Do You Believe This Knowledge?

I was having a cup of coffee when I picked up a publication that was sitting on the table. I flicked through it until the following caught my eye;

“A cockroach’s favourite food is glue on the back of stamps”

My first reaction was probably, I didn’t know that, followed by, isn’t that interesting. But then as it started to sink in I found myself thinking, how do they know that? In what context did they learn that?

Had they been trying to design a new food for people who keep cockroaches as pets I wondered? I could just imagine the television adverts. Nine out of ten cockroaches who expressed a preference preferred Stampo, made with real stamp glue extract! Feed your cockroach each day with Stamp to give them that health shine to their shell. And in a few years time there would be Stampo with added vitamins.

Or did they acquire this knowledge while trying to invent some new cockroach trap or method of eradicating them? Find the thing that cockroaches can’t resist, use it to lure them into the trap or perhaps eat the poison that will be fatal to them?

The context within which they had made this discovery, found this new knowledge is important. In one context we have happy, thriving cockroaches while in the other we have cockroaches who are no more. Context is important. Do you want happy cockroaches or unhappy cockroaches!

The other thing that spring to mind was, how do they know that? Did they conduct thousand of trails tempting cockroaches with different foods until they found the one that they preferred? If so who funded all of this experimentation. Did they mean that all cockroaches from anywhere in the world would find any glue from any stamp from anywhere in the world to be their favourite food?

Did I trust them? Was there any research or science behind this or was it just something written to occupy people such as me, while they were drinking their coffee?
Now while it might be easy to dismiss this story of me and my coffee break as trivia just reflect on some of the lessons that are in your lessons learned database. How many of them have the context in which the lesson was learned? How many of them contain sufficient detail to allow you to access if there was real learning behind the lesson or that it was just personal opinion?

The next time I meet a cockroach (which I hope will be a very long time from now) I will be sure to ask them if it’s true that their favourite food is the glue on the back of stamps.


Knoco Ltd