SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Working with Knowledge, Information, and Data
November 10, 2009
By Bruce Rosenstein
An excerpt from Chapter 5: Teaching and Learning from "Living in More Than One World" by Bruce Rosenstein.
Knowledge is always embodied in a person; carried by a person; created, augmented, or improved by a person; applied by a person; taught and passed on by a person; used or misused by a person. The shift to the knowledge society, therefore, puts the person in the center.
The raw materials of teaching and learning are knowledge and its stepping stones, information and data. Peter Drucker began writing about knowledge workers in the 1957 book, "Landmarks of Tomorrow." He put the spotlight on knowledge and its importance to accomplishing the work of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, much as he had done earlier with his focus on the practice of management.
He warned that today's knowledge workers would have to know how to organize their information. "In the past," Drucker said, "we always had a desperate shortage of information. Now we have an incredible overload of data. And the executive of tomorrow will have to learn how to transform data into information, which very few know."
Since the terms data and information often are used incorrectly as interchangeable, it helps to think about the difference between the two, and the relation of each to knowledge.
Data are the kernels of what eventually may become knowledge, but require increasing levels of understanding as they first are transformed into information. Once information progresses further and is put to use, it then becomes knowledge. Understanding this continuum from data to information to knowledge helps give you a framework for understanding your work. It might be helpful to think of the stock tables in newspapers. If you look at the numbers and words in the tables without connecting them to any other kind of information or knowledge, you are looking at data. If you look at the rows of numbers and understand that you are looking at stock numbers for General Electric, you now have moved into the realm of information. If you understand those numbers, and can make connections to what you know about stocks, the stock market, the company, and the industry, you now have knowledge that can—if you choose—be used for a decision on whether to buy or sell the stock.
In 1990, Drucker wrote in The Economist (later reprinted in his collection "Managing for the Future"): "But data is not information. Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose. A company must decide what information it needs to operate its affairs, otherwise it will drown in data." Note that this was written when major databases such as LexisNexis existed, but before the World Wide Web. If we felt we were drowning in data before the Web, that seems like the good old days now! It's not only companies that are in danger of drowning in data. The same is true for individuals, whether they work in companies or alone.
Drucker's view of data and information echoed his belief in the importance of the external world. In order to learn new information and transform it into knowledge, we have to go outside ourselves, to other people, as well as to online and printed sources. By consulting these sources, we learn what is going on beyond our own four walls.
For Drucker, knowledge existed in its application, by putting it to work. It must be learned to begin with, and either remembered or accessed to be put to good use. He didn't discount the pleasure and satisfaction of learning for its own sake, but he liked to focus on practical applications, especially those that held benefits for other people.
Whether we are teaching, learning, or working, he gave us a lot to consider about how knowledge can be used in the most productive ways. He was a master of getting to the heart of the matter, and finding the most relevant pieces of data or information, which then could be transformed into knowledge. This has become increasingly important as we face so many competing sources of information, especially online.
Drucker laid out some first principles of knowledge work and the knowledge society on May 4, 1994, in the prestigious Edwin L. Godkin Lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. Although he had no way of knowing it at the time, the knowledge world was about to undergo a huge shift. The World Wide Web recently had been introduced, but was not yet in widespread use. It was more than four years before Google, but some search engines and directories such as Yahoo! were beginning to appear.
The key knowledge principles advanced in his lecture are:
•Continuous learning is necessary.
•The acquisition and application of knowledge is increasingly important as a competitive factor for individuals, organizations, industries, and countries.
•In the knowledge society, leadership is open to any individual.
•The availability of knowledge means hyper-competition for individuals, organizations, industries, and countries.
•Theoretical knowledge is not enough.
•Knowledge work requires making yourself understood by others, and the ability to learn how to integrate the specialized knowledge of others with your own.
•Knowledge workers need access to an organization to fulfill their work.
•There is no hierarchy of knowledge; whatever knowledge fits the situation is the right knowledge at the time.
Most of what Drucker said about working with knowledge and information holds true today, and we can see it through the lens of all the technological breakthroughs that have come since. He talked about the shift from farming and blue-collar, industrial, manual workers to knowledge workers, and the career choices now available to so many people, who were no longer restricted to following in their parents' footsteps. Knowledge workers, he claimed, had become the leading class of society, if not its ruling class.
What makes a knowledge worker? First of all, it is formal education, and often many years of it. It is the kind of work that can't be learned through apprenticeship, which was prevalent in previous centuries. It's a mistake to think knowledge workers succeed solely on their brainpower. Drucker noted that skill in working with one's hands is crucial to, for instance, a neurosurgeon. But manual dexterity alone will not qualify someone for this career. Formal schooling, knowledge, and experience are required, along with the manual requirements.
Despite the drastic changes we have seen because of the Internet since 1994, Drucker's ideas and principles continue to hold up well. The pace of technological change is even more breathtaking now, which makes it especially difficult for managers who are expected to mold the knowledge society, and the knowledge-based organizations they are entrusted to run. As Drucker pointed out, the emergence of the knowledge society presents both threats and opportunities for the individual knowledge worker. All the more reason to remember his emphasis on capitalizing on opportunities.
Bruce Rosenstein worked for USA Today for 21 years (until December 2008) as a librarian researcher. He is the author of Living in More Than One World (Berrett-Koehler, August 2009).
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Resources Index |
|
|
