>An interesting management question is how much effort is it worth turning
>this organizational tacit knowledge into explicit (to help new hires, or
>to hold long term organizational memory as people leave) vs. creating an
>environment where individual tacit knowledge can be more rapidly shared
>and diffused to create organizational tacit knowledge. [David Skyrme ]
Making cultural norms explicit for new hire orientation is using symbols
and rules (to make the cultural expectation explicit) at the individual
level of the system (individual new hires are doing the learning).
Creating an environment where tacit knowledge can be more rapidly shared
is working at the organizational level.
How often do we make these alternative interventions explicit choices.
Other examples include:
1) Do we focus on hiring people who are willing to take risks or do we try
to create an environment where the desired behavior is not perceived as
risky?
2) Do we identify, select and develop future leaders of the organization
or do we create an organization with the capacity to embrace good
leadership, resist bad leadership and "know" the difference?
Is there a well developed intervention taxonomy that can be applied to
these types of alternatives?
Doug Merchant
Currently On Career Sabbatical
--"Doug Merchant" <dougm@eclipse.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>