Digital White Papers

42 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Transforming Tacit Knowledge: Making the Most of What You Know People expect their inboxes to be somewhat private, and most would balk at the notion of KM having free reign to pan their inboxes for golden nuggets. » An Emphasis on Answers: Like other fast-paced businesses, law firms tend to place greater value on geing answers quickly than on asking provocative questions to tease out insights. Make opportunities and time to ask probing questions and explore nuances to support the sharing and growth of tacit knowledge. » Hierarchical Structure: Most law firms are hierarchical, which can stifle junior people from contributing to conversations with ideas or questions. The laer are crucial to pulling tacit knowledge out of others, and the former are necessary for creating new knowledge. Overcoming these obstacles and developing effective ways to harvest tacit knowledge from these rich interactions is time well spent. Set Your Goals The main objective should be to figure out how to help unleash as much tacit knowledge as possible with as many people present to observe and learn from the exposure. The next objective needs to be recording the exchange to transform at least some exposed knowledge from purely tacit to more explicit. Do not worry about geing all the knowledge down and retaining its purity or you will never feel confident enough to record anything. Rather than viewing the task as recording a point in history, think of it as creating a new explicit knowledge asset from the momentarily exposed tacit knowledge. The last and arguably most important objective should be to keep the conversation alive. This allows the organization to build new knowledge and knowledge assets from the many conversations and comments the event might spawn. When done well, a cycle of continuous growth and learning emerges. Use Your Technology How do we release and take hold of tacit knowledge, short of using the Vulcan mind meld? Fortunately, practical approaches exist. Trawling and Mining Email: For all of our complaints about overloaded inboxes, email has moved some knowledge from the realm of tacit to explicit. Before email, internal exchanges typically occurred by telephone or by walking down the hall to another's office. The person seeking knowledge was restricted to one or a few people who were handy, and the exchange rarely was recorded. Now, people oen find it easier and less intrusive to email a question to colleagues, even those just a few doors away. Our laziness has benefits.

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