And how do you do it? Steve Trautman, author of “Teach what you know” makes a pretty good case for KM and he argues that all you need is an Excel Spreadsheet and a Word Document.
In some organizations, 50% of the workforce will be will be retiring in the next 10 years. That means that we don’t have a lot of time to bring new employees up to the caliber of expertise that our more knowledgeable colleagues posses.
The answer to this problem, according to Steve, is good knowledge transfer. Unfortunately, knowledge transfer is fraught with barriers. Have you ever heard anyone convey one of these sentiments?
- “I don’t have enough time to do knowledge transfer”
- “There’s no incentive for me to share what I know. Besides, how the heck am I supposed to know what a new person needs?”
- “I’m a specialist and I only talk to other specialists. I don’t have time to talk to intermediates let alone beginners.” (That one is courtesy of Gordon Vala-Webb of Pricewaterhouse Cooper Canada)
According to Steve, 78% of what people need to know is sitting right next to them so we need to spread the wealth that’s already around us.
Many organizations hire people based on a job description and then rank applicants against competency models. Once a person is hired, job descriptions and competency models get filed away. The amazing thing is, those competency models can provide some high level learning objectives.
In his presentation, entitled “Transferring Knowledge isn’t just for nice people”, Steve suggests refining competency models down to actual specific skills. With the help of HR, using a spreadsheet or word document, take a competency like Communication and identify the unique communication skills that a person will need to perform their job. To find out what skills are needed, use a simple interviewing technique to ask a manager or exisitng expert questions about what a new person might need to ‘Read’, ‘Analyze’, ‘Write’, ‘Facilitate’, etc as part of their work. Compliment each of those skills with a list of resources that will help a person master those skills. You can even develop a few simple metrics to test whether or not a person is progressing accordingly. It doesn’t have to be 5 year growth plan, so keep it simple. Ask yourself, what do you want a person to be able to do in one to three months? That’s probably as far into the future as you’ll be able to see. The rest is agility.
If you can update a job description, you can update a skills document. It takes a bit of time and planning, but do it once, tweak accordingly, and you’ll have a working tool to use over and over again for new employees coming around the corner and any high turnover you’re currently experiencing.
P.S. I wrote this post sitting on the plane from San Jose to Chicago O’Hare. The captain suggested we tune into channel 9 of the onboard sound system to hear the flight crew communicate with various ground control centres. Talk about getting an amazing glimpse into the working world of an airline pilot.
#1 by Dale Arseneault - September 29th, 2008 at 05:44
What Steve suggests is a great idea, something that very few organizations seem to do, and a great start to a re-usable tool. But hopefully launching into discussions about “job descriptions,” “competency models,” “skills” may point to the need for more. What I’m talking about is two things: 1) the unique nature of the application of generic skills and qualifications (expressed in competency models, skills inventories, job descriptions etc.) in the work environment and the lessons learned from that, and b) the development of “expertise” in the context of a work environment that enables people to successfully improvise when faced with a unique, complex challenge or situation. To try and “transfer” the unique learning that comes from experience gained in an organization requires a lot more than an MS Word document or a spread sheet. Organizations would do well to recognize and distinguish a “replacement strategy” of filling generic skill and qualification gaps, and fostering true-cross generational learning through far richer developmental conversations in the organization’s context while engaging in productive work.