The “expert advice” section in
each chapter of iLearning contains questions and answers from an episode
of the radio show, The Knowledge Worker, which is produced at KANW,
89.1 FM, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The listeners’ questions and the answers
emphasize just how universal many of the performance problems that
organizations experience are. They also reveal how using an iLearning paradigm
can address those problems.
Play or download (right click --
then select "Save Target As") these two minute editions of The Knowledge Worker by
selecting the chapter they appear in.
Chapter One
"Dear Mark , I’m sold
on the positive effects of knowledge management techniques — how they can save
time and money for an organization. However..."
Chapter Two
"Dear Mark , in a talk
that you recently gave, I heard you say that the foundation of collaboration
lies in creating a 'mind of one.' Sounds kind of Zen to me."
Chapter Three
"Dear Mark , it seems
to me that the 'trick' to working together smarter is to simply agree on your
process and put in some technology to manage the work around the process.
However..."
Chapter Four
"Dear Mark , we have
set up a collaboration area for our team to create documents. We have
agreed on a workflow for creating the documents, including which documents are
to be created before others. However..."
Chapter Five
"Dear Mark, I heard you
once say that performance objectives are the real 'work drivers' of an
organization and that they are the key for knowledge management systems. Would
you explain what you meant by this?"
Chapter Six
"Dear
Mark, my brother-in-law
is a blowhard. Last time he was over to our house he kept talking about 'tacit' and 'explicit' knowledge. Are there such things — or is he just making this
up?"
Chapter Seven
"Dear Mark, what is all
this talk about different kinds of knowledge? I’ve heard of 'factual
knowledge,' 'procedural knowledge,' 'declarative knowledge,' and several
others. Knowledge is knowledge — right?"
Chapter Eight
"Dear Mark, we want to
set up our new office computer system so that it is a resource for all our
employees — new hires, experienced workers, and our 'old-timers.'"
Chapter Nine
"Dear Mark, last year I
heard you speak at our brown bag luncheon series. In your talk, you mentioned
that training for newcomers, improving performance for experienced workers, and
increasing innovation for experts were related problems."
Chapter Ten
"Dear Mark, three
months ago we put up a Web site for our small nondenominational church. One of
our goals was to have a place on the Web site where members of our church could
find out who is in the hospital and how they are doing. However...."
Chapter Eleven
"Dear Mark, I know that
we are supposed to be in a 'knowledge economy.' However, I have recently
heard several people in our company mention the term 'knowledge markets.'"
Chapter Twelve
"Dear Mark, I am the
manager of a group of engineers. I’m always a little disappointed with our
yearly performance assessment because it doesn’t seem to really measure what
each engineer actually did for our bottom line..."
Chapter Thirteen
"Dear Mark, our
organization would like to take a more 'team-oriented' approach in
assessing the performance of individuals. In other words, we want to reward
people on the overall success of their team..."
Chapter Fourteen
"Dear Mark, I am the
manager of a group of knowledge workers. Our company is looking at how we can
do more knowledge work and do it better. We have all heard that we need to work 'smarter,' not harder, but realistically...."
Chapter Fifteen
"Dear Mark, I’ve
recently taken a new position as a training manager at a large government
agency. Although I have managed groups before, this is my first time managing a
training group."
Chapter Sixteen
"Dear Mark, I have
heard the term 'reuse' solutions and I have heard the term 'repurpose'
solutions. Are they the same? If they aren’t — what’s the difference?"
Chapter Seventeen
"Dear Mark, in our
organization, when one of the regulations changes for our industry, we spend a
lot of time and effort in updating our manuals..."
Chapter Eighteen
"Dear Mark, I'm the
manager of a group that makes training materials for our corporation. ...Now,
we have been given a new corporate initiative that tasks us with also providing
the same materials in a web-based format and making them available on a
just-in-time basis so that they can be accessed from a PDA."
Chapter Nineteen
"Dear Mark, you talk
about how organizations create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. What would
the ideal system look like for organizations wishing to take the most advantage
of technology for managing their knowledge?"
Chapter Twenty
"Dear Mark, I just
bought a new cell phone and, wow, I can ’ t believe what this thing can do. It
seems that we have just rounded a corner in the development of a new
technology."
Chapter Twenty-One
"Dear Mark, I’m a
knowledge worker — an individual contributor for a large semiconductor
manufacturer. I have two school-age children. When I look at what they are
learning in school, it scares me. It doesn’t seem to align in any way to what
goes on in the work that I do."