It may be a little passe, but the Johari window in its many re-incarnations, remains a useful reminder when looking at personal or organizational knowledge.
Knowledge assets
There are a number of variations depending on where you are coming from e.g. this next one that considers
Modes of discourse
or this more common 2 x 2 matrix that looks at:
Knowledge and certainty
Translation:
KK = what you know you know
KDK = what you know you don't know
DKK = what you don't know you (already) know
DKDK = what you don't know, you don't know
There sure is something elusive, futuristic and a little scary about contemplating what you don't know, you don't know. This is the provenience of environmental intelligence, awareness, discontinuous change, weak links and left field emergence. The window you need to pay most attention to if you are not to be caught napping - reflection of a very different kind.
This kind of analysis is always useful. The snag is that while many academic institutions are good at conceptualizing problems, they are often hopeless at coming up with solutions. Take the case of ESADE, a Spanish business school founded by the Jesuits. The institution preaches the KM creed but fails to practice it. While its academics wax lyrical about knowledge management, staff empowerment, and the New Economy, many of ESADE's administrative staff are severely challenged by even the most elementary office computing tasks. This was graphically illustrated when a visiting lecturer went down to the general office for some papers. He noted one of the admin. staff staring at a spreadsheet invoice and totting up numbers on a pocket calculator. It transpired that although the clerk had been on staff for some years, no one had deigned to show her how to use a spreadsheet (or, for that matter, what it was for). This is ironic, given that the school charges would-be yuppies hefty fees to learn the intricacies of Excel. With teaching institutions taking such a cavalier attitude to training their own staff, it is little wonder that many consider the current spate of academic writings on knowledge management as little more than hot air.
Posted by: Viktor | September 28, 2005 at 11:15 AM
Theoretical and Methodological Orientation of Continuous Education for knowledge management innovation.
An conceptual approach of the LRE/EGO-CreaNET on the fundamental issue of the FOR-CO-Preca-NET Project was presented and debated in occasion of an Interactive Course on the issue : “FUTURE e.LEARNING” A profile of such analysis was published on line in : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/dinamiche_cognitive.htm.
Aiming to realize the project outcomes in a good pertinence within the priorities of Leonardo call about the need to find some new forms to realize a permanent education for knowledge management innovation and looking to the particular and specific re-thinking of the networking economy needs, the LRE/EGOCREANET , in this intermediate report, would like to get a brief synthesis of some fundamental concepts regarding the condition to avoid the uncertainty and the fragility managerial work , giving also and some recommendations for improving NET-Learning Courses , summarized on the basis of the studies realized during the FORCOPRECANET –Leonardo Project.
The key argument of this intermediate report, shortly analyzed in the following basic considerations, is that most current interpretations of knowledge management are obsolete because they are relevant to the industrial world of business of the past industrial era and not adapted to the contemporary times of post industrial society base on the networking global economy. Hence the continuous training for improving a new perspective on knowledge management intelligence need to be focused on some fundamental considerations about the need on changing assumptions about business strategy and competitive business environment.
1) Strategic changes in business processes :rethinking the business model innovation.
The historical need of a global extension of the market generates a running effect on the industrial production system and as a direct consequence on a shift of the knowledge management paradigm of business organization. For that reason the evolution of the knowledge management paradigm in a NET- ECONOMY context is moving to develop cognitive and technological innovation building at the same time new intelligence and manage of risks in changing networking business functions.
The mayor reason of the shift of the knowledge management paradigm is an outcome of the transformation of business process from a localized market to a delocalized transnational business process characterizing the Net-working Economy has generally progressed over three phases:
1. co-operation among industry and centers of research, and Governmental Institutions, organized in various forms of corporate consortia, spin off , or digital-districts and so on.
2. :develop new strategy for increasing efficiency of co-operations based on the Rationalization of tele-work management procedures and continuous training of knowledge workers
3. .re-engineering: of collaborative business processes oriented to maximize the production value and quality of products along the co-opetative profit chain
All those phases depends upon deployment and an intensive utilization of information technologies so that as a direct consequence the principal need of innovation of knowledge management is based on a radical redesign of workflows and work processes organized as teams of “knowledge Workers”
Posted by: Paolo Manzelli | May 03, 2004 at 04:56 AM
Theoretical and Methodological Orientation of Continuous Education for knowledge management innovation.
An conceptual approach of the LRE/EGO-CreaNET on the fundamental issue of the FOR-CO-Preca-NET Project was presented and debated in occasion of an Interactive Course on the issue : “FUTURE e.LEARNING” A profile of such analysis was published on line in : http://www.edscuola.it/archivio/lre/dinamiche_cognitive.htm.
Aiming to realize the project outcomes in a good pertinence within the priorities of Leonardo call about the need to find some new forms to realize a permanent education for knowledge management innovation and looking to the particular and specific re-thinking of the networking economy needs, the LRE/EGOCREANET , in this intermediate report, would like to get a brief synthesis of some fundamental concepts regarding the condition to avoid the uncertainty and the fragility managerial work , giving also and some recommendations for improving NET-Learning Courses , summarized on the basis of the studies realized during the FORCOPRECANET –Leonardo Project.
The key argument of this intermediate report, shortly analyzed in the following basic considerations, is that most current interpretations of knowledge management are obsolete because they are relevant to the industrial world of business of the past industrial era and not adapted to the contemporary times of post industrial society base on the networking global economy. Hence the continuous training for improving a new perspective on knowledge management intelligence need to be focused on some fundamental considerations about the need on changing assumptions about business strategy and competitive business environment.
1) Strategic changes in business processes :rethinking the business model innovation.
The historical need of a global extension of the market generates a running effect on the industrial production system and as a direct consequence on a shift of the knowledge management paradigm of business organization. For that reason the evolution of the knowledge management paradigm in a NET- ECONOMY context is moving to develop cognitive and technological innovation building at the same time new intelligence and manage of risks in changing networking business functions.
The mayor reason of the shift of the knowledge management paradigm is an outcome of the transformation of business process from a localized market to a delocalized transnational business process characterizing the Net-working Economy has generally progressed over three phases:
1. co-operation among industry and centers of research, and Governmental Institutions, organized in various forms of corporate consortia, spin off , or digital-districts and so on.
2. :develop new strategy for increasing efficiency of co-operations based on the Rationalization of tele-work management procedures and continuous training of knowledge workers
3. .re-engineering: of collaborative business processes oriented to maximize the production value and quality of products along the co-opetative profit chain
All those phases depends upon deployment and an intensive utilization of information technologies so that as a direct consequence the principal need of innovation of knowledge management is based on a radical redesign of workflows and work processes organized as teams of “knowledge Workers”
Posted by: Paolo Manzelli | May 03, 2004 at 04:52 AM
This matrix needs to be placed within a context. As has been pointed out by others, we don't know what we know until we need to know it. The windows as presented fall into the same trap as the separation between explicit and tacit knowledge as if they could be linked without a contextural situation.
This also follows the dictum that knowledge can not be coerced, it can only be volunteered. What one can or chooses to provide, again, depends on the situation at hand.
Also, it depends greatly on the type and level of knowledge, the degree of abstraction, codification or diffusion.
Not only is it situational, but it is also affected by time and spatial issues. The boxes and what appear inside are dynamic and the relationship is non-linear and possibly discontinuous, forcing a dimensional shift.
Posted by: tom abeles | October 22, 2003 at 04:04 PM
>"There sure is something elusive, futuristic and a little scary about contemplating what you don't know, you don't know."
Denham, that's my favorite quadrant. I fill it in by hopping out of my comfort zone and into other disciplines. Also, conversation lead me there.
Posted by: Jay Cross | October 22, 2003 at 03:27 PM