PKMastery

Personal knowledge mastery

Personal Knowledge Management 2

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Note: If you are looking for the summary page on personal knowledge management/mastery (PKM) it is now here: jarche.com/pkm/

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Jay has recently posted on Learning Circuits that blogs can be used as knowledge management (KM) tools. Using these tools brings some new challenges, as Lilia has noted “In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.” I won’t deny the cultural change issues in using blogs for knowledge management but I will show how I, as an independent worker outside an organisational hierarchy, use blogs and other tools for personal knowledge management. [This is an update & re-write of a previous post from last year.]

I write on my blog for several reasons. First of all, it’s the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my life. By forcing myself to write a summary or an observation, I have to reflect on my own learning. Also, by making my thoughts public I know that they will be scrutinized – now and in the future. There’s nothing like public visibility to make you check your logic. I also view my blog as my main communication medium, letting me converse with potential clients or provide them with a venue to get to know me without any feelings of obligation. Basically, it’s all out there for the world to see.

But how do I get from “Gee isn’t that interesting?” to a written blog post?

Many of my observations come from the blogs that I visit regularly. These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account which is made up of +/- 100 feeds. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. The feeds I select are a reflection of the work that I’m doing. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipitous learning. The ability to scan, preview, read and save posts makes this a simple and easy process – better than visiting each site.

There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but I feel are not worth the effort of writing a blog post. For these sites I use Furl, a social bookmarking service. Furl not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. My Furl archive is public so that I can share these pages.

Items and thoughts that are not ignored or stored in Furl usually get saved into a temporary bookmark folder in my browser. Over time I review these and may find a few others that relate to each other. When I have the time and inclination, usually after exercise, I’ll draft a post, review it and post it.

But what use is my blog?

Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve two years of thoughts and comments and easily review these. This is quite practical for presentations, papers, proposals and responding to questions. If I didn’t write a blog, I would have a lot more bookmarks, without annotations of my reasoning and reflection at the time. After two years, my blog is becoming a valuable productivity tool, and the comments and links from others only add more value.

My blog is also a great way to meet people interested in similar subjects, and has helped to create an evolving community of practice. As I’ve mentioned before, this blog is like a very detailed business card, and those who disagree with my points of view may decide not to engage my professional services. This would be a good thing; from both perspectives.

As an independent consultant, a blog is probably the simplest, cheapest and most effective knowledge management tool there is today. Some other benefits are listed here.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

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Both Lilia Efimova and Denham Grey talk extensively about personal knowledge management (PKM). They have studied this field much more than I have, and if you’re looking for in-depth analysis then please look at their sites.
PKM
This post is more of a how-to for anyone new to blogs, aggregators and social bookmarking. I have mentioned how blogging is useful for me as a free-agent, consultant, knowledge worker. etc. Above is a overview of how this site is constructed to help me in managing my own knowledge flows [this is a screen shot of my previous Drupal installation and doesn’t reflect the current WordPress configuration]. It may also provide an argument on why you should have your own blog for work. First of all, Harold’s blog is the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my work or on the web. A lot of these observations come from the web sites that I visit regularly.

These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account, which is publicly available, so anyone can see the sites that I read. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field, like healthcare, I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipidous learning. My account usually runs at about 100 feeds, and the ability to preview and save posts makes this simple and easy – much easier than visiting each site.

There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but are not worth the effort of writing a blog post (these take some time and effort). For these sites I use Furl because it not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. For example, I have been using Furl to keep a list of items related to Public Education as well as Small Businesses that have blogs. My Furl archive is also public.

Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve thoughts and comments and easily review them. Others can do the same. This is quite practical for presentations and papers.

Finally, I have links to my Associates. These show who I’m working with and can be helpful in redirecting people. For instance, the Atlantic Wildlife Institute’s URL is an amalgamation of the English and French acronyms (AWI + IAF = AWIAF). It’s not that obvious, so I tell people to go to my website and follow the link – much easier. Sometimes I’m in a conversation and someone asks for more details on a subject. In many cases I’m able to point that person to my website with either, “search for this term” or “follow this link on the navigation menu”. I will even access my website from a client’s office and use some article to reinforce or explain a point – quite useful.

Personal Knowledge Management

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From Lilia Efimova, is this quote [on PKM] worth keeping for your files:

To a great extent PKM [personal knowledge management] is about shifting responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from a company to individuals and this is the greatest challenge for both sides. Companies should recognise that their employees are not “human resources”, but investors who bring their expertise into a company. As any investors they want to participate in decision-making and can easily withdraw if their “return on investment” is not compelling. Creativity, learning or desire to help others cannot be controlled, so knowledge workers need to be intrinsically motivated to deliver quality results. In this case “command and control” management methods are not likely to work.

Taking responsibility for own work and learning is a challenge for knowledge workers as well. Taking these responsibilities requires attitude shift and initiative, as well as developing personal KM knowledge and skills. In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.

My conclusion for a while has been that knowledge cannot be managed, and neither can knowledge workers. It will take a new social contract between workers and organisations in order to create an optimally functioning enterprise. Adding management and technology won’t help either. This is the crux of everything in the new ‘right-sized, lean, innovative, creative’ economy — getting the right balance between the organisational structure and the knowledge workers.