Formal/informal interplay

Matt Mower raises some unresolved Klogging issues:

• Klogs can overlap with existing formal systems – does klogging means that the same thing is not reported in formal way?
• Decentralised klogging vs. organisational trends to control.
• Does klog makes it easier to control you?
• As klogs are not really secure, could you post anything anything sensitive?
• Are big-KM vendors missing the point?

I love this issue popping up again and again: how control and formal structures can coexist with natural informal networks. I’m not sure that I want to tackle the whole issue, but at least I want to look at the learning side of it.

[from my PhD proposal] Learning is best described by the metaphor “you can lead horse to the water, but you cannot make it drinking”, or as Joseph Kessels says “you cannot make people smarter”. Even in the case of formal learning an organisation does not have control over employee’s brain and heart, so in order to benefit from employee learning, companies have to find the way to support and encourage it without full control. The author believes that the answer lies in supporting interplay between individual and organisational needs by relating and integrating employee-driven informal learning and organisation-driven formal learning.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2002/08/19.html#a130; comments are here.

• Teaching and knowledge sharing (3): coaching and knowledge sharing
• Learning: communities vs. courses (3) – experts vs. novices and competition
• KM and HRM

Tagged as: KM & learning