is only when we no longer think about something, like hammering a nail, that we can concentrate on the next level, like fixing the roof. We are constantly creating mental black boxes to lessen our cognitive load.
“Knowledge has, therefore, a recursive form: given a certain context, we blackbox – assimilate, interiorise, instrumentalise – certain things in order to concentrate – focus – on others.”
teaching in higher ed podcast
I was recently interviewed by Bonni Stachowiak, host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. The subject was my personal knowledge mastery framework which Bonni uses in her university teaching. You can listen to or download the podcast. Here are some lightly edited highlights of a very pleasant conversation with Bonni.
Knowledge
We can talk about knowledge bases and things like that, but for me, knowledge is that human sense making of experience, and exposure, and everything, and messy interactions, and feelings, and culture and all and all those kinds of things. And that’s really what knowledge is. Knowledge is the stuff that we use from which we take action. I use my knowledge to do whatever it is I’m going to do, to go to work, to make a decision, to do anything like that. Maybe it’s not a wonderful dictionary description of it, but it’s kind of a fuzzy place to start.
knowledge-sharing paradox redux
Knowledge-sharing in the Enterprise
An effective suite of enterprise social tools can help organizations share knowledge, collaborate, and cooperate – connecting the work being done with the identification of new opportunities and ideas. In an age when everything is getting connected, it only makes sense to have platforms in place that enable faster feedback loops inside the organization in order to deal with connected customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors. It takes a networked organization, staffed by people with networked learning mindsets, to thrive in a networked economy.
Getting work done today means finding a balance between sharing complex knowledge to get work done (collaboration), and innovating in internet time (cooperation).
learning for the next industrial revolution
Jesse Martin has posted a good article on Learning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the era many say we are entering. It appears to be an era driven by “cyber-physical systems” . So what will the new learning systems look like in this era?
“I see a learning system that will arise based on the technologies that are forming the basis for the fourth industrial revolution. I believe that learning will play a central role throughout our lives, and the basic foundation will focus almost entirely on the general higher order thinking skills. The skills that teach us how to think, be creative, keep an open mind about what is going on around us, and provide us with the self awareness to know what we need to know and do to succeed.”
making your education
When I first encountered the web I was certain it would change the world. Today there is little doubt that networked society is developing into a very different world than the pre-internet days. My personal knowledge mastery (PKM) framework developed out of a need to master the exponentially growing information flows and personal connections enabled by digital networks. I developed my own ways to Seek > Sense > Share information, knowledge, and experiences. This framework is now used by many other people around the globe. I created my PKM methods out of necessity 14 years ago. Today, sensemaking frameworks are needed by everyone. As Steven B. Johnson says, “Chance favours the connected mind”. This has never been more true in our connected world.
The writers of Age of Discovery say that we are living in a period similar to the Renaissance of the early 1500’s. “I am still learning,” Michelangelo said in his eighties. He and Leonardo da Vinci epitomized the Renaissance, pushing against traditional boundaries and expanding knowledge and understanding. The Renaissance brought wonderful new discoveries (universities, astronomy, print) as well as new challenges (the pox, war, mass slavery). Our age is bringing similar discoveries (nano materials, gene therapy, artificial intelligence) and new threats (Ebola, extremism, climate change).
agile sensemaking
“Complex environments represent a continuous challenge for sensemaking in organizations. Continuous ambiguity exerts continuous pressures on organizations to modify their patterns of interaction, information flow and decision making. Organizations struggle to address situations that are precarious, explanations that are equivocal and paradoxical, and cognitive dilemmas of all kinds. This creates a demand for innovative approaches in sensemaking. Since agility is what is required in navigating complexity, we can call these new approaches ‘agile sensemaking.'” —Bonnita Roy
Working in complex environments requires constant sensemaking, connecting outside the organization with the work being done inside. Increasing awareness of new ideas, methods, and processes often comes through serendipitous encounters outside the workflow. Radical innovation can appear here. Radical innovation only comes from diverse networks with large structural holes, according to Steve Borgatti. This is why our social networks cannot also be our work teams, or they become echo chambers. In our work teams we can focus on incremental innovation, to get better at what we already do. This is collaboration. Communities of practice then become a bridge on this network continuum.
out on the edge
Last month in Berlin I gave a keynote at the Landing Festival entitled, It’s your Network, Stupid. I explained that to find new ideas and information, loose social networks are best. Weak social ties enable us to find a wide variety of information and ideas, often relatively quickly using networked technologies. In this way a diverse social network can yield a lot of information.
what they don’t teach at university, but should
Even after four years of study, many students leave their institutions of higher learning only to find themselves inadequately prepared for what is next. University graduates often go on to get a certificate in an applied area in hopes of getting a job. Frequently graduate students who do not go into academia will find themselves adrift.
So what the heck have these institutions been doing with the valuable time of their students? Four years is a good chunk of time to accomplish something. We are told they are mastering a field. A field that often does not exist outside the institutional walls. But there are portable skills that can be learned WHILE at school. These are skills, like critical thinking, that universities purport to teach but usually do not.
No graduate should leave their institution without a good knowledge of the professional field in which they want to continue. There is no excuse today for students not to be connected to professionals outside their school. Keeping students focused only on their academic studies is akin to a prison sentence, expecting that the same world awaits as the one they left several years earlier.
PKM made simple
Here is a simple, but by no means only, method of putting personal knowledge mastery into practice. It is based on the seek > sense > share model.
Seek
- Use a feed aggregator to collect all your online news and information resources in one place. I would suggest Feedly or Inoreader.
- Carry a notebook to collect insights as you go through your day. A notes application for your mobile device would work as well.
- Determine what areas you want to learn more about. Find others from whom you can learn. Identify people who share their knowledge on social media. Follow them and take notes, as above.