Four questions to begin your personal knowledge management practice

I’ve made the claim that effective knowledge management must be personal at its foundation. This led one colleague to ask the natural question of “how do I get started?”

If you’re a knowledge worker, understand that you are already doing knowledge management in some form. You have an existing practice, even if you may not give yourself credit for it. Understanding what you are doing now is the best way to make it better.

Here are four questions that will help you tease out your existing PKM practice:

1. What deliverables are you expected to create?
2. When and how do you reflect on how and what you create?
3. Where do you feel most/least comfortable in your work?
4. What are the edges you encounter in your work?

Developing answers to these questions will surface strengths you can build on and weaknesses you will want to shore up. As you develop answers, you will also want to assess what degrees of freedom you have to work with. What restrictions does your organization or environment impose that you will need to bypass or overcome?

There’s a lot of attention and interest in the PKM field now. So there is a wealth of information to tap into. But the best place to start is with what you are already doing to meet the current demands of your work.