BERNARD MCKENNA: Oh, a very big difference.
[LAUGHS] The people who brought us the global financial crisis in Wall Street were very
knowledgeable people.
So knowledge alone is simply not enough.
It's interesting that when we look in philosophy, and in literature, we can often find useful
things that can guide us.
And in 1934, T.S.
Elliott in a poem called, The Rock, said this - Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
And then, about 50 years later, Russell Ackoff, who was an academic at Wharton Business School,
and also a business analyst, came up with the notion of data, information, knowledge,
and wisdom.
Clearly, a distinction between those four elements.
Now, we all know that we have more information than we can possibly deal with-- more data
than we can possibly deal with.
We've now developed the notion of a zeta-byte-- which I think is 10 to the 21 bits of information.
Remember when we used to think that terabytes were pretty darn big?
Well, now we've got zeta-bytes.
So the human mind obviously cannot possibly comprehend that amount of data.
Indeed, forming that data into information sets is also enormously difficult.
The other factor that we have to take into account is what Herb Simon called bounded
rationality.
And by that, we mean that people are not necessarily the sort of rational beings that we would
like to think that they are, in two ways.
First of all, when we make decisions, we now know that we make decisions not just on what
we would call reasoning processes, but we do bring into account elements of intuition,
elements of experience, we draw on various bits of knowledge that we have from the past--
and emotions.
So we don't make purely rational decisions, anyway-- we know that that's incorrect.
The second point about bounded rationality is that the human brain simply cannot deal
with more than, say, the general accepted point is around about seven bits of information.
And once we get beyond that, the brain starts to go whoa, I can't handle this anymore.
So we have bounded rationality.
Now, a lot of the evidence now shows that what people really do, what leaders really
do when they make a decision, is that they make a call, which is what we would call intuitive.
But it doesn't just mean a gut feeling.
Anyone can have a gut feeling-- we all have gut feelings.
But a leader has a gut feeling of intuition that is based on huge amounts of experience
and knowledge, but also it's based on the reflexivity.
That is, they've made a call some time, it went belly up, and they go, goodness me, that
didn't go so well.
What went wrong there?
So they need reflexivity, as well.
So when I say gut feel, or intuition, I don't just mean that people say, oh, I think this
is the way we'll go.
They have an intuitive understanding that this is the right way to go.
And having made that decision, what we now know is that people are then able to what
I call backfill with rationality.
They can then go, I now have the answer, now I'm going to look at the building blocks that
lead to that answer.
And that's the way, generally, people work.
Now, the point about having that sort of intuitive judgment, and the difference between knowledge
and wisdom, is that that intuitive judgment must be characterized by a number of things.
Obviously, experience, but of course, a wise person crucially has to have the characteristic
of a moral being.
They have to be virtuous in the sense that they are not doing this for their own benefit,
and not just thinking only of the firm's profit line, or whatever.
They're thinking of the general benefit.
So again, it gets back to that disposition element that I was talking about.
People who make these calls, if they have the right disposition, if they continue to
think and reflect on what they've done, and how those things turned out, then those sort
of intuitive judgments will generally turn out to be pretty good ones.
PAUL HOLLAND: Tricky, isn't it?
I tell people that there aren't too many diagrams in management science they need to remember,
but the DIKY [sic] [DIKW] pyramid or triangle is one of them.
Because it needs to remind us how important that stuff is, particularly that little layer
between data and information where you have to analyze stuff.
But anyway, we're not talking about that.
But certainly, the knowledge component where effectively, whatever information you're taking,
you take it in through your lenses, and you turn it into something personal for you.
And it becomes knowledge.
And of course, I suppose, in a simple way, simple model, you've got explicit knowledge,
and you've got tacit knowledge.
Explicit stuff you can spit back out again pretty easily.
And most organizations that think they're doing knowledge management, are just collecting
terabytes on the servers, and that's good stuff.
Really good stuff.
But that's simply explicit knowledge turned back into information.
Tacit stuffs the gold, and even the platinum in organizations, the stuff that you know
but you can't say-- the deep stuff.
And sometimes it's what you can do.
Thats all very well to have people full of that stuff, but then they're going to be able
to apply it.
And to me the difference is that wisdom provides you with the context in which to use your
knowledge, to direct your knowledge appropriately.
You know, I know a lot of knowledgeable people I wouldn't send to the shop to buy a bottle
of milk, probably go to the wrong shop and come back with something else.
To be wise-- and again, its an ancient concept, isn't it?
The wise person of the village.
They've got a lot of knowledge, but they know when and where to apply it.
You can find very knowledgeable people-- it can be any real all the day, seven days a
week, 24 hours a day, and they just become a nuisance.
Or they're sharing their knowledge with you at inappropriate times, or the wrong sort
of knowledge.
You know, stuff thats outdated, or it's not right for that particular moment.
Only a wise person knows when and where and how to share their knowledge to get results
of some form-- whether its purely to aid in the growth of that particular person, over
a period of time, or whether its to solve a problem that they're facing at that particular
time.
And that sort of wisdom can come from a mentor, a person who is a knowledgeable person in
your life who was there for the long-run, but is relatively passive.
You can go and ask them things, and they can 'like the old guru' when they say, well, son in this
situation.
I believe that this is what you should be considering.
But they can be a coach, as well, someone who's more actively involved in your life,
helping you create a plan.
And they can help direct that plan through using their knowledge appropriately with you,
sharing that knowledge appropriately with you.
And maybe just in the form of questions back to you, or challenges, rather than telling
you to do something.
So to me, knowledge is that very personal filtering and storing of the information of
the world, mixed in with your own predilections, and your beliefs, and your experiences.
So you cook up this brew of stuff inside you, some of which can come out pretty easily,
and some of which can't-- and thats your knowledge.
But a wise person knows how to apply that, when and where, and how to apply it.
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