PKMastery

Personal knowledge mastery

Working smarter, daily

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My blog functions as my outboard brain, a place to get half-baked ideas out in the open and work on them in public. It’s also a repository of thoughts and notes I use in my daily work. I often refer to a blog post instead of writing the same email a dozen times. However, it can be difficult to find a single post amongst the more than 2,000 here.

Recently I’ve been using Working Smarter Daily as a more intelligent front-end for my blog. WS Daily consists of what members of the Internet Time Alliance have identified as essential reading, assisted by the curation of Jay Cross and aided by a layer of intelligent filtering based on social signals. It’s more than a mere aggregation of blog feeds, though.The comprehensive topic search function yields interesting results from 42 different perspectives, on everything from culture to complexity.  You can also look at a single author (Source=Harold Jarche) and then filter. Filtering can be single or multiple terms. For example, here are my feeds for Innovation, Collaboration & Network:

 

This is one more, rather powerful, tool for my personal knowledge management processes that makes my life a bit easier. Getting things done is the final measurement in determining if any PKM system works. My thanks to Xyleme for sponsoring Working Smarter Daily again for 2012 and giving me and others another way to seek, sense and share.

Sense-making through conversation

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One of our clients referred me to a post by Nick Milton on another great Boston square that pulls “apart the KM world on dimensions of Knowledge Push and Knowledge Pull (which you might call “Sharing” and “seeking”), and the dimensions of Explicit and Tacit. We get 4 quadrants, which we could call Ask, Tell, Search, Share.”

The similarity to PKM with its seek/sense/share processes had me look back on that for any additional insights from Nick’s Boston square (my additions in red).

Sense-making consists of both asking and telling. It’s a continuing series of conversations. We know that conversation is the main way that tacit knowledge gets shared. So we continuously seek out explicit knowledge, in the form of written work or other knowledge artifacts left by others. We then have conversations around these artifacts to make sense of them. Finally, we share new, explicit knowledge artifacts which then grow our bodies of knowledge. Sharing closes the circle, because being a personal knowledge manager is every professional’s part of the social learning contract.

This square is a good model to look at our own processes. Is the (limited) time we spend on PKM well balanced between the four activities? Missing one of them completely would destroy most of the value in any PKM process. Seeking and sharing information without any conversation around it would only serve to create additional noise with no signal. It’s the individual context, gained through conversations, that provides the real value. This is why narrating our work and making it transparent (shareable) is so important in the creative, networked workplace. It’s how the organization makes sense, from multiple conversations.

Knowledge filters

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filters
This graphic is part of the Seek > Sense > Share PKM model and is based on Five forms of filtering by Tim Kastelle. Here’s a review of the five forms.

  1. Naive filtering is what too often happens in our knowledge searching. It’s like prairie-dogging, or standing up in your cubicle and asking those close to you for advice. It’s rather hit and miss and dependent on who works nearby and happens to be listening.
  2. Expert filtering worked when knowledge was more stable but in an interconnected, interdependent, digital world we have to ask, who are the experts? Still, good experts are valuable and I use platforms like Twitter to connect to them, like Michael Geist on Canadian copyright law or Valdis Krebs on networks.
  3. Networked expertise can be sought through group-sourced information resources, like the curated Working Smarter Daily or in self-created expertise lists like Google+ to create circles of expertise. You can also link to existing communities of expertise/interest such as Dave Gurteen on knowledge management.
  4. Algorithmic filters can be simple, like typing in a basic search string, or more refined using techniques like Google’s advanced operators. However, they are all based on someone else’s ideas of what is important, programmed in from the start. These filters are beginning to look very dangerous unless you know the underlying logic.
  5. A good perspective on Heuristic filters is Howard Rheingold’s Crap Detection Skills:

“Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. The good stuff is out there if you know how to find and verify it. Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet.”

Taking the time to cross the chasm

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I was asked by Ryan McClure, a regular reader of this blog, to “have a go at the fear of change by addressing it directly“. He was referring to situations where senior executives seem to be on a different plane of reality. For example:

  1. The CEO who doesn’t see the value of social networks and lumps them all into the “Facebook for fun” category.
  2. The successful business leader who is milking the current cash cow and sees the Internet as frivolous and of no interest to his customers.
  3. The President who gets others to handle his information needs without understanding the underlying technology infrastructure that is hampering knowledge-sharing and collaboration across the enterprise.

I addressed some of these issues in social media for senior managers, as Michael Cook had asked a similar question. I concluded that blocking social networks slows learning, reduces effectiveness and may in the end kill the organization. Senior managers need to understand social media in order to support learning in social networks which will enable practitioners to produce results.

But that’s probably not enough to change the status quo.

I work on these issues in two ways. One is by showing the big picture. These are patterns that, with any luck, are difficult to ignore. Most executives agree that their work and business environment is getting more complex. I try to show that we need to organize for complexity and diversity in new ways. A different corporate culture is required. Both of these will take some time, so it’s best to balance this message with specific practices that can be started right away.

I will demonstrate the benefits of networks in getting things done. Many times I have shown how simple tools, like social bookmarks, can make professional information gathering and sharing much more efficient. I explain how the organization should leverage collective knowledge from varied individual practices of personal knowledge management (PKM).

This is done by telling stories, showing examples and modelling behaviours, usually over a significant period of time. There is a lot of repetition. It’s also worth revising your message, based on feedback and observation. PKM made sense to my clients only once I had it boiled down to three alliterative words: Seek – Sense – Share. This took a few years to develop.

It takes time to cross the social business chasm.

Networked Learning (PKM) Workshop in Toronto

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Note: this workshop has been postponed until – 30 March 2012.

In just over a month’s time, I’ll be facilitating another one-day workshop on Networked Learning (PKM) at the University of Toronto’s iSchool Institute on Friday, 18 November 2011. The cost for the day is $250.

My consulting work this past year has shown a great need for two aspects of knowledge-sharing in organizations: 1) systems & processes to enable better collaboration & sharing, and 2) individual skills in narrating work and learning in networks. This workshop is focused on the latter.

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.

Let’s face it, it’s becoming more difficult to make sense of the world by ourselves. Understanding issues that affect our lives takes significant time and effort, whether it be public education, health care or climate change. Even the selection of a mobile phone plan requires more than mere numeracy and literacy.  We need context to understand complex issues and this can come from those we are connected to. The reach and depth of our connections become critical in helping us make sense of our environment and to solve problems. Problem-solving is what most people actually do for a living, so doing it better can have widespread effects. With social learning, everyone contributes to collective knowledge and this in turn can make  organizations and society more effective in dealing with problems. PKM is one of the foundations of social learning because we each need to make sense of the signals coming from our networks, while simultaneously reducing the ever-increasing noise.

If you’re in the Toronto area, this may be the workshop for you or your colleagues.

Making sense of our world

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I define Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) as a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world, work more effectively and contribute to society. It’s sense making + getting things done.

George Siemens has made this rather succinct statement about knowledge:

When I externalize something, it’s information.
When someone connects it in some manner, it becomes knowledge.
Knowledge is essentially relatedness/connectedness.

PKM is about making connections, with ideas and with people.

As I keep developing my own processes and work with clients to promote a networked learning culture I look for clearer ways of describing what this PKM stuff is all about.

The image below is an attempt to state the Seek-Sense-Share framework as simply as possible.

To be effective networked learners, we need to seek information; pulling, instead of having it pushed to us by others. We can use human (e.g. Twitter) and mechanical (e.g. Google) filters to help us do this.

We connect to this information by making sense of it in a variety ways, such as validating it with our own experiences and observations (e.g. blogging). We have to  be more than just information filters. Our experiences inform us and our environment gives us feedback. Making sense of the present prepares us for the future.

Sharing information about what we have learned by narrating our work (e.g. activity streams) and making it transparent (e.g. Intranets & Web) can create serendipitous network effects through social learning. As Hugh Macleod says, “The network is more powerful than the node”.

Becoming personal knowledge managers

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Nick Milton highlights an overview of knowledge management (KM) from Susan Camarena, CKO at the Federal Transit Authority, which includes:

How do we implement KM?

We already are doing it!

Everyone has their own KM program! Like:

  • Saving numbers of the “right” person to call on an old, wrinkled and well used piece of paper.
  • Reusing a memo that was approved as your template for the next memo to ensure it gets through.”
  • Getting a movie recommendation – you trust their opinion and ensure you don’t waste your time!

However, an ad-hoc approach is not efficient

You don’t learn from what I (and others) know!!!

This is the root of personal knowledge management (PKM). With digital information overload, an ad hoc method is definitely not efficient but neither is a standardized method for everyone in the organization. I’ve described my own framework as well as those of others. Setting filters is a good first step, as Five Forms of Filtering by Tim Kastelle explains.

Some of us are naive in our filtering, just going with what we think is best. Others rely on experts but that is more and more inadequate in our increasingly complex world of expertise. We need to develop networks of expertise and regularly check them for diversity and signal vs noise. Relying on a single set of algorithms can be dangerous so we need to establish heuristics that foster more critical thinking. The way we become better knowledge managers ourselves is through practice because information is not enough, we need to learn from experience. PKM is a process to capture  some of those experiences and learn through more structured sense-making and sharing.

The only knowledge that can be managed is our own.

Resetting learning and work

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A large portion of the workforce face significant barriers to being autonomous learners on the job. From early on we are told to look to authority and direction in learning and work. The idea that there is a right answer, or an expert with the right answer, begins in our schools. John Taylor Gatto describes this in the seven-lesson schoolteacher.

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all the important choices; only I, the teacher, can determine what you must study, or rather, only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I then enforce. If I’m told that evolution is a fact instead of a theory, I transmit that as ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.

Good employees wait for their supervisor to tell them what to do. In much of the industrial/service/information workplace you’re not paid to think, but to do the bidding of someone else. I know this is changing in many places, but a job is still a JOB.

Today, more of our learning is on the job so that formal training is an increasingly smaller percentage of what we need to get things done. Our informal learning needs will continue to grow, as Robert Kelley showed over a 20-year CMU study of knowledge workers. He asked:

“What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?”

1986 ~ 75%.
1997 ~ 20%
2006 ~ 10%

Workers need to take control of their learning, just at a time when the great majority (especially baby boomers) have been educated by the system that Gatto describes above and have endured countless hours of training measured by hours in a classroom. The crows have been culled from many flocks of turkeys.

Here’s a quote from Peter Drucker’s 2005 article Managing Oneself, in HBR (Slideshare Synopsis of Managing Oneself):

The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem self-evident to the point of appearing naïve. But managing oneself requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker. In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowledge worker think and behave like a chief executive officer. Further, the shift from manual workers who do as they are told to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves profoundly challenges social structure. Every existing society, even the most individualistic one, takes two things for granted, if only subconsciously: that organizations outlive workers, and that most people stay put.

Tom Peters called this change in mindset, Brand You and predicted over a decade ago that “90+ percent of White Collar Jobs will be totally reinvented/reconceived in the next decade”. Has yours? I don’t think we’re there yet.

For years, I put forth practical methods, like Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and Skills 2.0 as one part of the equation. The other part is changing organizational structures.

Dan Pink says we’re moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Like artists, we need to see and learn for ourselves. The great challenge for knowledge workers is to become knowledge managers – managers of their own knowledge. It’s accepting life in perpetual Beta.

However, we don’t have to do this alone. We can become independent while embracing our interdependence. We just need to get over our dependence on others who “provide a job” or “give us an education”. It’s not theirs to give. It’s ours to co-create.

I’ve learned a lot working for myself these past eight years. I’ve had to figure many things out on my own. Freelancing started the day after I was laid-off. PKM was my way of dealing with the fact of no professional development budget. But I learned with the help of others, most recently my colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance.  

Taking control of our learning and our work isn’t really a revolution. It’s more like a reset to the proper default position for the conceptual age.

PKM Updated

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Here are four main processes that can be used in developing critical thinking skills using web tools (click image to enlarge).

Using a Seek-Sense-Share framework (à la personal knowledge management), pick one or more web platforms on which to practise critical thinking.

PKM Critical Thinking Process Web Tools & Strategies
1) SEEK Observe & Study Use an aggregator (feed reader) to keep track of online conversations Follow interesting people on Twitter  

Use Social Bookmarks (set them free)

Find a Twitter App to suit your needs

Create online (reusable) mind maps,  graphics and text files of your thoughts

With more information in online databases, use Search, instead of file folders.

Set up automated searches

Review your bookmarks, Twitter favourites, etc
2) SENSE Challenge & Evaluate  

Form Tentative Opinions

 Tweet your thoughts, not just those of others  

Write a reasoned response to an article/post that inspires/provokes you

Write an original Blog post

Present your images/mindmaps with explanations

Write book/video reviews

Aggregate your learning from various sources and post a regular “what I learned” article – text, podcast, video, image
3) SHARE Participate Connect via Twitter 

Share social bookmarks through groups & networks

Join Social Networks

Join in Tweet Chats

Comment on or about other blogs

Continue and extend conversations from news sources, other tweets or blog posts

In my opinion, the core of PKM is 2) sensing, though 1) active observation is necessary to feed sense-making processes and 3) sharing with others creates better feedback loops. The diversity of both what one seeks and who one shares with have a significant impact on the quality of sense-making processes.

Update:

At the suggestion of a reader of Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership blog, here are some personal knowledge management (PKM) references:

Networked Learning: Working Smarter – longer article as an overview of PKM.

All posts on this site tagged PKM.

Latest list of PKM – Networked Learning Resources (2011)

 

iSchool Networked Learning PKM Resources

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This is a follow-up from the Networked Learning (PKM) workshop I conducted for the iSchool Institute yesterday. Here are some of the resources I suggested prior to the course:

Network Learning: Working Smarter, an article I wrote for the Special Libraries Association last year.

Sense-making (shows types of sense-making activities)

Talking about PKM (from the professional KM community)

PKM in a Nutshell (includes many links for further exploration)

Critical thinking in the organization (looking at how PKM fits into the workplace)

PKM categorized posts on this blog & my social bookmarks tagged PKM.

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All the slides are now posted on my Slideshare account and can be downloaded. It was interesting that few people had heard about The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) when I mentioned that Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy (#7).

I opened with a recent short video by Teemu Arina entitled Global, Local, Personal (2011)

We discussed Twitter for professional development and I suggested two weekly chats that might be of interest: #lrnchat & #KMers

Jane Hart hosts two communities, Social Learning (on Yammer) as well as Share and Learn (using the open source WPMU platform). More information and how to join these communities at C4LPT.

In the Share & Learn community, Jane is also hosting a thirty days to use social media to work and learn smarter program starting this Monday, 30 May. Join now.

I also showed a TED Talk by Eli Pariser called Beware of Online Filter Bubbles. This was a great introduction to information/source filters and I based part of the discussion on Tim Kastelle’s excellent post on Five Forms of Filtering.

I talked about my blog as home base for PKM and showed several other PKM processes.

One of the participants even set up a Yammer community on the spot and created a Twitter account. The Twitterers in the crowd included: @brentmack – @marcopolis – @elearningguy – @ruralibrarian

Discussions on what tools people use continued through our lunch and breaks. Evernote, a cross-platform tool to “remember everything” is quite popular.

As Marco Campana commented “If any of these tools don’t make your life easier, don’t use them.” – @hjarche Yup. #netlearn

If I’ve missed something or anybody has more questions or needs help, please contact me here, on Twitter, via email, Skype or send the Pony Express to Sackville (New Brunswick, not Nova Scotia).