ConFigures

Book Club

I mentioned “my” book club in passing during my review of Introduction to Knowledge Management : KM in Business.  Since Jack Vinson sounded interested, I thought I’d explain a little more about the book club:  it’s one of my work group’s weekly activities.  We pick non-fiction books with applications to our work.  We discuss a chapter per week from whatever book we’re working through.  One person is responsible for putting out “thought questions” about the chapter the day before we meet and leading the discussion during the meeting; this role rotates weekly, as does the scribe role.  The questions and discussion are saved on a wiki page (one per chapter) for future reference (or if anyone misses a week, s/he can catch up there).  Sometimes there’s more discussion about a chapter in the online discussion forums after the hour meeting; if so, we link between the topic (in our Book Club Thoughts forum) and the wiki page.

I’m very happy my group is doing this.  Our manager participates along with us and encourages us to set aside time for this as part of our continued learning efforts (participation in the book club is voluntary).  I think we learn more from the books by discussing them than we would if we were just reading them individually.  No book has been perfect, but we can profit by flaws in a book, too, as long as we read the books critically (not the same as negatively!).  I think it’s a good team-building activity; it brings us out of our cubes and we exchange our thoughts about how/whether to apply lessons from a chapter to our own practices.  Even the shyer/quieter folks talk some during the book club.  It’s helping us improve as a group.