The Oxford Dictionaries has named "post-truth" as its 2016 International Word of the Year, defined by the dictionary as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.  

"It’s not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse," said Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries.  "Fueled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time." And, he suggests, it may become a defining word of our time.

In fact, it is quite true that It is becoming more and more difficult to identify the factual truths from the many many seemingly truths.  It is easy to find many such examples in our daily lives, including those messages spreading back and forth among our friends in social media and instant messages.  Unfortunately, popularity of social media and lowering of barriers in technologies is not only helping the positive advantage of encouraging interactions and collaborations, but at the same time unavoidably helping the broadcasting of these untrue information sometimes even without our conscious knowledge.

Starting for some years, this already has changed some of my behaviors, including:

• Selectively accepting connections in social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and take actions to report spams and abuses.  I respect people using their real names and portraits.  I pay more attentions to their backgrounds, their connections, what they said, and more importantly what they did.
• Not to open messages or digital files that I receive from unfamilar senders, and even friends I know.  Avoid spreading promotional messages as much as possible.  It is not my job to provide free services and make such promotions on behalf of other people.
• Not to re-forward messages received without screening.  Even though there are still mistakes, but be one of those taking actions to reduce the risks and damages.
• Increased critical thinking, and challenge myself with a lot more questions why to believe in all these things happening around us, and try as much as possible, or later if possible any judgments I would have placed.
• Sticking to a habit of THINK-BEFORE-ACTION which is very often not as easy as one might think.

Of course, these measures will not 100% give me guarantees, but at least something to start with.  I am sure more measures will come, and we'll keep on learning.

In business and management, TRUST is still important, whether it be trust within the organization, between the management and subordinates, between the partners, and with the customers.  It takes a lot of costs, time, efforts and resources to build trust, but can be destroyed in just a minute.

In my opinion, trust is an experience, or more accurately is a repetition of experience.  That's why consistency is necessary to build trust.  Maintaining consistency requires holding on to our believes and our values, which comes from our vision, mission and values.  That's why establishing the VMV for an organization is not something easy or simple.  It requires a deep understanding of what the management believes, what they actually do, what they are really sustaining, and how they interact with the staff and the customers in the market in practice.

In KMP, our emphasis of experiencing in KM journey holds.  The more we experience, the better truth we know.  It's not just listening.  Actions makes us see the clearer picture on different sides.  I still strongly believe, when the world is going more crazy, the higher the value it will be for those who are still holding on their belief of honesty and integrity.  Trust and integrity are still the foundation of a real relationship, and that's what included in our Code of Conduct, and Rules & Regulations of KMP.