Elvis has left the building: LIKE 30 revisited (and the Christmas party!)

The LIKE 30 event from Thursday 27 October has already been thoroughly blogged by James Andrews, Virginia Henry, Sarah Wolfenden and Matthew Rees , so this is a very belated postscript to their excellent accounts.  

The evening's theme was knowledge transfer, the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of an organization to another, particularly in the context of senior staff or key knowledge holders leaving the business.  It was led by Gary Colet from the Warwick University Business School, who is the Facilitator for the Knowledge Retention & Transfer Special Interest Group at the Knowledge & Innovation Network. 

Gary opened his presentation with a practical demonstration of "knowledge degradation", with four volunteers participating in a form of Chinese whispers.  A simple narrative was read to the first volunteer, then passed progressively down the line to the fourth, who then had to repeat their own version to the audience. What I found interesting about this exercise was not simply the rapid loss of the basic facts and substance of the story in its final telling, but also that we in the audience couldn't agree on what we'd been told.  The simple lesson here was that it is important that knowledge is directly communicated to the people who need to use it, without an intermediary. 

Gary went on to outline and demonstrate the techniques and strategies to ensure that effective knowledge transfer takes place during times of personnel change, through structured interviewing and facilitation of key conversations.  Practical, structured interview and facilitation techniques must of course be backed up by appropriate and thorough record keeping, whether this is done through agreed written accounts or other audiovisual recording methods.

Something that Gary was keen to stress was that for this process to work, it is important to establish trust and rapport.  The last thing a person leaving an organisation through, for instance, early retirement or redundancy, may want is to do is to share their professional knowledge with the organisation that they are leaving.  One way to approach this is to emphasize the professional nature of the transaction - you can work wonders by appealing to an individual's professionalism and showing respect for their knowledge and experience.  So when your knowledge stars leave the building, you can be sure that their often priceless knowledge and expertise does not walk out of the door with them. The benefits for the people whose knowledge is being harvested, is that they feel that they have been valued throughout their time with the organization.

There is a lesson to be learned there for HR and other managers dealing with staff at all levels of the organisation during the kind of fundamental restructuring and redundancy programmes that we are currently seeing.  My question is in times of corporate crisis how often is this kind of respect truly demonstrated?

On a lighter note, the LIKE Christmas party on Thursday 8th December at the Rugby Tavern in Clerkenwell was yet another thoroughly enjoyable evening.  A great end to a great year of events.  Thanks again to the LIKE team for all their hard work during 2011, and we're looking forward to next year's programme!

- Donald.

Comments

[Sarah Wolfenden]

Hello,
Thanks for the link to my blog - can I just ask that you change my surname please - it's Wolfenden. There seems to be a spate of people addign an extra D! Thanks again.

[Donald Lickley]

Hi Sarah - Duly corrected. I think we must have all been copying and pasting from the same source!

[Sarah Wolfenden]

Thank you Donald!

[GaryColet]

Sue,
Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated. Sorry I didn't make the LIKE Christmas 'do' but hope to participate in some 2012 events.
Best wishes
Gary