That's
the question that Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Blanton would like to ask during APQC's
October KM community call. I've had the good fortune to work with Jerry for the
past four years or so supporting the knowledge management strategies of the U.S.
Navy's Carrier Team One group. Although Jerry can wax philosophical with the
best of them, he's also a practitioner concerned about knowledge sharing and
learning at the point of use. So with that background, when I invited Jerry to
facilitate our next call, he proposed the topic of if and when collected
explicit content is too much.
On the
surface, I find the question somewhat counterintuitive, especially in view of
the fact that I often use a picture of an iceberg as a metaphor for the
breakdown and value of explicit versus tacit knowledge. In that picture, the
part of the iceberg above the waterline represents explicit, or documented, knowledge;
below it is the tacit knowledge in people's heads. So it would seem to make
sense that exposing more of the iceberg (tacit to explicit knowledge) would be
better, right? Taking that thought to its logical conclusion might lead one to
think that, if the entire iceberg were floating on top of the water, all the
knowledge one needs would be exposed and available, right? And that would be a
good thing, right?
Thinking
about it a bit more however, there really is something in Jerry's question.
Rather than give away what that is though, I'll just encourage you to attend the
next KM community call.
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