It's not uncommon to hear the phrase used as a pejorative, with the implicit assumption that oral culture is inferior to literate culture and that tribalism == primitivism == bad and undesirable.
But I've come to believe that there are always going to be things that cannot or should not be represented in written documentation. Documentation is an artifact that must be maintained. Individual professionals and organizations spend a huge amount of energy producing, managing, and maintaining written documentation.
But how much time have we spent on oral transmission of ideas? Almost none. And that's because we dismiss it as an approach. It's seen as less than or primitive, or at best something to discourage.
But if you accept that there must always be some oral information, then ignoring the issues of how we communicate, update, and persist that orally transmitted information seems foolish. There are cultures that have more recently made the the transition from being primarily oral to literal that have not forgotten the skills needed to manage this class of knowledge.
I wonder what practices we can learn from them that we can use to improve our ability to share and communicate more effectively.