Posted by Randy Jordan on November 03, 1999 at 23:25:40:

In Reply to: KM dressed as Learning posted by Dilip Bhatt on November 01, 1999 at 12:02:25:

It seems to me that people have been managing knowledge for centuries. We used to call it learning. It seems appropriate to call it that again, to me. The issue that we can then address directly is "how do we generate enthusiasm so workers will use the technology and social/cultural networks to contribute information or knowledge?"

In applied learning psychology, when we want learning (from training) to permeate the organization, we develop a diffusion stratgey. This is a method for getting affected workers to buy into the change - or the need for change, that the learning addresses. The key element is the internal motivation factor of the workers.

My experience is that technology workers are internally motivated by working in a technically logical environment. It almost doesn't matter what the task is, they like the feeling of being logical in a logical universe. Consequently, they have trouble relating to the idea that other people have a negative emotional reaction to technology and the logic within it. So, they resist creating a strategy for making non-technical people want to use the technology.

You can make someone use a computer but if they don't like using it the results will be..oh, disappointing. There is an engineering-based process - instructional systems design, that addresses the issue of internal motivation for learning. I used it to redesign training for military installation master planners and they are a tough audience.

One clue that emotion - I mean interest, passion or commitment, is gaining credibility in the KM arena can be seen when people talk about corporate instinct. I believe human instinct is somehow wired into the emotional part of the brain. If you have ever had a "gut feeling" about something, that is the emotional part of the brain "talking". It is telling you it has compared the facts, as you see them, to a memory with similar facts and has tapped into the emotion associated with that memory.

Instinct is faster than logic. It skips the details and produces a summary in the language of emotion that is a "gut feeling". The problem with emotional thinking is the skipping of the details. Or is it? Some people are able to act on gut feelings and succeed often enough that they appear to be wizards or something.

Is corporate instinct a parallel concept? Some fast moving, highly skilled emotional thinker wants a bigger collection of details processed into corporate memory. Then he can recognize business patterns, tap into the corresponding emotion in his own mind and make a better informed, instinctive decision - faster.

Ok, I knew the risk when I started writing this. These ideas are a recent outcome of thinking about the unseen "linchpin" that keeps KM from succeeding in situations that logic dictates should be "easier". So, skin me alive but try to have as much fun doing it as I had leaping to the above conclusions.

Thanks
RJ

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Follow Ups:

• Re: KM dressed as Learning Ron de Weijze 19:12:42 11/12/99 (0)
• Re: KM dressed as Learning Dilip Bhatt 04:36:27 11/11/99 (3)
  • Re: KM dressed as Learning Reilly Atkinson 14:14:26 11/11/99 (2)
    • Re: KM dressed as Learning Dilip Bhatt 11:35:32 11/15/99 (0)
    • Core competencies & rigidities Denham 14:46:06 11/11/99 (0)
• Re: KM dressed as Learning Reilly Atkinson 01:51:40 11/05/99 (1)
  • Re: KM dressed as Learning Randy Jordan 10:15:46 11/05/99 (0)

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