After Dirk Baecker has brilliantly laid out a whole new model how organisations and corporations should be viewed, I'd like to start my first posting in the humble System One Journal with a piece I've been thinking about for a rather long time now and that focusses more in the personal side and a more structural viewpoint of Knowledge Work.

It is beyond question that the way we work nowadays has radically changed, we are dealing with information on a constant basis and have to produce decisions, carve out meaning and extract sense out of what we see, hear, read. The question is, what kind of actions or skills are necessary to do that and how software could support this process.

Dorsey defines seven skills for knowledge workers:

1. Retrieving information means searching and retrieving information.
2. Evaluating information includes judging the quality of information and determine its relevance.
3. Organizing information by using various tools in various environments.
4. Analyzing information entails the challenge of "tweaking" meaning out of data and establish relationships.
5. Presenting information to various audiences in an appropriate format.
6. Securing information by keeping its existence assured.
7. Collaborating Around information by using and understanding collaboration tools.

That fits almost perfectly with the description of Efimova (amended by Röll) concerning knowledge work processes:

1. Finding (codified) Information
2. Making Sense of Information
3. Organising Personal Information (PIM)
4. Negotiating Meaning
5. "Creating" new ideas
6. Establishing and maintaining a personal network
7. Collaborating in Communities

What Efimova adds to the perspective of Dorsey is the more social point of view, where establishing and maintaining a network is a crucial task for a knowledge worker. The current rise of social software is also present here, as weblogs and wikis are part of that software branch. It seems that this shift is nothing but a late effect where the cause is once more the World Wide Web. The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect to help people work together and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. This circumstance is part of the culture that is inherent to this model of knowledge work, which is drawn from a deep experience of weblogs, wikis and the blogosphere. In fact, many skills listed above, can be accomplished or supported with weblogs and wikis, as Röll argues:

The analysis has shown that weblogs support a multitude of knowledge work processes: They integrate personal information management and communication, making them an alternative to using the email client as knowledge repository. With personal publishing, knowledge workers can get feedback on their work witout having to interrupt colleagues and without having to know in advance whom to ask. By making thought processes "visible" to others they encourage communication between knowledge workers and open up new possibilities of collaboration.
Whilst they do not "automate" knowledge work processes, weblogs do support them in the sense that they make processes that today are not or unsuitably supported by IT tools more effcient. By giving a direct benefit to the user, they do not have to be "forced" into using the tool: Using them personally [...] integrates well into daily processes.

The main difference of weblogs and wikis as personal knowledge management environment compared to other KM approaches is the bottom-up notion, some kind of grassroots movement. This personal notion has been around since the early days of knowledge management, but the connection of personal and organisational effectiveness has so far been ignored. One conclusion that all concepts focusing on the individual share, is the opinion that the individual is the driver behind knowledge management adoption and use.
Employees must be able and willing to exploit their knowledge their personal capital.

It seems obvious, but is not often said that knowledge management works best when knowledge workers take the initiative and responsibility for what they know, don't know and need to know. Doing so not only makes the individual more valuable to the corporation, it also enhances the value of intellectual capital for the corporation.

Using the classical information technology perspective, that rather sticks to systems than to people as the examples above, Mack, Ravin and Byrd find five basic task groups for knowledge workers:

1. Capture/Extract (from datasources or colleague)
2. Analyse/Organise (in folders or project workspaces)
3. Find (documents, information pieces or people)
4. Create/Synthesize
5. Distribute/Share (email, project workspace or in meetings)

Shneiderman defines the four basic activities of users as

1. Collect
   The first stage of activity, which the user might return to repeatedly. Usually she collects information, to reach the second stage.
2. Relate
   Second stage of activity, which involves relationships with others. It includes consulations with peers, mentors, friends, family and the self in order to relate the collected information to other information, opinions and existent knowledge.
3. Create
   By now, information (collect) and communication (relate) technologies are booming, so it is natural to ask what might be the next revolution?. Predictions in this field are rather diffcult, because those activities might include composing a song, planning a party, launching a business, writing a scientific paper or organizing a social movement, in general meaning personal creativity.
4. Donate
   The last stage of activity is most likely related to weblogs, because publishing information, ideas or opinions is one mode to disseminate those memes back to the memepool that might have influenced their creation.
   

Ramana Rao (via Manuel Simoni) has some other typology, that pretty much resembles that of Shneiderman:

Consider the typical information work flow of a professional:

• Retrieve — collect information from a variety of sources
• Extract — extract data, facts, examples
• Arrange — arrange documents and facts for use now or later
• Present — compose information into artifacts of value

Search is just about the retrieve and the -eaping is pretty much left to the person. Does knowledge worker come to mind? My all time favorite word for the human process [...] is sensemaking because it reaches to even the deepest levels and the broadest extent of what we are after.
Some of my friends, especially these two—actually pretty much all of my friends and yours too—are incredible sensemaking machines.

It is obvious that none of the models describes the true work of a so-called knowledge worker in a simple, intuitive yet exhaustive way. All of them silently assume, that creation is a separate process, taking place in a well defined manor and a certain time frame. But if we just think of ourselves preparing a report or writing a text, our work includes constant switching between modes and creation is not only taking place on our computers or with a writing pen, but is happening almost constantly in our head. We read, combine, analyse, structure and create information constantly, with changing internal priorities in order to be able to work. It is true that the creation process is an important phase and that might be the reason for the present models. But better model of reality would incorporate the fact of constant creation.

Nearby: It reminds me very much of Doug Engelbarts NLS, where the "NLS is: An Instrument/Vehicle for helping humans to operate within the domain of complex information structures. Context represents concepts and Structure represents relationships, helping humans to Compose, Navigate (Move about, See, Modify), Study complex information structures."

A screenshot of the legendary NLS, showing the general architecture of NLS in NLS.