A Neo-Confucian Approach to Knowledge Management

I first became interested in Neo-Confucian philosophy sometime around 1994 when Dad, Chieh Chu, mentioned off hand that he remembered the name of the great Neo-Confucian philosopher, Chu Hsi, in our Jia Pu (Chu Family Ancestry Records). While reading translated excerpts from the “Complete Works of Chu Hsi” I noticed phrases related to the definition of Qi and Li which referred to the endogenous knowledge existing in wood that were eerily similar to an on-going discussion thread, about tacit and implicit knowledge, in a newsgroup that I participated in. In particular, I was intrigued by a paragraph, “Knowledge and action require each other. … In terms of precedence, knowledge comes first. In terms of importance, action is more important.” - A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, W-T Chan, Princeton Paperbacks (p 609)

A discourse ensued when I shared this nugget with the newsgroup. From this discussion eventually we coined the phrase “Knowledge without action is useless. Action without knowledge is Dangerous.” I believe a British newsgroup member, unfortunately I can no longer remember his name, was my partner in this effort.

From this beginning, I started to search for more Chinese philosophy pertaining to knowledge and its use. Thereafter, another Chinese phrase that I had heard from childhood education triggered another epiphany. “Know yourself. Know your adversary. Win every encounter,” from the “Art of War” by Sun Zi, combined knowledge and action in a holistic way. Based on that principle, I created my first product “Competitor Intelligence” in November, 1995. About six months later, I proposed a more comprehensive holistic, “Art of War” –based knowledge management approach at the Sandoz/Ciba merger team meetings. Although I must admit that most of my teammates had no inkling of what I was talking about, I managed to convince a few strategic thinkers and the Knowledge Office was founded and paired with Information Management (libraries, online information, etc.) to form KIM, the Knowledge and Information Management unit of Novartis Pharmaceutical Research. Unfortunately, most everyone else was too busy jockeying for power during the fogs of merger to get anything done.

As often happens in life, during the same merger Novartis Consumer Health named a far-sighted R&D VP. We arranged to meet for lunch when he came to the US from Switzerland to kick off his US operations. Within one hour we had laid out a skeletal but holistic knowledge suite that, with the usability expertise from Cognetics and the IT resources from Lotus Switzerland, was launched as the NCH InfoWeb.

During these past 10+ years, I have gained much experience and picked up much knowledge to recognize symptoms that are externalized often in terms of “communications gaps” and “technical incompatibilities” but that fundamentally stem from a deeper problem of a lack of cohesion in cultures, mindsets, and processes. The holistic, “Art of War” approach to knowledge management is based on integrating technology with these other elements.

It dawned on me during the Katrina fiasco that today’s governments face the same challenges as do the global, and indeed smaller, enterprises. I wrote yesterday’s blog-essay “National Knowledge Officer and Office?” specifically with the US in mind but I realize that the same challenges are faced by and possibly the same proposal may apply to the home of my ancestors from whose culture germinated my underlying ideas. Of course, there is no reason the approach could not be applied elsewhere as well, or is there?

DC