Knowing is an important component of knowledge, but staying with knowledge and nothing else is not enough, an even more important step is needed, and that subsequent step is the one that transcends the most, the one that is most noticeable when talking about knowledge.
Knowing how to apply what one knows in action is the most difficult, perhaps for this reason many organizations cannot capitalize on the knowledge that employees have in the market. In most organizations the learning "issue" is taken very seriously, constant training, continuous learning, virtual classrooms, e-learning, etc. and as if this were not enough, when a new management topic comes out, they immediately buy it.. ENOUGH SPENDING SILVER PLEASE !!!!!!!
Surely the reader does not understand much, it is most likely that his thought is this idiot what is wrong with him? On the one hand, he writes a book on the importance of knowledge and now he says the opposite. It may be true that he is an idiot, I have not yet proved otherwise, however let me clarify this point.
One thing is KNOWING WHAT and another thing is KNOWING HOW, with this I mean that the intellectual capital is not made up of the fact that the company has vast theoretical knowledge on a specific topic (knowing what), but is related to the practical application in the market of this knowledge (know how).
Before touching the field of business fully, let me give an example with what happens in university students, when they graduate after four or five years of incorporating theoretical knowledge, they think there are few, so they go to do a postgraduate degree After they spend more than two years studying, when they finish they realize that they are still not enough and embark on a master's degree where they invest other years, then they decide to specialize and embark on a doctorate, but as the specialization is not enough, they re-specialize in a Phd, until they say FINALLY END !!!! Now I get to work….. where do I start? How do I do it?
I agree that there can be no knowledge as if there is no knowledge that, that is, we cannot put into action what we do not know or know, but let's be concrete and say that most of the «knowing how» to apply theoretical knowledge is 50% of the person is guilty, for not being proactive and facing possible failures as a result of lack of experience, and the other 50% is the responsibility of the organization, tutor, institution or any other knowledge provider agent for not pacing the subject from saying to fact.
With organizations stop spending so much money on acquiring knowledge, I mean that they put knowledge into action, or in other words, that it is not a lot of noise and little nuts, that is, they go from knowing to knowing how.
To make this leap it is necessary to leave the theory and move on to the debate, some of the points detailed below may be useful for those organizations willing to take action, not only on words, but on deeds.
- Give freedom to knowledge theorists so that they can demonstrate in small groups the putting into action of theoretical knowledge. At Xerox, customers are invited to observe how they use the products allowing the team to gain important insights related to knowing how to improve usability. At Xerox they know the customer is right.
- Create informal places to bring the "know what" down to earth. I believe that it is true that man is a social being by nature, so that the socialization of knowledge is enhanced when there are specific places inside or outside the company where people get together and rave about an idea, apparently, crazy. "This is a space where we get together to chat informally, this morning we get together to rave about a project that we have to present to a client," a Microsoft consultant told me while we were taking a tour of the company. (AHHHH !!!, I don't know what happened to this project, but that it went from theory to practice I'm sure).
- Be an apostle of debate. If the intellectual capital of the company increases in direct proportion to the practical application of knowledge, allow new ideas to be debated rather than censored for fear of failure or rejection. History shows us how many people have had to overcome these obstacles, when Charles Darwin published his ideas on the evolution of species, he found that his colleagues in the sciences showed him more opposition than the religious authorities. His theories challenged too many deep-rooted motions. Jonas Salk stumbled on the same stone with his radical innovations in immunology, and something similar happened to Max Planck when he revolutionized the physical sciences. Perhaps in your company there is a Darwin, a Salk, or a Planck, I am not saying that you sign a blank check to the employees,What I am saying with this paragraph is that it provides the space so that people can express the practical aspect of their theory, in summary, with this being an apostle of the debate it is about that the managers of the companies go from a combative attitude to a compassionate attitude.
- Focus on the concept rather than the details. Excessive concentration on details separates theory from practice much more, it depends on the organizational situation and the theoretical knowledge that is exposed, but when we started using the clock we did not know what was behind the glass (the machine), even today Many of us do not know how it is composed, but nevertheless we buy a watch because we buy the concept, to know the time. When companies begin to dismantle the clock, and it is not necessary to do so, what they do is put bats in the wheel to put this theoretical knowledge into practice. The markets are hyperfast and the one that does not run flies, be it of the ones that fly and concentrate on the concepts when presenting or buying theoretical knowledge so that there is room for practice and error, practice and error, practice and error,practice and error, practice and error, practice and success.
- To experience. You should not be afraid of failure, failure in a new experiment to put theory into practice can be the best teacher. Imagine for a moment two extremes; At one end, 200 meters high, is knowing what. At the other extreme 50 meters apart is knowing how. These two extremes can be eternally disconnected if we do not draw a bridge to go from one point to another. To cross from one extreme to the other, risks must be taken, since we cannot make mistakes at 200 meters high because they would be fatal. The bridge to cross from A to B is given by experimentation.
Experimentation is a nexus that joins knowing that with knowing how. Of course it is normal for there to be fears, fear of rejection, fear of failure, but we must bear in mind that it is necessary to cross that bridge so as not to remain in theory or ideas. I invite you to return to the previous exercise again. If there was a containment network that supports its fall from more than 200 meters high, would the fear of crossing the bridge of experimentation be less?
Experimentation has more initiative when in the culture of the company there are containment networks that accept failures in experimentation as one less obstacle to success. At Corning, for example, experiments are continually being carried out with different raw materials and with new formulas to increase the yield and quality of the crystals. A specialty steel company called Allegheny Ludlum periodically experiments with new winding technologies and methods in order to increase productivity and reduce costs.
The containment network created by the organization's culture makes human capital feel safer in crossing the bridge of experimentation, but we still must not forget that the initiative in moving from knowing that to knowing how (or from extreme A to B) is motivated by the benefits to be gained from experimentation. People must be shown that the benefits of action outweigh the benefits of inaction. At Allegheny Ludlum the benefits of experimenting resulted in a 5-7% improvement in the company's track record of improvement.
In addition to these points, ideas, or whatever you want to call them, to increase intellectual capital, organizations or people must bear in mind that everything that can be seen is what counts, just as love is shown in actions towards the loved one, knowledge is evidenced in practice and not in theory. So put KNOWING WHAT into action and enjoy, because knowledge is something that is not spent with use, on the contrary, it increases value.
The increase in the value of intellectual capital in companies is given as we said before by the putting into action of knowledge. It is also true that in a company "knowing how" arises as a consequence of improvisation, spontaneity, chance, intuition, or simply as something inexplicable and without apparent logic.
The above corresponds to the unstructured knowledge that can be found at a tacit and implicit level. With Stradivarius violins, for example, it happens that violinists show it as the best, they say that it produces a much superior sound, but none can specify precisely how they were manufactured, since the manufacturing work was carried out by skilled craftsmen. This happens in many other companies that by leaving the intellectual capital at that implicit and unstructured level, the possibility of improvement is freed to chance, both in results and in productivity.
Sustaining intellectual capital is achieved by knowing why, "knowing why", allows knowing the process of knowledge creation down to the smallest details. By making explicit the implicit and tacit processes, it is possible to have a detailed and detailed control of the factors that intervene in the maintenance of intellectual value, avoiding that knowledge is not being used, evaporates or is left to chance, in the best of cases.
Fundamentally, knowing why gives us a map to get into the details of the process, obtaining control of the mind - hand - result relationship. Knowing why does not focus on controlling the mind, much less on tying the hands, but rather emphasizes the result that occurs in this chain. That is, to know why that result was reached.
Getting into this process allows us to evaluate and measure what knowledge should be incorporated or which should be discarded to increase results or to transfer and clone it to another part of the company. This is the way companies sustain the value of intellectual capital.
When Christopher Columbus discovered America he was based on intuition since there was no explicit demonstration of his theory, he maintained that the earth was round, and the social imaginary of that time maintained in some cases that what is now known as planet earth was flat and it was supported by two elephants, one at each end. When Colon successfully demonstrated his intuition, he opened the way to know why, and not only allowed him to repeat the journey, but also opened the way for many other characters in history to continue demonstrating why the earth was round.
Patents or invention registrations are precisely the explicitness of implicit knowledge and are achieved by going into knowing why. The demonstration and the explanation of the processes is the door that opens to learning and therefore to the maintenance of intellectual capital.
© Pablo L. Belly All rights reserved. You can redistribute, forward, copy, print, or quote this article as long as you do not modify its content and do not use it for commercial purposes. You must include this note, as well as the name of the company Belly Knowledge Management International and its author: Pablo L. Belly, the email [email protected] and the address www.bellykm.com
