We have this distinction in linguistics, from Chomsky, or competence vs. performance. It’s a pattern I learned from linguistics that has also informed my understanding of knowledge – and other domains. So it’s two-thoughts-in-one this time: first, the distinction and how it helps and, second, the idea of taking a pattern from one domain and applying it in another.
In linguistics competence is the grammar – the language knowledge and ability of speakers (and here by ‘grammar’ we mean the real-life structures and rules, the descriptive ones, not the Victorian textbook prescriptive ones). Most KM interventions exist in the competence area: methodologies, tools, models, data, information; and also structures such as communities, routines such as meetings, policies and so on. In their static declarative sense they are part of the competence – although in organisational terms we tend to use the word capability.
But the distinction prompts us to consider the other side, the performance. In linguistics this is actual speech utterance in practice. I think this side of the house receives less attention, but some people do indeed do things like discourse analysis and corpus analysis – studying conversation and large volumes of speech. You don’t have to be a linguist to know that real-life speech is full of features we might not readily identify as ‘correct’.
Real life speech is often fragmentary rather than in full sentences. There are pauses, stutters, sentences that break off and start again, midway, from a different point. People use the wrong word, miss words, yet we know what they mean. Drama scripts are seldom written anything like the way people really speak, and when they try to achieve that it’s often obvious by how far they miss. Yet what matters most is comprehensibility, not ‘correctness’.
So whilst it’s right, I think, that KM is focused on building capability, or competence, it’s capability that has to be applied – and that’s performance. We should expect performance to be different from competence, and also worthy of study and support.
Two of the things that you gain from studying any domain are its concepts and patterns. Competence vs performance, descriptive vs prescriptive, synchronic vs diachronic (snapshot vs movie, if you like) and linguistic levels are some of my faves from linguistics. I find that transferring concepts and patterns from one domain to another – in my case from linguistics to KM – provides a lens that can help you see new possibilities. To some degree, aside from the facts, models, inferences tasks and strategies, knowledge is also ways of seeing and thinking, and it turns out these can be transferred between domains, providing fresh value. It might be one of the most fundamental kinds of reuse.
AIxKM - Robert Taylor 