make decisions, and so on. Then, like Simon, feed these observa-
tions back to them so that verification can be made.
- Have people who possess valued expertise tell stories about
their work and give examples of projects they managed that went
well and projects that did not go well. From these stories and exam-
ples, patterns of experience are likely to emerge that can be verified
and then honed for organizational learning purposes. - Interview people who have valued expertise, asking such
questions as these:
- Why did you approach the task or project the way you did
instead of in some other way? - Think of a metaphor or an analogy to express what you did or
the approach you took. (This is especially useful if the person
can’t “find the right words” to answer the first question.) - Using behavioral language, describe a project in which you
were involved and explain what was done, when, and how.
(Discussing actual behavior helps make tacit knowledge more
explicit.)
- Have people with valued expertise participate in activities
that will lead to increased self-awareness, personality tests, and
multirater feedback processes, for example. Increased awareness of
self is likely to enhance the ability to access tacit knowledge and
make it more explicit.
Organizational StructureMost of us are familiar with Miller’s law, “seven plus or minus two.”
George Miller himself called it “The Magical Number Seven.”^9 In
a series of studies, he found that human beings could, on average,
keep track of or simultaneously deal with no more than seven cat-
egories. This is why telephone numbers are seven digits long. Of
course, today we have to add area codes and perhaps other codes,
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