There is a view that information should be free. It practically is anyway; we can Google just about anything.

Technical standards, like those produced by Standards Australia, currently face a difficult business model with that expectation of free. While they are not a money-making factory – not in it to make a dollar, they are in it to make a difference – there is a tension between freely available and open access, and the costs of that availability.

A fundamental requirement for technical standards is that we can undeniably trust the content. It’s a cost of doing business in a technical field.

Progression in work or career requires the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations. David Epstein, in his book “Range”, identifies that having a wide range of exposures to different situations and problem-solving experiences is superior to being able to do one thing really well.

Be able to take your knowledge and apply it to new or different situations. Problem-solving in complex and unpredictable fields relies on bespoke thinking and a wide range of options. Repetition of a task does not predict the ability to solve complex problems. Practise is important, but the breadth of training predicts breadth of the transfer.

“Knowledge Management” (KM) for organisations is an established arena. Businesses can catalogue and track the implicit knowledge of their workers using (blackbox) software. There has also been an influx of methods for managing, capturing, and utilising “lessons learned”.

The ideas around KM for businesses are well developed and “google-able”. There are consultants and books and software programs available for that.

For knowledge workers, knowledge management is almost crucial to progress. Knowledge management for individuals should be a standard part of our day: a default activity managing our own knowledge.

No matter where you go, they can’t take your knowledge away.

Documentation and records for knowledge work must be useful, concise (where required), accurate, and most importantly, used. Documentation and records have several aspects to be considered: purpose, audience, usage, content, detail level, length, structure, source, history, future, lifecycle, outcome, and approval requirements. It’s too easy to “start a document” without thinking through the aspects listed above. Plan the document and its lifecycle, before starting it. Otherwise you have a pile of puzzle pieces without knowing what the finished picture looks like. There are too many unfinished, unapproved, and unused documents out there already. Start writing with the finish in mind.

The book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear outlines handy ways to develop good habits, and break bad habits. Towards the back of the book are some gems about competency, context, and personality. Competence is highly dependent on the context (i.e. topic or circumstance or situation). This can be extended to dependence on personality too, by definition of who you are and what you like. Boiling water softens a potato, but hardens an egg. So the effects of boiling water are different depending on the circumstance. Similarly, defining your competence is entirely dependent on the depth of the topic being queried.

One way of considering competence is by determining what level your knowledge is at on a topic. This can be graded by 1. Read, 2. Write or 3. Teach. A person with “read” level can read or review a document about the topic, and know if it is correct or contradictory to other information. So there is familiarity and recognition, but not deep or extensive knowledge. A person with “write” level can write the document, report, or specification. This would also include, in technical industries, the relevant calculations. The “teach” level can, as it implies, teach others about the topic.

Competency in knowledge work, like engineering, is a hot topic. We live in a built environment, and when things go wrong a legitimate question is, whether those involved were competent at their job. Competency has been defined as having the right knowledge, skills and experience in a task or topic. There are numerous attempts at describing what is needed to be competent in specialist areas (engineering in general, pipeline engineering or systems engineering specifically). But sometimes these frameworks fall short of telling a person who wants to get competent, what to do next, to attain that knowledge, skills and experience.

Credibility is awarded by the receiver of information, to the communicator. In other words, a person can’t simply declare they are credible (that would backfire) – in the end, it is up to the recipient to decide.

An accepted method of ‘declaring’ credibility is through credentials – degrees, awards, titles.

Training and schooling (i.e., engineering credentials) are important, but with the freeing up of information, with many solutions ‘google-able”, and some credentials easily achieved, credibility is not solely dependent on that credential anymore. Credibility is agnostic to a role or organisation. It’s up to individuals to display credibility through actions and behaviour.

Competence and credibility are similar. In a world that moves faster every day, and in a world that needs everything to get easier and to take less time, it is getting harder to determine someone’s competence for the task to be done. “Competence” has been defined as having knowledge, skills and experience on a task or topic. More tangibly, these aspects can be described as having evidence of: outputs (pictures and words), interactions (having spoken to or otherwise interacted with others), and stories (what other people say about you and the topic). And if competency is established, credibility should follow.

“100 words a day” sounds just like it’s written, and probably doesn’t need explanation. It appeals because it represents enough words to get a thought out there, but it’s not too many words to be daunting every day. Except Saturday. No 100WADs on Saturdays around here.

The fun and challenge of #100wordsaday is after the writing of a couple of paragraphs, the next step is to go back to edit down (or up) to the exacting requirement of 100 words. It tests editing skills, and has forced the deletion of extraneous words, and also the addition of another adjective sometimes.

Risk, quality and competency are almost inseparable in a well-run business, or, in an astute individual.

Managing risk through effective controls inherently means high quality outputs and high competence levels. A competent person or business naturally produces quality work and operates at lower risk levels. Focussing on quality naturally results in focussing on competence and risk.

A well-established metaphor for good project management is the three-legged stool, representing the tensions amongst managing cost, time and quality. Similarly, but also differently, is the intertwined nature of risk, quality and competence. Manage one well and the others should follow.