The promise of wisdom

In the FT Summer School section of August 26, Michael Earl that I appreciate a lot for his, in general, insightfull research contributes an article titled "Tantalised by the promise of wisdom". Leaving apart the fact that talking with executives and then, a number of years later, observe that they are not in their functions anymore is not really what one could expect from research, an interesting point is made.

Indeed I think that most of the knowledge management projects that we have seen over the last decade were nothing more than hidden IT projects. But we all knew that. Indeed, the role of many Knowledge Managers (or whatever they were titled) was nothing more than a way to assembling quickly and flexibly resources throughout an entirely too fixed structure. But we also knew that.

Though what Michael suggests is no doubt correct (identify business needs; don't relabel IT projects; knowledge management should dissolve in the entire organisation), what a difference does that make with the past ? It are open doors that do not touch the real question about knowledge management: what is the nature of knowledge and consequently, what can we expect from knowledge ? As long as we continue to consider knowledge as a static (and linear) representation of experiences (in best cases), that can be transfered, we implicitly define it as information.

We should explore more dynamic definitions of knowledge, in line with what e.g. neurobiology knows as enacted cognition, knowledge in context (as the story tellers create) in order to understand how knowledge can make the difference. Knowledge is not necessarily a hype, but as we often do, we have made it one, since we ignore its true nature.

For those interested in some of these ideas, I refer to a chapter on complexity theory (under construction) that I contribute to a book these days.

Comments

[Malaurie Perrin]

I totaly agree with the wish of making knowlegde more fluid, in movement according to present events and chosen by our own. Yet, I want to enlighten the forgotten fact that this “new” way of learning should have a common basis and point of reference in order to make people understand each other (as for a mere instance: the langage).

Today, the School reform is an example of the drifts of the system: the government want children to master the basics such as reading, calculating, and having some notions in english and computer science. Indeed, there were many changes in the School program and due to this, knowledge has dispersed. As a result: there is a kind of global knowledge in each generation but now, basics are missing…I think this missing stands in the way of progress (a tree needs his roots to grow).

I am not defending a “static knowledge” but I believe that the learning process must begin with common references. Otherwise, why should a student of a business school have to learn finance (what is dislike) instead of learning Human resources (what he want to do in the future)?

Finally I think that one wins wisdom in long-term making a confrontation between a received- knowledge (what one has to learn), a wanted-knowledge (what one chooses to learn), and a living-knowledge (what one has learn according to his experiences) and making a personal synthesis of this.

[guigui]

ça dépend si l'on est formé à Ferrassières!

[guigui]

ça dépend si l'on est formé à Ferrassières!