The deeply held knowledge we have accummulated over time through experience is what we use to make sense of the world and to make good decisions time and again. That knowledge is hard won and many people think it is also hard to transfer. I had a conversation about this today, and I thought it might be interesting to share my experience in why people find transferring deeply held knowledge so difficult.
For one thing, there is a lot of it. For another, it is not all created equal -- it is not all of equal value. Why transfer what is not useful or needed? If you have long term experience and expertise which you want to share with others, you will understand what I mean.
There is experiential knowledge which helps you determine what factors are important in making decisions, identifies your current context, how that context influences your decisions, and how to make sense of what you are about to do. If you had to tell me exactly how you made your decisions and what part of that was most useful to be transferred, it would prove to be quite challenging.
But what if I asked those around you, those influenced by your decision or resulting activity, what they thought was most unique about the knowledge you held and what they turned to you for? Wouldn't that help you determine what knowledge was priority for you to transfer? One view of a subject, issue or challenge is only one view. It can not help but be skewed. How do you know if that view is correct? Or useful? Checking with others helps to frame the knowledge most useful and important. And if knowledge is not useful, why bother?
There is enough information floating around to overwhelm all of us. We need to transfer what is most important, not forgetting the contextual aspects, but to consider what would impact the most if lost. We need to make knowledge transfer as simple and useful as possible. What are your viewpoints?
No comments:
Post a Comment