Tacit (intuitive) knowledge has issues
Tacit knowledge can help us make quick decisions in familiar situations. But it has its limits…
As you probably know if you are reading this post, my colleagues and I make developmental assessments, several of which are focused on adult skills like leaders’ decision making. I am often asked about the validity of these assessments when it comes to tacit or intuitive knowledge. The short answer is that tacit knowledge is not captured by any assessment that asks people to show how they reason through a problem — because tacit knowledge is, well, tacit.
Some people think this is a problem with our assessments, but we have come to the conclusion that the real problem lies in the kind of learning — unreflective experiential learning — that often produces tacit knowledge.
What is tacit knowledge?
Often, people know more about a particular subject than they can communicate verbally. This is because much of what we learn through experience does not automatically become part of our conscious (or explicit) knowledge. It’s in a form that’s difficult to share. It is tacit or intuitive. Tacit knowledge is not always a bad thing. It helps us make quick choices in familiar situations; we’d be in big trouble if we had to think through every single situation in our lives before we made a decision! But tacit knowledge has its problems.
Problems with tacit knowledge
There are four serious problems with tacit knowledge. (1) We can’t share it, (2) it’s limited, (3) it can be unreliable, and (4) it can slow development.
We can’t share tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is, by definition, unconscious. It doesn’t reside in consciousness, so we can’t readily share it with others. One context in which this can be particularly problematic is in “intuitive” leadership. A leader who relies primarily on intuition is unable to actively support the development of others’ leadership skills. Organizations that are led by intuitive leaders often have trouble developing the leaders of tomorrow.
Tacit knowledge is limited to what we can learn from direct experience: Because tacit knowledge is typically created through direct experience, it’s most useful in familiar situations. Unfortunately, the world we live in constantly presents new challenges. To meet these challenges, we must continually evaluate the quality of new and existing knowledge.
Tacit knowledge can be unreliable. Often, tacit knowledge is sub-optimal because it has been created through unreflective direct experience. When we don’t consciously curate experiential knowledge, we’re leaving the job of networking that knowledge to our unconscious brain. The unconscious brain — sometimes called System 1 — networks knowledge purely by making associations. And although System 1 is fast and efficient, its default settings often make associations that lead us astray. We stand a better chance of networking experiential knowledge effectively if we pay attention to what we’re learning and do some conscious steering—with micro-VCoL.
Tacit knowledge can slow development. When we habitually learn primarily through unreflective experience or action, we miss opportunities to make novel connections or notice when an automatic connection is suboptimal. Our brains settle into a groove. People learn faster and better when they habitually reflect consciously upon experience.
Implications for assessment
The implications for assessment are clear. Tacit knowledge isn’t visible in a developmental assessment of reasoning skills. Although good developmental assessments can provide accurate evaluations of the level of complexity people can explicitly work within specific skill areas, they can’t give us direct information about the quality of tacit capabilities.
However, we can help people take control of the development of their tacit knowledge—with VCoL. VCoLing brings experiential learning into conscious awareness, making it more explicit and shareable. It also allows us to steer the construction of experiential knowledge networks, which, over time, leads to the development of more robust intuitions.
