Managing what you know

Professionals, with the ongoing need to express themselves in valid and useful ways, face an important challenge: how to equip ourselves with the knowledge and skills required to meet the increasing demands of clients and other stakeholders. While this appears obvious for those who speak to audiences as their primary job, it is by no means less important for those who have to provide answers and make decisions in response to clients, colleagues, suppliers, and regulators in the ordinary course of their work. While some professionals express their knowledge through speech or in writing; most express what they know through their decisions and actions.

Regardless of how we express what we know, that our effectiveness is in large measure determined by our stock of knowledge is a fact we cannot ignore. From medicine to marketing, insurance to investment research, what a person knows matters and often sets the foundation for and limits of professional success. Just as the jailor at an ancient prison asked his strange inmates “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” today’s knowledge professional cannot take for granted the question of how to increase his/her stock of knowledge. So how can you, as a knowledge worker increase your stock-in-trade?

First, knowledge can be acquired passively (in the course of everyday work) or actively (through deliberate steps to fill recognized gaps). While passively acquired, or tacit, knowledge is essential for progress in any field, it is by no means adequate for significant success. At best, it guarantees that a person can address routine issues. Because active learning is vital for distinction, the remainder of this piece addresses how you can acquire knowledge through active means.

Second, it is important to have at least a rough map of your discipline. While some will define this from an academic perspective, most professionals will have to answer from a practice perspective. If you’re an economist, for example, are you a teaching economist, a research economist, a consulting economist or some combination of the three? This helps you determine what knowledge areas would be vital to your effectiveness.

Third, you need to know the sub-territories within your area of calling. What subjects or topics would you have to master to become effective at addressing issues in your professional area? Investment bankers, for example, are expected to be well versed in business origination, asset valuation and deal structuring as basic aspects of they know and can do.

Fourth, decide how you will address the gaps in each sub-territory you have identified. Essentially, your learning is not a quest for superiority over your peers. Rather, it should be viewed as a conquest of your own ignorance in each identified sub-territory. Again, there are two paths to conquest? One involves formal training such as enrolling in professional exams or academic programmes. Formal knowledge acquisition imposes its own discipline on the learner and requires certain steps for the award of a certificate. Informal or ‘self-administered’ learning is more flexible, requires more creativity and serves the purpose of tailoring your learning to your own professional development especially on the job. Very importantly, while formal programs provide general guidelines and concepts, disciplined use of informal training exposes you to techniques and applications that are more situation-specific and hence equip you to deal with job tasks in a way that formal training usually does not. Devotion to self-study exposes the learner to the wealth of other people’s knowledge and experiences at a much lower cost than formal learning.

Fifth, develop a system to manage your own learning and growth. For most people, this would be a combination of formal and informal learning. Carefully select your professional and academic programs with you medium-to-long term career goals in mind. For informal learning: at regular intervals, create your own learning curriculum and place yourself on a definite mental diet. Search out open-enrolment programmes that can further your development and apply yourself to studying and applying yourself to the content of professional and trade books, magazines, journal articles, case studies and technical notes from reputable institutions in your profession.

Sixth, the Internet provides a wealth of materials on virtually every field and sub-territories of professional. Whatever you seek to do, someone has done it and or has written about it before. For young undergraduates and recent graduates, it’s a good place to start building working knowledge and a library. A person can begin to understand an industry and learn the techniques applied in that industry even before taking on the first job in that industry.

Seven, your time and energy must go into it. It’s not enough to enrol for exams or build a library, a professional must invest ample time studying, reviewing, digesting, and revising what is available. For example, studying only 75 minutes (1 hour 15 minutes) a day, 360 days a year is equivalent to 450 hours of active leaning in just one year while 2 hours a day results in 720 hours a year. Doing this for 5 years translates to 3,600 hours of learning in just five years! Imagine what that can add to your knowledge base and skill level. More importantly, it would multiply your level of impact as an individual and as part of a team.

Finally, it is important to note that in the same way that dwelling in a cave does not make a geologist, working in a knowledge environment (a university, a consulting firm, or a technology firm) or sleeping in the midst of books does not, in itself, make a knowledgeable professional. The content of journal articles, books, case studies, research policy reports is mere information. True knowledge resides in people and each one of us must accept the responsibility and execute our own strategy manage what we know and maximize our impact.

David is a financial adviser and economic strategist. He works for a Lagos-based consulting outfit advising corporations, project promoters and governments on investments and economic policy. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Energy Risk Professional (ERP) designations.

 

David Adeoye