Comments for Brad Hinton - plain speaking

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by Tacit, Explicit, Implicit, Whatever. Let’s call the whole thing off. | Knowledge Bird

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 01:40:35 +0000

[...] in the KM Australia LinkedIn group. Brad Hinton also offered a response to the question on his blog. I found the meaning of should or shouldn’t in this discussion to be unclear, and indeed [...]

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by John Tropea

John Tropea — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 05:46:13 +0000

Brad this is an excellent post, and James also elaborates on your point about polarisation. And jack is spot on http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2012/07/10/can_tacit_be_made_explicit.html

I too agree that a tacit to explicit transfer factory line approach is not good…but like you, I do agree that there’s lots of informal and local information that helps others. Eg a new person in the office doesn’t know all the tips, shortcuts and ways things are best done around here….but if they visit an online group space they may get up to speed very quickly by reading the previous job owners posts…and they now also can use this same space to ask questions. All in all there’s a good chance they become a very competent person very quickly, due to the former person sharing online, and now being able to ask questions and share themselves. What is this called, is this called km?

But this is more “know-what”…both formal procedures and informal/local tips

In contrast to “know-how”…sure you can follow the recipe in that blog post on how to troubleshoot a particular problem if it arises…but would you have the skill to troubleshoot a similar problem that deviates from this one just a little bit…I think “skill” is the key word here

But “over time”, there will be lots of blog posts, and slowly the learner may see a pattern or methodology and may perhaps be able to troubleshoot a new problem from scratch one day.

Sure blog posts or group spaces are not exactly an apprenticeship of doing and observation, but in aggregate over a long period of time (and being able to probe using comments) I think it’s a valuable process for people to get work done and hopefully learn (ie. not just following recipe, but actually learning)

Tend to agree with Snowden (or what I think he means) in that what we know is made up of fragments, and when faced with a situation, certain fragments assemble to deal with the situation. ie. knowledge is not a ready-made object. Well it can be for certain simple and repeatable scenario’s, but then this would be called information. The real power is being able to use skills to solve problems, or act in situations…and how can more people in the organisation learn from each other so we can also increase the breadth of our skills…but I’m not talking about a university at work, I’m talking about this happening as a product of work.

This Venn diagram does a good job
http://anomalogue.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/tacit-vs-explicit2.png

Also like Weinberger’s counter to knowledge being actionable information
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/10397046006

BTW – I like Nancy Dixon’s use of the term “sensemaking” rather than “capture”; and “moving” rather than “transfer”
http://www.nancydixonblog.com/2010/05/the-complexity-of-transferring-lessons-learned-from-projects.html

John Bordeaux also has a knack for explaining this esoteric stuff http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/19608856932
http://johntropea.tumblr.com/post/122154231

Anyway, more of my thinking on this whole thing is here http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2011/12/08/oh-is-that-km-is-it

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies … | red rabbit skills services | skills development consultancy

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 06:37:20 +0000

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Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies … | Errol A. Adams, J.D. M.L.S' Blog

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:08:18 +0000

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Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by brad hinton

brad hinton — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:28:57 +0000

Jo,
You can speak to Richard McDermott at the KM Australia conference about communities of practice – he knows a thing or two about them! My experience at Rabobank suggests that communities of practice work where there is a sharing culture within the organisation and where the system/tool for using the CoP is not too difficult to use or time consuming. Speak to you some more next week!
regards,
Brad

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by Jo Hicks

Jo Hicks — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:11:01 +0000

I am looking at implementing a blog to facilitate sharing tacit knowledge within my agency. I agree that there is an issue with turning tacit into explicit in most cases. For us, the types of experience and knowledge we need to share internally would date quickly and in a government agency context such information may be viewed as ‘official’ if stored in a more formal format and location (risk management). In this situation, I think a blog is the best way to surface the tacit knowledge we need access to.

We did the same thing with a wiki in my last job but that caused confusion around who was an expert and whether wiki content was authorative and approved (staff didn’t ‘get’ the wiki concept).

Interested in learning more about CoPs in this context.

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by James Dellow

James Dellow — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:49:05 +0000

Thanks for this post, Brad. Without giving my argument away completely, building on Dave’s point about augmentation versus replacement I do think the KM debate gets a bit polarised between either the perfect “capture of knowledge” or doing nothing at all. I think part of the issue is reframing the question and thinking about what we are trying to achieve and how KM can help. The mistake of early KM was that they though they were capturing knowledge, but at best it was just good information management (and nothing wrong with that).

Comment on The great debate – tacit knowledge and collaborative technologies by Dave Snowden

Dave Snowden — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:03:26 +0000

Its worth thinking about the problem differently. Tacit knowledge transfer in general takes place through doing – apprentice models come to mind. Now used properly technology can create augmented memories, but the secret is to keep it all fragmented so that the brain can assemble and blend those memories with its current situation in order to “know to act”.

That is technology as cognitive augmentation, something we are finally moving towards rather than failed and doomed to fail attempts at cognitive replacement.

Comment on On the positive side of tagging by Tagging « andrewhernandez80

Tagging « andrewhernandez80 — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 01:24:27 +0000

[...] I read a blog written by Brad Hinton on the top ten benefits of tagging. Mr. Hinton is an Information and [...]

Comment on On tagging, the grey side by Being good with Tagging | www.mindfuldigitalcitizen.com

Being good with Tagging | www.mindfuldigitalcitizen.com — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:04:48 +0000

[...] http://bradhinton.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/on-tagging-the-grey-side/ This entry was posted in Social Media and tagged tagging by hutchinsschool. Bookmark the permalink. [...]