7 critical knowledge capture lessons from historians
Could you improve your knowledge capture methods?
Anybody interested in knowledge capture has to be interested in narrative, which naturally leads to storytelling (from lessons learned to the in/formal stories that shape an organisation’s culture).
It is here that we can learn lessons from historians (for example, see R.G. Collingwood's book, "Autobiography") - for who are Knowledge Managers if not curators/interpreters of the past and, therefore, who better to guide KM practice than people who are experts at bringing the past to life.
Collingwood’s was unhappy with the way in which historians tended to approach their profession, believing that, traditionally, they failed to engage with the whole and the rationale behind any given historic event - becoming enamoured with proximal causality and missing the more discrete underlying causality (sound familiar?). This led him to revisit the philosophy and method of the historical narrative and at the heart of his restructured approach was a simple question, “why?”
At the same time I found myself reading a commentary by another historian, Niall Ferguson (discussing the need to communicate context - proximal versus underlying causality - in history) and, when you combine his work with Collingwood, a narrative guide for KM practice begins to emerge:
The past comes alive in the present through artefacts
The past is meaningless if the intended purpose cannot be inferred
History requires a leap of imagination into the mind of the person(s) whose story is being told: “He [the historian] must think that problem out for himself, see what possible solutions of it might be offered, and see why this particular philosopher chose that solution instead of another. This means re-thinking for himself the thought of his author, and nothing short of that will make him the historian of that author’s philosophy. (Collingwood, p. 283)”
“Historical knowledge is the re-enactment of a past thought encapsulated in a context of present thoughts, which by contradicting it, confines it to a plane different from theirs” (Ferguson, p. 20)
History provides insight – an expert historian is like a trained woodsman versus a traveller – the traveller sees the grass and the trees, the woodsman sees the tiger in the grass.
“To inform people about the present, in so far as the past, its ostensible subject matter, is encapsulated in the present and constitutes a part of it not once obvious to the untrained eye” (Ferguson, p. 20)
We use history to gain insight into the problems facing us today – a plane of current time and space into which history is summoned in our journey towards a solution.
The key point for Knowledge Managers is to work create rich artefacts that transmit enough detail of the original time and place, in such a way that future readers/users can make the leap of imagination into the context of the author. Through these narratives you can create artefacts that stimulate even richer narrative and provide a greater contribution to solving the problems of the today.
Consider your lessons learned reports, do they convey a rich sense of time and place? Do they allow the reader to jump in the mind of the author? If not, why not? Perhaps you need to consider a lessons learned best practice template to improve the value of what is being captured.
