The podcast by project managers for project managers. Knowledge Management is a key practice for top-performing teams. We can improve our projects by tapping into, and managing, project knowledge. Join us to learn more about managing project knowledge, knowledge sharing, and nurturing knowledge within an organization.
Table of Contents
01:56 … A Definition of Knowledge02:59 … Difference between Knowledge and Wisdom04:53 … Tacit Knowledge - “Knowhow” and “Know What”05:43 … The Purpose of Managing Knowledge06:20 … Managing Project Knowledge08:10 … Overcoming Resistance to Knowledge Bias09:52 … Projects Run on Knowledge11:03 … Measuring Business Value12:27 … Drink Tea14:59 … Face-to-Face Communication17:09 … Nurturing Knowledge in an Organization19:27 … Kevin and Kyle21:08 … Rewarding Knowledge Sharing22:55 … Building Organizational Trust25:04 … Developing Knowledge-Oriented Team Culture27:11 … Recognizing the Value of Knowledge29:06 … Building Successful Knowledge Projects32:42 … Effectively Harnessing Experience36:22 … Contact Larry36:57 … Closing
LARRY PRUSAK: There’s a lot of ways to instill trust. Trust your children. Trust your community and things like that. It really pays off. I mean, it’s not so much being altruistic. It pays off. Things work better when you trust each other. Speaking as a social scientist, it lowers the transaction costs. You don’t have to always be looking over your shoulder or sniffing out things. It lowers the cost. Oh, yeah, I trust him. He’ll do what he said, or she’ll do what she said.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. I’m Wendy Grounds, and here in the studio with me is Bill Yates. So we want to take a moment to say thank you to our listeners who reach out to us and leave comments on our website or on social media. We love hearing from you, and we always appreciate your positive ratings and reviews on whichever podcast listening app you use.
Today we’re talking about a topic we’ve not addressed before, and we’re very excited to dig into it. Our guest is Laurence Prusak, and Larry has been studying knowledge and learning for the past 30 years. He has been a consultant in these areas for Mercer and a co-founder for Ernst & Young Center for Business Value. He’s the founder and director of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management and co-founder of the Babson College Working Knowledge Research Program. He’s been a senior consultant for NASA, as well as teaching in over 40 universities. He has also recently taught at Columbia University’s program on information and knowledge, and he has co-authored 11 books.
BILL YATES: Wendy, we got this recommendation from Stephen Townsend to reach out to Larry and talk with him. One of the books that Larry recently worked on is called “The Smart Mission: NASA’s Lessons for Managing Knowledge, People, and Projects.” So as we get into this topic, I think project managers will appreciate the depth of Larry’s knowledge on knowledge management.
WENDY GROUNDS: Hi, Larry. Welcome to Manage This. Thank you so much for being our guest today.
LARRY PRUSAK: You’re welcome.
A Definition of Knowledge
WENDY GROUNDS: So we’re going to be talking knowledge management, which is a new topic for us on our podcast. And we’re very excited that we have you with us. Before we begin, could you give us your definition of knowledge?
LARRY PRUSAK: It’s what a knowledgeable person knows. Think about, if you go to a dentist, a dentist knows how to fix your teeth. If he wasn’t knowledgeable, you wouldn’t be going to him. We’re talking about working knowledge, the knowledge that allows people to do things. There’s other sorts of knowledge. There’s religious knowledge, aesthetic knowledge, all sorts of things. But we’re talking about the knowledge that allows you to do something, and do it well. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge isn’t data. It’s the skill, the basis of a skilled activity.
BILL YATES: One of the writings that you did years ago hit on this point about information. And I love this quote. You say, “Information about customers becomes knowledge when decision-makers determine how to take advantage of the information.” So it’s all about that application.
LARRY PRUSAK: Let me give you a little story. You don’t mind if I tell a short story.
WENDY GROUNDS: Oh, we love stories.
Difference between Knowledge and Wisdom
LARRY PRUSAK: Years ago I worked for a very big consulting firm that loved to get their names in the newspaper. I won’t say who they are. And I got a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter saying, gee, we’re hearing a lot about knowledge, and people say you know a little about it. So could you define the difference between data, information, and knowledge, and wisdom?
Well, I was caught off-guard. I was at my desk. But somehow a stroke of inspiration hit me, and I told them, let’s say you’re preparing a meal for someone you really like, and really want to get it right. If you look at a recipe book, the letters in the recipe are data – A, B, C, D – or the numbers. That’s data. Little bits of this and that. When data is put together in a meaningful way, it becomes information. So a recipe is information. It tells you how to make something. It’s two-dimensional. You can’t talk back to the recipe. It’s static. It doesn’t move. It stays that way. We have a whole bunch of cookbooks here. They don’t move.
Knowledge is knowing how to cook, which is experiential. You don’t know how to cook until you really cook, and cook for a while. During this recent COVID epidemic I told my wife, “I’ll take care of some of the cooking.” And I realized I am not a cook. I had a mother, I had two wives, so I didn’t have to cook. But eventually I saw that the more you cook, the more you gain a little knowledge, and you know how to cook. And so if you cook a lot, as my wife does and many people do, you gain knowledge of cooking. That’s different than information. Wisdom is marrying a good cook.
BILL YATES: That’s true. If our listeners don’t take anything else from this, that is a key point of wisdom, yes.
LARRY PRUSAK: Printed it in a journal, I got all sorts of letters, people accusing me of being sexist. I said, “I didn’t say what gender. I don’t care who you marry. But if you have some wisdom, and you’re going to live with someone, find someone who can cook well.”
Tacit Knowledge - “Knowhow” and “Know What”
WENDY GROUNDS: And that’s what you mean by “tacit knowledge,” the experience-based.
LARRY PRUSAK: Yeah. It’s not always tacit. I know my friend Jiro Nonaka used that a lot, and it became very, very popular. All knowledge is tacit. Someone once asked me to write an essay on what I learned growing up in Brooklyn, New York. And I could never say enough, I mean, there’s so many – the smells, the sounds, the problems, dah dah dah. All knowledge is tacit. Some of it becomes explicit. But a better way of looking at those terms are “knowhow” and “know what.” Know what, for example, if someone’s talking about France, you would know that Paris is the capital of France. But knowhow, how to get around in France, how to act, how to speak, that’s knowhow. Firms pay a lot of money for knowhow, but they don’t always know how to manage it.
The Purpose of Managing Knowledge
WENDY GROUNDS: That leads to the next question. What is the purpose of managing knowledge?
LARRY PRUSAK: Well, it’s the most valuable thing you have in an organization. I mean, around here, some of the schools are a little short on cash. You know, if they’d raise the taxes for the schools. And there’s a bumper sticker that says, “Well, if you don’t like knowledge, try ignorance.”
David Teece, who’s a professor at Berkeley, who I learned quite a bit from, he said: “Any organization is really composed of knowledge and relationships. That’s about it.” Knowledge and relationships. There’s many other things we all can name, but those are the two key things, what you know how to do and the relationships you have with your customers.
Managing Project Knowledge
BILL YATES: You know, it’s interesting, Larry, as I was thinking about our listeners or project managers, many of them are PMP certified. They’ve studied and been exposed to the PMBOK Guide from PMI. And I remember going from the 5th to the 6th Edition of the PMBOK Guide, there was an additional process. There are 49 processes that define some of the work that project managers do. And one of those 49 in the 6th Edition is called “Manage Project Knowledge.” It’s the first time it showed up. And it just made sense, you know, it’s like, oh, well, this should have been a part of what we were doing before. Now we’ve finally spelled it out.
And Manage Project Knowledge is to tap into and leverage the knowledge of the performing organization so that I do my project better. Then I also add to that knowledge management, that bank of knowledge, by the times that I fall and skin my knees with my customer; and then I learn from that, and I share that with my organization.
LARRY PRUSAK: It’s also gaining knowledge outside the organization. I mean, I was a consultant at NASA for 20 years. Finally, after I was there 15, they decided to look at knowledge outside of NASA because no one, no organization can ever know enough these days. The world is awash with knowledge. You can never know enough. I don’t care who you are.
I did some work for one of our government intelligence agencies. They, too, never looked outside Virginia, and they’ve completely changed. They’ve totally changed that way, sharing knowledge with where it’s appropriate. I worked at Harvard for a number of years. They thought, if they didn’t know it, it wasn’t knowledge. I think they still may think that way.
