Every organization today is trying to address the changing nature of work, driven by rapid technological change, and made more complex by global changes in economics, politics, and resources. Simultaneously we are seeing rapid advances in all the sciences and their intersections. But what about our structures that organize how people work together? Providing better tools and developing individual skills only address part of the needs of the digital workplace. There is also a need for cognitive skills that enhance creativity and initiative. For example, working and learning out loud in online social networks significantly change the flow of knowledge and influence power structures. Pattern sensing becomes all important. Even leadership has to be exercised in a different way from the hierarchical organization, understanding the dynamics of networks.
PKMastery
Personal knowledge mastery
Sense-making Skills
The most difficult part of personal knowledge mastery is developing a sense-making routine. A recent academic paper from the Association for Psychological Science examined various methods to improve learning.
In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. – Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques
This paper was summarized at BigThink.com in an article entitled The lesson you never got taught in school: How to learn! which is how I came across it.
A Swiss Army Knife for the Network Era
I am amazed at how personal knowledge mastery [PKM] is adapted to so many different situations, which attests to the usefulness of a simple framework to deal with complex problems. It’s beginning to look like the Swiss Army knife of the network era.
When it comes to workplace transformation, the key is getting people to accept change and more importantly change behaviours, especially those day-to-day routines that reflect the organization’s culture. Part of PKM is critical thinking, or questioning assumptions, which is why it may be threatening to certain management systems. But I am seeing a sea change, or perhaps at least a small tide of change.
Sense-making and sharing
The Seek > Sense > Share framework is a very simple model with many layers, which you discover as you develop personal knowledge mastery.
A simple explanation is to look at PKM as four quadrants of sharing and sense-making, based on a foundation of continuous seeking of new knowledge and diverse people.
Four Basic Skills for 2020
In 2011, The Institute for the Future and the University of Phoenix published a report that looked at Future Work Skills 2020 (PDF). The report identified six drivers of change. I’ve added links to examples of each, three years later.
- Longevity, in terms of the age of the workforce and customers — Retiring Later
- Smart machines, to augment and extend human abilities — Workplace Automation
- A computational world, as computer networks connect — Internet of Things
- New media, that pervade every aspect of life — Online Privacy
- Superstructed organizations, that scale below or beyond what was previously possible — AirBNB
- A globally connected world, with a multitude of local cultures and competition from all directions — Geek Nation
Seeking feedback on PKM
We are just finishing the second PKM in 40 Days online workshop this year. So far we have have had over 75 participants in the new format of 40 days online, 6 themes, 18 activities, and 14 days for reflection and catch-up. Each workshop is different but it is always great to get serious feedback on what PKM means for those who have undertaken the workshop.
I am realising the benefits of practicing what the PKM concept preaches…
1. SEEKING is a good start, but it isn’t enough.
2. SENSING INCLUDES PRIORITISING
We must make SENSE of everything we find, and that includes prioritising–recognising what is useful now, what will be useful later, and what may not be useful. The trick is to learn how to store the ‘useful later’ stuff so that I can get back to it, and this has been a key ‘take away’ for me. I’ve particularly enjoyed learning about this … Learning about how to organise information was a key reason I signed up for this program, so I’m a happy customer.3. And finally, I have become more mindful that we must SHARE insights we’ve formed so that we can give back to the ‘universe’, as much as we get. What stood out for me was the fact that just ‘forwarding’ isn’t always helpful sharing. This is my reason for this post. I’m definitely thinking out loud here, so forgive me, but I’m trying to articulate the key insights I’ve taken away, hoping that it will help you frame this program with future participants.
Therefore, if I were to comment on this program, Harold, I’d have to say it’s brilliant: it offers something for all of us. But it’s up to each of us to take what you offer; make SENSE of it and filter it to identify information that is immediately useful vs useful later vs less useful, then SHARE key insights formed as a result of having gone through this process. – Chemene Sinson
mastering a discipline for transformation
A model of curation for the digital era that is being used in health and care is Harold Jarche’s ‘Personal Knowledge Mastery’ (PKM). This is about individuals making the best use of their networks and other sources of knowledge so that they can keep up to date with the most effective thinking in their area and practice new ways of doing things. Leaders who take responsibility for their own effectiveness through PKM create leverage and value for their organisations. The underpinning framework for curation within PKM is ‘seek, sense, share’. ‘Seeking’ is about finding things out and keeping up to date; pulling’ information, but also having it ‘pushed’ to us by trusted sources. ‘Sensing’ is about making sense and meaning of information, reflecting and putting into practice what we have learned and plugging information into our own mental models and turning it into knowledge. ‘Sharing’ is about connecting and collaborating; sharing complex knowledge with our own work teams, testing new ideas with our own networks and increasing connections through social networks.
—UK National Health Service White Paper 2014: The new era of thinking and practice in change and transformation
Mastery
There is always more to master in a discipline. One is never finished. As with all journeys, mastery begins by taking the first step. In the PKMastery workshops, everyone is at a different stage of mastery. We are all fellow seekers, including those of us who have been at it for many years. Perhaps this is why PKM does not fit easily into a curriculum, as it transcends subjects and skills. PKM is composed of many skills, but not a definitive set. My PKM is not your PKM.
a compass for the big shift
Participation in knowledge flows can generate new insights and practices and improve performance in ways that also yield learning and new capabilities.
This thinking extends from the individual up into the organization and beyond, into the ecosystem. Not just how can we learn, but how can we learn faster? We’re still early in the Big Shift, but if we can figure this out, we create an environment of increasing returns, expanding opportunity, and more value for everybody. —Why learning is the only sustainable response to the increasing pressures of the Big Shift
Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a discipline of seeking from diverse knowledge sources, actively making sense through action and experimentation, and sharing through narration of work and learning out loud. PKM is a critical business skill to address what John Hagel describes in the Shift Index:
The ability to participate in and learn from knowledge flows, often through technology, will be critical for success for individuals, organizations, and ecosystems.
The skills gap is a learning gap
Continuous learning, lifelong learning, learning organizations, and constant learning – terms we hear every day about the changing nature of the workplace. We don’t even know what skills to prepare for, but most people agree that we all need to keep on learning if we wish to remain relevant at work, in our professions, or in life. Just watch how new technology is adopted by people of my age. It can be painful.
With technology accelerating change in the marketplace and automation replacing highly skilled workers with robots, the decision to invest in any particular set of skills is far from obvious. Empty platitudes about “upgrading skills” and “investing in our people” will not suffice. We need to start thinking seriously about viable strategies to manage the skills gap. – Digital Tonto
Learning to breathe in the network era
The networked workplace is the new reality. It’s always on and globally connected. This is where all organizations are going, at different speeds and in a variety of ways. Some won’t make it. In many organizations the outside world is better connected than inside the workplace. This makes it difficult to connect at the boundaries, which is where we have the best opportunities for serendipity and potential innovation.
At the edge of the organization, where there are few rules; everything is a blur. It may even be chaotic. But opportunities are found in chaos. Value emerges from forays into the chaos. In such a changing environment, failure has to be tolerated. Nothing is guaranteed other than the fact that not playing here puts any organization at a significant disadvantage.