Global Meeting of Coalition Partners

Nairobi, Kenya 2001

Glossary

We learned in our school years to acquire and use knowledge but we did not learn how to share knowledge. Today the most "powerful" individuals/organisations will be those that became a source of knowledge by proactively sharing what they have or what they can get their hands on with others 1.

Knowledge is neither data nor information; it is still important to emphasise that data, information and knowledge are not interchangeable concepts. Organisational success and failure can often depend on knowing which of them you need, which you have and what you can and can't do with each.

Data 2

Data is a set of discrete, objective facts about events. Data describes only a part of what happened; it provides no judgement or interpretation and no sustainable basis of action. While the raw material of decision making may include data, it cannot tell you what to do. Data says nothing about its own importance or irrelevance. But data is important to organizations - largely, of course, because it is essential raw material for the creation of information.

Information

The word "inform" originally meant "to give shape to" and information is meant to shape the person who gets it, to make some difference in his outlook or insight. Strictly speaking then, it follows that the receiver, not the sender, decides whether the message he gets is really information - that is, if it truly inform him.

Quantitative measures of information management tend to include connectivity and transaction.

Unlike data, information has meaning - the "relevance and purpose". Data becomes information when its creator adds meaning; we transform data into information by adding value in various ways:

•  Contextualized: we know for what purpose the data was gathered

•  Categorised : we know the units of analysis or key components of the data

•  Calculated: the data may have been analysed mathematically or statistically

•  Corrected: errors have been removed from data

•  Condensed: the data may have summarised in a more concise form.

Knowledge

"Who knows useful thing, not many thing, is wise"

Aeschylus

Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the mind of knowers. In organisations it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms.

Knowledge is not net or simple. It is a mixture of various elements; it is fluid as well as formally structured; it is intuitive and therefore hard to capture in words or understand completely in logical terms. Knowledge exists within people, part and parcel of human complexity and unpredictability.

If information is to become knowledge, human must do virtually all the work. This transformation happen through:

Comparison: how does information about this situation compare to other situations we have known?

Consequences: what implications does the information have for decision and actions?

Connections: how does this bit of knowledge relate to others?

Conversation : what do other people think about this information?

Clearly, these knowledge-creating activities take place within and between humans. While we find data in records or transactions, and information in message, we obtain knowledge from individuals or groups of knowers, or sometimes in organisational routines.

One of the reasons that we find knowledge valuable is that is close - and closer than data or information- to action. Knowledge can and should be evaluated by the decisions or actions to which it leads.

Knowledge develops over time, through experience. Experience derived from a latin verb meaning "to put to the test". One of the prime benefits of experience is that it provides a historical perspective from which to view and understand new situation and events. Experience changes ideas about what should happen into knowledge of what does happen. Knowledge has a "ground truth".

The importance of experience and ground truth in knowledge is one indication of knowledge's ability to deal with complexity. Knowledge is not a rigid structure that excludes what doesn't fit; it can deal with complexity in a complex way.

Values and beliefs are integral to knowledge, determining in large part what the knower sees, absorbs, and concludes from his observations. The power of knowledge to organize, select, learn and judge comes from values and beliefs as much as, and probably more than, from information and logic.

Computer Networks and Knowledge Exchange

The access to technology and networks has created potential infrastructure for knowledge exchange and opened up important knowledge management opportunities. The computational power of computers has little relevance to knowledge work, but the communication and storage capabilities of networked computers make them knowledge enablers. Through e-mail, GroupWare and Internet, computers and networks can point to people with knowledge over a distance. What we must remember is that this new information technology is only the pipeline and storage system for knowledge exchange. It does not create knowledge and cannot guarantee or even promote knowledge generation or knowledge sharing in a corporate culture that doesn't favour those activities.

Effective engagement is not about definitions, numbers or procedures or things. It's about involvement, commitment, creativity passion and ultimately the freedom to do everything we can, and to use all of the knowledge we have, to make sure that we have done our utmost to satisfy our purposes.

The culture of Knowledge Transfer

There are many cultural factors that inhibit knowledge transfer. We call the inhibitors "frictions" because they slow or prevent transfer and are likely to erode some of the knowledge as it tries to move through the organization. The following are the most frictions and ways of overcoming them.

Why should a few sheets of paper that come from the other side of the world persuade them there's a better way to do what they've been doing for years?

Transfer = Transmission + Absorption (and use)

Knowledge transfer involves two actions: transmission (sending or presenting knowledge to a potential recipient) and absorption by that person or group. If knowledge is not absorbed, it has not been transferred. Merely making knowledge available in not transfer. Access is necessary but by no means sufficient to ensure that knowledge will be used. The goal of knowledge transfer is to improve an organisation's ability to do things, and therefore increase its value. Even transmission and absorption together have no useful value if the new knowledge does not lead to some change in behaviour, or the development of some new idea that leads to new behaviour.

Lesson Learned 3

A "lesson learned" (LLE), in the context of evaluations, can be defined as a generalization based on an experience (e.g., projects, policies or programmes) which was evaluated.

Note that "lessons learned" are not merely "experience". A LLE is the outcome of a learning process, which involves reflecting upon the experience. Neither an accumulation of "facts" or "findings" nor an accumulation of evaluations will, by itself, yield lessons. The lessons have to be produced (distilled or extracted) from the experience.

A distinction can be made between: normative (or instrumental) lessons , concerning what should be done (or what should be avoided) and causal lessons , which correspond to statements of the form "if...then..", showing what are the likely outcomes of different processes.

Until some years ago, it was common practice in evaluations to refer to findings, conclusions and recommendations, but not so much to "lessons learned". Thus, it is worthwhile to ask the following question:

What are the differences between findings, recommendations and lessons learned?

a finding is a "factual statement" (such as "the repayment rate was 95%"; but any description involves a selection)

a conclusion is a synthesis of "factual statements" corresponding to a specific circumstance (e.g., policy x failed to achieve its objectives)

a recommendation is a prescription on what should be done in a specific circumstance (for example, in order to increase the repayment rate in a certain credit project).

a lesson learned is a generalization which does not refer to a specific circumstance but to a class of situations (for example, to credit projects for the rural poor in the highlands). It points out what is very likely to happen and/or on what should be done in order that something will take place (or to prevent it).

It should be noted that the LLE can be helpful in the process of formulating recommendations and, more generally, in the design process. As observed above, "Lessons learned" are (or might be) an output of evaluations, and they are (or should be) also an input in the design process. To facilitate this linkage of evaluation to design (of policies, programmes and/or projects), as well as to help in the retrieval and use of lessons learned, it is convenient to elaborate a typology of situations to which the lessons learned might apply.

Knowledge Management: a New Competitive - Asset State of the Art Institute

Working Knowledge by Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak.

From IFAD web site