Knowledge management is a concept that began to appear in academic journals in the 1980s. For some people, it can be a relatively new management concept. From my point of view, knowledge management is not new; it has always been there. Knowledge has always been sharing from generations to generations, from one human being to another. So the newness lies in the fact that it is first during the last 3 decades, managing knowledge becomes a conscious action that takes place in organizations. But unfortunately, in many cases, knowledge management has been about creating an IT system that extracts the “knowledge” or information from the employees, stores it and makes it accessible. That’s all?
I cannot help to flash back to all those martial movies that I used to love watching in the past. In any traditions or organizations, there is a need to pass on not only the knowledge but also the wisdom to the younger generation in order to secure growth or at least survival of the traditions/ organizations. When a martial master passes his knowledge on to his disciple, it’s never only about the technique of how to use a sword! You can always learn the technique easily by e.g. reading a book. But what makes the disciple able to carry out the work of the master is always about his ability to internalize the lessons from the master, reflect upon it, use it, gain experience with it and thereby achieve his own wisdom with the lessons! In this way, information to knowledge to wisdom is interconnected and consciously managed by the master himself!
In our modern world and in knowledge management, it seems that we have lost the ability to see the connection between information, knowledge and wisdom. And thereby we fail to nurture it. Knowledge management in the modern days only recognizes and nurtures the transformation between information to knowledge. Therefore in most cases we only use IT system to store information. The transformation process from information to knowledge is mostly taken care of by the employees. And we fail to manage and nurture the process of transforming knowledge into wisdom where knowledge can be internalized, reflected and used. Why do we fail to do this? I can think of three reasons at the moment:
1) The transformation process from knowledge to wisdom takes time- and time is perceived as “scarce resource” in our modern world- we don’t have enough of it- (so it seems)
2) The process is very intangible and therefore can be hard to manage. Therefore it would also be difficult to measure the outcome and to convince the management team that it is worth to invest the resource into it.
3) Most importantly, wisdom is a) hard to define and b) to put into a box or as a goal for us to achieve! (and I can imagine that we do have organizations that not even the leader or the management team possess the wisdom that is valuable for the organizations!)
So what is critical in knowledge management? From my point of view, it is critical that we must have a broader view of how knowledge can be managed. Further, we should understand and recognize the interconnection between information, knowledge and wisdom. We can use IT system to support the process between information to knowledge but from knowledge to wisdom, it requires other skills. It is like growing a flower. It needs nurturing, attentiveness, suitable conditions and most importantly, it just simply needs to develop at its own pace.
