It depends on 2 things Sandra -  the size of the practitioner base and the rate of change of the knowledge.

Knowledge that is fully mature (so is not constantly changing) but has a large practitioner base is best written down. Multiple requests to a CoP for this type of knowledge tend to lead to the development of an FAQ, or exhortation to “read the manual”.

Knowledge that is still evolving is best left with the community of practice, as by the time it is documented for a wide audience, it is out of date. If the community of practice is large, they may want to keep an evolving wiki, or a blog for discussion. If its small, then maybe the cost of documenting exceeds the value, and a small group of practitioners can keep the knowledge live through discussion and review.

Nick Milton
Knoco Ltd
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Author of the recent book - "The Knowledge Manager’s Handbook"

"Ambition without knowledge is like a boat on dry land." 
--Mark Lee

Dear Sandra,

TLDR:  I’d urge you to think of codification and personalization as a continuum, rather than as an either-or dichotomy.  Seek to develop a hybrid approach that captures and integrates the best of both approaches.

—

Codification “versus” personalization is one of the oldest debates in modern knowledge strategy.  It goes back at least to 1999, when Morten Hansen and others published their HBR article “What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?”  The answer is, as you might expect, “it depends” — on the organization’s overall competitive strategy, its customer value and economic models, and how its people deliver that value.  I would add, as Nick mentioned, the rate and nature of change in any of those variables.

Neither approach alone is nearly as useful or durable as a hybrid or blended approach, in my experience.  We may find useful precedents in other knowledge-based fields — for example, in the legal system here in the USA (and probably elsewhere.)  The law (a massive body of knowledge) consists of two major parts — STATUTES, which are codified at the federal, regional (state), and local levels, as well as through agency regulations — and CASE LAW, comprising decisions from judges at three main tiers of courts at each of those jurisdictional levels.  Codified law is relatively static, though of course subject to change by legislatures.  Case law is relatively dynamic, with new cases being decided continually — each of which becomes part of “the law” going forward.

I’m not a lawyer, so someone who is may chime in with corrections to what I’ve said.  But I do admire the law as a robust system of applied knowledge.  Of course, the legal system isn’t perfect — but it has lasted for centuries and works pretty well much of the time for most people.

How does this approach apply to knowledge work as we more often define it?  One example I work with turns this hybrid approach on its head, and leads with personalization (rather than with codification, as the legal system does.)  In addition to my “day job” as a consultant, I run a small enterprise (a media studio) in which there is a continual need for information about new products, technologies, and work methods. The several “bulletin boards” I consult on a daily basis consist of threaded discussions, many of which are useful and informed.  (The groups have human moderators to edit, or even delete, those that are not.) 

All comments are personalized (by name or pseudonym) and time-stamped.  Frequent visitors quickly learn whose information is reliable, its timeliness and context, and on what it was based.  When something is especially relevant or interesting, one can make “direct message” contact with the human source of the information to gain further depth.

When any discussion thread gets long and complex enough, some kind person (these are all run by volunteers) periodically takes on the job of compiling an FAQ or BKM (Best Known Methods) document.  This contains nuggets from the thread, validated where possible, and organized into user/problem-oriented categories.  If the BKM is especially valuable to other community members, and the discussion and/or topic is dynamic, the document may be issued in dated revisions that supplant the old ones.  When I’m making key decisions on workflow and capital outlays, this is like a living encyclopedia.

One other thing to remember is, with either strategy, it’s most useful to think of the “cognitive perimeter” of the organization as being potentially much broader than the organization itself.  Personalization, for example, may extend beyond current personnel to include both external experts and former internal experts (i.e, the organization’s alumni.)

Fascinating topic, thanks Sandra for your question, and I hope this at least gives you some ideas.  FYI I’m leading a workshop on the related topic “Knowledge Dynamics:  Strategies to Prevent Enterprise Knowledge From Turning Zombie” on Monday afternoon at KM World in November.

Kind regards,

Tim

Hello all,

I was wondering about other opinions on the approach to knowledge capture for sharing purposes (technical, R&D, manufacturing, consumer goods project/product lessons learned) in terms of ease of access for the user.

Community of Practice (for each group in an organization) VS Enterprise-wide repository (or maybe both or neither).

Much of my recent reading appears to indicate for maybe scientific, technical or related types of content it may be best set up as CoPS (or focus libraries/repositories) instead of feeding all final lessons learned, project summaries, etc into one location and then trying to tag everything extensively to ensure accurate and relevant search results.  Or am I reading the wrong materials, books, websites (ha, ha).

I bought The Smart Mission so I will see what that covers as a technical information organization (NASA) about that approach to creating maybe segregated content (via wiki, knowledge portal, COP) vs single library/repository.

Thanks so much,
Sandra 

Thank you Nick as I really appreciate what appears to be a subtle difference on content type/practice areas (mature steady vs evolving), but its transformative actually when you use it as a decision criteria.

I also just bought your Knowledge Manager’s Handbook. I am only on Chapter One and then skipped to the Use Cases as the Mars and NASA one’s were every relevant for me. Look forward to reading the rest.

Thanks!

Sandra

Hi Douglas,

Agree on the critical K part for Knowledge Transfer for core and deep expertise in the business when one retires requires its own lane.

I just finished a Knowledge Book (Kadrant) to capture the 20-30 year announced retirement from not only an internal expert, but a world expert in the industry for process technology.

It’s a bit more of a challenge for other ‘expert’ K that one can’t spend the same level of resources to capture in a book on a topic.

Best,

Sandra