Personal toolkit A framework for personal knowledge management tools

The seven information skills of Personal Knowledge Management have been clarified in that article with the intent of identifying challenges that institutions of higher education and global enterprises face as they address the business challenges of worker productivity and effectiveness in the twenty-first century. These challenges of harnessing and directing the intellectual power of knowledge workers are both educational challenges and management challenges, and both educators and managers need to address those challenges. The focus has not been on the business disciplines, such as marketing or finance, but on a set of information skills, which crosscut the business disciplines. It is argued that it these information skills, intertwined with technology tools, that provide the framework for addressing the twenty-first century challenge of knowledge worker productivity. Technology serves the personal strategy of the knowledge worker and does not drive it.
The article focuses on the development of a set of practical tools for managing organizational complexity. It’s seeks to bring together work processes, knowledge management, and business strategy development in the process of cutting through the clutter of current workplaces. Personal Knowledge Management, with its seven information skills, can be viewed as a toolkit in approaching the riddle of the productivity of knowledge work. Organizations, and knowledge workers, will continue to face the challenge of being open to new developments and ideas and, at the same time, creating and sustaining the kind of focus that organizations must have to succeed. Managing that creative tension, with the help of Personal Knowledge Management and toolkit, will be critical to knowledge worker success in the twenty-first century.