Tacit vs explicit knowledge: how do they differ?

Explicit knowledge is that which is easy to communicate, document, and transfer between people. It is formal and systematic, such as information found in a recipe, a manual, or a company handbook. A doctor, for example, will have a significant wealth of explicit knowledge related to human anatomy and physiology, medical procedures, and drug interactions. You can't intuit this knowledge, it has to be studied and learned through lectures and textbooks.

Tacit knowledge, by its very nature, is hard to articulate. It's built up with experience and is intrinsic, personal, and context-specific. Think, for instance, of a hotel concierge. While they may have area-specific knowledge or hotel information that can be documented or pulled up on a screen, the best are able to use charm and presence to make guests feel welcome. This ability is not easily written down or taught in a manual; it’s learned through experience and practice.

Cooking is another example of tacit knowledge really coming to the forefront. Yes, you can follow the recipe, but what do you add when your meal just needs that extra… something? Is it salt? Do you need a splash of lemon juice? How much garlic do you want to add? All of these situations require experience to know how flavours meld and complement each other.

We could also return to our doctor example. Although they have a wealth of explicit knowledge, they will also have developed heaps of tacit knowledge gained through years of practice that allows them to make quick, intuitive decisions in complex situations.

Deployed effectively, tacit and explicit knowledge can significantly improve your operations. Tacit knowledge, grounded in past experience, can support decision-making processes and allow teams to form successful strategies and solutions based on your business context. It will also support ideation and innovation, given the deep understanding of their work, and their innate knowledge of what has worked previously. Likewise, explicit knowledge facilitates clear communication within your organisation. Being easily documented and shared, it ensures consistent understanding across teams, empowering employees to work more independently.

So now you know the benefits of tacit and explicit knowledge, but how do you harness that knowledge to reap the benefits for your business?

One element that often gets overlooked when starting this process is the need to foster a knowledge-sharing culture within your company. If the process of sharing and documenting knowledge is new to you, then, like all change, it’s best managed with support, employee consultation, and appropriate training for stakeholders to get buy-in and faster adoption.

With tacit knowledge, especially, training is likely required to help support your employees to take what’s in their heads and convert that into explicit, documented knowledge that can be understood by other people. Not everybody is a natural writer and sometimes they don’t know what they know, and what may seem obvious or insignificant to one employee could be fundamental to successful execution. Good, structured training will ensure you’re able to extract all their expertise in a clear and methodical way.

Once all of your explicit knowledge has been collated, you must organise that information effectively. That’s where a knowledge management system comes into play. Using a tool like Confluence will help all employees, whether they're knowledge workers or not, quickly find the information they need. That means less time spent searching for answers and more time being the experts they were hired to be.