Unveiling Tacit Learning: Definition, Examples, and Organizational Excellence
Tacit knowledge, often described as "know-how," is the unspoken expertise residing within individuals' minds. It's the kind of knowledge that's difficult to articulate or codify explicitly, yet it's essential for high performance and organizational success. This article delves into the definition of tacit learning, explores its various forms, provides real-world examples, and discusses strategies for capturing and leveraging it within organizations.
Defining Tacit Knowledge
People often define tacit knowledge as knowledge that you can’t put into words, but this negative definition doesn’t say what tacit knowledge is-just what it isn’t. Worse, this definition is too broad and vague. Tacit knowledge is intuitive and unarticulated knowledge that cannot be communicated, understood, or used without the 'knowing subject'. It is the type of knowledge that is deeply ingrained in individuals and is often challenging to articulate or codify explicitly. It is the type of knowledge that helps people do something.
Michael Polanyi, who introduced the term "tacit knowing," asserted that "we can know more than we can tell." This highlights that all knowledge is rooted in tacit knowledge. While declarative knowledge may be needed for acquiring skills, it is unnecessary for using those skills once the novice becomes an expert.
Tacit knowledge is also known by a few alternative names in the business world. It is sometimes referred to as “tribal knowledge,” as it spreads throughout an organization (or a group within an organization) without being documented. Instead, it’s shared from person to person.
The Essence of Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge refers to the vast, unspoken, unwritten warehouse of knowledge that each person holds, which is based upon observations, emotions, experiences, intuition, insights, and internal information. Tacit knowledge is key to an individual’s consciousness, and it is acquired primarily through relationships with other individuals. It requires shared activities and communication to be imparted between humans. It acts as the underlying foundation of explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the information we all possess that is gained from personal context and experience.
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Types of Tacit Knowledge
Patrick Lambe (2023) has his own description of the variety of forms of tacit knowledge: embodied skills, experiential knowledge, technical knowledge, perceptual skills, social skills, and cognitive skills.
The suggestions described above seem to fall into five clusters. There is nothing profound about these clusters, and I imagine that others have developed taxonomies that are more compelling.
Tacit knowledge can be divided according to the terrain. Terrains affect the process of changing tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
- Relational tacit knowledge: Relational tacit knowledge could be made explicit, but not made explicit for reasons that touch on deep principles that have to do with either the nature or location of knowledge of the way humans are made.
- Somatic tacit knowledge: Somatic tacit knowledge has to do with properties of individuals bodies and brains as physical things. It includes things our bodies can do but we cannot describe how, like riding a bike.
- Collective tacit knowledge: Collective tacit knowledge is a kind of knowledge that we do not know how to make explicit and that we cannot envisage how to explicate.
Examples of Tacit Knowledge in Action
The general idea of tacit knowledge is very important. It forms the basis of expertise and it informs efforts at knowledge management (e.g., Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) and training. It explains how an emergency department physician can walk into a room and judge that a patient “looks sick.” It explains how Mike Riley, a British naval officer, looked at a radar blob on his screen during Desert Storm in 1991 and knew that it was an Iraqi silkworm missile coming to destroy his ship, rather than an American A-6, even though the two radar profiles were identical.
Here's another example. My youngest grandchild, Harold, was celebrating his 7th birthday. Asked what he wanted, he said that he wanted me to make fudge. Hmmm. I had made fudge in the past, perhaps 20 years earlier, but never with much success. Somehow Harold remembered me telling of these failures and came away with the deluded belief that I could successfully make fudge for him. I carefully followed the recipe, dreading the step at the end that simply said I should continue stirring the cooked mixture until it lost its gloss-whatever that meant. There I was, stirring away and bracing myself for yet another failure. And then something happened. I felt the fudge start to stiffen, evoking memories from 20 years earlier. “This is the moment,” I thought. I stopped stirring and poured and-amazing. It came out fine, for the first time. Some sort of muscle memory kicked in, a memory I didn’t even know I had.
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Consider a more relatable example: driving a car on the highway. Reflect on your instinctive ability to apply just the right amount of pressure to the brakes, avoiding stopping too short (risking a rear-end collision) or too late (colliding with the car in front). While a manual can teach you how to use the brakes (explicit knowledge), your ability to use them effectively stems from experience (tacit knowledge).
- Sales: A senior account executive’s ability to read a client’s body language and know when to push for the close or when to back off.
- For example, someone asked a veteran sales representative how he knows when a prospect is almost ready to buy. Through years of experience, the rep can clearly see the signals-spoken and unspoken-that a potential customer is ready to take the next step.
Tacit knowledge is inherently tied to the individual’s experiences and the specific context in which they operate.
Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge
There are many different types of knowledge, but the two most common types of knowledge are tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is intangible and resides within an individual's mind. Explicit knowledge is tangible and can be captured, recorded, and communicated in a clear and systematic manner. It is rote knowledge that people can memorize and recite back to you.
Codifiability and mechanism of transferring knowledge: Explicit knowledge can be codified (for example, 'can you write it down' or 'put it into words' or 'draw a picture'), and easily transferred without the knowing subject. In contrast, tacit knowledge is intuitive and unarticulated knowledge that cannot be communicated, understood or used without the 'knowing subject'.
Main methods for the acquisition and accumulation: Explicit knowledge can be generated through logical deduction and acquired through practical experience in the relevant context.
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Potential of aggregation and modes of appropriation: Explicit knowledge can be aggregated at a single location, stored in objective forms, and appropriated without the participation of the knowing subject. Tacit knowledge, in contrast, is personal and contextual; it is distributed across knowing subjects, and cannot easily be aggregated.
Tacit vs. Implicit Knowledge
Sometimes the terms "tacit knowledge" and "implicit knowledge" are used interchangeably, but they're not entirely the same. In simple terms, implicit knowledge is a form of tacit knowledge that can potentially be made explicit with some effort or reflection. It lies between tacit and explicit knowledge and represents subconscious understanding or assumptions that individuals may not immediately be aware of.
For implicit knowledge to become explicit knowledge, it requires more than just recording the information verbatim. It involves a process of reflection and translation of the subconscious understanding into an easily communicable format.
It's crucial to note that knowledge isn't strictly classified as either explicit or tacit. Instead, we should consider each piece of knowledge possessed by an organization on a continuum, ranging from purely tacit to entirely explicit.
Take, for example, your sales team's documented process for pitching to a customer. The overall document clearly outlines the steps to take throughout the process-an example of explicit knowledge. However, within each step, there may be certain "know-how" aspects that your sales team intuitively understands but might not be obvious to others without their experience and expertise.
The key differences between tacit, implicit, and explicit knowledge come down to how easily they can be communicated and documented. While tacit knowledge is elusive and hard to articulate, implicit knowledge is subconscious but can potentially be made explicit, and explicit knowledge is straightforward to share. By understanding these distinctions, you can create an environment that nurtures learning, sparks innovation, and drives growth within your organization.
The Benefits of Capturing Tacit Knowledge
Now that you understand what tacit knowledge actually is-and how difficult it is to capture-you might be left asking: Why should my organization bother capturing our tacit knowledge and codifying it into explicit knowledge in the first place? To be sure, there are many benefits of capturing tacit knowledge.
Communicate Organizational Knowledge More Effectively:Earlier, we mentioned that tacit knowledge is sometimes referred to as “tribal knowledge”, as team members often “absorb” it simply by gaining more experience working within an organization. The thing is, though: Relying on this osmosis-like transfer of knowledge leaves up to chance whether it actually happens or not. Unfortunately, even your longest-lived employees may not gain the tacit knowledge needed to best do their jobs. Worse yet, it may be the case that your team members don’t know what they don’t know. Basically, this means they’ll continue to use a sub-par approach to their duties simply because they aren’t aware that there’s a better way to do them. (This especially applies to remotely-operating teams, as employees have minimal interactions with one another-meaning much fewer chances to exchange and absorb knowledge.)
That said, the main benefit of being able to transfer tacit knowledge is that it makes this information visible and accessible to all members of your team. It also clarifies any confusion or uncertainties your team members may have about a given process, allowing them to dig into the “nitty-gritty” details to cement their understanding for good.
The ability to capture your tacit knowledge also allows you to onboard new employees more efficiently. The typical onboarding process involves teaching newbies what the steps of various processes are. Injecting tacit knowledge into the mix allows them to get a feel for how to optimally perform these tasks.
Similarly, codifying your tacit knowledge adds value to your current, explicit knowledge content. For example, you might supplement a standard operating procedure document with a video in which an employee demonstrates the procedure in action.
In supercharging your current knowledge content, your team will be better equipped to tackle any and all processes they’re responsible for. This can lead to a massive spike in productivity throughout your organization.
Injecting tacit knowledge into your external knowledge base will have a similar effect on your customers. Here, your knowledge base content won’t just tell your customers what to do-but will also explain just how to do it. This will equip them to get the absolute most value they can from your products or services.
Overall, tacit knowledge becomes useful and valuable to others only when it’s shared by those who possess it. By documenting it concretely, you allow each of your team members to share their tacit knowledge with ease.
Differentiate Your Company from Your Competitors:
As we mentioned earlier, the ability to store and share tacit will better equip your organization to serve its customers-and can also better equip (and enable) these customers to solve their own issues as they wish. With a comprehensive knowledge management system full of “know-what” and “know-how” information, both your support staff and your customers will always be able to find what they need to overcome the issue at hand.
If your customers can always get the info they’re looking for when engaging with your brand, they’ll have every reason to trust you over your competition moving forward.
What’s more, simply showcasing your tacit knowledge to your audience-even if they don’t necessarily need it at the moment-helps position your brand as a team of experts. If your competitors don’t offer similar content to showcase their value, you’ll already have a pretty hefty advantage over them.
Gain Knowledge Capital and Retain Organizational Knowledge:
We’ve established that your organization’s tacit knowledge is a valuable asset. And we don’t mean this symbolically, either. Your team’s documented tacit knowledge is proof that your team knows what it’s doing, and that your company is a valuable entity.
For employee candidates, it provides insight into your organization’s vision, goals, and capabilities. This can attract high-quality candidates looking to work with a team as skilled and dedicated as they are.
For investors and other stakeholders, it’s proof that they can continue working with your business with confidence-and that doing so will pay off in dividends.
And, if your goal is to eventually sell your business, your documented tacit knowledge offers buyers proof that your company is made up of a highly-skilled and knowledgeable team of employees.
Knowledge capital is also valuable to your organization, as well. As we said earlier, documenting tacit and other knowledge makes employee onboarding much easier. The other side of this is that you’ll also retain previous employees’ knowledge once they leave your organization. This can help your current employees pick up the slack as you search for a replacement hire, and also enable your new employees to hit the ground running.
Increased Productivity & Organizational Innovation:
Since you’ll have collaboratively developed and demonstrated best practices and optimal approaches to tasks, you’ll almost certainly perform at a much higher level.
Moreover, this type of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer where individual team members can learn from each other's experiences and mistakes will allow employees to spend less time and energy on ideas that don't work. This open exchange of ideas and experiences allows employees to gain new perspectives and see things from different angles which can lead to breakthroughs, “aha moments,” and other outside-the-box ways of thinking.
How to Convert Tacit Knowledge Into Explicit Knowledge
Documenting your organization’s tacit knowledge may take some effort, but doing so is always well worth it. That is, as long as you approach the process in a strategic manner…
Create an Environment Centered on Continuous Learning: Your first order of business will be to get your team focused on collecting and documenting tacit knowledge as a matter of course.
Audit Your Current Knowledge Content and Identify Knowledge Gaps: To get started, here, you’ll first need to audit your current knowledge content-both related to tacit knowledge and overall.
- Comprehensiveness: Does the content cover every aspect of the topic? Is anything left unsaid or unexplained?
- Digestibility: Is it easy to read or otherwise consume the knowledge content?
- Applicability: Does your knowledge content allow the user to take action? Will taking said action lead them to the outcome they expect?
You also want to think of any knowledge-related questions, comments, or feedback you’ve received from your team or your audience. After breaking into small groups, your team members will begin exploring the many facets of the topic at hand. After a period of time, certain members of the group will rotate out, while others will stay put. Once new groups have been formed, those that stayed will review the previous discussion, then new members will discuss theirs. The group as a whole will come back together for a “town hall”-like meeting. Finally, you’ll want to focus on documenting tacit knowledge whenever discussing lessons learned with your team. This means thinking more abstractly about the intangibles and “know-how” exhibited by your team that led to a positive (or not-so-positive) outcome. From a-ha moments to on-the-fly changes to your procedures, there will likely be a number of things worth discussing that otherwise typically go overlooked.
Before moving on, note that, to create an environment focused on continuous learning, you may need to realign your employees with your company’s overall vision. Without taking this critical step, it will be difficult for your team to even recognize tacit knowledge in the first place-let alone effectively document it.
Inject Storytelling Into Your Knowledge Management System: Now that you’ve identified, fleshed out, and solidified your team’s tacit knowledge, you’ll need to find a way to codify it so that it more easily be documented.
This is where knowledge management (KM) comes in. Knowledge management tries to find ways to visualize tacit knowledge and convert it into explicit knowledge to better enable knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer with other individuals within a group. The key to doing this: Storytelling.
As opposed to explicit knowledge (which can be communicated in concrete terms, such as a step-by-step list), tacit knowledge is best understood through experience. In lieu of actually providing an experience to your learner, the next best thing is allowing them to experience it vicariously through your team members.
The idea here is for your audience to be able to see themselves doing the things being discussed within the content. It allows your team to convert their experiential learning into immersive content to be experienced by others. More than just reading the steps of how to troubleshoot an issue, you want them to actually picture themselves fixing it in real life.
tags: #tacit #learning #definition #and #examples
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