Using Mentoring and Coaching for Knowledge Management LO29961

From: Das Sujatha (Sujatha.Das@Siemens.Com)
Date: 03/03/03


Greetings!

Below is an excerpt which I read from some articles on the net (forgot the
site address). The first para was on Mentoring and Coaching. It read thus:

"Mentoring and Coaching have become very popular methods of training and
knowledge transfer in recent years. By matching new or inexperienced
employees with more experienced senior personnel, the intangible, tacit
knowledge of your industry or organization can be passed on effectively.
It allows the newer employees to grow without learning the hard way and
creates a bond between Mentor/Coach and Protégé. This is particularly
useful for organizations with a large population of employees approaching
retirement age, steep learning curves, or high turnover rates. Mentoring
and coaching also allow the more experienced personnel to "give back" to
the organization."

Soon after I came across this information in an article on Knowledge
Management:

"While information entails an understanding of the relations between data,
it generally does not provide a foundation for why the data is what it is,
nor an indication as to how the data is likely to change over time.
Information has a tendency to be relatively static in time and linear in
nature. Information is a relationship between data and, quite simply, is
what it is, with great dependence on context for its meaning and with
little implication for the future. Beyond relation there is a pattern,
where pattern is more than simply a relation of relations. It embodies
both a consistency and completeness of relations which, to an extent,
creates its own context.

When a pattern relation exists amidst the data and information, the
pattern has the potential to represent knowledge. It only becomes
knowledge, however, when one is able to realize and understand the
patterns and their implications. The patterns representing knowledge have
a tendency to be more self-contextualizing. That is, the pattern tends, to
a great extent, to create its own context rather than being context
dependent to the same extent that information is. A pattern which
represents knowledge also provides, when the pattern is understood, a high
level of reliability or predictability as to how the pattern will evolve
over time, for patterns are seldom static. Patterns which represent
knowledge have a completeness to them that information simply does not
contain.

Wisdom arises when one understands the foundational principles responsible
for the patterns representing knowledge being what they are. And wisdom,
even more so than knowledge, tends to create its own context. These
foundational principles are universal and completely context independent."

Today most organization's are pursuing Mentoring and Coaching techniques
for promoting Knowledge Management. With this perspective in mind, I was
wondering the impact and results of the knowledge assets, with respect to
the statement above.

Anyone will like to share their experiences of using Mentoring and
Coaching techniques to develop knowledge assets? Any thoughts / ideas /
opinions? Just for understanding different perspectives.

Best regards,

Sujatha Das

-- 

Das Sujatha <Sujatha.Das@Siemens.Com>

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