Tacit knowledge as deep, relational and contextual

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12/18/2014

Tacit knowledge as deep, relational and contextual

A few days ago I blogged on tacit knowledge, and used a story of a London cab driver to explain the difference between tacit knowledge and other knowledge. I received this comment on the story from Kay Winning, who works at the World Bank and was a recent contributor to the DDD Workshop (see her video of work in Sierra Leone below). Kay's dad was a taxi driver and she notes that tacit knowledge is all about context and relationship, built through trust and deep connection--key to doing PDIA:

The analogy to taxi drivers is great. My Dad was a taxi driver for 17 years in the UK and his tacit knowledge went beyond the physical observations mentioned in this posting (where is the ATM, fish shop, least traffic etc. on the way from A to B). It deepened to the relationships, characters, dynamics, undercurrents of places. He didn't remember my friends names (even after years of friendship!), but he remembered their address - telling of the ambiance of the neighborhood they lived in, the characters that lived on their street, what happened there, who held a grudge against who for what, and if it was safe for me. He knew all the stories from seeing and speaking to people all the time (it was a small town). My point is, I don't think we often really spend enough time going around really scratching the surface of the seeming environment and gaining tacit knowledge like this - understanding relationships and undercurrents to know what's a smart/good thing to do, and more likely to succeed, given the underlying dynamics. (This is why the 'locally driven' part of PDIA is so important, I think - and why investing in trust-building is critical ).

Posted at 12:02 PM in Doing Development Differently | Permalink

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