People-focused knowledge management

Additional
Client Objectives
Client’s Personal
Knowledge
Client’s Personal
Information
Goal-Directed
Reasoning
by Client
Goal-Directed
Human
Reasoning
by Financial
Planner
Decision:
Selected
Alternative
Recommendation
Alternative 3
Recommerdation
Alternative 2
Recommendation
Alternative 1
Figure 3-9
Clients make decisions based on the financial planner’s 
recommendations. Copyright © 2002 Knowledge Research Institute, Inc.
Reproduced with permission.
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Actions Are Initiated by Knowledgeable People
83
The importance of this example is to illustrate that knowledge-
intensive processes such as financial planning can be illustrated and
communicated to coworkers to help build mental reference models
of the work they are to perform. Such models are also help-
ful to support knowledge mapping and explorations of how to
improve work.
Personal Knowledge Is Built from
Mental Models
We adopt the premise that operational knowledge is generally 
represented as mental models in our minds. Many of the mental
models are also reference models. The mental models encode situa-
tions that we know from personal experiences, that we have learned
from other sources, or that we have generated in our own minds from
thought experiments and speculation, goal-oriented reasoning, or
“just thinking” about something. Hence, mental models can reflect
reality or imagined situations. Beyond mental models, we possess
other kinds of mental constructs such as facts, perspectives, concepts,
truths and beliefs, judgments and expectations, methodologies, and
know-how.
Pursuant to our premise, much of our personal knowledge is
created by assembling our understanding, insights, expectations, and
preferred procedures into mental models (Johnson-Laird 1983, 1988;
Johnson-Laird & Byrne 2000; Nadel 2003; Wilson & Keil 1999). We
possess mental models on many levels of abstraction and in different
domains. Some mental models, such as those that describe how we
open a door or start a car, are concrete and may be deeply internal-
ized and automatized to the extent that they have become tacit.
Others consist of scripts that describe chains of tasks or events to
form our expectations as to how situations may develop or which
sequence of tasks we should follow to perform certain work. Still
others are more general schemata or are based on metaknowledge as
indicated in Figure 3-10 and discussed further in Appendix C.
People form lasting mental models that embody understanding of
what the world is about, how it works, and what is normal and per-
missible behavior. As situations and episodes are observed or expe-
rienced, they are compared with existing mental models — prior
knowledge. New mental models are formed, and prior models are
reinforced, expanded, or revised. Daily life leads to an ever-
expanding set of concepts, expectations, and responses in the form
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84
P
eople
-F
ocused
K
no
wledge
M
ana
gement