Capturing Tacit Knowledge for Organizational Learning By Vanessa Cerallo

1. Capturing Tacit Knowledge for Organizational LearningBy Vanessa Cerallo

2. A New Reality • Modern society perception & behavioral shift. Old Model: hierarchies, highly structure, inflexible model New Model: dynamic, constantly changing, creative model

3. A New Reality • Modern companies need to be creating and constantly adapting in order to adjust to the competitive forces of the market (survival). • To succeed in adapting to changing situations companies need to able of learning and absorbing knowledge rapidly. • Knowledge is a tool for success: a companies ultimate competitive advantage. • When companies managed strategically the share of their knowledge they can become Learning Organizations.

4. Types of Knowledge and Ways to Acquire It • Explicit: written, specific, database type of knowledge. Easily codified thus easily transfer. • Tacit: experiential, acquire through action and affected by each person mental models. Is the “Know How”. Very difficult to capture and hard to share.

5. Tacit Knowledge “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.” Chinese proverb. • Action creates knowledge. • Way of learning by trail and error. • Trail and error is risky and can be costly. • To create new ideas some degree of risk is necessary- risk to fail. • New corporations need innovation in order to progress. “Learning Organizations see performance shortfalls as opportunities for learning.” By Michael Marquardt.

6. How Knowledge Becomes Valuable • For individual knowledge to be of value to a company the employee needs to share the knowledge in order to transform it into Organizational Knowledge. • To share Tacit knowledge it needs to be converse into Explicit knowledge.

7. Theories of How to Converse Tacit Knowledge Peter Senge. “Embodied knowledge is embodied knowledge. But with reflection or careful observation, patterns of tacit knowledge can be experienced, expressed and describe. It is like a translation”. • Behavioral method: Listening and Dialogue. • Through programs that facilitate knowledge sharing (Ex. Jim Stuart's executive programs).

8. Theories of How to Converse Tacit Knowledge Takeuchi “ New knowledge will be created if you transform one type of knowledge into another” • Tacit to Tacit (watching somebody, then doing it) • Tacit to Explicit (doing it, then describing it) • Explicit to Tacit (reading about it, then doing it) • Explicit to Explicit ( reading about it, then describing it)

9. Eureka- Xerox France & Palo Alto research center in CA: a system that facilitates the share of knowledge among peers. Groupware- Hewlett Packard: online meeting in which participants communicate through computers. Lotus Notes- Pricewaterhouse Coppers: Used to carry discussions via e-mail. Idea Factory- Unisys: website that allows employees to suggest new ideas and gives room for others to comment on them. Systems Used to Shared Knowledge

10. Key Points for Successfully Sharing Knowledge • Knowing employee’s interest and characteristics. • Offering incentives and rewards. • Senior management support- the system should be apply at all levels. • Communication and measurement. • TRUST!

11. Problems in Implementing Knowledge Management Systems • Underused of the program due to lack of incentives. • Overused of the program making it unstructured and difficult to use. • Changing people’s behaviors in order to create knowledge sharing structures.

12. Becoming a Learning Organization Changing people’s behavior is a very difficult task because it requires challenging people's assumptions and triggering a paradigm shift. The ideal situation is when a company has employees that already posses the knowledge sharing behavior. Ex: Sun Hydraulics

13. Being a Learning Organization ” A learning organization is s place were people are continually discovering how they create their reality and how they can change it”. By Peter Senge. People are the masters of their own destiny and future.

14. The Five Disciplines of a Learning Organizations • System Thinking • Personal Mastery • Mental Models • Building Shared Vision • Team Learning

15. Organizational Learning “The learning organization and organizational learning have emerged as metaphors and models for successful and competitive organizations. Because the new economy is driven by knowledge, intellectual capital figures prominently in a firm's value. Knowledge workers learn from and contribute to the intellectual capital of learning organizations” By Maureen Bogdanowicz

16. Questions? Thank You for Your Time!