Someone asked a question that is probably very key to the existence of Knowledge Management. “How do we convert individual learning into organizational learning?”. It could surely have been the root cause why KM was conceived and is now being pursued seriously within organizations. KM is not only about individual learning and competency development but also about converting it into something that the entire organization understands and can act upon. It exists on the premise that each of us learn different things and have our own unique strengths. When many of us come together to accomplish a common goal, we can only do things a lot more effectively and efficiently due to the pooling of knowledge, skills and expertise [provided we genuinely want to contribute and avoid herd mentality and are open to learning from others]. But how easy is it to convert individual learning into organizational learning? It, admittedly, is a very complicated affair. And whatever can be achieved can anyway be done so only after years of effort and passion.
A very quick response to that question would be:
- Mentoring and coaching
- Shadowing (You let the knowledge-seeker shadow the 'expert' and watch and observe what he/she does rather than just restrict it to focused conversations and training sessions)
- Communities focused on collective thinking and learning
- Tools and utilities that you find on the Internet these days - allowing you to share your bookmarks, videos, articles, notes, ideas, book-reading habits, friends and so on. [Which basically means you begin to understand how individuals learn, from where they get their material, who the connect with and learn from, how they think etc]
Takes me back to my previous post on Calvin and Hobbes wherein Calvin wants to learn to be a Tiger and Hobbes tells him it is instinct and cannot be taught. Calvin’s retort is to look up the topic of Tigers in the Encyclopedia. The result of that exercise is anybody’s guess. So, there’s clearly a limit to what one can do to convert individual learning into organizational learning….
Interesting post! But a harsh conclusion! Right from the time I have been engaged in building repositories for knowledge sharing, I've heard people talk about the possibility of repository-users compromising on originality. I think there has always been a tug-of-war between reuse and innovation.
Organizations end up pushing people to deliver faster while doing better and most people choose to make it faster at the cost of quality just to temporarily silence the managers breathing down their neck. At the end of the day, I think a lot depends on the individual's style of working. Some people are subjected to the NIH syndrome and will not reuse anything whatsoever even if it is thrust down their throats while there are others who will blindly reuse anything and everything that is even remotely related to their work.
KM's job is to provide the repository, ensure that good content gets into it and also usher in a culture that involves introspection before the decision on whether the situation calls for reuse or originality or a mix of the two. In most cases, I'd imagine it ought to be a combination!
Shutting down corporate document management systems is akin to shutting down libraries, even otherwise. It seriously can give us food for thought. Different from giving us the thoughts themselves. And many a time, I discover a document and that is how I come to even know that there is such a person (the author) whom I can contact for further conversations! Consider another case - Innovation is often described as a new way of connecting 'old' information. When I discover many documents written to satisfy the same requirement (by many people) I may end up seeing them as different dots that need to be connected....I could possibly connect them in a novel way - perhaps combine [mash-up] all the material to create something quite new.
But there definitely are situations that call for abandoning the past and starting with a clean slate. The individual/team working under such a circumstance should realize it and know when not to recook knowledge. Human intelligence and decision making must intervene and take over the rules and old habits.