In Praise of Tacit Knowledge
Here's something I bet you didn't know if you speak English.
There's something every speaker of English knows but most don't know they know. It's the reason you can say "my big, fat, Greek wedding" but saying "my Greek, fat, big wedding" sounds wrong.
Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
That quote comes from a book The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. The full breakdown of the adjective order is:
1. Opinion (lovely)
2. Size (little)
3. Age (old)
4. Shape (rectangular)
5. Color (green)
6. Origin (French)
7. Material (silver)
8. Purpose (whittling)
This is an example of Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge one gains through experience that's often hard to communicate through words. It's the opposite of explicit knowledge. Another example is how to ride a bike. Someone can tell you how to do it but you can't learn it without the experience of getting on a bike.
I've said HERE that outputs are the reason you hire people. Outputs come from two places; people with experience & intuition (tacit knowledge) and from people operating systems (explicit knowledge). People with the requisite experience and intuition are hard to find but when you have robust systems producing the outputs your company needs becomes repeatable and scalable.
I've gone so far as to say in this post that you can document many systems as you can a recipe in a cookbook. That is the ultimate in explicit knowledge.
Does Tacit Knowledge Mean You Can't Systemize Your Company?
Not exactly. (I bet you didn't see that answer coming 😁.) But it does mean you have to subdivide your systems to do it properly. To stay with the cookbook analogy, one person with the right tacit knowledge could plan a meal, buy the ingredients, do the prep work, cook the dishes and then present them. That's how grandma makes a really good meal without a recipe. But it's not very scalable if you run a restaurant.
However, if you break that process into subsystems, then some can be taught to people without much experience and the others, those systems that really require tacit knowledge, can be done by those who have it. That's how restaurants make the same dishes of the same quality night after night. The result is not only repeatable and scalable, but you have a situation where everyone plays at the top of their game.
Systemization Doesn't Mean Your People are Robots
But it means that work can be divided up so people who have experience and tacit knowledge spend more of their time using it and don't have to spend time on something that doesn't require their level of skill and expertise.
This makes for a more robust company, and more engaged employees.
Here's an Excerpt from my upcoming book "Output Thinking: Scale Faster Manage Better Transform Your Company
Outputs help everyone play at the top of their game
Tony DiGioia is the Director of the Bone and Joint Center at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh. But the thing he did that has an impact beyond Pittsburgh is to develop a protocol called “patient and family-centered care” (PFCC). It’s a method for redesigning the entire patient experience, starting with when people enter the parking lot all the way through to rehabilitation months after surgery. In business we call that designing a workflow from the customer’s point of view. It delivers what DiGioia calls the trifecta: better medical outcomes, better patient satisfaction, and reduced costs.
One of his concepts is something he calls “everyone plays at the top of their game.” This means that a doctor only does things a doctor is licensed to do. A doctor doesn’t do anything a physician’s assistant or a nurse practitioner is trained and licensed to do. Those people don’t do anything a registered nurse can do. Registered nurses don’t do anything a licensed practical nurse can do. And so on.
In the medical world, the different levels of licensing make this division of labor obvious. But you can do the same thing with output thinking. You start by specifying the different outputs—usually these are already being produced by your people. Then determine who should be assigned to produce those outputs. In some cases this will be dependent on training. In other cases it will be determined by a level of responsibility in the company. Corporate officers are required to produce (or at least sign off on) certain outputs. Team leaders may be required for others.
This concept of playing at the top of your game can produce many benefits for any business. One is reduced cost. People with less training and lower salaries are reducing the workload of those with more training and higher salaries. If you can design your workflow to do that it can be a huge benefit.
Another benefit is increased job satisfaction. Most people enjoy a challenge and go into their chosen field to do meaningful work. Constantly working below your skill level can be demoralizing, but working at the top of your game is motivating.
A third benefit is providing an obvious career path and setting the stage for targeted training. When people see that by getting more training they can move up, this inspires them to take that training seriously. As they do, it allows you to track who is being trained for what outputs and to develop a training grid.
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge gained from experience that can't be easily communicated in words; like how to ride a bike. It's opposite is called explicit knowledge. Systemizing your company, and documenting SOPs doesn't mean people are robots. It means subdividing systems so that people with tacit knowledge spend most of their time using that knowledge rather than doing what other can be trained to do (using explicit knowledge). This allows those people can develop tacit knowledge too. The result is everyone plays at the top of their game.