Personal Knowledge Management is the collective name for all the cognitive processes we use to learn, innovate, create, communicate our knowledge. Some defintions Knowledge is like synthesized information we can use. It may imply phases of learning, understanding, and practice before we use it. Some knowledge is not conveyed or retained using words, it’s called tacit. Our focus here is another kind: explicit knowledge or at the edge: the simple description of tacit knowledge without trying to explicit it.

Why not calling it “learning”

Personal Knowledge Management is practiced by all of us since we were kids, like prose. Putting a naming turn it into an object of study, reflection, and innovation. Without this cumbersome name, we would have to list all those processes every time we devise about it. The most well-known part, learning, is often used for the whole but it’s imprecise since nobody would consider creativity or communication as part of learning. If you compare knowledge with vegetables, PKM would be all the processes from seeding, weeding, watering, collecting, preserving, cooking, eating and composting. Learning is like growing the vegetables. It’s important but a part only of the workflow. Without eating it makes no sense. in PKM the goal is not to accumulate knowledge but to use it, well, quickly then to renew it, make it better, more efficient and finally to disseminate it.

Why do we reflect on our knowledge management?

There was a time books were rare, access to knowledge a privilege. More recently studies led to jobs people could keep for their life. Today there is almost too much knowledge freely available and Independent learners are legions. People learn new skills motivated to gain freedom on their life. What are the best practices to make the most of what we learn? How to make it easier to acquire vast domains of knowledge just by ourselves? How do you turn learnings into the basis of a new business? One that belongs to you? Personal Knowledge Management was studied long ago and didn’t get a lot of attention because traditionally Knowledge was the privilege of leaders, specialists, experts, pandits. They had plenty of time and experience from their studies. Meanwhile, a large part of each generation reaches college level, people learn by themselves and learning to learn became a thing. PKM follows the same trend.

is PKM a part of KM?

There was also a confusion with Knowledge Management, which lives in large organizations only and deals with collecting and circulating knowledge inside those organizations. Some processes are common but the scale, the motivation, and the focus on personalisation are different. It’s like collecting recipes to cook with love for your family versus optimizing processes for mass production of meals. Both deal with recipes but it’s originality, creativity, and inventiveness on one side, repeatable bureaucratic administration on the other. For many KM people, PKM is seen as a minor aspect of KM, more like a hobby. As more people take in charge their own professional development and organization become more user-centric, personal knowledge management is bound to become more strategic even for organizations. Cultivating diversity and individual performance leads to more dynamic companies. This is already visible in the world of startups or very agile companies like Google.

Shouldn’t training department, L&D be in charge of popularizing PKM?

Self Directed lifelong learning on the other side was the black sheep of workplace learning. If employees start to take in charge their career where will hierarchy go? They could access to knowledge above their actual position, start to become critic or want to participate to decisions. They now have a renewed interest on it but lack experience. PKM in the L&D version was shrunk down to the lack luster goal of merely curating and dealing with information flows. Sure it’s important but moving information without digging deep into it, apply critical thinking, building long deep links, won’t make you able to make use of this information.

What is Modern Personal Knowledge Management in this context?

Modern Personal Knowledge Management is an improvement, a major one. The goal is to boost performance by deeper knowledge acquisition and faster application. This is achieved by adding higher-order thinking and meta knowledge (Knowledge applied to cognitive processes).

- new processes are added (like visual thinking, sketchnoting, retrieval practice, sprints, agility), - more importance is given critical thinking, listening, dealing with feedback. - Constant improvement is encouraged with small experiments and reflection on our process (like a meta level?)