- We came to realize that documents were limited to “explicit”
knowledge (what we know we know) and that the real payoff
might be in finding ways to share “tacit” knowledge (what’s in
our unconscious, or what we don’t know we know). - Workforce demographics showed an aging population of
deeply knowledgeable people who were going to retire in a
narrow time frame. This issue is especially acute in the gov-
ernment, for which specific programs have been developed to
retain as much of this “institutional memory” as possible.^2
Point of Interest: A cousin to early knowledge management efforts
was benchmarking and best practices, which sprang up in the
1980s.^3 “Site visits” were conducted between companies to share
best practices on such topics as how to reduce manufacturing setup
times or how to bring products to market faster. Interestingly
enough, these early site visits were very people-centric—the com-
panies involved knew that the value came from collaboration and
not so much from an exchange of manuals or operating procedures.
Formal knowledge management needed a few years to recognize the
importance of face-to-face meetings and trusted relationships.This people focus gave rise to new techniques (and newly dis-
covered old techniques) to describe the people-to-people interac-
tions. I’ve selected three that exemplify this new focus:
communities of practice or expertise, storytelling, and expertise
location. However, there are others, including collaboration, social
network analysis, and social capital, that offer additional insights
into the central role people play in knowledge management.^4
Communities of Practice or Expertise
Communities are one of the most powerful and intuitive knowledge-
sharing mechanisms. People connect with others to whom they
feel some kinship, and the levels of trust that exist within a
community facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge.
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