Three Ways of Seeing Knowledge How knowledge shifts from substance to mind to action

There are at least three distinct ways of looking at knowledge.

The first treats knowledge as a substance. It can be captured, stored, transferred, and moved around. Databases, documents, videos, and repositories are all said to “contain” knowledge. In this view, knowledge and information are effectively the same thing. Management then becomes a matter of managing stocks and flows.

The second separates knowledge from information, but still treats knowledge as a substance. The difference is location. Knowledge lives in people’s heads. When we write something down, we convert knowledge into information. Documents hold information; minds hold knowledge. Management in this frame then focuses on extracting, sharing, or unlocking what individuals already “have.”

The third shifts the ground more radically. Knowledge is not a substance at all. It is not a noun. It is a verb. It does not sit anywhere, whether in systems or in heads. It shows up in action. It is enacted in judgement, performance, conversation, and decision.

A simple analogy helps. Our legs do not contain “walkage.” They give us the capacity to walk. Walking only exists when we are actually walking. In the same way, knowledge may be better understood as a capacity that becomes visible in doing, rather than a thing stored somewhere.

This has direct implications for Conversational Leadership. If knowledge is a stock, conversation is a channel for transferring it. If knowledge is something held in minds, conversation is a way of exchanging it. But if knowledge is enacted, conversation is not a channel at all. It is the very place where knowing happens. Collective judgement, shared sense-making, and coordinated action arise in the interaction itself.

Knowledge is in the doing

For many years, in my work in knowledge management, I adopted the second view. Increasingly, as my thinking around Conversational Leadership widens and deepens, I find myself drawn to the third.