For the last 25+ years, I have helped companies acquire and use enterprise software technologies; first working with ERP applications and for the last 10 years working with ECM applications. During this time, I have been a small business owner, worked for major consultancies, and been employed by software vendors. Through this experience, I have helped 100’s of companies in a variety of sectors put in place technology solutions that addressed their critical business needs and processes.
Prior to receiving my MBA, I was a professional dancer and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the University of California at Irvine. As a dancer, I studied ballet, modern, jazz, tap and other dance styles, was a member of modern dance companies, worked commercially in Las Vegas and Paris, and performed as a member of a television dance troupe in Germany. As a dancer, I learned movement, just as all dancers do, by observing, mimicking, and practicing the movement of others. In so doing developed a facility for acquiring tacit knowledge.
Ikujiro Nonaka (The Knowledge Creating Company, Harvard Business Review, 1991) posits that organizational learning and innovation starts with the process of acquiring tacit knowledge through “observation, imitation, and practice”. As stated by Michael Polanyi, “. . . all understanding is tacit . . . if understanding is taken to include the kind of practical comprehension which is achieved in the successful performance of a skill.” Though both Nonaka and Polanyi go on to describe the role of intuition, the interplay between tacit and explicit knowledge and the role of the physical body in providing input, neither delve into what would constitute the skills and techniques that help us to optimally absorb and understand tacit knowledge.
The ability to optimally “observe, imitate, and practice” the actions of others in order to learn is the set of skills and techniques essential to the art of dance. This is the core skill required of a dancer: to be able to adapt to and learn any style of movement. Similarly, individual adaptability in the workplace has a strong relationship to one’s ability to learn. Being able to easily gain new knowledge, specifically being able to absorb and internalize tacit knowledge, becomes a critical indicator linked to long term adaptability in the modern work environment. (Unpacking personal adaptability at work, David O'Connell, Eileen McNeely, Douglas Hall, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, Feb, 2008).
The ideal dancer has an elastic body and an elastic mind--someone who can learn and perform many styles of dance expression, cultivate the skills required to be able to quickly observe other dancers, imitate their movements, and then remember and practice those movements. Dancers recursively perform this process in order to hone their craft. Dancers themselves call this adaptability and measure their level of adaptability as a critical success factor.
Given the pure tacit nature of dance knowledge, the student of dance develops a capability critical to learning, comprehension, and innovation. Since all knowledge begins as tacit knowledge, dancers, off the dance floor or the stage, have a unique advantage and ability to rapidly adjust to new environments and cultures, absorb information from others, and learn quickly. Their ability to rapidly absorb tacit knowledge helps them to jump start communication; moving quickly in explicit expression.