Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow

Knowledge Flow, Not Knowledge Management

Many organizations deal with knowledge badly. They duplicate efforts and miss opportunities due to ignorance or, even more destructively, because someone in the organization had a valuable idea that never got shared. Why does this happen, not once in a while, but all the time? First, many people confuse the key concept of “knowledge,” using the term interchangeably with “information.” Information can be recorded and transferred. Knowledge cannot. Knowledge depends on the presence of an active mind. Knowledge exists when you connect information to past experiences. Knowledge “cannot be managed.” Therefore, the common term “knowledge management” contains a built-in misconception. That encourages people to make up definitions of the term to include whatever they want or need to address. Thus, they approach knowledge in dysfunctional ways.

Because knowledge exists only “in the context of the mind,” it “is actually tacit (implicit) by nature.” This means that knowledge cannot be externalized. Instead, spreading it requires multiple conversion processes. Knowledge must be converted to information, which can be shared. That is, a ...