I wrote a book two years ago entitled “The Tribal Knowledge Paradox.” It had a sub-title: Using the War on Waste to Align Strategy with Process. It is carried by Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Paradox-Strategy-Process-ebook/dp). Why did I call it “The Tribal Knowledge Paradox?” Before I answer that, let me get clear about what I mean by Tribal Knowledge.
Tribal Knowledge is the collective wisdom of the organization. It is the sum of all the knowledge. It is the knowledge used to deliver, to support, or to develop value for customers. But it is also all the knowledge that is wrong, imprecise, and useless. It is knowledge of the informal power structure and process or how things really work and how they ought to. It is knowledge of who constrains the process and who facilitates it. It is the knowledge that is squirreled away by employees who feel a need to protect their jobs by not sharing the information needed to do a job. This is part of the totality of the Tribal Knowledge. For example, it is the knowledge and the experience of the assembler who won’t tell others how he can put those two casings together (when no one else can). That knowledge is his job security. But more importantly, it is the untapped knowledge that remains unused or abused.
This is what Tribal Knowledge is. I am going to expand on this in subsequent posts. But I wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page.
The next time, I will give you an example of Tribal Knowledge that blew me away.
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