Push vs pull, information vs knowledge
Posted on: June 11, 2012
Harold Jarche wrote about pulling informal learning over pushing for training.
He started by listing eight demand-side knowledge management principles by Nick Milton:
- People don’t pay attention to knowledge until they actually need it.
- People value knowledge that they request more highly than knowledge that is unsolicited.
- People won’t use knowledge, unless they trust its provenance.
- Knowledge has to be reviewed in the user’s own context before it can be received.
- One of the biggest barriers to accepting new knowledge is old knowledge.
- Knowledge has to be adapted before it can be adopted.
- Knowledge will be more effective the more personal it is.
- They won’t really know it until they do it.
But there is a difference between information and knowledge. Knowledge is information that is meaningful and internalized by the learner. Information is what people externalize and hoard, share, or other otherwise use.
So I might modify the principles slightly as follows:
- People don’t pay attention to information until they actually need it.
- People value information that they request more highly than information that is unsolicited.
- People won’t use information, unless they trust its provenance.
- Information has to be reviewed in the user’s own context before it can be received.
- One of the biggest barriers to accepting new information is old knowledge.
- Information and knowledge have to be adapted before it can be adopted.
- Knowledge will be more effective the more personal it is.
- They won’t really know it until they teach it or do it.
But otherwise, I agree with the overall principle of “Training is Push. Informal learning is mostly Pull” because in the latter the learners take more control and ownership of their learning.
The era of front loading and just-in-case “learning” is setting. Already rising is networked and just-in-time learning. Organizations that do not recognize this yet will have to play catch up.
