Apparently, an acquaintance challenged my colleague Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) model. He seemed to consider the possibility that it’s a fad. Well, I do argue people should be cautious about claims. So, I’ve talked about PKM before, but I want to elaborate. Here’s my take on the case for PKM.
As context, I think meta-learning, learning to learn, is an important suite of skills to master. As things change faster, with more uncertainty and ambiguity, the ability to continually learn will be a critical differentiator. And you can’t take these skills for granted; they’re not necessarily optimal, and our education systems generally aren’t doing a good job of developing them. (Most of school practices are antithetical to self learning!)
Information is key. To learn, you need access to it, and the chance to apply. Learning on one’s own is about recognizing a knowledge gap, looking for relevant information, applying what you find to see if it works, and once it does, to consolidate the learning.
Looking at how you deal with information – how you acquire it, how you process it, and how you share your learnings – is an opportunity to reflect. Think of it as double-loop learning, applying your learning to your own learning. We’re often no so meta-reflective, yet that ends up being a critical component to improving.
Having a framework to scaffold this reflection is a great support for improving. Then the question becomes what is the right or best support? There are lots of people who talk about bits and pieces, but what Harold’s done is synthesize them into a coherent whole (not a ‘mashup’). PKM integrates different frameworks, and creates a practical approach. It is simple, yet unpacks elegantly.
So what’s the evidence that it’s good? That’s hard to test. The acquaintance was right that just university uptake wasn’t a solid basis (I found a renowned MBA program recently that was still touting MBTI!). The hard part would be to create a systematic test. Ideally, you’d find an organization that implements it, and documents the increase in learning. However, learning in that sense is hard to measure, because it’s personal. You might look for an increase in aggregate measures (more ideas, faster trouble-shooting), but this is personal and is dependent on outside factors like the culture for learning.
When you don’t have such data, you have to look for some triangulating evidence. The fact that multiple university scholars are promoting it isn’t a bad thing. To the contrary, uptake at individual institutions without a corporate marketing program is actually quite the accolade! The fact that the workshop attendees tout it personally valuable it also a benefit. While we know that individual attendee’s reports on the outcomes of a workshop don’t highly correlate with actual impact, that’s not true for people with more expertise. And the continued reflection of value is positive.
Finally, a point I made at the end of my aforementioned previous reflection is relevant. I said: “I realize mine is done on sort of a first-principles basis from a cognitive perspective, while his is richer, being grounded in others‘ frameworks.” Plus, he’s been improving it over the years, practicing what he preaches. My point, however, is that it’s nicely aligned with what you’d come at from a cognitive perspective. Without empirical data, theoretical justification combined with scholarly recognition and personal affirmations are a pretty good foundation.
There’re meta-lessons here as well: how to evaluate programs, and the value of meta-learning. These are worth considering. Note that Harold doesn’t need my support, and he didn’t ask me to do this. As usual, my posts are triggered by what crosses my (admittedly febrile) imagination. This just seemed worth reflecting on. So, reflections on your part?
Nice summary, Clark. Thanks for sharing this. I think I have witnessed the ‘fad’ suggestion on LinkedIn.
I first came across Harold’s work about ten years ago while studying and trying to make sense of my early forays into the world of online professional development in social networks. My field was, and still is, to an extent, English language teaching. My interest in PKM was how it applied to individuals, whether connected to an organisation or not. In my current role as a freelancer, I’m looking into how the principles of PKM could be applied to a freelance network, rather than as part of an organisational learning culture. That’s my context.
Because of this background, I view PKM specifically as a framework for self-directed personal and professional development driven by individuals rather than by L&D, or similar. A business could organise itself to ‘tap into’ the knowledge of the employees, but the agency is with the individual. So my reflection is on the extent to which an organisation could ‘implement’ PKM. Introduce the idea, foster networked collaboration, encourage sharing and working out loud, yes. But does this fall under the heading of ‘implementing’, as far as you’re concerned? Just wondering!
One potential criticism, or at least doubt, that I can understand, is the extent to which somebody supposedly ‘practicing’ PKM could simply remain at a shallow ‘information management’ level, i.e. sharing of limited value, curating without learning. I think that a valid area of research would be to ascertain the extent to which individuals are truly learning from using the framework and then whether an organisation is benefiting; I suppose that’s a pretty simplistic view, though.
Anyway, thanks again for writing this and giving me something to make sense of!
Richard, I do think orgs can facilitate their folks taking on PKM. Yes, it’s personal, but too often folks haven’t had their meta-learning skills developed, but leaving them to chance isn’t in the orgs best interest. And I believe part of Harold’s program is about how to continually monitor and test and develop your PKM skills. So you don’t learn them and set your inputs and sharing approaches once, but you also test them and refine them. Double-loop learning. It’s all very meta ;).
OK. That makes a lot of sense, yes. Thanks for your response. Merry Christmas and happy learning in 2019! :)
Hi Clark, all the best for the season!
I came across this again as I’m working on some stuff related to PKM and thought I’d just comment again to add a couple of thoughts. I wondered what you might think.
Are you aware of Cal Newport’s work and, specifically, his ‘Deep Work/Life’ concepts? I’ve been focusing recently on how this connects to PKM. I’ve also just come across the concept of a ‘deliberate professional’ (related to deliberate in the sense of ‘deliberate practice’), someone who pays attention to their professional learning and self-directs to learn and improve. Many labels are pointless or obscure, but I think the concept of a ‘deliberate professional’ could be really useful.
Anyway, some thoughts to finish the year. I wish you health and success in life and learning in 2021!
Richard, thanks for the feedback. I wasn’t aware of Newport’s work, a quick look makes it seem like he taps into Deci & Ryan’s Self-determination theory. Your notion of a ‘deliberate professional’ sounds a lot like Schön’s ‘reflective practitioner’. Thanks for prompting my exploration!