Tribal Knowledge

According to Wikipedia, “Tribal knowledge is any information or knowledge that is known within a tribe but often unknown outside of it. A tribe may be a group or subgroup of people that share a common knowledge. With a corporate perspective, Tribal Knowledge or know-how is the collective wisdom of the organization. It is the sum of all the knowledge and capabilities of all the people”

One perception of tribal knowledge that I commonly hold is that tribal knowledge is only unwritten – it is the “understood” but undocumented.  It is assumed to be factual, but has no known data or analysis to verify that it is factual.  Because of this, tribal knowledge can carry a derogatory and negative connotation, especially in the business world.

I would ask you to consider that tribal knowledge is, in fact, the most vital knowledge that we can capture.  Tribal knowledge is a constantly evolving center of transient and core information.  It is an “energy center” around which associated minds exchange ideas, traditions, protocols, inspirations, experiences, and lessons learned.  So why do we disregard much of this information as “banter” and not document it?

There’s a business saying that goes, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you don’t monitor.”  This is obvious in the business analytics of any organization, but we take a fairly lax approach to this in the more subjective areas of our work and our lives.  So, let me suggest a concept that, even I, get squeamish when I mention…journaling.

My perception of journaling is sitting down in a quiet place and writing down your feelings, hopes, fears, blah, blah, blah.  Not my thing.  But, I have also had the experience, when I was competing in various sports, of “daily logging,” and I found this to be valuable, so maybe it’s just semantics and content.

For example, in college our coach had us track each day of practice or competition. Not only the “stats” of that session, but how much sleep we got, what we ate, how we felt on the course, rate our mental grit, rate our physical energy, weather, etc.  When, many years ago, I was dabbling in running and racing we were taught to do the same thing with our training – not only factual stats of the run, but energy, nutrition, environment, mental, sleep patterns, etc.

The value in this “daily logging” was that it allowed us to begin to discover patterns, tendencies, and connections that we never would have discovered if it wasn’t logged.  It brought lasting, living, knowledge of the work that we put in.  It gave us documented checkpoints of growth in our work and provided motivation by demonstrating what had been accomplished along the journey.  Finally it allowed for meaningful “course correction” when we identified a pattern or link that was disruptive to the desired outcomes.

I would ask you to consider the value of documenting your work and tribal knowledge.  To measure the pulse of your “tribe(s)” and the conditions that impact them on a daily basis in a purposeful way.  To better appreciate all that gets accomplish and the journey that we’ve had from where we’ve come.