Knowledge management involves managing the ability to make decisions based on experience for organizational goals. It is an evolving discipline that some consider an oxymoron since knowledge cannot truly be managed, only the processes and environments related to knowledge. Knowledge involves both the experiences of individuals and their ability to make relevant decisions. While explicit knowledge involving plans and best practices can be captured and documented, tacit knowledge resides only in people's minds and is more difficult to manage directly. An effective knowledge management strategy must account for both the object view of capturing explicit knowledge and the process view of cultivating environments for sharing tacit knowledge.

1. What is Knowledge Management?
or, Knowledge Management is an oxymoron.
During the creation of Rowanwood’s consulting practices, we considered creating
a Knowledge Management practice. After all, much of what we do is getting
called Knowledge Management but first we thought it would be a good idea to
take a look at exactly what it means.
Knowledge Management is an important new discipline that is evolving fairly
quickly. And as such precise definitions can be tough to nail down.
For instance, many practitioners consider the term Knowledge Management a
misnomer. Something as slippery to define and as intangible as knowledge can
never be truly managed. Processes relating to knowledge can be created and
managed and the right environments can be cultivated, but controlling knowledge
per se is still out of reach.
Still, we needed a common understanding so the first placed we looked was the
dictionary.
Webster’s definition for knowledge is: “understanding gained by actual
experience”, understanding is defined as the “knowledge and ability to apply
judgement”, while judgment is defined as “the process of coming to a
decision by recognizing and comparing.”
An analysis of the definitions reveals two significant things about Knowledge:
1. It involves the real experience of individuals
2. Only that which is relevant to making decisions can truly be called knowledge.
So knowledge can be said to the ability to make decisions based on
experience.
That is a nice tight definition, but it there are lots of other things about Knowledge
Management and knowledge being talked about. For instance:
What about the other thing you see all the time in literature about KM, the
knowledge spectrum, or pyramid or steps of knowledge? Data – Information –
Knowledge – Wisdom – Truth is one that I saw the other day.
Data being useless without context which turns it into information which when
you add some experience becomes knowledge which presumably leads to
wisdom if you live long enough and then with enough wisdom you learn the truth.
This is a useful concept in terms of establishing context for your Knowledge
activities. It is and also useful in terms of thinking about management because as
you move along the spectrum things become more abstract and less
manageable. It is quite possible to control and carefully manage data, Database
Administrators do it every day. Likewise systems are on the market today that do
a reasonable job of managing information, assuming you can define and
recognize the relations between the data types, however, I suspect things get a
little trickier when we try to manage knowledge, wisdom and truth. So the
concept of knowledge being part of a spectrum of things is useful, but it doesn’t
change our definition any.
Another thing about the Knowledge Management world we have learned is that
are two general views or philosophies, the Object View and the Process View.
The Object View considers knowledge to be something that can be captured and
delivered in discreet packages to users when they need it. This is a very
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2. attractive view to system designers because it makes knowledge tangible.
Rather, it makes the explicit part of knowledge tangible.
The Process View sees knowledge as something that is inherent in the
experiences people go through. And tries to find ways of improving, guiding or
controlling experiences in order to build and share knowledge.
To some extend these two views or perspectives are related to the idea that
there are two broad types of knowledge; explicit and tacit.
Explicit knowledge can be captured, documented and stored in systems, this
includes things like plans, best practices, process and policy. One needs be
careful here though because knowledge is dynamic and what makes sense now
in this situation may not in a different time and place. Nonetheless you can see
how this type of knowledge is consistent with the Object View, it can be mapped,
stored and is amenable to something close to true management.
Tacit knowledge on the other hand is more slippery. This resides only in the
minds of people, with significant effort some of it can be converted into explicit
knowledge. Tacit knowledge is largely unconscious and includes things like
beliefs, syntax, cultural norms and common sense. We can become aware of at
least some of it but not all.
A great deal of theoretical work is currently being done on Tacit knowledge.
Currently it cannot be truly managed. However the environment for sharing and
developing Tacit knowledge, or for turning some of into Explicit knowledge can
be cultivated by taking the Process View of Knowledge Management.
The Process View and the Object View, combined with the ideas of Explicit and
Tacit knowledge give the field of Knowledge Management a distinctly Bi-Polar
personality. They also mean that any Knowledge Management strategy must
account for both perspectives to be successful.
Back to our definition of Knowledge Management,
Knowledge Management is the art and science of managing the ability to
make decisions based on experience for some organizational goal.
The art and science bit is there to reflect the fact that any management effort is
part science and that the data and information management systems that are
part of Knowledge Management can be empirical, logical and pre-designed
systems. The art part recognizes the fact that a great deal of knowledge lies only
in the human mind, and any attempt to manage the human mind is at the least a
dark art.
Decisions based on experience for some organizational goal describes the core
aspect of knowledge and assumes that the effort that will be expended in the
management will be directed towards some mission like competitiveness,
adaptability, efficiency, quality or any of dozens of serious issues organizations
face.
That’s it. What do you think?
Drop me a line at @thomkearney
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