Volume 1 Number 6 May 24, 1999+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ KnowBits Administrivia The knowldgWORKS News newsletter is
now hosted by a bonified listserver!! As we grew fairly rapidly, it had become obvious to me that my days of hosting the newsletter list manually were rapidly coming to a close. The newsletter is hosted by Marty Crouch at http://www.webvalence.com. I happened to find Marty and Webvalence in
another newsletter I subscribe to, and in my brief interaction with him, he has been most helpful. Subscribing and un-subscribing to the newsletter are as follows: To subscribe send an e-mail to: knowldgWORKSNews-on@lists.webvalence.com.
To unsubscribe send an e-mail to: knowldgWORKSNews-off@lists.webvalence.com.You may type an x in the subject or body if your e-mail program requires +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Preliminary Announcement Knowledge Work TeleClass
Personal Knowledge Effectiveness In September and October I will be hosting two teleclasses on the subject of Personal Knowledge Effectiveness. A more detailed description of the teleclass can be found on the ACCSYS Corporation web site. Registration will begin in August, and be limited to 15
attendees. More about this as we get closer to registration time.+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Another list I subscribe to is the "learning-org" list. I believe the learning organization movement
and knowledge work are tightly intertwined. Here is an interesting posting I found that I thought would be valuable to our community. My thanks to Roy Greenhalgh and Naomi Stanford for sharing this. Subject: Creating a Knowledge Sharing culture LO21626Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:27:36 +0100 From: Roy Greenhalgh <rgreenh@ibm.net> Reply-To: learning-org@world.std.com
Organization: Roy Greenhalgh To: learning-org@world.std.com Hello I attended an interesting meeting in London, UK yesterday organised by a research company called CREATE (
http://www.create-research.co.uk
). The meeting was to explore 3 aspects of Knowledge Sharing and KnowledgeCreation, namely:- 1. what are the Technical Platform issues? 2. issues in creating a Knowledge Sharing culture
3. what are the Knowledge Sharing Competencies? We reviewed each topic from the viewpoint of 4 questions:- - what works? - why does it work? - how does it work? - what doesn't work?
I worked in the "Culture Club". A table was presented to us that I thought LO'ers may find useful. (I recommend that you reset your browser's font to display fixed font, e.g. courier 10 so that the virtual
columns are viewed as columns) WHAT WORKS? Rewarding and recognising, Anderson consulting
Valuing intellectual assets, Skandia Creating physical conditions, British Airways
(their new London HQ)
WHY DOES IT WORK? Built into structures and
processes, BP Amoco Integral to business
measurement, Unipart (***)
Conscious continual learning, Boeing HOW DOES IT WORK?
Proving what's in it for me, Compaq Ongoing reflection and
improvement, Xerox Management endorsement
and enthusiasm, Buckman Labs WHAT DOESN'T WORK?Badging any software with "Knowledge" label, Hype, "Doing" KM as an initiative or project. The pleasantly surprising point of the meeting was that it
wasn'tpopulated solely by the well-heeled finance houses and insurancecompanies. Colleges, universities, training organisations, SME's andmanufacturing companies had representatives in the 90 or so folk in themeeting.
KM is widening its appeal! Thanks to Naomi Stanford of BA for the table .. and an excellent workshop. (***) Unipart is an offshoot of what was British Leyland cars (now BMW-Rover), a UK motor manufacturer. It used to be
BL's parts division. Is now a totally separate company. -- Roy Greenhalgh rgreenh@ibm.net +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+This Week's Column
Last week's newsletter indicated that the subject of this week's newsletter is "Neats vs. Scruffys." I know that you were waiting expectantly for this newsletter but you will have to wait another week for that topic. Denham
Grey, the host of the Knowledge for Non-Profits discussion group, responded to the list of knowledge work activities I wrote about. I thought this would be a great follow-on to last week's newsletter. This also fits with my goal to
promote different voices in the newsletter. My thanks for Denham for this submission. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Denham's Brief Bio My interest in KM started with modeling forestry decisions in
South Africa on how to interpret soil profiles and evaluate their potential for tree growth in the mid '80s. Seems I have been talking KM for some considerable time, as I gave a conference address on the subject in 1988 and
published my first KM article in 1989. My current interests are distance learning, psychographics, collaborative filters, ontologies, text mining and knowledge ecology. My Firm GreyMatter Inc. is a small KM consultancy
located in Indianapolis but KM has not reached these parts yet. My work has taken me throughout the USA and Canada where I have helped firms capture and structure knowledge for helpdesk applications. I'm an associate with
Smith Weaver Smith, a firm of independent consultants with an interest in change management. Knowledge Management Practices I would like to come at core KM activities from a slightly different angle, i.e., practices, which I
understand to be more than an activity, as a practice includes the concept of collegiality, joint venture and social approval. It attempts to answer the question what does or should a knowledge manager do? My list of core knowledge
practices then looks as follows: 1) Facilitate access & acquisition: supports exposure to ideas and creates awareness, this goes beyond pull and push to active involvement of people in determining and evaluating their
current information needs. It would include some proactive pushing of ideas, contacts and papers not requested to increase awareness, encourage communal search and active mining. In partnership with knowledge structuring there is a
responsibility to see the people & information are easy to find and there is provision for adequate feedback to empower learning. 2) Knowledge generation: here we look to dialog, annealing, inquiry, reflection, and synthesis.
It is taking the information, making links, looking for patterns and using concept graphs to identify and close gaps. This is a social constructive process, best conducted in a community of practice where there is trust and
reciprocity. In my books knowledge creation is more about making links, altering mindsets, changing beliefs and sharing useful patterns than data mining. 3) Mapping: this is close to what Randy called identify
knowledge. Our approach places the focus on knowledge-related opportunities, boundary objects and leverage of knowledge processes (knowledge levels). Let me explain; a boundary object is a form or artifact that is passed from group
to group. It requires some negotiation of meaning and serves to connect different departments, e.g. a purchase requisition or a customer order. Knowledge levels are where we take a step back and ask what knowledge do we have about
knowledge? How can we judge, compare, validate and improve our knowledge activity. The KMCI has an entire project devoted to this aspect of structuring knowledge see their Metaprise web pages: http://www.km.org/Metapriseproject.htm 4) Knowledge
structuring: developing terminology, shared meaning, ontologies, abstraction and editing to make it less context specific and protect privacy. We recognize the importance of translating even between mental models e.g. engineers
& artists. Concept mapping and navigation aids, stories, templates and automatic clustering creep in here as well. Ontologies seek to create and share terminology and meaning within a group or organization. This may sound
rather pedantic and trivial, but some of the largest KM breakthroughs come from having effective communication and a clear common idea & understanding of the complex concepts we deal with. 5) Knowledge sharing: this goes
beyond passive content delivery to support for continuous learning, dialog, to surface assumptions, systems thinking to help elicit mental models, backboards to co-ordinate and collect and a pattern language to promote effective
communication. Sharing knowledge means you have a duty to assist others to appreciate the meaning, to assimilate the concepts and to understand how these can be applied. There is an implied reciprocity and deeper level of
engagement here than just publishing your words. 6) Empowering learning: this is different from knowledge generation although closely related. We look at learning histories, best practices, left hand columns, personal
journals, project reviews and distance learning here, recognize the value of deep dialog and quality questions. Here is a paper I highly recommend that sets the landscape for learning: http://www.aahe.org/pubs/TM-essay.htm Here are my
take-aways from this article- Prior beliefs are impervious to 'teaching as telling' - The meaning and sense we make is highly colored by prior experiences and emotional dispositions
- Learning is a whole person activity centered around inquiry - Intelligence is not fixed at birth - Stress & threats reduce learning - Apprenticeship is a cohort activity & engagement - We need to change from
teacher-dependent to continuous learning communities FAST - The key to powerful learning requires building connections between cognition & the workplace (situated learning) - Deep learning is portfolio building,
ownership, practice, seeking meaning, reflection and social negotiation. - Ask powerful questions and practice empathetic listening. Not a great difference from what Randy has given, but a shift of emphasis to community,
negotiation, engagement and construction as the way forward. What do you think? +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ If you are interested in learning more about knowledge work, subscribe to this
newsletter by sending email to: knowldgWORKSNews-on@lists.webvalence.com.To unsubscribe send an e-mail to: knowldgWORKSNews-off@lists.webvalence.com
.You may type an x in the subject or body if your e-mail program requires Next week's issue: "Neats vs. Scruffys" (as promised) Mail me directly at: infoac@accsys-corp.com with your questions and issues.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Published by Dr. Randy M. Kaplan, and ACCSYS Corporation. This newsletter is the property of ACCSYS Corporation. No part may be reproduced in any form without
permission from ACCSYS Corporation. Copyright © 1999 ACCSYS Corporation. All rights reserved. All contributed work remains the property of the authors.u |
