Know the Enemies of Your Business

Organizational Barriers to the
Sharing of Tacit Knowledge

According to Dorothy Leonard and Silvia Sensiper, the authors of The Role of Tacit Knowledge in Group Innovation, tacit knowledge is difficult to share because it cannot be documented explicitly. Tacit knowledge resides in human minds, in habits, and in relations.  It is highly individual, personal and hard to formalize. It is learnt through personal experience, practice, observation, and reflection.

Tacit Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge as a Source of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

How To Manage Tacit Knowledge

Hierarchies create barriers to knowledge sharing when they implicitly assume that wisdom accrues to those with the most impressive organizational titles.

Human Barriers to Knowledge Sharing

Strong preferences for analysis over intuition discouraging employees to offer ideas without "hard facts" to back it up.

Silo Mentality

Penalties for failure discouraging experimentation.

Freedom to Fail

Strong preferences for a particular type of communication within working groups.

Fear of failing to express the inexpressible when trying to convert tacit knowledge into explicit one.

Inequality in status among the participants is a strong inhibitor for tacit knowledge sharing, especially when exacerbated by different frameworks for assessing information.

Uneasiness of expressing emotional life experiences rather than intellectual disagreements.

Distance, both physical separation and time.

Know Your Enemies

Inner Personal