Connect with an Open Knowledge Convert?
Open knowledge? Sounds fine to me, you go ahead. I’ll stick to my books and occasional links to websites.
That was my view some years ago. A life-long bookworm, I was fairly confident of my ability to get access to information I wanted on my own, when I wanted it, leaving others to dissipate their time pursuing as many ‘networks’ as they fancied. It was unlikely there was much on which I was missing out.
I have learned the error of my ways. Some years back I set up my own L&D business, and since then joined the University as an L&D professional. I have grown my professional networks; a member of the Manchester Branch of the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development). And through learning to say ‘yes’ to connecting — in all forms — I have realised the manifold benefits to my own personal development, and through experience have recognised that ‘chance favours the connected mind’ (Steven Johnson).
It was through a connection with a CIPD Branch colleague that I discovered Harold Jarche (www.jarche.com). Harold defined Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM): a framework to help you take control of your professional development through a continuous process of seeking, sense-making, and sharing for the mutual benefit of your and related networks. Jarche quotes Plato, who said of Socrates’ work that his knowledge could not just be stored away; that it has a shelf-life, and that it needs to be tested and indeed experienced for the reader to make full sense of it — Jarche’s ‘sense-making’ point, which includes the process of how we make it meaningful to ourselves, how we reflect upon it and how we then make use of it. So, others have to share it and individually make sense of it for it to be truly of value to society. The seeking part is about a personal discipline of actively and regularly reaching out to your network, and to others it connects you to, in order to keep up to date with emerging developments in your field of study.
(Jarche’s Seek, Sense, Share model, posted in www.Jarche.com, February 2014)
Ultimately this is about sharing and applying the knowledge we gain through connections both inside and outside our organisation; it encourages diversity of thought and approach, and it can be done both virtually and physically. This year I have arranged two conferences for Manchester CIPD, and the experience has taught me a great example of this point. Through one connection contributed as a speaker, I was introduced to another who made a great input on values in organisations (and who is currently working with our University on our own values project).
At the conferences we shared our knowledge inputs and activity sessions with those HR and L&D professional attending; they in turn shared their own experiences which others built on, and this conversation continued beyond the conference via social media, with invitations to follow others or join networks. Through one of the conferences, a CIPD colleagues introduced me to Wakelet; a way of linking Tweets on a particular subject into a stream of related Tweets for those who may have missed some or all of these.
The theme of one of the conferences was The Agile Organisation. Given my role as Lead L&D Partner in the University’s Staff L&D Team, I considered how I could bring some of the knowledge shared in this event to our team. This led to an input I made into one of our Team Development meetings; sharing a digest of knowledge covered and encouraging my colleagues to reflect and consider in discussion groups how we could bring in some more agile practices to our internal operation for the benefit of our users.
(Harold Jarche, posted January 2010, www.jarche.com)
Jarche argued that having a goal often helps as a spur to seeking and sharing, and this has been true for me, though of course the wider your network becomes, the greater the likelihood someone will reach out with information which will prove useful to a current goal. The second conference I organised focused on performance consulting in HR, OD & L&D. Some of the knowledge for this I had gained from a CIPD Organisation Development workshop. Further external research via my network introduced me to the work of Andrew Jacobs, on the changing skills and approach by L&D professionals to client requests, the work of Cathy Moore (https://blog.cathy-moore.com/services/) on diagnosing learning needs, and of Dana and James Robinson on Performance Consulting (Performance Consulting, 3rd edition, 2015). All were used in the conference, and for my internal L&D and OD practice.
Within our SL&D team, we actively subscribe to the 70:20:10 model of learning, which recognises that 70% of our learning typically is achieved on the job, through chance connections, the example of others, links by which we are introduced to ideas and models which we can then experiment with and integrate into our practice. 20% is learning via personal activity, such as coaching or mentoring. Finally, 10% is via formal instruction, be it classroom or virtual. I have applied this model to my own practice, particularly the 70% through the growth and expansion of my personal learning network and consequently have found a demonstrably powerful mechanism for my ongoing CPD.
Jarche argued it takes at least six months to get your personal knowledge mastery started. He recommends sharing something everyday, something I aspire to but am far from yet. Jarche also argues that the wider community of practice which develops through connecting with others is vital to helping us be open to new ideas, mindful of our ever-present tendency to filter via our paradigms and hence may reject new inputs which fail to get past our individual filters. There is a need though to apply some judgement and selectivity; let’s be honest, not everything out there is of good quality, and we will simply flood our senses if we are open to every knowledge source which comes our way. How to apply some selectivity? Jarche recommends we aim for connections who in our experience are high sharing and high sense-making.
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