I’ve had a couple of workshop events with clients in recent weeks where we have gone back to some of KM’s first principles, using some foundational quotations.
Polanyi’s “We know more than we can tell” is a great one to explore, and I like David Snowden’s build “..and we tell more than we can ever write down”.
When it comes to KM having a real business impact though – actually changing something to generate value and/or create improvement – which after all, is the reason we do KM – then I think it’s incomplete.
I’d like to add a third part to the picture (if I might be so bold as to stand on the shoulders of giants).
So here’s the first viewing of a Polanyi/Snowden/Collison triptych.
We know more than we can ever tell,
we tell more than we can ever write down,
and we write down more than we ever act upon.
October 14, 2011 at 7:56 pm
Looks & feels good: I see this as a mapping or hierarchy from the more abstract “constructive ambiguity” of an idea to the more concrete “crystalisation” of an action.
Yes, you gain through structured framework and action; but you also lose something. Or are there “constructively ambiguous” actions?
October 14, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Sorry Chris, I’m not sure I can go along with “we write down more than we ever act upon.” maybe “I think of more things than I will ever act upon” would be more accurate, for me at least.
I think of things that I personally write down, everything from grocery lists, to project plans to scribblings in a journal and I have to say I act on the majority of it, if it needs to be acted upon (the bad poetry I write doesn’t necessarily require action). A lot of it gets written down so that I remember it, whether that’s milk at the grocery store, or the approval process for a scope change on a client project.
On the other hand I think of lots of things and act on very few of them, which is probably just as well, strangling family members because they have made me angry is detrimental to everyone’s well-being.
Similarly, buying that bag of cookies or chocolate bar is okay to think about, but less desirable to act upon. Very few of these thoughts ever get written down, and if they do the likelihood that I will execute them goes up dramatically.
Even if we are talking from an organizational perspective, I think this holds true. Processes roles and responsibilities, checklists are documented so that they can me executed consistently and repeatedly by lots of people. They are not written down and not acted upon, although some may sit on a shelf until they are needed.
So, I think you’re going to have to go back to the drawing board on that triptych, or explain where my reasoning has gone awry.
October 15, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Hi Stephanie,
That made me smile. :O)
For personal learning, I agree, provided an individual is fairly dsciplined (or has strangled all potential distractions!), then writing things down should support action. I don’t claim to be one of those disciplined people and usually lose my lists before I can tick off the final item.
I guess I was ambiguous. I *was* thinking in the collective, corporate “we” and in the context of how organisations learn, or fail to. I had in mind the piles of lessons learned reports which languish in dark corners of SharePoint teamspaces, and the likelihood that they will ever be read, let alone acted upon.
So for a typical project team, I would argue that they certainly know more than they can tell. A well-facilitated post project review will help them to tell some what they know, and capture a pale imitation of the discussions in some kind of documented report.
My belief is that corporately, most organizations fail to act upon the lessons which are written down:
Learning loops are rarely closed,
Other projects believe that they are different,
Perceived time pressures and a lack of faith in the value of learning before doing,
What’s written down gets lost or buried,
A lack of governance of absence of continuous improvement mindset means that recommendations from reports aren’t acted upon – processes and policies aren’t modified, and sanctions are not set in place.
Still, let’s remain positive – the project team which learned the lesson first-hand, and had it as tacit knowledge before the post-project review facilitator even started – they are unlikely to repeat their mistake! So for them “knowing” from experience is more likely to lead to action than reading what someone else wrote down.
For the realm of process decriptions, roles and checklists, I’m with you (although there will always be those who see to bend/break/ignore them).
But for the fuzzier world of lessons learned, I’ve less faith in human nature!
October 15, 2011 at 5:59 pm
[...] on the heels of yesterday’s post on Polanyi and Snowden’s “We know more than we can ever tell, we tell more than we can [...]
October 19, 2011 at 8:45 am
Absoutely Chris – as I have long said for KM to be useful knowledge must be considered a verb not a noun, the emphasis must be on action not objects
October 20, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Hi Chris,
Yes, I agree, when it comes to lessons learned you are right, a lot of things get written down and never/rarely used.
I think it’s because of what you have identified, that thinking that this project is different, and a lack of critical thinking that forces us to really look at something and say “wow, that really is like what I’m doing, I really could take that lesson learned and apply it to this project.
I think the bigger issue is that the knowledge isn’t tacit for people, as you also identified. They haven’t lived/experienced the lesson learned personally, so it isn’t real for them, and having to try to apply someone else’s lesson learned is too abstract and uncomfortable/uncertain, it’s far easier to make the same mistake and learn the lesson myself.
January 11, 2012 at 11:20 am
[...] interactions and relationships – and all too often we lose a lot more in our haste to summarise. Polanyi and Snowden had something to say about [...]
January 11, 2012 at 11:59 am
… and we act more than we are aware of.
January 11, 2012 at 12:10 pm
I like it!