Mountain Quest Institute
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Mountain Quest Institute
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ICAP (The Intelligent Complex Adaptive Professional) The knowledge worker is a major part of the workforce; that is, those workers who use their experience, education, and mental capacity to deal with the problems and opportunities arising from complexity, uncertainty, and rapid change. Knowledge workers are individuals whose work effort is centered around creating, using, and sharing knowledge. Over the past decade the focus on knowledge management has encouraged organizations and workers to recognize the importance of knowledge in the workplace, and to search for new capabilities and processes that ensure the increase and best use of this resource for organizations. See KM, Learning and the Knowledge Worker (PDF, 11 pages). One of the resources provided by MQI for use in the Technology Management Institutes emerging across India is an article titled “Managing Self in Troubled Times: Banking on Self-efficacy” that was published in April 2009, Effective Executive XII(04), pp. 56-82. Icfai University Press has provided the PDFs for the three magazines including these articles so you may print them in that format. Note the copyright for these three articles: “… In the spirit of collaborative advantage, with attribution, any part of this paper may be copied and distributed freely.” Since all action comes from the Self—either consciously or unconsciously—our frame of reference is the Self, considered as an intelligent, self-organizing complex adaptive learning system (ISOCAS), more commonly referred to as the mind/brain/body for this magazine and it is available to download. ICAPs relate in a new way to their organization and other knowledge workers. They bring personal experience, uniqueness, and diverse perceptions, capabilities, and opportunities to their organization. A strong sense of self is essential for productive interactions, open communication and self improvement, and when accompanied by a willingness to learn and collaborate will provide the foundation for organizational flexibility and growth. Simultaneously, the organization will need to support a culture of sharing, the way work gets done, because it is the exchange of knowledge that leverages knowledge and produces intelligent behavior as an organization. As their careers evolve, their responsibilities will increase and their knowledge will become broader. At the same time, the environment will become more dynamic and challenging, necessitating additional cognitive and behavioral skills well beyond logic, analysis and authoritative management. For career success, knowledge workers must become multidimensional, expanding their competencies beyond their professional discipline. The multidimensionality of their organization will depend on its knowledge workers. One aspect of that multidimensionality is the knowledge worker's capabilities to work in multiple domains simultaneously, moving in and out of those domains as needed, combining the physical, the mental, the intuitive, and the emotional to continuous expand their knowledge, capabilities, capacity, networks and perceptions. (See graphic on The Continuously Expanding Multidimensionality (single PowerPoint slide) of the Knowledge Worker) For a new age a new set of integrative competencies provide connective tissue, creating the knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors that support and enhance other competencies. These integrative competencies have a multiplier effect through their capacity to enrich the individual's cognitive abilities while enabling integration of other competencies, leading to improved understanding, performance, and decisions. Integrative competencies can be understood from two perspectives. The first is from the individual's viewpoint. Here the competencies help the individual to deal with the larger, more complex aspects of their organization and its environment. They either integrate data, information, or knowledge to give the individual more capability or they help the individual perceive and comprehend the complexity around them by integrating and clarifying events, patterns, and structures in their environment. From the organization's view the integrative competencies help strengthen the organization's capacity to deal with its environment by creating programs, networks and cultures that pull together capabilities that can more effectively handle uncertainty and complexity. Integrative competencies that the Institute continues to focus on are:
Additional Resources
DATA collected at the 2005 eGov Community Meeting (Washington, D.C.)
Key Definitions Adaptation is the process by which an organization improves its ability to survive and grow through internal adjustments. Adaptation may be responsive, internally adjusting to external forces, or it may be proactive, internally changing so that it can influence the external environment. Complexity is the condition of a system, situation, or organization that is integrated with some degree of order but has too many elements and relationships to understand in simple analytic or logical ways. Knowledge workers are individuals whose work effort is centered around creating, using, and sharing knowledge. Personal Knowledge Management refers to the individual and personal capacity to continuously learn, adapt and manage their knowledge for professional and personal success. |
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This Web Site copyright 2008 by Alex and David Bennet. For educational and knowledge sharing purposes and in the context of knowledge mobilization, permission is given to copy and distribute materials on this web site with attribution.Send mail to adean@mountainquestinstitute.com with questions or comments about this web site.Send mail to dereklowe@mountainquestinstitute.com with problems or technical difficulties with this web site. Last modified: 07/08/09 |
