People-focused knowledge management

It Is Always Hard to Grasp the Whole Coherently
Stories are important for building context-specific personal mental
models. In general, synthesizing isolated knowledge objects into 
new cohesive patterns or contextual models without being given a
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People-Focused Knowledge Management
framework for structure is an innovative and creative act that often
is difficult to perform and perform well. Whereas we may know all
the individual knowledge objects that may apply to deal with a 
situation — principles, theories, concepts, particulars, and other
matters — it requires complex synthesis and originality to integrate
them into a new and effective mental framework that will be appro-
priate for handling the situation.
That is why it is hard for a mechanical engineering graduate who
knows all the theoretical principles and basic engineering practices
to create the design of a working machine before he has formed a
“story” — a congruent model — in his mind of how all the elements
fit together. It is much easier to be told a story that provides a struc-
ture into which the weave can be created for the specific purpose and
be memorized as a routine, operational model, script, schema, or gen-
eralized pattern, depending on the level of abstraction with which he
will work. From a connectionist principle, this involves conceptual
blending of the story with his prior knowledge to create a new mental
space that is applicable for his purpose (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).
As people gain deep understanding of how to handle complicated
situations effectively in the form of internally consistent stories and
mental models, they tend to internalize the approaches to handle such
situations as “second nature.” In these cases, people will automati-
cally choose such “natural” approaches since they are easy (they
know well how to perform them), they are acceptable, and they are
executed at low psychological costs.
In our minds, we often link isolated knowledge objects with other
knowledge objects to form understandings of relationships, implica-
tions, and other combination characteristics. We synthesize to create
a weave — a mental model, a story-like construct for a particular
context. To serve this purpose, mental models take many forms and
may be encoded descriptions of a static scene, a dynamic episode, a
complex situation, and so on. Stories have significance for many
aspects of KM — such as how knowledge is shared among people,
how knowledge is acquired and institutionalized, how education is
performed, and how knowledge diagnostics is conducted.
Stories are important when illustrating and communicating
specifics of a context. From a wider perspective, they are even more
important when providing deep insights into culture, folklore, and
ideologies — even religion — through their underlying meanings.
Many stories are metaphors that provide partial, but important,
understanding of complex aspects of approved and accepted behav-
iors, societal aspects, and life in general.
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Mental and Structural Reference Models
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