Some time ago, Dave Snowden offered his Seven Principles of Knowledge Management. I’ve commented on some of them before in the context of a review of a presentation by John Tropea. However, John’s presentation pre-dates Dave’s blog post presenting all seven principles. I’ve not had time to review Dave’s post since it appeared, but I think it’s well worth a critical analysis. So, here’s my commentary on it, principle-by-principle.
— “Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted. You can’t make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can’t determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case.”
I’m certainly not a fan of coerced knowledge sharing. Nor do I think that coercing people is an effective way to institutionalize or enhance the frequency, or intensity, or relevance of knowledge sharing. Also, I certainly agree with the last sentence in the above paragraph. But, stating that “conscription” of knowledge can’t be done, is an overstatement. This is true for three reasons. First, when people are literally, conscripted into military forces, at least some of their knowledge is conscripted too. Keeping in mind that knowledge is of three types: biological, psychological, and cultural; when you conscript a soldier you conscript his/her biological knowledge. Also, given that a soldier will have certain routine duties that are mandatory and that involve using all three types of knowledge, it’s also pretty clear that you can conscript the kind of knowledge that people use when they perform routine duties. Second, there are not just two states here: coerced and voluntary sharing. Rather, knowledge sharing contexts may involve a variety of influences, which together produce various degrees of coerced and freely motivated participation in knowledge sharing processes. So the issue in organizations is never whether knowledge can be conscripted or not, but instead whether particular environments comprised of both coercive and non-coercive influence relationships, grounded in particular cultural contexts, are more favorable for knowledge sharing than other environments are. Third, I agree that we can’t measure whether someone really has shared their knowledge or not, but, also, whether we can measure something or not, doesn’t mean it is not occurring as a result of what we do. In other words, a particular context with coercive and non-coercive elements may result in knowledge sharing that we cannot measure directly, and we may only know that knowledge sharing has occurred, after the recipients of what may be communications empty of knowledge, test the information they receive and discover that it has survived.
— “We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted.”
I agree with everything in the above paragraph except the principle itself, which is in no way entailed by the rest of the paragraph. We certainly do “know what we know when we need to know it” in the case of conscious situational belief. However, in the case of biological knowledge, we cannot “know”, in the conscious sense of that term, whether we know it. Also, we can “know” that we have the capability to do something before we need to know it. For example, even though I may not need to know at this moment that I have the capacity to sum a column of figures using paper and pen as an aid, I do, in fact, “know” that very well. I also “know the way” to get to my local box store by automobile right now, even though, I don’t need to know until I want to drive there. These examples can be multiplied ad infinitum. From them, it is very clear that we can and do “know” many things before we “need” to know them.
— “In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts.”
I’m very much in sympathy with this one; but, again, I think it may be over- or, at least, too vaguely, stated. What, after all, is “real need”? Whose “real need” are we talking about? The person asking for help, or the person getting the request? If the person getting the request believes the other person doesn’t really need help, they may not share. If the person receiving the request is even a bit short of time, and doesn’t “need” to share themselves, then they may, all too frequently, not help. On the other hand, if both parties “need to share” to solve a problem that both share in some dimension, then I certainly agree that few people will withhold their knowledge. I think the point is that I agree with Dave, that trying to get people to share in the abstract, in the absence of a context of perceived need won’t work, and that successful sharing must occur in context. But, terms like “real need” and no “previous history of distrust,” say far too little about the contextual requirements for successful knowledge sharing. This “principle” may be useful as a caution for those who think they can treat the knowledge retention problem with methods that are short on context. But its utility beyond that is hard to see.
— “Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information.”
Here, again, I find myself in agreement with every sentence except the principle itself. We do, after all, create and use documents that are more than fragments, or whose “fragments” are interrelated. And we have learned how to use these too, as well as “fragments” that come in an unrelated form that we have to synthesize into narratives of various kinds. So, clearly, “everything is not fragmented”, even though fragments may well be the foundation of more complex narrative constructs, and theories.
To Be Continued