The Easy Things are Hard
I type this paragraph with one hand while Aleta, my cat, is draped over my arm, purring. I lift my coffee cup with the other hand.
Later today, I will drink more coffee and black tea while attending five remote meetings in a row. I won’t drink water. I know this because I rarely drink water.
I know that I’m supposed to drink 6–8 glasses of water a day. I can Google. Also, my friend Andrew stuck a “Hydrate” sticker on my laptop.
I could pass an exam on hydration practices. My friend Indu told me a horror story about kidney stones. Yet, here I am, dehydrating.
The tension — between what we know and what we can embody — shows up everywhere. In ourselves, our teams and organizational systems. We blame lack of willpower or a myriad of other causes. Most of the time, the truth is … we’ve simply missed something systemic and important.
Recently, I told my doctor “I’m feeling so much better. Except, in the evenings. I eat Cashewtopia Gelato, potato chips, or chocolate. (Sometimes, all three.) They don’t satisfy my craving, and I don’t want to eat that stuff before bed …"
She said, “When the body is dehydrated, it craves sugar (or salty snacks or chocolate). The cravings are a symptom. Are you drinking water?”
Busted.
“I really hate drinking water.” I said, having nothing less lame to say. “I’m not thirsty!”
“Drinking water”, she says, “feels awful when you are dehydrated. Telling yourself to “just drink water” isn’t helpful unless you are into torture.”
I’m not into torture. My approach to hydration had been — push myself to do something that feels awful (drink water) while pushing myself to stop doing something that feels good (eat sugar).
That was bad strategy — even though it would make sense to most people.
My doctor and I made a list of things I enjoy drinking. Bone broth, iced decaf tea, fruit smoothies, frothy warm cocoa with stevia before bed. I was willing to try.
That night, a big storm blew in and knocked out power for days. Without power, I have no water, my well runs on electricity. I fled to a nearby retreat center, where they make self-care frictionless. I brought my water bottle with me.
Now, I need to stop typing this chapter. Because, for the fourth time today, my water bottle is empty. And I’m thirsty.
When you are pressing for a result that does not materialize, it’s time for the core practices. This is important. Because as you read this book, you’ll see there is much to do in order to generate knowledge flor. But doing is rarely the first step.
The core skills might seem easy, even obvious. You might wonder “where are the new frameworks?” or “when will we talk about AI?” (Later. And you’ll discover that actual intelligence is required in order to leverage AI effectively.)
The hardest part of knowledge flow is to pay attention. Not paying attention to what you know but to what you don’t know.
Core Practices of Knowledge Flow
Notice → Make Sense → Relate → Generate → Act → Update
Like hydration, knowledge isn’t about what you can Google — it’s about what you can embody, in the right moment. Knowledge is inextricable from lived experiences, a systemic process that we participate in.
As my “drink water” story reveals, knowledge is not simply access to information. Knowledge is more like an event — a right place, right time, right information kind of experience. It arises when we synthesize information with interactions, observations, self awareness, experiences, and a bit of luck.
When you’ve invested plenty of time, energy and attention and still end up with nothing that resembles knowledge — there is usually something missing. Some insight or relationship pattern or systemic impact you don’t yet understand.
Wise actions are often hidden in our blindspots.
But how do you discover blindspots? They are, after all, blind.
You practice.
I can use the “drink water” example because you do need hydration too, you know what I mean, from experience. You know knowledge flow in the same way. You might not call it that and you probably don’t know all the shapes, patterns and impacts it has on your life, but you already have knowledge experiences.
The practices in this chapter help you invite, recognize, and act on knowledge experiences. When situations get complex, the practices remind you to pause — reconsider what you know and look at things from a different perspective.
These are (obviously) not the only practices a knowledge worker needs. But without them, you are unlikely to cultivate knowledge flow.
Activity
Notice → Make Sense → Relate → Generate → Act → Update
As you travel around the Knowledge Flow Loop, create your own examples. While you might relate to the examples I give — your own experience is the best teacher.
If nothing comes to you, remember the pain. Consider your biggest frustrations and ask yourself “would this practices have helped?” Sometimes, it’s what’s missing that matters most.
Even though we wouldn’t call an experience “lack of knowledge flow, we have all experienced the impact. When someone interrupts necessary inquiry by jumping to conclusions. Blames the wrong thing. Ignores important perspectives. Resists the opportunity to learn from recurring patterns.
Create more than one example, if you can. That will help your mind remember to practice in the heat of a moment. If you struggle, go to the pain. Chances are, you’ll find a fruitful example there.
The Knowledge Flow Loop
Notice → Make Sense → Relate → Generate → Act → Update
1. Notice
Look before you leap.
A colleague sends me an irritating Slack. My fingers are already typing before I realize that it’s 2pm and I haven’t eaten all day. Perhaps I’m hangry. I step away, eat lunch, and reread their question. Now it seems both reasonable and necessary.
Remember the opening story about my fraught relationship with drinking water? Hydration required noticing I wasn’t drinking, interpreting why (over and over), and framing my choices within my circumstances rather than trying to apply generic “shoulds.”
Primary Practice: Observation
Your first reaction is rarely the right one.
Observation is developing awareness of what is happening before interpreting meaning or solutioning. Noticing signals, patterns, and anomalies without jumping to conclusions.
Example: In a workshop, three people stay quiet. The project manager decides to watch this pattern across other meetings to see if it changes.
Supporting: Interpretation
Make your leaps of logic visible (to you).
When we begin to make sense of observations, we are interpreting. Exploring possible meanings of what you’ve observed, without locking in too soon. Remaining open to revision because too often, our first conclusion is weak.
I write down my observations, considering what I noticed and might be missing. I identify conclusions I’m drawing and any reasons I have for drawing them. Do they hold up?
Supporting: Contextual Framing
Position an idea or action within its larger environment.
The value of information, insights or experiences depend on the circumstances. Contextual framing is clarifying the significance of information within its relevant context. Placing what you’ve interpreted into a specific time, place, and purpose.
I open the discussion about “quiet people” in meetings with “I want to remove any friction you might be experiencing when sharing what you know. How can I better facilitate this discussion?”
2. Make Sense
See the patterns, not just the symptoms.
There’s an outage in production. I drop everything to fix it. Four days later, it fails again.
Two weeks later, again.
I gather a cross-functional group together and we map the patterns — what we see, when, and under what conditions. What else is happening simultaneously? What changed?
We gain insight and design an experiment to test our hunch.
It helps us avoid bandaiding every symptom and instead, change the things that matter.
When I searched for information about dehydration, I found “drink water” advice. A solution, but no insight.
I didn’t recognize that sugar cravings signaled dehydration. My doctor’s recommendation helped me make sense of the patterns. And revealed the impact of dehydration patterns on my physical system.
Then, my experienced evaluation, drinking things I enjoyed, shifted those patterns towards hydration.
Primary Practice: Sense-Making Translation (Convergent)
Relationships are complicated.
Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone is using the same word but, it turns out, mean very different things? Sense-making translation is identifying ways that varied viewpoints are struggling to converge. Finding the shared pattern under multiple perspectives, interpretations or languages.
In a new project meeting, I mention “Agile” and someone reacts as if hornets just flew into the room. We pause and create a shared definition of what we mean, and don’t mean, by “Agile”.
Supporting: Evaluation
Test thinking like it’s software.
A great idea isn’t great in every circumstance. Evaluation is validating and prioritizing information before acting by testing its accuracy, quality, and relevance.
Before I share my conclusion, I ensure I have three cogent reasons to support it. If I have no data to back me up, I figure out how to find some.
3. Relating
Make meaning travel.
A product manager hands me a list of requirements. I don’t understand why they matter. We talk. He explains the problem they are trying to solve, and together we invent a solution neither of us could have invented alone.
When we practice related, we are designing relationships between parts so they can work intelligently, together.
I had information about dehydration yet didn’t know it was related to my evening “eat all the carbs” habit . Connecting my own experience, and drinks I actually enjoy, with advice from my doctor is what made hydration possible. And created a natural, powerful feedback loop that was missing.
Primary Practice: Relational Mapping
Make connections visible.
Relationships between people, ideas, events, and toolsets form the fabric of any organization system. Relational mapping makes the relationships that shape meaning and outcomes explicit. It is the ongoing practice of identifying, verifying, and articulating connections between people, ideas, events, and systems.
A technology team creates a repository that links customer stories , business goals, and security constraints to the capabilities they are building. They tag people with business, design or security expertise when they have questions about the impact of their decisions.
Supporting: Curation
Kondo information so it reveals the underlying intelligence.
We are all drowning in information. Curation is discernment: selecting, deleting, organizing, and structuring information and perspectives. This practice gives a tidy, powerful shape to informational relationships to they can convey meaning.
After researching user behavior, a team creates a video with examples of their pain points, along with examples of how the system is reinforcing those experiences.
4. Generate
Bring new meaning into being (aka the fun part)
Frustrated by the suggestion that we hack the system to “get something out quick”, I model two pieces of software working together to create an even better experience for users.
It helps us change things rather than maintain the status quo (when it isn’t working for us.)
Stuck in the false dilemma of “drink water” vs “not thirsty”, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Transforming my way of thinking and synthesizing advice generated a playful list of alternative approaches
Primary Practice: Synthesis
The magic of creating what wasn’t there before.
Synthesizing is creating new meaning or solutions from existing elements by combining diverse inputs to produce something new. An insight, concept, solution, or pattern that didn’t exist in any of the parts alone.
A content creator finds older articles related to her topic. While reviewing engagement data, she spots a question no one has covered. She updates her piece with links to the old content and writes a new article to fill the blindspot.
Supporting: Generative Discourse
Build ideas together.
There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. — Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Generative discourse is dialogue that builds ideas rather than … most of the ways we usually engage in meetings. This practice engineers concepts that are sound and well designed.
A journalist, engineer and product manager walk into a bar … and co-create a model that frames “content” and “data” in a new way. The tool they recommend significantly reduces friction in their workflow.
Supporting: Integration
Discover how pieces work as a whole.
Unlike “alignment”, getting everyone to think the same thing, integration combines disparate inputs— ideas, perspectives, data sources, practices — into a unified perspective. All of our thinking generates the same system. Integration is helping ideas work together as a coherent whole.
Finance, marketing, and engineering integrate their perspectives by creating a model of how a payment process happens, from beginning to end. They craft a common language so they can understand this process from all three perspectives. And discover the one pain point impacting them all.
4. Acting
Make knowledge move.
Launching isn’t just “pushing code to production.” When I share an artifact showing how workflows harm daily experience, I’m launching knowledge. Action helps us avoid the stagnation of “needing to know everything before we act” and encourages adaptive processes.
Small invisible actions, like reducing friction between silos, matter as much as big, visible launches. Because the big outcomes can’t exist without the small adaptations.
Drinking water sounds easy but I couldn’t do it alone. Sharing my struggles, and spending four days in a supportive place, launched changes I couldn’t have sustained alone.
I didn’t know how long the power would be out or if my doctor was correct. But I was willing to be adaptive, and often, that’s all it takes.
Primary Practice: Flow-Making Translation (Divergent)
Help insights travel across differing perspectives.
Flow-making translation is expressing an insight in multiple forms. Reshaping an artifact so different audiences can understand and make use of it. This enables insights to move effectively across organizational boundaries.
An engineering lead prepares tailored explanations for engineers, product, leadership, and finance — and gets approval for her budget request.
Supporting: Adaptation
Keep knowledge alive.
The decisions we make are often correct, at the time we make them. Then, things change. Adaptation is adjusting how knowledge is used, shared, or framed as circumstances evolve over time.
On Friday, the data team considers the feedback (see Launch above) and identify ways to improve what they measure based on insights from other teams.
5. Update
Evolve with experience.
After acting, we revisit what we noticed, made sense of, related, generated, and launched — and ask what needs to change next time. We identify blindspots, areas where our knowledge flow process can be improved — so we can design more-impactful actions.
Remember: knowledge is something we do, how we invest our time energy and attention. Updating is simply navigating life with our eyes open.
Primary Practice: Ecosystem Architecture
Design for growth.
Ecosystem architecture designs the human, technical, and cultural conditions that sustain learning, trust, and innovative play.
Two teams, discussing a difficult problem, add new emojis to help them express their challenges with lightness and levity.
Here is where I confess:
My miraculous recovery didn’t last. Hydration comes and goes as I discover other patterns.
For example, feeling stressed by too much to do, I starting vaping German Watermelon-flavored nicotine instead of filling my water bottle. (I know, I know, but the German brands are really good.) Forgetting (or ignoring) that thirst reveals a need for support.
I adapted and stopped vaping. No doubt, there is still more to learn about myself as an ecosystem.
Explore Your Own Terrain
There is no exam at the end of this chapter. No whiteboard test to prove you have memorized this skills. Knowledge, like hydration, only matters when it becomes part of you. Knowing you need water is not the same as drinking it.
I’m not even going to summarize the practices. You’ve got this. The only thing you need to do now is: pay attention. Notice moments when you are already practicing these skills. Consider trying something new.
Most of all, have fun. Don’t force yourself to do things you don’t like — begin with whatever makes your day more enjoyable.
This is the good stuff, my friend. Our raison d’etre in the knowledge economy. These are the skills that sustain you. They are the journey itself and the reason you are on it.
Activity
For the next week or two, notice how you work.
At the end of your workday, pick one of these prompts and write about it. Invite others to join you — you’ll discover that your quirks are more common that you think.
Make Sense
- Notice a conversation where the same word meant different things
Relate
- Notice a time you linked scattered information to help a decision
Generate
- Notice an outcome created by pairing across boundaries
Act
- Notice an insight you shared in two different ways
Update
- Notice a system change that made work more enjoyable