Already in the 90s we began to speak insistently about the Information Society, and now we know that the information available in the world doubles every few months.
Perhaps we do not always find what we are looking for, but there is certainly a lot that is offered to us and we must know how to extract the maximum knowledge from the available information.
This is a challenge to face: getting to what is offered, separating the good from the mediocre, and incorporating it into our store of knowledge.
Hardly anyone questions lifelong learning anymore, and, beyond attending courses regularly, it forces us to deal well with the many technical and scientific information, printed or electronic, that we can access.
We certainly live immersed in the knowledge and innovation economy. We have been transforming ourselves into the new knowledge workers that Peter Drucker - whom, now deceased, we can imagine in peace, but hardly at rest - had been describing.
If the PC is our tool, the information becomes, in many cases, the raw material of our daily work. We must master the knowledge of the field in which we move, and we must also be generating new knowledge: expanding the field. This seems to be the formula for prosperity, survival, access to the future in today's economy.
A little over ten years ago, two concepts related to the Information Society began to spread separately: in companies, knowledge management; and in universities, the sufficiency or information skills. The first (knowledge management) seemed to suppose a kind of conceptual reengineering of the traditional information management systems in companies, paying more attention to the technical, functional and relational information of business activity: know what, know how, the know why, the know who… The second (information literacy) arose among documentary filmmakers and in some universities, in tune with the growing concern for self-directed lifelong learning.
The idea of information sufficiency - today, rather than speaking of sufficiency, it was necessary to speak of excellence - already aimed at the access, use and exploitation of the growing information available, even though we still did not use the Internet.
Since those 90s, on the one hand, the advancement of knowledge management in companies has not always been satisfactory (despite the powerful tools available), and on the other, information has continued to multiply significantly and has been made available to us through of ICT. Today, those concepts - knowledge management and information literacy - have very visibly approached each other in the business world, to enter into synergy with the emerging figures of the new manager and the new worker, also very especially with the idea of lifelong learning, of course with the need to innovate, and, ultimately, with the evolution of the economy.
In organizations, the skill in the use and exploitation of accessible internal and external information seems more than necessary, although we do not always possess it to the precise degree.
Perhaps the new generations will leave the universities with solid preparation for lifelong learning, but companies already need a greater dose of knowledge today, to better face their challenges of competitiveness and prosperity in the new economy.
The concept of business excellence has evolved with the new realities, and it does not seem to be questioned that we must also be excellent in the translation of information into knowledge, and in the flow of this in companies. Everything certainly points to the need for us to significantly improve our information competence.
In recent years this concern has been emphasized, and as an example I now reproduce a paragraph from the director of the Navarran think tank Institución Futuro, Julio Pomés, in Expansión, in 2002: “When we allow new technologies to hypnotize us, we fall into gluttony swallowing overwhelming information that prevents us from concentrating on the capital: synthesis. There is something worse than not having information: lacking selection criteria that filter and provide only the references that have meaning to study an issue. When the one who must decide does not have all the information, but knows the really essential information, he usually applies an additional common sense, which frequently achieves holistic intuitions, more brilliant than those derived from valuing non-relevant information ”.
Here we were already alerted to that kind of gap between information and knowledge. It seemed years ago, and still today, that the important thing was to manage with technology to access information, but we must also focus our attention on how to translate information into knowledge, in what we call lifelong learning, throughout and width of our working life. Neither would it be wrong to delve into the passage from knowledge to action -or from knowledge to innovation-, but let us now focus on the automatic non-achievement of new knowledge, from the available technical and scientific information.
And there is another important message in the reproduced text: the growing importance of intuition in the profile of new managers and knowledge workers.
Intuition should not be a substitute for careful analysis of accurate information, but it is a valuable supplement from which we can derive greater benefit. It helps us to read between the lines, to understand, to evaluate, to establish connections, to abstract, to apply what we have learned.
How we relate to information
It can be said that many of us are human processors of information: we consult many papers and generate more. We continually learn and contribute, through innovation, to extend the frontiers of our field of knowledge.
What we do is full of knowledge: what we have acquired, what we continue to acquire and what we have generated ourselves.
However, the transition from information (which lies on supports) to knowledge (which lies on people) is extremely complex - nothing automatic - and invites analysis and reflection.
It can be said that the treatment of the much information that is offered to us consists of the following steps:
- Awareness of the need for information Definition of the search pattern Identification of the sources Access to them (human, printed or electronic) Location of useful information Parallel discoveries Examination of the information Interpretation and evaluation of the same Contrast of information. Integration and learning. Combination with previous knowledge. Establishment of connections. Possible inferences and abstractions. Synthesis and conclusions. Systemic reflection. Application and diffusion.
Indeed, managers and knowledge workers, before acting -open new business lines, carry out a study, analyze opportunities, define a project, prepare an offer, design a process or product, organize an activity, prepare a plan, solve a problem etc. - we inform ourselves, we learn, we reflect, and we finally apply what we have learned, or we spread it. Each new knowledge must fit into the existing acquis and contribute to results. Here then is the list of subtasks of information processing as raw material; subtasks that mark, on the one hand, the path of our self-directed lifelong learning, and on the other, constitute a good part of our daily performance: knowledge is basically the capacity to act (because ignorance incapacitates us).
We are alerted to the importance of defining good search patterns, of distinguishing rigorous and well-founded information from that which is not, of connecting some knowledge with others, of generating enriching syntheses… Without a doubt and among others, we face a particularly significant challenge: evaluating the information we access, putting our critical thinking to work.
We can, for example, find documents on the Internet with dense and even convincing content, which, however, is already outdated and outdated; we can also allow ourselves to be persuaded by information that is not rigorous, or that is formulated with interests of questionable legitimacy.
On the other hand, we do not always know on what date an information was written, nor do we have sufficient data on the author and its sources.
Because they are even more specific, this sometimes happens with the online courses offered within the framework of continuous training: we sometimes lack sufficient references about the author and the documentation that has been used in the design.
Due to the rhythm with which the fields of knowledge advance, we will all have to get used to generating information -metain information: date, authors, sources, references, summaries, connections, dissemination, etc.- about the information that we ourselves generate, and to miss it when we make inquiries to increase our knowledge. But neither is it always easy to combine the new knowledge with the previous one, or the elaboration, where appropriate, of deductions and abstractions, or the application of the conclusions reached.
Carrying out these subtasks satisfactorily is so important that we cannot avoid an analysis of the necessary competences. We need operational skills (knowledge of the field, search and inquiry strategy, handling of tools, ability to understand and synthesize, questioning and evaluating information, materialization of learning…), and also skills of a more personal nature (self-knowledge, eagerness to learn)., flexibility, concentration, tenacity, intuition, critical thinking…). But these would only be the “pull” type informational competences, that is, those that we put in place to learn; we would have to add others of the “push” type, for when we are the ones who have to generate information for others.
Indeed, our profile of managers and knowledge workers forces us to generate information for others: to express ourselves orally, but above all to write.
Let us add other informational competences, both operational (allegation, written communication…) and personal (concept management, assertiveness, empathy, collective spirit…).
Many large companies have deployed their competency models for human resource management, but informational competencies, such as conversational ones, may have been underestimated, if not pre-empted in some case. The fact is that we cannot take our information skills in the knowledge economy for granted: great if we are proficient in this area, but let's check it out.
We must remember that, in our assignment of meaning to signifiers (that is, in the study of information), various elements influence: our interests, concerns and desires; our previous knowledge and experiences; the beliefs and mental models that filter reality…
In other words, we have to make an effort of objectivity that we are not always aware of. In other words, on the one hand we have to neutralize endogenous interferences (and in his case exogenous), and on the other we have to develop the diverse informational competences (personal and operational) to which we were referring.
conclusion
We have spoken of 16 precise steps in the treatment of technical and scientific information as raw material, and we must finally insist that, in general, any deficiency in each of them drags on the following. What is at risk is the acquisition of the knowledge that is necessary at all times, and in this regard we would insist that perhaps there is something worse than ignorance: false learning.
If good learning can already become obsolete in a short time and we are not always attentive to its renewal, imagine how dangerous wrong or incomplete learning can be, perhaps due to various sensitive deficiencies: in the use of tools, in insight and tenacity during the search, in critical thinking during evaluation, in the rigor of inferences, in the integration of knowledge, etc.
And one last detail for the interested reader who has accompanied us thus far: let's not forget the possible serendipitous discoveries during our access to information. We can come across interesting information that, although they do not respond to our search pattern, it is convenient to leave them registered for the near future.
We find these kinds of casual discoveries behind many technical and scientific advances.
We would keep saying things - like, for example, that we almost never exhaust the possibilities of learning from each piece of information considered valuable - but we leave it for today. Don't forget to test your informational skills.
