Two people with conflicting or incompatible mental models will likely:
If they harbour mental models of each other that the other does not agree with (“On Michael Jackson, or Our Mental Models of People We Know”) then listening stops and the erosion of goodwill starts; further communication is unworkable. What are the options in such a case?
Unfortunately, protocols for Option 4 are not yet fully developed. The scientific method is a rather well-developed and tested set of protocols for validating mental models, but applied only to empirical validation or only on “what is” and “what works” (in figure below, only right side of Ken Wilber’s quadrants). Knowledge management is engaged in seeking, innovating, developing and re-using “what works”. Sustainable development criteria falls on the lower right quadrant. Parallel protocols for validation and selection of mental models for the left side of Ken Wilber’s quadrants (see figure below) are not yet fully developed. Protocols for application to validation of experiential data (upper left quadrant) are still being developed in the discipines of transpersonal and paranormal psychology and in phenomenological research. There is no consensus on how “individual benefit” (upper left quadrant) is to be defined and assessed. What does it consist of? Money? Social opportunities? Learning and realizing human potential? Security? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a step in clarifying this area. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the slew of accessory protocols on other aspects and varieties of human rights is a notable contribution on the lower left quadrant. Surprisingly, the Rotary Club’s “Four-Way Test” fits very well with Ken Wilber’s framework and provides commonly-understandable or laymen criteria for the four quadrants: I have written about Ken Wilber’s framework and applied it in many ways in past blogs:
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Posts Tagged ‘learning organization’
Your Judgement Can Block Your Learning
July 9, 2009Quoting Anthony De Mello again:
When you judge you measure what is in front of you against the standards, expectations or values inside your head. You are trying to fit ‘what is’ to your concept of ‘what should be’. Judging can block your learning, which is why one of the requisite skills in a learning organization is the ability to suspend judgment. For example, a productive brainstorming process is a two-stage process: a free-for-all no-judgment no-evaluation idea generation stage followed by a weeding-out selection or judgment/evaluation stage to arrive at the single or few best ideas. The first stage uses divergent thinking where the P-type (MBTI type) members exercise their right-brain talents of idea generation. The second stage uses convergent thinking where the J-type members exercise their left-brain screening and judgment talents. Brainstorming would be less productive if the J-types are allowed to control the first stage, or the P-types are allowed free rein in the second stage. In the 12 Manners of Voicing (see blog entitled “L14- Voicing”), the least productive of learning are those that entail exercising judgment (the brown areas below) and the most productive are those that require suspending judgment and respecting the other person (the green areas below). 12 MANNERS OF VOICING - In the 12 Types of Learning (see blog entitled “12 Types of Learning”), the most productive of understanding one another are those types (those on the left side of the diagram below) where a person can show to another her past experiences that throw light in how she came to adopt her current beliefs, paradigms, interests and values. This is why story listening (NOT storytelling) is a most powerful tool for learning and understanding. Listen to Anthony de Mello: “the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.” - 12 TYPES OF LEARNING - — Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on a link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to. =>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog“… what you judge you cannot understand. …if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand.”
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L16- Concepts Can Block Learning
July 7, 2009“From the moment you teach a child the word ‘tree’ he can no longer fully experience a tree” said Anthony De Mello from India.
Concepts are fine tools for organizing and communicating our experiences of the world. Concepts and mental models also enable us to recognize what otherwise we hardly notice. Mental models are just that: models of reality. But if concepts become rigid beliefs or we equate them with reality itself, then concepts can imprison our thinking. If we invest our ego in our concepts, they become our “pet concepts” or “pet theories” and close our mind to other or new theories. We stop testing concepts against our experience and the experiences of other people. And we cease to learn. I wrote a blog on “We found the enemy: our own concepts!”
Religious and political concepts can possess and control minds. As a matter of survival, religious and political institutions preserve concepts (e.g. doctrines and beliefs) and impose sanctions on its members against thinking freely and challenging those concepts. As a result, it takes years, decades or even centuries to unlearn concepts that no longer work. Theological concepts can control our thinking and block achievement of the very purpose and essence of religion. De Mello also said,
- “The final barrier to your vision of God is your God-concept. You miss God because you think you know.”
In a doctoral defense by a graduate student at the Asian Social Institute, I sat in the faculty panel which included a monsignor (a rank between priest and bishop). At some point in the defense proceedings I pointed to the difference between “God as a concept” and “God as personal experience”. The monsignor’s subsequent remarks revealed to me his surprise at recognizing the difference seemingly for the first time.
A learning conversation is possible when people talk about their experiences, but unlikely among people attached to their respective concepts. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn edited such a learning conversation on “Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue”. Mystical union is a personal experience of God; which is different from theological concepts of God. Do you think a learning conversation is equally possible between a Jewish theologian, a Christian theologian and a Muslim theologian?
Working with mental models is one of the five disciplines of a learning organization, according to guru Peter Senge. Below is a slide from one of my presentations on organizational learning, which lists some skills in working with our own mental models.
Staying too long in a professional area of practice or in an academic discipline or in a type of work poses the danger of being stuck with the concepts in that area or type of work. One way of continuously refreshing one’s repertoire of concepts is to shift or learn a completely new area of professional practice.
It worked for me…several times.
After a bachelor’s degree in physics, I took an M.S. and Ph.D. in physical biology. The new concepts in the life sciences were completely new and different from those of the physical sciences and mathematics. After I earned my doctoral degree I practiced through consulting in environmental management, which added the human and social dimensions. Afterwards, I accepted a position in policy studies in a university think tank, which introduced me to governance and equipped me to later accept an appointment in the Philippine government as Assistant Director General for Policy of a government body that directly provides analysis and policy advice to the Philippine President. For seven years I was immersed in the real world of politics and governance. What a change! In shifting from the academe to government, the learning opportunities opened before me were literally vast! When I went back to the academe, my interests went to development and non-government organizations. I co-founded CCLFI, a non-profit foundation for organizational learning and change, knowledge management (KM) and knowledge-based development. That was 13 years ago [as of August 2011], when I practically started KM in the Philippines and at the University of the Philippines. What a learning journey!
I learned to:
- Shift my area of professional practice several times, thus preventing me from being stuck on the concepts of one area;
- Compare, cross-fertilize and synergize concepts of one discipline with those of another;
- See that different principles from two or more disciplines are actually the same principle, e.g. the Weber-Fechner law in psychology is essentially the same principle as the law of diminishing marginal utility in economics, and the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics is parallel to Hawthorne effect in sociology;
- Integrate knowledge across disciplines, e.g. see the different forms of capital across economics, ecology, psychology, organizational development, law, political science, etc. and call them “metacapital”; and
- Discern trans-disciplinal patterns, e.g. trans-societal Megatrends #1 (see blog Q14) and Megatrend #2 (see blog Q26), or “connect the dots” across seemingly unrelated facts, e.g. the growing importance of intangibles (see blog F2).
Cheers!
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L14- Voicing
June 22, 2009If you grew up in North America or Europe and have lived and worked for some time in Asia, you must have experienced something similar to the following scenario in a meeting or conference among Asians:
Many do not speak their mind in obvious deference to the boss, or for seeming fear of causing disharmony or ruining good interpersonal relationships, or because of a prevailing organizational culture against disagreements. The boss may be authoritative and he may have a habit of browbeating or putting down any idea of his subordinates. Women and juniors noticeably hesitate to speak most likely because they grew up in a culture where they are expected to just listen to men and elders. Opposing or different ideas that are suggested are expressed with painfully too much sugar-coating and diplomatic language. If you are an Asian who has spent years in North America or Europe, you must have observed meeting or conference scenarios among Westerners similar to the following:
Speakers are very direct and appear confrontational and even disrespectful. Ideas and counter-ideas fly in all directions and the debate is uncomfortable to Asian ears. The boss is not spared from opposing or critical views. People who are otherwise friends behave so strangely unfriendly and seemingly arrogant when they argue and debate their positions. After the meeting, everyone seems OK and so easily forget the heated and emotional meeting. Have you personally experienced any of the above? The manner that people voice their views in a group (including virtual e-group or discussion lists) determines whether and how far learning will happen in the group. If authentic sharing and group learning are objectives of a group, then it is useful for the group members to distinguish what are the more productive from the less productive ways of voicing. From our experiences at CCLFI, and from the 12 Types of Learning described in another blog post, one way to be more aware of our habitual manners of voicing is through the following 12 Manners of Voicing: - If you are married or have been married, do you agree with me that during the courtship or dating stage your communications were in the green areas such as 3? After you are married or before you divorced or separated, did you also notice that your communications shifted more towards the brown areas? Couples married for decades stayed in Green Area 3 and/or at least one partner settled in the brown habits in Area 5. Scientific discourse often lies in Areas 1 and 4. Generative dialogue lies in Areas 1, 3 and 4. The stereotypically Asian authority-driven habits are also in the brown habits in Area 5 as well as in Areas 6, 10 and 12. These manners of voicing belong to Stage 1 of William Isaac’s four stages of dialogue. The Brown Areas 9-10 are more likely where stereotypically Western habits of speaking would likely land on; these latter manners of voicing belong to Isaac’s Stage 2. I will explain these stages in my later blog posts (L42 and L43). These are only my personal impressions of stereotypes coming from eight years living in New York and travelling many times to eleven other Western countries; they are not the result of any statistical or scientific study so I may be wrong or inaccurate. My intention is to help us be more aware of our personal habits and unconscious group patterns of communication, and to contribute towards a more conscious and studied way of managing our group communications towards group learning and mutual trust-building. What do you think? Can you suggest how we can improve the 12 Manners of Voicing? — Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on any link to create a new tab to reach the webpages pointed to. =>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
The green areas tend to be more productive for group learning and mutual trust-building, especially those manners of voicing in the dark green area or described in bold letters. The brown areas tend to be less productive, especially the dark brown areas. I highlight respect — both intended and perceived — as a defining factor in how far communication and learning can or cannot proceed productively. This typology must be understood from the context of the earlier 12 Types of Learning.
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Personal Learning History
June 19, 2009In the movie “The Kid” Russ Duritz (played by actor Bruce Willis) mysteriously met an 8-year old boy who turns out to be Russ himself when he was a boy. The conversations between the 40-year old Russ and the 8-year old Russ enabled the older Russ to reflect on his life: What did he do wrong? What should he have done? How should he chart a new course in life?
The time-warp was an extraordinary opportunity for the older Russ to give advice to the boy Russ. It was an equally extraordinary opportunity for the boy Russ to ask the older Russ questions such as: “Why did you give up your dream of being a pilot? You are 40 years old and you don’t have a wife yet! (The older Russ has a girlfriend who is getting tired of his inability or unwillingness to commit.) You don’t even own a dog, what’s wrong with you?!”
The last scene in the movie was in an airport runway in the evening. It was a double time-warp. As the 40-year old Russ and the 8-year old Russ was watching, a much older Russ — who was boarding his private jet with his wife (Russ’ current girlfriend) and their dog — waved back at them.
Richard Edler interviewed CEOs and compiled the results into a book entitled “If I Know Then What I Know Now: CEOs and other Smart Executives Share Wisdom They Wish They’d Been Told 25 Years Ago” (New York: Berkley Books, 1996). Like Russ Duritz in the movie “The Kid”, the CEOs summarized their most important life learning into a few paragraphs that they wished were told them when they were 25 years younger.
Some excerpts:
“…the most important enduring aspect of a person’s ability to make a difference comes not from brains or motivation, but from character. And at the heart of character is an old-fashioned value that is overlooked and underrated. Trust. …certainly not a new perspective. But, as I look back at my own life, these things seem more important than ever.”
Retired Chairman and CEO
Foote, Cone & Belding
“Listening is the most difficult skill to learn, and the most important to have… Learning to talk is relatively easy. Spend twice as much time learning to listen as you do learning to talk.”
CEO
Ketchum Advertising, San Francisco
“Success is waking up in the morning, whoever you are, wherever you are, however old or young, and bounding out of bed because there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you’re good at – something that’s bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again today.”
Columnist
“What is your most important learning?” is a high-value question that is best asked of an experienced senior staff about to retire from your company. It will produce high-value answers that are worth listening to (and documenting) by you and your company colleagues. It is high-value knowledge that would otherwise be lost to the company.
“What is your most important life learning?” is a most high-value question that is best asked of very senior people in their twilight years. Their answers would be high-value knowledge on how to live life that would otherwise be forever lost if not asked. We spent years and much money going through school so that we learn how to make a living, but not how to live life. So, go ahead and ask high-value questions of very senior people. You will spend only a few minutes and they will share it for free. Where else can you get such an extremely high benefit-cost ratio?!
You can ask the same high-value question especially of people who are dying. I enjoyed and profited tremendously reading Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson.” I recommend it to you.
And how about you, what is your most important life learning?
Some organizations find it useful to construct a “learning history” (see for example: George Roth and Art Kleiner: “Developing Organizational Memory through Learning Histories” in James W. Cortada and John A. Woods (editors): The Knowledge Management Yearbook 2000-2001, Boston: Butterworth Heinemann, 2000).
Why can’t an individual also construct his or her own “personal learning history“? Try it. Make a short outline your academic and career history, and ask yourself “What are my major learnings along the way?” “What does it tell me about my approach to learning, personal and professional development?” “Did I have a conscious learning plan and career development plan?” “How can I improve the rest of my learning journey?”
The last question is a high-value question for me. Ask yourself that question too (or perhaps you can invent another high-value question that suits you better).
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The Reflective Knowledge Worker
June 17, 2009If self-reflection (or similar internal listening skills; see my last blog post on “Learning How to Learn”) is a key to successful business leadership, then self-reflection is also a key to success for knowledge workers.
What is the first practical step in learning self-reflection? From my experience, the doorway to learning internal listening skills is conscious moment-to-moment control of attention. Practice it now. As you read these words, your attention is on the computer screen. If a phone rings now, your attention will be diverted to the telephone and to what the caller is saying. After the call, you revert your attention to reading this blog post starting from where you left off. All of these are externally-focused and externally-driven attention. As much as 99% of our attention at the workplace is external. Practice being also aware of how your mind is responding to what you are reading now. Is there agreement, or doubt? Does your mind shoot off on something you remember that is related to what you just read? Is your mind now making a silent internal conversation stemming from the ideas expressed here? Are you noticing any discomfort triggered by a word or phrase? Is your interest level moving up or down? It all starts by your decision to consciously control where you focus your attention. There are times when your mind — without your conscious control or decision — shoots off in a different direction while you are attending, say, a meeting. In each such occasion of absent-mindedness you miss what is being said for several seconds. The mind — the prime tool and asset of knowledge workers — is often like a poorly-tamed horse that literally gets off-track every now and then. And worse, the horse rider (=we) fails to notice this most of the time! Control of the horse begins with conscious attention: the horse rider must direct his attention on his horse consciously and every moment along the way. The knowledge worker depends very much on his horse; therefore he must be a constantly alert horse rider. — Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on any link to create a new tab to reach the webpages pointed to. =>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
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Appreciating Nonaka’s SECI Model (#23)
May 13, 2009Let us review the four critical tasks of a learning organization (numbers 1-4 refer to the figure below):
The tasks revolve around the green quadrant because (a) it is the quadrant where most value creation takes place, and (b) most of the knowledge in an organization is located in the green quadrant. According to Laura Birou, only 10-20 percent of an organization’s knowledge is explicit. Robert H. Buckman of Buckman Laboratories estimates this fraction at only 10 percent. William H. Baker Jr. estimates it at 20 percent. Furthermore, not all of this explicit knowledge is captured in the organizations’ IT-based information systems. What IT does well is facilitate the replication and transmission of explicit knowledge so that more knowledge workers can use/practice them, convert them to their tacit knowledge, and create value for the organization. Notice that the well-known SECI model of Nonaka addresses all four critical tasks of a learning organization:
The SECI model is not the only mix of knowledge pathways that performs the four critical tasks. In the previous blog post, notice that the Case Study 3 organization also addresses all four critical tasks of a learning organization. The mixes of knowledge pathways do vary from organization to organization. In Case Study 3, the explicit group knowledge is in the form of a Learning-Oriented Systems Manual (=organizational brain), which at this point in time is not yet web-based. This illustrates the fact that although information technology can be an excellent enabler, it is not an absolute necessity for a learning organization. — (Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on any link to create a new tab to reach the websites pointed to.) =>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
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Knowledge Pathways: 3 Case Studies (Practical Hint #22)
May 11, 2009Please first review the previous blog on “Knowledge pathways in a learning organization.” The following three case studies are drawn from our KM consulting experiences at CCLFI.
Case Study 1. These are the new knowledge pathways resulting from the KM initiatives of a big government ministry/department:
The characteristics of this organization’s KM initiatives are as follows:
- Membership of the cross-functional KM Team is drawn from about 20 functional units.
- The KM team was involved in the KM audit, KM strategy formulation and KM action planning activities.
- Nurturing of the KM Team took the form of KM training using experiential exercises and KM mentoring as the team members “learn KM by doing KM.” Their practice projects are various web-based KM toolkits.
- The KM Team launched a wiki to reconstruct the KM history of their department, the first Philippine department to formally set up a KM unit in 2001.
- The KM Team practiced in documenting a sample business process (procedures to be followed by a retiring staff) and placed their output in the department intranet.
Actual feedbacks from KM Team members:
“I am more confident now to promote KM in [my unit]; being equipped with all ideas from the KM meetings and workshop.”
“[I learned] that I love my work more – because of the KM challenge. Would like to see this work and take part in its success.”
“KM also responds to the heart of the worker by way of interaction, collegiality and peer learning. To me this is a very holistic approach in the development of the person/worker.”
Case Study 2. These are the new knowledge pathways resulting from the KM initiatives of a government regulatory agency:
The characteristics of this organization’s KM initiatives are as follows:
- A KM Team was set up consisting of a Process Sub-Team, a Technology Sub-Team and a People Sub-Team.
- KM training was through workshops that use adult experiential learning processes.
- The central KM initiative is mentoring of the KM Team in setting up their intranet and organizing/uploading content.
- The next activity was mentoring the KM Team in documenting and automating a business process through their new intranet.
Actual feedbacks from KM Team members:
“The development of the Intranet was a very challenging activity. To be able to put all the information and knowledge in a one-stop shop for the benefit of the organization is just a great achievement.”
“What I like is the part where we are actually doing the hands-on, applying what we have learned from the lectures”
“The development of the Intranet system gave me freedom to speak my mind by contributing some articles for uploading at the Intranet”
Case Study 3: These are the new knowledge pathways resulting from the KM initiatives of a multi-sectoral organization consisting of representatives from the national and local governments, local community organizations and non-government organizations, and private sector. The red arrows show where and how tacit knowledge is increased through practice.
The characteristics of this organization’s KM initiatives are as follows:
- Their biggest problem is high turnover of membership resulting in constant loss of knowledge and long learning curves of new members.
- The solution was (a) training in team learning including convening Lessons-Learned Meetings or LLM to elicit and document what works well in existing procedures and (b) compilation of administrative and technical documentations into a “Learning-Oriented Systems Manual.”
- A subset of the Manual was used for briefing of new members.
- The executive committee adopted a new vision: “to become a living, learning organization.”
- LLM was adopted as an organizational habit: “what worked well” and “what did not work” was answered and documented at the end of every activity: meetings, field operations, etc.
Actual feedbacks from the members:
“I learned that learning can be tremendously fun… the atmosphere becomes conducive if you have fun while learning.”
“The process, the flow, the sequence of events were very well placed and very appropriate that even the games brought us to higher levels of interaction.”
“Here, we are taught to take notice of those that are not usually taken notice of in the ordinary course of thinking.”
“I passed through the `unlearning’ stage, then the `learning’ stage, then perhaps it may be more than this, but the end of it is the ‘appreciation’ stage.”
Overall observations:
- Documentation is not the end-point of the KM pathways; the end-point is adoption/practice by other employees for their more effective action.
- The mix of KM pathways varies across organizations; it responds to what the organization wants from KM.
- “Learning by doing” coupled with mentoring/coaching is an effective knowledge transfer from consultant plus learning by client. There are three secrets to good KM: practice, more practice and still more practice! (smile)
- Experiential workshops are effective in helping KM team members understand and appreciate KM.
- Participation, team practice and involvement tends to develop sense of ownership on the part of KM Team members.
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Knowledge Pathways in a Learning Organization (#21)
May 9, 2009I wrote in the previous blog about the “Organizational Brain” (lower right or yellow quadrant in the diagram below). The Organizational Brain is a superb instrument for storing, providing, replicating and leveraging explicit knowledge but explicit knowledge by itself cannot create value. Information just sitting in a database does not create value. It is only when PEOPLE apply knowledge that value can be created (upper left or green quadrant in the diagram).
There are few exceptions. In a fully robotized factory, technology (~explicit knowledge), almost by itself, creates value. I said “almost” because there will always be humans overseeing the factory. Even in highly automated systems such as Ultra-Large Crude Carriers (ULCCs), about two dozen crew members are needed to manage its sophisticated technological systems.
Photograph from Wikimedia Commons
Value may be created from explicit knowledge such as when a company sells the patents, copyrights, tools, software and formulas it had internally developed. Of course, the original source of this explicit knowledge is the tacit knowledge of the employees who developed them.
In short, the main creators of value are PEOPLE: individuals and teams using their tacit knowledge: this is a central tenet in the knowledge economy. In the diagram below, these are located in the left quadrants, particularly the green quadrant. Structural capital and technology (right quadrants) are only supportive. Note that the diagram is again based on Ken Wilber’s framework. You can go back to the following blogs to read about Ken Wilber’s framework: (click on any link)
There are four critical tasks facing a Learning Organization:
Task 1: Enhance employees’ tacit knowledge (green quadrant) especially those that create most value for the organization.
Task 2: Convert useful individual tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge — the form easily replicable and re-usable by more people in the organization (conversion from green to yellow quadrant using Pathways 2, 3 or 4).
Task 3: Facilitate re-use or practice of the right explicit knowledge by the right people (conversion back to green quadrant). Pathway 6 does this. Through practice explicit knowledge is converted into the practitioner’s own tacit knowledge (see “D4- Converting Tacit to Explicit Knowledge and vice-versa”). Some organizations analyze, recombine, correlate and mine their Organizational Brain into more useful forms (Pathway 5).
Task 4: Acquire needed knowledge from outside (Pathways 7-10 in the diagram below)
Some KM tools for Task 1 are:
- Pathway 1 or replication of individual tacit knowledge: Mentoring, coaching, understudy, buddy system, lecture-demonstration, peer assist, cross-visits, knowledge sharing among a community of practitioners. Some of these KM tools tend to lie “outside the radar” of HR practitioners because the HRD framework looks at the individual employee as the unit of management, while the KM framework is based on managing value-creating knowledge across employees.
- Various tools to enhance employee motivation and engagement; our empirical findings at CCLFI reveal the importance of motivational factors (see: “A Success Factor in KM: Motivating Knowledge Workers” and “Practical Exercise: Ingredients of Effective Group Action”)
Some KM tools for Task 2 (individual tacit knowledge to group explicit knowledge) are:
- Pathway 2 (the predominant knowledge pathway for Task 2): Manualization, process documentation, learning history, individual mind mapping, blog, surveys and questionnaires.
- Pathway 3: Lessons-learned session, after-action review, wiki or collaborative authoring, group exercises for thinking together such as mind mapping, causal flow diagramming, fishbone diagramming, etc.
- Pathway 4: Video capture of story telling, company visioning exercise accompanied by documentation, minutes or aide memoire of a meeting and conceptual design brainstorming among architects
Some KM tools for Task 3 are:
- Pathway 5 or recombination: Data mining, performance metrics followed by identification and study of best practitioner, multiple regression or path analysis to detect causal linkages and contributions, statistical summaries and fitting trend lines to data.
- Pathway 6 or group explicit knowledge converted to individual tacit knowledge in many: Practicum, learning-by-doing, on-the-job training, workplace-oriented mentoring, action research, R&D, experimentation and replication/adaptation of best practice.
We know that the usual means for Task 4 are: purchase of knowledge products, hiring new employees, buying a franchise to quickly use a ready product and its support network, engaging a consultant, copying from the public domain, business intelligence procedures, etc.
I have written about these knowledge pathways in Section 3.5 of my Overview chapter in the book “Knowledge Management in Asia: Experience and Lessons” published in 2008 by the Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo, Japan. If you wish to receive a copy of this chapter, send me an email.
See also: “Knowledge pathways: 3 case studies” and “Appreciating Nonaka’s SECI model”.
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