Personal Knowledge Management

Harold Jarche highlights the potential acceleration of learning with emerging social media tools. Network learning provides an unprecedented platform for personal knowledge management (PKM) through a continuous process of seeking, sensing and sharing.

Certainly for knowledge workers (and really we're all knowledge workers to some extent regardless of occupation), the skills of PKM are a critical success factor. We hear every day about the knowledge economy and the demise of organisations that fail to adapt to a rapidly changing business climate.

For instance, this week in Australia we saw the substantial downsizing of Fairfax Media and perhaps the beginning of the end for print media. Many commentators are reporting that Fairfax has responded too late to the digital era.

There can be ramifications for both organisations who neglect knowledge management, framed within the contemporary digital landscape, and for individuals within those organisations who don't adapt their skills to bring high value work practices.

Organisations should be facilitating a culture of PKM and promoting its value to its people as a significant strategy for capacity building, continuous improvement, innovation, renewal, reconstruction and engagement.

PKM feeds the intellectual capital of an organisation.

So what does PKM mean for the individual focused on professional growth and adaptability within today's dynamic business environment?

Seek / Sense /Share is magnified by Web 2.0

Seek out information, make sense of it & share your thinking to test it & provide context

Narrating your work helps you synthesise your thinking into a context that enables application

Finding & growing your online voice extends your reach & enhances your PKM

Narration is the essential ingredient for engaging & sharing, as a pathway to higher order learning

Connection with people across a network is the fabric that facilitates PKM

Networks should go beyond colleagues to also include looser external connections

Diversity has a multiplying effect on the value of networks & increases serendipitous opportunities

PKM is a lifelong journey – a lifestyle!