Knowledge Matters™

Just over a month ago, and before the current debate on wisdom management began in earnest on actKM, I had a brief exchange with Professor Bruce Lloyd on the relationship between knowledge and wisdom. Bruce kindly pointed me to a number of his papers. I've reproduced them below, some with hyperlinks. ...

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I am happy to enter into a discourse on “what is knowledge” but that is not the intent of this post. Rather I want to explore the idea that knowledge representation is becoming more visual. In his 1997 book ‘The Measure of Reality ’ Emeritus Professor Alfred Crosby suggested that visualisation and measurement were the two factors most responsible for the rapid development of all of modern science. Now this is an interesting proposition, and one I think I largely agree with.

The first attempts to represent knowledge were probably pictorial, and can be seen in the elegant cave paintings of our ancestors. Indeed some of these are still maintained by indigenous people today – see for example the Aboriginal rock art of the Gagudju people of Northern Australia, one of the oldest cultures on the planet. Numerals and text soon followed and have been the mainstay of knowledge representation for at least the last 6,000 years. But is this changing? ...

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Time, like the term knowledge, is an elusive concept. Like knowledge, a definition of time that is satisfactory to everyone has defied the greatest minds from Antiphon to Newton, and on to Einstein and Planck. Yet time is pervasive across cultures, and at least in the Western world, drives much of what we do. Time is also intrinsically linked to knowledge management, and provides some insights as to why knowledge management is so difficult.

Take for example the common platitude –“just in time knowledge management”. I take this to mean that the right information (I have chosen my words carefully) should be available to decision-makers at the right time and in the right place, and not before or after the time it is actually required! Now this begs all sorts of questions, like:

• How do we determine what is the right information?
• How do we know who should receive that information?
• What is the right format for the information, so it can actually be used?
• How do we know what the right time is?

I could go on but you should get the idea of just how difficult, if not impossible this is. This brings me to my second idea – knowledge management is about the effective use of data or information at some future point in time. ...

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Yesterday I posed the question – “Is the word ‘knowledge’ content free? ” I addressed the propositions that knowledge consists of facts, and facts represent either analytic or synthetic truths. I now want to introduce beliefs to the equation, because most, but not all, knowledge management models have a ‘justified true belief’ foundation.

Beliefs are something that we hold to be true. To the individual beliefs are facts that are derived from either analytic or synthetic truths, or some other source such as an authoritative reference or person. Our dictionary definition of knowledge says it consists of facts and truths. So a belief is a truth; yet it is possible to hold a mistaken belief – that is we believe something to be true when in fact it is false. Clearly then a mistaken belief should not be considered to be knowledge. But how do we determine whether a belief is true or otherwise? ...

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In my second blog-post I implored those who profess to be knowledge practitioners to read some basic philosophy, and in particular some epistemology. To fill this hole I thought over the next couple of blog-posts I would introduce ‘truth types’ and ‘belief’.

In my opinion one of the problems with the knowledge management discipline is we can’t define what it means, and in particular we can’t define in a consistent way what we mean by knowledge. The Macquarie Dictionary provides eight definitions of knowledge. The first says knowledge is ‘acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, from study or investigation.’ Another says knowledge is the ‘perception of fact and truth and being cognisant or aware of fact or circumstance.’ The last definition says knowledge is the ‘body of truths or facts accumulated by human beings in the course of time'. From these definitions we might deduce that in order to have knowledge one must first have some facts. ...

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About three years ago I came up with the idea of the “Knowledge Conduit”. The idea is still a bit raw but I thought I would share it with you anyway. The Knowledge Conduit is illustrated below.

First, you should observe that there are two distinct domains – the descriptive domain and the predictive domain ...

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A simple model which I find useful is the “Six Knows Knowledge Model ” shown below. The model has its origins in the Rudyard Kipling poem “I Keep Six Honest Serving-Men ” , but no doubt I will be challenged on this assertion! That said it is a model that serves me well, except I would add ‘know how much’ as a node. Let me describe each node.

‘Know what’ knowledge is the knowledge about how to find the relevant data to produce information. It is not about the data or information itself. This knowledge is increasing in importance simply because of the sheer volume of data that is now available to a corporation. For a knowledge manager the ‘know what’ dimension represents a real challenge, because discovering where knowledge resides, internal to and external to the enterprise, is crucial to success. ...

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There is a good deal of criticism of the data, information, knowledge, wisdom model of knowledge, which is sometimes called the DIKW hierarchy but I prefer to call it the ‘pyramid to wisdom’. Most of the criticism says the model is too simple. I wonder, however, if the model has some use. As usual it is useful to return to source documents.

In knowledge management circles Russell Ackoff is usually credited as the originator of the hierarchy, and indeed published two seminal papers, the first in 1989. However Milan Zeleny published a paper two years before Ackoff, and Harlan Cleveland published a paper in 1982. Both of these authors mention the hierarchy and provide examples. ...

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Today David Snowden has an interesting blog with the title “Ignorance, opportunism, trivialisation, & hijacking”. He uses the metaphor of the four horseman of the apocalypse for new ideas and concepts, with each word representing a horseman. This metaphor resonates with me. His argument is I think well considered, and brings me to my point. In this world of instant access it is too easy to find information on an idea or concept and then take a bit of it, without understanding its foundations and limitations. Often the problem is the information we find is piecemeal and has been filtered through many disparate world views. Each filter changes the context of the idea. We need to take the time to go back to source documents. I’ll use the idea of tacit and explicit knowledge as an example of how concepts become corrupted.

Ikjiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi are widely quoted and sometimes credited with the idea of tacit and explicit knowledge. However the idea rightly belongs with Michael Polanyi, who in fairness was acknowledged by Nonaka and Takeuchi. Polanyi believed that knowledge was both individually and collectively formed in a constant cycle between personal tacit knowledge and public explicit knowledge, but that all public explicit knowledge has a tacit dimension. He said public explicit knowledge is at once both tacit and explicit and based in individual experience (Polanyi 1966). Note that he says knowledge is at once both tacit and explicit. ...

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Yesterday I was interviewed by Eric Burns from the Babson College Working Knowledge Research Center in Boston. (Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak are the Center Directors). Eric is exploring the links between knowledge management and innovation, and wanted to get a sense of the current status of knowledge management practices in industry. I spoke about my 4-year involvement with TARDIS , which is a knowledge management initiative within the Australian Defence Force. I am one of the developers of TARDIS and have been involved with it since its conception. As such I am very aware that anything I say and write is coloured by my deep and personal involvement. Indeed David Snowden blogged three days ago about this problem. He said – “I have sat in many a conference listening to a presentation from a KM person is a company where the statements about what has happened bear little relation to the reality on the ground.” I pointed this world view problem out to Eric and suggested he may want to speak to some of the users.

Coincidentally, two weeks ago Patrick Lambe invited me to be one of the judges for the Singapore iKMS KM Excellence Awards. He sent some documentation to each of the potential judges for comment. I commented by saying - “We need to understand the organisational motivations and know something about the organisation. … I also think we need to clearly understand the scope and intent of the initiative. A webpage is not knowledge management, nor is a database, and nor is a blog, or a collection of stories. These are enablers and a step along the path. Any initiative should demonstrate a holistic attempt to bring together the people, process and technology elements, for organisational and knowledge worker benefit.” ...

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