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Cognitive Psychology, Knowledge Management, and Why Not Everything Is Important

The most recent entrant in the cottage industry of cognitive psychology books, Daniel Leviten’s new book The Organized Mind, attempts to help us sort through the vast amount of information demanding our attention daily. Leviten claims we are victims of our evolutionary and inadequate attentional filter. This deluge, or as one dead essayist, Eric Hobsbawm, called it “the great simultaneous circus show of sounds, shape, image, color, celebrity and spectacle that constitutes the contemporary cultural experience.”  (I don’t think information overload killed Hobsbawm: the 21st century did.)

Now, for the requisite “And what exactly does this have to do with KM?”  Cognitive psychology is the study of how human beings process information.  Obviously, information processing falls into KM’s wheelhouse so we ought to be checking our quiver to see what we have that can help.

One arrow in the KM quiver is to externalize our memory and what we know (content management) and reminders (Outlook calendar and alerts).

Another KM arrow to tame the information overload beast is knowledge mapping. It is also the perfect method for technical communities to identify what and who needs to be known. Using knowledge mapping, technical leaders can identify key content and designate “experts” to ensure questions get answered and the best answers are valid.   To help with knowledge loss, knowledge mapping can identify who the go-to experts are, and if they retired or left, their loss would wreak havoc in their organization’s brain trust.

The power of knowledge mapping is not confined to technical areas. Any function from HR to Marketing to Sales to Finance that needs to identify and retain critical knowledge can use knowledge mapping to do just that.

Here are APQC’s quick tips on how to ensure your knowledge maps identify the right people and content so that employees find the answers they need.