We
in knowledge management place such a premium on tacit knowledge that explicit
knowledge would get its feelings hurt, if it had any.
Tacit
knowledge is what people carry in their heads as a consequence of education and
experience. It enables them to respond effectively to new situations, act on
their hunches, and--as
Malcolm Gladwell would say--generally "blink" well.
Explicit
knowledge, on the other hand, is codified knowledge--information and data. It
takes the form of documents, e-mails and, more and more often, social
networking comments. And it can get you
into at least as much trouble as acting on your hunches.
In
fact, if you are an organization, letting explicit knowledge manage itself will
get you into MORE trouble. Have you ever thought about how much it would cost
your organization to sift through its e-mail archives to find a single e-mail
exchange that a regulator wants to see? Or pondered the impact that a breach in
customer data would have on customer retention and acquisition?
Records
information management, or RIM, is the practice of identifying, classifying,
archiving, preserving, and destroying records.
KM and RIM are kissing cousins. Every employee creates and touches
records. As knowledge managers, we know the importance of instilling a sense of
ownership over the content one creates, and how difficult that can be. If you don't have an RIM process in your
company, you may be at greater risk than you think.
For
more information on records management, I recommend taking a look at ARMA International's "What is Records
Management? Why Should I Care?" and APQC's
upcoming peer-to-peer summit, Records
Management: New and Leading Edge Issues.
Make
sure you don't blink and get blindsided.
Carla, great recommendation! There's room for reaching across from both the KM and RM domains. Records managers have so much complexity to deal with that I think there is an inadequate recognition of the critical role Rm plays in ensuring an authentic, reliable foundation for knowledge. Conversely, knowledge managers seem so focused on either the knowledge sharing capacity of people and cultures, or the IT focus on search and retrieval, that the implications of content and its management are unaddressed.
Step by step!
Hi Carla
You have writen a very helpful article. I have being working a a recordkeeper for the past 11 years and have always been struck by the way RM and KM can complement and support each other. For example, the rigourous functional classification and disposition tools used in RM can really help manage a range of knowledge assets, not just records, over time, ensuring that in both a temporal and geographic sense they remain valuable tools for an organisation.
I am also wondering if other readers have other examples of RM and KM working well together?
Thank you both for your insights. I too would like to hear of other examples of RM and KM working together. APQC is currently considering a study on this intersection and examples would be most welcome. Carla
Stephen Macintosh's comment touches on a critical angle--the use of metadata to "get granular" with meaning that transcends media type, higher level categorization, etc. (OK, maybe I've stretched it a bit, but suspect we're thinking in similar directions.)
My partner and I introduced a conceptual model for knowledge resource management in an article published in the International Journal of Intellectual Capital and Learning, January 2009. It has evolved as we refine our analysis and representation of the concept relative to projects that incorporate records management as fundamental to knowing. Briefly, based on experience as accountable managers within organizations, we hold the view that records are the vehicle through which intangibles are made visible. Once visible in the sense of defined meta descriptors, intangibles can inform conscious knowing and become manageable.