Digital White Papers

Knowledge Management: One Size Does Not Fit All

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41 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Transforming Tacit Knowledge: Making the Most of What You Know Get Some Perspective Knowledge changes continually. People are the core of tacit knowledge, and individuals change from one day –– or even hour –– to the next, as they experience new information, interactions and events that slightly alter their take on what they know or believe. The path our encounters take and the knowledge they generate are influenced by many factors, including the number and combination of participants, their unique perspectives (alone and as influenced by the others' perspectives), what the participants are doing, and what actually happens. Consider a conversation between two people. The experience is dictated by: » What each says » How each understands what the other says » Other people who enter into the conversation » Physical events Something as simple as a piece of paper catching one's eye could change the experience and resulting knowledge each person walks away with. Compound this by the number of people working in an organization and the potential amount of unique knowledge created daily becomes astronomical. Encounters between an organization's people –– one-on-ones, large and small groups, spontaneous and planned, formal and informal –– create invaluable knowledge assets that, if shared, build an organization's intellectual capital. Break Down Barriers Tacit knowledge is hard to explain to others; it is something we know well, but in many ways it is fleeting, mutable and hard to reproduce or replace. Explicit knowledge can be thought of as knowledge made tangible by, for instance, explaining, recording or transcribing. Like a photograph, it represents something at a fixed point in time. Knowledge rarely fits neatly into one category. For instance, a model document is explicit knowledge constructed from an author's tacit knowledge. If the model is annotated with the author's rationale for language chosen or practice tips, some of the tacit knowledge approaches explicit. If I had a conversation with the model's author, the exchange would convert more knowledge from purely tacit to somewhat explicit through the act of explaining it. If I later write about my conversation, I move still more of the knowledge from tacit to explicit, but the author's knowledge remains tacit because my rendition contains my understanding and interpretation of what I heard influenced by my own perspective and experiences. Capturing and sharing knowledge is more important than classifying it as tacit, explicit or somewhere in between; finding opportunities to create new from existing tacit knowledge maers most. Apart from its elusive nature, additional barriers inhibit sharing and capturing tacit knowledge, especially in law firms: » Fear of Ridicule: No one likes looking foolish. Because tacit knowledge is subjective and oen based on core beliefs and values, people are more nervous about sharing it than easily proven, objective information. Firms must build a safe environment and culture based on trust and sharing. Tacit knowledge is hard to explain to others; it is something we know well, but in many ways it is fleeting, mutable and hard to reproduce or replace.

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