Daniel Brent Patton

Product Content Strategy & UX Writing

 

Knowledge will make you free

Knowledge will make you free (Photo credit: tellatic)

John Old, of Texaco, makes salient—though still fairly broad—statements regarding knowledge management in September’s Fast Company. Mostly it’s about people. First, to paraphrase a paraphrased paraphrase (from David Snowden):

“One, knowledge can only be volunteered; it can’t be conscripted. Two, people always know more than they can tell and can tell more than they can write. And three, people only know what they know when they need to know it.”

And these…

“There are plenty of obstacles, most of them having to do with people and organizations. For example, it’s hard to share knowledge if you don’t have enough time to reflect on what you know or what you need to learn.” “It’s hard enough to think great thoughts—let alone to capture them for a knowledge database. That’s why David Gilmour, the founder, president, and CEO of Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc., in Palo Alto, set out to create applications that capture expertise as it gets created. Tacit’s software and server products scour email, documents—anything digital—to build an ever-changing knowledge bank.”

Heady stuff…