John Maxwell teaches that we should be more concerned with growth than we are with goals. This is because a goal focus leads to an end destination whereas a growth focus leads to a continuous journey of learning and development.
The basis for this then is to manage your learning through a process and to focus more on this process than the outcome.
To do this well there are many aspects to consider, but essentially you want to build a system that supports your style of learning and produces value.
With the right system in place, you increase your knowledge in the areas that you focus on. And as your knowledge increases, so does your growth potential.
The system becomes your Personal Knowledge Management system (PKM).
Personal Knowledge Management
I thought I understood the process of personal knowledge management fairly well already, but it was not until I started researching digital note-taking and reference systems that I realised how mistaken I was.
Knowledge Management is a large and complex subject, and it is beyond the scope of this article — and author! — to do it justice. But having spent some time now reading up on the basics and tapping into the wisdom of Knowledge Management professionals such as Stan Garfield, I feel much better prepared to create my own effective system.
And when I say my own system, I mean a regurgitation of some established practices and ideas of others, along with some minor synthesis of my own. But then, as I have also come to appreciate, this is exactly how one does increase knowledge.
Personal Knowledge Management is about capturing, developing and sharing knowledge according to Tom Spiglanin, and this makes sense to me.
Essentially it is about generating something of value from what you have learned from your source material.
This is similar to how an operational input/output process works. Raw materials (the inputs) are transformed into something of value (the outputs). A feedback loop is included to relay information on how valuable or otherwise the output was.
In the context of Knowlege Management, if you think of the raw materials as the information you have captured, such as books or articles you’ve read, or conversations you’ve had, you have your inputs.
(I will ignore the DIKW — data, information, knowledge, wisdom — discussion here thanks to Stan’s advice and simply say that when I talk about information, I mean data that has meaning and context relative to whatever you’re considering — thus is informative)
Next, to turn these inputs into something of value, you need to transform them. With Knowledge Management this transformation occurs when you begin to broaden your understanding of a topic by applying different ideas, models and concepts to form some of your own thoughts and conclusions. This transformation process develops your knowledge.
Finally — and this was a step I was personally missing — to complete the process you need to share that output. This output is the knowledge you have gained.
This is perhaps the most important step and where the value is generated.
By sharing the output — the knowledge you’ve gained — you engage with others and test your ideas. Hopefully, you add value.
And this is also why the feedback loop is so important.
Knowledge Management is both an iterative and continuous process. You don’t suddenly become knowledgeable by following this process once. Yes, you will hopefully become slightly more knowledgeable about something, but it’s not until you apply this ‘knowledge’ and test it against reality that you begin to grow.
This then is the iteration and the feedback loop. By sharing your ideas with others and testing them out your gain more feedback (data that becomes information) to further build on what you originally thought and to better refine your ideas. Thus you become more knowledgeable, which aids your personal growth.
What you learn and share becomes more valuable when it is added to by others.
As a process, it looks like this -
However, to stop there would be to miss some of the most important elements of Knowledge Management.
These elements are People, Process & Technology (Stan Garfield) and they are necessary to facilitate the transfer of knowledge (and value). By combining them with the basic model, we can create a basic framework for a system.
Turning the model into a system
Each of these elements is at least an article in their own right. But to provide a simple illustration of how these elements support each step of the PKM model, consider the following example and then ask yourself how this could work better for you.
People — a network of people provide the inputs, they help develop your ideas and are necessary to receive your output. You might develop key contacts for each area of interest you’re considering.
Process — processes help you capture and organise raw inputs such as data and information. Your processes may include techniques such as mind mapping or literature reviews to help you synthesise and develop ideas. Additionally, processes for generating presentations and articles help you share your outputs.
Technology — such as Evernote is used to capture data that becomes information once organised. You might use Google Docs to develop your ideas and then post them to your blog entry to share.
Thus, these elements support each step of the model and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and value. The model is, of course, a process in itself, but as processes are necessary to support each step of the model a distinction is made in terminology.
The model then becomes a system by the inclusion of the essential elements -
Making an effective system
There is far more to Knowledge Management than is covered here. This article is only scratching the surface and is intended to provide a basic understanding of some of the key concepts in Personal Knowledge Management.
Making an effective system requires generating value and transferring knowledge.
This takes trial and error. But, through the application of these basics, and additional reading, it’s possible to develop a system that suits your learning style and that supports your growth journey by fulfilling these requirements.
