I’m refocusing my study and practice around Personal Knowledge Management (and taking Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge mastery in 40 days course).
A few short points on the “why and what” of PKM – this is a placeholder post that I will expand with more links over time.
Why is Personal Knowledge Management important?
In very simple terms, we all need to earn a living, and in the modern workplace some of the most important facets contributing to that are:
- what we know
- who we know
- how well we acquire, internalise and apply new knowledge
Beyond that, there is the change in the nature of work – more and more work is being automated, and not just at the level of manual labour or transaction processing. The jobs that are left will be those where work cannot be standardised, and this sort of work relies heavily on tacit knowledge.
Harold Jarche has done the homework, here’s his post on “Why mastering personal knowledge is critical to success”
What is Personal Knowledge Management?
In 2009, Jo Smedley, Newport Business School published “Modelling Personal Knowledge Management” which links PKM to experiential learning and communities of practice.
Harold Jarche offers the Seek-Sense-Share framework as a way of framing and embedding practice. He draws the distinction between collaboration (working together on a shared goal) and co-operation (sharing information and knowledge), and notes that PKM bridges the gap between work teams, communities of practice and social networks.
Seeking is about choosing the right sources, and using the right tools to select high quality information. One of the best ways of doing this is to use human filters – people whose views you trust and who share knowledge.
Sensing is about internalisation and action
Sharing is the giving back, the act that establishes you as a valuable member of the network in your own right.
