Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. 
Sometimes you read something and think: “How come these guys can put my hunches into such clear and convincing language, while I just sit here, having the funny feeling that something might be wrong…?” Then all you can do is smile and share it with everyone who might be interested. This is what happened when I read the new white paper by anecdote directors Mark Schenk, Shawn Callahan and Andrew Rixon on “Our take on ‘how to talk about Knowledge Management“.
My hunch: I see organisations pour piles of money and effort and thoughts into the database kind of knowledge management (or information storing) – on the other hand I see that I rarely use these kinds of information repositories in my professional learning. So in a way it’s reassuring to find out that I am not the only one:
“In 2003, MIT researchers found the same: ‘People are five times more likely to ask a co-worker for information than consult the Intranet, portal or other enterprise subsystem’. So why do we build KM solutions assuming that people first visit a database?”
While this is not to say that data collections and documented information are useless (obviously, they are not), it does makes sense to first think about how people learn and use knowledge and then develop structures, repositories, opportunities, water coolers, incentives etc. around this.
Filed under: Other people's work
