Published May 2009
By reinforcing knowledge sharing with supportive relationships, organizations allow people to learn at their own paces, focus on their unique needs and learn in styles that suits them. Learning must be able to expand and flex to meet people’s individual learning situations and help them meet their performance goals. From needing general information about a subject to make educated decisions; to technical and relational skills to do their jobs and manage personal interactions productively; to greater understanding about career choices, organizational culture and knowledge of external forces that impact business decisions, each person has unique knowledge needs. And the scope of learning ranges across a broad spectrum of possibilities.
In the late 1990s, John Seely Brown created the image of knowledge ecologies to accelerate creative learning. He advocated a balance between spontaneity and structure that allows for the freedom to explore options and ideas while addressing the need to produce concrete work results.
Ecologies are nurtured by providing opportunities for growth. To flourish, organizations need an integrated approach that provides multiple learning opportunities. The reality is that no manager can meet all of the knowledge needs of one person, nor can a single mentor or a particular training class or a singular hands-on experience. To access the learning required in today’s environment, workers need the freedom to engage in multiple collaborative learning experiences. To be effective and impactful, these learning opportunities should be embedded into the structure of everyday work, where employees have the freedom to seek out knowledge sources and learn at their own paces.
The future of knowledge management lies in the growing use of social networks and person-to-person knowledge exchange. This underutilized but burgeoning strategy will help people connect more freely, learn more actively and apply their knowledge more effectively on the job. Creating a knowledge ecology in which learning takes place in multiple ways becomes much simpler when organizations offer integrated knowledge-sharing opportunities.
Identifying information blockades, finding people who are hidden resources and opening up the flow of information between colleagues are the pressing matters for learning professionals in the coming years. To address these concerns, people must be enabled and encouraged to connect with each other in collaborative learning relationships that are tailored to their various and unique learning needs, and they must be given opportunities to succeed. Only then will we have accessible, ubiquitous and democratic knowledge management.
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