People-focused knowledge management

Poor Situation Understanding
Ability to acquire better information and repeat
Acting upon poor or inaccurate situation 
Sensemaking —
understanding —
May improve situation understanding.
Leads to creation and selection of undesirable
action-options.

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A Knowledge Model for Personal Situation-Handling
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person or team to find desirable action-options to handle novel and
complex situations in ways that will benefit all stakeholders. As such,
innovative Problem-Solving is required in difficult high-value-added
situations with considerable importance. This has been widely recog-
nized, and Problem-Solving principles and methods are treated by
many researchers and practitioners. Interested readers should consult
their works (Ackoff 1978; De Bono 2000; Gilhooly 1988; Schön 1983,
1987). In addition, many sources in society provide advice on
Problem-Solving and handling of dilemmas. Such sources include
parental guidance, role models, cultural storytelling, religious texts,
laws and legal principles, and cultural rules for good conduct.
As indicated, rapid Decision-Making and Implementation of
routine actions cannot handle less well understood situations effec-
tively and instead require creative Problem-Solving as part of multi-
stage Decision-Making. Because these situations are not well known,
reference models (such as patterns or templates) for desired actions
may not exist, thereby requiring Problem-Solving. Good Problem-
Solving uses methodological mental models to guide the process and
often relies on extensive application of personal critical thinking and
conceptual blending as part of “intuition.” For situations that are
quite unfamiliar or unknown, the best reference models may consist
of methodological metaknowledge. For situations that have just some
similarity with prior experiences, the applicable mental models may
consist of scripts and schemata.
In all cases, good Problem-Solving requires curiosity, flexible per-
spectives, and broad understanding of the general context. That
includes good topic domain knowledge, knowledge of adjacent
domains, world knowledge, and metaknowledge to support regular
work and innovation effectively. Deficiencies in either knowledge
domain often will result in repeating trivial and reactive actions,
whereas innovative and proactive actions bring about more desirable
outcomes. Finding good and effective solutions to complex and less
understood situations is of great worth to any enterprise. Hence,
Problem-Solving often becomes a major value-creation activity for
which we need to prepare deliberately and systematically. However,
few do.
In difficult situations, Problem-Solving often becomes an iterative
process that may include additional Sensemaking. For example, deci-
sion makers may need to return to the situation several times to
obtain more information leading to a better understanding. During
this process, it is frequently found that the situation itself, or the 
perception of it, may be changing, further complicating the 
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People-Focused Knowledge Management
Problem-Solving task. To address these challenges, Decision-Making/
Problem-Solving tasks rely largely on knowledge in the form of 
Decision-Making models and Problem-Solving models.