- Experts can rarely “extract” their own knowledge.Experts pos-
sess the ability to exercise practical judgment in context. When
they try to codify what they know, they generally arrive at either
something so specific that it appears to lack broader applicability or
something so general that it appears obvious. - Insight occurs mostly by analogy.When someone is stuck
(knowingly or not) in solving a problem, the issue most often is
that the person has not seen that the problem actually resembles
some other problem for which a solution could more easily be envi-
sioned. Once someone has framed the problem right, finding the
solution tends to be relatively easy. In business, however, we are
constantly surrounded by tremendous amounts of potentially dis-
tracting detail. Problem framing is consequently quite difficult. The
codification-access model assumes that the “user” has already
framed the problem right and can now go about trying to find ideas
that will help solve the problem. Unfortunately, this is often not
the case. - Professionals rarely want to disrupt the flow of their work.The
kinds of people to whom knowledge management is generally
directed are competent, busy, and used to having to deal with com-
plex problems quickly and efficiently. A large part of what profes-
sionals learn how to do is to take a daunting task and approach it
in such a way that they can systematically and rapidly complete it
at an acceptable level of performance. Professionals often fail to
optimize the result of their work, but they are rarely stumped.
Knowledge management systems generally require professionals to
stop what they are doing (“working”) and do something else
(“access knowledge”) that generally does not yield the feeling of
rapid progress that they associate with the mastery they have
achieved.
There are of course situations in which these issues have been
addressed, and we would be disappointed if each of our readers
failed to think of two or three right off the bat. We believe, how-
ever, that these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
WHERE“MANAGINGKNOWLEDGE” GOESWRONG 29