good knowledge or bad knowledge?
In the movie, Kung-Fu Panda, Master U-guey said, "there's no good news or bad news, there's only news".
It's like knowledge and information: there's no good knowledge or bad knowledge, only information itself. If you could make the information useful, then it becomes a knowledge; vice versa that if you mis-use it, then the information is useless.
In business world, you're always trying to make the right decision based on the information and knowledge you have. It's all about strategy. Business is like a way of life. You can't learn everything or absorb all the things you learn, you always need to think (critically) and explore (experience), then find out a "good" practice instead of the "best" practice. To me, work experience is the best teacher to understand how business operates. The more you taste, the more you get. Afterall, everything in the world is about people and connections, and how do you make use of the resources you have.
Whatever people share (information) is a kind of knowledge (information). It may be useful, yet could sometimes have negative impact on it. So how to control your knowledge (information) is another kind of art.
Usually in real life, at least what I experienced and executed is that "if I don't have a certain degree of understanding about a topic/situation/matter, I don't give my comments coz it might be imcompetent that the people who receive the message may be misguided or have misconception about the certain issue which affects their decision making.
I think knowledge sharing is beautiful and generous. But how you share it and when you share it is an art and the indicator to determine whether the knowledge is useful or not. Sometimes irrelevant response during a discussion may trigger unpredictable good ideas. Yet it may also interfer the process of making a right decision.
Somehow I think it depends on luck when doing business. When the world is time to be yours, then you'll make all the right decisions along with your hardwork to make things happen. It is also about your mental model of how you perceive things as well. There's always more than 1 aspect of the ways to explain or analyse things. When you are more experienced, you know better how to choose useful and effective information, and use those knowledge in the right time to create a good effect.
25 Apr 2010 19:15
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[Skip to the latest comment]thats right. Additionally, in reall life, people are always scare to share their knowledge that they learned from their mistakes, for example, beacause they worry to lose their job our their image. even companies they do not share their knowledge about their failure due to same reason
losing their imageIn my case, this mental model is so wrong and needed to be chage…25 Apr 2010, 19:30
It’s great that you mentioned mental model, coz I’m just writing another article about changing mental model. I guess I’ll do it here instead :-)
Remember the example I gave when I worked for the baby product company that I went to our factory in China for 1 month to execute few things. Funny it is, one of the main reasons that I went there is because my boss wanted me to show them “who’s the boss” so that they know that they’d better work harder and behave. For those people, we need to be bossy and to push them or even scare them from time to time so that we can control their behavior and productivity. This is one mental model they have: fool around when the boss is not around!
The other mental model they have as I experienced and the company suffered was that the workers in the ink room would intentionally remove the masks so that they could get compensation (financially) as soon as they get sick. This mental model is more complex because it involves decades of history to develop this kind of thinking. That is to say, most of them in their lives are suffering from poverty, so they’re even willing to sacrafice their health if they can get more money to support their livings. This is totally normal. When you suffer from something for a long period of time, the only thing you wanna do and your motivation of living is to get out of that situation, and you will try whatever means that will succeed.
So the point is, how can we change this kind of mental model—a unhealthy but deeply rooted one?
If people really want to do something, I believe nobody can stop them. If the worker really wants to get sick in order to get the company’s money, he can find many many ways to make it happen. Optimistically you can try to change it by setting rules and examples. But the prevention is almost impossible. I couldn’t prevent people from doing something harmful to themselves or even to the company. At least it is really difficult. I would love to think about it more indepth and come up with a solution.
yet, what I’m trying to say is, changing someone’s mental model is really an unbelievably hard work! It takes great effort and psychological intelligence and strategic planning.
25 Apr 2010, 20:23
Hey Lavinia;
I think you may be right about “there is no good or bad knowledge, just information”. However; information can be good or bad and that can corrupt your knowledge.
Let me give an example; a person who read/watched/heard sth. from an unreliable source would believe it without questioning and share that information with someone in the company. Person believes it and will likely to convince the others on its reality. Now; the information is not true and it is inside your information flow. All knowledge became corrupted by that information.
I think there is no bad knowledge but there is corrupted knowledge…
The discussion on impact of mental models on KM would be an interesting topic. I believe; impact would be huge. The Important questions are; how can we make the impact positive rather than negative? Can we convince everyone to work for greater good? Can we make them share everything they know?
Cheers…
25 Apr 2010, 20:52
hum..deep ones. well, first thing came to my mind is that not every person is optimistic or positive. So I dunno how can we control the impact which a matter could bring to us, we could only try to guide it to the place where we want it to be.
I believe in positive energy and thinking. but I also believe in people are evil sometimes. We can try to convince, but we also have to cope with each person’s flavour and needs.
finally, the answer is no. because people will share the things which to them are harmless. I believe in conflict interest. Once it happens, then people will protect themselves. It’s just a way of life.
-OMG, do I sound pessimistic? Please would anybody give me some positive energy and inspire me!25 Apr 2010, 21:06
Mental model…everyone has different one. As simple as they beleive what is the best way to do something or react upon any specific situation. Before this Module I had in my mind that any situation coming in my future job i wanted to sort it out with my previous experience…what the wrong mental model, because every situation are different, every organization are different and there are new ways to do something or simple it suit just in colombian but not in England. So yes the journey now is to create a flexible mental model with the information that we beleive it is right..as you say guys there are never a right answer maybe information that will help you to minimize the risk of failing.
thanks
25 Apr 2010, 23:09
yeap Rossmary I agree with you… thanks for the feedback :-)
25 Apr 2010, 23:34
This reminds me the debate we had during the class…. about the competence of knowledge sharing…...What I believe is that once this knowledge has being stored into the knowledge base (either database or people’s brain) the value of this knowledge will generate is sooo unmeasurable…. and so many possibliity…..
26 Apr 2010, 00:00
annawoods04
It is very famous and well known gem that we are always been judged by others by the company we keep. It is also known that what so atmosphere we live in we grasp the things very easily according to the atmosphere. But one better knows that what is good ans better for their own so always take good things from others and always spread good knowledge with others. It increases by sharing with others.
Houston personal injury
26 Apr 2010, 13:38
Sue
Once I was part of a group who were given the task of making sense of the words of Robert Benchley when he saw Venice for the first time. When he got there a sent a telegram to a friend saying “Streets flooded. Please advise.” The question up for debate: “Was he unintelligent or just not very well read or travelled?”
05 May 2010, 07:22
Well… I think there’re different ways to look at this :-) First, nobody knows everything. Knowledge is gained through learning and sharing most of the time. And all the experience in life would turn the knowledge into wisdom. Although thousands of books you have read, you might still live in your own little framed world. Because you might read a limited range of collections and easily ignore other knowledge that doesn’t interest you that much at the first place. That’s why people say Walk a thousand miles beats reading a thousand books.
In this case you mentioned, it’s nothing about intelligence to my perspective. It’s just that he doesn’t travel enough if you must say. Yet, his problem might be actually a refusal to receive new information and judging something that he doesn’t know with a lot of past experience (making assumptions) because he’s never seen houses in the water before. He doesn’t understand and so he didn’t try to understand or confirm the scenes in front of him. So there’s a bias.
I think when we stand in front of the world, especially a new place when we go travel, we should be like a sponge absorbing all new things, opening our eyes and hearts to feel and understand the new things and new possibiliities. It’s also a way of life and a way of seeing things. If I were Robert Benchley, I think I’ll text my friend and say “Found a new world.Stunning.” :-)
It’s interesting that you brought this up, and please feel free for more discussion. I love debating :-D
Cheers,
05 May 2010, 09:37
Michael
Great post Lavinia!
A wise person once said, “Many people seek to figure out what things mean, what about trying to figure out what things don’t mean as well. Like what does mean to not know what some you love is capable of. Things fall apart. I stopped trying to figure things out a long time ago.”
Check out what National Geographic and Kenya have teamed up to do…experiential learning through travel!
Pretty neat! www.naturalkenya.com
18 May 2010, 17:19
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