In today’s fast paced world with change being the only constant, the pursuit of knowledge is relentless and continuous. Anyone facing a customer facing role or a market facing role faces multiple challenges daily. While there would be several operating procedures and guidelines given there would be several challenges which each of these people would be resolving in their own ways. As each situation would be different the ways used to address the same also would be different and the learnings that each of these people learn during these interactions also would be different.
Over a period, the individuals or teams develop their own thumb rules which work in their geographies or situations. It is this knowledge which individuals and teams learn and possess which is only known to them and which you will not get to learn in any manual or operating procedure is referred to as tacit knowledge and is perhaps the most important knowledge that is essential for betterment of decision making and problem solving.
Tacit knowledge often resides in the intangible realm of experience, intuition, and emotions. It’s what enables a seasoned chef to create a masterpiece without a recipe, relying solely on their intuition. It is also what makes an experienced person to identify and go directly to a problem area during an important discussion or review despite them being not visible to several others in the same meeting.
What’s interesting is this is a common trait in the animal world. There is this widely quoted example of two English birds the blue tit and the robin and how two very similar birds nesting in the same place follow very different patterns and behaviours both individually and as a group. This example which was first listed in the Arie de Gues book “The Living Company”.
The UK has had a long-standing milk distribution system for close to a century where milk was delivered in bottles at each doorstep. In the initial days, the bottles didn’t have covers and both these birds feasted on the rich cream which would settle at the top of the bottles during the movement to each of the doorsteps.
After a while once aluminium seals were invented these milk bottles were sealed with the aluminium seals. This closed access to both the birds to the milk. Over a period, the blue tit was able to find ways of breaking the aluminium seal and what’s more interesting is this knowledge of breaking open was gained by all the blue tits over a period. In the case of the robin birds while some individual birds did figure out the way to break the aluminium seal and gain access to the milk it was never institutionalised.
This is perhaps the best example that can be quoted where a tactical knowledge gained by a few birds got institutionalised and got converted to explicit knowledge which was then used by the entire group of blue tits.
Explicit knowledge is the type of knowledge that can be easily documented, codified, and shared. It’s the foundation of textbooks, manuals, and databases. In the example quoted above the birds found a unique way of converting this tactical knowledge into explicit knowledge. In fact, we find this happening regularly across the animal kingdom with birds following the same migratory route for centuries and turtles coming to the same beaches every year to lay their eggs and so on.
A good, documented example of converting tactical knowledge is that of the creation of the Matsushita home bakery.
The story of the home bakery began with a keen observation by Matsushita himself. In the 1980s, bread consumption in Japan was on the rise, but most households relied on bakeries or stores for their daily bread. Matsushita recognized a market gap—people desired freshly baked bread at home, but the process was too cumbersome and time-consuming.
But the initial product that they created using all the explicit knowledge available didn’t provide the best result as the machines produced bread with an over cooked crust, but which was still raw inside.
They zeroed in on the Osaka International Hotel as they produced the best bread but couldn’t figure what was producing this result nether was the chef able to explain the same to them as he was following his set process which he has fine-tuned over years of experience.
So, the Head of Software Development and several of their engineers started working with the chef to understand the process that he was following. The team then noticed that the chef was also both stretching and twisting the dough, and this influenced the creation of gluten development in the bread. Once this was implemented the Home bakery became a hugely successful product.
So tacit knowledge has three characteristics,
- It is difficult to express and at times the person himself might not be aware about the fine ingredients of this knowledge
- It can only be shared if the person having the knowledge is willing to share the same with others.
- The knowledge is usually born in the midst of an urgent need which needs to be addressed .
The ability to convert the tactical knowledge into explicit one allows their more widespread adaption and usage and creates the major differentiator in the marketplace. In this age of rapid change and innovation, understanding the delicate interplay between these two forms of knowledge is essential. It equips us not only to appreciate the secrets they hold but also to harness their collective power for the betterment of society, business, and human endeavour. To continue learning about such business insights, keep visiting my LinkedIn page Rejo’s Biz Bytes and my web page Rejo Francis – Inspirational Business Leader
