Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Issue 309 – March 2026
There’s quite a lot happening on the Conversational Leadership event front at the moment, with four new events now posted on my site.
On 11 March, I’ll be running an online Knowledge Café Workshop, where I will share how to design and host your own Café, whether online or in person. Then, in March and again in April, I’ll be hosting two Knowledge Cafés focused on Conversational Leadership. These sessions are a chance to explore the ideas together that underpin Conversational Leadership.
Then, in September, John Hovell and I will host a five-day in-person Conversational Leadership workshop in the Hampshire countryside here in England. It will be an opportunity to step back, think deeply, and work closely with others over several days. I will share more details about the event soon.
You can see all the upcoming events here:
https://conversational-leadership.net/events-future/
Contents
- The Rules of Confidential Conversations
How Sunshine, Chatham House, and Vegas rules shape confidentiality - Nothing Stands Alone
A relational view of people information and systems - The Trouble with DIKW
A misleading KM framework that still persists - Three Ways of Seeing Knowledge
How knowledge shifts from substance to mind to action - You Can Leave KM, but KM Does Not Leave You
You can quit the label, not the practice - Help Keep My Work Alive
- Coaching
- Unsubscribe
- Gurteen Knowledge Letter
The Rules of Confidential Conversations
How Sunshine, Chatham House, and Vegas rules shape confidentiality
I have been reflecting on the invisible agreements that shape our conversations. We assume we share the same understanding of what can be repeated, attributed, or kept private, but we rarely test those assumptions. When expectations differ, trust erodes, and we hesitate to think aloud. In this post, I introduce the Sunshine Rule, the Chatham House Rule, and the Vegas Rule—three rules that clarify expectations. You can read more in my blook.
Nothing Stands Alone
A relational view of people information and systems
Much of our language assumes that people, ideas, and systems exist independently. In this post, I explore the concept of relationality, in which meaning, identity, and information emerge through relationships and context rather than from isolated things. The focus shifts from nouns to patterns of interaction and consequence. You can read the post here.
The Trouble with DIKW
A misleading KM framework that still persists
I still find it surprising how seriously many people take the Knowledge Management DIKW model, despite its misleading and conceptually weak nature. If you know my views on DIKW, you already have a good sense of where Dave Snowden stands, and his comments in this LinkedIn discussion make that clear.
What caught my attention, though, was not the model itself but the range of reactions. The thread shows just how differently people see data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. The diversity of views is striking.
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.
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.
You Can Leave KM, but KM Does Not Leave You
You can quit the label, not the practice
Every so often, someone unsubscribes from my Knowledge Letter with a polite note: “I’m no longer involved in Knowledge Management.” Fair enough, I unsubscribe them, no questions asked. But I always smile.
How can any of us not be involved in Knowledge Management?
Whether we are at work, in our communities, or just trying to get through the day, we are constantly making sense of what is going on around us. We try to understand what things mean, what we believe, what matters, and what to do next. We make decisions. We act. We behave, sometimes wisely, sometimes less so.
This is Knowledge Management. It has little to do with databases, taxonomies, portals, or platforms. Those are tools, sometimes useful, often oversold. The real work is human. It is about sense-making, meaning-making, judgment, and learning in action.
So when someone says, “I’m no longer involved in Knowledge Management,” what they are really saying is, “I’m no longer interested in how I understand the world, how I think, or how I decide.” And I have yet to meet anyone who truly means that.
You can leave the KM job title and databases behind. But as long as you are trying to live, work, and choose well in a complex world, you are still very much in the business of Knowledge Management.
Help Keep My Work Alive
Sustaining 25 Years of shared learning and conversation
For almost 25 years, I've been sharing the Gurteen Knowledge Letter each month, and many of you have been reading it for five years or more. My Knowledge Café also reached a milestone, celebrating its 20th anniversary in September 2022.
If my work has made a difference to you, I'd be grateful if you could consider supporting it. A small monthly donation or any one-off contribution would greatly help cover some of my website hosting costs.
Thank you to the 50+ patrons who have already supported me - your generosity means a great deal.
Coaching
Bringing Conversational Leadership into your daily practice
If you're curious about how a more conversational approach might shift the way you work with others, whether in leading, learning, or collaborating, I offer one-to-one coaching tailored to your context.
We explore real challenges and possibilities through dialogue, helping you develop your own way of practicing Conversational Leadership in daily work.
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The Gurteen Knowledge Letter
A monthly reflection on Conversational Leadership and Knowledge Management
The Gurteen Knowledge Letter is a free monthly email newsletter designed to inspire thinking around Conversational Leadership and Knowledge Management. You can explore the archive of past issues here.
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David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
