Enlightened tradition

This is where I gather my thoughts on tradition, rationality, organisational learning and knowledge management.

There is a (badly recalled) quotation that is supposed to encapsulate the Enlightenment: “The antiquity of an idea, a law, or a notion need not necessarily be a reliable indicator of its excellence.”

Rationality and Occam’s Razor are better tools for judging excellence, but it is still interesting that irrationality in the form of gossip and (harmless) tradition — such as dress codes and the like — are impressive in their power to remove friction from a range of human relationships and endeavours.

Here I want to explore these things, to see how a rational approach to organisational knowledge and learning can fit around established ways of working, traditions or human expectations.

These are my personal reflections. They draw on but are not defined by my day job: knowledge management in a UK law firm.