From Expertise to FAQs

We knew someone was retiring. We brought someone in to interview him, and he asked questions and we captured all the answers to those questions. And now in SharePoint we have those Q & A and it is accessible to all.

Memory is linked to context

From a blog post by Shawn Callahan 10/11/08

Remembering experiences is heavily dependent on surroundings. I’m currently helping an energy company learn the lessons from retiring employees. I’m videoing their experiences with the view to facilitating sessions using the footage; it’s not really about capturing knowledge, just sparking new conversation based on what’s captured. My last subject was the company’s network controller. He’d been in the role for 10 years and I interviewed him in his office, which was right next to the control room. The control room looks like a mini version of the one from the movie The China Syndrome. His office has a window looking into the control room and it is festooned with charts and whiteboard diagrams. Everywhere you look are computer screens. He has a large table in the middle of his office, which has been the site of many disaster response war rooms. He was brimming with stories.

The network controller was retiring two weeks after my interview and I asked whether I could interview him again at his home. He was happy to help. A month later we met in his lounge room and the response was noticeably different. The stories weren’t as rich. It was harder for him to recall the events. The surroundings didn’t contain the memories and prompters to help him remember what he knew. Surroundings make a big difference to what people can recall.

http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2008/11/ask_a_gardner_w.html

Remember Who...

It really makes a difference if the expert is sociable. People who move on to another role can still be reached, because their ex-colleagues remember them and maintain contact. So they can call on them when they need help. The non-sociable ones just “disappear” as soon as they move on. People are not aware of their knowledge. Maintaining networks is so important.

To the Rescue

I was working in a plant, and they had quality problems. Even the very experienced person who worked there couldn’t resolve it. The younger people in the plant didn’t know that I had worked there before. I went in with a team and fixed it. So expertise was brought in eventually, but not where people had originally expected to find it.

Knowledge sharing is two way

I just changed job scope, and the colleague who handled that before me shared her experience with me. Knowledge sharing is a 2-way thing. Experienced colleagues can’t recall everything so you have to ask them questions to jolt their memory.

Lost knowledge

Staff turnover is high in my dept. Recently, there was a query from Internal Audit about payments not done since 2002. However, all the staff who were involved in the matter had left, and my boss and I had to trace everything from scratch.

Can't remember

We were trying to ask an experienced person about handling this particular case. This person had been transferred to another department, and he couldn’t remember how he handled the case. There was either no documentation, or he didn’t know how to locate it.