How blogs and wikis can help knowledge management

One of the well-established models of knowledge differentiates between “tactit” and “explicit” knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the formally-expressed knowledge that’s found in books, manuals, data and formulae and the like; while tacit knowledge is the highly-personal “what we know” - insights and intuitions. The problem for organisations is that it’s often tacit knowledge that’s the most vital - but at the same time, it’s the most difficult to capture and classify.

The creation of knowledge within an organisation occurs as a result of the interactions of explicit and tacit knowledge, in the process of knowledge conversion. This is where both types of knowledge increases in both quality and quantity. One useful model of this process is the SECI process - which stands for socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation. In this post I’ll explain the SECI process and explain where wikis and weblogs can help.

Socialisation
From my window, I can see the great cathedral of York Minster, which was built over 700 years ago by generations of skilled craftsmen. They would have learnt their trade through serving seven-year apprenticeships, where they picked up the skills of their craft by observing the more experienced craftsmen. This is a classic example of socialisation - the tacit knowledge belonging to the craft masters is passed on through shared experiences to the apprentices.

A blog can help the socialisation process by recording experiences as they happen - if you blog the progress of a project, then others can read about what you are doing and pick up on information and techniques that you have shared through the medium of the blog. Similarly, a wiki can be used to provide a forum that everyone can contribute to, building up the store of explicit knowledge within the organisation or the team.

And if socialisation is about sharing experiences between people, both can help to bring together widely-dispersed teams. Tacit knowledge is often passed on through “watercooler conversations” - so by providing a virtual watercooler, wikis and blogs can help to bridge the physical gaps that would otherwise prevent tacit knowledge being shared.

Externalisation
Much of the knowledge that we have about how the great cathedrals were built has had to be painstakingly recreated by historians and archaeologists because their builders didn’t leave any written records of what they did and why. Their knowledge was tacit, and because it was never externalised - or transformed into explicit knowledge - ultimately it died with the craftsmen that it belonged to.

If organisations need tacit knowledge to be converted into explicit knowledge in order for it to be best-exploited, then wikis and weblogs have a part to play in the socialisation process. Both aid in capturing the tacit knowledge by making it easier to record - by quickly writing a blog entry, or updating a wiki page, your tacit knowledge can be recorded and made explicit. The externalisation process also benefits from feedback - because wikis can be rapidly updated, the knowledge that they contain can become much more accurate as a result of

Combination
Archeologists and historians have spent entire careers dedicated to learning about how and why the great medieval cathedrals were built, and what we know about them today has been built up over a period of time. Later historians have used earlier research as a starting point, and built upon it with their findings.

Combination is the process of creating more complex and systematic sets of explicit knowledge - it is combined, edited or processed to create new knowledge. Blogs can aid in this process firstly by making the explicit knowledge available in the first place, and then making it possible to add to what exists through linking, quoting or commenting. A wiki enables rapid creation of explicit knowledge, but also makes it incredibly easy to edit and combine. And both provide a readily-accessible store of the new knowledge.

Internalisation
The medieval carpenter learnt on the job - through a process of socialisation as they watched their masters at work and copied them. The modern carpenter will go through a similar process, but a great deal of their knowledge will also be picked up through formal training - as they read the textbooks on the properties of their working materials, and manuals on safe ways of working. Over time, this knowledge will become second-nature to them - it will have been internalised, or transformed from explicit to tacit knowledge.

By providing a way of creating explicit knowledge from the store of tacit knowledge around the organisation, blogs and wikis can aid the internalisation process. Reading the progress of a project through a blog archive, or following a procedure that’s been documented in a wiki enables an individual to convert this into the tacit knowledge that will allow them to be effective in their roles. But having internalised the explicit knowledge, this can then lead to a new spiral of knowledge creation - tacit knowledge accumulated by the individual can be the trigger for new knowledge creation when it is shared with others.

Summary
Organisations face tremendous challenges in handling the knowledge that enables them to create their products and deliver their services. Blogs and wikis have an important part to play here - by allowing the information to be captured and shared rapidly and easily, the organisation can be able to convert the tacit knowledge held by its people into explicit knowledge that can be shared. Building upon existing knowledge is also aided by blogging and contributing to wikis. And they can provide a powerful means of getting the information to the people that need it, enabling them to become more effective in their roles, and in turn generate more tacit knowledge that can be captured and shared with others.

Further reading
The SECI knowledge conversion process was devised by Nonaka, Toyama and Konno in their paper “SECI, Ba and Leadership: A Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation” which appeared in volume 33 of Long Range Planning. The original paper is reproduced in Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader, published by the Open University and Sage Publications - a good introduction to the more academic end of the knowledge management debate.