Knowledge is a Static Possession

With great power comes great…great mountains of artifacts — not Spiderman

This delusion confuses knowledge with static assets: documentation, dashboards, models, data warehouses, style guides, project plans. All the inert information we store, quantify, tag, control, and defend.

We treat knowledge as a treasure, hoarded and guarded by dragons.

Facts do not generate intelligent organizations. Yet we persist in producing as many artifacts as possible, as if knowledge can be transmitted via manuscript alone.

This includes facts stored in your own mind. Winning at Jeopardy! or recalling trivia at lightning speed is impressive and requires devoted practice. But this practice trains storage and rapid retrieval, not (necessarily) knowledge.

Knowledge is not something you possess. Knowledge is something you do. Knowledge is: interpretation, connection, application, contextual awareness, collaboration, synthesis, adaptation, and meaning making.

A living process. Shaped by time, shared energy, and attention. Applying new insights and changing your own mind.

• The strategy deck becomes knowledge when the relationships in the system have shifted and everyone can act on it without friction.
• Data becomes knowledge when people access the right information, in the right context, at the right moment, to do something valuable they could not do before.
• Technology-Specific Expert generates knowledge when their expertise becomes part of the team's skillset instead of a bottleneck.
• A JIRA ticket generates knowledge when the team notices the real problem and proposes a better way to achieve the underlying goal.
• The fancy reporting dashboard becomes knowledge when it reveals why something is slow. (It never will.)

Key concept: Knowledge is not a possession, it's a process you participate in. Shaped by time, and orchestrated by your investment of energy and attention.