|
We need to understand that people prefer to think, make decisions,
and act in ways that are natural and convenient for them. They like
to feel that any decision can be made and implemented in an easy,
manageable, and acceptable manner and that it will be the “best way”
to promote and secure their own success and the success of both the
enterprise and customer. We also need to understand why people
choose to not “do the right thing” —why they choose to pursue
something that is less effective —or even the wrong thing. There are
many reasons for such undesirable behavior. For example, people who
do the wrong thing may find that doing what is right is too difficult
and it is not natural. They may perceive that it is not “the way we do
things here” or that it is counter to culture, practices, and peer acceptance.
They may lack the motivation to exert themselves or may find
that the psychological cost is too high. They may think that their personal
goals are better served by following a different path, or they
may not see any merit in doing the right thing. Or they may not
possess the requisite knowledge to do the right thing.
As we pursue our objective of identifying how we might support
successful personal and enterprise behavior, we need to identify counterproductive
misconceptions and how they can be addressed. During
the last several decades, most of us may indeed have misunderstood
how people utilize and deal with knowledge to prepare themselves
and to deliver competent work. We have misconceptions as to how
people learn and build knowledge, and remember, reason, and apply
knowledge to decide and carry out actions. In addition, we often do
not have a clear understanding of how knowledge relates to performance
and how different working conditions affect the knowledgerelated
effectiveness of work. We also may not realize the depth of
knowledge required to deliver complex work. Some of these misconceptions
clearly have resulted from our efforts to explain the functions
of the human mind in terms of simple information processing
or mind-as-machine models —only from the machinery of the brain
perspectives. In reality, our brains—our minds—are much more
complex and perform many functions of which we have little understanding.
As a result, our narrow perspective of how the human mind needs
to be treated has led to problems. Many of our traditional practices
and methods used to prepare and support workers with education
and systems are less effective than they should be. Our work environments
may also be found wanting by providing conditions that
hamper the effective use of the available knowledge and intellectual
capital (IC) assets. Major developments that cause us to revise our
understandings include the following.
Most people remember concepts and “stories” easier than they
remember “facts.” Businesses and educational institutions often
prepare people by providing theoretical education and training
that emphasize facts, details, and relatively mechanistic and concrete
aspects of “this is how you do it” and “these are the facts.”
General understanding and underlying rationales are not
provided as often as needed: the focus is on telling “how” and
“what,” not on “why.” The ability to perform under nonstandard
conditions and deal competently with complex work relies
mostly on utilizing mental models at different levels of abstraction
rather than on piecing together new approaches from basic
principles and facts. Education that provides integration of
many aspects of practical situations through hands-on and
laboratory work, or even storytelling, alleviates this problem
to some extent.2 As work becomes more complex, relevant stories may be encoded as mental
models and provide procedural metaknowledge and generic
abstractions as will be explained.
Decisions are nonconscious to a larger extent than we realized
earlier. When possible, people attempt to make decisions by
repeating previous experiences —by doing what they know how
to do and what appears most natural to them. The majority of
daily decisions are based on utilizing tacit mental models to
handle situations by “covert activation of biases related to
previous emotional experiences of comparable situations.”
A large aspect of competence relies on
this behavior and requires extensive, well-developed libraries of
mental reference models.
People have different cognitive styles and “intelligences”
When groups of people are educated and
trained or provided with cognitive work supports based on a
single model of cognitive functioning, the results are often disappointing
across the enterprise. The problem is that people
have differing abilities to assimilate and utilize provided information.
To the extent practical, we must provide different modes
of communication or staff positions with people whose cognitive
style matches the type of work to be performed
Stress impairs retrieval from long-term memory. People who are
hurried, perform under pressure, feel threatened, uncomfortable,
or angry, are constantly interrupted, or work in noisy
environments experience a reduced ability to use all they know
in their efforts to deliver work. People who are content, feel
motivated, happy and relaxed, and work in pleasant and effective
environments generally are able to deliver better quality
work, and although they appear to be in stressful situations, they
are able to work fast and to deeply engage themselves in what
they do.
The impact of example behaviors and role models is more
important than we recognize from our normal practices. Many
leaders tend to minimize communication between subordinates
and rank-and-file. They often provide terse and ineffective communications
to direct work and describe how they wish their
employees to behave and perform. They may not act as role
models or provide living examples. By neglecting to provide conceptual
and explicit guidance, they make it difficult for other
people to act in the desired manner since they have not understood
in-depth what is desired. People are uncertain about how
to operationalize the desired behaviors —they cannot copy
example behavior since that is missing. People are not provided
with motivation to copy their leaders’ behaviors since those are
behaviors they do not respect; they do not see that their leaders
find it necessary to act in the desired way. Without leaders acting
as role models, new criteria for performance and behavior do
not become part of enterprise culture. As a result, people do not
understand or feel motivated to act as the enterprise desires —
although that would be most effective and valuable for themselves,
the enterprise, and other stakeholders.
Knowledge required to deliver complex work may require
greater mental capacities than most people can provide. The
complexity of modern work often requires greater knowledge
than a single person has the opportunity to acquire. (Examples
include delivering modern medical services, solving complex
industrial and business problems, and creating social and
economic legislation.) Such tasks must be performed by collaborative
teams whose members are included to provide
complementary expertise, and their work styles must become
integrated with general operations practices.
Knowledge and information are fundamentally different in
both nature and function. The purpose of information is proper
description, whereas the purpose of knowledge is effective
action. Knowledge and information are not part of a continuum
and need to be managed separately and diligently by separate
disciplines.
We can improve how we prepare and
support knowledge workers at all levels, make it easier for people to
become motivated, and understand how to perform their work and
manage knowledge better by focusing deliberately and separately on
knowledge management and information management.
|
Disclaimer
