Living and Knowing

We don't know most of what we know.

That's because the kind of "knowing" that forms the basis for most of our daily lives—most of what we "know"—is not the kind of knowing that we can easily articulate.

Not to mention, measure.

So we go about our day-to-day lives, knowing lots of things—how to determine where to walk on the sidewalk, how to tell if someone is going to cut in front of us on the highway, if our boss is telling us the truth when she says we're doing a good job—without the foggiest idea of how we came to that knowledge.

We just know.

This kind of knowledge, what psychologists call implicit, or "tacit knowledge," is crucial to everyday life.

By contrast, "explicit knowledge"—the capital of Arkansas, the number of feet in a mile, Derek Jeter's batting average—is most often what we mean when we say we "know" something. 

When I was in graduate school, we talked about this as the difference between "the lived and the known."

Daily lived experience is steeped in tacit knowledge, a deep understanding of the way the world, in general, and the ways in which the situations in which we find ourselves most often, in particular, work.

This lived knowledge operates as assumptions, the unspoken "rules" that govern social interactions; a kind of operating system for daily life.

We all "know the rules" of polite society ("you can't stare at that girl for more that three seconds without becoming creepy"); relationships (the appropriate gestures to be used when greeting spouses, siblings, friends, strangers), and groups (how to create and stand in a line at Starbucks). But stating them in simple declarative sentences is very difficult.

So, we are all embedded in a complex fabric of tacit, implicit, assumption-rich knowledge which keeps the wheels of social interaction turning.

It is only when these implicitly assumed rules break down that we become aware of them.

For instance, walking in London brings to awareness all the lived knowledge about city-walking that urban Americans take for granted every day. The familiar rules no longer apply. We "know" that we cannot trust our usual assumptions or else we're liable to be picked off by a double-decker bus.

We might say that this fabric—this network of assumed structures—is the "social architecture" of our lives. 

Social architecture is an odd phrase.

Is it apt?

When we walk London's streets, and the familiar becomes strange, it's as if the superstructure of the social world—the girders, pipes and wires that usually remain hidden by walls, floors and ceilings—has suddenly been exposed.

And, that's when we get just a glimpse of the power of shared beliefs.

It's no surprise, then, to realize that organizations, too, are living expressions of social architecture. 

Using architectural metaphors to think about organizations can help us to appreciate the degree to which organizations share common social features (just as buildings share "walls," "ceilings," "plumbing"), exhibiting stylistic similarities (like "Victorian," "Art Deco," or "Modernist" buildings do), and quirky idiosyncrasies ("that door's just a false front.")

These metaphors can also help us appreciate the source of the significant challenges we face when we seek to "renovate" them (engage in "change management.")

Just as we do in our homes or offices, we become quite comfortable after living within particular social architecture over time. We "know" them well: their features are familiar and comfortable; we can navigate them at night, blindfolded, and never once even bump our knees.

But, move just one chair two feet to the left and the whole place feels different; and most of us aren't all that comfortable with "different."

So, no wonder most change management programs fail.

Questions:

1. How can we become aware of the social architecture that underlies our organization? Are the original schematics still around or are they lost to antiquity?
2. How can we evaluate the efficacy of that social architecture to our current organizational challenges? In other words, are we trying to house a high-tech start-up in a house with Victorian-era wiring?
3. How can we make the right kinds of social architectural modifications to make our organization fit for its current use? How do we prioritize those changes? And, Is this an afternoon's do-it-yourself handyman project or are we looking at a season's worth of This Old House episodes?

I invite you to share your thoughts as we look at those questions over the next week or so.

Comments

[Richard Shear]

Hi Tom, In reading this post I couldn't help but feel that there is an interesting association with implicit and explicit knowledge and package design. My feeling is consumers respond to packaging and brands based both on what they literally see (explicit) and what they feel/experience (implicit) about the brand.

In the end their purchase motivations are an interesting mix of both types of knowledge. A good designer intuits both when designing a package.

I also posted some more detailed thoughts on the subject on my blog at, http://tiny.cc/LhDfV

[ways to pass saliva drug test]

I subscribed to your blog when is the next post,Thanks for such a nice post.