Knowledge can be volunteered, not conscripted.
You can never force someone to share their knowledge because you'll never know if they've done so. You can examine whether information was transferred or a process was completed, but you'll never know if an expert has truly shared their experience. (Drucker)
We only know what we know when we need to know it.
Human knowledge is fundamentally context-based and requires incentives for retrieval. Unlike computers, we are not equipped with a list of operational options. Small verbal and otherwise gestures can suddenly evoke memories in the context we need for action. When we "sleep on things," we are engaged in a complex organic activity of retrieval and creation.
In the context of real need, few people will withhold their knowledge
A genuine request for assistance will only be accepted when trust is scarce. On the other hand, we will usually refuse a request to document knowledge without raising questions in an appropriate context (and it's not always possible). Connecting and linking people is more important than storing the facts they possess.
In real life, everything is fragmented.
Over the years, we have evolved to deal with unstructured nuclear fragments of information, not with highly structured documents. People will spend hours online or in casual conversation without any incentives or pressure. In contrast, creating structured documents will require much more effort and time from us. Our brains have evolved to deal with fragments of patterns, not ultra-structured information.
Tolerated failure imparts more learning than success.
When a lit match burns a child, they learn about the dangers of fire more than from any cold instructions from their parents. All human cultures have developed ways of telling stories of failures without attributing blame. Avoiding failure has a more significant evolutionary advantage than imitating success. Additionally, imposing a system of insights goes against thousands of years of evolution, teaching a lousy thing this way.
The way we know is different from the way we tell about it.
A growing body of research shows that when it comes to knowledge, people tend to use rules of thumb, past patterns, and rough estimation combined with ideas and experience for decision-making, all in a split second. When describing the decision-making process after the fact, people tend to present a more structured process than what occurred in reality. This insight has significant implications for the knowledge management profession.
We will always know more than we can say and more than we can write.
This insight is crucial: transferring things from our heads to our mouths and from there to our hands involves the loss of much content and context. Extensive documentation will always be lacking. (Polanyi)
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