“Tacit Knowledge” – What is it?

When I first learned how to drive in Cincinnati, there were no gadget gizmos like Google Map or OnStar. This was back in the mid-1990s’ and if you wanted to get somewhere unknown, you had to plot it on a map—which I found on the back of a phone book—and figure out the major streets and a sense of direction. From there, you just have to get on the road, and test it out. Cincinnati is also a bit strange. Streets will cut off in one part of the city and pick up in another. Most often, streets will change names as you proceed through from one part of the city to another. This made driving fun and difficult, but it forced me to learn landmarks and develop a topographic understanding of the city’s throughways.

More than ten years later, my wife and I moved back to Cincinnati and now it’s her turn to figure out the streets. She, of course, has the handy-dandy smart phone with the not so helpful Siri. She also has OnStar and those people will bend over backwards to do your bidding. My wife heavily relies on the technology and plotted routs. I get very frustrated when I try to tell her not to go a certain way because instinctively I knew that would be a bad way to go. She often refuses to listen and trusts the formal institutional knowledge Google and OnStar has put together on their servers. Sure, my brain may have less memory and horse-power; but I am much better at predicting the traffic flow and knowing just how long it will take the car to get from point A to point B. My wife, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge my intimate familiarity with this city’s landscape.

What I have in my brain about the city’s driving ecosystem is a sort of “tacit knowledge” It’s earned through driving countless times and being lost in the city’s maze . . . again, and again, and again. It’s tacit in the sense that I don’t know the street names or which street connects to which. Instead, I know the feel of the neighborhoods, the old buildings that has been there for decades, the empty parking lot that once was a dwindling shopping center. This is not really knowledge in a formal sense since I don’t categorize it by north vs. south, left-turns vs. right turns. Instead, I rely on a judgment on how far I’ve gone in which direction and what’s around that seems right and what seems wrong. The details are voluminous and often mundane; I taken them for granted.

This phenomenon also occurs in organizations and companies. Often referred to as “organizational knowledge”, most people think it can be categorized and transferred. But in part I believe it should not if the objective is organizational growth. Instead of transferring it, your organization or company should really think about permeating it into your organizational culture and innovate with it.

Think about it, "tacit knowledge" resides with the people who live and breathe your organization or company. They are information or practices that would make a difference in an stakeholder collaborative innovation process because they give you a sense or feel of what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s why when companies innovate, they should rarely rely on outsiders to do the job. Leave to strangers to create means leaving them with a map and letting them find the formal path that you would’ve found anyway if you weren’t so lazy. Internal innovation means stakeholders involved and getting comfortable with the way things will come together in a group setting. When tacit knowledge of a group of internal stakeholders is put together, you will find they inherently find a pattern and a path forward.

This is an intuitive way of moving forward. It's much better than the institutionalized methods of paying for a boxed thinking. Out of the box I say.

the 3D Manifesto

I followed a cookie trail today to PDIA (Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation). At its core, it’s a process based governance development theory that’s also focused on engagement and influence. Intrinsically it recognizes the bifurcation between people and society, the fact that complexity demands systematically factored and analyzed steps or iterations, and encourages learning from positive deviance or good disruptive thinking in an attempt to get people to think and “do development differently.”

It is the exact same thing my wife and I have been doing for a while now. We just don’t have the fancy acronyms and the prestige of “Harvard” to stand behind. We call our little project “BrainBox.”Although our work is slow to gain traction, but at this exciting discovery of the 3D Manifesto we are validated. Yup, that makes a pretty good day


The DDD Manifesto – the BrainBox abridged version.

“Ask, think, create and do; with your ecosystem of empowered stakeholders.” 

 Developments with real results usually involve many players – governments, civil society, international agencies and the private sector – working together to deliver real progress in complex situations and despite strong resistance. In practice, successful initiatives reflect common principles. 

 • They focus on solving local problems that are debated, defined and refined by local people in an ongoing process. 

• They are legitimised at all levels (political, managerial and social), building ownership and momentum throughout the process to be ‘locally owned’ in reality (not just on paper).

• They work through local conveners who mobilise all those with a stake in progress (in both formal and informal coalitions and teams) to tackle common problems and introduce relevant change.

• They blend design and implementation through rapid cycles of planning, action, reflection and revision (drawing on local knowledge, feedback and energy) to foster learning from both success and failure.

• They manage risks by making ‘small bets’: pursuing activities with promise and dropping others.

• They foster real results – real solutions to real problems that have real impact: they build trust, empower people and promote sustainability. 

You can look at the 3D Manifesto here.There’s a pretty impressive list of people who have signed on to the Manifesto and as of today, we have also signed.

Sustainability Index for Non-profits.

A little company in town called P&G recently updated its Sustainability Guidelines. It sent a reminder to its external business partners and their suppliers to comply with its Sustainability Guideline or face audits and possible discontinuation of future businesses for failure of compliance. P&G’s Sustainability Guidelines is an impressive list of actionable items including strict legal compliance, respecting human rights, respecting child labor and anti-force labor standards, health and safety, wage and hours standards, anti-discrimination practices, environmental standards, collective bargaining standards, anti-corruption standards, privacy standards, and personnel security standards.

 P&G’s Sustainability Guidelines seem to be directed at for-profit entities primarily doing business in other countries but for a non-profit local to P&G’s footprint and receiving annual grants from P&G’s philanthropy efforts, it is worthwhile to think how this will impact the value proposition during the annual grant writing process. Intrinsically, the question of whether the non-profit can measure its own sustainability index and performance intrigued me. Naturally, when the question was presented to me by a non-profit’s board member I jumped at the change to think this one through.

First, you have to define the measuring criteria in each of the three (3) sustainability categories – social, environmental and economical performance. P&G has done this with its own operations and ecosystem of stakeholders in mind. Their Guidelines are unique to P&G, but the premise is replicable. You just have to follow a process of define, measure, analyze and improve for the relevant factors identified in each of the three categories. It's a bit of work, but it's nothing too complicated.

I.     Social Performance.

The social performance of non-profits is often neglected because most non-profits are mission driven. They are already socially orientated so its leadership and those evaluating these non-profits aren’t looking outside the mission box. But sustainability is more than that, and stopping at the non-profit’s social mission neglects the wider ecosystem in which the non-profit exist. Can the non-profit do more? Can it easily cooperate with another and find synergy? These are often questions not asked. Interestingly, this mentality sets in at later stages of a non-profit’s operation when it has paid staff who are very silo-ed and have accustomed to the “it’s not my job” mentality. For the younger and budding non-profits, this isn’t so much of a problem and I find some of the less established non-profits are more flexible in their ability to collaborate and there are less barriers since they are not so much economically incentivized.

This adaptability often yields interesting results in new venture formations.

So how do you measure a non-profit’s mission in the context of sustainability? Well, you have to look at what that mission is and if it is a durable or an end-goal mission. For example, a charity for curing cancer will cease to exist (likely) when cancer is cured; but a charity that is focused on leadership development will never have an expiration date on its operations. So long as there are people, leaders are to be developed.

You also have to look at its flexibility, in terms of adaptability not only in budgeting but also with respect to innovation—does the non-profit have a process for creating value out of its original ideas and not just fundraising efforts? I find a non-profit with older constituents and larger operation size are less flexible and a non-profit with younger constituents and small operation size are more flexible and tends to be more creative. They ca capture new value and can grow very quickly. However, the x-factor in this analysis is whether the non-profit has heart. How passionate is its stakeholders? I find that a lot of passion will transform perceived demographic barriers and make older people creative and adaptable.

Another way to look at a non-profit is through its focus on diversity and inclusion. There are many ways to define diversity and inclusion, but I believe it’s more about diversity of experiences and thoughts, and giving that diversity a voice that really creates value for any organization. Of course skin color or cultural differences naturally manifest into diversity of thoughts and experience, but the really good organizations look beyond skin deep and try to do something about empowering its minority and often neglected constituents.

It is also a good idea to look out for the lack of diversity and inclusiveness that manifest in unexpected ways. Take organizational structure for example. Most organizations love org-charts and love to tell its staff where they fit-in in the grand scheme of things. This leads to exclusion of thoughts in the same way discrimination works against skin color or gender or cultural background. Think about it, your idea is not valued simply because you are working as an administrative assistance and everyone assume you have nothing to contribute to the new fund raising campaign initiative even though they are targeting exactly your demographic. How does that make you feel?

So there are a number of questions a non-profit, or any organization, can ask: is it diverse and inclusive not just for the sake of appearances, but because the organization really values what everyone has to contribute? Is it putting this to practice and really allow opportunities for the diverse and often minority voice? And finally is it implicitly exclusive (for example, is its mission to serve a particular political party)?

Finally, you can also measure the social performance of a non-profit by the educational impact it has on its stakeholders. Here, you want to examine whether the organization is systematically following a script (donate to disabled veterans) and not really inspiring its stakeholders to be creative and really think of solutions to the social problems it is trying to address; or is it finding a new way of looking at the root problems and finding holistic sensible solutions to really alleviate the problem? Here, you have to think a bit counterintuitively. If you are really just raising funds, then you want the problem to exist so you can sustain your fundraising campaigns. On the other hand, if you are really looking at how to solve a problem then you should be working yourself out of a job. Because by the end of the day, you have solved the problem and your charitable work is no longer needed. But this is only applicable to those non-profits without a durable pro-active mission. A non-durable passive mission is one that aims to solve a problem. Once the problem goes away, then the mission is no longer applicable. It is reactionary. It’s good that we are solving problems, but sustainability is more about anticipating what’s ahead. A durable active mission is one that aims to empower a particular good thing in society. The arts for example; or developing today’s leaders and tomorrow’s communities as one non-profits has it. After all, you will probably never run out of good leaders to develop and good communities to build; I hope we never run out of good art to promote. 

To recap, the social performance of a non-profit can be evaluated by its mission and purpose, by its adaptability and innovative capacity, by its diversity and inclusion, and by its educational and inspirational impact. Under each of the four factors, benefits and barriers can be assigned scores based on subjectivity and although not an entirely accurate science, it does provide a good gauge of how well the non-profit is performing beyond just a mere assessment of its ability to perform its mission.

II.     Environmental Performance.

Following a lazy-man’s assessment, our non-profit isn’t about the environment so this is not applicable to us. Right? Or, we aren’t subject to any environmental laws, so we don’t have to be assessed in this category. Okay? No. Everyone has an environmental impact and any organization can do something about it.

To start, there are three categories under environmental performance we can use to assess a non-profit’s environmental performance standard: conservation, protection, and impact. First, conservation is about reduce, reuse, up-cycle and recycle. All organizations can be mindful of how they are reusing their material, how they are reducing their carbon footprint, and how they are creatively recycling things they were throwing away. How well does your non-profit manage its resources? How well does your organization communicate needs and surplus?

Protection is about being mindful of making the right choices. If you can order 100 t-shirts from a company overseas (high transportation cost and carbon footprint) and that company uses environmentally unfriendly processes (using harsh chemicals to dye), then do you really need to save that five dollars per t-shirt? A even better question, why are you buying the t-shirt in the first place? Is it because your constituents really need it or is it because that’s just what everyone else is doing?

Finally, let’s talk about impact. Your non-profit has a lot of brand power for your own advocacy work. But are you leveraging that brand power to co-brand environmental initiatives? Are you making the connection of your brand recognition with any environmental problems that you’ve turned a blind eye? For example, if your mission is to alleviate poverty are you also looking at how the poorest are often living next to the most polluted places and have higher health care costs because of this? After you have connected the dots and recognized how closely connected you are to the environmental impact you can make, are you leveraging your organization’s social diffusion power to really make a stink about your new found knowledge?

III.     Economic Performance.

This is a small category because non-profits by definition are not focused on just making the single profitable bottom line. Non-profits are mission driven to begin with and is at a lower risk level for lack of good governance and corporate social responsibility.

What does need to be addressed with non-profits are often their cost of inefficiencies both in terms of its operations and its administrations. It’s also important to look at its budgeting (how good is the organization at predicting fluctuations in its revenue cycles and how good is it at reducing ineffective cost items and protocols). Additionally, it’s important to examine whether the non-profit is looking at opportunities and stakeholder involvement. Is it getting its constituents involved in the innovation process to capture new value that has otherwise been neglected?



These are just the starting points. I can go on for days. . .