Monday, January 12, 2009

Knowldege retention - Proactive vs. recovery?

With high turnover and difficulty in replacing key employees, knowledge retention is becoming more and more important.

I classify knowledge retention efforts into three categories:

1) Proactive – as an everyday task, capturing knowledge on an continual basis
2) Salvage – When you know someone is going to leave, capture essential knowledge in the time allotted.
3) Recovery – Finding or reconstructing the needed knowledge afterward

In an ideal world being proactive would be the best. However, capturing knowledge takes time, effort, and resources. There’s a fine balance between the value of knowledge captured and resources required. Prioritization and most importantly an understanding of “mission critical” or “position critical” knowledge is a good place to start.

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1 Comments:

At 4:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,
You have rightly talked about the ideal world...
As I see it this is the main task of any KM prof. in any organization: capturing the "hot from the oven" knowledge - both structured as well as non structured.
What will be the best way of doing so. in your opinion?

 

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