Knowledge is available, yet the ability to access it is often limited. It left the company when the experienced employee resigned, it’s with that incredibly busy person who doesn’t have time for you, or my biggest pain point – it’s accessible if you sift through hundreds of files within the Wiki only to probably (not) find what you’re looking for.
Common knowledge transfer methods often don’t support the variety of learning styles, they support the knowledge holder or the budget and time constraints of organisations.
Once an organisation reaches a certain level of maturity and begins the process of documenting information, it can suddenly accelerate. Put it in the Wiki – it’s fantastic, until it’s not, and the Wiki becomes a dumping ground for out-of-date information and you’re checking the document dates to minimise the risk of using out of date information.
The problem is, two-thirds of the population have a learning style that isn’t read/write¹ and more than half are multi-model learners (when you must vary the way information is presented).
We must start designing our knowledge transfer methods from the outside in. Start with the learner in mind and work towards the source of knowledge. This will consume more of your experienced peoples time. Yes. But as I regularly joke “good, cheap, fast… pick two”.
If you want quality, then you must build quality into your processes. Every good quality system built teaches us this, so why cut corners when it comes to knowledge transfer?
One idea I’ve been throwing around lately is the Ask Me Anything concept, popular in the podcast world. It’s where a respected individual is interviewed and listeners can ask them anything, there’s no set topic and there’s no guarantee they know the answer.
Take your knowledge-wealthy employees, schedule reoccurring 30min blocks of time, and invite others to ask them anything during this block.
You’ll need to experiment with a few structural rules; submit questions prior, time limits per question, limited listeners, a support person to provide information and even record the session, just be careful not to build a video-based Wiki abyss!
My only ask is the knowledge-giver should not have significant actions after the session, it should be a time-blocked effort.
Of course you’ll need to allocate time from your most experienced staff. However, dedicating just 90mins per knowledge giver proves to be a highly cost-effective investment in internal training.
With love, Kristie
¹ J Adv Med Educ Prof. 2017 Oct; 5(4): 185–194. The National Library of Medicine.
