I received some feedback on my post on Organizational Knowledge Mastery. The claim was that if you trusted to human sensing, you’d be only able to track what’s become common knowledge, and that doesn’t provide the necessary competitive advantage. The extension was that you needed market analytics to see new trends. And it caused me to think a little deeper.
I’m thinking that the individuals in the organization, in their sensing/sharing, are tracking things before it becomes common knowledge. If people are actively practicing ongoing sensemaking and sharing internally and finding resonance, that can develop understanding before it becomes common knowledge. They’ve expertise in the area, and so that shared sense making should precede what emerges as common knowledge. Another way to think about it is to ask where the knowledge comes from that becomes the common knowledge?