I was a little disappointed when I first read the title of Patrick Lambe’s commentary at Inside Knowledge, “Should be it be wisom — not knowledge — management?“.

However, as I got into Patrick’s arguments, my disappointment gave way to a sense of relief — Patrick, by the end of the article, dismisses “wisdom management” as the red herring that it is.

Discussions about whether knowledge management should be called “wisdom management” (or anything else, for that matter), usually stem from epistemological arguments about the nature of knowledge and wisdom, and whether it’s truly proper to call what we do “knowledge management”.

Well of course it’s not. A name is, after all, just a name. And it’s unfortunate that “knowledge management” is what has stuck, but that’s the nature of naming things — sometimes the name you end up with is not really the best for something.

People are certainly confused by “knowledge management” as a phrase — even executives, uninitiated in the arcana of KM, are often baffled when presented with a proposal for managing knowledge.

But does “wisdom management” provide a solution to this problem? No — it actually makes things much worse. It belies a tendency (as there is in any field) to raise what we do above what others do, when paradoxically, we’re often struggling for recognition in the real world (and we should be attempting to make what we do less arcane, not more).

This subconscious elitism often comes about as people are passionate about what they do — and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Believing strongly in what you do is important. But the phrase “wisdom management” is not only elitist, it’s also an even worse misnomer than knowledge management.

So much of the value of knowledge management is in the sharing of knowledge, rather than the wisdom of isolated experts. The word “wisdom” relies heavily on the data->information->knowledge->wisdom progression, and seems to implicitly state that wisdom is somehow better than information or knowledge, when in fact, they just have different uses at different times.

And I’ve saved the best for last. As Patrick states, creating this elitist model for “wisdom management” effectively shuts users up — the message is clear that only the wise and enlightened have a valuable opinion to share.

Knowledge management should be about breaking down barriers and opening up sharing and communication, not the establishment of an organizational ecclesiarchy who ‘know better’. A heartfelt thanks to Patrick for sending “wisdom management” packing.