On Fri, 13 Oct 1995 BJLEM@aol.com wrote:
> Tapping the unlimited experience through out the digest, I am dealing with
> a difficult issue among educated individuals who hold to their knowledge
> as if it were "ALL POWER".
Creating *organizational* learning, not just personal learning, is an area
of current interest to me; I'll say some about what I've been thinking,
and hope that others will join in.
Here, I'll use "knowledge" to mean ability to do or accomplish something.
Tacit/Explicit -- there are things we know how to do, but can't explain
how to do. Before knowledge can be transferred easily, it has to be made
explicit. That is, the pople who know how have to create the "instruction
manual."
I've been enjoying Michael Polanyi, _Personal Knowledge_, in which he
reports a finding that as we get skilled at using a tool, the tool becomes
part of "self" and we forget the explicit "know how." That is, as we
increase our ability to *do*, we tend to lose the ability to explain
*how*. I take from this a reminder that it may be a real project to create
(or re-create) the explicit "how to" info, that the experts may not be
able to just lay it out directly.
In many organizations the culture, mental models, and rewards may
discourage sharing of knowledge. The Price Waterhouse Lotus Notes case is
often mentioned (references??) -- This is the largest Notes implementation
and was launched to facilitate sharing of knowledge, so that any PW
professional anywhere in the world would be able to use the best knowledge
of the whole firm on any case. (I may be exaggerating a little...) The
early results were disastrous; no one shared anything. They had, de
facto, a very expensive email system and no sharing. The more recent
stories are of progress thru addressing the cultural issues. In
particular, this is a culture that responds to rewards and measurement;
they now include "publishing" of learning that helps others in determining
pay and promotion.
Once the necessary "how to" manual is available to the person who needs
it, then what? For most examples of significant learning, some practice
and perhaps coaching is important for the novice to become sufficiently
skilled.
Nonaka and Takeuchi, _The Knowledge Creating Company_, has an exposition
of this which I find intriguing. They say "Our dynamic model of knowledge
creation is anchored to a critical assumption that human knowledge is
created and expanded through social interaction between tacit knowledge
and explicit knowledge. This conversion is a social process between
individuals and not confined within an individual." I take from this that
the *conversations* are important. It's not just a matter of getting an
excellent written description, but also the social conversation about
doing the task.
Perhaps that's enough for just now.
--
Richard Karash ("Rick") | <http://world.std.com/~rkarash>
Innovation Associates, Inc. | email: rkarash@world.std.com
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