The tyranny of the explicit

KMers like to talk around the idea of the explicit knowledge vs tacit knowledge divide. We like to say that the tacit is the bigger, more important part – and yet then invest the majority of the effort into the explicit side. We’re not entirely to blame; it’s an embedded cultural preference for the material, and every resourcing, resource allocation, priority determination etc will force you that way.

One area we see this is how organisations wish to make their purpose – their mission, vision, values and principles into official, explicit statements. It’s as if, in making them explicit, they have established a line that cannot be breached. They’ve made them material. Someone won the battle to have their wording adopted.

When I was much younger I think I believed in this, but that was in the last millennium, and I grew up.

In inescapable reality, the drives, motivations, guard rails and so on of an organisation will be fluid and pluralistic – and are best seen as an ongoing conversation. What are we trying to do? Within what constraints? Views will differ and evolve between people, within each individual, over time and in different contexts.

But I also love paradox and I understand the utility of having some agreed description to use in various contexts where something is needed. We just shouldn’t take it too seriously.

All knowledge is provisional and it can be useful to entertain, at one and the same time, both the current agreed best articulation as well as, and at the same time, entertaining diverging interpretations and approaches.

It’s possible to have a best or standard practice and be experimenting with others. You can have a default view and approach and allow each person enough professional autonomy to express it their own, and even quite different, way, allowing for their interpretation of the demands of each context.

What matters is this ongoing conversation. It’s what the scientific process embodies. We can do no better nor any different in organisations – or else succumb to the tyranny of the one explict articulation.