Leading Organizational Learning

Chapter Nineteen

Learning Stored Forward

A Priceless Legacy

Betsy Jacobson

Beverly Kaye

In today’s economy, it is common knowledge that organizational
worth is not caught up only in material assets but is to be found in
human assets as well. Organizations invest heavily in protecting
their material assets but surprisingly less so in safeguarding their
human assets. Though a reduction of investment in the former can
cause great problems for companies, minimizing or cutting invest-
ment in the latter can have even more serious implications.
An organization’s most valuable human asset is also among its
most intangible—the vast bank of knowledge contained within
its ranks. Many organizations have sought to capture the explicit
knowledge—knowledge that is easily codified and conveyed to
others, such as in business plans, procedures, customer lists, and
market research—of their technical and management leaders in
complex information systems and databases. To a large extent,
these systems function well, but definitive results of their direct
contributions and usefulness are still being studied.
Going a layer deeper in that vast bank of knowledge, we come
to the tacit knowledge—experiential, how-to information based on
clues, hunches, instinct, and personal insight—that individuals
have acquired over time and now hold “in their bones.” This learn-
ing gives clues and cues about how to do the work and deliver on

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