What is Tacit Knowledge

The Tacit Knowledge podcast explores how environment-specific unspoken rules shape our ability to navigate and succeed in different situations. Host Elvira De Silva shares her personal journey from growing up street-smart in South LA during the volatile 90s to feeling completely lost when her family moved to the suburbs, highlighting how tacit knowledge that serves us in one environment may not transfer to another.<br><br>• Growing up in South LA required specific tacit knowledge about colors not to wear, streets to avoid, and constant awareness of potential dangers<br>• Moving to the suburbs rendered this knowledge irrelevant, creating a feeling of being "a fish out of water"<br>• College life presented similar challenges without parents who could provide guidance about university experiences<br>• Tacit knowledge gaps appear throughout life in situations like new parenthood, career changes, and unfamiliar social settings<br>• Personal example of clubbing as a teenager and eventually learning the unspoken rule about bottle service to skip long lines<br>• The podcast aims to create a platform where peers can share their tacit knowledge to help others navigate unfamiliar situations<br><br>Join us on this journey as we uncover the unwritten rules that help us succeed in various environments, making the invisible visible through shared experiences.

Transcript

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Hey everyone, thanks for joining me on my first episode of my Tacit Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, Elvira Da Silva. The first time I heard the phrase, Tacit Knowledge, I was like, what is that? What do you mean, Tacit Knowledge? I thought there was only one type of knowledge. The type that you learn from a book. If you go to school, you study real hard, you learn stuff, right? Seems simple enough. You want to know something, you... Go study it. You go seek out people who can teach you it. But basically knowledge is something you can just get on your own or read about it. I had never heard the term tacit knowledge. Me naturally being the curious person I am, I had to look further into it and I'm so glad that I did. And I'm even more glad to be able to present it to you today because really it's all around us. So why is it important? Why does it matter? And what does it mean? Well, let's start there. What does it mean? A long time ago, the philosopher Aristotle stated that we had three types of knowledge. There was only three types. You had the type of knowledge you learned from a book or that someone taught you. You had the knowledge where you learned it from skill. You learned the skill, you did it often enough, and you got the knowledge. And the last type of knowledge was knowledge. through trial and error. You tried it, if it failed, well, that wasn't right. If it worked, there you go, you gained the knowledge. It was a simple, straightforward definition of knowledge. And it would remain this way until finally in the 1940s, a chemist at the University of England, his name was Michael Polanyi, started to look into social sciences and started noticing that people have the ability to understand more than they can perceive. And he started talking about this knowledge we have embedded inside of us. And he describes it as being impossible to explain, impossible to kind of teach, but the person who possesses the knowledge understands it completely. And this would become known as tacit knowledge. Whoa. So now we have that, you know, very educational, very formal understanding of tacit knowledge. But honestly, the first time I read it, I was like, what the hell does that mean? I still don't know. Well, it's pretty simple. Tacit knowledge is something that we've all been around, we've all experienced, and we all kind of possess. Growing up, I remember my mom used to tell me in Spanish, el hijo de panadero es panadero. Let me translate that. It basically translates to a child of a baker is a baker because you just pick up on these skills and you know what to do and you're around it your whole life. So you just know it. And I was like, okay, yeah, but you can learn that, you know, through observation, just like Aristotle pointed out. This is one of the three types of knowledge. That's not tacit knowledge. Then I really started giving it some thought. and one thing that came to mind was my very difficult almost you know frustrating and not being able to understand and i asked so many people how do you network how do you just start talking i'm very smart when it comes to books i'm a friendly person once i know you but for me to initiate conversation or Be able to walk into a room and just be the life of the party or know everybody in that room right away. Well, that ain't going to happen. That's not who I am. And I say hello to everybody, but it's just not something I know how to do. My father, on the other hand, it doesn't matter where we go. In less than five minutes, it seems like he knows the entire place and everybody in there knows him and they all love him. And it could be like 10 years later and he'll run into those people and be like, hey, what's up? Like they never stop talking and they continue to love him and they haven't seen each other. And this would really be like, how did you do that, dad? What is it that you're doing? Teach me, tell me. And he would say, I don't know. I just do. I don't know how to explain it to you. That is tacit knowledge. So why is it important for us? Well, that's what this podcast is about. We will be interviewing and talking to people from different walks of life, from a variety of places. And we will be asking them how tacit knowledge has affected their lives, either in a positive or in a negative manner. How it has been vital to their lives. improvement in life or how it has had a detrimental effect on their life. Either way, we're going to dig deeper into this type of knowledge and figure out how we're going to learn it and why we should know it. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to continuing this informational journey with you.