Dave Pollard has posted a mea culpa article on the fallacy of seeking information as opposed to seeking those who know better how to do what you are doing.
Just as "competencies" were co-opted by the HR folks into yet another machine approach to development that obscured the much more valuable and human aspect of Attribute ( The emotional maturity and ability to deal with complexity and hence the core lever for personal performance), so "Knowledge" became a machine approach to documents that obscure the deeper reality that what we want is not "information" per se but "personal advise" on how best to do something. Information on its own has little value. The driving issue for humans is that we need to solve problems and that we want some person to help us not a manual.
You don't believe me. When would you rather read a manual to put a barbecue together or read a manual to work some software or read a parenting book to cope with a challenge with your unruly 14 year old son? Why do you find a manual so limited? Why do you find a person so much more helpful?
Information is cold, based on a document, and contains only the narrow explicit. Personal advise is warm, based on a relationship, and contains the full tacit knowledge of the advisor. The interaction with information adds nothing to the whole. A conversation with an advisor teaches both more. Managing documents is a process of diminishing returns. Encouraging communities of interest appears to have no limit.
Having a person directly help us offers the flexibility that we need to deal with a unique experience and the warmth that we crave as a social animal. It offers the advisor the reward of recognition and the chance to learn even more. Most of all a personal approach deals with the main organizational need - how do we keep our social communities thriving. There has to be a socio- economic issue here that is different from trying to ascribe a value to information as a commodity.A huge flaw in my opinion of KM is that it can see information as an end in itself. Only rarely has it been seen in the context of how it creates value for the work of the organization. What do I mean by this?
I like the story of New Bedford in its heyday as a whaling port. It is for me the epitome of how best to set up the conditions for a true knowledge-based society. Whaling in the age of sail, as anyone who has read Moby Dick will recall, was a business that demanded many extreme skills: not the least of seamanship - being away for up to 3 years in the world's most challenging oceans. Whale hunting itself, the use of small boats, harpooning etc. Whale processing - imagine fooling around with a flensing knife? Finding whales was an art. The entire business aspects not the least chandelling and selling oil products into a global market. What was special about New Bedford?
New Bedford today is a sad town but for well over 150 years, a very long time, it was arguably the wealthiest community in America. It had organized itself deliberately as a series of interlocking communities of practice. All voyages were funded cooperatively by people in the community including the suppliers. There was no difference between the sail-maker and the trip as the sail-maker had a piece of the voyage and could only be paid in 2 years from the share. The entire community was financially behind the trip. All contributed to ensuring that the investment was safe by offering the very best equipment from the boat to the rigging. All crew members were paid on a share basis - all had a vested interest i supporting all the others on the ship. It was considered bad form to sail with the same crew so experience was continually spread around the fleet. Every position was apprenticed so their was a hierarchy of experience behind every trade and position. All captains shared their logs at the end of every trip so the NB fleet collected the collective wisdom and experience of every trip.
In the New Bedford model the system worked to deliver the best for the unit and the group. Each sailor had his entire community both onshore and afloat working to help him be successful. Every unit whether it be New Bedford or a ship or an investor had every individual working for their benefit. The mechanism was to share information within the boundary of the unit communities. Within the ships, within the fleet and within New Bedford.
So what if a bank saw itself like this? What if a hospital saw itself like this? What if a province saw itself like this?
