Knowledge processes powered by questions
Lilia Efimova has some more interesting thinking on how knowledge management works. Mathemagenic: Knowledge flows are powered by questions
One of the goals of knowledge management is to improve knowledge flows and knowledge reuse in an organisation. While there is much discussion on knowledge sharing, motivation and culture, the demand side of knowledge exchanges seems to get too less attention.
Right on! We don't know what we know until we need to know it (to paraphrase Snowden). We need to understand how our people work with knowledge in all its guises and processes. Learning from others and learning by example are some of the more powerful techniques by people learn. We can't expect this to change if we create "knowledge repositories" without building the related structures around people.
I have a client who wants to change the 'asking over the wall' mode (the coffee pot conversations) to an online database. To Lilia's point, it would make more sense to think about how and why these questions come up in the first place. Can we make the questioning easier and more beneficial to the organization as a whole?
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IMHO, creating a structured app around an emergent activity like questions and search will not work. It's the same old problem of nailing jelly to the wall.
How can tech SUPPORT an emergent process/practice, instead of capture/cement the process/practice?
Valdis is right. We can't create software to encode emergent activity. But there needs to be some ways to enable the discussions and to spread what has been learned to the other members of the organization. Typical software focus talks about members creating content, but this doesn't make sense in every environment. What about encouraging the questions and getting people to discuss the resulting "answers."
I discovered Anti-Knowledge by Bruce LaDuke recently. What struck me was the central role he gives to the power of the question in his framing of how human knowledge develops. Read More
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Questions sure are an important ingredient of knowledge making. I assume you are familiar with AskMe - a tool that creates a workflow around questions, routing to 'experts' based on their profiles.
http://organik.kmworld.com/organik/orbital/content/latest_questions.jsp
Here are links to working with questions in KM I've collected:
http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?PowerofQuestions