>. Given our movement toward the Knowledge Age, how does one measure the
>contribution of knowledge to the customer? How does the customer see the
>application of knowlege?
>
>. Is it even important to measure knowledge or the contribution of
>knowledge? Why or why not?
>
>. If you were to measure knowledge, what precisely would you measure?
>
>. How does one measure the acquisition of knowledge? The application of
>knowledge? The sharing of knowledge?
Okay, these are good questions, I think. We often frame discussions about
the learning organisation around the benefits to the people working in
them.
As my action learning "mentor" Reg Revans once wrote, you can learn
without acquiring knowledge, by being able to do something useful with the
knowledge you already have. Knowledge per se is not necessarily useful.
Putting a customer benefit on knowledge is a good test. In the real world,
we don't run organisations for the direct benefit of those working in
them. We run them (in a capitalist system) for the benefit of customers so
our customers can make us successful.
I think the question about learning is "learning what?" and the answer
isn't - really - "learning to learn". The "curriculum" of the learning
organisation has to be the strategic agenda of the organisation in the
short term at least, and maybe when we get familiar with acquiring
knowledge and taking strategic action on that curriculum, we can get a bit
better at the process of learning.
So I wouldn't measure knowledge per se. Organisations aren't schools, and
even the pedagogical notion of measuring acquired knowledge (through
terminal exams etc) has been (I think legitimately) challenged.
We should measure the application of knowledge, which we do by our
organisational performance against the determined curriculum. the
architect of the learning organisation is the effective - effective -
curriculum designer. We can measure the sharing of knowledge by the
ability of our organisations to apply the information in its memory banks
to new experiences, which I guess is a reasonable definition of learning.
As David Kolb put it (paraphrased), learning comes from the information
gained from an experience, followed by reflection on the experience
(meaning), generalisation and conceptualisation (what are the
transferrable messages) and then application to future (different)
experiences.
Whether it's worth all the bother must be defined in customer benefit
terms - does it help us get and keep customers, in the short or medium
term? If not, let's divert our intellect and resources towards something
which does. There's a place for art for art's sake, but it's not the
business world, and if anyone out there is working for free, I'd be
interested in a counter argument!
All best from Merrie England
John Peters
Editor, The Learning Organisation Journal
Director, Red Swan Ltd
--
john peters (johnpeters@gn.apc.org)