Capturing Implicit Knowledge

In continuation to my earlier blog on Knowledge Harvesting - I would like to put forth the ways and means of capturing implicit knowledge.

My earlier blog ends with the following Statement - "Much of the success of knowledge harvesting will be in the ability of the interviewer to elicit the right level of detail from the expert. He or she should not immediately assume that the reasoning behind certain approaches or tasks is not discernable. Often, it is necessary to guide an expert through their own thought process, though the steps used to arrive at conclusions that the 'expert' believes are tacit or invisible."

The best way to capture implicit knowledge is to interview the experts face-to-face. Ask them to talk about what they do and to describe specific situations where they have applied specific know-how. This may sound easy.

Lets have a step by step approach:

Build rapport - This is something you do throughout the eliciting process. Rapport makes it easier by helping one to create trust and credibility which makes the contributor more comfortable sharing what they know; and also allows the common thinking processes which are heard during the discussion to emerge. These aspects of building rapport results in time savings and quality of the knowledge transfer.

Organise the harvesting meeting - During the session, it should be made clear to him/ her that he/ she has been identified by the top management as a contributor on that specific topic; The individual should know that you are here to help make the process of capturing and leveraging this knowledge easier; The individual should know that you recognise that he/ she is valuable and you want to take up only that which is necessary to capture key know-how; You need to provide an overview of the whole process - like the duration of the meeting; how the meeting will be conducted; expected results, etc.; Try to get as much feedback about the meeting.

One can even use a recorder for capturing the conversation - but it should be done in concurrence with the contributor.

Guide and encourage - Nurturing the discussion of knowledge that the contributor has but does not know they have or know how to articulate. You need to act as a catalyst to spur what is 'natural' that which is inside the person's head lying unexpressed. Eliciting is about prompting knowledge to come out.

Knowledge capturing - You can start with some general question and slowly move on to the specific ones. But one should remember that its very important to collect - the flow of process (step by step description); Relationships (to other people and job, to include all interfaces and connections); Resources used like documents, information or people referenced in the process - to know the know-how and the facilitators involved; and finally the systems and tools used.

We can say the process of capturing is complete only when you have collected enough for the target learners to perform the work with the aid of the information alone.

Maintain good etiquette - Never interrupt. When the contributor speaks you need to show your keenness in knowing what he is describing, by your body language. During the course of knowledge capturing, if ideas pop up in your head, jot them down and ask later.

Handle resistance - You are likely to face resistance from time to time. Some people may come forward and share their knowledge willingly or due to the pressure from the top. In both the cases, the contributor may have a difficult time communicating what they know.

Understanding the nature of resistance is very important - do they have a sense of insecurity of job or power? or is it simply a matter of not having the time? are they aware of the value of the excercise?. Once you understand this problem you can begin to build rapport and overcome resistance. I hope this blog will aid the reader to have a good sense of what to do.

Knowledge Management & Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge management (KM) is a hot topic in many business communities. Although, the term knowledge management might suggest a rather simple definition, there are plenty of opinions on what exactly it is and how it should be used, if used at all.

However, because of the ever-increasing pace of business development, the task of effective and competitive management of organizations becomes essential, and KM, if understood and implemented properly, may be a useful tool for business transformation as well as the key to competitive advantage.

KM as the process is that, which combines technical and organizational initiatives to manage structured and unstructured knowledge in order to help the organization improve its effectiveness through improved retention and reuse of knowledge.

Knowledge defined by Davenport and Prusak (1998) - they view knowledge as an evolving mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.

The organizational knowledge is an integral component of what organizational members remember and use, meaning that knowledge is actionable.

The most KMers when get an opportunity to speak or write they usually start doing it by highlighting the types of Knowledges - Tacit and Explicit. I personally feel that it is not that important but knowing it is important to certain extend.

Tacit knowledge is that which is understood within a knower’s mind. It consists of cognitive and technical components. Cognitive components are the mental models used by the knower that cannot be expressed directly by data or knowledge representations and also is known as unstructured knowledge.

Technical components are concrete concepts that can be expressed readily and also is known as structured knowledge. Explicit knowledge also consists of these technical components that can be expressed directly by knowledge representations.

Knowledge transfer in an organization occurs when members of an organization pass tacit and explicit knowledge to each other. Information technology (IT) assists knowledge transfer by providing knowledge repositories and methods for capturing and retrieving knowledge. The extent of the dimension of the knowledge being captured limits the effectiveness of IT in assisting KM. IT works best with knowledge that is primarily in the explicit dimension.

Four modes of Knowledge Transfer:
• Socialization is the process of sharing experiences and thereby creating tacit knowledge such as mental models and technical skills. Tacit knowledge can be obtained without using language through observation, imitation, and practice.

• Externalization is the process of articulating tacit knowledge in the form of explicit concepts, taking the shapes of metaphors, analogies, concepts, hypotheses, or models.

• Combination is the process of systemizing concepts into a knowledge system by combining different bodies of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is transferred through media such as documents, meetings, and e-mail and/or phone conversations. Categorization of this knowledge can lead to the generation of new knowledge.

• Internalization is the process of converting explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge and is closely related to learning by doing.

For further reading - Jennex, Murray E.(Editor). Knowledge Management in Modern Organizations. Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global, 2006