Three Types of Knowledge Work Requires

Before the Upsurge Era, mastering your craft was enough to be considered excellent at your job. That's no longer the whole picture.

This episode breaks down three kinds of knowledge work now requires: technical knowledge, our functional expertise, situational knowledge, understanding our organization's actual position and history, and human knowledge, understanding the specific people around us well enough to know who to ask and how.

Like a three-legged stool, all three need equal strength. A single strong leg, or even two, can't provide stability on its own.

Transcript

Welcome to The Career Edge, where we unpack how work actually works. I'm Leslie Ferry. In the Upsurge era, the shift where AI has raised what every role at every level is expected to bring, what it means to be excellent at our jobs has expanded. It used to be enough to master our craft, you know, the analysis, writing code, designing a campaign. What we need to know.

Has grown beyond that now. Picture a three-legged stool with all three legs are exactly the same length. It holds steady no matter how much weight you put on it. Shorten just one leg, even slightly, and the whole thing tips. A single, strong leg, or even two, can't quite provide the stability on its own. All three at equal strength are what work requires now.

We talk about trust this way a lot, built on ability, integrity, and benevolence. When two out of the three are strong, but the third isn't, trust is unsteady. You know, it's off somehow. The same is true for knowledge at work right now. The first knowledge we need to build is our technical knowledge. And of course, everyone recognizes this. It's our functional expertise. If you're in finance.

It's understanding the models or the accounting principles, the regulatory frameworks. If you're in engineering, it's the coding language, the architecture, the operating systems. If you're in marketing, it's the channels, the data, and the creative process. It's whatever it takes to do the craft of your role well. This is also the knowledge that immediately comes to mind when we think of continuous learning.

We pursue additional certifications, evolving techniques, or current best practices, continuously honing our craft or the foundation of every job. Technical knowledge answers primarily one specific question: Is this correct? Is the analysis sound? Is the code clean? Is the campaign well designed? It's a yes or no, somewhat right or wrong kind of knowledge.

Knowing the correct answer is just the first step to work these days. Technical knowledge is largely about execution, doing the work correctly. What to recommend in the first place, and whether that correct answer will be effective for the situation we're working on depends on two other types of knowledge.

The next is situational knowledge. And situational knowledge starts at the organizational level, both externally and internally. Externally, it's the industry, the competitive landscape, whether we're a private or public company. Internally, it's our mission, our long term goals, how we're actually performing against them right now, and maybe even where we have real weaknesses. That picture it it cascades down, shaping.

How our function contributes to those larger goals, and shaping our own team, our particular strengths, and where the gaps are. This is what actually shapes a good recommendation, not just whether it's technically sound, but how it contributes to a goal or runs into a situational factor we haven't considered. There's another dimension worth naming here too.

Our organization's own history within things already tried. Maybe it was a pricing change attempted a couple years ago that didn't land. The idea that was right but arrived at the wrong moment. Timing changes, and an idea that failed once for reasons specific to that moment might genuinely be the right move now. Think of it like a board game. The rules stay the same, but every other player's moves.

Change the situation constantly, and the players who are winning are the ones that are tracking the whole board, including what's already been tried. This is also where situational knowledge quietly powers something we've talked about before on the show: judgment. Knowing an idea failed once isn't enough on its own. Judgment asks the sharper question: Does the original reason it failed still apply?

Or has it enough changed that it deserves another look? And understanding specifically why it failed for the first time. Not just that it did, is what tells you how to bring it back differently this time. So we're not repeating the same mistake with new timing. Then there's human knowledge. Human knowledge is the understanding of the specific people around us well enough to know what they need to feel clear.

What genuinely motivates them, how they want their contributions to be recognized, among other things. It goes beyond someone's technical strengths into the unique way they approach their work, which can be different from our own. This is what actually removes friction from our day-to-day work. It's how we know who to talk with about a specific situation, whose perspective would genuinely sharpen our and or check our own thinking.

And how to work with teammates whose approach differs from ours without that difference turning into friction. It's the ability to work with ease alongside others. Say a colleague goes quiet in a meeting right after an idea gets raised. Without human knowledge, that silence might get read as disengagement or actually assumed agreement on the idea. And the conversation moves on without them.

With it, we recognize that this particular person they process quietly and need a beat before responding. So we circle back after the meeting instead of assuming their silence meant something it didn't. So we get their accurate input by taking this approach. This benefit compounds even further for anyone that happens to be new to an organization. Building these relationships early.

Gives us somewhere to go when we need to understand what's worked in the past and why or why not. Exactly the kind of situational history we just talked about.

A new hire who invests in this early has a real advantage, not a vague any advice for me kind of question, but the ability to ask something specific. Has anything like this been tried before? And what happened when it was? And to know exactly who to ask. Here's why human knowledge is distinct from the other two. Technical knowledge tells us if something is correct. Situational knowledge.

Tells us if the timing and context are right for our organization, our function, our team, right now. But even a technically sound idea proposed at exactly the right moment can still fail for reasons that live entirely outside of any document or industry report. Maybe a specific leader has personal history with this exact issue. Maybe someone in the room has quietly

stake their own credibility on the opposite conclusion. That's not information anyone withheld from us. It simply lives inside relationships and becomes available to us only once we've taken the time to build them and feel comfortable enough to ask. Human knowledge is what lets us calibrate everything else, how we present, when we present, and to whom, so that being correct and well trained has a chance to matter.

Each of these three genuinely stands on its own, and each one contributes something real by itself. Strong technical knowledge produces sound, defensible work. Adds situational knowledge, and that same work lands at the right moment for the right reasons. Strong situational awareness helps us read timing and context well, even on its own. Add technical depth, and the idea underneath it holds up in real scrutiny.

Strong human knowledge builds genuine trust and understanding, even on its own. And add the other two, and that trust becomes exactly what carries a sound, well-timed idea across the finish line.

Real effectiveness at work, at any level, in any role, comes from all three knowledges working together, each one strengthening what the others can do.

Here's how to put that into practice this week. Pick one of the three legs: technical, situational, or human knowledge, whichever you've spent the least amount of time on lately, and try the specific version of building it. For technical knowledge, find one thing in your current work you've been doing on autopilot: a report, a process, content that you write continuously, a tool.

And ask whether it's still the best way to do it, or just the familiar one. For situational knowledge, pick one idea that got shelved or rejected somewhere in your organization in the past year. Find out specifically why. Not just that it didn't work, and ask whether that specific reason still holds true today. For human knowledge, identify one person whose perspective differs from yours on something you're currently working through.

And ask them directly what they're seeing that you might not be before you finalize your own view, not after.

Whatever the shortest leg is, that's where this week's attention belongs. And now you have a real place to start.

That's where a career edge actually comes from now. Not from one long leg, from knowing which one needs the most attention and building it on purpose. Thanks for listening to The Career Edge. I'll see you next time.