Hi Patrick,
Nicely put. I'm not entirely convinced that the separation is as
clean as Polanyi would like though, because it only considers
individual knowledge and not that of the group.
[I'm still working on how to express this elegantly -- bear with
me.]
Language is fundamentally a mechanism for social communication.
In fact it can't exist without a social group. It
has evolved along with the multiplicity of nested and overlapping
groups we belong to, many acting as cohesive and coherent systems
that evolve and dissolve constantly and dynamically.
Just as our neurons signal to each other to yield emergent, complex
behaviour based on past and present inputs, language is the internal
signalling mechanism that achieves the cohesion necessary for
systemic group behaviours.
From the group's perspective, it has capabilities that are not
easily expressible; nor are the exact limits of its knowledge.
Thus, I would posit that articulated knowledge / language still
retains the form and function of tacit knowledge so long as it
remains inside the context of that group.
Cheers,
Stephen.
====================================
Stephen Bounds
Executive, Information Management
Cordelta
E: stephen.bounds@...
M: 0401 829 096
====================================
On 9/09/2020 10:35 pm, Patrick Lambe
wrote:
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Great to see Gary Klein’s work being brought in Rob.
It seems to me that explication is an entirely
different kind of knowledge activity than understanding or
knowing, or knowing how to. They are of course connected.
Explication requires reasoning, observation, contextualisation,
knowledge integration and translation. In fact it could be said
to be a form of knowledge building.
If I’m working on a piece of writing, I am of course
working out of "the ground" of what I know (in my head and
body), but there’s a long and venerable tradition of thinking
from Ryle through Polanyi and McIntyre that says that this tacit
ground of knowing is inarticulable, and once you articulate
you’ve created an entirely different form of knowledge that
connects only in a loose way to the “knowledge ground” that
produced it, you have not simply “converted” the tacit
knowledge. Polanyi does acknowledge that articulation can
provide a feedback loop to deepen our tacit knowledge (so
explication of techniques can improve piano playing) but he was
adamant that they are fundamentally different kinds of thing.
Tacit and explicit knowledge forms in their various degrees of
combination follow each other around, but they are not blood
relatives. Neither is reducible to the other.
If I am working on that piece of writing, I’m not
simply trying to represent what’s in me. I’m also trying to
connect it to what I know about (out there in
the world), which I may need to explore or think about more
deeply, and I’m trying to connect to it to what I know about my
audience, which I may need to observe and reflect on more
carefully, so there’s a sense in which it feels like a journey
of discovery, as much as simply expressing something I know. The
whole thing feels much more like the interaction of various
cognitive activities, and it feels like an iterative process
full of feedback loops, interacting back and forth with the
world, not at all like a simple “produce something out of my
head” kind of activity. I’m building something, not converting
something. And my building blocks are out there in the world as
much as in my head and body.
And I’m with you Rob, that explication/articulation
is only one mode of moving knowledge around (or replicating it)
- “creating the conditions to accelerate the discovery of tacit
knowledge” is a nice way of putting it. To bring this back to
Laurie’s contribution, this is why an understanding of networks
and collaboration is useful - because they can provide enabling
or disabling conditions.
P
On 9 Sep 2020, at 7:51 PM, Robert L. Bogue
< rbogue@...>
wrote:
For me, this merges
both “the perfect form” and practice. If you practice
enough, and you’re willing to accept performance
setbacks to try new forms, you’ll eventually settle on
the “perfect” one. However, even discovering the
“perfect” stance doesn’t mean you’ll be able to
explain it. (ala tacit) Observers can only get to
the observable factors, many unobservable factors
remain.
When I relax the
conditions from teaching to coaching on tacit, I
realize that I don’t have to be able to articulate
every nuance as long as I create situations that
accelerates the learning process.
Rob
-------------------
Robert L. Bogue
Excellent discussion
on an age-old topic: tacit vs. explicit.
Some
have long claimed tacit is knowledge and
explicit is just information. The ISO 30401:2018
argues otherwise. I do as well.
Here's
a few further arguments on topics already raised.
Physical K - whether
a hitter is good or not is probably less dependent
on exactly correct form than the essence of a
10,000 hr. rule.
As for "but I do really believe
that you can't know something until you can
articulate it," I
agree and would go one step further. For me, the
detailed articulation is the intellectual
challenge that provides great insights. Almost
as if the articulation forces you to open and
inspect every nook and cranny of your brain's
synapse connections.
Lastly,
if you strive to formalize a tacit to explicit
process, for whatever unique purpose such as
retirement, consider some truths: if the
articulation is one-on-one (Mentoring?) it may
be less efficient than a one-on-manyprocess; and, if you
can easily codify as you articulate, you expand
the effective use even further.
Sometimes,
merely paying attention to obvious truisms can
provide great benefit.
I
hear you Patrick and mostly agree, to me
understanding something means I can articulate
it to someone else, this is perhaps something
I've learned by being a professor, I can't
teach something I can't articulate (and this
means you can't transfer what you can't
articulate). Of course I talk about tacit
knowledge and in particular use sports
metaphors, however, you will not disrupt my
serve or strokes by asking me to explain them
as I've been a tennis coach and the same
applies there, you can't coach what you can't
articulate. All that said, I don't worry
about instinctive knowledge, I understand that
to be something buried in my brain that comes
out when I need it, however, when it does come
out I strive to articulate it. I agree with
you that it isn't a clean 1:1 swap, nothing
ever is and so don't take my statements as
being 100%, but I do really believe that you
can't know something until you can articulate
it. I don't worry if that means there is no
tacit knowledge, that is just a gut feel of
mine, but hey, it does spur some really good
discussions! I love to use Tony Gwynn as an
example of someone who was perhaps the best
hitter in baseball but when he coached our
college team we were only average hitters.
Does that mean Tony didn't really understand
the knowledge of hitting? I don't think so,
he just had special physical tools that made
it so that he could do what he said while
others couldn't. Perhaps we combine instinct
and other physical attributes with what we
call knowledge? I'd argue we have the
knowledge and are confusing that with
performance or putting the knowledge in
action, sometimes we know what we want to do
but just can't do it!....murray
-----Original
Message-----
From: Patrick Lambe <plambe@...>
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Cc: llocklee@... <llocklee@...>
Sent: Tue, Sep 8, 2020 11:32 pm
Subject: Re: [SIKM] Reference resources,
case studies about managing tacit knowledge?
Hi Murray I would just swap out
one word in your sentence
My own feeling is that
all knowledge is explicit once you
[understand] can articulate it,
i.e. tacit knowledge is simply
knowledge we haven't learned to
express yet.
Speaking for myself, I often
think I understand something without
being able to articulate it (maybe
that’s an illusion!!), and sometimes I
can articulate the same understanding
in quite different ways depending on
the context.
In relation to tacit
knowledge, of course there’s the whole
area of somatic knowledge (things my
body knows how to do) where words can
be descriptive but virtually useless -
i.e. the articulation of the knowledge
“hold the violin bow at an angle of 30
degrees to the strings” doesn’t really
express the knowledge in the same way
that a recipe might. So being able to
express how I ride the bike doesn’t
accurately represent the tacit
knowledge involved.
I have a friend who regularly
(and deliberately) disrupted his (very
skilful) tennis buddy’s serves by
asking him to explain how he did it.
Shifting his buddy’s focus from his
bodily knowledge to a poor verbal
expression of it, distracted his body
from actually being able to deliver
the serve effectively.
So while I agree with your
general point, we do need to recognise
that there isn’t a clean 1:1
convertibility from explicit-tacit or
vice versa. In fact the dualism
between tacit and explicit is far too
simplistic - which I think is where
your first comment was going.
Actually,
many would argue that there is
no such thing as purely tacit
knowledge or purely explicit
knowledge, that both have
degrees of tacitness and
explicitness and that the
degree of each varies with the
knowledge user/holder.
Capturing tacit just means
we've made it more explicit,
it doesn't reduce its value
and actually may increase it.
My own feeling is that all
knowledge is explicit once you
understand it, i.e. tacit
knowledge is simply knowledge
we haven't learned to express
yet....murray
-----Original
Message-----
From: Laurence Lock Lee <llocklee@...>
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Sent: Tue, Sep 8, 2020 4:15
pm
Subject: Re: [SIKM]
Reference resources, case
studies about managing tacit
knowledge?
Many
would argue that once
tacit knowledge is
captured it is no longer
tacit, and therefore
degraded. If your
intention is to benefit
from online exchanges
through the sharing of
tacit knowledge it is
therefore far more
important to identify
the holders of that
tacit knowledge and to
connect with them one on
one for knowledge
exchange and skip the
translation to explicit
knowledge and back to
tacit processes.
Organisational/Social
network analysis is a
good way to find
experts. Our business
conducts ONA/SNA online
through Yammer Teams and
Workplace by facebook
(not Slack though
...that is another
story) ... we have lots
of case studies on our
site www.swoopanalytics.com.
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