Tacit aversion

Despite the attention it garners as a subject of discussion in KM circles, there is an in-built aversion to tacit knowledge in orthodox work culture.

Tacit knowledge is the subject we want to talk about. It seems to be inherently more mysteriously interesting than that boring explicit knowledge stuff. So how can I claim that there’s an in-built cultural aversion to it? We love it, don’t we?

It’s precisely because of its immaterial nature. The orthodox culture in business and organisations likes what it can see and measure and control (or so it thinks). Tacit knowledge is a great ‘turn’ for an offsite – and then it’s back to the serious business of documents and models and data.

Further evidence of this is the frequent talk you will see (and read about) concerning “capturing tacit knowledge”. You see, all this wild and dangerous stuff is really no use at all without being tamed, put into captivity, recorded, explained, measured and put in a file somewhere. That’s how to make tacit knowledge really count. We have to face the fact that this is the action logic behind most of orthodox business and organisational culture.

But those people really ought to face the equally weighty facts about tacit knowledge. Number one, you’re never going to ‘capture’ it all (even if you could it’s not instantly clear that would be of much use). You’re never going to capture it all because, firstly, most of all the knowledge there is is tacit, and secondly because it’s generative and keeps growing like a Japanese knotweed the more of it you pluck. Number two, this is knowledge in it’s natural state and how we’ve grown up with it as minds over the millennia.

You’re just going to have to face the fact that most of all the knowledge there is emerges as if from an invisible fountain all the time, was never consciously known let alone written down before it spouted forth, and is endless.

You’re going to have to work with it the only way that it works.