Knowledge management 1: make it personal

Posted by Stephen Bynghall PM | on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 17:15 2504 2 comments

In the first of three articles Stephen Bynghall sets out his view of personal knowledge management (PKM) and how to make it work for you.

What is PKM?
There is no generally accepted definition of what personal knowledge management (PKM) actually is. Even if there was it would still mean different things to different people, depending on their own priorities and activities.

Some of the areas PKM touches upon are:

Personal effectiveness and getting organised
Dealing with information overload
Using technology and the web
Learning and development (including CPD)
Personal networking and managing relationships
Making sense of an increasingly complex and fast-moving world

An attempt at a definition
Here are two succinct descriptions which are useful in describing both the concept and the type of actions involved in PKM.

On his website, knowledge management David Gurteen described personal knowledge management as “taking responsibility for what you know, who you know – and what they know.”

Wikipedia, citing academic Janis Grundspenkis, defines PKM as a “collection of processes that an individual carries out to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve, and share knowledge in his/her daily activities.”

Examples of PKM
Some examples of PKM activity might be:

Organising a series of links and RSS feeds on iGoogle for current awareness
Working out a system on how to prioritise which emails to respond to
Having regular meetings with different colleagues to keep on top of different subject areas
Keeping in touch with your contacts in a more organised fashion

Thinking about PKM
When you’re thinking about Personal Knowledge Management and the type of systems, techniques and tools which could work for you, there are some things worth bearing in mind. These are:

PKM is personal to you
A PKM “system” is never going to be perfect
Flexibility is important
It’s not just about technology
Managing relationships is the most important aspect

Continued...

Nice article about a very important topic !

Atle Iversen | Fri, 06/08/2010 - 15:28 | Permalink

Nice article !

PKM is a very important topic, and more people are starting to be aware of this.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is focused on personal productivity improvement for knowledge workers in their working environments. A core focus of PKM is 'personal inquiry', a quest to find, connect, learn, and explore.

I've written a couple of articles on this topic myself (shameless plug):

- http://www.ppcsoft.com/blog/km-3.asp ("This time it's personal")

- http://www.ppcsoft.com/blog/pkm-filtering-info-overload.asp

Looking forward to the rest of this series.

kNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - A BRIEF INTODUCTION

grimsdales | Fri, 10/09/2010 - 07:31 | Permalink

1. Introduction

What of the skills, knowledge and experience of the employee and manager, how is it defined in the workplace, where does it come from, how is it channelled and what is the resulting pay-off? Knowledge management can sound a bit like an oxymoron, so how about “knowledge sharing,” “knowledge wealth” or “knowledge know-how”, anyone of these would do.

We now have to capture this data in our research and turn it into information? A particular favourite of mine are: Kaplan and Norton who in the nineties, produced the “Balanced Scorecard” (BS) that measured performance against strategic alignment. This though, did have some drawbacks, in that mountains of data were needed resulting in a possible production-meltdown and also, different strategies have to be developed for each organisation; albeit that some measures are applicable to other organisations.

In the accountancy sector, data is collected from prime books of entry. But to an investor, this would mean very little and totally irrelevant in its existing format. Raw data has to be converted into some meaningful information that can be understood. By this I mean a simple exercise using the following process:

1. Scan data for intelligibility

2. Check for any inaccuracies and make any amendments

3. Amass data and put into groups or nominal heading categories

4. Analyse the headings to see if there were any questions needing further verification

5. Translate the data for conversion into relevant information, known as final accounts

6. Agree the contents with the customer and decide if there is anything further to do.

7. Process and submit to public body

The relevant information into producing a set of accounts is under-way and at the same time, further knowledge from the client in the form of approval has been achieved. The customer has a wealth of information-feedback that can be harvested in an organisation and it’s from this that we improve our understanding and communication. For instance, If asked to produce a business plan on behalf a client, they would impart their knowledge of their organisation including facts and figures as long as your arm before being converted into information. A systematic format is then followed and through experience and knowledge, a timetable for completion can be expounded. Other practices would be outsourcing knowledge if the organisation has not the resources to comply; this would be giving the customer best advice.

And so, knowledge is all around us, but are we using it effectively, by that I mean succeeding, capturing and sharing this wealth. Or, is it being abused? The recent case of: Joyti De-Laurey of Goldman Sachs; used her knowledge to her own pecuniary advantage by withdrawing large sums of money from her bosses’ bank account. So trusted was she that police discovered that £3.3 million was missing from the account engineered over a period of several years. Is too much knowledge good or bad for an organisation? This and other issues in KM principles will decide its leverage in businesses.

We need to understand the business first so as to deliver the results:

· The organisation’s goals, aspirations, competitiveness and strategies.

· Culture: change it or live with it

· People: employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, public authorities

· Information technology (IT): internet, database management

· Financial resources: capital equipment, cash flow, budgets, stock control, production capacity

· The market: who we’re in the business with and its environment.

· The Leaderships that drives KM

Dr A D LUNN