I’ve been thinking about knowledge metabolism recently.

Transitions

I often work in times of transition:

  • Startup → Scale-up
  • Digital Transformation in theory → Messy reality of Digital Transformation
  • Small organisation → Medium organisation → Large enterprise
  • Individual practice → Collective performance
  • Delivery focus → Navigating complex systems
  • What works for one team → What works at scale
  • Hands-on → Middle-management → Senior leadership
  • Discovery → What now?
  • Movement → hitting a wall
  • Clarity → Ambiguity

Etc

Knowledge as content

And I’ve realised that, at times like this, traditional ideas of ‘knowledge management’ break down. Traditional learning can fail. Generic models can fall flat.

‘Knowledge management’ is often built on 1990s context and assumptions:

  • Problems are repeatable, expertise is stable, and scaling known answers is the goal
  • Knowledge is content, content is an asset, an asset is something to me stored, retrieved, and controlled
  • Knowledge management systems answer questions like “where can I find that document?”, “who has done this before?”, “can we create a template?”
  • Store it once, reuse it forever, build big repositories, treat knowledge like inventory.

This approach works when life is stable. But in complex systems, where context shifts constantly, static knowledge quickly becomes irrelevant and this approach starts to fall apart.

Wayfinding: knowledge as creation

In the moments of transition I shared above, the ‘path’ offered by existing, generic knowledge quickly disappears. You’re between stable conditions. The models don’t fit. Training doesn’t land.

This is when you need to learn through movement. You can’t know and then move, you have to move and then know. This isn’t the moment for training, it’s the moment for wayfinding. If you move into a new role without a neat definition, a strategy fails to land, a team disbands, a project gets messy, you’re not sure what to do next . . . you have to find your own way. There’s no neat, external knowledge that can totally unblock you. You’ve got to figure it out. You’ve got to find your own way.

Metabolism

. . . and in that wayfinding sits knowledge metabolism: You experience a disturbance and the ‘path’ offered by traditional knowledge disappears You reflect You synthesise You act You reflect again.

This is the real loop behind learning during these transitional times. Not course → quiz → certificate. But: friction → reflection → forward. At these times it’s not just absorbing information .. . . it’s digesting it, synthesising it, and transforming it into clarity, action, or movement.

Knowledge metabolism is how we make meaning, not just how we find facts. I’ve realised this idea sits at the heart of how I work, learn, and lead. It suits learning that happens during transitions, learning that has to be self-directed, reflective, contextual. The theory of this type of learning is called ‘heautagogy’ and ‘knowledge metabolism’ is the way that I help it to happen.

Just in case → just in time

Traditional learning often prepares us for things that might happen, just in case. It often comes in a big lump, in an abstracted package, before we need it. Organisations love leadership training before anyone leads, strategy decks no one uses, guidance and playbooks that don’t match the real work.

But when someone hits a wall or a moment of choice, those tools rarely help. What helps is the ability to pause, reflect, metabolise, and move again. Knowledge metabolism supports you when things actually do happen, just in time. When we don’t need more content, we need consequence. It’s how we start learning from the work we’re already doing, not adding learning on top of it. It’s how we build insight at the edge of action.

Space to think

Most organisations still treat knowledge as something you store, like inventory in a warehouse. But in complex, fast changing environments, this breaks down. The result is that learning doesn’t happen when you need it most. Over the last couple of decades I’ve seen:

  • Leaders promoted without support and left to figure it out silently
  • Teams stuck in cycles of discovery without learning
  • Strategic decisions made without shared understanding
  • Endless documentation that doesn’t build confidence or clarity.

What if even some of the money spent on ‘learning & development’ was reinvested in giving people space to think? And we trusted them to create their own knowledge? What if some of the money spent on knowledge management systems was reinvested in curating field notes that shared what was happening, on the ground – what was changing, what was being learned? What if some of the money spent on off the shelf operating models was reinvested in building field guides based on the reflections and field notes of your own staff?

This is the frame I’m starting to test across all my work. What we need isn’t more information. We need to digest what we already know, and turn it into something usable.

This is what I mean by knowledge metabolism: friction → reflection → forward.

It’s how we transform experience into insight. Not as a luxury, but as a survival skill in complexity. And it’s especially powerful and suited to moments of transition.