Using Knowledge Sharing to Think About Knowledge Sharing
Last week I asked for your help, dear readers, in moving my thinking forward about a useful way to organize and share knowledge sharing (KS) methods. This came out of the call from a variety of corners for "knowledge sharing toolkits" and workshops. Everytime I try to do this, I have this annoying inclination to say it is all about context, and we have to think about methods in context, not as an abstract list of things we can pluck up and use. It is not just about the notes, but the music they create.
So I asked for your help and here is how you have influenced my thinking. Of course, what we get is more questions, but I think together, as we share our knowledge and reshape my thinking, the questions are getting to the root of things. Thank you Jay, Shawn, Danilo and Floris! This, along with my reading of David Weinbergers "Everything is Miscellaneous" is also informing a workshop I'll be facilitating here in Brussels tomorrow on KM and KS in Development. More on that in a separate post.
posted by Nancy White at 3:03 AM
2 Comments:
wow. . . thanks for the slide show, Nancy. Every once in awhile, I have the fleeting illusion that I am beginning to catch up with internet 2.0, that maybe I have a glimmer of the possiblities. . . but then I read your blog and I see that the race is far beyond me.
I think in its microscopic way, my stumbling into your slide show is a good example of using knowledge sharing to, er, think about KS, sure, but also to think in general.
I noticed in the Anecdote link that Jay includes capacity and skill building in his thinking about KS. I tend to feel fractured when I think about thinking here by myself inside my thoughts, like I used to think when I practiced law: I knew what thinking was when I was a lawyer. Or, at least, I thought I did. But now, it often seems to me that sitting here doing what I thought was thinking well, it is no longer thinking. I have an uneasy sense, often, that showing up to work with my fine mind is no longer enough, that I need all kinds of knowledge/data that didn't exist before.
Here is how I solve problems.
I start to think about the problem, the project, call it what you like. Problem sounds mildly pejorative. Then I do what I got trained to do in law school. . . I start to follow up my thinking with reading, gathering more input, learning more facts. Then as I learn more facts, read more law/analysis, my thinking shifts. . . again and again. Trusting my own judgement, mostly, I sift through all the stuff that keeps coming at me, I invest as much time as I think I can into a given project (back when I practiced law it was often very easy to know when to stop doing research and thinking because the client would tell me how much they were willing to spend and then when the meter stopped, they wanted to hear my end product of my thinking). . .
well, it must sound like I am babbling. . . .
I probably am babbling and it is just some goofy illusion inside me that has me thinking that I am thinking . . . .
BUT (please don't feel you have to post this ramble on your blog, dear, I'm writing just to you. . .but post if you wish, I am never afraid to look idiotic)
I am so old fashioned. I want to be able to live in a world less complex than the one you live in, Nancy. AND I want to live in the world you live in. I want to know how to bang out a slide show and share it around the world, drawing on the thinking and models of colleagues from around the world . . . goodness, what you did here in your blog, Nancy, IS using KS to think about KS
I want it all.
And I want to feel fluent in the world, like I used to. . .
It is all about context. Context is everything, I think.
Say, I'm coming to Seattle again in July. And maybe again in August. This seems to funny to me, that nobody ever hired me to do anything when I lived there but now I keep getting paid to return.
Where in your approach to KS does judgement, intuition, wisdom, factor in? Because I'm old fashioned enough that I still want to trust my judgement. I sometimes reach a point where within myself I know I know all I need to know to make choices and then to make those choices and then to move on. Now this is much more complex if you place me inside a human system and ask me to collaborate so that all my decisions and choices match up, somehow, with the other humans in the system. . . these links must be made and this, of course, is where KS comes in. . . what KS do I need to share to come to a choice and to make the choice and to have agreement on the choice and then to move on to the inevitable next moment when I am faced with more and more choices? where does it end? It doesn't end, of course, that's the point. So much much sharing is enough? And if we factor in the simple, complex fact that there is always something new. . . . well, modern life overwhelms me.
Nancy --
This is the space where my KM team (which focuses on knowledge transfer as a component of organizational learning) ... and we finally have reached our "tipping point". Our leverage has come from focusing on showing how the various sets of structures and supported behaviors (cultural attributes) accelerate strategic priorities within the organization. For example, If one of our priorities is to become the "work community of choice" in all of the communities we serve, then our langugage focuses on how communities of practice contribute to this strategy. Another example: How can structure approaches to knowledge transfer can accelerate a large scale system implementation through the sharing, documenting and applying of successes and lessons learned & through peer connections across this very large organization.
It is hard to get to the hard core ROI numbers (as was ONCE AGAIN) reiterated at the Online Communities Unconference in Mountain View, CA last week. Experience with the value of these structures within the organization has provided a foundation upon which we have been able to build. The strategic application of the structures and staff time to put them in place and support them has resonated and our program has exploded as a result.
I'm here to share more, if you find this at all helpful!
- Holly
Catholic Health Initiatives
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home